8/9/2019 Gould - Grimm's Greatest Tale
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THIS v
EW OF
LIF
Grimm's reatest
Tale
The threads
o
our
linguistic
history
closely
match
the pattern o our
biological development
by Stephen
Jay
Gould
With the possible exception of Eng and
Chang, who had
no choice,
no
famous
brothers have ever been closer than
Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm,
who
lived
and
worked
together throughout their
long
and productive
lives. Wilhelm
(1786-1859) was the prime
mover
in col
lecting the Kinder-
und
Hausmiirchen
(fables
for the
home and
for children) that
have become a pillar and icon of our cul
ture. (Can
you even
imagine a
world with
out Cinderella or Snow White?) Jacob,
senior
member of the partnership
(1785-1863), maintained a primary inter
est in
linguistics
and
the
history
of human
speech.
His
Deutsche Grammatik,
first
published in 1819, became a cornerstone
for
documenting relationships between
l n d ~ E u r o p e a n languages. Late in their
lives,
after a principled resignation
from
the University of Gottingen (prompted by
the king of Hanover's repeal of the 1833
constitution
as too
liberal), the brothers
Grimm settled in Berlin
where
they began
their
last and
greatest project, the
Deut
sches Wijrterbuch a gigantic German
dictionary documenting the
history,
ety
mology,
and use of every word contained
in
three centuries of literature
from Lu
ther to
Goethe.
Certain scholarly projects
are,
like medieval
cathedrals, too
vast for
completion
in the lifetime of their archi
tects.
Wilhelm never got
past
D;
Jacob
lived to see the letter F
Speaking in Calcutta, during the in
fancy
of the British raj
in 1786,
the phi
lologist
William Jones first noted impres
sive
similarities
between
Sanskrit and the
classical languages of Greece and Rome
(an Indian
king, or
raja, matches
rex,
his
Latin counterpart). Jones's observation
led to
the
recognition
of a great
l n d ~
European
family
of languages, now
spread from the British Isles and Scandi
navia to
India, but clearly
rooted in
a
20
NATURAL HISTORY
2/89
single, ancient origin. Jones may have
marked
the basic similarity,
but the broth
ers Grimm
were
among the
first
to codify
regularities of change that underpin the
diversification
of the rootstock into its
ma
jor
subgroups
(Romance
languages, Ger
manic
tongues, and so on). Grimm's law,
you see, does not state that all frogs shall
tum into princes
by
the story's
end,
but
specifies
the characteristic changes
in
consonants
between
P r o ~ l n d ~ ~
pean (as retained in Latin) and the Ger
manic languages.
Thus, for
example,
Latinp'sbecomef'sinGermaniccognates
(voiceless
stops become
voiceless frica
tives
in the jargon). The latin
plenum
be
comes full vol/, pronounced foll in
German);
piscis becomes
fish Fisch in
German); and pes
becomes
foot Fuss
in German). (Since English is
an
amalgam
of a Germanic stock
with
Latin-based im
ports from the Norman conquest, our lan
guage bas added Latin cognates to n g l ~
Saxon
roots
altered according to Grimm's
law-plenty,
piscine, and
podiatry.
We
can
even
get both for the price of one in
plentiful.
I first learned about Grimm's law in a
college
course more
than
twenty-five
years
ago. Somehow,
the
idea
that the
compilers
of Rapunzel
and
Rumpelstilt
skin lso gave the world a great scholarly
principle in linguistics struck me as one of
the
sweetest
little
facts
I ever learned a
statement,
symbolic
at least, about inter
disciplinary study and the proper contact
of
high
and vernacular culture. I
have
wanted
to
disgorge
this
tidbit for years
and am delighted that this essay
finally
provided an opportunity.
A great dream of unification underlay
the observations
of
Jones
and the
codifica
tion of systematic changes by Jacob
Grimm. Nearly all the languages of
Eu
rope (with
such fascinating
exceptions
as
Basque, Hungarian, and Finnish)
could
joined
to
a pathway that spread throu
Persia all the way to India
via
Sans
and its
derivatives. An origin in
the
m
dle, somewhere in the Near East, seem
indicated, and such
fossil l n d ~
pean
tongues
as Hittite support
this in
pretation. Whether the
languages w
spread,
as
convention dictates,
by
c
quering nomadic tribes on horseback
as Colin Renfrew
argues
in his
recent b
Archaeology
and
Language,
Cambrid
University
Press, 1987), more gently
passively
by the advantages of agric
ture,
evidence
points
to
a
single sou
with
a
complex history
of proliferation
many directions.
