Talks of the Past (ToP) Öpet Seminarium av CHP: The Language Families of the World: Current State and Future Perspectives.
- Date
- 4 December 2024, 14:15–15:30
- Location
- Blåsenhus, Blåsenhus/ seminar room 21:136
- Type
- Seminar
- Lecturer
- Harald Hammarström
- Web page
- https://www.centerforthehumanpast.se
- Organiser
- Center for the Human Past (CHP)
- Contact person
- Marzena Norling
- Phone
- 0184710000
Talks of the Past (ToP) seminars are open to students and academics interested in interdisciplinary research in the fields of palaeogenetics, archaeology, and linguistics. It is a series of seminars that take place on the first Wednesday of each month and are followed by a discussion and a “fika” (coffee break). The seminars are delivered in English.
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Abstract
The approximately 7,000 languages of the world is currently divided into no less than 422 lineages (= families + isolates) by the orthodox evidential criteria of Glottolog (glottolog.org). Should we believe this number? To what extent is it subjective, consistent in meta-properties and dependent on the amount of research and documentation? The time-depth of the families so far established do not reach more than 10,000 years back in time whereas human language arguably goes back at least 300,000 years (probably further). The inherent rate of linguistic change puts a limit on how deep linguistic data alone can probe, but are there combinations using evidence from other disciplines and general geospatial considerations that may take us further?