Origin of every human language (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Origin of every human language
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Arekkusu
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Message 41 of 77

16 April 2011 at 10:11pm | IP Logged

tractor wrote:

Merv wrote:

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.

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.

The data I accept to rely on does not, on the one hand, require ad hoc explanations for why it defies
the laws of nature, and on the other, is based on information that is universally accessible,
regardless of culture, origin, language, upbringing, etc.

The particular kind of god you have accepted happens to have been prevalent in your society or family
environment, but is not universally accepted or accessible. In other words, even if your explanation
was correct -- and by no means am I implying that that's a possibility -- any explanation you bring
based on those precepts will inevitably be rejected by a majority of people and is condemned to never
be accepted.

Edited by Arekkusu on 16 April 2011 at 10:14pm
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Merv
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Message 42 of 77

16 April 2011 at 10:15pm | IP Logged

akprocks wrote:

Merv wrote:

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

read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language

Read the right side of that wikipedia article:

Quote:

developed as an independent pidgin-like language from a number of home sign systems, with the
addition of an ASL-influenced manual alphabet

Neglecting writing for the moment, let's address the first sentence. Pidgin-development is nothing remarkable,
so let's move to the latter part of that sentence:

from a number of home sign systems

Who were these kids communicating with at home? Adults who already knew and used spoken language.

This is not the situation we were talking about. It is about societies without any spoken language whatsoever
suddenly spontaneously developing it in its full grammatical complexity.
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akprocks
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Message 43 of 77

16 April 2011 at 10:24pm | IP Logged

Your theory is full of holes. How can you have a society without a spoken language? How would the members communicate to build the society? I can guarantee that there are archeological ruins older then the supposed 'Tower of Babel'. How can people build houses and tools if they can't collaborate?
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Merv
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Message 44 of 77

16 April 2011 at 10:26pm | IP Logged

Arekkusu wrote:

tractor wrote:

Merv wrote:

Well yes, I have an "ad hoc" explanation whereas you have none whatsoever. Look, it's you and the others here
arguing with me who out of hand reject my (and JW's) explanation while offering nothing in opposition. So be it.
And our explanation does not defy nature at all. There is nothing in nature that says that novel language families
could not arise spontaneously. It's just a question of what might drive such a process. You have neither provided
evidence of a common world language that might have arisen once, however improbably, nor evidence for how
the even more improbable but eminently more adequate explanation of multiple points of language origin could
be true. In fact, you have provided no evidence as to how spoken language might arise among non-speakers,
period. So the onus is on you to provide the explanations, not on me to reject things I know to be true so that I
avoid offending your atheistic sensibilities.

I don't care if the majority of people reject my beliefs. My beliefs do not hang on common opinion whatsoever.
And I have strong personal reasons based on personal experiences and observations that I believe to be
evidentiary for believing what I believe that have nothing to do with family or culture (the intricate details of
which you obviously do not know).
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Merv
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Message 45 of 77

16 April 2011 at 10:28pm | IP Logged

akprocks wrote:

Your theory is full of holes. How can you have a society without a spoken language? How would
the members communicate to build the society? I can guarantee that there are archeological ruins older then the
supposed 'Tower of Babel'. How can people build houses and tools if they can't collaborate?

Indeed! Then work your computer programs and talk to your linguists and show to me how Basque and Hungarian
and Ge'ez and Malay arose from the same mother tongue. Your work is cut out for you: go to it.
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Arekkusu
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Message 46 of 77

16 April 2011 at 10:40pm | IP Logged

It's extremely easy to imagine how language could have arisen gradually, without any
supernatural intervention.

Members of society that could communicate better with other members were inevitably
better able to collaborate and, for instance, to kill bigger pray, more often. As those
individuals capable of better communication are favoured over time, their ability for
communication increases and so does the sophistication of their system.
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Bao
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Message 47 of 77

16 April 2011 at 10:43pm | IP Logged

Merv wrote:

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.

It might not have been obvious, but I am not arguing for any particular scientific explanation. I am arguing against any religious explanation.

By the way, I find it offensive to see my viewpoint defined by the absence of God in it. I just wanted to mention it so that you have the choice to avoid being offensive without even being aware of it.

Merv wrote:

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.

I merely tried to describe what I perceive as being the reality, and suggested it as a possible explanation for why constructed languages mirror the features of natural languages. I did not mention in any way that constructed languages, which were developed by a few individual with a certain goal in mind, should be treated as equals of natural languages which develop by serving the needs of a group of speakers, adding and losing features with changing conditions and just time. That they should be was your conclusion.

Merv wrote:

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.

If you had paid attention - the original article is about phonology, the original claim is about phonology. =)

Merv wrote:

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?

Who cited their numbers in this discussion? Who explained how they got to those numbers? Who analyzed their data and looked if they ended up with the same numbers? Who looked at possible flaws in their assumptions? Who postulated other sets of assumtions that might give better results?

Merv wrote:

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.

Or people who fled from a disaster to a new area and have to learn how to communicate with the local residents or other groups who sought refuge there.
I do not know if you realize it, but your arguments show signs of a static world view, with peoples living at one place since the dawn of time. In my world view, people move hundred and thousands of miles to find a new home. Or maybe only a few dozen.

Merv wrote:

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.

Please re-read what I had written. I wrote deaf children. Not feral children. Deaf children who have a bond to their care-taker. And cannot learn the language of their community.
By the way, how would you explain the existence of idioglossia?

Edited by Bao on 16 April 2011 at 10:46pm
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Merv
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Message 48 of 77

16 April 2011 at 10:47pm | IP Logged

Juаn wrote:

Bao wrote:

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.

Any possible statement rests upon implicit presuppositions.

~~~~~~~~~~

Here is an interesting article on
the subject of the relationship between languages.

Thank you Juan. I read the article and will download and read the original as well. Most enlightening.

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