Re: Human Language. (long post)

John A. Halloran (seagoat@primenet.com)
19 Jan 1997 14:53:01 -0700

In article <19970119184501.NAA07653@ladder01.news.aol.com> mscob@aol.com (MSCob) writes:

> the comparative or historical
>linguists that I have talked to feel that languages as we know them have
>their
>origins in the Palaeolithic, which extends from 40,000 to 10,000 years
>ago.

> I'm a linguist, and I question those opinions. They would have to be
>speculations based on archaeology or physical anthropology, because I
>don't think you can tell anything about human language at those deep
>distances from linguistic evidence. Mary Coberly

This is the dating attached to the spread of the so-called Nostratic language
family across Eurasia.

I am not myself defending the Nostratic hypothesis, as I think the observed
facts can better be explained by stimulus diffusion rather than by genetic
descent.

Regards,

John Halloran