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From: dick@tjalk.UUCP (Dick Grune)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Horrible Hack to tell Scand. Languages apart
Message-ID: <521@tjalk.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 19-Oct-85 11:14:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: tjalk.521
Posted: Sat Oct 19 11:14:50 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Oct-85 07:18:53 EDT
Organization: VU Informatica, Amsterdam
Lines: 24

In <845@mcvax.UUCP> Andries Brouwer writes:

> The relation to Turkish is too remote to be proved, but typologically
> Hungarian and Turkish are rather similar. (But then, also English and
> Chinese are typologically similar, while English and Icelandic are
> very dissimilar; in other words, typology doesnt prove anything about
> genetic relationships.)

Yes, but English and Chinese are similar only morphologically, not
syntactically, i.e. in the way they build sentences. Chinese says:
You come not come, to mean: Do you come? which is kind of un-English.
That they are morphologically similar is no great miracle because
they are both featureless.  And the fewer features you have the less
chance you have to be different.

Both Hungarian and Turkish are highly structured AND the structure is
very similar. The structure is so similar that knowing one is a help
in studying the other.

					Dick Grune
					Vrije Universiteit
					de Boelelaan 1081
					1081 HV  Amsterdam
					the Netherlands