Comments on: The expanding crest of modern humanity

By: Jess Tauber

Jess Tauber — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 07:25:59 +0000

What I find interesting is that having studied phonosemantics over three decades and having looked at many different language families, there seems to be some sort of rough correlation between hybridization events recently discerned from genetic studies and the presence of large-scale systems within languages of highly transparent (pre)lexical items (ideophones). Since in their prototypical state ideophones (like onomatopoeia on steroids, but covering many more semantic domains than just sound) are prelexical (just as closed-class grammatical forms are post-lexical), this raises the question as to whether any genetic/neurological structures responsible for the implicational developmental hierarchical system of historical language processes were in some manner reset by such hybridization events, with aftereffect echoes even today in populations that underwent them.

By: ohwilleke

ohwilleke — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 22:08:07 +0000

FWIW, there is increasing evidence for something similar in language evolution. Models that show outsized levels of linguistic differentiation of the moment of language split are showing support both from statistical patterns of linguistic differences between related languages whose histories are known, and from psych lab studies that show advantages for language differentiation for those involved.

By: Razib Khan

Razib Khan — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 17:29:08 +0000

#4, i think greg’s point is that normal demographic processes aren’t subject to a range expansion which is like a diffusion process. e.g., the american settlers did not range expand and dilute through the space of native american territory.

By: Tom Bri

Tom Bri — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 17:01:12 +0000

Well worth the time it took to read, and accessible to the informed layman.
# 2, I am with # 3 on this. Was this sarcasm, or is there some point that I am not catching?

By: S.J. Esposito

S.J. Esposito — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 16:08:37 +0000

#2, how or why is B true?

By: gcochran

gcochran — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 17:34:24 +0000

A range expansion is the natural default model, since A. it’s mathematically tractable and B. No one has ever seen anything very similar happen in human history.

By: Paul Jones

Paul Jones — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 13:53:47 +0000

Discrete events: Toba volcano, flooding of the Black Sea, closing of land bridges by rising waters, invasions?