AND THE FIRST SETTLEMENT OF THE NEW WORLD
AND THE FIRST SETTLEMENT OF THE NEW WORLD
复制标题
以及新世界的第一个定居点
作者：
J. Nichols
新大陆语言在遗传学和类型学上的多样性经常被注意到，这不是由于历史的偶然性，而是由于语言地理学规律的作用。语言多样性理论的四个组成部分：多样性的分类和措施，多样性的原因，分化率的措施，估计语言人口的年龄的手段。根据最保守的考古学观点，新大陆在大约12，000年前首次被殖民;根据公认的观点，最多在20，000年前。但是，没有一个高纬度地区，如西伯利亚、白令吉亚、阿拉斯加或北方加拿大，能够在这些时间框架内贡献或传播语言多样性，为新大陆带来种子，也没有一个单一的离散家庭能够在这些时间框架内产生已证实的多样性。语言学证据确凿无疑地证明，新大陆的人类居住时间几乎和澳大利亚或新几内亚一样长，大约有35,000年。“美洲印第安人”的基因统一性与语言事实所要求的时间顺序不相容。
The oft-noted genetic and typological diversity of the languages of the New World is due not to accidents of history but to the operation of regular principles of linguistic geography. Four building blocks of a theory of linguistic diversity are presented here: a classification and measures of diversity, an account of the causes of diversity, measures of rates of differentiation, and means of estimating the age of a linguistic population. On the most conservative archeological view, the New World was first colonized some 12,000 years ago; on the received view, up to 20,000 years ago. But no high-latitude area like Siberia, Beringia, Alaska, or northern Canada could have contributed or transmitted the linguistic diversity to seed the New World in these time frames, and no single dispersing family could have given rise to the attested diversity in these time frames. The unmistakable testimony of the linguistic evidence is that the New World has been inhabited nearly as long as Australia or New Guinea, perhaps some 35,000 years. Genetic unity for 'Amerind' is incompatible with the chronology demanded by the linguistic facts.*