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Doesn't this perhaps show selection based on language? People who speaks similar languages are more likely to interact and reproduce, eventually narrowing the g
by daemonk 12y ago
Doesn't this perhaps show selection based on language? People who speaks similar languages are more likely to interact and reproduce, eventually narrowing the gene pool.
- Fannon 12y agoOh no, someone is thinking the obvious! ;)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- astazangasta 12y agoNo, this is purely correlative. That's why I, with South Asian genetics, am able to speak a language with no voiceless retroflex stop natively without accent.
- kaoD 12y agoYou might have misunderstood GP (or I might have misunderstood you). What GP is saying is that people with the same language interact more with each other and therefore reproduce, thus narrowing (averaging?) the gene pool to the speakers of that language. Not that you'd be unable speak a language because of your genes! The cause-effect GP proposed would be language -> genes, not genes -> language (which is what I guessed you meant to refute).
- astazangasta 12y agoI'd also dispute the likelihood of that. Genes change slowly, language changes quickly. It seems unlikely that language could then drive genes on a global scale.
- kylebgorman 12y agoIndeed. A strong link between genes and phoneme inventories is very unlikely, since as far as we know, all typically developing babies are born wired to the learn the phoneme inventory of any human language equally well. It is only later (starting at around 5-9 months of age) that the perceptual system begins to specialize in the target language(s) the baby is exposed to.