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<b>Welcome, hubeyh</b>
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(hubeyh<B> · </b>hubeyh@mail.montclair.edu)
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<b>evolutionary-psychology</b>
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<font size="-0"><b>From:</b>
Larry Trask <<a href="/group/evolutionary-psychology/post?protectID=034166091180196134015102065108229208163146031008209079252150105127">larryt@c...</a>> </font><br>
<font size="-0"><b>Date:</b> Thu Mar 20, 2003 7:29
am</font><br>
<font size="-0"><b>Subject:</b> Re: [evol-psych] In Click Languages, an Echo of the Tongues of the Ancients [long]</font><br>
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<tt><BR>
Well, I suppose some of you are expecting me to tell you that this report <BR>
is largely nonsense, and I won't disappoint you: the linguistic part of it <BR>
is balderdash on a large scale.<BR>
<BR>
> New York Times<BR>
><BR>
> March 18 2003<BR>
><BR>
> In Click Languages, an Echo of the Tongues of the Ancients<BR>
> By NICHOLAS WADE<BR>
<BR>
> Do some of today's languages still hold a whisper of the ancient mother<BR>
> tongue spoken by the first modern humans? Many linguists say language<BR>
> changes far too fast for that to be possible.<BR>
<BR>
In fact, all respectable linguists believe this, and with good reason. <BR>
Only a few fantasizers hanging around the fringes take seriously the idea <BR>
that we can recover some of the properties of the ancestral Mother Tongue <BR>
of all humans from the properties of modern languages.<BR>
<BR>
> But a new genetic study<BR>
> underlines the extreme antiquity of a special group of languages, raising<BR>
> the possibility that their distinctive feature was part of the ancestral<BR>
> human mother tongue.<BR>
<BR>
This is arrant nonsense, as I will attempt to show.<BR>
<BR>
> They are the click languages of southern Africa. About 30 survive, spoken<BR>
> by peoples like the San, traditional hunters and gatherers, and the Khwe,<BR>
> who include hunters and herders.<BR>
<BR>
> Each language has a set of four or five click sounds, which are<BR>
> essentially double consonants made by sucking the tongue down from the<BR>
> roof of the mouth. Outside of Africa, the only language known to use<BR>
> clicks is Damin, an extinct aboriginal language in Australia that was<BR>
> taught only to men for initiation rites.<BR>
<BR>
Damin was not a mother tongue. It was the ritual language of the Lardil <BR>
tribe. It was an invented language, and it contained a number of unusual <BR>
speech sounds not found in the everyday language of the Lardil, or in any <BR>
other Australian language. It appears that the inventors deliberately <BR>
tried to make Damin as exotic as possible.<BR>
<BR>
> Some of the Bantu-speaking peoples who reached southern Africa from their<BR>
> homeland in western Africa some 2,000 years ago have borrowed certain<BR>
> clicks from the Khwe, one use being to substitute for consonants in taboo<BR>
> words.<BR>
<BR>
Clarification. The Bantu languages -- which by the way reached southern <BR>
Africa a lot more recently than 2000 years ago -- historically lack clicks. <BR>
But a number of Bantu languages in southern Africa have acquired clicks by <BR>
contact with languages that already had clicks. Two well-known examples <BR>
are Zulu and Xhosa in South Africa. Forget about the naughty words: the <BR>
clicks are thoroughly integrated into the sound systems of these Bantu <BR>
languages, and a speaker can't get through a sentence without using some <BR>
clicks.<BR>
<BR>
> There are reasons to assume that the click languages may be very old.<BR>
<BR>
Here we go with the nonsense. Apart from a few special cases like creoles, <BR>
all human languages are equally "old", and no language is "older" than any <BR>
other. An assertion that one language is older than another is <BR>
meaningless, and it shows merely that the speaker doesn't know what he's <BR>
talking about.<BR>
<BR>
How did you learn your mother tongue? You learned it from people who <BR>
already knew it. How did they learn it? From people who already knew it. <BR>
And how did *they* learn it? From people who... You see where this is <BR>
going.<BR>
<BR>
Now, suppose you want to maintain that language A is "older" than language <BR>
B. You are therefore claiming that there was a time in the past when <BR>
laanguage A already existed but language B did not yet exist. So where did <BR>
B come from? You now have to claim that there was a first generation of <BR>
speakers of B, and that these people learned a language that did not exist. <BR>
And this outcome, of course, is preposterous.<BR>
<BR>
No language is older than any other.<BR>
<BR>
> One<BR>
> is that the click speakers themselves, particularly a group of<BR>
> hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari, belong to an extremely ancient genetic<BR>
> lineage, according to analysis of their DNA. They are called the<BR>
> Ju|'hoansi, with the upright bar indicating a click. ("Ju|'hoansi" is<BR>
> pronounced like "ju-twansi" except that the "tw" is a click sound like<BR>
> the "tsk, tsk" of disapproval.)<BR>
<BR>
> All human groups are equally old, being descended from the same ancestral<BR>
