A Biological Dig for the Roots of Language

[Ameen]

From the March 16th New York Times...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/16/science/16LANG.html

March 16, 2004

A Biological Dig for the Roots of Language

By NICHOLAS WADE

Once upon a time, there were very few human languages and perhaps only one, and if so, all of the 6,000 or so languages spoken round the world today must be descended from it.

If that family tree of human language could be reconstructed and its branching points dated, a wonderful new window would be opened onto the human past.

Yet in the view of many historical linguists, the chances of drawing up such a tree are virtually nil and those who suppose otherwise are chasing a tiresome delusion.

Languages change so fast, the linguists point out, that their genealogies can be traced back only a few thousand years at best before the signal dissolves completely into noise: witness how hard Chaucer is to read just 600 years later.

But the linguists' problem has recently attracted a new group of researchers who are more hopeful of success. They are biologists who have developed sophisticated mathematical tools for drawing up family trees of genes and species. Because the same problems crop up in both gene trees and language trees, the biologists are confident that their tools will work with languages, too.

The biologists' latest foray onto the linguists' turf is a reconstruction of the Indo-European family of languages by Dr. Russell D. Gray, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

The family includes extinct languages like Hittite of ancient Turkey, and Tokharian, once spoken in Central Asia, as well as the Indian languages and Iranian in one major branch and all European languages except Basque in another.

Dr. Gray's results, published in November in Nature with his colleague Quentin Atkinson, have major implications, if correct, for archaeology as well as for linguistics. The shape of his tree is unsurprising — it arranges the Indo-European languages in much the same way as linguists do, using conventional methods of comparison. But the dates he puts on the tree are radically older.

Dr. Gray's calculations show that the ancestral tongue known as proto-Indo-European existed some 8,700 years ago (give or take 1,200 years), making it considerably older than linguists have assumed is likely.

The age of proto-Indo-European bears on a longstanding archaeological dispute. Some researchers, following the lead of Dr. Marija Gimbutas, who died in 1994, believe that the Indo-European languages were spread by warriors moving from their homeland in the Russian steppes, north of the Black and Caspian Seas, some time after 6,000 years ago.

A rival theory, proposed by Dr. Colin Renfrew of the University of Cambridge, holds that the Indo-Europeans were the first farmers who lived in ancient Turkey and that their language expanded not by conquest but with the spread of agriculture some 10,000 to 8,000 years ago.

Dr. Gray's date, if accepted, would support the Renfrew position.

Several linguists said Dr. Gray's tree was the right shape, but added that it told them nothing fresh, and that his dates were way off. "This method is not giving anything new," said Dr. Jay Jasanoff, a Harvard expert on Indo-European. As for the dates, Dr. Jasanoff said, "The numbers they have got seem extremely wrong to me."

Dr. Don Ringe, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania who has taken a particular interest in computer modeling of language, said that Dr. Gray's approach was worth pursuing but that glottochronology, the traditional method of dating languages, had "failed to live up to its promise so often that convincing linguists there is anything there is an uphill battle."

In the biologists' camp, however, there is a feeling that the linguists do not yet fully understand how well the new techniques sidestep the pitfalls of the older method. The lack of novelty in Dr. Gray's tree of Indo-European languages is its best feature, biologists say, because it validates the method he used to construct it.

Most historical linguists know a few languages very well but less often consider the pattern of change affecting many languages, said Dr. Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading.

"The field is being driven by people who are not confronted with the broad sweep of linguistic evolution and is being invaded by people like me who are only interested in the broad sweep," Dr. Pagel said.

Glottochronology was invented by the linguist Morris Swadesh in 1952. It is based on the compiling of a core list of 100 or 200 words that Swadesh believed were particularly resistant to change. Languages could then be compared on the basis of how many cognate words on a Swadesh list they shared in common.

Cognates are verbal cousins, like the Greek podos and the English foot, both descended from a common ancestor. The more cognates two languages share, the more recently they split apart. Swadesh and others then tried to quantify the method, deriving the date that two languages split from their percentage of shared cognates.

The method gave striking results, considering its simplicity, but not all of the findings were right. Glottochronology suffered from several problems. It assumed that languages changed at a constant rate, and it was vulnerable to unrecognized borrowings of words by one language from another, making them seem closer than they really were.

Because of these and other problems, many linguists have given up on glottochronology, showing more interest in an ingenious dating method known as linguistic paleontology.

The idea is to infer words for items in the material culture of an early language, and to correlate them with the appearance of such items in the archaeological record. Cognates for the word wheel exist in many branches of the Indo-European family tree, and linguists are confident that they can reconstruct the ancestral word in proto-Indo-European. It is, they say, "k'ek'los," the presumed forebear of words like "chakras," meaning wheel or circle in Sanskrit, "kuklos," meaning wheel or circle in Greek, as well as the English word "wheel."

