Special Lecture by Dr. Thomas Pellard
The Mirage of Transeurasian
Robbeets et al. (2021) argue that the dispersal of the so-called “Transeurasian” languages, a highly disputed language superfamily comprising the Turkic, Mongolian, Tungusic, Koreanic, and Japonic language families, was driven by Neolithic farmers in the West Liao River region of China. They adduce evidence from linguistics, archaeology, and genetics to support their claim, but a closer investigation of all three types of evidence reveals fundamental problems with each of them. In particular, Robbeets et al.’s analysis of the linguistic data does not conform to the minimal standards required by traditional scholarship in historical linguistics. Neither conclusive evidence for a Transeurasian language family nor for associating the five different language families with the spread of Neolithic farmers from the West Liao River region can be found in Robbeets et al.’s data.
About the Speaker
Dr. Thomas Pellard is a researcher at CNRS and teaches linguistics at Inalco (France). His research interests focus on the synchronic diversity and the diachronic diversification of the languages of Japan. He has carried out linguistic fieldwork on all Japonic languages and has published widely on the description of the endangered Ryukyuan languages, the historical-comparative reconstruction of Japanese and Ryukyuan, the linguistic archaeology on the Ryukyu Islands, and the phylogeny of the Japonic language family.
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Date: December 20, 2022
Time: 4:30-6:00pm JST
Language: English
Venue: Zoom live
Contact:
Matthew Zisk
Email: matthew.zisk.a6(at)tohoku.ac.jp
Graduate School of International Cultural Studies (国際文化研究科)