Genetic relationships II
Li2 Language variation:
Historical linguistics
David Willis
The Wave Theory
Assumptions behind the family-tree model:
•
homogeneous parent language
•
sound change is regular
•
parent language splits suddenly and cleanly into two daughter languages
Instead we observe:
•
dialect continua (with recently imposed divisions into standard languages)
•
mixture of shared and independent innovation in neighbouring varieties
•
conflicting evidence for subgrouping
•
irregular development of creoles
The Wave Theory
The satem : centum split
SATEM
CENTUM
LANG UAGES
LANG UAGES
Indo-Iranian
(Sanskrit)
Baltic
Slavic
Ave stan
Armenian
Albanian
Italic (Latin)
Greek
Celtic
Germanic
Another split
INST.
/ DAT. PL.
WITH [b]
Indo-Iranian
(Sanskrit)
Celtic
Italic (Latin)
INST.
/ DAT.
PL. WITH [m]
Germanic
Baltic
Slavic
The Wave Theory
The Wave Theory: Example
The Wave Theory: Example
These sound changes produce contradictory trees:
The Wave Theory: Example
The Comparative Method beyond IE
Problems with the languages of Australia
• most (> 80%) Australian languages are
classified as Pama-Nyungan
• subgroupings within Pama-Nyungan have been
established, but not a full family tree
• it has been argued that there is so much
borrowing in Australian languages that systematic
correspondences are obscured
Punctuated equilibrium (Dixon 1997)
• language groups have existed for most of human history without disruption
• in periods of equilibrium languages change slowly and largely by borrowing from
one another, creating linguistic areas crossing genetic families
• long periods of equilibrium are interspersed with short periods of punctuation
(invasion, migration, new technology etc.)
• splits of the type found in family trees happen only in periods of punctuation,
hence the Comparative Method is applicable only to periods of punctuation
Punctuation equilibrium: Problems
• convergence and split can occur simultaneously e.g. in ancient Anatolia, the non-IndoEuropean languages were converging with the Indo-European (Anatolian) ones, while,
at the same time, the Indo-European (Anatolian) languages were splitting from one
another
• punctuated equilibrium justified by the claim that there are 'too few' languages (only
6500) if languages had been splitting in the manner of the Comparative Method for
100,000 years; however, this underestimates the role of language death, and ignores
the huge recent population growth which has increased language diversity in the last
10,000 years
Punctuated equilibrium
• The Comparative Method can be applied partially even to Australian languages:
Punctuated equilibrium
• The Comparative Method can be applied partially even to Australian languages:
Conclusions
Bardi and Yawuru are related (both Nyulnyulan family)
Bardi (Nyulnyulan) and Karajarri (Marrngu (Pama-Nyungan)) are not.
Punctuated equilibrium
Alternative view:
• Family Tree model works well for relationships between languages but not for
relationships between dialects
• Dialects/closely related languages form chains of mutually comprehensible varieties
• This leads to conflicting subgroupings, even though the varieties are genetically
related (compare problems with subgrouping in Romance or Indo-Aryan languages)
Long-distance reconstruction
General view:
•
even under the best conditions the Comparative Method allows reconstruction only
as far back as 6000–8000 years ago
•
further reconstruction is impossible because the shared set of cognates between
any two related languages will have diminished so much after this time period that
it will be indistinguishable from chance resemblances
•
language families may well be related beyond this time depth, but we can never
demonstrate those relationships successfully
Can we do better?
Long-distance reconstruction: Nostratic
• claims to be using conventional Comparative Method (identifying sound
correspondences and reconstructing proto-phonemes on this basis) groups
together Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic [= hypothesised grouping of Semitic,
Berber, Chadic, Cushitic and Ancient Egyptian], Kartvelian, Uralic, Dravidian,
Altaic [= Turkic, Mongolian and Tungusic].
