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WORLD & NATION
The birth of language: African origins?
By Terah Kelleher
Staff Writer
A new study encourages discussion of the origin of lan
guage and how it spread. Did it originate from one location
and spring outward or did it manifest in various locations,
all over the globe, and evolve individually?
According to an April issue of The New York Times, Dr.
Quentin Atkinson, who received his Ph.D. in psychology
from the University of Auckland, published a study sup
porting that language originated from one location: south
ern Africa.
According to The New York Times, Atkinson's study
combined mathematical methods and linguistics to create a
computer program that looked at the phonemes of 504 dif
ferent languages. According to New Scientist, phonemes are
sounds that, for example, create the "c", "a", and "tch" in
the word "catch".
Dr. Ralf Thiede, associate professor of applied linguistics
at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, sees the merit
in combining different types of research.
"Any time an area of research can replicate conclusions
from another area of research, there is the excitement of con
firmation of knowledge," said Thiede in an email interview.
"I am not quite convinced that the genetic findings that tell
the story of human migration are confirmed by Atkinson's
linguistic study, but surely we can appreciate the potential
of modern interdisciplinary research."
CRISIS
African languages contain a higher number of phonemes
and the clicking sounds present in some African languages
demonstrate this idea, according to The New York Times.
The number decreases the farther away from Africa one
lives, according to Science Daily.
This phenomenon parallels the "serial effect," which,
according to New Scientist, is the "thought that humans first
lived in a large and genetically diverse population in Africa,
from which smaller groups broke off and migrated to what
is now Europe."
Atkinson's research applies this same effect to language,
according to New Scientist. As earlier humans migrated
from Africa, the genetic and phonemic diversity became less
varied. For example, Hawaiian languages, one of the far
thest locations from Africa, use only 13 phonemes, according
to The New York Times.
"I am impressed with the mathematical methodology,
which presents an intuitively coherent picture, but that
very coherence also gives me pause," said Thiede in an
email interview. "North America, for example, shows up as
an area of a weak inverse relationship between phonemic
diversity and distance from the origin. The linguistic land
scape of North America is complex, not as uniform as the
smooth shading of Atkinson's maps."
Other linguists are concerned with another issue that
Atkinson's research presents. According to The New York
Times, "linguists tend to dismiss any claims to have found
traces of language older than 10,000 years." Some linguists
may approach Atkinson's research with caution because he
is tracing language back 50,000 years, when modern humans
dispersed from Africa, according to The New York Times.
While one group remains wary of the study, others marvel
in Atkinson's findings. One such person is Mark Pagel, a
biologist at the University of Reading in England.
"What's so remarkable about this work is that it shows
language doesn't change all that fast," said Pagel to The
New York Times. "It retains a signal of its ancestry over tens
of thousands of years."
Dr. Tracey Snipes, professor of speech pathology at North
Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, shared
this study with her phonetics class the first week of school.
She felt Atkinson's article helped create a dynamic discus
sion in class.
"We live in a culture where people are still discriminated
against because of the way they speak," said Snipes. "Often
times, especially black people who speak a dialect are
frowned upon. I thought it would be interesting to get the
class's feedback on what they think if speech actually origi
nated in Africa."
The ink still drying on this research, leaving many sucji as
Donald Hinge, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania,
believing it is too soon to know if Atkinson's research is
correct.
"But if (it is true), it's one of the most interesting articles
in historical linguistics I've seen in a decade," said Hinge to
The New York Times.
Hunger crisis rocks East Africa
Continued from Page I
Reuters. The camps were originally meant to
hold 90,000.
Questions as to how and why conditions
became so bad are being looked into by the
global community.
It is important to realize that there are
varying levels of food shortage. Associate
Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
Edwins Gwako explained. Economic anthro
pologists view famine as the worst scale
on a taxonomy for food insecurity. As the
availability of food resources decreases, food
insecurity increases.
The current hunger crisis as in East Africa
is frequently attributed to drought.
"If there is no rain, grasses won't grow —
the basis for the vertebrate food chain," said
Dana Professor of Biology Lynn Moseley.
This can be seen as pastures have failed and
livestock has died.
Fourth-year Elizabeth Fisher, who studied
in Kenya and Tanzania in the spring of 2011,
said that "whole families were devastated by
the loss of livestock."
Drought is certainly one factor contribut
ing to food shortages — a large factor directly
affecting the procurement of food. But there
are other factors as well.
"The severity of food shortage frequently
depends on the (in)effectiveness of interven
tional actions by the government and non
government agencies," said Gwako.
There are various food procurement frame
works in place. Non-government agencies
like Oxfam work with farmers and pastoral-
ists directly, Gwako explained. He also noted,
however, that government agencies enact
policies that are often ineffective because of
poor funding, nepotism, underemployment,
and corruption.
