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Origin of every human language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 33 of 77 16 April 2011 at 8:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
supernatural theories rather than scientific ones? Until we've established that science is unable to account for the data we have, it is unreasonable to evoke theories that fall outside of the scope of the natural world. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 34 of 77 16 April 2011 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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0.) I wouldn't even call it a hypothesis, because that evokes the idea of a scientific hypothesis - and you have to subscribe to a specific set of beliefs to find the Tower of Babel explanation plausible.
1.) Language is a means of communication. It doesn't make any sense to invent a language that is more different than necessary from what people already know if you want people to learn it. More than that, anyone inventing a language can only start from what they already know. There is no independent point of view from where you could start. 2.) Varieties of what could be perceived as the same language often are so different in phonology that the average speaker of one variety has to learn how to understand the other variety. And it's a process that is relevant to the current development of language. Listen to recordings that are only 50 years old, read books that are only 100 years old. You will see the change. And 50 years, that is nothing. First-hand-experience for many people living today. 3.) 'In all likelihood' is a completely nondescript term if you do not refer to exact numbers. This discussion is not about numbers or percentages, it is about more or less adventurous beliefs. You choose what you believe, I choose what I believe. 4.) You need a population to create a language, not an individual. And it's not in your average population's best interest to invent a communication tool that is absolutely different from what the majority of the population is well-acquainted with. 5.) So you would subscribe to the idea that your average born deaf person has to be retarded, unless or until they learn how to sign? Edited by Bao on 16 April 2011 at 9:10pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 35 of 77 16 April 2011 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Because the ex nihilo hypothesis explains human linguistic diversity far better than the gradual evolutionary hypothesis. The examples of constructed spoken languages we have today, not to mention computer languages, demonstrates that at this point in history, given all the communication and literacy and knowledge we have, the human intellectual capacity at either the individual or group levels is incapable of constructing a language that can stand alongside the natural languages in innovation or complexity. Let us look at writing. Inventing written language is far simpler than inventing spoken language. We sometimes have to laugh at the thought that our ancestors didn't come upon it on their own (well, the ancestors of most of us, that is) but usually had to have their writing system imported from others who were literate. It seems so obvious that writing is useful and so trivial to construct an alphabet or even a logographic writing system. And yet, writing arose at most five times independently: Mesopotamian cuneiform, Indus Harrapan script, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chinese characters, and Mesoamerican Olmec-Zapotec scripts. And even then, we have no proof that two of the first three I listed did not arise as a result of an imported concept (e.g. Mesopotamian writing introducing the concept of writing, if not the actual script, into India and Egypt). So it is possible that there were only three independent cases: China, Mesoamerica, and a Middle East-India-Egypt continuum. So if writing arose only 3-5 times independently in history, what makes you so confident that something far more complex, like spoken language, could have arisen dozens of times independently? Another point: the notion that reason requires rejection of religion is nonsense. Reason may operate on any kind of information: observation, sensation, revelation, etc. There is nothing intrinsic in reason that dictates that to be consistent we must only work with what we observe ourselves. After all, you, Arekkusu, accept and work with many ideas and facts/"facts" that you only believe to be true based on the statements and records of others. You choose to reject God and His revelation, and I choose to accept Him. That's the only difference. Otherwise, we both use reason to work our way through what we firmly believe to be true to arrive at our conclusions. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5346 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 36 of 77 16 April 2011 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Any possible statement rests upon implicit presuppositions. ~~~~~~~~~~ Here is an interesting article on the subject of the relationship between languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 37 of 77 16 April 2011 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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0.) Strictly speaking, neither the secular nor the religious offer a hypothesis. Neither is currently testable. We are
looking at history and trying to make sense of it, so these are not scientific hypotheses. They are the sort of rationalizations a historian might make. I called the Tower of Babel a hypothesis because it is fully equal to your secular explanations, which is to say, they are on an equal footing. Neither are scientific hypotheses, but rather rationalizations or explanations of history. One is based on the belief that God has revealed the explanation. The other is based on the belief that God cannot be part of the explanation and that therefore we must use solely the material to explain the origin of languages. 1.) Your counterargument only strengthens my point. It suggests that independent language families must have arisen from people who could not communicate other than by gestures who therefore did not have biases as to which kind of grammar they would come up with. 2.) I don't understand how this differs from what I said. Phonology is not that important, nor is even lexicon. Grammar is the problem here. 3.) Yes, because to be clear there haven't been any professional linguists and mathematicians who have tried to link up all language families into a universal family. They have. They've even used computers to do it. They have failed. There is nothing to indicate a common ancestor between Basque and Tzotzil and Farsi and Japanese, other than perhaps the sounds they use and the most basic concepts they have (agency, action, the object of agency, etc.). The onus is not on me to do the math, but on the secular linguists to do it. And better yet, tell us what that original proto-language was like. Was its grammar more like that of Cherokee or of Xhosa or of Malayalam? 4.) Again, your argument here just supports what I was saying. People who already speak a language have no incentive to invent a new one. Therefore, you are suggesting that new language families were invented by grunters, mutes, and gesticulators. 5.) Children who were abandoned before they learned how to speak ARE retarded. Read about feral children. Obviously, that situation does not recapitulate what we are talking about above. That would be about 20 babies left in the wild (none of them hearing a word of human language), living together (thus having some sort of society), and then we could see what sort of language they would come up with. My suspicion is not much. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child
Edited by Merv on 16 April 2011 at 9:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5454 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 38 of 77 16 April 2011 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Most constructed languages and computer languages have been designed to be simple and easy to learn and use. They have not been designed to compete with natural languages in neither innovation nor complexity. They have been designed to help solve problems. It is relatively easy to construct a language that is easier to learn than most natural languages. It is also relatively easy to construct a machine that performs certain tasks better than human beings. If someone tries to construct a language that can compete with natural languages in complexity, the language will most likely be a failure. If someone tries to create a robot that is as complex as a human being they will most likely fail. That neither proves nor disapproves the existence of God.
True, but it is an important difference. To those of us not believing in God, any explanation based upon his revelation is invalid (because we do not believe in Him in the first place). So, we either need an alternative explanation or you must convert us to your religion. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 39 of 77 16 April 2011 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
First part: I mostly agree, although arguably the creators of artistic languages (e.g. Tolkien) would be motivated to create a language that could stand its ground alongside natural language, given that they had gone to the effort of creating one in the first place. And secondly, creating a complex language that can stand alongside natural language would be of theoretical interest and, particularly historically-speaking if not so much today, of use in encryption and espionage. The fact that the US used Navajo speaking code-talkers during WWII demonstrates quite easily that the artificial encryptions of the time could not come even close. So I would suggest that this is more a matter of capacity than of motivation. Second part: I agree entirely. But the onus is on you to provide a good explanation using only material processes that can compete with the ex nihilo/creation explanation. You're free to provide one. But before you do (and I am not addressing you personally but the whole group on this forum that seems to scoff at religious explanations out of hand), do not be so flippant as to dismiss someone else's rationalization which logically is fully capable of explaining the evidence. The assumptions and beliefs you may reject, but condescension is absurd when you have no better explanation. Edited by Merv on 16 April 2011 at 10:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| akprocks Senior Member United States Joined 5287 days ago 178 posts - 258 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 40 of 77 16 April 2011 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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