Might we extend the vision of un
even
further? Could we link I n d ~
pean
with
the Semitic (Hebrew,
Arab
languages of the scx:alled f ~ s i a t
stock;
the Altaic languages of Tibet,
M
golia, Korea, and Japan; the Dravid
tongues
of southern India;
even to
the
tive Amerindian languages of the
N
World? Could the linkages extend e
further
to
the languages of southeast
Asia
(Chinese, Thai,
Malay, Tagalog),
Pacific Islands, Australia, and
N
Guinea,
even
(dare one dream) to
most
different
tongues
of southern Afri
including the Kboisan family
with
its co
plex clicks
and
implosions?
Most scholars balk at the
very
thou
of direct evidence for connections amo
these basic linguistic phyla.
The peop
were once
united, of course, but
the
d
sion
and spreadoccurred so long
ago (o
the usual argument
goes)
that no traces
linguistic similarity should be left
acco
ing to standard views about rates
change in such volatile
aspects of hum
culture.
Yet
a small group of schola
including some prominent emigres fr
the
Soviet Union (where theories of
8/9/2019 Gould - Grimm's Greatest Tale
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guistic unification are not so scorned), per
sist in arguing
for
such linkages, despite
acrimonious
rebuttal and
dismissal from
most Western colleagues. One
heterodox
view tries to
link
Indo-European
with
lin
guistic
phyla
of the Near East and north
ern Asia
from
Semitic at the
southwest,
to Dravidian at the southeast, all the way
to Japanese at the northeast) by
re-
constructing a hypothetical ancestral
tongue called Nostratic (from the Latin
noster
meaning our ).
n even more
radical
view holds
that
modern tongues
still
preserve enough
traces of common
ancestry to
link
Nostratic
with
the native
languages of the Americas (all the
way
to
South America via the
Eskimo tongues,
but excluding the puzzling Na-Dene lan
guages of northwestern America).
The
vision
is
beguiling, but I haven't the
slightest idea whether any of these unor
thodox
ideas have a prayer of
success.
I
have no technical knowledge of linguis
tics,
only
a hobbyist's interest in language.
But I can report, from my own evolution
ary domain, that the usual
biological
argu
ment, invoked a priori against the possibil
ity of direct linkage among linguistic
phyla,
no longer applies.
This conven
tional argument held that Homo
sapiens
arose and split
by
geographical migra
tion) into its racial lines far too
long
ago
for
any
hope that ancestral linguistic similar
ities might be retained
by
modern
speak
ers. A
stronger
version
held that
various
races of Homo
sapiens arose
separately
and in parallel
from
different stocks of
Homo
erectus
thus putting the
point
of
common linguistic ancestry even further
back into a truly inaccessible past. Indeed,
according to this view, the distant com
mon ancestor of all modern
people
might
not even have possessed language.
Some
linguistic phyla might
have
arisen
as
sepa
rate evolutionary inventions, scotching
any hope for theories of unification.)
The latest
biological
evidence,
mostly
genetic but with some contribution from
paleontology,
strongly indicates a
single
and discrete African origin for Homo
sa-
piens at a date much closer to the present
than standard
views
would have dared to
imagine-perhaps only 200,000 years ago
or
so, with all
non-African diversity per
haps no more than 100,000 years old see
my column of June 1987). Within this
highly compressed framework ofcommon
ancestry, the
notion
that conservative
lin-
guistic elements might still link existing
phyla no longer
seems
so absurd a
priori.
The idea is
worth
some
serious
testing,
even i
absolutely nothing
positive
eventu
ally
emerges.
This
compression
of the time scale
lso
suggests
possible
success for a potentially
powerful
research program into the great
question of historical linkages among
modern peoples. Three major and entirely
independent
sources
of
evidence
might
be
used to reconstruct the human
family
tree:
(1) direct but limited evidence of fossil
bones and artifacts by
paleontology
and
archeology; 2) indirect but copious data
on degrees of genetic relationship
among
living
peoples; (3) relative similarities and
differences
among
languages, as dis
cussed
above.
