Grammar Analysis Reveals Ancient Language Tree

Nature.com ^ | 9-22-2005 | Jennifer Wild

[blam]

"Perhaps these people were living in one community on a common land mass more than 10,000 years ago.

That would be Sundaland before the end of the Ice Age.

Sundaland is an area around Indonesia that is twice the size of present day India that went underwater from Ice Age melt.

[blam]

GGG Ping.

Thanks to 'Right Wing Professor' for this post.

[jrg]

Sundaland is an area around Indonesia that is twice the size of present day India that went underwater from Ice Age melt.
OH NO! Not Global Warming!

[The Sons of Liberty]

Heck, I can't understand (and usually don't want to) people from Massachusetts, so it's not surprising that languages are so diverse.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam (and Right Wing Professor).

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
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[SunkenCiv]

related recent topic:

Evolutionary Tools Help Unlock Origins Of Ancient Languages
Scientific American | 9-23-2005 | Sarah Graham
Posted on 09/23/2005 4:44:55 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1490287/posts

[SunkenCiv]

thanks to Cronos for most of these cool graphics:

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[SunkenCiv]

Ping!

[ClearCase_guy]

Sundaland is an area around Indonesia that is twice the size of present day India that went underwater from Ice Age melt.

Who came up with that name? I'd call it "Sundawater".

[headsonpikes]

Sundaland is an area around Indonesia that is twice the size of present day India that went underwater from Ice Age melt.

I live within sight of glaciers from the last dang Ice Age.

Sundaland sounds like it may be a good place to move to if the glaciers fill my valley again.

I'll betcha that underwater property is cheap like borscht!

BTW, thanks for all your interesting posts.

[plenipotentiary]

Sundaland is where the Mackems live next to Newcastle and the Geordies

[Famishus]

I'd call it "Sundawater".

Please report to the Paranomasiac Reeducation Center for your flogging. Thank you.

[SuziQ]

Heh, I live in MA, but am from MS, so these folks have a hard time understanding me, sometimes!

I found a cute t-shirt at AnimeBoston this year. It reads "English does not borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them down, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar." I got it for our #1 son, an English major who is finishing Law School this year.

[ikka]

Marklar Marklar were used in the writing of this marklar.

[coloradan]

Grammar Analysis Reveals Ancient Language Tree

Like, Dude! You know?

[BenLurkin]

Recommended reading:

[Question_Assumptions]

I live just south of the terminal moraine from the last big round of glaciers. Long Island and the Watchung Mountains of New Jersey are a terminal moraine. Of course they've also found remains of dinosaurs that were living byond the Arctic and Anarctic circles, during periods when there were no ice caps.

[Question_Assumptions]

In many ways, English is a pidgin of Danish, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman French with vocabulary borrowed from a lot of other sources. That's why it's fairly easy to speak it well enough to be understood.

By the way, if it weren't for Latin-educated academics who couldn't bear to use anglicized Latin words rather than properly declined Latin words and couldn't write an English grammer without claiming that you shouldn't split your infinitives, well, because you just can't do that in Latin, we wouldn't have mugged Latin for it's grammar. Instead, we'd be happily talking about indexes, datums, genuses, and so on without Latin grammar pedants telling us it's improper.

[SuziQ]

One of the most fun classes I took in college was in my first quarter. I had graduated high school in May and didn't have any particular plans for the summer, so I started college. I was attending the one in my hometown, anyway, so it wasn't like I had to travel or anything. Anyway, I took the requisite English Composition, but we had a visiting professor that summer. Instead of the same old, same old, we did a course in "The History of the English Language" which was just fascinating!! It was amazing to learn what an amalgam our language is!

We only ended up having to write three compositions that summer, and he made sure we didn't fill it up with what he called "Easter Vocabulary"; words we never used, but put in papers to make it sound fancy.

[Ichneumon]

Poing. Both science-related, and appropriate for the evolution list (languages evolve from common roots, and the kind of analysis done on these languages uses the same principles as DNA analysis which determines biology phylogenies).