h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So what are the tools and techniques used to study this type of problem (how languages relate to one another).

I'm interested as it seems like a similar problem to that in biology on looking at how organisms are related (in a tree of life kind of way). I've also been told a lot about the techniques used in that field and wondered if similar techniques were used.

Phil:

Historical linguistics typically uses comparative techniques. The best way is to compliment literary research with fieldwork. Find obscure, conservative, isolated dialects.

In some cases there is no written record, so all you can do is go out into the field and work out the relationships between different dialects and languages.

What you do is look at "universal" words that are very resistant to change: personal pronouns, terms for 'water','mother', 'fire',
'cow', 'dog', etc. In theory, there's no need to freely borrow these kinds of terms, so their origins should be of a very early date.

Once you've made this set for comparison, you look for the similarities between the two dialects or languages. For example, if the personal pronouns begin with a labial initial of 'p' or 'b', in both languages, then you might be able to postulate an affinity.

This process is repeated over and over, broadening as you go, eventually looking at all aspects of a language: phonology, morphology, syntax, etc. The more work you do, the easier it will be to judge which words have been borrowed and which words are native.

Done on a large scale and over an extended period of time, larger typological patterns should emerge: perhaps the languages both use numeral-classifiers or are both SOV languages.

Language families can then be worked out, postulated, refuted, and redefined. It's an inexact science since nobody can know for certain
where every word came from, how it was pronounced, and so forth. But it is fascinating!

Does that sound similar to biological research techniques? Let me know if you want a more technical reply.

Bye now,
Miao

Thanks Miao. It does seem that similar ideas are used for the research.
With biological systems (I'm a computer person, not a biologist - I was good friends with a couple which is how I know about this) you can compare morphologies of organisms and also now the genetic structure. Paleontologists only use the morphology of course.

I suppose that the comparative linguists have the added problem of languages borrowing words from each other, something that can't really happen in biology.
Phil

Yeah - that is a problem. Usually, though, languages only borrow words for things which they don't already have - so a language won't borrow words for "the " or "and" or "water" or "mother" or whatever. There are exceptions to this, though, which confuses the issue a lot. And some languages borrow at an astonishing rate - 60% of Vietnamese is actually Chinese in origin, even though the languages aren't related...

For what it's worth, I recently heard about an entomologist who took a course in etymology because the entomologists were just starting to use shared innovations rather than shared retentions as a means of classification, something the etymologists have been doing for some time now. She delighted in going to linguistics department parties and tricking people into trying to correct her when she said that she was an entomologist.

Phil,

Borrowings are possible in biology.

Sexual reproduction brings together the genes of two individuals to produce a third. The child's language is also likely to be derived from that of each parent (but also the environment, the society in which s/he grows up).

Bacteria can incorporate DNA from other organisms, such as plants, they come into contact with, and the GM debate is going to bring this subject out more.

Ed

Thanks Ed. That I didn't know. The people I was talking with about this sort of thing were looking at rather larger organisms than bacteria.

If I undestood you correctly, analyzing universal words is key to determining origin. If two words in two different languages are very similar in construction and meaning, then it might be concluded that both peoples, back in time, had interaction with each other and their present-day languages are spin-offs of their once shared language? Am I on the right track? I've always been intrigued with the idea that it is possible for two cultures that have never been in contact with each other but shared similar environments (climate and vegetation... therefore lifestyles) would evolve similar words for similar experiences. For example...just a thought...say someone on the Himalayas needed a word for "cold" and decided to say "sheeeee" because it sounded like the wind that caused the cold. Could it be possible that someone in Alaska would come up with a word like "shuuuuu" to mean "cold" for similar reasons? Are there ways that researchers in comparative linguistics could account for this?

As I understand these things it's largely a matter of weight of evidence. That is, with all the tens or even hundreds of thousands of words in any given language, there are bound to be some that are similar just by pure chance. This number can probably be determined by strictly mathematical means and taken as background noise when comparing languages to determine their relationship. If some large number of words are similar, particulary if their differences follow some sort of pattern, such as the initial p in Latin compared with the initial f in English, pater/father or pisces/fish, etc., then some relationship between the languages is indicated. There is probably some "linguistic destiny" involved, too, as in the overwhelming tendency for words for mother to have "ma" in some important part of the word. "Ma" is going to be one of the first sounds a baby makes since it is imitative of the suckling process; the child will make the sound with no meaning attached and the mother will create and reinforce any tendency for that sound to refer to her. On the other hand, there is a natural method of word formation in which the word is intended as being imitative of the sound of that to which it refers, e.g., "bang". These processes are understood by real linguists far better than by interested layfolk such as I.

There are also similarities in words and phrases in non-related languages that have no meanignful relationship; the Spanish colloquial phrase meaning "so what?" could get you beaten to a jelly by a Navajo if he thought you were speaking Diné bizaad.

Similarly, be damn careful how you answer an Arab if your name is Nicholas - do NOT say 'Nick'! Arabs also think the name of the state Mississippi is pretty funny because it sonds like 'almis zibi'.