Comment on Bing Su et al. "Polynesian Origins: Insights from the Y Chromosome," PNAS 97.15:8225-8228 (July 18, 2000.)

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2001
Authors
Reid, Lawrence A.
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Abstract
The appearance of another article by geneticists claiming to throw light on the homeland of a linguistic family,1 this time on the basis of distribution patterns of haplotype frequencies identified in Y-chromosome data, points up once again the problems of attempting to use data from one discipline to support or challenge conclusions based on data from another discipline. These problems are compounded, at least in this case, by a serious misunderstanding of the claims made by linguists and of the significance of the methodology used by linguists to establish linguistic subgroups. It is necessary to make a distinction between “the settlement of Polynesia,” and “the origin of Polynesian,” that is between claims that can be made about who the people were that have, over the last two millennia, moved into the island area known as Polynesia, and claims about the origin of the languages that have been called Polynesian, speakers of which live not only in the “Polynesian triangle” but in at least a dozen scattered enclaves in Melanesia, the so-called Polynesian Outliers.
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Proto-Polynesian language, Polynesian languages
Citation
Reid, Lawrence. "Comment on Bing Su et al. 'Polynesian Origins: Insights from the Y Chromosome,' PNAS 97.15:8225-8228 (July 18, 2000.)" Language and Linguistics 2, no. 1 (2001): 247-252.
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6 pages
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