Evolutionary Tools Help Unlock Origins of Ancient Languages
- From: "GWhyte" <gwhyte3003@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2005 04:04:29 -0400
Evolutionary Tools Help Unlock Origins of Ancient Languages
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=00074F10-365F-1333-B65F83414B7F0000
The key to understanding how languages evolved may lie in their structure,
not their vocabularies, a new report suggests. Findings published today in
the journal Science indicate that a linguistic technique that borrows some
features from evolutionary biology tools can unlock secrets of languages
more than 10,000 years old.
Because vocabularies change so quickly, using them to trace how languages
evolve over time can only reach back about 8,000 to 10,000 years. To study
tongues from the Pleistocene, the period between 1.8 million and 10,000
years ago, Michael Dunn and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for
Psycholinguistics developed a computer program that analyzes language based
on how words relate to one another. They developed a database containing 125
"structural language features," which include traits such as verb placement
within clauses, for two sets of languages. Sixteen Austronesian languages
made up the first set; the second was composed of 15 Papuan languages. (The
image above shows an outrigger sailing canoe in a region where languages
from the two sets are spoken. Called Island Melanesia, it is east of Papua
New Guinea and northeast of Australia.) When the researchers used the new
approach to reveal historical connections between languages, the results for
the Austronesian languages closely resembled previous results that were
based on vocabulary.
In contrast, the vocabulary-based method could not yield results for the
Papuan languages but the novel technique did. It suggests that the languages
are related in ways that are consistent with geographic relationships
between them. In an accompanying commentary, Russell Gray of the University
of Auckland in New Zealand cautions that the new technique still has
uncertainty. But he contends that the approach "is likely to be widely
emulated by researchers working on languages in other regions. In the future
we may see the development of Web-based databases for the languages of the
world. " --Sarah Graham
.
- Prev by Date: Transportation: Any Port In A Storm
- Next by Date: Iraq: Strategy, Strategy Everywhere.
- Previous by thread: Transportation: Any Port In A Storm
- Next by thread: Iraq: Strategy, Strategy Everywhere.
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
Loading
