Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!rutgers!venus.sun.com!cs.utexas.edu!howland.erols.net!netcom.com!petrich
From: petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)
Subject: Re: Language Hard-Wired in the Brain?
Message-ID: <petrichDxnJ5o.JrC@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <4vv851$evi@server-b.cs.interbusiness.it> <seagoat.543.02080E97@primenet.com> <petrichDxM3B3.LuF@netcom.com> <3239B53D.471B@trl.telstra.com.au>
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 03:32:12 GMT
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In article <3239B53D.471B@trl.telstra.com.au>,
Jacques Guy  <j.guy@trl.telstra.com.au> wrote:
>I really didn't pay much attention (read: I paid no attention
>at all) to this thread until now.

>However, I found this (in think it was in one of Loren Petrich's posts):

>        Since this feature is universal across our species, and since this
>feature has the awkward side effect of making choking easy, this makes
>John Halloran's hypothesis that our species was without spoken language
>until 10,000 years ago *extremely* implausible.

	That's me :-)

>Well, if humans were without spoken language until 10,000 BP, that means
>that language developed independently in Australia (populated at least
>40,000 years ago), in New Guinea (evidence of garden cultivation 9,000BC)
>and of course, in America (populated at the very least 18,000 years ago).

	That would certainly have had to be the case, and there is the 
question of why *every* human society for which appropriate documentation 
exists has had language. If human language was invented only well after 
our species had emerged from some pre-human species, then why aren't 
there any left-behind languageless groups?

-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
My home page: http://www.webcom.com/petrich/home.html
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