Glottochronology

Glottochronology (from Attic Greek 'tongue, language' and 'time') is the part of lexicostatistics which involves comparative linguistics and deals with the chronological relationship between languages.

The idea was developed by Morris Swadesh in the 1950s in his article on Salish internal relationships. He developed the idea under two assumptions: there indeed exists a relatively stable basic vocabulary (referred to as Swadesh lists) in all languages of the world; and, any replacements happen in a way analogous to radioactive decay in a constant percentage per time elapsed. Using mathematics and statistics, Swadesh developed an equation to determine when languages separated and give an approximate time of when the separation occurred. His methods aimed to aid linguistic anthropologists by giving them a definitive way to determine a separation date between two languages. The formula provides an approximate number of centuries since two languages were supposed to have separated from a singular common ancestor. His methods also purported to provide information on when ancient languages may have existed.

Despite multiple studies and literature containing the information of glottochronology, it is not widely used today and is surrounded with controversy.

Over time many different extensions of the Swadesh method evolved; however, Swadesh's original method is so well known that 'glottochronology' is usually associated with him.

Methodology

The original method of glottochronology presumed that the core vocabulary of a language is replaced at a constant (or constant average) rate across all languages and cultures and so can be used to measure the passage of time. The process makes use of a list of lexical terms and morphemes which are similar to multiple languages.

Lists were compiled by Morris Swadesh and assumed to be resistant against borrowing (originally designed in 1952 as a list of 200 items, but the refined 100-word list in Swadesh (1955) is much more common among modern day linguists).

The core vocabulary was designed to encompass concepts common to every human language such as personal pronouns, body parts, heavenly bodies and living beings, verbs of basic actions, numerals, basic adjectives, kin terms, and natural occurrences and events. c = proportion of wordlist items retained at the end of that period and r = rate of replacement for that word list.

By testing historically verifiable cases in which t is known by nonlinguistic data (such as the approximate distance from Classical Latin to modern Romance languages), Swadesh arrived at the empirical value of approximately 0.14 for L, (c?) which means that the rate of replacement constitutes around 14 words from the 100-wordlist per millennium. This is represented in the table below.

{| class="wikitable"

|+ Glottochronology Time Scale

! Rough Median Dating !! Median Cognate Retention in 100-Word List

| 500 BP || 86%

| 1000 BP || 74%

| 1500 BP || 64%

| 2000 BP || 55%

| 2500 BP || 47%

| 3000 BP || 40%

| 4000 BP || 30%

| 5000 BP || 22%

| 6000 BP || 16%

| 7000 BP || 12%

| 8000 BP || 9%

| 9000 BP || 7%

| 10000 BP || 5%

Results

Glottochronology was applied to a range of language families, including Salishan, Indo-European, Japonic, Afro-Asiatic, Chinese and Mayan and other American languages.

For Amerind, correlations have been obtained with radiocarbon dating and blood groups as well as archaeology.

Example Wordlist

Below is an example of a basic word list composed of basic Turkish words and their English translations.

{| class="wikitable"

|+Glottochronological Turkish 100 Word List

|hep (all)

|ateş (fire)

|boyun (neck)

|bu (that)

|kül (ashes)

|balık (fish)

|yeni (new)

|şu (this)

|kabuk (bark)

|uçmak (fly)

|gece (night)

|sen (thou)

|karın (belly)

|ayak (foot)

|burun (nose)

|dil (tongue)

|büyük (big)

|vermek (give)

|bir (one)

|diş (tooth)

|kuş (bird)

|iyi (good)

|kişi (person)

|ağaç (tree)

|ısırmak (bite)

|yeşil (green)

|yağmur (rain)

|iki (two)

|kara (black)

|saç (hair)

|kızıl (red)

|yürümek (walk)

|kan (blood)

|el (hand)

|yol (road)

|sıcak (warm)

|kemik (bone)

|baş (head)

|kök (root)

|su (water)

|yakmak (burn)

|duymak (hear)

|kum (sand)

|biz (we)

|bulut (cloud)

|gönül (heart)

|demek (say)

|ne (what)

|soğuk (cold)

|ben (I)

|görmek (see)

|beyaz (white)

|gelmek (come)

|öldürmek (kill)

|tohum (seed)

|kim (who)

|ölmek (die)

|bilmek (know)

|oturmak (sit)

|kadın (woman)

|köpek (dog)

|yaprak (leaf)

|deri (skin)

|sarı (yellow)

|içmek (drink)

|yalan (lie)

|uyumak (sleep)

|uzun (long)

|kuru (dry)

|ciğer (liver)

|küçük (small)

|yok (not)

|kulak (ear)

|bit (louse)

|duman (smoke)

|göğüş (breast)

|yer (earth)

|erkek (man-male)

|ayaktakalmak (stand)

|hayvan tırnagı (claw)

|yemek (eat)

|çok (many)

|yıldız (star)

|dolu (full)

|yumurta (egg)

|et (meat-flesh)

|taş (stone)

|boynuz (horn)

|göz (eye)

|dağ (mountain)

|güneş (sun)

|diz (knee)

|yağ (fat-grease)

|ağız (mouth)

|yüzmek (swim)

|ay (moon)

|tüy (feather)

|isim (name)

|kuyruk (tail)

|yuvarlak (round)

Discussion

The concept of language change is old, and its history is reviewed in Hymes (1973) and Wells (1973). In some sense, glottochronology is a reconstruction of history and can often be closely related to archaeology. Many linguistic studies find the success of glottochronology to be found alongside archaeological data. An introduction to the subject is given in Embleton (1986) and in McMahon and McMahon (2005).

Glottochronology has been controversial ever since, partly because of issues of accuracy but also because of the question of whether its basis is sound (for example, Bergsland 1958; Bergsland and Vogt 1962; Fodor 1961; Chrétien 1962; Guy 1980). The concerns have been addressed by Dobson et al. (1972), Dyen (1973) and Kruskal, Dyen and Black (1973). The assumption of a single-word replacement rate can distort the divergence-time estimate when borrowed words are included (Thomason and Kaufman 1988).

The presentations vary from "Why linguists don't do dates" to the one by Starostin discussed below. Since its original inception, glottochronology has been rejected by many linguists, mostly Indo-Europeanists of the school of the traditional comparative method. Criticisms have been answered in particular around three points of discussion:

Criticism levelled against the higher stability of lexemes in Swadesh lists alone (Haarmann 1990) misses the point because a certain amount of losses only enables the computations (Sankoff 1970). The non-homogeneity of word lists often leads to lack of understanding between linguists. Linguists also have difficulties finding a completely unbiased list of basic cultural words. it can take a long time for linguists to find a viable word list which can take several test lists to find a usable list.).

:That global assumption has been modified and downgraded to single words, even in single languages, in many newer attempts (see below).

:There is a lack of understanding of Swadesh's mathematical/statistical methods. Some linguists reject the methods in full because the statistics lead to 'probabilities' when linguists trust 'certainties' more. by splitting the word list into classes each with their own rate, while Dyen, James and Cole (1967) allowed each meaning to have its own rate. Simultaneous estimation of divergence time and replacement rate was studied by Kruskal, Dyen and Black.