Re: Related languages (Re: A China-Sumer connection)

phippsmartin_at_hotmail.com
Date: 03/24/05 

Date: 23 Mar 2005 20:57:45 -0800

Comm wrote:
> "Neeraj Mathur" <neemathur@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:d1qb9t$9l7$1@news.ox.ac.uk...

> > Now, a more general point, for Martin. He points out that linguists
use
> > similarities in vocabularies to determine relations, and offers the
tables
> > as evidence. This is true, but it is not the correct approach. What

> > historical linguists and comparative philologists actually do is
trace the
> > history of any given word through the language. If you do this, you
will
> > find that there are basically two possible scenarios: first, the
word can
> > have been borrowed at a given moment from some other language. If
this
> > happens, your tracing of the word's history ends at the time of the

> > borrowing (to trace it further would mean tracing it in a different

> > language; if you are a specialist in English, you might get
'jungle' as
> > far back as the moment it enters Hindi but you may simply not have
the
> > resources or knowledge to trace it further within Hindi itself).
> > On the other hand, if
> > the word is not borrowed, then essentially you are tracing it back
to the
> > end of your records. Your search ends at the point when your
records for
> > the > past run out. Comparative philology now provides the
opportunity to
> > go one step further back. It is at this point, and this point only,
that
> > comparison tables between different languages become relevant. If
you make
> > a large enough table, then if two languages offer regular sound
> > correspondences, you can go further back and posit that they are
all the
> > descendants of a given form and you can say that the word you were
tracing
> > is 'inherited' from that parent source. If you cannot set up these
regular
> > correspondences, then your search ends in mystery.
> >
> > This is much more sophisticated than simply drawing up a table of
words
> > that > look similar. If you were simply comparing vocabulary, you
might be
> > tempted > to posit some sort of connection between Latin 'deus' and
Greek
> > 'theos', both of which mean 'god'. However, there is no way to draw
up a regular
> > sound correspondence to account for these two words that is
consistent
> > with > all the other words of the language, and so we cannot say
that
> > there is any connection between them.

Yes, BUT when I was studying Mandarin Chinese the teacher made the
comment that if you trace back the pronounciation of words in Chinese
(presumably if you found ancient rhyming dictionaries?) then you will
find that words used in Vietnamese to mean the same thing are, in fact,
the same word. He went so far as to speculate that Vietnamese sounds
more like ancient Chinese than modern Chinese does (presumably due to
the influence of Manchu pronunciation on Mandarin). Yet people on this
group have insisted that Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) and
Vietnamese belong to unrelated language groups. Comm suggests that
this is a paradigm, that people are classifying Chinese languages as a
group for political reasons whereas, in reality, Cantonese differs from
Mandarin to the same extent that Vietnamese differs from Cantonese.
Who is right?

> > All of the trees that linguists draw up are based on patterns that
arise
> > from tracing the histories of the individual words of a language.
They
> > exclude borrowing because that would make things too complex: you
can only
> > have one source from which to 'inherit' words, and you can only
'inherit'
> > them at one point in time, while you can borrow words from as many
sources
> > > as you like and in as many moments in history as your fancy
takes. The
> > tree diagrams are simply shorthands for showing the inherited
> > relationships; the vocabulary comparisons that you will see
philologists
> > make are specifically of those words that are inherited, not
borrowed.

Fair enough, but note your use here of the word "inherited". I've been
criticized for saying that there should be a correlation between
genetics and linguistics: if you trace back different groups speaking
different languages and assume that they were once one group speaking
the same language then you would have to argue that they must also have
a genetic relationship. The only other possibility is that there was a
language shift, that people, for whatever reason started speaking
another language. It has been pointed out by many people that this
does happen when one group is conquered by another (even though I was
criticized, yet again, for making this very suggestion).

> > It is true that a complete description of the history of, say,
English
> > would need to talk about the French influence, the fact that French
and
> > Latin were such large and continuous sources of borrowing. But a
tree
> > diagram does not claim to do any such thing - it is limited to
offering a
> > history of the words that were inherited by a language only. This
is much
> > more easily identified, codified and worked with: since inheritance

> > happens only once, you can describe it in general rules that will
apply to
> > all inherited words; borrowing happens all over and so a separate
> > description is needed for each borrowed word. That is why most
linguists
> > use the much simpler, easier to fully understand situation and use
> > 'related' in reference to the tree diagrams only.

Now, in the case of English, we are descended from Angles and Saxons,
Germanic tribes, so it is natural to say that the oldest English words
are from German, even if most of the modern words were borrowed from
other languages, mostly French and Latin. Fair enough. But in the
case of people in South America, for example, who speak Spanish but are
presumably descendents of local people, couldn't we argue that they are
still speaking their traditional language but that they have borrowed
vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation from Spanish? This is an extreme
example. I'm just asking if vocabulary can be borrowed then why not
everything else? In which case we are all speaking whatever language
we inherited from our ancient ancesters plus any elements that were
borrowed along the way. We would then expect a 100% correlation
between genetics and "inherited" as opposed to "borrowed" language.

> Martin said:
> >> Certainly English speaking people
> >>> can decipher a lot of words from Romance languages and very
little from
> >>> Indian languages (meaning languages spoken in India and not meant
to
> >>> imply that there is an all encompassing Indian language group).
Again,
> >>> it would be prejudicial NOT to recognize the relationship between
> >>> languages in India and Europe just because they sound different.
By
> >>> the same token, however, it is intuitive to think that closely
related
> >>> languages should sound similar and that people who speak one
should be
> >>> able to understand someone who speaks the other.
> >
> > This argument seems to be confusing two very, very different
things. Two
> > languages can 'sound similar' and two languages can have vocabulary
in
> > common.

Perhaps I should have been clearer. I don't understand, say, Greek or
Hindi, and probably wouldn't be able to identify any of the words in
either but I can still judge whether they sound similar. I was
refering to Comm's subjective descriptions of languages (eg her claim
that Chinese sounded like "cats meowing" to her) and not to
similarities in vocabulary.

On the other hand, related languages should sound similar AND have
words in common and should therefore it should be easier for people
speaking realted languages to understand each other.

> > It is certainly true that English has a greater percent of its
> > vocabulary in common with French than with Hindi. However, in terms
of
> > their > sounds, Hindi is much, much more like French than either
are to
> > English.
>
> Hmm, it doesn't sound anything like French to me.

It's subjective.

> > Suggesting that 'closely related languages should sound similar' is
not
> > really a tenable argument: Armenian sounds a lot like its close
neighbours
> > in the Caucasus, but is not related to them at all. As for being
able to
> > understand them, I don't see how that argument is meant to work at
all.
> > I'm afraid that, despite having spoken English for my entire life,
I still
> > very often do not understand Scottish people talking - and that is
> > supposedly the same language! Punjabi and Hindi are extremely
closely
> > related, but I can't understand Punjabi. Nor can I understand
Dutch, one
> > of English's closest relatives.

But pronounciation, the use of tone and rhythm, these are what
determine how a language sound. Surely these things are inherited (or
borrowed as the case may be) along with vocabulary and grammar, so that
you would EXPECT realted languages to sound similar. I suggested that
could be a "prejudice".

Martin

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