Re: Polynesian and South American place names
From: Philip Deitiker (Donevenask_at_worlnet.att.net)
Date: 08/30/04
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Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 01:11:13 GMT
benlizross <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> says in
news:413246DD.4DB7@ihug.co.nz:
> Philip Deitiker wrote:
>>
>> benlizross <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> says in
>> news:4131A100.4234@ihug.co.nz:
>>
>> > And on all these ending in -n you plan to base what
>> > claim?
>>
>> No. If Korea can have on suffix, chinese another and
>> Japanese still a third. We say lake, spanish lago,
>> Scottish Lach, how old are these minor differences.
>
> Well, I could look it up, because these words are known to
> have a common origin. You are suggesting that Japanese gen,
> Korean han, and Athapaskan -t'in do have a common origin?
No.
> But you do not seem interested in doing the comparative
> linguistics that would be required to make such a claim
> more than hand-waving.
Let me ask you a question what does Avocado mean in english?
How about alabama? What about Oklahoma?
> You are aware that English "lake" is borrowed from French,
> aren't you?
The issue is how long ago. and relative difference.
> You have an amazing store of dogmatic linguistic
> pronouncements which seem to be based on nothing. Anyway,
> "ko" is not a proper name, any more than English "lake" or
> "river" or "mountain" (all loanwords by the way).
Just like Leon Creek is not a formal name.
>> Back up a little bit, Jacques [confusion intended], before
>> you go jumping up and down what I was saying is simply
>> this, despite the way Japanese have created their
>> 'alphabet', despite that it has been tranlated in the
>> spanish pronunciation, despite that the NA never had an
>> 'alphabet' and despite the way the canadian have
>> translated their alphabet there is alot of similarity.
>
> But the factors you have just mentioned, if they were in
> any way relevant, would tend to produce a written form
> which did not accurately reflect the spoken language.
Right, so we actually should see no similarity. Everything acts
against seeing similarities even if the two aboriginal languages
were derived from a recent common source this is why I think the
linguistic distances are actually greater than they actually
are. Therefore I found it was odd that there were so many
familiar spoken forms. So what did I say, this is something one
may want to approach with caution. Many things are acting to
diverge the languages. We know in that case of the athabascans
that they do have more recent euarasian contribution than other
groups, although the exact % is a question. This probably means
that if there is a connection, it is likely some creolization
were words may have crossed but exact meanings might have been
lost or altered.
On the flip side, the origin of the athabascan recent genetic
elements is not clear to me, and I could paint a scenario about
japan and its contribution, but I am not going to do that.
Gisele can tell you about what she thinks are gaps on the
eurasian side in terms of linking new world haplotypes to
specific old world sources.
There is a basic problem however in Japan I would like to
bring up. During the Yayoi invasion by mtDNA ~66%, by HLA ~78%
and by Y 85~90% [IOW the net proportional retention is about
22% for Jomon] of the proportional representation of the
preYayoi population was lost. I predict based on what limited
information that I have, that most of this loss occurred as
people migrated to the north from the two most southern Islands,
kyushu, S. honshu and Shikoku (although not to much work has
been done on shikoku). My guess is based on the Ainu which show
more siberian like elements and differ markedly from the Non-Kor
HLA elements in the Japanese. These elements should have
recombined with the Ainu haplotypes and thus we should see
recombinants between these and a gradient down to ryukyu.
However what I see is a partial gradient, that then appears to
stop in the south, and appears a near complete replacement
occured in the north, the Ainu being representative of this
because they were not assimilated. Therefore there is a gap in
the genetic representation between southern Japan and Hokkaido
for pre-yayoi elements. This is not the only gap. Given the
presences of the implicitily s.jomon haps in south america one
expects a trail up the kuril or kamchatka into the new world.
This trail does not exist, and these island people are not
particularly close to the Ainu either in their genetic
representation. Therefore it looks as if there has been
widescale replacement north of Japan also. This is consistent
with the presence of the gap that Gisele is seeing. I should
also mention the A31 B29 haplotype in the Yakuts, which appears
to be the recombination of a haplotype once very common in Japan
(A31 and B29 which appears to come from WEA more recently;
however there is no intermediate population that has A31 B29).
A31 is very frequent in new world population as occasionally
B29. Reverse flow from the americas? lol. Or the loss of a
rather large population with small bits and pieces radiating
many directions.