The earliest wheels appear in the archaeological record around 5,500 years ago. So the proto-Indo-European language could not have started to split into its daughter tongues much before that date, some linguists argue. If the wheel was invented after the split, each language would have a different or borrowed word for it.

The dates on the earliest branches of Dr. Gray's tree are some 2,000 years earlier than the dates arrived at by linguistic paleontology.

"Since `wheel' is shared by Tocharian, Greek, Sanskrit and Germanic," said Bill Darden, an expert on Indo-European linguistic history at the University of Chicago, "and there is no evidence for wheels before the fourth millennium B.C., then having Tokharian split off 7,900 years ago and Balto-Slavic at 6,500 years ago are way out of line."

Dr. Gray, however, defends his dates, and points out a flaw in the wheel argument. What the daughter languages of proto-Indo-European inherited, he says, was not necessarily the word for wheel but the word "k'el," meaning "to rotate," from which each language may independently have derived its word for wheel. If so, the speakers of proto-Indo-European could have lived long before the invention of the wheel.

His tree, Dr. Gray said, was derived with the methods used by biologists to avoid problems identical to those in glottochronology. Genes, like languages, do not mutate at a constant rate. And organisms, particularly bacteria, often borrow genes rather than inheriting them from a common ancestor. Biologists have also learned that trees of any great complexity cannot be drawn up by subjective methods. Mathematical methods are required, like having a computer generate all possible trees — a number that quickly runs way beyond the trillions — and then deciding statistically which class of trees is more probable than the rest.

Dr. Gray based his tree on the Dyen list, a set of Indo-European words judged by linguists to be cognates, and he anchored the tree to 14 known historical dates for splits between Indo-European languages.

Many of the Dyen list cognates are marked uncertain, so Dr. Gray was able to test whether omission of the doubtful cognates made any difference (it did not). He also tested many other possible assumptions, but none of them produced an age for proto-Indo-European anywhere near the date of 6,000 years ago favored by linguists.

"This is why our results should be taken seriously by both linguists and anyone else interested in the origin of the Indo-European languages," he wrote, in a recent reply to his critics.

"We haven't repeated the errors of glottochronology," Dr. Gray said in an interview. "What we are doing is adding value, since we can make inferences about time depths which can't be made reliably in other ways."

Dr. Gray said he had formed collaborations with linguists and hoped they would give his tree a warmer reception once his critics understood that he had not made the errors they cited.

Some linguists are interested in the biologists' approach.

"I think these methods are extremely promising," said Dr. April McMahon of the University of Sheffield and the president of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain, though she expressed concern about Dr. Gray's emphasis on dating language splits.

If the biologists' methods can date languages that existed 9,000 years ago, how much further back can they probe?

"Words exist that can in principle resolve 20,000-year-old linguistic relationships," Dr. Pagel of Reading wrote in a recent symposium volume, "Time Depth in Historical Linguistics," adding that "words that can resolve even deeper linguistic relationships are not out of the question."

Many linguists believe that once two languages have drifted so far apart that they share only 5 percent or so of their vocabulary, chance resemblances will overwhelm the true ones, setting a firm limit on how far back their ancestry can be traced.

"That's a mistaken reasoning which shows the linguists are relying on a model of evolution they trash when they see it written down," Dr. Pagel said.

He added that their argument assumed a constant rate of language change, the very point they know is wrong in glottochronology.

Geneticists believe modern humans may have left Africa as recently as 50,000 years ago, perhaps in a single migration with very small numbers. Reconstructing language of 20,000 years ago would be a big stride toward whatever tongue those first emigrants spoke. But Dr. Gray has no plans in that direction.

"It's hard enough to work out what happened 10,000 years ago, let alone 30,000 years ago," he said.

[Ivory Troll]

Once upon a time, there were very few human languages and perhaps only one, and if so, all of the 6,000 or so languages spoken round the world today must be descended from it.

I believe it's possible for one language to develop, as is evident by our use of langauge, as well as another to develop, both without a predecessor. And, while it may be true 'homo sapiens' are responsible for one original langauge, its entirely possible one of the languages spoken now was developed from an extinct species of hominid & borrowed by our species.

[Stop Fundies]

Now that you've introduced an article supporting Proto World (the name for the proposed language that was supposedly once spoken by all humans), it's time for me to introduce the arguments against it... ...Just because I can.

This biologist is not trained in glottochronology. Therefore, any dates he proposes are going to be inaccurate, just like Dr. Jay Jasanoff of Harvard said in your article.

