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Editor for this issue: Sarah Murray <sarahlinguistlist.org>
hotmail.com>Dear List members, I'm no expert either, and I haven't read the book, but for what it's worth i think it's important to distinguish between the claim that China visited the west coast of the Americas and the claim that there has been any lasting linguistic influence. The former seems to me to be not unlikely given that less technologically advanced societies like the Polynesians succeeded in even more extraordinary feats of navigation and endurance. And let's not forget the successive waves of Europeans who allegedly visited the east coast of North America before any longer term settlement. The possibility of linguistic influence on indigenous languages does seem to be far less convincing on the basis of the evidence discussed on the list and in terms of general principles applied to the data. Mark J. Jones Department of Linguistics University of CambridgeMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
psu.edu>Some methodolical criteria I would like to see in such an analysis. 1) If we assume that "1421" only was the year of contact, then I would expect there to NOT be too much in the way of Chinese loans - the period of contact would be too brief and sporadic. However, if some loan words were proposed, then the phonology should match the form of Chinese from that era (which "dialect" would it be I wonder?) 2) If it's over a longer period, I might expect to see a series of loans matching even earlier eras of Chinese. There's a possibility that the American loans would actuall be very dissimilar to the modern Chinese if they came early enough. For instance we know English "cheese" is very early Germanic borrowing from Latin "caes-" because it has undergone the Old English palatalization changes. A word like Spanish "queso" is more recent and therfore more similar sounding. Ideally, you would be able to identify "sound laws" if the pool were large enough. If the lists of "cognates" are lists of similar sounding Modern Chinese and sounds from the Latin American languages, I would be skeptical myself unless a more systematic correspondence is available. I haven't looked at the data, but that's how it sounds like it is based on this discussion (but maybe I'm wrong). FYI - The Harvard paper appears to be a review of proposed archaeological evidence, which could be more helpful than the linguistic evidence. My two cents. - Elizabeth J. Pyatt, Ph.D. http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue