<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" align="center">=====================================================<br>
L O W L A N D S - L - 16 April 2011 - Volume 01<br>
<a href="mailto:lowlands.list@gmail.com" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext">lowlands.list@gmail.com</span></a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext">http://lowlands-l.net/</span></a><br>
Posting: <a href="mailto:lowlands-l@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext">lowlands-l@listserv.linguistlist.org</span></a><br>
Archive: <a href="http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext">http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html</span></a><br>
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)<br>
Language Codes: <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/codes.php" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext">lowlands-l.net/codes.php</span></a><br>
=====================================================</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From:
<span class="gd"><span style="color:#790619">Mark and Ruth Dreyer</span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:mrdreyer@lantic.net">mrdreyer@lantic.net</a>></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject:
<span class="gi">LL-L "Language history" 2011.04.15 (05) [EN]</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Dear Ron & All:</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Subject: LL-L "Language
History"</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Someone posted a
link to an article on my Facebook page that I am sure many of you will find
interesting.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: navy;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/3fbbvxb" target="_blank"><span style="color:black">http://tinyurl.com/3fbbvxb</span></a></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">It asserts that
recent findings point toward there having been one proto language, i.e. one
ancestor of all of today’s languages.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Mark here:</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">I Also don't don't know
about Atkinson's research, but I have some objections to share with the rest of
us</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">To start with language maps:
In isolation they are a pointless guide to history because people move around;
& to add insult they can also change languages. For example the Damara of
Namibia are an isolated strain of Negro with a vast sub-continent of Bantu
between them & their blood-kin in West Africa.
Worse than this, they have abandoned their initial tongue & adopted
that of their conquerers, Nama - a Khoikhoi language. This is not a peculiar
event. I can bore you to tears with a litany of examples from early classical
times to the present. Extrapolating from such phenomena as this starting in
the Dawn of Humankind makes a mockery of any pretention to continuity,
progression or for that matter usable data.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">By the way, what is 'fringe
science'? This seems to be to be a kindly circumlocution on a par with
'reasonable concensus' & 'moderately pregnant'. I would however defer to an
argument that it is <strong>good</strong>
or <strong>bad</strong> science.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">I do not hold with <span style="color:black">Ruehlen and Greenberg, or any other advocates of
a single proto-language, for a reason that ties in with a previous string
on idioglossia - twin-language. But let me open with a point that humankind,
like all other animals, necessarily underwent a process of biological evolution
right up until the advent of culture - since when adaptation has been cultural,
almost across the board, thus subverting any intervention of Nature.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">It must have
been among the very last devations from the biological norm, as between
ramapithecenes, that one strain of which deviated in a <strong>cerebral</strong> stucture allowing for
articulated communication. It must have bounced around in latency for
generations before anything was actually done with it.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Old Darwinists
clumsily called this sort of thing 'pre-adaptation'. In point of fact the
mechanism is simply random deviation. Nature allows this within limits.
Deviation is not significant as away from the norm, as much as between
extremes, & the extremes are policed by limited fertility, access to
fertile mates, & ultimately extinction. However between the
extremes Nature allows a lot; consider the number of benign mutations that
occur in Nature (consider particularly the North American chimney
swift). A whole lot of presently unnecessary capacity is knocking around
in every creature's genetic code, just waiting to be found useful.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">But we know all
surviving anthropoid apes call out to attract attention, & to a significant
degree to indicate intent. They are also intelligent & to a high degree
cultural. I would expect the natural talent for articulate language to kick in
spontaneously in isolation among a number of communities as to this
very day, the same phenomenon is manifest spontaneously in isolation among
a number of twins.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Bluntly put, it
is not necessary for language to have a single founadation. Idioglossia don't.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Moreover:
Idioglossia aren't mutually intelligable, so actual structure is not hard-wired
into the talent. Furthermore, they are not deviations from the language heard by
speakers around them, though many may borrow, so they do not have to follow
from a prior cultural impulse. These two considerations define the parameters
of human language; not, in my opinion, merely idioglossia but all our
languages.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">By the way, it didn't
seem to me the kids in that video were actually communicating verbally, but
they had the wit to pretend to, as between themselves, while actually
going by gesture & expression. I am informed that kids can sign
meaningfully long before they are able to speak. Sandy, what do you say - about this last?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Yrs,</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Mark</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">----------</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From:
<span class="gd"><span style="color:#5B1094">Sandy Fleming</span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:fleemin@live.co.uk">fleemin@live.co.uk</a>></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject:
<span class="gi">LL-L "Language history" 2011.04.15 (09) [EN]</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">> From: Paul Finlow-Bates <<a href="mailto:wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk" target="_blank"><span style="color:navy">wolf_thunder51@yahoo.co.uk</span></a>> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">> Subject:
LL-L "Language history" 2011.04.15 (05) [EN]</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;"> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">> The
human race couldn't emerge from several related tribal groups if there was no
communication. We would have to be descended from one or other of them, and
speak a descendent of one their languages. Or, if they are related, they
must have a common ancestor - and a common ancestral language even if it
subsequently diverged.</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Theory
aside, there is a problem with investigating an actual protolanguage.<br>
<br>
The Toba event, about 70,000 years ago, eliminated all but several thousand of
the human race.<br>
<br>
So either, the survivors spoke different languages and any protolanguage which
these may have been derived from can't really be investigated, since we have to
assume that many other branches of the protolanguage were irretrievably lost;
or, the survivors spoke one language and our investigations will make this seem
to be the protolanguage even if it isn't.<br>
<br>
In short, even if a protolanguage can be constructed and it can be demonstrated
that all known languages derived from it, it doesn't mean it was the first
human language spoken.<br>
<br>
And I didn't even start on sign languages!<br>
<br>
Sandy Fleming<br>
<a href="http://scotstext.org/" target="_blank">http://scotstext.org/</a></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" align="center">=========================================================<br>
Send posting submissions to <a href="mailto:lowlands-l@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext">lowlands-l@listserv.linguistlist.org</span></a>.<br>
Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.<br>
Send commands (including "signoff lowlands-l") to<br>
<a href="mailto:listserv@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext">listserv@listserv.linguistlist.org</span></a> or <a href="mailto:lowlands.list@gmail.com" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext">lowlands.list@gmail.com</span></a><br>
<a href="http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext">http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html</span></a>.<br>
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#%21/group.php?gid=118916521473498" target="_blank"><span style="color:windowtext">http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/group.php?gid=118916521473498</span></a><br>
===============================================================</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>