--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:> 01-12-03 11:18, Michal Milewski
wrote:> > Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
> >> I know the study only from the brief report posted here
> > > > I can email the original paper (as a PDF file) to you (and
other > > cybalisters, who are interested), if you wish. I can also
add a > > commentary (by D.B. Searls) that appeared in the same
issue of Nature.
>
> That's very kind of you. I'd love to see a copy.
Thanks to Michal Milewski and for the articles kept temporarily on
the files section, taken from the two referenced articles
in 'Nature' Vol. 426, 27 Nov. 2003:
Language-tree divergence times.pdf
Trees of life and of language.pdf
The thesis is that IE divergence occurred around 7800 to 9800 years
BP with the spread of agriculture from Anatolia.
Cognates are words assumed to derive from a common ancestor.
Lexicostatistics is based on the assumption that a pair languages
sharing a higher percentage of cognates (higher than another pair)
are more closely related. Lexicostatistics is sought to be linked
with glottochronology. The method used is to work out an average
rate of word substitution over time; this derived rate is
extrapolated backwards to present a tree-structure of language
divergence.
The basic flaws in the combined methods of lexicostatistics and
glottochronology are:
1. The limited number of words chosen (2449 lexemes from 87
languages; thus about 29 lexical items per language) as cognate word
pairs may not be a true representative sample of 'genetic'
relationships among languages. The choice of the sample is not
random and hence, application of statistical methods of analyses may
result in spurious correlations.
2. The concept of 'genetic' links among languages is itself a
questionable assumption, since there could be a linguistic area
where interchanges occur with a rapidity and intensity, particularly
in relation to technological advances such as farming
tools/techniques or alloying of minerals. The 'genetic' links assume
that a particular language is learnt only from a 'genetically'
related language speakers. This is a false assumption. For example,
in the Sarasvati Civilization, we have indications of
metallurgists's lexical repertoire which is based on new inventions
such as bronze or brass alloys (or pancaloha, five-metal alloys). In
such words related to new technologies, the words are likely to have
entered the parole of, say, Munda, Dravidian and Indo-Aryan speakers
almost simultaneously. In such cases, the assumption of a 'genetic'
relationship gets immediately falsified.
3. If indeed agriculture spread from Anatolia and if IE language
traces intruded into Bharat, it should be possible to find IE
agricultural terms in indic. But, this is not the case. The received
wisdom is that agricultural terms in I-A are not derived from IE but
from Language X. I have posited a hypothesis and tried to prove that
the Language X was mleccha, an indigenous, autochthonous language in
the linguistic area of Bharat circa 5000 years BP which explains the
minerals, metals and furnaces possessed by artisan guilds and
represented on Sarasvati hieroglyphs.
http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati/sarasvatihieroglyphs1
http://sulekha.com/expressions/articledesc.asp?cid=307017 Code of
Sarasvati Hieroglyphs cracked
The next exercise of Russel D. Gray and Quentin D. Atkinson should
include some lexical items from my Indian Lexicon; there is a
possibility that the Anatolia hypothesis will be disproved for
agricultural and metallurgical cognate pairs.
Kalyan