semantics, DNA and computer modelling--论文代写范文精选

然而DNA测试没有发现显著相关性的东西，类别姓氏及其DNA匹配到一个父系家庭。在证据的指导下,我们的计算机模拟识别各种姓家族。在过去的十年中,DNA测试促使修正我们对姓氏的理解。由此产生重估一个姓氏的含义。

Abstract

We here address such questions as: what does a surname mean; is it single origin; and, why do some surnames grow abnormally large? Though most surnames are rare, most people have populous surnames.1 In this article, we consider in particular the evidence that some frequent surnames could be completely or nearly single origin; this would imply that the whole surname relates to a single family that has grown abnormally large.

Some populous surnames have a geographical distribution that might be thought to be consistent with a single origin. As yet, such supposition generally lacks support from adequate DNA evidence. With the onset of DNA testing, some scientists are becoming more active in surname studies and they might be more reluctant than some traditionalists to infer too much from categories of surname meaning. It has sometimes been argued, for example, that a surname is single-origin if it is locative, or that it is multi-origin if it is occupational.

However, King and Jobling (2009)2 DNA tested forty English surnames and found no statistically significant correlation between the supposed semantic category of a surname and its degree of DNA matching into a single male-line family. Guided by the empirical evidence, our computer simulations identify various possible reasons for a surname family’s unusually prolific growth. In particular, chance is a main factor. Also, overall population growth conditions vary widely between different counties. This can go a long way.

Introduction

In the past decade, DNA testing has prompted revisions to our understanding of surnames. In some cases, the resulting reappraisals have extended to a surname’s supposed meanings.4 Meaning has long featured strongly in surname studies, with linguists freely accepting such a device as metonymy when postulating a surname’s semantics, often neglecting other considerations arising from a more detailed study of the particular surname.

Sometimes, a surname’s supposed meaning has been used to suggest a selected hypothesis for its origins, as for Plant which has been claimed to be occupational and multi-origin in order to explain it large population. A fuller investigation, however, reveals that there are at least four different semantic hypotheses for this surname’s origins, with different implications for its development and growth. Despite an assertion in some Surname Dictionaries that Plant simply means a `gardener’, it may have come from any of at least three different languages and be locative, occupational, or a nickname.

Some people have taken summary surname meanings to indicate the likely number of geographical origins to a name: for example, an `occupational name’ is sometimes said to imply many origins unless, of course, it derives from a particular family’s rare adoption of its seminal word(s). Some surnames could perhaps have been coined from a dialect word for a local trade such that, though occupational, they could have arisen with just one, or relatively few origins. Though locative surnames are sometimes taken to have a single origin there are for example, for the much discussed example of the Sykes surname, several minor places called Syke, meaning a ditch or stream. In 1379, men named `del Syke' or `del Sikes' were taxed in six different townships in the West Riding of Yorkshire and once at Butterworth in Lancashire.5 Most people now consider that it has been overstated that Sykes must be a single-origin surname. Mark Jobling and Turi King6 pointed to the low-resolution of the initial Sykes DNA study though some have perhaps gone on rather to overstate the significance of that single point. A fuller account of the problems in the initial Sykes study has been outlined by Debbie Kennett.

We outline the underlying statistical considerations in this article. As we will show, the surname Berry is clustered largely around Bury in Lancashire and has a very large, apparently single-source population in 1881 that seems too large for a ready explanation as a single family. It might simply be that Berry is in fact more than one family. In their Surname Dictionary, Reaney and Wilson8 state that, in Middle English, the words beri, biri, buri were used for a manor-house and they conclude that the surname must often have meant a `servant at a manor house’. Without sound DNA evidence, we cannot be sure that its large surname population does not arise from many families that originated with some such meaning.(report代写)

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