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T Givon argued in a couple of places starting with "On understanding grammar" (1979) that the current prevalence of SOV languages is a retention from proto-human, on the grounds that a) there is a roadmap from pre-human communication to SOV order, and b) in
well-developed languages, it is easy to shift away from SOV but difficult to shift to it. That was when it was generally thought that modern human language had been around for only 50,000 to 100,000 years, prior to recent discoveries involving Neandertals
that greatly push back the time frame. <br>
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Others who have argued recently for linguistic fossils from the earliest human speech, but not in a specifically typological framework, include John Haiman (ideophones) and Liljana Progovac (syntax). The converse is the argument that widespread current features,
such as labiodental fricatives or general complexification, are due to more recent cultural developments.<br>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces@listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Ian Maddieson <ianm@berkeley.edu><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Monday, January 20, 2020 4:04 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Harald Hammarström <harald@bombo.se><br>
<b>Cc:</b> LINGTYP LINGTYP <LINGTYP@listserv.linguistlist.org><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Lingtyp] Proto-World explains universals</font>
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<div class="" style="word-wrap:break-word; line-break:after-white-space">Bernard Comrie comes pretty close to suggesting something of the sort that Martin asks about in his 1992 paper cited below.
<div class="">For example, the universal that "no language has only nasalized vowels" (or "all languages have oral vowels”) is</div>
<div class="">attributed to there being a sole historical source of nasalized vowels from a sequence of a vowel plus a nasal (either order).</div>
<div class="">While Proto-World is not given explicitly a role here, the implication that all proto-languages — projected back far</div>
<div class="">enough in time — had only oral vowels comes pretty close.
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<td valign="top" class="" style="padding-bottom:15px">Comrie, B. <span class="x_NLM_year">1992</span>: <span class="x_NLM_article-title">Before complexity</span>. In Hawkins, J.A. and Gell-Mann, M. , editors, The evolution of human languages, Santa Fe Institute
Studies in the Sciences of Complexity XI, <span class="x_NLM_publisher-loc">Redwood City, CA</span>: <span class="x_NLM_publisher-name">Addison-Wesley</span> , <span class="x_NLM_fpage">193</span>–<span class="x_NLM_lpage">211</span></td>
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<div class="">Ian Maddieson</div>
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<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">On Jan 20, 2020, at 12:04, Harald Hammarström <<a href="mailto:harald@bombo.se" class="">harald@bombo.se</a>> wrote:</div>
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<div class="">Re basic constituent order argued to be (partly) the reflection of proto-world SOV, see:</div>
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<div class="">Gell-Mann, Murray & Merritt Ruhlen. 2011. The origin and evolution of</div>
<div class="">word order. PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of</div>
<div class="">the United States of America 108(42). 17290-17295.</div>
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<div class="">Maurits, Luke & Thomas L. Gri?ths. 2014. Tracing the roots of syntax</div>
<div class="">with Bayesian phylogenetics. PNAS 111(37). 13576?13581.</div>
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<div class="">Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2000. On the reconstruction of 'Proto-World' word</div>
<div class="">order. In Chris Knight, Michael Studdert-Kennedy & James R. Hurford</div>
<div class="">(eds.), The evolutionary emergence of language: social function and the</div>
<div class="">origins of linguistic form, 372-390. Cambridge: Cambridge University</div>
<div class="">Press.</div>
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<div dir="ltr" class="x_gmail_attr">Pada tanggal Sen, 20 Jan 2020 pukul 18.45 Haspelmath, Martin <<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" class="">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>> menulis:<br class="">
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<div class="">Dear all,<br class="">
<br class="">
Does anyone know a case where it has been proposed (or suggested) concretely that an observed universal tendency (or absolute universal) is due to inheritance from Proto-World?<br class="">
<br class="">
Cysouw (2011: 417) has suggested this as a possibility:<br class="">
<br class="">
<font size="-1" class="">"It is possible that there are still founder effects available in the current distribution of the world’s languages, i.e., that there are preferences in the current world’s languages that go back to incidental events during the spread
of languages over the world (Maslova 2000)."</font><br class="">
<br class="">
But while this is logically possible, are there any concrete suggestions with a global scope?<br class="">
Word order universals such as the Greenbergian correlations, or phonological universals such as vowel dispersion cannot be due to Proto-World (or some other founder effect), because the universality lies in the implicational patterns, not in specific structures
that all languages share. Has anyone suggested that any other universal properties (e.g. the fact that all languages can express negation or questions, or that agent-patient organization is universal, or that all languages have recursion) may be due to Proto-World
inheritance?<br class="">
<br class="">
Thanks,<br class="">
Martin<br class="">
<br class="">
************<br class="">
<br class="">
References:<br class="">
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<div class="">Cysouw, Michael. 2011. Understanding transition probabilities. <i class="">
Linguistic Typology</i> 15(2). 415–431.<br class="">
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<div class="">Maslova, Elena. 2000. A dynamic approach to the verification of distributional universals.
<i class="">Linguistic Typology</i> 4. 307 – 333.<br class="">
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<pre cols="72" class="">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank" class="">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
Institut fuer Anglistik
IPF 141199
D-04081 Leipzig </pre>
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<div class="">Ian Maddieson</div>
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<div class="">Department of Linguistics</div>
<div class="">University of New Mexico</div>
<div class="">MSC03-2130</div>
<div class="">Albuquerque NM 87131-0001</div>
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