Re: New Methodology on Analysis of Language Change

On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 23:49:57 GMT, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

>>
>>> It's basically the same technique used by Ringe et al., which was
>>> published in the last-but-one *Language* but which I reviewed in the
>>> 1998 Mair volume on the peoples of Inner Asia; it comes down to GIGO.
>>> The results depend more closely than usual on the selection of the data
>>> to be analyzed.
>>
>> I tried to figure out exactly what they were doing but failed. The quest
>> took me to the "Science" website and I have to pay $10.00 for a day pass to
>> read the bigger article.
>
> I hope you didn't do so ... Your central public library, and even the
> bigger branches, should ahve *Science*; if it's current, you can buy it
> at Borders (or B&N).
>

The article is here:

<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/309/5743/2072>

As mentioned, it'll cost you $10.00 to read. There is a "free summary"
which is fairly short. It reads as follows:

Structural Phylogenetics and the Reconstruction of Ancient Language History

Michael Dunn,1* Angela Terrill,1,2 Ger Reesink,1,2 Robert A. Foley,3
Stephen C. Levinson1,2

The contribution of language history to the study of the early dispersals
of modern humans throughout the Old World has been limited by the shallow
time depth (about 8000 ± 2000 years) of current linguistic methods. Here it
is shown that the application of biological cladistic methods, not to
vocabulary (as has been previously tried) but to language structure (sound
systems and grammar), may extend the time depths at which language data can
be used. The method was tested against well-understood families of Oceanic
Austronesian languages, then applied to the Papuan languages of Island
Melanesia, a group of hitherto unrelatable isolates. Papuan languages show
an archipelago-based phylogenetic signal that is consistent with the
current geographical distribution of languages. The most plausible
hypothesis to explain this result is the divergence of the Papuan languages
from a common ancestral stock, as part of late Pleistocene dispersals.

> How did they pick 15 of the hundreds of Papuan languages?

Aside from the above, I haven't a clue. I'll try to get my hands on the
bigger article

> Do any of the authors claim to be linguists?

It was done as part of an interdisciplinary project.

Michael Dunn, Angela Terrill, and Ger Reesink are at the Max Planck
Institute for Psycholinguistics at Nijmegen, Netherlands.

I think Foley is some kind of geneticist.

Dunn's website is here:

<http://www.mpi.nl/Members/MichaelDunn>

"Professional background: In 1995 I started fieldwork-based linguistic
research on Chukchi, an indigenous language spoken in the Arctic east of
the Russian Federation. In 2000 I began negotiating a second fieldsite in
the Solomon Islands, to work on a Papuan language called Touo (known to
linguistics as 'Baniata'). From 2002 I have been employed on the ESF-OMLL
project 'Pioneers of Island Melanesia', in a project investigating the
non-Austronesian languages of New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville and
the Solomons.

While physically still mostly at the Max Planck Institute for
Psycholinguistics, I am now employed by the Reseach School of Pacific and
Asian Studies (Australian National University) in the Department of
Linguistics, working with Malcolm Ross and Angela Terrill on the
non-Austronesian languages of the Solomon Islands."

Joe Murphy
Boy Linguist
.

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