[Lingtyp] Proto-World explains universals

[David Gil]

Dear all,

I'm not sure whether Martin is looking for such cases in order to cite 
them favourably or shoot them down, but either way ...

The kind of proposal that Martin mentions presupposes the existence of a 
single Proto-World, aka monogenesis, of a similar degree of complexity 
to contemporary human languages, the latter condition being necessary in 
order for it to be possible to meaningfully attribute a particular 
universal feature of contemporary human languages to such a hypothetical 
proto-language.

However, the monogenesis hypothesis is more consistent with the 
saltational view of language evolution espoused primarily within 
generative grammar, than it is with alternative views of language 
evolution that would characterize it as the outcome of gradual processes 
that began before the rise of modern Homo Sapiens. Under the latter 
view, modern languages could be traced back in a continuous path to 
various rudimentary "proto-languages" of the kind more likely to have 
arisen independently in multiple times and places.

Also, it's not clear to me how strict monogenesis can be reconciled with 
recent genetic discoveries suggesting that there was admixture between 
modern (linguistically-endowed) humans and Denisovans as recently as 
15,000 years ago in New Guinea.  While not a logical necessity, it's 
extremely likely that there was some kind of inter-species communication 
going on, and such communication could, potentially, have left traces 
still observable in modern human languages.

David


On 20/01/2020 19:45, Haspelmath, Martin wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> 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?
>
> Cysouw (2011: 417) has suggested this as a possibility:
>
> "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)."
>
> But while this is logically possible, are there any concrete 
> suggestions with a global scope?
> 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?
>
> Thanks,
> Martin
>
> ************
>
> References:
> Cysouw, Michael. 2011. Understanding transition probabilities. 
> /Linguistic Typology/ 15(2). 415–431.
> Maslova, Elena. 2000. A dynamic approach to the verification of 
> distributional universals. /Linguistic Typology/ 4. 307 – 333.
>
> -- 
> Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp

-- 
David Gil
  
Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
  
Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-556825895
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20200121/a32cfb3f/attachment.htm>