By: ettlinger
Interesting post, especially with respect to the main idea, that rara and rarissima (http://wwwstaff.eva.mpg.de/~wohlgemu/rara2006/) can provide insight into the language faculty unavailable through...
View ArticleBy: Sean
Good point (although rare phenomena don’t have to violate universals). Cysouw and Wohlgemuth use Plank’s definition (see his website here): “. . . a trait . . . which is so uncommon across languages as...
View ArticleBy: ettlinger
I think it’s a bit more complicated (simpler?) than that. You need an appropriate control, or some stochastic way of determining the rarity of something a priori given probabilities of the different...
View ArticleBy: Sean
Regarding the violation of universals, I agree with what you said. I guess I was thinking ‘positive’ rara rather than ‘negative’ rara. For example, Great Andamanese doesn’t violate any big universals...
View ArticleBy: razib
Indeed, recent genetic research has shown that the Andamanese are descendants of the first human migration from Africa in the Palaeolithic if you are talking about the recent papers which came out on...
View ArticleBy: Sean
Sorry – after looking this up it seems like I have a hopelessly simple view of migration patterns! Thangaraj et al. (2005) find that the Onge and Great Andamanese belong to haplogroup M (new clades M31...
View ArticleBy: razib
these papers are the most update to date: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2011/09/out-of-africa-onward-to-wallacea/ first one speaks directly to andaman islanders, while second one to the fact...
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