4 ms·
I'm going to reserve judgment on the findings themselves until I read the paper (although, having a background in historical linguistics, I've learned to be ver
by andolanra 13y ago
I'm going to reserve judgment on the findings themselves until I read the paper (although, having a background in historical linguistics, I've learned to be very skeptical of any claim that posits historical superfamilies.)
However, I will complain about the pop-science intro, because the thought that a hunter-gatherer has some chance of understanding a sentence like the one given is laughably preposterous. An Old English speaker would only barely understand it (just as we would only barely understand gief þæm menn ealdan þisne fýr[1]), to say nothing of the many thousands of years of change between us and the hunter-gatherers spoken of. There is a vast difference between 'two words have a statistically provable correspondence' and 'two words are understood as the same word.'
[1]: My old English is pretty weak, so I take full responsibility for grammatical errors.
Edit: accidentally used 'th' instead of 'þ' in the Old English.
- DanBC 13y agoWhat do you think about theories like Vilayanur Ramachandran's that some words exist because they are sort of onomatopoeic? (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/lecture4.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/lecture4.shtml)
- duskwuff 13y agoI can certainly believe it for one of the examples given, "to spit". The audio examples are clearly imitative, especially in the terminal syllable, which almost always uses a consonant like [p]. (Just like someone spitting.) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/words-that-last/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/words-...
- nijk 13y agoThat is someone's theory? That's what 'onomatopoeia' means.
- DanBC 13y agoI've really dumbed it down, and horribly mangled it. Read the link I provided, he does a much better job there. If you don't want to read all of it just search for "Now, remember I said the third thing you have to do in science is show that this is not just some quirk.", and read from the top of that section. 'slush' is onomatopoeic. Is 'axe'? How about 'milk' or 'mother'?
- Jun8 13y agoTotally agree with your skepticism. Even the Uralic-Altaic superfamily has been rejected for decades (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural%E2%80%93Altaic_languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ural%E2%80%93Altaic_languages), let alone a combination of seven families.
- nijk 13y agoCould you convert your example to phonetic english? Spelling is one thing, pronunciation another.
- andolanra 13y agoIn the IPA: /gyf θæːm menː ˈældan ˈθisne fyɹ/ In rough English approximation: güf thæm men ÆL-dun THEES-nuh für, where ü is as in German and æ is the vowel sound in 'cat' in most dialects (i.e. not in the dialects of Scotland or New Zealand.)
- jonsterling 13y agoI think the more normal word order would be “gief þæm ealdan menn þisne fyr” (if I am correct in understand the sentence you're trying to do). As for the pronunciation: 1. the <g> in the first word manifests in that particular phonological environment as [j] (palatal approximant, as in English "y"), if I'm not mistaken. 2. The <ie> is pronounced either [i:] or as a diphthong [ie] (but probably not [y]). The diphthong is probably older, and sort of has an Old Saxon twang to it, if I may say. 3. <ea> is not pronounced [æ] but rather as a super cool-sounding diphthong, [æɑ]. 4. There's not consensus as far as I know about the pronunciation of <r> in OE. I tend to go with the alveolar trill, but other options are the alveolar approximant (as you have suggested) and the alveolar tap. So, an amended pronunciation gloss might look like this: yeef thæm ÆAHL-dun men THEES-nuh für.
- nl 13y agoyeef thæm ÆAHL-dun men THEES-nuh für. Thanks. I'm sure all agree that's much clearer.
- ardit33 13y agoI'd be very skeptical of this as well. I am Albanian, and expect mother (mama), and father (baba), the rest of the words just don't sound the same at all. Albanian is a separate branch of Indio-European languages (so is Greek, Latin, etc), so it should have some words that are similar to these ultra conserverd word.