--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <petegray@...> wrote:
> >Is there some statistical proof which give us the significance of
a
> relationship? Say, if for >two languages A and B 1000 cognates are
> identifidied, this is more significant if for the two >languages A
and B
> only, say, 250 cognates are identified.
>
> One cognate is sufficient.
> If it is shown to be a cognate, then the languages are related.
> You mean, I presume, "similar words", which are not the same thing
at all.
> (a) they may be borrowings.
> (b) they may be coincidence (this is surprisingly common)
> (c) actual cognates may not look alike at all.
> So it's the rules that matter, not the number.
Well, it you can confirm the genuineness of cognates by divine
revelation, you don't need any!
When you say 'the rules matter', are you simply referring to the
plausibility of the correspondences establishing the putative
cognates taken together? (Swadesh had criteria for acceptability.)
False cognates of type (b) are, of course, the reason for wanting a
reasonable number of matches.
How bad can the effect of borrowings get? English is supposed to
have been impacted heavily by Romance, but there are only a few
borrowings in the 200-word list - there's a tally at Nostratica.
The worst case I can think of is Thai, going by the spelling. I
reckon it has about 10 Indic loans in the c. 208 word list used by
the Rosetta Project. The words entered for 'thou' & 'you' (2
entries for one lexeme) and 'sun' are open to challenge though.
Richard.