from nature.com


"Grammar analysis reveals ancient language tree

It's not the words, it's how you use them that counts.


When it comes to working out the relationships between ancient languages, grammar is more enlightening than vocabulary, scientists say.

There are some 300 language families in the world today. Researchers have long studied similarities between the words in different languages to try to work out how they are related. But the rate of change in languages means that this method really only works back to 10,000 years ago.

Homo sapiens evolved more than a hundred thousand years ago and by 10,000 years ago had already settled around the globe. So researchers are keen to peer further back in time to see how language evolved and spread..."

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050919/full/050919-10.html

Interesting. Unfortunately, I don't see why word order, syntax (the relationship between words in a phrase) or grammatical categories (such as gender) are any less prone to change than phonology or morphology.

1. Librum legi.

2. J'ai lu le livre.

Latin and French are not that far apart historically.