During the New Britain survey, there were four villages in particular that we really weren't sure how to classify. They've previously been classified as one language, but some people seemed to think maybe there were actually two separate languages. Well, just last night I finished comparing the word lists, and two of the villages are very similar to each other, and the other two are very similar to each other, but the similarity between the two groups is kind of on the border. You know, similar enough that you could maybe sort of almost consider them to be part of the same language, but different enought that there are definitely . . . well . . . differences. So how do we decide? Today I'm going to look at some other factors that we always consider, but that are especially important in borderline cases like this. Do the people who speak those languages consider them to be two separate languages or the same language? Can they understand the language spoken in the other two villages? Are there significant grammatical differences? Do people in the area see themselves as having the same cultural heritage, or are there significant cultural differences between the two groups?
In some ways it would be easier if there was some kind of scientific formula that you could run a bunch of words through and it would tell you definitively how many different languages there were. But life really wouldn't be as interesting, would it, if human beings and the languages we speak could be reduced to a scientific formula?
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