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Re: [engelang] All languages share a single origin?

2012/9/20 John Cowan <cowan@hidden.email>
 

Leonardo scripsit:


> Were you people aware of the work below?
> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/04/15/clever-study-uses-genetics-trick-to-trace-language-back-to-its-very-beginning-in-africa

It's nonsense, unfortunately: a small founder population may have only
a fraction of the genes of its source population, but there's no reason
to believe it had only a small fraction of its phonemes.

Hmmm... If the USA send some astronauts to colonize Mars,
wouldn't they take with them only a small fraction
of Earth's phonemes?

Anyway, I agree that the vowels-consonants-tones division is odd,
because "tone" could be considered only one of the various features
of vowels, such as nasality, lip rounding, backness, etc.,
with the possible difference that tone more usually apply
to all vowels of a language, while other features frequently
apply only to a subset of the vowels. But my knowledge
of tones is too little for me to be sure about that.