Talk:Genetic relationship (linguistics)

Confusion
from article: The term genealogical relationship is sometimes used to avoid confusion with the unrelated use of the term in biological genetics.

How to avoid confusion? - in genealogy is direct biological genetic relationship. It is even hard to imagine less proven and direct biological genetic relationship since :genealogy study and tracing of family lineages.

Both genetic and genealogical seem to be inappropriate terms, as language has proven to be a poor marker for genetics. This article should cite references.Jmldalton (talk) 00:45, 10 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure you understand the concept. Genetic relationship in linguistics does not mean that two populations have a common ancestors. It means that their languages have a common ancestor. (e.g. African Americans speak a language that is related to German, but they have African genes) Which sources would you like to cite? You can cite virtually anything. A lot has been written on this. You know, when you say that German and English are genetically related, many people confuse this with biology, but biology is irrelevant here. How to avoide the confusion then? Use a term that is much less typically connected with biology and biogenetics - whence "genealogical".--Pe t 'usek [ petr dot hrubis at gmail dot com ] 15:38, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Even better is to use cognate or some less ambiguous term. -LlywelynII (talk) 16:24, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Cognate applies to individual words, genetic relationship to languages. The two should not be merged. --JWB (talk) 16:59, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not our place to try to determine the concepts used by linguists - this is not our concept. We only need to define how they use it. Your argument is really with them, not with us; we can't do anything about it here. Such analogous use of terms is not all that uncommon, especially in nuclear physics, where an entire technical lexicon might be based on the analogous use of an ordinary word, such as color. In the sense used, there is nothing ambiguous about "genetic"; in fact, it was coined to make meanings clear. It just has to be used correctly.Dave (talk) 15:54, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It's a responsibility to not add to the world of un-knowledge, when writing an encyclopedia. Hence, whatever stupid confusing term linguists descended categorically from the same people who brought us nazism use, it is a responsibility to explain clearly to our audience, what is actually true, and what is said and why, without further adding to the confusion and biases, whether brought in from the existing body of theory of the distant past, or from current trends. Do not under any circumstances publish my IP.  This means you.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.101.157.18 (talk) 08:18, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Merge proposals
Several articles have been proposed as targets of mergers into this article. I tend to agree with them, and would even suggest additional ones, but the real problem is that this article is confusing. A better ultimate article might be Genetic (linguistics), which surely also needs to merge with the content in this article. But the real point to me is that the first or second sentence in the lead has to make it very, very, very clear that "genetic" in this sense is entirely metaphorical. Linguistic "genetic" relationships have nothing whatsoever to do with genes, yet (see discussion above) the [ab]use of this term within linguistics is causing a great deal of confusion, seeming to imply to anyone who is not a linguist that actual biological descent is part of the equation. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 12:54, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know where the 'suggestion' or 'discussion' are located. Cognate has nothing here or there. Against. "Genetic relationship" is a completely infelicitous and relatively unknown term (at the very least outside the field; it would be unfortunate if it were well established within it.) -LlywelynII (talk) 16:24, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It is in fact well established. What do you not like about it? --JWB (talk) 16:56, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Bad evaluations of bad articles - let's start over, hey?
These two articles are both bad. There is nothing at all to gain by selecting one over the other. The other one is circular; it defines genetic as membership in a language family and under language family the latter is defined as a relationship between genetically-related languages. Whichever one we select has to be totally rewritten; they are unreferenced, contain sweeping generalizations, personal opinion and errors. Obviously these two articles were written off the top of some student's head who has little or no knowledge of linguistics. Now we want to argue about which is better. This is totally absurd and would be totally ridiculous if we were not trying to do a serious encyclopedia. Of course none of us ad hoc encyclopedists can be expert in everything, so no blame is to be attached anywhere. Let's just stop it, hey? So which title to use? The request is set up for this article, so let's use it. Genetic relationship seems a little clearer to me than genetic (linguistics). As for you gentlemen and your comments, I think it would be best if you just butt out. It is manifest to anyone with a modicum of knowledge on the topic that your level of knowledge is to be set at zero. Would you pick out an article on advanced mathematics or nuclear physics and presume with no knowledge of those topics to tell the editors what the best names for the basic topics of those fields ought to be? That is what you are doing here. If you want a basic introduction to what we are trying to talk about, see under Tree model and Wave model (linguistics) for a starter. Wikipedia is such a convenient forum for any contributor's views that editors begin to get the idea they ought to have something to say about everything. Not so. I hope I do not see you again in this discussion or the article either unless you are willing to do some look-ups and learn some linguistics. There was never any question of any confusion about biological genetics and no one is confused apparently not even you. For non-linguists we need only to explain once that this use is analogous or metaphoric and has nothing to do with biological genes. Once and briefly, I says. If the article is properly developed with see also and quotes and some history of the concept all larded over with footnotes no one will bat an eyelash. That is why you are getting answers of only a few words to your concerns. No one else has them. Now, if you do not like the language and the concepts used by linguists, go get yourself an education in languages and linguistics, work up a few publications and get them published. Then go to a few symposia and propose that the concept of genetic relationships in language is confusing and obsolete and ought to be dropped. Ciao, best wishes in your linguistics education, in which this article when properly done might assist. Until then I know you will want to withdraw from the field to the sidelines where you might do all the cheering you like.Dave (talk) 16:43, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Linguistic interference and borrowing
I am rewriting part of the subsection titled Linguistic interference and borrowing. It includes a defective sentence (which I am replacing) and seems in need of greater clarity (which I hope to provide). The passage is also unencumbered by references, which I hope someone else might be able to add, please. The content does seem sensible and useful, so I hope it doesn't have to be deleted altogether. --Frans Fowler (talk) 04:43, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Pidgin and creole excluded from monogenesis
Why are pidgins and creoles excluded from monogenesis theory? it is illogical. If all other languages come from a single source, and pidgins and creoles originate as a mixture of different languages - they ultimately also relate to the same proto-source, although not in one way, but in two ways. It's like pure breed races of dogs and mixed breed dogs: mixed breeds are descendant from those original pure breeds which were mixed in them, but those pure breeds are descendant (each of them in its own, specific way) from a proto-dog race. Anyhow, I would like to know, who was the first to exclude pidgins and creoles from the monogenetic theory and whar were their arguments. noychoH (talk) 23:21, 11 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Pidgins and creoles do not exactly originate as a mixture of different languages. By the nature of their genesis, they have features not attributable to any of their "parents".  There is, at first, no continuum of dialects between a creole and any parent, though a continuum may develop later (as in Jamaican varieties of English, if I understand right) as a result of code-switching. —Tamfang (talk) 02:49, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Merge proposal
I propose merging this page into Language family. See Talk:Language family. AJD (talk) 16:41, 7 July 2023 (UTC)