Sociological Linguistics

[Patrick C. Ryan]

Dear Joat and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 2:58 AM

> >Patrick C. Ryan

> >suggests strongly that language began very simply, as calls and gestures...

Joat responded:

> -- this may be true, but it's utterly irrelevant to the languages under
> discussion here.  All _extant_ languages are of the same general level of
> development, whether PIE or Esperanto.

> Any more "primitive" stage of linguistic development is lost.  None of the
> languages of which we have records show any such 'simplicity'.  They are
> all about the same, at the fundamental level of serving the purposes of human
> communication.

Pat responds:

"Irrelevant" must be your favorite word. What happened to your "*in any
era*"? Have you just dropped that idea without acknowledging how
wrong-headed it is?

What "extant" languages show is totally irrelevant to what they may have
been like in the far distant past.

As far earlier stages having been "lost", prove it --- if you can.

Pat

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