From a language point of view what are the expectations if a
people, faced with possible extintion pull all the watercraft
they had and migrated east
> So
> you are suggesting that the fact that a distorted
> representation of Athabaskan eminds you of a distorted
> representation of Japanese is highly signficant?
See above, what I am suggesting is that unless the relationship
is rather recent such distortions should dissolve all apparent
similarities.
> Are you
> assuming that an undistorted representation would show even
> greater similarity? But we don't have to assume. We know
> what actual Japanese is like, and we know what actual
> Athabaskan is like, and they do not look particularly
> similar.
Do you know what Jomonese was like? Steer you little logical
boat back into the channel. I will try to look at the paper that
looked at non-korean components in the Japanese language, he
tried to reconstruct jomon elements but what he found were these
similarities to the Basque.
> A "fact" which you have not established by any sort of
> test.
Descriptive not experimental. So far as yet I have not been able
to raise the dead. I'll let you know when I can and we'll have a
walking on water ceremony. ;^).
>> How do you know?
>
> A lot of linguists know because these languages are well
> studied.
Theories of language origin change every 6 mos. Many of the
biases are largely based on the ethnic background of the people
who are studying them. Just like this group, we focus so much
attention on what west eurasian accomplish and the group is
virtually ignorant of cultural advancements that propogated from
the east. What we know is what we study.
Or let me put it to you like this, If I find something
studying that COMPLETELY disagrees with the cultural
anthropologists, archaeologist and linguist, i really don't
care, because there are freqeuntly unpercieved limits as to how
well they can interpret their data. Linguist for example have no
means of measuring the depth of impact of language creolization,
or the direction creolization will take. I am not convinced
however of the molecular information regarding the Athabascans,
if I was convinced I might change my cautious stance to a
supportive stance.
And BTW, some of the predictions I have made have later been
verified in the published literature, so you are not going to
make me feel to guilty disagreeing with what is published.
Linguistics is very sloppy, some studies are more sloppy than
others. All it takes is one good molecular study to show a
connection that was not previously seen to get someone to point
there refined algorythms a new direction and redouble the
comparative efforts.
> Phil, your accounts of the writing system just emphasize
> how confused is your understanding.
OK. Jacques, you can continue with your childish insults.
> The fact remains that
> Japanese has borrowed literally thousands of words from
> Chinese. Nobody disputes this.
Yes, thousands of words, thousands of Kange, however have you
seen written Japanese, it is katakana, kange, hirogana. For
example poetry is largely written in Kange. A technical manual
desribing how to process fish is going to be largely written in
katakana.
> Obviously it did have an influence, and the correct
> statement would be that Ko and Hu are both versions of an
> earlier form.
So you are 100% positive beyond all reasonable doubt that the
word ko was not used to describe lakes prior to the Yayoi. I
would like to know which crystal ball you determined this from.
>> to rule out all possible instances of more direct contact,
>> to explain certain cultural similarities.
>
> Do you really think that Japanese arriving via the coast
> 1500 years ago would have either (i) morphed into
> Athabaskans in that short time? or (ii) somehow induced the
> existing population to rename dozens of local features with
> silly-sounding Japanese names??
I don't know, what I perceive is a relatively large confidence
interval of times and places a compliment of protoathabascans
left from. The athabascans are an admixture, the problem I have
had with previous comparisons is estimating the amount of the
most recent precolumbian eurasian contribution because it
appears there is not a wonderful source population in asia that
I can extract these non-NA haplotypes from. When I say 1500
years ago what I mean is that in a period where before written
history their source population in eurasia might have vanished.
Potentially also true 4000 years ago. Don't let this lack of
confidence confuse you. The asthabaskans do have recent input,
the issue without a parent population in the old world from
which to derive a snapshot of HLA one is left going to
statistically derived populations some of which, like the
Japanese and Ainu already share extensive similarity with native
americans. Yes I suppose if I worked several weeks on this I
could come up with a figure that would be +/-20% relative to
the recent WEA input, but I simply have no vested interest in
doing so since I have no athabascans in any of the things I am
currently working on.
> No, because a linguist would go beyond "hearing a lot of
> words very similar" and show you the thousands of detailed
> resemblances. The historical records have nothing to do
> with it, and language relationships have been established
> all over the world in the absence of significant written
> records.