Example (Trask 1996: 383):
Proto-Nostratic **/k/
1. PN **küni 'wife, woman' > PIE *gwen-, Proto-Afro-Asiatic *k(w)n, *knw 'wife' woman',
Proto-Turkic *küni 'one of the wives' (in polygamy)
2. PN **kälU 'female in-law' > PIE *gjlou- 'brother’s wife', Proto-Afro-Asiatic *kl(l) 'sister-inlaw, bride', ?Proto-Kartvelian *kal- 'woman', Proto-Altaic *käli(n) 'wife of younger brother or
son; sister’s husband'; Proto-Dravidian *kal- 'father’s brother’s wife'
3. PN **kamu 'grasp, grab, squeeze' > PIE *gem- 'grab, take, squeeze', Proto-Afro-Asiatic
*km- 'grab, take, squeeze', Proto-Altaic *kamu- 'seize, grab, squeeze', Proto-Uralic *kamo'handful', Proto-Dravidian *kamV- 'grab, take, hold'
• works by establishing proto-forms, then by applying the Comparative Method to
the proto-languages
• distribution of cognates is indistinguishable from chance (Ringe 1995)
Long-distance reconstruction: Mass comparison
Methodology:
• collect lots of words from the languages you are interested in
• look for resemblances between words
• declare any languages with resemblances related
• Seemed to work for African languages (Greenberg 1963), but highly
controversial for Amerind (the claim that all languages of the Americas except
Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Déné are related, Greenberg 1987)
Long-distance reconstruction: Mass comparison
• cognates are identified on the basis of phonetic similarity alone but it is highly
unlikely that true cognates would be phonetically similar at the degree of
separation postulated, cf. English five and its cognates French cinq, Russian
pjat', Armenian hing; and English two and Armenian erk (PIE *dw > *tg- > *tk> *rk- > erk-); or German Feuer 'fire' and French feu ‘fire’, and English day and
Spanish día 'day' which are not cognates
• after a certain period of time, lexical replacement will remove all cognates
between two related languages, making it impossible to identify the link
between them
• borrowing is difficult to eliminate: even basic vocabulary items can be borrowed
e.g. Finnish has borrowing tytär 'daughter' from Germanic, English has
borrowed 'basic vocabulary' person, grease and mountain from French
Long-distance reconstruction: Mass comparison
• using large numbers of languages increases the possibility that chance is
responsible for the similarities (that is, in a group of twenty languages, you
are more likely to discover four with a similar word than in a group of four)
but no statistical check on this is offered. Greenberg says the reverse though,
which is clearly wrong:
The method of multilateral comparison is so powerful that it will give
reliable results even with the poorest of materials. Incorrect material
should have merely a randomizing effect. (Greenberg 1987)
•
there is no check on the semantic shifts allowed e.g. Greenberg's Amerind
hypothesis used a group of 'cognates' with the range of meanings 'body /
belly / heart / skin / meat / be greasy / fat / deer'
•
there is no check on the degree of phonetic similarity permitted
•
similarities due to onomatopoeia (in words such as 'suck', 'sneeze' etc.)
and nursery forms (mama, papa) are not consistently ruled out
Long-distance reconstruction: Mass comparison
• the role of chance is so great that any genuine similarities will inevitably be
obscured, especially if the forms involved are of CVC structure and any
consonant at the same point of articulation is allowed to match any other
consonant at that point of articulation
• in practice the evidence offered is full of elementary philological errors and
the known early history of languages is ignored
• morphological structure is added or eliminated at will in order to increase the
plausibility of a relation e.g. Dravidian (Tamil) melku 'chew' has the
morphological structure mel-ku, which decreases the proposed similarity
with Indo-European milk-type words
• evidence is second-hand through dictionaries: errors build up
Glottochronology
• compile a list of basic vocabulary in two or more languages you are
interested in (use a Swadesh list or something similar)
• use basic vocabulary:
this is most resistant to borrowing
the items can be identified in most languages
• identify what proportion of the vocabulary on the list is cognate in pairs of
languages
• calculate the time since the languages diverged, assuming that after one
thousand years, a language will have retained 81-86% of its core vocabulary
Glottochronology
• cognates are identified by inspection and not by the Comparative Method
• translating vocabulary lists is not straightforward: different possible translations
• semantic shifts obscure cognates:
English head
German Haupt '(metaphorical) head' German Kopf
French chef 'chief, boss'
French tête
Ok to allow two cognates that have moved apart in meaning?
• lexical replacement doesn't operate at a constant rate
• languages don't split apart at a particular date (there is a potentially long period
when they drift apart), so the final calculation is meaningless