From: delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott C DeLancey)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Proof of relationship (was Bulgarians - descendents of a Finnis
Date: 2 Jan 93 05:31:11 GMT
Article-I.D.: pith.1i39avINN5e2
Organization: University of Oregon Network Services
NNTP-Posting-Host: darkwing.uoregon.edu

In article <Dec.31.19.29.26.1992.18979@pilot.njin.net> hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey) writes:
>
>I keep wondering how it is that people can make assertions about
>relatedness of languages based on what I perceive to be a rather
>narrow definition of 'relatedness'.
>
>It would seem to me that over along period of time languages
>diverge from one another. The closest languages share lots
>of words. But that in itself cannot be the measure of relationship
>since words can be borrowed. We look for 'regularity' and we 
>try to show that the words that two languages share were not
>in fact borrowed. This is a recursive process since we don't
>know, a priori, which words belong to which language group.
>
>This implies that, in addition to sharing words, languages
>must also share other characteristics. In other words, finding
>lots of words in common, say between Farsi and Turkish, is
>no proof of relatedness since something else in these languages
>--something much more important and something at a more
>primitive level (fundamental)--is different. What are the characteristics
>of these primitive measures ? Is it morphology ? Is it synax ?
>
It is most definitely not syntax.  Morphology is very useful, but
not in the way that you seem to mean.  What you need is not similar
morphological patterns, but cognate morphemes arranged in paradigms
(e.g. the verb endings of different Indo-European languages).

>Let's say two languages A and B which share a common ancestor
>diverged over 8,000-20,000 years ago. It would be rather
>difficult to find any words in common in the descendants of
>these two languages. 

Yes, it's very difficult, and therefore very difficult to prove
relationships at this level.  (Conservative historical linguists
tend to say "impossible" rather than "very difficult", but that is
a controversial point).

>using regular transition rules. What aspects of language
>change least over long periods of time ? Words themselves ?
>Unlikely ? Would the morphology of the languages change/diverge
>as rapidly as the words themselves ? 
>
>Would two modern languages say P and Q which seem to share
>morphological typology (i.e. patterns) but don't share any
>words be judged more closely related than if one of the
>languages say P, happens to share some words with another
>language, say Z (which belongs to another language group) ?

No.  First of all, morphological typology can also spread from
one language to another, so similarity doesn't prove common
inheritance.  More importantly, there is a smaller range of 
logically possible typological patterns than of possible words,
so coincidence between unrelated languages is more likely.  The
gross example is word order--from time to time people try to 
construct arguments for relationship based on common word order
patterns, but since there is only a handful of logically possible
types-- SOV, SVO, VOS, VSO, OSV, OVS, and a one or two variations
on free word order--you would expect the pattern of any given
language to be shared with a number of unrelated languages.
Possibilities of morphological structure aren't nearly so limited,
but they're far more limited than possibilities for individiual
words and morphemes.

Scott DeLancey
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon