PIE vs. Proto-World (Proto-Language)

Ralf-Stefan Georg Georg at home.ivm.de
Thu Jul 29 19:42:59 UTC 1999


>On Fri, 16 Jul 1999, Ralf-Stefan Georg wrote:

>> "Having consonants" may be a
>> universal feature of human language, "Being related to some other lg."
>> simply is not.

>A fascinating thought:
>Imagine "Being related to some other lg." WAS actually a universal feature
>of (spoken) human language, wouldn't it then be the only true universal?
>In other words, if all spoken languages should prove to be derived from
>one common source, would we then be able to distinguish true language
>universals from other features shared by all languages ONLY because of the
>fact that these features were present in "proto-world"?

Yes, of course we would, given a little progress in the field of typology
and universals (but in some subareas we are close). We could when and only
when we succeed in *explaining* language universals, i.e. explain them as
*necessary* ingredients of a communication system serving all the purposes
human language does serve. If it can be shown that, in order to be a
functional, viable means of intra-group communication, a sign system will
have to share in a (however small) set of features, without which it could
hardly work, let alone stabilize, these universals would be universals
independent of contiguous inheritance from some proto (where they could be
as arbitrary as meaning-to-form-relations generally are).
Admittedly, research into universals has not yet reached the state where we
can tell all this, but that's one of the direction it is heading in (at
least, imho, should be). Compare this to the "grand unified theory"
physicists are hunting for.
But, theory aside, "being related to some other lg." is not a language
universal. Polygenesis is equally likely as monogenesis, I can't see any
reasons why the opposite should hold.

St.G.

Stefan Georg
Heerstrasse 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
+49-228-69-13-32



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