by Leolaia 75 Replies latest jw friends
CONGRAGULATIONS!!! Leolaia,
Thanks for adding the info about your Mom. I'm starting at a community college this fall semester. I'm looking forward to/scared to be starting, but I'm determined. Still don't know what I wanna be when I grow up. But I have to get the basics over with first anyway,so gives me a while to decide.
bem. Thanks for giving me hope.
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!
THAT IS WONDERFUL!! ( BIG HUG AND KISS)
frank
The article excerpt you posted discusses two separate but related things. First:
NICHOLAS WADE Once upon a time, there were very few human languages and perhaps only one, and if so, all of the 6,000 or so languages spoken round the world today must be descended from it.
If that family tree of human language could be reconstructed and its branching points dated, a wonderful new window would be opened onto the human past. Yet according to historical linguists, the chances of drawing up such a tree are virtually nil and those who suppose otherwise are chasing a tiresome delusion. Languages change so fast, say linguists, that their genealogies can be traced back only a few thousand years at best before the signal dissolves completely into noise. The linguists? problem has recently attracted biologists who have developed sophisticated mathematical tools for drawing up family trees of genes and species. Because the same problems crop up in both gene trees and language trees, they are confident that their tools will work with languages, too
Oh I am so glad to read this! The press has tended to report the most extravagant claims, like the flurry of attention during 1990-1992 about the Proto-World hypothesis and similar theories reducing the global extent of language into just a few macrofamilies, and reconstructing actual forms for such flimsy entities as Proto-Eurasitic (I'm not sure if I got the name right, it was Greenberg's answer to Proto-Nostratic), Proto-Amerind, and even Proto-World . There is a real time-depth problem in such deep reconstructions, when the role of chance plays a greater and greater factor, when there are so many parameters one could play fast and loose with. I'm willing to allow a little bit of credence to Proto-Nostratic, but the anything over 9,000 BC is very dubious to me. I think of it like carbon dating, when the method becomes very unreliable when you reach a certain threshold.
Plus, there is a simple problem with the evidence. Languages die out. The languages in existence today are the descendents of only a small fraction of languages that existed 10,000 years ago. Whole language families that once existed have died out. Look at how many of the languages attested only 5,000-3,000 years ago like Sumerian, Hurrian, Etruscan, Aquitanian (e.g. Old Basque), Elamite are unrelated to any known living language. So we are without critical evidence of what the linguistic situation was like 10,000 years ago -- much less 100,000 years ago, or even 200,000 years ago.
Indo-European family
This is different because of the Indo-European family has a shallower time depth and is universally accepted. I did not read the recent article that dated Proto-Indo-European much earlier, and I am a little surprised by the dating since Proto-Afro-Asiatic is probably best dated to 8,000-9,000 BC. (Proto-Nostratic, while is quite dubious to me, would fall even earlier, like 14,000 BC). There are other datums other than the "wheel" example. The domestication of dogs and horses are another: Proto-Indo-European *wlkwo "wolf" is the source of *kwon "dog" (whence English hound and Latin canis, and Sanskrit svan), and the latter is the probable source of *ekwo "horse" (whence Latin equus and Sanskrit asva). This would point to a later date for Proto-Indo-European, as the horse was domesticated around 5,000-4,000 BC. Domestication is suggested because the word for "horse" is likely derived from the name of another domesticated animal. However this can be disputed by treating the -kwo- element as a morpheme simply meaning "animal". It is also important to recognize that even in reconstructed PIE, there are already dialect divisions evident -- such as the famous satem-centum division as well as other more finer distinctions. And then there is the loss of the pharyngeals which occurred in most languages except Hittite. So Proto-Indo-European should be treated as a language like English that existed for several thousand years, but went through several stages in its own history.
Congratulations, dear Leolaia, for your graduation !
Good news : the French translation of your work "JW and the cross" is progressing.
I have encountered some major difficulties : French transcriptions of classical and patristics texts are not so easy to find, and very often incomplete ... the only solution was to translate myself the English text (or sometimes from Latin / Greek, because the "old" English was too obscure for me :-)
Another thing was to retrace the exact French translations of the WT and AW magazines ... dates of publication not matching with the original printing.
Be patient. I don't forget you !
Jacques
leo,
i have two questions...how likely is it that all languages are derived from a single original language? is there evidence that humans had already a language before they started to spread from africa to the rest of the planet? in contrast to biology it seems to me it would be quite possible that languages were completely reevented at several points in history. also is it assumed that neanderthals had a spoken language?
second question...when trying to assemble evolutionary trees for prokaryotes (bacteria etc.) a big problem stems from the fact that these organisms exchange genes with each other. this makes it quite complicated to trace back a tree based on a single gene or a small group of genes. only whole genome analyses can clarify the true relationship between the organisms. in linguistics how can one account for the transfer of words from one language to another? and how can you select certain words for making the tree? seems a lot harder than it is in biology.
Jacques:
Most patristic texts have been nicely translated in the "Sources chrétiennes" collection (éditions du Cerf), which you will find in any seminary or theological library. If you cannot find some of them, send me the list of references and quotes and I'll try in Paris as soon as possible.
As for WT literature, it is usually 3 months later in French until about 1985 when they switched to simultaneous publication...
Congratulations That is so awesome ....
A big fat congratulations to you Leo!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is so awesome, you blow me away with your intelligence, and if any one deserves success, it's most certainly you!!!
Wa - Hoooooooo !!!!!