"The people are protected by the govern
ment; but sadly, the things that prevent these
(food shortages) are not happening," said
Gwako. "On paper, there are good plans, but
there's ineffective implementation."
MSNBC reports that billions of dollars
have been budgeted previously for dams
and equipment that could harvest, purify,
and store rainwater; the frameworks are in
place, but the money has not been used for
its intended purpose.
Another factor contributing to food inse
curity is human-wildlife conflict.
"As food sources dwindle, wildlife begins
to crop-raid — and could harm people,"
Fisher said.
The government policies to reduce human-
wildlife conflict — like building electric fenc
es — also fail, according to Heather von
Bodungen, another student who studied in
Kenya and Tanzania during the spring 2011.
"Projects meant to benefit humans aren't
always maintained well; and they're not
good for wildlife either," she said.
There are further problems with food pro
duction and food distribution systems that
affect food availability, according to Gwako.
The Council on Foreign Relations reports
that distribution of aid to parts of Somalia
is exceptionally difficult, citing problems
caused by both poor infrastructure and the
extortion of money by militia.
According to The International Famine
Centre, other factors that both contribute to
and worsen famine conditions are violence,
warfare, and disease.
"Violent conflicts and diseases like AIDS
and malaria take away humans that are
responsible for food production," said
Gwako.
Violent conditions are unsafe for relief
workers, and relief resources cannot be dis
tributed to parts of Somalia at this time.
According to The Atlantic Wire, militant
rebels known as al-Shabaab control the rnost
severely affected areas of southern Somalia.
Although the current food crisis is dire,
humanitarian efforts are underway — from
African citizens, the governments of other
nations, and NGOs — but budgeted amounts
to provide the necessary support have not yet
been met, according to Oxfam International.
Thousands arrested in 4-day
long London rioting
By Rory Molleda
Staff Writer
On Aug. 6, London, England was set
ablaze by a series of unprecedented riots
that quickly spread from one borough to
the next, leaving five dead and hundreds
more injured.
Several days before the riots began,
police shot dead 29-year-old Mark Duggan
during a planned attempt to arrest him. The
peaceful demonstration calling for answers
in protest of Duggan's death was followed
by riots, arson, and looting in the north
London neighborhood of Tottenham. The
news of the violence in Tottenham spread
quickly and set off more riots close by in
the London districts of Brixton, Enfield,
Islington and Wood Green, according to
the BBC.
Although it seems the violence might
have been a direct response to the death
of Duggan, British Prime Minster David
Cameron doesn't agree.
"It is simply preposterous for anyone to
suggest that people looting in Tottenham
... were in any way doing so because of the
death of Mark Duggan," Cameron said in
a speech following the riots. "The young
people stealing flat screen televisions and
burning shops was not about politics or
protest. It was about theft."
Robert Duncan, assistant professor of
political science, agreed with Cameron.
"They may have used (Duggan's) death
as an excuse but it was simply thrill-seeking
hooligans from the soccer stadiums who
wanted to smash and grab for a new TV
set," Duncan said.
Ironically though, the damage and secu
rity concerns caused by the riots actually
forced the British Football Association to
cancel an international friendly between
England and the Netherlands, and the first
match for English Premier League team
Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.
According to the Guardian, these soc
cer games were cancelled because there
wouldn't have been enough security, but
the Metropolitan Police have received some
criticism for their poor reaction to the riots.
Associate Professor of Political Science
Ken Gilmore believes the police did well
to protect the banks and larger businesses,
which unfortunately allowed the violence
to spread into the lower income communi
ties. This decision may have saved the more
important businesses, but it facilitated more
damage to the city.
As a result of the riots, which finally
ended on Aug. 10, over 100 homes and
even more businesses had been destroyed.
The BBC reported that there would be
about £200 million ($327 million) paid out
by insurance companies as a result of the
damage. Also, Scotland Yard has said that
2,006 people had been arrested so far and
of those 1,135 have been charged, according
to the BBC.
Social media services such as Facebook,
Twitter, and Blackberry Messenger have
also been partially blamed for the spread of
the violence because the rioters were able
to easily communicate and plan attacks,
according to the Guardian. Although
the British government decided against
restricting these services, Duncan said that
he would have had no problem doing so,
saying that it would be "smart law enforce
ment to monitor the sites, so that they could
prevent more violence."
The Prime Minister also blamed the riots
on a culture of entitlement among' Britain's
youth, but Gilmore believes that it is too
complicated to simply blame'the culture.
According to Gilmore, the first step to
ensure this does not happen again "is
to look at the underlying social, econom
ic, and political conditions in Britain that
might lead to this type of violence."