The method used to develop Proto World is called mass comparison. The languages are compared by using a limited set of words simply by means of counting cognates. Using cognates is wrong for two reasons. Critics say that from the purely statistical point of view, among any two unrelated languages, there would be more than 40% of words sharing a roughly similar sound and meaning. Therefore, the concept of comparing languages basing only on general comparisons between their vocabularies is considered flawed. To back that up, here is a list of false cognates among unrelated languages:

English 'dog' and aboriginal Australian language Mbabaram 'dog'. The Mbabaram word evolved regularly from a protolinguistic form 'guduga', while English 'dog' is from Old English and was a rare word used for a specific breed of canine, but the word eventually threw out the native Germanic word 'hund' (which is now 'hound'). There is no common ancestor or other connection between Mbabaram and English.

Korean 'manhi' (meaning plentiful) and English 'many'. The English 'many 'comes from Proto Germanic 'managaz' from Proto Indo-European 'monogho'.

English 'occur' and Japanese 'okoru'. Japanese is an isolated language, meaning it doesn't belong to a family and shares no linguistic connections to other languages. 'Occur' is from French 'occurrer' from Latin 'occurrere'.

False cognates are particularly common in core or common vocabulary. Such cognates often occur in kinship terms, as shown by these examples:

Kung (A southern African language) 'ba' and French 'papa' (both "father")

Navajo 'mą', Chinese 'mā' and English 'mother'

Korean 'tu' and English 'two'

Also there is something called a "false friend":

Welsh 'ie' (yes) and Japanese 'iie' (no)

Now for the argument invented by me. For this argument, however, I have to write a detailed setup before you can understand where I'm coming from. I'm going to use the Germanic Family to illustrate the argument. The Germanic Family is a branch of Indo-European and consists of three groups:

West Germanic: English, Frisian, Dutch, Flemish, German, Yiddish, Afrikaans, Frankish (dead)

North Germanic: Norwegian, Faeroese, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish (all originated from Old Norse)

East Germanic (dead): Burgundian (dead), Gothic (dead), Vandalic (dead), Heruler (dead), Rugian (dead)

There are very many unique traits belonging to only Germanic languages. So you don't have to spend 5 hours reading this (you can if you think it's interesting, like me), I underlined the most important characteristics:

-Strong evidence for the unity of all the modern Germanic languages can be found in the phenomenon known as the first Germanic sound shift or consonant shift (also called Grimm's law), which set the Germanic subfamily apart from the other members of the Indo-European family. Consisting of a regular shifting of consonants in groups, the sound shift had already occurred by the time adequate records of the various Germanic languages began to be made in the 7th to 9th century. According to Grimm's law, certain consonant sounds found in the ancient Indo-European languages (such as Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit) underwent a change in the Germanic tongue. For example, the sounds p, d, t, and k in the former became f, t, th, and h respectively in the latter, as in Latin pater, English father; Latin dent, English tooth; and Latin cornu, English horn.
-Also peculiar to the Germanic languages is the recessive accent, whereby the stress usually falls on the first or root syllable of a word, especially a word of Germanic origin.
-Another distinctive characteristic shared by the Germanic languages is the umlaut, which is a type of vowel change in the root of a word, and is almost exclusively used in words of Non-Indo-European origin. It is demonstrated in the pairs foot (singular), feet (plural) in English; fot (singular), fötter (plural) in Swedish; Kampf (singular), Kämpfe (plural) in German; mouse (singular) mice (plural) in English = in German Maus (singular) Mäuse (plural)
-All Germanic languages have strong and weak verbs; that is, they form the past tense and past participle either by changing the root vowel in the case of strong verbs (as in English lie, lay, lain or ring, rang, rung; German ringen, rang, gerungen) or by adding as an ending -d (or -t) or -ed in the case of weak verbs (as in English care, cared, cared or look, looked, looked; German fragen, fragte, gefragt).
-Also typically Germanic is the formation of the genitive singular by the addition of -s or -es. Examples are English man, man's; Swedish hund, hunds; German Lehrer, Lehrers or Mann, Mannes.
-Moreover, the comparison of adjectives in the Germanic languages follows a parallel pattern, as in English: rich, richer, richest; German reich, reicher, (am) reichsten; and Swedish rik, rikare, rikast.
-Germanic languages are also unique by these seven traits:
1. The levelling of the IE (Indo-European) tense system into past and present.
2. The use of a dental fricative suffix - /d/ or /t/ - to form the past tense, instead of a vowel change as in IE.
3. The presence of two distinct types of verb conjugation: weak (regular) and strong (irregular). English has 161 strong verbs; all are of native Germanic origin. All of the strong verbs in all Germanic languages are of Germanic origin.
4. The use of strong and weak adjectives. Modern English adjectives don't change except for comparative and superlative; this was not the case with Old English, where adjectives were inflected differently depending on whether they were preceded by an article or demonstrative, or not. However this system is still in use by Modern German.
5. The consonant shift known as Grimm's Law.
6. The shifting of stress onto the root of the stem. Though English has an irregular stress, native words always have a fixed stress regardless of what's added to them
7. A number of words with etymologies that are difficult, if not impossible, to link to other Indo-European families.