> population. But geneticists can now place ethnic groups on a family tree<BR>
> of humankind. Groups at the ends of short twigs, the ones that split only<BR>
> recently from earlier populations, are younger, in a genealogical sense,<BR>
> than those at the ends of long branches. Judged by mitochondrial DNA, a<BR>
> genetic element passed down in the female line, the Ju|'hoansis' line of<BR>
> descent is so ancient that it goes back close to the very root of the<BR>
> human family tree.<BR>
<BR>
> Most of the surviving click speakers live in southern Africa. But two<BR>
> small populations, the Hadzabe and the Sandawe, live near Lake Eyasi in<BR>
> Tanzania. Two geneticists from Stanford, Dr. Alec Knight and Dr. Joanna<BR>
> Mountain, recently analyzed the genetics of the Hadzabe to figure out<BR>
> their relationship to their fellow click speakers, the Ju|'hoansi.<BR>
<BR>
> The Hadzabe, too, have an extremely ancient lineage that also traces back<BR>
> close to the root of the human family tree...But the Hadzabe lineage and<BR>
> that of the Ju|'hoansi spring from opposite sides of the root. In other<BR>
> words, the Hadzabe and the Ju|'hoansi have been separate peoples since<BR>
> close to the dawn of modern human existence.<BR>
<BR>
> ...[T]he divergece between the Hadzabe and the Ju|'hoansi might be the<BR>
> oldest known split in the human family tree.<BR>
<BR>
Now comes the big one:<BR>
<BR>
> Unless each group independently invented click languages at some later<BR>
> time, that finding implies that click languages were spoken by the very<BR>
> ancient population from which the Hadzabe and the Ju|'hoansi descend.<BR>
> "The divergence of those genetic lineages is among the oldest on earth,"<BR>
> Dr. Knight said. "So one could certainly make the inference that clicks<BR>
> were present in the mother tongue."<BR>
<BR>
Well, one could make that inference, but one would make a huge fool of <BR>
oneself in the process. The authors have just pointed out -- correctly -- <BR>
that languages that lack clicks can acquire them by contact with languages <BR>
that have them. But now the authors suffer a sudden attack of brain death, <BR>
and they conclude that all click languages must have inherited their clicks <BR>
from a single common ancestor in the unspeakably remote past. This is a <BR>
screaming *non sequitur*.<BR>
<BR>
There is another *non sequitur* here. The authors point out that the <BR>
Hadzabe and the Ju|'hoansi separated from the rest of us very early -- fine <BR>
-- and from this they conclude that the languages of these two peoples must <BR>
be exceptionally conservative. But, by the same token, the rest of us <BR>
separated from these two groups very early, and so *our* languages ought to <BR>
be the conservative ones.<BR>
<BR>
> If so, the modern humans who left Africa some 40,000 years go and<BR>
> populated the rest of the world might have been click speakers who later<BR>
> lost their clicks. Australia, where the Damin click language used to be<BR>
> spoken, is one of the first places outside Africa known to have been<BR>
> reached by modern humans.<BR>
<BR>
Apparently we are meant to suppose that those ancient click speakers <BR>
trotted from Africa to Australia -- without passing through Asia, Indonesia <BR>
or New Guinea? -- and carried their clicks with them, which is why the <BR>
Lardil tribe had a click -- they had only one click -- in their ritual <BR>
language. Nonsense. Damin was invented, and Australian languages do not <BR>
have clicks, nor is there any evidence that they ever had clicks.<BR>
<BR>
> But the antiquity of clicks, if they are indeed extremely ancient, raises<BR>
> a serious puzzle. Joseph Greenberg of Stanford University, the great<BR>
> classifier of the world's languages, put all the click languages in a<BR>
> group he called Khoisan. But Sandawe and Hadzane, the language of the<BR>
> Hadzabe, are what linguists call isolates. They are unlike each other and<BR>
> every other known language. Apart from their clicks, they have very<BR>
> little in common with the other Khoisan languages.<BR>
<BR>
Clarification: Greenberg's "Khoisan" is not a valid grouping. It is merely <BR>
a residue class, a collection of leftover languages.<BR>
<BR>
> That the Hadzabe and the Ju|'hoansi differ as much in their language as in<BR>
> their genetics is a reflection of the same fact. They are extremely<BR>
> ancient, and there has been a long time for both their language and their<BR>
> genetics to diverge. The puzzle is why they should have retained their<BR>
> clicks when everything else in their language has changed.<BR>
<BR>
The puzzle is why geneticists should leap to such wild conclusions without <BR>
evidence. These authors have leapt to the unsupported conclusion that <BR>
clicks are descended from the Mother Tongue, and now they are scratching <BR>
their heads over the survival of these things. This is what happens if you <BR>
take a mundane observation and at once jump to the most fantastic <BR>
conclusion you can think of.<BR>
<BR>
We don't need any of these fantastic scenarios. We know that Bantu <BR>
languages have overwhelmed most of the southern half of Africa in the last <BR>