We
might attempt to
corre
late these separate sources, searching for
similarities in pattern. I am delighted to
report
some
marked
successes
in this di
rection ( Reconstruction of Human Evo
lution: Bringing
Together Genetic,
r-
chaeological, and Linguistic Data, by
L.
L.
Cavalli-Sforza, A. Piazza,
P Men
ozzi,
and J. Mountain, Proceedings
o he
National Academy o Sciences August
1988, pp. 6002-6). The reconstruction of
the human family tree its branching or-
. der, its
timing,
and its geography-may
be within our
grasp.
Since this tree is the
basic datum of
history,
hardly anything
in
intellectual life could be more important.
Our recently
developed
ability to
mea
sure genetic distances for large numbers
of protein or DNA sequences provides the
keystone
for
resolving
the human
family
tree.
As
I have argued many times in this
forum,
such genetic data take pride of
place not because genes are ''better or
more fundamental than data of mor
phology,
geography, and language but
only because genetic data are so
copious
and so comparable. We all shared a com
mon origin, and therefore a
common
ge
netics and
morphology, as
a
single ances
tral population some quarter of a million
years ago. Since then, differences
have
accumulated as populations separated
and
diversified.
As a
rough
guide, the
more extensive the measured differences,
the greater the time of separation. This
correlation
between
extent of difference
and time of separation is our chief tool
for
reconstructing the human
family
tree.
But this relationship is only rough and
very imperfect. So many factors can dis-.
tort and disrupt a strict correlation of time
and difference. Similar features can
evolve
independently-black
skin in
Afri
cans and Australians,
for
example,
since
these groups stand as far apart
genealogi
cally
as
any two
peoples
on Earth. Rates of
change
need
not be constant.
Tiny popula
tions,
in particular, can undergo marked
increases in rate, primarily by random
forces of genetic drift. The best way to
work
past these difficulties lies in a brute
force approach: the greater the quantity
of measured differences, the greater the
likelihood
of a primary correlation be-
tween time and
overall
distance. Any
gle measure of distance may be impac
by
a large suite of forces that can disr
the correlation of time and differen
natural selection,
convergence,
rapid
netic drift in
small
populations. But tim
the only
common
factor underlying
measures of difference; when two pop
tions
split,
all
potential measures of
tance
become free
to diverge. Thus,
more
independent measures of dista
we
compile, the more likely we are
recover the only
common signal
ofdive
fication:
time itself. Only genetic data
least
for
now) can supply this requi
richness in number of
comparisons.
Genetic data
on
human
differences
flowing
in from
laboratories through
. the world, and this essay shall be obso
before it hits the
presses.
Blood gro
provided our
first
crude insights dur
the 1960s, and Cavalli-Sforza was a
neer in these studies. When technique
electrophoresis permitted us to
sur
routinely for variation in the enzymes
proteins
coded
directly
by genes,
t
data on human differences truly bega
accumulate
in
useful cascades. More
cently,
our ability to sequence DNA it
has given us even more immediate acc
to the sources of variation. (The data
mitochondrial DNA has received
most
publicity, including
an essay
in
series and a story
in Newsweek
that
br
conceptual ground
with
a cover paint
of Adam and
Eve
as black, i minimall
with their near-white
complexions,
honor our ultimate African
ancestry.
additional data from other genes h
been published and continue to accum
late rapidly.)
The methodologically proper and p
terful brute force
comparisons
are, for
lmoment,
best made
by
studying
differ
~ t t e s and frequencies ofgenes as revea
in
the
amino
acid sequences of
enzym
land proteins. Cavalli-Sforza and
]eagues
used
information
from
alle
(varying states of genes, as in tall
ver
short for Mendel's peas) to construc
tree
for
human populations least affec
by
extensive interbreeding. (few hum
groups are entirely aboriginal, and
m
populations are interbred to various
grees,
given
the
two most
characteri
attributes of
Homo
sapiens: wanderl
and
vigorous sexuality. Obviously, i
wish
to reconstruct the order of
diversif
branching
from
a common point of orig
historically mixed populations
will c
fuse our quest. The Cape
Colored,
liv
disproof
from
their own ancestors for
Afrikaner ideal of apartheid, would
j
Khoisan
with Caucasian. One town
Brazil might well
join everyone.)
