http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2013/05/linguists-identify-15000-year-old.html
Linguists identify 15,000-year-old ‘ultraconserved words’ -- David
Brown
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/linguists-identify-15000-year-old-ultraconserved-words/2013/05/06/a02e3a14-b427-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html?tid=ts_carousel
Words that last
By Wilson Andrews and David Brown, Published: May 6, 2013
A research team led by Mark Pagel at the University of Reading in
England has identified 23 “ultraconserved words” that have remained
largely unchanged for 15,000 years. Words that sound and mean the
same thing in different languages are called “cognates”. These are
five words that have cognates in at least four of the seven
Eurasiatic language families. Those languages, about 700 in all,
are spoken in an area extending from the British Isles to western
China and from the Arctic to southern India. Only one word, “thou”
(the singular form of “you”), has a cognate in all seven families.
<
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3BuFnZhzTx4/UYj-Y6mSZ5I/AAAAAAAAZD0/PAC1puYztQ4/s1600/ScreenShot047.jpg>
Voiced by Rebecca Béatrice Grollemund, a post-doctoral researcher
at the University of Reading.
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http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3ZUTvXJ3mto/UYj-omnCSjI/AAAAAAAAZD8/OjHadFtMZk8/s1600/ScreenShot048.jpg>
All 23 “ultraconserved words”
Listed by the number of language families in which they have cognates. Click here
<
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1218726110>
to learn more about this research.
7 - thou
6 - I
5 - not, that, we, to give, who
4 - this, what, man/male, ye, old, mother, to hear, hand, fire,
to pull, black, to flow, bark, ashes, to spit, worm
SOURCE: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/words-that-last/
Ultraconserved words point to deep language ancestry across Eurasia
Mark Pagela,b,1, Quentin D. Atkinsonc, Andreea S. Caluded, and Andrew
Meadea
Edited* by Colin Renfrew, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United
Kingdom, and approved April 15, 2013 (received for review October 31,
2012)
Abstract
The search for ever deeper relationships among the World’s languages
is bedeviled by the fact that most words evolve too rapidly to
preserve evidence of their ancestry beyond 5,000 to 9,000 y. On the
other hand, quantitative modeling indicates that some
“ultraconserved” words exist that might be used to find evidence for
deep linguistic relationships beyond that time barrier. Here we use a
statistical model, which takes into account the frequency with which
words are used in common everyday speech, to predict the existence of
a set of such highly conserved words among seven language families of
Eurasia postulated to form a linguistic superfamily that evolved from
a common ancestor around 15,000 y ago. We derive a dated phylogenetic
tree of this proposed superfamily with a time-depth of ∼14,450 y,
implying that some frequently used words have been retained in
related forms since the end of the last ice age. Words used more than
once per 1,000 in everyday speech were 7- to 10-times more likely to
show deep ancestry on this tree. Our results suggest a remarkable fidelity in the transmission of some words and give theoretical
justification to the search for features of language that might be
preserved across wide spans of time and geography.
*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.
This article contains supporting information online at
www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1218726110/-/DCSupplemental.<
http://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1218726110/-/DCSupplemental>
Published online before print May 6, 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1218726110
PNAS May 6, 2013
Full text (pdf)<
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/01/1218726110.full.pdf+html>
Full Text + SI (Combined
PDF)<
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Supporting Information<
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/01/1218726110/suppl/DCSupplemental>
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/01/1218726110
Ultraconserved words point to deep language ancestry across Eurasia
Supporting Information
Files in this Data Supplement:
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http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2013/05/01/1218726110.DCSupplemental/pnas.201218726SI.pdf>
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(DOCX)<
http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2013/05/01/1218726110.DCSupplemental/st01.docx>
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http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2013/05/01/1218726110.DCSupplemental
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