Re: Human language (long)
ailak@walrus.megabaud.fi
9 Jan 1997 01:35:08 +0200
Help! I am experiencing a deja vu!!!
seagoat@primenet.com wrote:
snip
In article <32D1533E.1BB4@earthlink.net> Michael McBroom
>><bodhi@earthlink.net> writes:
>>I have stated repeatedly that non-linguistic vocalizations were not what
>>our vocal tract has been selected for. I have also stated that the
>>descent of the larynx was for different reasons than the specific
>>production of lower-pitched vocalizations. In other words, I reject
>>your claims on the basis that there is no evidence to suggest that the
>>human vocal tract evolved for the uses you indicate.
>If it is true that
>
>1. low-pitched sounds travel longer distances than high-pitched sounds; and
>
>2. a larynx lower in the throat enables creation of lower-pitched
>vocalizations,
>
>then there is a clear alternative to the theory that the human larynx
>descended for linguistic reasons.
>
>Regards,
>
>John Halloran
I have just fought against the idea, that the woman, who can exhaust
any man with her desire of sex, and experience more orgasms than a
man, and whose sexual behaviour has a crucial importance on the
structure of the society, has obtained her equipment as an accidental
side effect, with no further adaptation, of the development of the
male penis.
Now I am taught, that the women, who master in speech, who learn new
languages with a considerable ease, who are always blamed for too
much talking and who always claim, that men do not talk with them,
has learned the *mother tongue* as an accidental side effect of the
howls of hunting males!
Oh, please!
First, not much hunting by a babbling committee! A good hunt needs a
leader and short orders. That's how a wolf pack hunts (lead by the
intentious alpha female who has no smart kids hanging on her heels).
Second, if language was needed for hunting, the ability would appear
at the age when boys went hunting. But no, speech is learned early
in the childhood. No bump in boys at the hunting age.
Why is speech learned so early in childhood? Why is the female
stressed by such production of milk, to grow so rapidly brains big
enough to learn grammatic and a host of words? Try to learn a new
language! A child at the age of three learns it with ease. Why?
Because speech was *needed* early in the childhood. If it was needed
in hunting age, there was plenty of time to grow the brains for it.
The most basic communication, and the only one in many species, is
that between a young and the nursing female. It consists of two
separate and independent parts, the female's ability to warn and
call and understand, and the infant's ability to understand and call.
Most animals have an inborn ability to produce and to react to such
calls. They are expressions like 'where are you?', 'come here!',
'don't go there', 'no', 'bad', just what women and children say to
each other every day.
The smarter the species, the less stereotypic, inborn behaviour
it had. It had to learn much of the behaviour of its species, but
then, its behaviour was much more flexible than that of less
intelligent animals. The loss of stereotypies was achieved by
premature birth of the infant, before the inborn behaviour had been
fixed in its brains. That made it so altricial, and made it lose
the inborn calls, too. It had to learn them anew every time - and
they were desperately needed. Ask anybody who has a defected child!
In other words, speech replaced the lost inborn communication
between mother and infant. Since this communication is needed just
at that age, speech was learned at that age. At later age it serves
the communication between group members, for so do the inborn calls
of other social species. But for that purpose, alone, it could be
learned less hastily. Once begun, the learning time stayed what it
was initially.
The mother's ability to communicate with the child is a separate
trait. It is seen in the early linguistic ripening of girls around
puberty, when they prepare to be mothers. As is commonly known,
girls are then a few years afore the boys, who progress steadily
and reach them only later. So, there is a bump in speech progress,
but it is in girls.
For the hunting males, the Klingon grammary would do, and
'Tarzan bundolo KREEGAH!'
? :)
--
Aila Korhonen in Finland ailak@walrus.megabaud.fi
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