jueves, 16 de febrero de 2012

Out of Africa? Data fail to support language origin in Africa

Last year, Quentin Atkinson, a cultural anthropologist at Auckland University in New Zealand, proposed that the cradle of language could be localized in the southwest of Africa. The report, which appeared in Science, was seized upon by the media and caused something of a sensation. Now however, LMU linguist Michael Cysouw has published a commentary in Science which argues that this neat "Out-of-Africa" hypothesis for the origin of language is not adequately supported by the data presented. The search for the site of origin of language remains very much alive.
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Journal Reference:
1.M. Cysouw, D. Dediu, S. Moran. Comment on "Phonemic Diversity Supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa". Science, 2012; 335 (6069): 657 DOI: 10.1126/science.1208841

ScienceDaily

1 comentario:

Maju dijo...

Da la impresión de que está todo basado en el hecho (obvio) de que los clicks también se usan en otros lenguajes pero de forma no constituyente sino, irregularmente, para marcar pausas (en lugar de silencios).

Si eso es todo, me parece una gilipollez. Otra cosa es que Atkinson quizá esté equivocado. A mí todos estos ejercicios basados no en la ruta plausible de migración sino en mera distancia geométrica desde África, me parecen irracionales.