Some of them I trust and some of them I don't
> If you are interested in showing a linguistic relationship
> between Athabaskan and Japanese, this is not the way to go
> about it.
Right the best way to do it is to absolutely define the genetic
source population in the oldworld, through it out on the
internet with alot of publicity, have someone copy the work and
publish it, and finally the linguist will wake up and do more
extensive comparisons.
BTW, who said it had to be the Japanese, back up and insert
the words I said, what I said is that there was possibly a
connection in the northern region of Japan. I stated in the
paragraph above. I must have made this statement several times,
so let me clearly state this so you will not confuse it again.
The similarities seen with the Tlinglet point in the direction
of NORTHERN JAPAN [Not southern Japan, Not korea, Not Ryukyu, No
Tw aboriginal and Not chinese] and/or[emphasis on or] AMUR
RIVER. The affinities of the athabaskans is not clear. Unless I
had a clear genetic connection [unlike some people] I would
never assume a cultural connection unless there were other very
strong reasons to do so. I think the similarities between these
plateu lake and river names and Japan are possibly of a gradual
nature, meaning that the languages were similarly spoke, like
many native american languages, but that based on the genetics
those preYayio language elements should primarily have come from
the south, and it is unlikely the recent genetic elements in the
athabascans came also from the south. Which means they likely
came from a people who had a language between the Ainu and
southern tongue, IF IN FACT the athabascans came from Japan.
They could have been displaced from the kurils or from northern
amur region. Since I only know where the Tlinglet generally come
from it is not a predictor of where the Athabascans came from.
>> with these sloppy linguist.
>
> LOL! You dare to call someone else sloppy???
Yes and without hesitation. Also sloppy is someone who tromps
all over the possibility of longer range diffusion in a
haphazard and kneejerk reaction.
> None of this is impossible, but you are not even remotely
> close to evidence of any of it.
Back up, back up a little more, back up to where I entered this
thread. What did I say? I would exercise some caution in
dismissing a linguistic relationship between recent asia
populations and NA populations. I did not say absolutely
positively there is a recent strong relationship that explains
these, what I said is that there are potential similarities and
that these potential similarities are not far removed
geographically from genetic evidence for recent migrations to
those regions. There may be a connection, there may not be, but
I would not be the fool who summarily dismisses them at this
point because they do not fit his global prejudice on [his
perception] of what hyperdiffusionism is.
>> Again I urge caution on the issue of treatment of recent
>> immigration waves from the old world.
>
> Again I urge an approach to linguistic data with some
> seriousness.
Again I would urge a retrospective veiw on the overall accuracy
of linguistics.
> You shot first, buddy.
No, I said have caution. And I gave some reasoning as to why you
should have caution.
> The "test" is pointless, and I repeat again that you have
> not administered any "test" on your own data. We have
> nothing but your impression to support your claims.
The test was one for your brain. If you know som much about
Japanese you could easily separate the Japanese from the
Athabascan place names. Even after I made the list I couldn't.
If I randomly selected chinese place names and put them amoungst
Japanese or Athabascan place names I would be willing to bet you
could easily decide which was which at 90% confidence. That was
the point of the test, the fact you didn't take it means there
is some wanted ignorance to this debate.
> Well there's a law against a dilettante accusing others of
> not being "serious".
Was Eistein a dilettante when he started dreaming about what
would happen as he traveled the speed of light. It can also be
serious.
> The place name evidence shows neither, so far.
> Virtually everybody admits more recent links (past 2000
> years or so, which is as long as Polynesians have existed),
> but linguistic evidence of same is not abundant.
Who cares about the polynesians. You have got a pretty ferocious
genetic barrier that extends from manchuria across the ryukyu
chain that blocked almost all subsequent genetic exchange up the
western pacific after 16 kya. Within that capsule I was
speculating on where recent migrations and cultural diffusion
might pinpoint from.
>> There is a nodal distribution of name similarities.
>
> It's a "nodal distribution" now? You do these things in
> your head?
Well its not hard given that the surrounding region has been
heavily Anglicized. If I put a pin at every point on the NA map
where a japanese sounding place name was, you would also see the
distribution is nodal. That is not the issue, the issue is the
importance of 'Japanese sounding'
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