2000 years or so, obliterating most of the earlier languages in the <BR>
process. The few surviving remnants, the click languages under discussion <BR>
here, have clicks because clicks were what we call an "areal feature" of <BR>
southern Africa before the Bantu expansion. That is, clicks were common in <BR>
the area because they had spread from language to language by contact -- <BR>
just as some of the intrusive Bantu languages have now acquired clicks by <BR>
contact. There is no puzzle here that needs to be explained, and the <BR>
authors are merely confusing themselves with their wild interpretations.<BR>
<BR>
Compare east Asia, where tones have been spreading for millennia. Tones <BR>
spread long ago into Vietnamese, which formerly lacked them, and now <BR>
Vietnamese is a fully-fledged tone language. Tibetan historically lacks <BR>
tones, but very recently tones have appeared in the Lhasa dialect, by <BR>
contact with Chinese. And I might point out that the European scholars of <BR>
the 19th century considered tones to be every bit as weird as our <BR>
geneticists obviously consider clicks.<BR>
<BR>
> Dr. Knight suggested that clicks might have survived because in the<BR>
> savanna, where most click speakers live, the sounds allow hunters to<BR>
> coordinate activity withouit disturbing prey. Whispered speech that uses<BR>
> just clicks sounds more like branches creaking tha human talk. Clicks<BR>
> make up more than 40 percent of the language and suffice for hunters to<BR>
> convey their meanings, Dr. Knight said.<BR>
<BR>
Now we're getting seriously loopy.<BR>
<BR>
First, in spite of Dr. Knight's assertion, it is not possible for a speaker <BR>
of a click language to convey anything at all with clicks alone. He has to <BR>
use all the rest of the language, including all the other consonants and <BR>
vowels. So, any special properties the clicks might have are useless if <BR>
they are not shared by all the other speech sounds in the language.<BR>
<BR>
Expecting a speaker of Hadzane to say anything with clicks alone is like <BR>
expecting a speaker of Chinese to say something with tones alone. Dr. <BR>
Knight is *badly* confused.<BR>
<BR>
Second, if you have ever heard a click language spoken, you will have <BR>
noticed one thing: clicks are *loud*. As the linguist Anthony Traill <BR>
points out later in the article, clicks are acoustically high-impact sounds <BR>
for mammalian ears, and they are probably the worst sounds to use if you <BR>
are trying to conceal your presence.<BR>
<BR>
Third, the only function of speech sounds is to distinguish one word from <BR>
another. The idea that individual consonants can have additional social or <BR>
cultural functions is simply demented.<BR>
<BR>
Take English. English is not a click language, but it is a "dental <BR>
fricative" language. We have two dental fricative sounds, the two sounds <BR>
spelled <th>, as in 'thin' and 'this'. These sounds are very rare in the <BR>
world's languages, and most of the rest of the world regards them as almost <BR>
unspeakably exotic and difficult. We have them because we have inherited <BR>
them from our remote Proto-Germanic ancestor. Most of the other Germanic <BR>
languages have lost them, but we still retain them.<BR>
<BR>
So, following Dr. Knight, why do we still have them? What function do they <BR>
serve in English-speaking society? Do they help us in hunting? Do they <BR>
smooth our mating rituals? Do they make it easier to invade Middle Eastern <BR>
countries?<BR>
<BR>
This is deranged drivel, right? Well, if it's drivel in England, then it's <BR>
drivel in Africa, too.<BR>
<BR>
Finally, I've had it up to here with this "Man the Hunter" crud. The idea <BR>
that languages have the properties they have because those properties make <BR>
hunting easier is a 19th-century fairy tale that should have been laid to <BR>
rest with Queen Victoria. The purveyors of this fairy tale forget that <BR>
women and children do no hunting, but they still have to speak the <BR>
language. Even men don't spend most of their time hunting, and in fact I <BR>
have seen mischievous reports that men in foraging societies spend most of <BR>
their time lolling about, while the women get dinner ready -- but of course <BR>
I can't believe anything so shocking.<BR>
<BR>
Anyway, observation shows -- unsurprisingly -- that the chief function of <BR>
language at critical moments in the hunt is to be avoided, as the hunters <BR>
very sensibly keep their mouths shut. In the circumstances, then, it <BR>
hardly matters if the hunters' everyday speech sounds like Papageno's song <BR>
in The Magic Flute, since the animals are never going to hear it anyway.<BR>
<BR>
Why do so many scholars abruptly lose the ability to think clearly the <BR>
moment the subject turns to language? And why do so many of them lose <BR>
their grip on reality altogether?<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
Larry Trask<BR>
COGS<BR>
University of Sussex<BR>
Brighton BN1 9QH<BR>
UK<BR>
<BR>
<a href="/group/evolutionary-psychology/post?protectID=034166091180196134015102065108229208163146031008209079252150105127">larryt@c...</a><BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
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