Comments on: No vindication of Joseph Greenberg?

By: gcochran

gcochran — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 22:33:47 +0000

How could we know it, or at least strongly suspect it? Well, genetics: we know from genetics that the original settlers were few in number. Against, from genetics, it looks as if there was a single ancient arrival. A priori, that makes a certain amount of sense, since the first settlers have a huge dual continent to expand into. After even a couple of thousand years, the same number of people in a later migration would be a drop in the bucket, hardly noticeable. The Eskimo-Aleuts and the Na-Dene seem, for the most part, to have originally settled the far north, which became habitable later and required specialized survival skills.

And of course, according to Greenberg and Ruhlen, there are shared characteristics of those Amerind languages.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 22:02:02 +0000

This has been of only slightly more than casual interest for me, but whatever I’ve read on this topic has always been consistent with a.) a well-defined Eskimo-Aleut language group (relatively recently arrived), b.) a well-defined Athabaskan group (arrived less recently) and c.) an undefined group which arrived before them. I’ve never seen much of an argument for a single arrival or a single original language.

By: Mike Keesey

Mike Keesey — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 17:26:47 +0000

#2,

“one that almost certainly spoke a single language”

How could we possibly know that?

By: Jess Tauber

Jess Tauber — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 07:07:11 +0000

I’ve got evidence (lexical, morphological) that Yahgan, from the southern tip of South America, has some sort of relatively recent connection to Salishan (from the North American Pacific Northwest). What the nature of this relation is (I lean towards contact) remains open.

Yahgan was one of the languages Greenberg mucked up, splitting it into two different ‘Yahganan’ languages because he didn’t understand the different nomenclatural conventions used in two different research eras, and the poor renderings from the more recent one.

He and his research tradition predecessors (Swadesh, Sapir) thought they saw Salishan related to local neighbors Chemakuan and Wakashan, and later connected through Kutenay and Algonkian-Ritwan. There may be some evidence for Salish-Kutenay linkage (some of the Kutenay forms resemble Yahgan more than Salishan), perhaps Ritwan to Yahgan as well. Chemakuan and Wakashan are no-go.

Greenberg also connects Yahgan to other ‘Andean’ language families, but the evidence is relatively sparse (very distant if true). Yahgan is very different from its neighbors such as Qawesqar and various Chon languages (except for borrowings). I have some evidence that makes a not-so-solid case for a link between Salishan and Mapudungun.

It will be interesting to see whether long-distance genetic relationship is as important on the Pacific coasts of the Americas as it seems to have been in select cases elsewhere. Can Greenberg’s ‘Amerind’-internal splits be trusted?

By: magscanner

magscanner — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 02:47:34 +0000

I like gcochran’s idea. Imagine you have a stable society, and the upper class develops a private language based on a sarcastic view of the lower classes. They make up words, grammar, and all of that stuff, and start using it amongst themselves, but keep it secret from the toiling classes.

Eventually the lower classes revolt, and throw the erstwhile bosses out of the tribal group, leaving them to survive as best they can while using a jabbering language that was made up and is probably inefficient.

I’d like to see some alternate-history fantasy writer try this on for size.

By: Chris Irwin Davis

Chris Irwin Davis — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 19:55:17 +0000

It would have been impossible in a pre-literary era for someone to develop “speaking in tongues” into a second language. Even modern recording technology and computational analysis has revealed glossolalia (as it’s known to linguists) to elude identification of any lexical or grammatical structure.

Perhaps I am arguing semantics. If someone claimed that the numerical substring “999999″ was significant because it recurred frequently in a stream of random numbers, could it actually be said to be “based on” that stream if the claim were not, in fact, true?

By: gcochran

gcochran — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 19:44:38 +0000

Sarcasm
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sarcasm is “a sharp, bitter, or cutting expression or remark; a bitter jibe or taunt”, usually conveyed through irony or understatement.

By: Karl Zimmerman

Karl Zimmerman — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 18:29:13 +0000

2 -

How would that work in a pre-literary era? One group of Paleo-Indians having a Pentacostal-like belief in “speaking in tongues” and the younger generation thinking they hear structure in this jabber, and developing it into a second language among themselves?

By: gcochran

gcochran — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 17:25:14 +0000

Right. Even though the Amerinds ( as opposed to the Eskimo and Na-Dene) stem from a single, small, ancient colonization, one that almost certainly spoke a single language, maybe some of their existing languages (or the ancestors of those existing languages) were made up from scratch, like Klingon.

By: Charles Nydorf

Charles Nydorf — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 13:00:39 +0000

That the Eskimo-Aleut languages constitute a single family descended from one original language is generally accepted. The same is true for the Athabaskan languages. In both cases, it is possible to get a rough idea of what the hypothetical ancestral language would be like. The languages that Greenberg grouped as Amerind constitute a different case because they are far more diverse. If they do go back to a single ancestral language it would be far older and far more difficult to reconstruct. Reich et als conclusion that speakers of Eskimo-Aleut and Athabaskan arrived later than speakers of languages in the Amerind grouping does not imply that Greenberg’s postulation of a giant Amerind family is valid or invalid.