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From: petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)
Subject: Re: Invention of Language
Message-ID: <petrichE0LAE6.FD0@netcom.com>
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References: <55lmbo$g2m@scream.auckland.ac.nz> <seagoat.677.01B9F229@primenet.com>
Date: Sat, 9 Nov 1996 06:08:30 GMT
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In article <seagoat.677.01B9F229@primenet.com>,
John A. Halloran <seagoat@primenet.com> wrote:

	[...]

>While the dating appears too early to me, I fully agree that Proto-Afrasian 
>must be an early independent language which should correspond to the earliest 
>known cities such as Jericho.  As such it is more in the nature of a sister 
>language to Nostratic, which evolved in the northern part of the Fertile 
>Crescent, while I believe that Sumerian evolved in the eastern part of the 
>Fertile Crescent.  New Guinea was on the tail end of a wave of largely 
>independent inventions of vocabulary and grammar, all under the influence of 
>human rules for thinking.

	And how did those isolated New Guineans catch the wave, as it were?

	And catch it -- and *nothing* else?

-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
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