Atkinson’s theory of language origins

Feb 10, 2012 by

In a number of earlier posts, I’ve discussed the recent work by Quentin D. Atkinson from the University of Auckland on the origin and spread of language. In an article published in Science, Atkinson shows that by applying mathematical methods used in genetics to linguistic data from 504 languages around the world, one can trace the origin of language to West Africa. His main observation is this:  a language area uses fewer phonemes the farther that early humans had to travel from Africa to reach it.

 

You can read some of my objections to Atkinson’s work in these posts:

These and other objections are also discussed in some more detail in a Technical Comment response, co-authored with Rory van Tuyl and published today in Science. Dr. Atkinson’s reponse to our response can be found there as well.

 


Previous Post
« 		| Next Post
»

Related Posts

Subscribe For Updates

We would love to have you back on Languages Of The World in the future. If you would like to receive updates of our newest posts, feel free to do so using any of your favorite methods below:

      

Tags