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English & Afrikaans = More Advanced? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| RogueRook Diglot Senior Member Germany N/A Joined 6843 days ago 174 posts - 177 votes  6 sounds Speaks: German*, English Studies: Hungarian, Turkish | Message 33 of 39 08 December 2006 at 10:36am | IP Logged | ||
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Nice post Iversen. I asked this myself, too. Maybe there is an endless cycle from anyalytical-> agglutinating->fusional->analytical.
We can already obserce some interesting changes in English: Isn't; Haven't; Aren't etc. are some early signs of fusion. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Silvestris Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6575 days ago 131 posts - 136 votes Speaks: English*, Polish*, German | Message 34 of 39 08 December 2006 at 10:56am | IP Logged | ||
Don't you even joke about that. I had a nightmare once, where English was changed to have 20 politeness levels and I ended up offending everyone I talked to! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| breckes Triglot Groupie Belgium Joined 6810 days ago 84 posts - 89 votes Speaks: French*, English, Russian Studies: Italian, Dutch, Swedish | Message 35 of 39 08 December 2006 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | ||
Here you can read an excerpt of «The Rise and Fall of Languages» by R.W. Dixon; in this excerpt he explains such a cycle. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| RogueRook Diglot Senior Member Germany N/A Joined 6843 days ago 174 posts - 177 votes 6 sounds Speaks: German*, English Studies: Hungarian, Turkish | Message 36 of 39 08 December 2006 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for that link breckes. This is indeed what I had in mind unbeknownst it had already been analyzed by linguists. Judging from that we could say that speech must be very ancient. Because if Proto-Indo-European started out fusional it must be antedated by a much older isolating language. I think it is fair to assume that the first language was very isolating, lacking most of the complicated syntactical/morphological rules of todays language. (They might not even have had subordinate clasues, every sentence being a simple statement.)
Gets very philological but no doubt higly fascinating. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6714 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 37 of 39 08 December 2006 at 7:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is impossible to say today what the earliest language was like, and maybe there is not even a clear boundary where ungrammatical grunts suddenly metamorphosed into language. I have read that there are a few genetical markers that have to do with the ability of the larynx to form sound that we use for spoken language. This might indicate a fairly sudden shift in linguistic ability. But how far back. According to this quote from Wikipedia one important marker for linguistic ability was present also in neanderthals:
The idea that Neanderthals lacked complex language was widespread, despite concerns about the accuracy of reconstructions of the Neanderthal vocal tract, until 1983, when a Neanderthal hyoid bone was found at the Kebara Cave in Israel. The hyoid is a small bone that connects the musculature of the tongue and the larynx, and by bracing these structures against each other, allows a wider range of tongue and laryngeal movements than would otherwise be the case. Therefore, it seems to imply the presence of anatomical conditions for speech to occur. The bone that was found is virtually identical to that of modern humans. This, combined with the fact that recent DNA-analysis on material from neanderthals versus sapiens'es indicate that there has been no significant interbreeding between the two species, would push back the invention of language by at least 400.000-500.000 years, maybe even to Homo Erectus. And then we are so far back both temporally and in the human evolution history that it serves no purposes to look in modern languages for clues how the 'first' languages were structured. An erectus might or might not have been able to handle morphology, we simply don't know. Edited by Iversen on 08 December 2006 at 7:13pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6779 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 38 of 39 09 December 2006 at 4:43am | IP Logged | ||
There really is no evidence for the "evolution" of language from grunts. Linguistic and archaeological evidence only shows that the world's language families existed, independently, all over the world circa 4000-3,500 BC. There's no evidence that Proto-Indo-European was anything less than a highly structured declining language with cases, genders, and a full vocabulary — features that all its children inherited. From there, its evolution and divergence into various branches (Indic, Slavic, Romance, etc.) is fairly well understood.
For this to be a workable theory, there would have to be a Greater Indo-European family with evidence of earlier offshoots, but there isn't. You can't really go back further; there doesn't seem to have been any Proto-Proto-IE language, nor any proto-world grunt language. Edited by Captain Haddock on 09 December 2006 at 4:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6714 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 39 of 39 12 December 2006 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just to fisnish the discussion of Neanderthal speech:
I found this in Softpedia (quote) .... the base of the Neanderthal tongue was positioned higher in the throat, crowding the mouth somewhat. As a result, Neanderthal speech would most likely have been slow-paced and nasalized. The overall conclusion would be that, although Neanderthals did have the ability to speak, they were capable of articulating only a smaller number of phonemes. ... Thus, it seems that the ultimate reason behind Neanderthals extinction was not due to their mental capacities but to the shape of their larynx. (end quote) wow! I remember that 30 years ago I saw an article in the American magazin "Language" where the flatter shape of the Neanderthal mouth was taken as an argument for the hypothesis that the Neanderthals couldn't speak at all. The new view at least gives them at least the credit of a language, but still represents in an extreme form - and across a species boundary - the idea that civilisations that have an efficient communication win while those without loose. But would it be enough to explain the demise of the Neanderthals? - that's the question. And does the effectiveness of a language depend that much on the number of phonemes a the resulting long and winding utterances? Not very likely, - until recently Hawaiian functioned perfectly well, and its present problems are probably due to other factors than the number of phonemes.. Edited by Iversen on 13 December 2006 at 1:08am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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