It's the word order SOV.

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/42/17290.abstract

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/42/17290.full.pdf

http://dienekes.blogspot.de/2011/10/origin-and-evolution-of-word-order.html

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brains-natural-order/

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/542102/

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21028-language-50000-bc-our-ancestors-like-yoda-spoke

http://wals.info/feature/81A?s=20&z6=3000&z5=2999&z4=2998&z3=2997&z7=2996&z2=2995&z1=2994&tg_format=map&v1=c00d&v2=cd00&v3=cff0&v4=dff0&v5=dd00&v6=d00d&v7=cccc#2/18.0/152.8

http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/people/faculty/dryer/dryer/DryerWalsSOVNoMap.pdf

Regards,

Joachim

Hello Joachim,

Great post. Thank you very much.

Best regards,

Marion

Keep in mind that people, as well as languages, can be "language isolates." A person's ":language isolation " is a continuum, from someone whose domestic tongue shares an alphabet with other surrounding languages and therefore who likely is at least bilingual often is trii- or more lingual, to someone whose domestic tongue has not been alphabetized and who rarely hears another language.  Examples of the former are many -- withing India, within continental Europe; examples of the latter are the non-Christian Hmong in Laos before the American-Vietnam war.

Perhaps one criterion for the definition of a language as an "isolate" is that it has not been alphabetized, and therefore that the oral tradition of the society that speaks it likely is strong.

Thank you, M. Muecke, for pointing out the importance of considering people and their influence on language isolation.

If a language has not been alphabetized, attested, or studied in some other way tends to make us think that the language may be an isolate. It could very well be. However, our lack of information and documentation about the language does not necessarily mean that the language is an isolate or that it fits the definition of an isolate.

Perhaps a related question that we could ask, to bring the human cultural aspect into the discussion further, is to say, "What characteristic of the people who speak a language isolate has helped them to preserve their language intact and to resist assimilation and drift in the face of migrations of other peoples whose languages fit into families that contain other related languages?"

This related question pertains to my "kipuka" theory of language isolation. Here in Hawai'i, where we have active volcanoes, we observe that when lava flows, it goes around hills and high points of land to form "na kipuka." "Kipuka" is derived from the word, "puka," for hole. High ground makes holes in the lava such that the new ground surrounds old ground that is more well established. The terrain produced by fresh lava flow is very different from land that has been well established for thousands of years.

A language isolate is like a kipuka in that it has survived a wave of migration of other people who speak another language, in many cases, a language that is part of a large family. An example is Basque - a kipuka in an Indo-European "lava flow." The Basque are known to be a free and independence-minded people. This could be a measure of the "height of the kipuka" above the "lava flow."

I'm not sure how many language isolates this theory explains but it may be another characteristic, in addition to SOV, that multiple isolates have in common.

Best,

Marion

Your response including the metaphor is most helpful Marion, thanks!

How is word order SOV indicative of language isolates like Ainu, Basque, Kusunda, Nihali, Sumarian, and Zuni?

WALS lists 565 languages with SOV order, most of which are not language isolates. Many are from the Indo-European family. Most of the major languages of the Indo-Iranian group use SOV word order, and are spoken by well over 1 billion people across a very large area of Asia (Hindi-Urdu, Sinhala, Persian, Pashto, Punjabi, Nepali, Marathi, Kurdish, Gujarati, Bojpuri, Bengali, Azeri, Azerbaijani, Assamese).

Ainu, Basque, and Burukashi may share SOV word order, but they share it with Amharic, Bengali, and Burmese...and Apache, Aymara, Fore and languages from just about every group on the planet.

Word order, SOV or otherwise, is not a meaningful dimension by which to classify language isolates. SOV languages are some of the most frequently used languages in the world.

Also, a language isolate is a well-defined term, not a metaphor. A language isolate is one for which no relationships with other languages may be established.

Language isolates are found in areas that have been very well studied, with very long traditions of writing. Burukashi and Kusunda are in South Asia, one of the most densely populated regions of the world, one which has had writing for thousands of years, and one in which the study of language is also extremely old.

Basque is similar, and has been scrutinized for a couple thousand years, with much extant writing. And Sumerian is known only from writing. Whether a written form exists or not is also not indicative of a language isolate. (alphabetization is not  relevant; many writing systems are non-alphabetic, including the Chinese group)

Also, considering a lack of writing to be a false lead to considering a language to be an isolate underestimates the abilities of illiterate language users to compare languages, especially in regions where bi- tri- and multilingualism is common such as south Asia.

As for Finnish and Hungarian, the metaphor doesn't work so well. Finns and Hungarians migrated into Europe well after Indo-European languages were established in Europe. The Finns (and Sami) arrived approximately 3000 years ago. Hungarians are more well known, entering central Europe during the 9th century CE, having migrated to the southern Ural and Volga region in the 4th-5th centuries, then on toward the Don River region, moving into Carpathian Europe after rebelling against the Khazar Khaganate.