Doerfer: Genetic relationship of languages review
Have you ever
wondered how the relationship of two languages can be proved? How can linguists
claim whether two languages are related and what kind of relationship they
have? Have they genetic affinity or are the similarities between them only
borrowings? Gerhard Doerfer collected the main conditions of establishing
linguistic relationships in his article The conditions for proving the genetic
relationship of languages.
“Science is not
a study of things which exist but of
those which can be proved to exist.”
Have you ever
wondered how the relationship of two languages can be proved? How can linguists
claim whether two languages are related and what kind of relationship they
have? Have they genetic affinity or are the similarities between them only
borrowings? Gerhard Doerfer collected the main conditions of establishing linguistic
relationships in his article The
conditions for proving the genetic relationship of languages.
Would not you
think that similarities would be the key for genetic relationship? Probably,
one would think at first glance that similarities in structure really means something.
However, we can learn that similarity proves nothing!
Let’s look at how to prove genetic
relationship then! The principles are quite logical: we need to find words to
compare in a significant amount (400 comparable roots) which satisfy
qualitative conditions as well. What are the qualitative conditions? That
‘famous’ sound laws have to be established although he also admits that words
do not always satisfy conditions of sound laws. The work of the linguist is
very hard! We have a fundamental condition which cannot always be
satisfied!
Furthermore, he
has a very interesting approach: understanding the difference between norm and
rule! It means that the sound laws are the norm of development while deviations
can be registered as a rule. In addition, very often overlapping of several
sound laws occur!
Another problem
to deal with is the coincidences. It can happen that two words originally have
nothing to do with each other. The idea is that two words are comparable if
their roots are comparable, so they have similar meanings and phonetic
characteristics. What else is needed for the recipe of proving genetic
relationship?
It is known to
prove genetic relationship it is necessary to find basic words like parts of
body terms or numerals, etc. However, essential basic words can also be loaned
frequently. The author tries to solve this problem by distinguishing other
categories. Anyhow, he poses a question after defining the conditions. Do basic
words exist?
The answer is
right there in his article: basic words do not exist, but basic categories
exist.
This work is
very informative and contains contributions for the bases of linguistic
comparison. Even if you are not an expert in the topic, it may give you several
interesting insights. I would absolutely recommend it to have an idea what the
mainstream approach is in linguistics for proving linguistic relationship.