-One group of these words has to do with ships and the sea; words like keel, oar, rudder, steer, mast, ship, and sea are shared by every Germanic language, but cognates for these specific words and senses are not found in other branches of Indo-European. Another group of these words deals with war and weapons; words like sword, shield, helmet, bow, and knight are all found in every Germanic language, but again, not with these meanings among other Indo-European languages. Another group is those words related to weather; words such as hot, cold, cool, warm, weather, rain, storm, thunder, cloudy. Some names for animals such as eel, carp, stork, and bear are also among these words of obscure origin; so are a few farm animals like calf, lamb, swine, and cow. Yet another is select parts of the body: toe, foot, leg, shin, knee, thigh, finger, hand, arm, wrist, shoulder. There are scores of non-Indo-European words that are used daily by English speakers; words like earth, blood, bite, hand, wife, evil, little, sick, bring, run, and house. As you can see, this quickly adds up to thousands of words that are exclusively Germanic. Among the Germanic languages, these words are found everywhere; outside the Germanic family, these cognates are unknown, or have been borrowed from Germanic.

Now this is where everything comes together. You'll see why I had to write so much about the Germanic family. I don't know if I'm the only person to notice this or what, but here is my reasoning:

If Proto Germanic could invent its own grammatical case (genitive), why couldn't any other languages?
If Proto Germanic could invent a signature passed tense, why couldn't any other languages?
If Proto Germanic could invent its own stress system, why couldn't any other languages?
If Proto Germanic could invent a signature adjective system, why couldn't any other languages?
If Proto Germanic could invent its own superlative comparison system, why couldn't any other languages?
If Proto Germanic could invent a signature pluralization system, why couldn't other any languages?
If Proto Germanic could invent hundreds of its own verbs (strong verbs), with different variances for past tense, and participles, why couldn't any other languages?
If Proto Germanic could invent thousands of its own words, why couldn't any other languages?

[Stop Fundies]

Oops, I forgot to mention the fact that there are things such as isolate languages.

This category deals with languages that are isolate, in the sense that they cannot conclusively be shown to be related to any other language. There are actually quite a few languages in the world that aren't related to any others. I was surprised at the amount of them when I first saw the complete list.

Language -Comments

Ainu -Endangered language, spoken in northern Japan.
Basque -No known living relatives, found in the Basque region of France and Spain. Aquitanian is commonly regarded as a direct ancestor of Basque. Some linguists have claimed similarities with various languages of the Caucasus, especially because of its ergative case system, but the resemblances seem superficial. Other linguists have proposed a relation to Iberic.
Birale (Ongota)
Burushaski -Little information available.
Elam -Extinct language of Elamite Empire; some conjecture a relationship to the Dravidian languages
Etruscan -Language of the ancient Etruscans in southern Italy, not well understood at present
Hadza -Often listed as an outlier among the Khoisan languages
Iberic -There are lexical coincidences with Basque, but it is hard to know if they are more than a result of vicinity.
Jalabe (Jalaa)
Japanese -Possibly related to Korean language, though not yet proven. Connections to the Altaic languages have also been proposed. See Altaic hypothesis for these theories.
Ket -No known relatives. Some linguists have attempted to show a relationship with Burushaski.
Korean -Possibly related to Japanese language, though not yet proven. Connections to the Altaic languages have also been proposed. See Altaic hypothesis for these theories.
Kwadi -Often listed as an outlier among the Khoisan languages
Mekejir (Shabo)
Meroitic -Extinct language of ancient Nubian kingdom
Nahali
Nivkh -or Gilyak. A Palaeosiberian language spoken in the lower Amur River basin and on the Sakhalin Islands; Ainu is also spoken on Sakhalin.
Oropom -Possibly nonexistent.
Sandawe -Often listed as an outlier among the Khoisan languages
Sumerian Long-extinct language of ancient Sumeria.
Taiap
Ticuna
Yukaghir -Connections to Uralic Languages have been proposed

After what I said about Proto Germanic being able to invent nearly all components of a language on its on, it would only make sense that other languages could rise where they invent all of their components. These 23 isolate languages irrefutably defend my point.

[Stop Fundies]

a signature passed tense

*a signature past tense

I wrote this at 4:30 AM so you'll have to excuse me for that