How to dig deeper
THE LINGUISTIC REVISION
The exciting research into the early languages of Britain has been going on behind closed doors for five years and has only started to reach the public domain in the last year. On this page are some of the references you can follow up, if you want to learn more.
Much of the discussion in books and journals is difficult for the non-specialist, so these webpages are an attempt to put it into plain English in a nutshell.
Three very different studies independently reached similar conclusions:
- Genetic
- Language Classification
- Place-names
Professor stephen oppenheimer
Dr Peter Forster
Peter Forster's work uses a phylogenetic method to understand the connections between ancient languages. In many ways, it is a much better way of looking at the development of languages than the traditional family tree, or "stammbaum" method. Phylogenetic methods, developed to understand genes, allow languages to borrow content and structure from each other.
You can see an example of one of his phylogenetic networks applied to language here.
The software he uses for genes and languages, is available free on his website at Fluxus Engineering.
http://www.rootsforreal.com/migrations_en.php
Criticisms
http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-1876.html
