I'm reading Peter Farb's "Man's Rise To Civilization As Shown by the
Indians of North America from Primitive Times to the Coming of the
Industrial State." Farb is basically a cultural anthropologist and the
book was published in 1968.

At one point he is discussing how human aggregates (family, families,
tribes, chiefdoms, etc.) branch into multiples that separate. One way to
measure the amount of time since the separation is to consult fossil and
artifact findings, do carbon dating and make inferences.

It seems that there is another method called "Glottochronology". This
method first identifies words that will appear in virtually all human
languages, e.g., I, we, one, two, all, man, woman, fish, foot, etc. You
now see what percent of the words on this list have drifted apart in the
spoken language. You then use the empirical "fact" that 16-19 percent of
these words will drift apart in a 1000 years. (Treat the drift
percentage like compound interest.) This allows one to estimate the time
of separation. This method seemed to work surprisingly well when enough
evidence was available to compare Glottochronology with carbon dating
and the like.

I looked at a Wikipedia article and didn't learn very much that wasn't
implied in Farb's book. My questions for you all: Is there still an
active community pursuing these ideas? Any good stories or examples
where the methods worked well or failed miserably? What, today, is
considered the better or best methods for making such measurements?
--
Jeff Barnett

Ar an ceathrú lá is fiche de mí Eanair, scríobh Jeff Barnett:

> [...] I looked at a Wikipedia article and didn't learn very much that wasn't
implied
> in Farb's book. My questions for you all: Is there still an active community
> pursuing these ideas? Any good stories or examples where the methods worked
> well or failed miserably? What, today, is considered the better or best methods
> for making such measurements?

It’s out of fashion. I’m not sure of the exact credentials of Marie-Lucie on
languagehat.com, but she certainly was a professional academic linguist, and
she wrote in 2012:

https://languagehat.com/those-darn-biologists-again/#comment-100862

“The problem with glottochronology is the assumption of a constant rate of
vocabulary change, a concept borrowed from the rate of carbon-14 decay. There
is absolutely no reason why the rate of decay in the remains of dead plants
or animals (something discovered through very careful measurements of a
physical process, conducted and repeated by a number of scientists) should
have anything to do as a concept with the rate of attested vocabulary loss
and replacement in human languages: nice guess perhaps, worthy of some
consideration, but when put to the test by actually studying vocabulary
change in long-attested languages, it failed, sometimes quite spectacularly:
compare the rate of replacement of English vocabulary between Old and Middle
English with that of German or Swedish within a similar period.

Any human language is intimately bound up with the life of the society that
speaks it, and vocabulary is especially reflective of this life: new
inventions, new social mores, abandonment of traditional techniques and of
social customs, migration in or out of a country, addition of new immigrants
(free or slaves), serious upheavals such as revolution, war, foreign
occupation, etc. Such events as contributors to vocabulary change (and
sometimes also to other types of change) have no equivalents in the physical
changes that happen to organisms after they have ceased to live”

Peter T. Daniels doesn’t seem to be active here anymore, if he were he would
have seized on the question like a Jack Russell.

--
‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
(C. Moore)

On 24/01/2024 11:11 p.m., Aidan Kehoe wrote:
>
> Ar an ceathrú lá is fiche de mí Eanair, scríobh Jeff Barnett:
>
> > [...] I looked at a Wikipedia article and didn't learn very much that wasn't
> implied
> > in Farb's book. My questions for you all: Is there still an active community
> > pursuing these ideas? Any good stories or examples where the methods worked
> > well or failed miserably? What, today, is considered the better or best methods
> > for making such measurements?
>
> It’s out of fashion. I’m not sure of the exact credentials of Marie-Lucie on
> languagehat.com, but she certainly was a professional academic linguist,

Yes, this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Lucie_Tarpent

and
> she wrote in 2012:
>
> https://languagehat.com/those-darn-biologists-again/#comment-100862
>
>
> “The problem with glottochronology is the assumption of a constant rate of
> vocabulary change, a concept borrowed from the rate of carbon-14 decay. There
> is absolutely no reason why the rate of decay in the remains of dead plants
> or animals (something discovered through very careful measurements of a
> physical process, conducted and repeated by a number of scientists) should
> have anything to do as a concept with the rate of attested vocabulary loss
> and replacement in human languages: nice guess perhaps, worthy of some
> consideration, but when put to the test by actually studying vocabulary
> change in long-attested languages, it failed, sometimes quite spectacularly:
> compare the rate of replacement of English vocabulary between Old and Middle
> English with that of German or Swedish within a similar period.

