Russian racehorses, Cooter Brown, fast foxes

Donald M. Lance LanceDM at MISSOURI.EDU
Mon Mar 20 06:42:48 UTC 2000


Arnold Zwicky wrote:

> my inclination is to think that there's a lot more individual
> creativity in language use than most folks credit, ...

The great thing about language is that it doesn't *mean* anything.  People "mean"
something when the use this wonderful tool.  What a great invention!!  Language itself
didn't evolve, nor does it now.  Hominids evolved in such a way that one set of them could
work wonders with damping and reinforcing harmonics in the periodic pulses of air rolling
out between those things in our throats that we must close tightly in order to defecate or
to give birth to a baby.  This particular set of hominids had to be pretty creative in
order to invent language.

DMLance



More information about the Ads-l mailing list