[Linganth] Is "motherese" universal?

[Claire Bowern]

I'm delurking to make an aside on Harriet's comment on spinning
technology. Spinning's possible without spindles or whorls. I've made
string under tutelage from people in Arnhem Land (north Australia) from
balgurr (a type of currajong I believe, with very fibrous bark that's
split and rolled on the thigh). I've also seen it made from fig roots,
and Bardi people (NW Australia) made fishing and harpoon lines from
this. They also use gut or sinew. Carrying straps are also made from
plaited hair. Woven pandanus only needs a hooked stick to get the centre
fronds out. I think weaving technology like spindles, etc, is later than
we're talking about, but it's not necessary.
Claire


Harriet J. Ottenheimer wrote:
> David's arguments make sense.  My own (not-yet-ready-for-publication)
> idea is that children actually might have had a fairly active role in
> making the leap to duality of patterning.  I flesh it out a little bit
> in the intro text I've just completed but it's just an intro text so I
> don't go into great detail there.
>
> I've been thinking about the slings a lot. Gatherers would need to have
> had some sort of slings anyway, as it is pretty inefficient to have to
> carry each root or handful of berries/nuts back to camp separately. A
> sling would make it possible to carry more than a handful of stuff at a
> time. It would also be useful for carrying/balancing a baby on one's hip
> or back. So what could such slings have been made of? Netting or animal
> hide come to mind from looking at contemporary gatherers. Now, as a
> sometime fiber artist it it is clear to me that nets are made out of
> strings (via macrame or crochet or fishnet technology or something like
> that) so the next question has to be whether there could have been
> string-making (spinning) technology as early as the period we are
> talking about. I don't remember when the first spindle whorls are found
> but that would be a good clue. So my guess is that if slings were being
> used that early for gathering and child-carrying then they would most
> likely have been made of animal hide.  I don't know why Falk imagines
> that early hominins are gathering but does not allow them to have slings
> to carry the fruits of their labor back to camp. It doesn't make sense
> to me. Maybe I'm not being egocentric enough.
>
> Seriously, I do think that one of the major problems with this kind of
> theorizing is the fact that individual scholars in the four subfields of
> anthropology are no longer reading one anothers' work much. I am not
> sure, and have no evidence to back it up, but it seems to me that there
> are a great many anthros in the other three subdisciplines who just do
> not read linguistic anthro (and may not even ever have taken an intro
> course in the subdiscipline, or taken one but thought it was too
> difficult to go any further, what with all that stuff about phonetics
> and such). Depressing.  Perhaps we need an Indiana Jones type of movie
> about a daring linguist anthropologist to make the field seem more
> accessible!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Harriet



--------------
Dr Claire Bowern
Department of Linguistics
Rice University
Houston TX