Re: A China-Sumer connection

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 03/06/05 

Date: Sun, 06 Mar 2005 14:36:51 GMT

phippsmartin@hotmail.com wrote:
>
> Comm wrote:
>
> > He could have simply asked me why I thought that about Sumer and
> Tatars and
> > Indonesians (Austronesians) and I'd have simply told him - it's very
> very
> > simple. Nomads move around and spread ideas. These people were land
> and
> > sea nomads and that is 100% well known.
>
> It's Sunday morning in Taiwan and I am clear headed enough to refute
> arguments, including my own. This is a good thing because Peter
> Daniels outright refused to respond to my post. Oh well.

Sorry, what post was that?

<...>

> This reminds me of another problem: language. How could Turks or
> Austronesians communicate easily with both Sumers and Chinese? I
> suppose if they were merchants then they would only need to know some
> basic words like "How much?" and "One, two, three..." and maybe some
> words for weights and measures. Not enough to communicate complex
> ideas. Of course, aliens from Vega would have had an even harder
> problem. :D
>
> Of course, this is why it is good that this is posted to sci.lang too.
> I understand that Turkish and Azeri is related to Korean and Japanese.

Only if you believe (as no one has been able to demonstrate) that
there's a language phylum "Altaic" comprising Turkic, Mongolic, and
Tungusic; that Japanese and Korean are related to each other
sufficiently recently that a Common Jpn-Kor can be reconstructed; and
finally that enough can be known about this Proto-Jpn-Kor that it can be
compared with the (also not yet known) Proto-Altaic. If there is some
connection, it's so long ago that it would be of no use in helping
Turkish- and Korean-speakers understand each other.

> Why and to what extent? I have studied both Japanese and Filipino and
> I find that their grammatical structures are similar too (the way they
> both add endings to a base verb to make it past tense - of course we do
> that too in English for regular verbs - and the way they have particles
> following nouns and verbs to indicate the parts of speech). It seems

Those are _typological_ similarities, found around the world in
unrelated languages, and typological properties tend to change over the
centuries.

> to me that linguists are more willing to believe that cultures are
> related based on the similarities of language and, indeed, this would
> seem to be what inspired the whole idea of Indo-European culture,
> namely the linguistic similarities. If languages and cultures are
> related, doesn't that mean that people _had_ to be in contact, directly
> or indirectly?

You're confusing two things (at least). Linguistic similarities exist.
By studying them, characteristics of the (no longer spoken) language
that gave rise to the existing language can be reconstructed. Some of
the characteristics that can be reconstructed are vocabulary items. If
words for things having to do with agriculture, or wheels, or horses,
can be reconstructed, then it's plausible that the ancestral culture
knew agriculture, or wheels, or horses.

Related languages, by definition, had a common ancestor language.

Cultural traits, however, can be shared by neighboring peoples whose
languages are totally different (see New Guinea, for instance).

> The question, of course, is whether Asian languages are/were closely
> related enough that people from different parts of Asia could learn
> each others languages easily enough to communicate even the simplest of
> ideas. I would imagine the answer is "Yes" because some people seem to

The answer is No. There are quite a few independent language phyla in
Asia, and even being related doesn't necessarily make languages easy to
learn -- just try (as an English-speaker) to learn Irish (let alone
Dari).

> have a gift for learning languages. Besides, you could have had some
> Turks who could speak Sumer and some Turks who could speak Chinese:
> there wouldn't have been a need for anyone to be multi-lingual.

Um, you just posited _two_ multilinguals.

Except that Sumerian had ceased being spoken several thousand years
before any Turks arrived in their area.

> Still, what you say above Americanisation, it isn't as easy as all
> that. I know because I am currently teaching English here in Taiwan:
> it isn't that easy for people in Asia to learn English; it takes a lot
> of work. It would have been even harder for a merchant to learn
> another language, even one related to his own. Or perhaps languages

You contradict yourself? Very well, you contradict yourself.

> became related through contact. I do that with my wife: I speak a mix

Languages do not "become related." They get words and even syntactic
structures from each other.

> of Filipino and English with her and with Chinese people who can speak
> English (outside class) I and they speak a mixture of Mandarin Chinese
> and English, because neither of us is fluent. Again, Turks and

I hope each of you spoke to your children in your own language and not
in your non-fluent attempts at each other's language; that way, they had
a good chance of growing up perfectly bilingual. And if another language
was dominant in your community, perfectly trilingual. (Contrary to
Comm's belief, multilingualism is the normal state of affairs among the
peoples of the world.)

> Austronesians need not be fluent to communicate if the Sumerians and
> Chinese are willing to try learning a bit of their language too. But
> it's still difficult to communicate complex ideas. Mind you, just how
> complex are the ideas we're talking about? Not very.

There weren't any "Austronesians" around to communicate with Sumerians.

> The point is that people from different parts of the world don't just
> walk up to each other and start talking and exchanging ideas. It is
> difficult.

They start talking right away -- but it takes a while before they can
exchange ideas.

> > It's a lot more plausible than
> > morphogensis - which is the other explanation for how all those ancient
> > people just happened, by mere coincidence, to develop the same kinds of
> > things at the same time, more or less!
>
> Now, hold on, morphogenesis is not completely implausible as an
> explanation for human behaviour, just not sufficent to explain the
> development of ideas. I see the problem more along the lines of having
> to believe in genetic memory or Jung's concept of archeotypes. Genes
> correspond to protiens which correspond to chemical and physical
> development. Genetics can explain certain human and animal instincts.
> What we are talking about in this thread is not instinctive behaviour,
> however, so morphogenesis isn't an issue.

First you ought to get her to tell you what she thinks "morphogenesis"
means. 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net

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