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Origin of every human language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6471 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 57 of 77 28 April 2011 at 11:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree with Ari.
I think the research may be picking-and-choosing data. For example, the average Austronesian language has less phonemes than the average South American indigenous language. Piraha is an extreme example - Aymara for example has 29 phonemes, putting it about on par with Farsi. Farsi (30 phonemes) is spoken less than 800 kilometers from Archi (91 phonemes). Also, not all Sub-Saharan African languages have a lot of phonemes, for example Bambara only has 20 phonemes, and the surrounding languages don't fare much better. Most languages have 25-35 phonemes, no matter where they're located. To call this research valid, you'd have to accept that peak data is most indicative of the development, that averages mean nothing. Rather than tie the question to the NUMBER of phonemes, I'd look at the KIND of phonemes. Learning a new phoneme is hard work for an adult and I don't think that it happens too often that new phonemes are introduced into a language, especially without contact to languages that already have that phoneme. If Archi's 91 phonemes are a relic of Xu's 141, why are the inventories so distinct? A quick glance (1 and 2) shows that Archi has lots of dental and uvular sounds, while these entire categories of sounds are missing in !Kung dialects. Also, Archi has fortis/lenis distinction throughout, again missing in !Kung dialects. IF these languages developed from a common ancestor, it is unlikely that these two have close ties, e. g. that Archi was one of the first languages to appear during humans' exodus from Africa. More likely Archi developed from a group of Kamchatkan settlers trekking back to the Caucasus and talking only to each other. Edited by Sprachprofi on 28 April 2011 at 12:37pm 2 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 58 of 77 28 April 2011 at 1:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not Iversen, but this question reeks of the early linguistic assumption that languages deteriorate. That is, as said, an assumption based on the fact that the earliest documented Indoeuropean languages were more synthetic and used flectional morphology more widely than their early modern and modern counterparts do. On the other hand, even though modern German has lost a lot of its declension, it has gained agglutinative elements. Iversen mentioned once that you could even say that modern French and some Italian languages are on their way to greater syntheticity, because of the bound pronouns and other features. Chinese language, I have been told, have changed from an almost completely analytic one morpheme-one word style to a somewhat more synthetic style with words that consist of two morphemes (or more?), even though they are still mostly analytic. There surely are many more examples that I in my very limited linguistic (non-)knowledge are not aware of. How will you explain that there are polysynthetic languages spoken nowadays, how will you explain that Chinese languages are likely to have developed tone in historical time to make up for phonological change if you believe that languages invariably "evolve" from a complex to a simpler structure? I doubt that it is possible to use such a simple explanation, even if you make up parameters for linguistic change in relation to demographic, environmental and cultural change. Out Of Eden. It certainly fit with the general rennaissance mood, but does it fit with current thinking? I'm not saying that any other model, like progress or cyclic motion/reincarnation, would be any better as your bias. I just wanted to mention that the idea that languages deteriorate is biased, even if it may be true that under certain circumstances they do become less irregular. I hope I didn't go overboard again. I'd like to add something to Ari's questions: Can we find correlations between cultural and linguistic change, qualitative and quantitative ones? How much are those hypoteses influenced by scientific trends of their time? By the way, I think it would be damn cool if there was a common primal language that developed into many different ones, and I think it would be equally cool if language had practically evolved at several different places just because it could. I mean, isn't language wonderful either way? Edited by Bao on 28 April 2011 at 2:47pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| 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 59 of 77 28 April 2011 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Your premise that languages simplify is wrong. The processes within languages do indeed tend to simplify over time and tend towards regularity, but that doesn't prevent complexity from entering the system in multiple other ways. Language evolution is a constant, ongoing process. This much we know for sure. It's ongoing in EVERY language and it's both unavoidable and uncontrolable. As far as we can go back in the history of any language, this process has always existed. While our written records do cease to provide any information eventually, why should we suspect that this wasn't always so? Why should we not posit evolution from some kind of basic communication to an ever more complex system until today? Outside of religious texts, exactly what could lead anyone to think that this didn't simply occur natually over time? What reason can there possibly be to posit that the current web of languages is impossible within the natural course of time and that it had to happen suddenly? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Romanist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5283 days ago 261 posts - 366 votes Studies: Italian | Message 60 of 77 28 April 2011 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
(I'm unconvinced by this...) BTW I'm very grateful for other comments, but my question was actually directed at Iversen... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 61 of 77 28 April 2011 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
Then put it in a private message -- this is a public forum and everyone is free to comment. The tendency of languages to "degrade" that was much lamented last millenium is likely to be not a universal of language, but a result of language expansion. You will have noticed, for instance, that very vanishingly few people ever acquire native-like mastery of a foreign language. The "degradation" of Latin into the modern Romance languages was caused by the massive and rapid expansion of the Roman Empire. As Latin was imposed on non-native speaker, they spoke it with mistakes. Within individual speech communities, certain forms became prevalent and the language fragmented. Also, the inflections of Old English were culled rapidly after the Norman invasion, producing what became known as Middle English. Current thought is that complexity is something that can only exist in the language of a closed and settled speech community. The complexity of Inuktitut, for example, is only possible because in the isolated polar regions, the Inuits were a closed group with no immigration. Unfortunately, the nature of isolation means we have very little evidence of how the languages spoken there developed, but current theory would suggest that a closed group breeds morphological complexity and mixing between groups encourages morphological simplicity. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6471 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 62 of 77 28 April 2011 at 3:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Cainntear, your post is off-topic here, take it to the senior members' forum if you must,
and re-write it so that it only attacks the behavior, not the person. By the way, I think the word "ridiculous" was a bad choice in Iversen's post, but other than that it was perfectly fine. The issue of languages getting easier or more difficult with time is an interesting aspect. I'm afraid that a lot might be influenced by observer bias though, seeing that Indo-European languages are currently tending towards simpler grammar (albeit more difficult ways of phrasing; a dictionary and a grammar is by far not enough to understand modern colloquial English). Can anyone report from a different language family? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 63 of 77 28 April 2011 at 3:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm of a completely opposite opinion. The evolution of language is intrinsically linked to the genetic evolution of homo sapiens, and the genetic evidence would point to a single origin. We have specific brain structures and a very particular voicebox without which language would be impossible, and these things appear to be genetically and physiologically near-identical across the entire human population of the world. A genetic trait does not became universal if it isn't useful, and the prerequisites for language acquisition are only useful if there is a language to acquire. If there was no language before the human population grew and left the heartlands, then different populations would surely have genetic and physiological differences in their speech organs and their brain makeup. This would also mean that people would have a genetic predisposition to a particular language, and this is an idea that no-one would seriously believe in this day and age -- immigration and adoption have proved it as nonsensical. So as far as I can see, there must have been a single "mother tongue". 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5968 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 64 of 77 28 April 2011 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've removed a comment here with some rather blunt criticism of Iversen. None of us is above criticism, but if there's a disagreement with any moderator, please send it by PM. In the same spirit, try to be restrained if you need to disagree with any member. Otherwise we risk losing a good conversation.
5 persons have voted this message useful |
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