Encyclopedia of Evolution.pdf - Online Reading Center

Humans spread all over the world from their African
homeland. Once a tribe had a language that was their identity,
they were unlikely to change it. As tribes migrated, and
displaced or conquered other tribes, they took their languages
with them. Languages have changed tremendously, and people
have evolved slightly, since that time. Most of the genetic
patterns that have resulted from recent human evolution
consist of minor genetic variation (see markers). Luigi Luca
Cavalli-Sforza, a geneticist at Stanford University, has found
a rough correlation between human genetic markers and languages
(see figure). The major language groups correspond
roughly to the major genetic groups.
Sometimes the correspondence between language and
genetics is quite close. Both genetic markers and languages
spread along with agriculture: Indo-European languages in
Europe, Sino-Tibetan languages in China, and Niger-Congo
languages in Africa. The linguistic association of Apaches and
Navahos (Na-Dene) to the Athapascans of the Pacific Northwest
is mirrored in the similarity of their mitochondrial DNA
(see DNA [evidence for evolution]). The linguistic association
between the Romany and Hindi languages cleared up
the historical enigma of where the Gypsies came from, over
a century before DNA tests could demonstrate the same
thing. The Gypsies are apparently a tribe that left India and
migrated into Europe about 2,000 years ago.
Sometimes the correspondences between languages and
genes in human history are not as close or not necessarily reliable.
Some of the language families that Cavalli-Sforza used
in his analysis, such as Australian and (Native) American, are
not linguistically related groups but geographical clumps. The
American languages are of recent origin (probably the past
13,000 years) but constitute many linguistic families, while
African languages are the oldest but constitute far fewer linguistic
families.
Linguistic diversity has developed through the same two
processes, vicariance and dispersal, that have stimulated the
development of geographical patterns of species (see biogeography).
Vicariance occurs when an ancestral language spreads
and is then divided into separate groups, and this has been the
dominant process in the development of languages. Most of
the languages spoken from Ireland to India have evolved from
the language (called Indo-European) apparently spoken by
people who spread out from northwestern Asia about 5,000
years ago. In each region it diverged into a different language
family. The surviving Indo-European language families are:
• Indo-Iranian (today including Hindi)
• Greek
• Italic (today including Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese,
and Romanian)
• Celtic
• Germanic (today including English, German, Dutch, and
the Scandinavian languages)
• Armenian
• Balto-Slavic (today including Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbo-
Croatian, Bulgarian, and the Baltic languages)
• Albanian
language, evolution of
Latin was ancestral to all surviving Romance languages, and
during the Roman Empire it remained a coherent language.
Once the empire fell, however, communication between
regions was minimal, and Latin evolved into languages such
as Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian.
Dispersal is the long-distance spread of a people and
language to a new location disjunct from its origin, as in the
Gypsy example above. The Hungarian language emerged
from the invasion of the Huns into Europe from northeast
Asia. Although the Hungarian people are not Oriental, and
the Hungarian language is not closely allied with North Asian
languages, it is strikingly different from the Indo-European
languages around it.
In some cases, a small number of conquerors spread and
imposed their language on genetically different peoples. Alternatively,
people may adopt new languages when they migrate,
by choice or by force. Examples include:
• Finnish people are genetically Scandinavian but speak a
language often classified as Altaic. Altaic-speaking men
imposed their language on a Scandinavian population. A
marker on the Y chromosome of Finnish people shows their
association with North Asian speakers of other Altaic languages.
The Lapps of Finland provide a separate example of
an Altaic language replacing the original language.
• Some Southeast Asians are genetically related to the Chinese
but speak Austronesian languages.
• North Indians are genetically similar to South Indians but
speak the Indo-European language of ancient conquerors,
while the South Indians still speak Dravidian languages.
• Ethiopians, genetically similar to other Africans, have
adopted a North African language similar to those of peoples
north of the Sahara Desert.
• African Americans have adopted the English language.
• Native Americans of Latin America have adopted Spanish
and Portuguese languages.
Some cultural groups have genetically and linguistically
complex origins. An excellent example is the Japanese. Even
though the Japanese are primarily of Chinese genetic origin,
the Japanese language is often classified as Altaic because of
its grammar. The Japanese language is quite unlike the monosyllabic
Chinese languages, but the Chinese immigrants added
many of their words to the Altaic language that already had
words for the same things. As a result, the Japanese language
frequently has two different words, one of Altaic origin and
the other of Chinese origin, for the same thing. For example,
the Altaic harakiri and the Chinese seppuku denote the
same kind of ritual suicide. The Chinese (on) words are used
in more formal situations than the Altaic (kun) words, as
when the Chinese dai- denotes “big” in formal names while
the Altaic okii is used as the adjective. Even Japanese writing
reveals the hybrid origin of the language. Written Japanese
uses thousands of pictographic characters (kanji) derived
from, and sometimes identical to, Chinese pictographs. Each
kanji has a meaning and has both on and kun pronunciations.
Written Japanese also uses syllabaries such as hiragana
to connect and modify the kanji.