On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 09:01:18 -0500, "Patrick C. Ryan"
<
proto-language@...> wrote:
>> I speak phonologically unmodified native Dutch, despite my genes.
>
><PCR> Your personal situation has absolutely nothing to do with the question under discussion.
It has everything to do with it. The language(s) that I, or anyone else,
speaks, and the way we speak them, have zilch to do with genes, apart
probably from the trivial requirement that they should be human genes.
Any child under a certain age will acquire the speech of his peer group(s)
perfectly, whatever his genes may be.
>It never fails to amuse me how some people struggle to avoid the simple facts
>out of ideological biases. If a large number of other-language speakers invade
>the territory of language speakers, the OVERALL gene frequencies of the new
>population (other-language + language) change, even without actual mixed marriages.
That's the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.
The operative factor is that the newcomers speak _another language_ (and
arrive in sufficient numbers or with attitudes that block full
integration), not that they have different genes. At best changing gene
frequencies in the population are a symptom [of language change by sub-,
ad-, or superstrate influences], never the cause of language change. And
the simple fact is that languages change in any case, whether the "gene
frequencies" change or not.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...