What Genes Tell Us About the Evolution of Language

Episode 34 What Genes Tell Us

Dr John McWhorter (2019)

Film Review

Geneticists use DNA studies, specifically the history of mutations to trace historical movements of ethnic populations. Because random mutations (most harmless) occur at a predictable rate, they can pinpoint the approximate date that sub-populations separate from one another. According to DNA analysis, most of our current global population is descended from migrants who left Africa 100,000 years ago.

Languages undergo similar predictable changes. Migration of language groups can be tracked via glottochronology. This methodology is based on the discovery that when language groups separate, each loses 14 core words every 1000 years form the Swadesh list of key words.

Languages with a lot of borrowed words can change more rapidly. Norwegian is example. Both Icelandic and Norwegian are descended from Old Norse. The former is still basically Old Norse while Norwegian has a lot of words borrowed from Danish and low German.

Although there is still controversy over where proto-IndoEuropean arose (either the Ukrainian steppes 6,000 years ago Turkey 8,000 years ago), DNA studies show that modern Europeans arrived in Europe in three distinct waves. The first to arrive were hunter gatherers 40,000-12,000 years ago. The second wave were farmers genetically related to modern residents of Siberia and the Near East 8,000 years ago. The third were technically advanced Yamnaya from Ukraine 5,000 years ago. The latter spoke an IndoEuropean language, which replaced the Basque spoken by the hunter gatherers and the Etruscan spoken by the migrating farmers.

DNA from Otzi (Frozeman) found in the Alps on the border between Italy and Germany indicate an IndoEuropean culture known as the Villanovan culture had reached Italy by 1100 BC.

Genetic studies also confirm the Dravidian language and culture dominated all of India prior to the arrival IndoEuropeans around 2,000-1,200 BC. The latter replaced Dravidian culture in most of northern India.

Gene studies also show that African click language all originated from the same family.

Genes also confirm there were two distinct migration of Pacific people out of Asia – one from Taiwan to Melanesia and one from Melanesia to Polynesia. They also suggest large numbers of Polynesians learned to speak a Polynesian language as adults, which helps explain why so many Polynesian languages have been streamlined (losing prefixes and suffixes, etc).

Genetic studies have also helped linguists ascertain whether the Omotic subfamily belongs to the Afroasiatic (Semitic) language family. Genetic studies of populations in southwest Ethiopia and southeast Sudan who speak Omotic languages suggest they aren’t (that they’re language isolates unrelated to any known language family).

Although linguistically Navajo seems related to the Ket language spoken in Siberia, genetic evidence doesn’t support this. See Basque, Ainu, Somali, Etruscan: Languages Without Families

DNA studies indicate the Inuit aren’t descended from the original Siberian migration to to North America. They appear to have arrived with the Thule migration on the West Coast of Alaska around 1000 AD and gradually spread across northern Canada. Similar evidence indicates that Dorset culture arrived in Greenland (from Siberia) around 4,500 years ago and disappeared around 700 years ago.

DNA evidence confirms that the Chukoto-Kamachatkam Paleo Siberian culture, which has ejectives* similar to Pacific Northwest indigenous languages, are distantly related.

At the same time, McWhorter finds it really puzzling that there is no genetic evidence of Norse DNA in modern Britain, given the massive Norse influence on English (get, happy and skirt are Norse word). In English grammar the preposition stranding (eg where the preposition comes at the end of the sentence – “What is that for?”) is a Norse construction.

*Ejective sounds are made by trapping above the glottis and pushing it out:

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/6120000/6120068

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