Kaer Glen hag Erwan (John),
> This is analogous to IndoEuropean isoglosses - we could split IE any
number
> of countless ways, but are they all correct? Which gene do we pick
out of
> the countless millions to obtain our flawed results?
>
> Why couldn't we say based on this 90,000 year-old gene that Welsh and
Papuan
> lgs are related? How does one choose "good" genes from "bad" genes
for the
> purposes of this research? By what arbitrary criteria?
That's also a question I wanted to ask to geneticists. I suppose the
mutation that could generate such a gene is estimated very improbable,
so it is not likely it appeared two times independently at
approximately the same period. However, how do you mesure the
probability for a mutation to happen or not ? We don't have yet the map
of the human genome, have we, so we don't how many aminoacids were
replaced. Besides, how do you estimated when a gene appeared ? We can't
do that in linguistics with any precision (who can tell me which
millenium proto-IE split ?), so how come you geneticists can ?
I already told Glen by private email my personnal opinion on the
proto-languages issue : I think ORAL language is more ancient that the
human race (homo sapiens), that it existed already by the time of homo
erectus. I also think that nobody can prove that homo sapiens is a
different specie from neandertal or erectus, so how how modern cultures
and languages might be homo sapiens expansion on a erectus/neandertal
substrate.
Language appeared at different times and places independently, and I
think modern languages have a different origin from the begining of
ages.
I don't say that because I am a racist, but because I like VARIETY. I
think linguistics would be desperately boring if there were only one
language family. That is why (but not only why) I am an opponent of
Nostratic. I fell sad to think that IE people and uralic people have a
common origin.
Well John, could you tell me some serious references on genetics and
languages (preferably a handbook, I don't want to spend a week looking
for articles in specialized journals).
Glen, I think you should be more polite. You are behaving with John as
you were with me a week ago. Please don't be so extremist. We are just
talking about useless things that don't matter to anybody. No life is
at stake, there is no need to insult each other.
I think using genetics in some ^parts of the world might be very risky,
in china, for example. I have here an article by chinese geneticists,
and when you look at the maps of "isogenes" whatever you call them in
english, there is no correlation whatsoever with language families. In
austronesia, in isolated islands, on the contrary, I believe that
genetics can be useful to support the hypothesis that AN are originated
from Taiwan, for example.
Guillaume