Re: A China-Sumer connection

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 03/09/05 

Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 13:16:30 GMT

phippsmartin@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> a.manansala@attbi.com wrote:
> > benlizross wrote:
> >
> > But
> > > this is the speculative edge, where you can find somebody to
> support
> > > almost any pairing of the known families of SE Asia.
> >
> > Not only SE Asia, but NE Asia. Sagart has also suggested
> > Sino-Tibetan-Austronesian. Benedict has Japanese-Austro-Tai. So,
> > Martin isn't really alone.
>
> Upon reflection, what probably makes me open to the idea of languages
> being related to each other is the fact that the first time I studied
> Chinese I was taught by a linguist who strongly suggested the idea of a
> proto-language when he described Indo-European languages as being
> "innovative" in the way that they use relative pronouns to introduce
> subordinate clauses and refered to modern languages that appeared
> unrelated to any other known languages as "extremely rare" (in his
> words). He claimed, as you do, that Asian languages are strongly
> interrelated as refered (without giving examples) to similar vocabulary
> in languages throughout Central and Northern Asia and right across the
> Bering Strait to include Inuit. Of course, he could have been full of

Yes, he was full of it.

> crap: I don't think he was a full professor and might have only had a
> M.Sc. in applied linguistics. But now to see people on this group
> refer to languages in East Asia that have up to a 70% overlap in
> vocabulary (albeit with different pronounciations and depending on
> usage, be it technical or colloquial) as "related" strikes me as a tad

surely you mean "unrelated"?

> arrogant, and it does contradict just about everything he said or
> anything I've read since on the matter.

What have you read on the matter? Anything involving the name "Ruhlen"
is excluded prima facie, but you won't find responsible reference works
claiming "relatedness" all across Asia. See e.g. David Crystal,
Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language; or Andrew Dalby, A Dictionary of
Languages; or Bernard Comrie, ed., The World's Major Languages. 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net

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