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The pattern I'm talking about shows up across language families. Japanese, Tamil, Quecha, Latin -- are not known to be related but tend to Subject-Object-Verb.

by retrac 4y ago

The pattern I'm talking about shows up across language families. Japanese, Tamil, Quecha, Latin -- are not known to be related but tend to Subject-Object-Verb. English, Chinese, Indonesian, Arabic, Igbo are all Subject-Verb-Object. None of these languages are in families known to be related (except English and Latin). Some 90% of languages in hundreds of unrelated language families are SVO or SOV in basic word order. Most of the remainder are VSO. Object first is extremely rare everywhere. It's a conjecture that, perhaps, all, or most, of the world's language families are related if you go far back enough, and that proto-World was SOV or SVO, but that has not been demonstrated. So there's no consensus on why these patterns have these tendencies. The sample size is quite large. There's several hundred documented, not-known-to-be-related language families, and language isolates, that must have been separated historically from each other for at least a couple thousand years (or their relation would be pretty obvious). It does look like the tendencies mentioned are retained for a long time in separate populations despite language change, for some reason. That it might be because it relates to how we think is speculation, admittedly. You can read more about the phenomenon here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order#Distribution_of_word_order_types https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order#Distribution_of_wor... It is a rather striking distribution, isn't it?

shakna 4y ago
> It is a rather striking distribution, isn't it? No, not at all striking. [0] Merely a reflection from the older influences. Many, many languages that are not grouped in the same families, _are_ descended from PIE, and its children. That is to say, they may not traditional grouped in the same family, but would probably still be considered to be in the Indo-European family. For an example of this "same family" thing, Japanese, Tamil, Quecha, are all probably descended from Proto-Uralic [1], despite not traditionally being considered sister languages. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language#Syntax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language#S... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Uralic_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Uralic_language
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- retrac 4y ago
  No. Quecha is spoken in Peru and Ecuador, in South America. Sami is spoken in northern Scandinavia. Tamil is spoken in Southern India. Japanese is spoken in Japan. They would have had to have spread so far in the past that any systematic relationship becomes opaque to us, linguistically. A valid and compelling demonstration of their relationship would be mind-blowing. It would link the indigenous cultures and peoples of southern Asia, northern Europe and South America culturally, with common origin likely within the last ~10,000 years (about the event horizon of the reconstructive method). I've never heard of that claim made seriously, have you? The only language family known to exist in both Asia and America is the Yeneisian-Dene family [1], the existence of which is still a bit controversial, and which is spoken in northern Siberia and North America (which is more like what you'd expect -- though notably, Navajo is in Arizona). If we're just going to assume on very loose basis from typological comparison, we might as well assume proto-World, because that's what the sum evidence suggests. But that guess (an idea I do take seriously) is very different from demonstrating their relationship through solid comparative and historical linguistics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Den%C3%A9%E2%80%93Yeniseian_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Den%C3%A9%E2%80%93Yeniseian_la...
  - shakna 4y ago
    > I've never heard of that claim made seriously, have you? The only language family known to exist in both Asia and America is the Yeneisian-Dene family I assume, then, that you've never heard of the Borean languages [0]. Which link the people of southern Asia, northern Europe and South America, culturally, with a common origin around 40-45,000 years ago. The Borean hypothesis is a claim that is made quite seriously, but does not presuppose a universal origin. It is wide reaching, but there are people groups outside of it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borean_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borean_languages
    - retrac 4y ago
      Yes, I have heard of it. Borean effectively is a superset of Altaic or the even more controversial Nostratic. The languages of Iberia 3000 years ago, Ancient Egyptian, classical Mayan, Chinese -- all probably related? This is not generally accepted. It's an interesting idea, I cannot disprove it. But I don't think it has been proven, either. Even the possible relationship between Uralic, Afroasiatic and Indo-European is not widely accepted yet. Those language families are extensively documented and we can reconstruct their proto-languages convincingly back to somewhat around 10,000 years ago. They look kind of similar in some ways, maybe areal effects? I think to hope for another 10,000 years further back is too much. Borean is a claim about probably further back than even that. The Nostratic and Altaic subsets of the Borean hypothesis, presumably with its proto-language somewhere in Asia around 10,000 years ago, alone is controversial and is not generally accepted.

by retrac 4y ago

shakna 4y ago

> It is a rather striking distribution, isn't it? No, not at all striking. [0] Merely a reflection from the older influences. Many, many languages that are not grouped in the same families, _are_ descended from PIE, and its children. That is to say, they may not traditional grouped in the same family, but would probably still be considered to be in the Indo-European family. For an example of this "same family" thing, Japanese, Tamil, Quecha, are all probably descended from Proto-Uralic [1], despite not traditionally being considered sister languages. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language#Syntax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language#S... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Uralic_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Uralic_language

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
retrac 4y ago
No. Quecha is spoken in Peru and Ecuador, in South America. Sami is spoken in northern Scandinavia. Tamil is spoken in Southern India. Japanese is spoken in Japan. They would have had to have spread so far in the past that any systematic relationship becomes opaque to us, linguistically. A valid and compelling demonstration of their relationship would be mind-blowing. It would link the indigenous cultures and peoples of southern Asia, northern Europe and South America culturally, with common origin likely within the last ~10,000 years (about the event horizon of the reconstructive method). I've never heard of that claim made seriously, have you? The only language family known to exist in both Asia and America is the Yeneisian-Dene family [1], the existence of which is still a bit controversial, and which is spoken in northern Siberia and North America (which is more like what you'd expect -- though notably, Navajo is in Arizona). If we're just going to assume on very loose basis from typological comparison, we might as well assume proto-World, because that's what the sum evidence suggests. But that guess (an idea I do take seriously) is very different from demonstrating their relationship through solid comparative and historical linguistics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Den%C3%A9%E2%80%93Yeniseian_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Den%C3%A9%E2%80%93Yeniseian_la...
- shakna 4y ago
  > I've never heard of that claim made seriously, have you? The only language family known to exist in both Asia and America is the Yeneisian-Dene family I assume, then, that you've never heard of the Borean languages [0]. Which link the people of southern Asia, northern Europe and South America, culturally, with a common origin around 40-45,000 years ago. The Borean hypothesis is a claim that is made quite seriously, but does not presuppose a universal origin. It is wide reaching, but there are people groups outside of it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borean_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borean_languages
  - retrac 4y ago
    Yes, I have heard of it. Borean effectively is a superset of Altaic or the even more controversial Nostratic. The languages of Iberia 3000 years ago, Ancient Egyptian, classical Mayan, Chinese -- all probably related? This is not generally accepted. It's an interesting idea, I cannot disprove it. But I don't think it has been proven, either. Even the possible relationship between Uralic, Afroasiatic and Indo-European is not widely accepted yet. Those language families are extensively documented and we can reconstruct their proto-languages convincingly back to somewhat around 10,000 years ago. They look kind of similar in some ways, maybe areal effects? I think to hope for another 10,000 years further back is too much. Borean is a claim about probably further back than even that. The Nostratic and Altaic subsets of the Borean hypothesis, presumably with its proto-language somewhere in Asia around 10,000 years ago, alone is controversial and is not generally accepted.