language origins

Stanley Friesen sarima at ix.netcom.com
Sat Oct 16 01:30:23 UTC 1999


At 05:45 PM 10/13/99 +0100, Larry Trask wrote:
>Stanley Friesen writes:
>> Now, I, *personally* find this situation unlikely, but it is at least
>> coherent, and thus cannot be ruled out a priori.

>Well, maybe it can.

>Language, I'd say, is a lot *more* complex than calculus.  But I don't think
>degree of complexity is the issue.

>The point is that our language faculty appears to be part of our biological
>inheritance in a way that the ability to construct or use calculus is not.

This is a large part of why I find an origin of spoken language after the
origin of the *capability* to be unlikely.  Unfortunately, preadaptation
(or as it is more commonly called nowadays, exaption) can produce just this
appearance of special adaptation.  Thus it is *possible* (though unlikely)
that the human "language capability" actually evolved for to perform some
*other* function, and turned out to accidentally allow what we call human
language.

I do not believe this is what happened, but it is hard to entirely
eliminate this possibility.

>I think we learn a first language because our ancestors, at some point,
>evolved a very specific biological proclivity to learn and use language.
>I don't believe we have a specific and dedicated calculus faculty, or
>ice-skating faculty, but I do believe we possess a dedicated language faculty.

I agree, I just do not think the whole of this model is yet completely
established.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com



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