--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Juha Savolainen <juhavs@...> wrote:
>
>
> Thanks for your comments and for pointing out the existence of
the "Continental Celtic" group. As nobody seems to have read the full
article, it is not possible to discuss properly the methodology of
Forster and Toth. However, if the NYT newspaper story got it
right, "Dr. Forster says he assumes that the rate of language change
can also be averaged over time".
>
> Somehow I get the feeling that Forster, perhaps without knowing it,
is trying to resurrect Morris Swadesh´s "glottochronology" from its
scholarly grave. If I remember correctly, Swadesh argued that
the "core vocabularies" of various languages changed at a constant
rate. Too bad that it turned out to impossible to specify reliably
such "core vocabularies" and that the assumption of a constant rate
seemed to contradict the available evidence, not to speak about the
impossible dates Swadeshian approach suggested for many language
splits
The variation of the rate of change from meaning to meaning is not
what invalidates glottochronology.
> Morover, if we take the "molecular clocks" (such as they exist in
their very imperfect state) as the point of comparison, we
immediately see a major difference between these clocks and lexical
items. The molecular clocks make use of "junk" DNA, precisely in
order to eliminate the workings of the natural selection. But what
items would play the role of "junk memes" here?
I presume that the implication here is that some words are ripe for
replacement. The issue then is whether error bounds can compensatoe
for such effects. If they can, then they are not a problem. Some
mtDNA base positions are actually ripe for replacement, though it's
probably accurate to say that some base sequences are more prone to
mutation. (Such tendencies can include a significant, and ultimately
lethal, tendency to insert bases. No random walk here!)
The real killer for glottochronolgy is variations in the tempo of
change; I can't comment on how real they are, but Piotr believes they
are.
Richard.