Re: Crossing the language threshold was Re: First Language
Richard M. Alderson III (alderson@netcom.com)
Tue, 29 Aug 1995 21:41:27 GMT
In article <rte-2908951314450001@mac-118.lz.att.com> rte@elmo.lz.att.com
(Ralph T. Edwards) writes:
>As a result crossing the language threshold is a potential speciation event,
>that is, something that creates a boundary between one species of premodern
>humans and another. I seem to recall that there is fossil evidence that the
>larynx is undescended in Neanderthals, can anyone confirm or deny?
There was a paper claiming this in the early 1970s. It appears that it was
based on data known to have been misinterpreted even at that time.
A good source on current thinking on Neandertals is Trinkhaus & Shipman, _The
Neandertals_.
>Of course acquisition of language may not be one event, but many, perhaps
>nouns first, then adjectives, then verbs, then grammatical relationships.
Since nouns, verbs, and adjectives are not necessarily distinct in all
languages, such an acquisition pattern is unlikely.
>Of course even if language acquisition is the speciation event for modern
>humans, it may have occurred in more than one place, and then merged.
Why "merged"?
>Simplicity suggests the contrary to me.
Simplicity suggests Euclidean geometry, too...
>Warning, I've cross posted the above to sci.anthropology.paleo (from sci.lang)
>I hope that's not a mistake :-) or :-(.
It usually is.
--
Rich Alderson You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
what not.
--J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com _The Notion Club Papers_
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