limbismul - structuri !
- From: "Ronin" <Kotyto@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 23 Sep 2005 14:48:17 -0700
Structure exposes the evolutionary roots of languages
The structure of languages may reveal more about their roots than their
vocabularies do, according to a new biologically inspired linguistic
technique.
Studying languages can be extremely useful to answer questions about
human origins and movements, says Michael Dunn of the Max Planck
Institute of Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
Traditional techniques can be used to construct evolutionary trees of
languages by comparing their vocabularies. The trouble is, the speed at
which word use changes means that this approach is not much good at
looking further back than 10,000 years.
"It is probable that a considerable portion of linguistic
diversification occurred at earlier dates," says Dunn.
Sentence structures
The new technique developed by Dunn's team offers hope by focusing on
structure - how different word types, such as nouns, verbs and
adjectives, relate to each other - rather than vocabulary.
First they constructed a database of 125 structural language features,
such as where verbs appear in clauses. This was then analysed using
computational cladistics - a technique normally applied in
evolutionary biology to classify organisms based on their phylogenetic
relationships.
By treating the structural features of languages as phylogenetic
signatures, they were able to classify the languages into their
appropriate evolutionary groups.
Historical connections
Their database was made up of two different sets of languages. The
first set, used as a control, comprised of 16 Austronesian languages (a
family of languages in the islands of south-east Asia, the Pacific and
Australia) which already had well-defined histories obtained by
comparing vocabulary.
Their new structural method produced the same historical connections
between the languages, indicating that the technique is reliable.
The method was also able to produce historical connections with the
second set of languages, consisting of 15 Papuan languages (spoken in
the Western Pacific), even though comparisons of vocabulary have never
revealed any historical relationships between them.
Many visitors to these Papuan islands have commented on the
similarities between these languages despite there being no surviving
relationships between their vocabularies, says Dunn. The similarities
are between their structures, he says.
The results appear to reach further back than the 10,000 years
achievable by comparing vocabulary, says Russell Gray, an expert in the
evolution of language at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in an
accompanying commentary in Science.
This is an important step forward and one that is likely to be emulated
by other researchers, says Gray.
Journal reference: Science (vol 309, p 2072)
.
- Prev by Date: la gâlci, by Gregorian Bivolaru
- Next by Date: viitorul nu-i liniar
- Previous by thread: la gâlci, by Gregorian Bivolaru
- Next by thread: viitorul nu-i liniar
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
Loading
