PIE vs. Proto-World (Proto-Language)

[Adam Hyllested]

On Fri, 16 Jul 1999, Ralf-Stefan Georg wrote:

> "Having consonants" may be a
> universal feature of human language, "Being related to some other lg."
> simply is not.

A fascinating thought:
Imagine "Being related to some other lg." WAS actually a universal feature
of (spoken) human language, wouldn't it then be the only true universal?
In other words, if all spoken languages should prove to be derived from
one common source, would we then be able to distinguish true language
universals from other features shared by all languages ONLY because of the
fact that these features were present in "proto-world"? Language typology
would still be a great help in the work of reconstructing proto-languages,
but would it prove anything about the nature of spoken human language?

The above are only questions, not statements...

Adam Hyllested