Asian languages have roots in Europe

[M Winther]

"European and Asian languages traced back to single mother
tongue"

Eurasiatic languages from Portugal to Siberia form 'superfamily'
with root in southern Europe 15,000 years ago, scientists claim.
http://tinyurl.com/cxb25lc
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/06/european-asian-language-tongue-superfamily

M. Winther

[John Briggs]

And if you read the Comments, linguists are rather scathing.
--
John Briggs

[Chance]

In a final analysis, all the languages of the world are cognate with each
other.
An anecdote has it that a scholar well versed in Chinese encountered with
Latin
first time after acquainted with sound representations of Latin could
comprehend
texts in Latin.

CK

[R H Draney]

M Winther filted:

>
>"European and Asian languages traced back to single mother
>tongue"
>
>Eurasiatic languages from Portugal to Siberia form 'superfamily'
>with root in southern Europe 15,000 years ago, scientists claim.

I can't wait until they bump into those characters who insist all human
languages are derived from Sanskrit....r


--
Me? Sarcastic?
Yeah, right.

[abc]

Anecdote has it that the moon is made of cheese.

[Peter Moylan]

One of those regularly pesters aue, and we used to have another who was
certain that Hebrew was the common ancestor. I always thought it a pity
that those two never debated the point with each other.

--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> writes:

> On 09/05/13 05:31, R H Draney wrote:
>> M Winther filted:
>>>
>>> "European and Asian languages traced back to single mother
>>> tongue"
>>>
>>> Eurasiatic languages from Portugal to Siberia form 'superfamily'
>>> with root in southern Europe 15,000 years ago, scientists claim.
>>
>> I can't wait until they bump into those characters who insist all
>> human languages are derived from Sanskrit....r
>
> One of those regularly pesters aue, and we used to have another who
> was certain that Hebrew was the common ancestor. I always thought it
> a pity that those two never debated the point with each other.

I got the impression that the Hebrew guy just did it as a game, seeing
if he could come up with plausible-sounding explanations based on
similarities. The Sanskrit guy, not so much.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |When someone's taking time to do
SF Bay Area (1982-) |something right in the present,
Chicago (1964-1982) |they're a perfectionist with no
|ability to prioritize, whereas when
evan.kir...@gmail.com |someone took time to do something
|right in the past, they're a master
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ |artisan of great foresight.
|
| Randall Munroe

[Robert Bannister]

On 10/05/13 2:44 PM, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
> Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> writes:
>
>> On 09/05/13 05:31, R H Draney wrote:
>>> M Winther filted:
>>>>
>>>> "European and Asian languages traced back to single mother
>>>> tongue"
>>>>
>>>> Eurasiatic languages from Portugal to Siberia form 'superfamily'
>>>> with root in southern Europe 15,000 years ago, scientists claim.
>>>
>>> I can't wait until they bump into those characters who insist all
>>> human languages are derived from Sanskrit....r
>>
>> One of those regularly pesters aue, and we used to have another who
>> was certain that Hebrew was the common ancestor. I always thought it
>> a pity that those two never debated the point with each other.
>
> I got the impression that the Hebrew guy just did it as a game, seeing
> if he could come up with plausible-sounding explanations based on
> similarities. The Sanskrit guy, not so much.
>

I have an acquaintance - normal and intelligent in most other respects -
who is convinced that most European languages at least are derived from
Slav Macedonian. He claims he's writing a book about it.
--
Robert Bannister

[RichTravsky]

Heh. I don't those are linguists in the Guardian...

> --
> John Briggs

[RichTravsky]

The actual paper is here:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/01/1218726110


Abstract

The search for ever deeper relationships among the World's
languages is bedeviled by the fact that most words evolve
too rapidly to preserve evidence of their ancestry beyond
5,000 to 9,000 y. On the other hand, quantitative modeling
indicates that some "ultraconserved" words exist that might
be used to find evidence for deep linguistic relationships
beyond that time barrier. Here we use a statistical model,
which takes into account the frequency with which words are
used in common everyday speech, to predict the existence of
a set of such highly conserved words among seven language
families of Eurasia postulated to form a linguistic
superfamily that evolved from a common ancestor around
15,000 y ago. We derive a dated phylogenetic tree of this
proposed superfamily with a time-depth of ~14,450 y, implying
that some frequently used words have been retained in related
forms since the end of the last ice age. Words used more than
once per 1,000 in everyday speech were 7- to 10-times more
likely to show deep ancestry on this tree. Our results suggest
a remarkable fidelity in the transmission of some words and
give theoretical justification to the search for features of
language that might be preserved across wide spans of time and
geography.

It's PNAS so the PDF is free, tho I'm getting timed out at the
moment.

[John Briggs]

On 13/05/2013 03:44, RichTravsky wrote:
> M Winther wrote:
>>
>> "European and Asian languages traced back to single mother
>> tongue"
>>
>> Eurasiatic languages from Portugal to Siberia form 'superfamily'
>> with root in southern Europe 15,000 years ago, scientists claim.
>> http://tinyurl.com/cxb25lc
>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/06/european-asian-language-tongue-superfamily
>>
>> M. Winther
>
> The actual paper is here:
>
> http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/05/01/1218726110

Note that it is published in PNAS rather than in a linguistics journal.
--
John Briggs

[RichTravsky]

And freely...

[R H Draney]

John Briggs filted:

Pronounced /'pi:n@s/?...r

(Non-language groups trimmed to save having to explain ASCII IPA)

[John Briggs]

Quite possibly!
--
John Briggs

[Dr Nick]

I tended to use that pronunciation when talking of it. For citations I
much preferred "anal. biochem."