Evolutionary Tools Help Unlock Origins Of Ancient Languages

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

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.

A computer program...that seals it.

Betwixt 1.8 million and 10,000 year ago...that nails it down.

Psycholinguistics...correction, pycho linguists.

Nothing can be definitively known about the sound of Attic Greek (500-300 B.C.), a mere 2500 years ago for which we have both literary and introspective evidence, and we're to believe that an automated method will reveal what we can already guess--languages can have structural similarities because we, as humans, have a inherent capacity for language, independent of their vocabularies. Further, we were told languages evolve from highly inflected to word order languages, and experts are WAG'ing that this process oscilates between some speculated extremes.

This is not science. But such often appears in "Science" magazine.

> 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...

OK...there is a methodology for comparing living languages and the written record of dead languages to describe how an ancestral proto language may have worked within its family of related languages.

We can't go back much further than 5000 BC. There are no inscriptions, no surviving linguistic artifacts, no records other than cave paintings, nothing, nada, zilch from before that. There is no evidence to reconstruct a language from "the Pleistocene, the period between 1.8 million and 10,000 years ago."

Why exactly is this not science?

A computer program...that seals it.
The same analysis could be done by hand, it would simply take a lot longer.

Betwixt 1.8 million and 10,000 year ago...that nails it down.
Scientists study events that happened long ago constantly in science.

Nothing can be definitively known about the sound of Attic Greek
Which has absolutely nothing to do with the study in question. There is no way to reproduce the sounds of a language, because the sounds didn't survive. However, the structure of a language can survive, which is why we still have people "speaking" Attic Greek even though the pronunciation is probably quite different.

The scientists used a new, experimental method to see whether they got the same results as using the old, tested method and it worked. After the successful test, they published their findings and asked other linguists to test the new method on the languages they were studying. More experimentation will show how much the theory is worth.

That's science.

Why is this not science?

Their conclusions, whatever they might be, will be neither provable, testable nor observable. It will be yet another academic exercise in speculation.

Scientists study events that happened long ago constantly in science.

Yes, but at least they have physical evidence which they can try to date using some radiometric dating method (such as they are), or concurrence with "known" events. Such physical dating can also be highly dubious--radiometric dating methods are hardly reliable, assumptions made about dating frameworks, etc. Language prior to writing leaves no trace. If we didn't have extant copies of ancient Greek texts could we know for any certaintly what ancient Greek was like, making our surmises from the modern dialects? We might get close, but how would we know unless we unearthed a text?

[I said] Nothing can be definitively known about the sound of Attic Greek... [You said] Which has absolutely nothing to do with the study in question. There is no way to reproduce the sounds of a language, because the sounds didn't survive. However, the structure of a language can survive, which is why we still have people "speaking" Attic Greek even though the pronunciation is probably quite different.

Of course it is germain. The point is that all aspects of language undergo change, phonology probably being the most dramatic, which is why I used it as an example. Yet, we know more about the supposed sound of Attic Greek than we do of some 10,000 year old language's supposed structure, because we have a written record for the language in question. We have no written record for proto-greek (unless one assigns that role to Linear B), let alone some even earlier indo-european tongue circa 3,000-10,000 B.C. We can "guess" what it may have been like, but we can only "guess." We will never know. We will never observe it. We can never prove it. We can only test it against whatever criteria we have established, which is suspiciously circular.

We don't have people today speaking [Ancient] Attic Greek, as you say, "because the structure survived." The morphology and syntax of Attic and Modern Greek are significantly different, not to mention the phonology. Some structure survived others didn't (the passive transformation of modern Greek is more closely related to modern English than Attic Greek.) What structures of language are being investigated? Sentence structure? (SVO or SOV? Clauses? Conditionals? Prepositional phrases?) Inflection? Surface level case? Deep structure? The Science blurb doesn't detail what aspects of language "structure" is under investigation.

The problem with all historical linguistics is that there is very little history, mostly speculation. One can posit what the structure of 10,000 year old proto-indo-european may have looked like, but no one will ever know. Ever. It's not testible. It may be repeatable--repeatably wrong--but how will we know?

More experimentation will show how much the theory is worth.

I'm not holding my breath.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.