From: mkelkar2003
Message: 48225
Date: 2007-04-04
>That *is* the correct way to classify with complete objectivity. If
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@>
> wrote:
>
> > > If you are just doing similarity comparisons on languages, there is
> > > no justification for excluding loan words. The question is rather
> > > whether they are now the 'typical' words for the meaning.
>
> > Excuse my ignorance, but why should loan words, even those which have
> > in course of time become typical for a given meaning, be included in
> > these Swadesh-like lists created for the sake of historical
> > comparison? As minimum, one should in this case consider carefully
> > the time depth at which the loan took place (e.g.: was it in the
> > prehistoric period? in the early historical period? three centuries
> > ago? etc.).
>
> If you are using Swadesh lists for glottochronology, then the answer
> is simple - they are examples of word replacement and help date the
> notional splits.
>
> For lexicostatistics, I would again say that they reflect the nature
> of the vocabulary. For example, the English words chosen to define
> the 100-word list include several North Germanic and Romance words -
> the following at least:
>
> North Germanic: bark, skin, egg, give
> Romance: person, mountain, round
>
> The verb 'die' might be of native origin, or a native word revitalised
> by Danish influence. The IE collection of word lists (Dyen et al.)
> marks 'bird' as a loanword, I don't know why. From its history and
> phonetics, 'big' looks North Germanic, but the North Germanic cognates
> are lacking. In my usage, native 'belly' survives only in set phrases
> - I would normally use a word of Greek origin, 'tummy', 'stomach' or
> even 'abdomen'. 'Breasts' is not the normal word in most Britons'
> speech - Romance(?) 'tits' is the usual (plural) word, though a lot of
> substitutes are used. Pushing things further back, 'path' is a
> Scythian loan, and 'long' looks like a Celtic loan.
>
> This is a fair reflection of the fact that English vocabulary has been
> heavily influenced by North Germanic and Romance. If one wants to
> exclude such features for some reason, it is generally better to use
> an older form of the language.
>
> > If one includes loan words like these in Swadesh-like lists such as
> > those used by "our" Slovenian researchers, will English and Arabic
> > cluster close to each other after they have put the data into their
> > shaker? :^)
>
> Well, 'die' and 'egg' probably helped English come out as aberrant
> North Germanic rather than aberrant West Germanic. Other contributory
> factors may have been the use of 'to' in the infinitives, possibly
> better matching the 'att' etc. of the Scandinavian forms, as opposed
> to the zero of the Dutch and German forms. The High German consonant
> shift may also have helped with this misclassification. Note that in
> the schemes presented, regular correspondences get no discount - each
> word pays the full cost of the sound change!
>
> Using spelling similarity with differences assessed word by word to
> identify genetic relationships is an attempt to automate naïve mass
> comparison. Need one say more?
>
> Richard.
>