|
Dené–Yeniseian is a proposed language family consisting of the Yeniseian languages of central Siberia and the Na-Dené languages of northwestern North America. It has been called "the first demonstration of a genealogical link between Old World and New World language families that meets the standards of traditional comparative-historical linguistics".〔Bernard Comrie (2008) "Why the Dene-Yeniseic Hypothesis is Exciting". Fairbanks and Anchorage, Alaska: Dene-Yeniseic Symposium.〕 If valid, it would be the second linguistic connection between the Old and New Worlds, with the first being the Yupik languages. ==Early work== Amateur and professional researchers in historical linguistics have long sought to link the various known language families around the world into macrofamilies. The putative relationship between Na-Dené and Yeniseian families was first proposed by Alfredo Trombetti in 1923.〔see Vajda 2010a:34 who quotes Trombetti, Alfredo. 1923. ''Elementi di glottologia''. Bologna. pp.486, 511)〕 Much of the early evidence adduced has been typological; in particular, both families have a complex agglutinative prefixing verb structure, which differs from most of the other languages in Asia. More recently, a number of attempts have been made to link together various language families and language isolates with prefixing verb structures, including (in addition to Yeniseian and Na-Dené) the Northwest Caucasian (Abkhaz-Adygh) and Northeast Caucasian (Nakh-Dagestanian) language families and the Sumerian and Burushaski language isolates—grouped into a putative long-range Dené-Caucasian family by supporters of a genetic linkage. The first peer-reviewed publication to propose the existence of a distinct Dené–Yeniseian family was written by macrofamily supporter Merritt Ruhlen (1998) in ''Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences,'' USA.〔http://www.pnas.org/content/95/23/13994.full.pdf〕 However, Vajda (2010a:34) states (without specifying which ones) that 26 of the 34 sets of words offered by Ruhlen are coincidental look-alikes, whereas 8 of Ruhlen's word sets follow Vajda's rules of sound correspondences. Michael Fortescue independently suggested the possible existence of a Dené–Yeniseian family in his 1998 book ''Language Relations Across Bering Strait''〔http://books.google.com/books?id=hHMrfxhAZ-UC〕 (see pages 213–215). He writes, "I have attempted throughout to find a middle way between the cavalier optimism of 'lumpers' and the pessimism of orthodox 'splitters' on the matters of deep genetic relationship between the continents" (page 1). As alluded to by Fortescue's comment, scientific investigations of long-range language family relationships have been complicated by an ideological dispute between the so-called "lumpers" and "splitters", with "lumpers" caricatured as bumbling amateurs willing to group together disparate, unrelated families based on chance resemblances〔Lyle Campbell, ''Historical Linguistics: An Introduction'' (2nd Edition), MIT Press, 2004.〕 and the "splitters" caricatured as rigid enforcers of orthodoxy willing to "shout down" researchers who disagree with their belief that long-range connections are impossible to establish.〔Merritt Ruhlen, ''The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue'', Wiley, 1994.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dené–Yeniseian languages」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|