Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer)
Subject: Re: Language and genes
Message-ID: <D01LK6.BBJ@inter.NL.net>
Organization: NLnet
References: <629@percep.demon.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 1994 18:48:06 GMT
Lines: 45

In article <629@percep.demon.co.uk>,
rmallott <rmallott@percep.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Easy but not adequate to explain a continuing relation between language 
>and population gene frequencies. Languages change and diverge even without 
>any dramatic events such as geographic isolation which may provide the 
>occasion for divergence but not decide the manner or rate at which languages 
>change to become different languages. Simple transmission from parents to 
>children would tend to preserve a language even with geographic isolation 
>rather than give rise to a different language.

Language change is random, just like biological change.
In a small geographically isolated group, really "bizarre" 
random changes just have better chances of survival, again 
both in language and genetics.  In a large population they 
will only be background noise, filtered out by "normality".  

>The question then becomes what 
>causes language change? what mechanisms  are there which maintain a 
>correlation between changing language and changing population genetics?
>Thirty years ago Stevick [1963. The Biological Model in Historical
>Linguistics.  Language 39: 159-169] demonstrated the close relation
>between the processes of language and genetic evolution. What we might
>now consider is whether population genetics offers not only
>a biological model for language change and diversification but also
>an explanation.

No, not an explanation.  At most a parallel model.

I think it is to be expected that some correlation exist between
genetics and language: if people have been living in enough of
a mutual isolation to develop distinguishing racial charcteristics,
they will also have developed different languages.  Even more so,
since linguistic change is _faster_ than genetic change.
But this also works the other way: a language can easily spread
to genetically unrelated populations, blurring the genes/language
relationship.  Proving that two populations are genetically
related can never be a substitute for proving that their languages
are related, or viceversa.  All the interesting cases are exceptions
to the genes/language rule... There is no racial basis for Indo-European,
for instance.

-- 
Miguel Carrasquer         ____________________  ~~~
Amsterdam                [                  ||]~  
mcv@inter.NL.net         ce .sig n'est pas une .cig 