There are also studies which aren't dependent on long-written languages,
such as Blust's comparison of a couple of hundred Austronesian
languages, which showed large differences in retention rate of
proto-vocabulary (roughly graded from high-retention west to
high-replacement east, associated with repeated migrations).

>
> Any human language is intimately bound up with the life of the society that
> speaks it, and vocabulary is especially reflective of this life: new
> inventions, new social mores, abandonment of traditional techniques and of
> social customs, migration in or out of a country, addition of new immigrants
> (free or slaves), serious upheavals such as revolution, war, foreign
> occupation, etc. Such events as contributors to vocabulary change (and
> sometimes also to other types of change) have no equivalents in the physical
> changes that happen to organisms after they have ceased to live”
>
> Peter T. Daniels doesn’t seem to be active here anymore, if he were he would
> have seized on the question like a Jack Russell.
>

PTD was a user and staunch defender of Google Groups. I think recent
events may have been a shock to him; he has disappeared from both
alt.usage.english and sci.lang. I assume there is no technical reason
why he could not find his way back via non-Google pathways. Unlike many,
I don't think that would be a bad thing.

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 01:31:22 -0700: Jeff Barnett <jbb@notatt.com>
scribeva:
>It seems that there is another method called "Glottochronology". This
>method first identifies words that will appear in virtually all human
>languages, e.g., I, we, one, two, all, man, woman, fish, foot, etc. You
>now see what percent of the words on this list have drifted apart in the
>spoken language. You then use the empirical "fact" that 16-19 percent of
>these words will drift apart in a 1000 years. (Treat the drift
>percentage like compound interest.)

How exactly is "drift away" defined in this context? A slightly
different pronunciation? Changed beyond apparent recognition but still
a cognate upon closer study? Replaced by a non-cognate? That, but the
original word is still used, but with a slightly or very different
meaning?

That is what I see happening all the time when enjoying the
etymologies given in Wiktionary. How to express that in percentages in
unclear to me.
This allows one to estimate the time
>of separation. This method seemed to work surprisingly well when enough
>evidence was available to compare Glottochronology with carbon dating
>and the like.
>
>I looked at a Wikipedia article and didn't learn very much that wasn't
>implied in Farb's book. My questions for you all: Is there still an
>active community pursuing these ideas? Any good stories or examples
>where the methods worked well or failed miserably? What, today, is
>considered the better or best methods for making such measurements?

On 1/26/2024 12:11 AM, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> Wed, 24 Jan 2024 01:31:22 -0700: Jeff Barnett <jbb@notatt.com>
> scribeva:
>> It seems that there is another method called "Glottochronology". This
>> method first identifies words that will appear in virtually all human
>> languages, e.g., I, we, one, two, all, man, woman, fish, foot, etc. You
>> now see what percent of the words on this list have drifted apart in the
>> spoken language. You then use the empirical "fact" that 16-19 percent of
>> these words will drift apart in a 1000 years. (Treat the drift
>> percentage like compound interest.)
>
> How exactly is "drift away" defined in this context? A slightly
> different pronunciation? Changed beyond apparent recognition but still
> a cognate upon closer study? Replaced by a non-cognate? That, but the
> original word is still used, but with a slightly or very different
> meaning?

Farb was not trying to define the method in detail; rather, he was
trying to tell the reader about methods that professionals might use to
do their work. In this case, he did give some examples such as some
words on the list starting with t changing to the voiced d as their
initial sound. There were a few other examples - some like the one I
just cited and others that did not seem to suggest a pattern for several
changes.

> That is what I see happening all the time when enjoying the
> etymologies given in Wiktionary. How to express that in percentages in
> unclear to me.
> This allows one to estimate the time
>> of separation. This method seemed to work surprisingly well when enough
>> evidence was available to compare Glottochronology with carbon dating
>> and the like.
>>
>> I looked at a Wikipedia article and didn't learn very much that wasn't
>> implied in Farb's book. My questions for you all: Is there still an
>> active community pursuing these ideas? Any good stories or examples
>> where the methods worked well or failed miserably? What, today, is
>> considered the better or best methods for making such measurements?
--
Jeff Barnett