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From: mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer)
Subject: Re: More Proto-World
Message-ID: <Cy6xBJ.66D@inter.NL.net>
Organization: NLnet
References: <37pqr1$ffn@tardis.trl.OZ.AU> <hubey.782882530@pegasus.montclair.edu> <38eqnq$jhc@tardis.trl.OZ.AU> <ONEIL.94Oct24011108@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 1994 18:42:55 GMT
Lines: 43

In article <ONEIL.94Oct24011108@fas.harvard.edu>,
John O'Neil <oneil@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
>All joking aside (good phrase, that...), there's something in this
>debate that I can't figure out, and I'm hoping some helpful sci.lang
>person will help me out.  It's been supposed that if we knew the date
>of origin of H. Sapiens^2, then we'd have the date of the origin of
>language.  However, I don't understand why this is necessarily the
>case.  Why couldn't the capacity for language (in the modern sense)
>have existed in separate places first?  After that, language in the
>modern sense could spring up in multiple places independently--and
>thereby eliminating any chance, even in principle, of
>reconstruction. After all, it's not likely that we went from Koko to
>Shakespeare in one fell swoop--useful precursors to language were
>probably already in use long before our ancestors wiped out the
>Neanderthal competition.
>

You're right, it doesn't necessarily follow.  What makes it
a reasonable theory is that if the Neanderthals were indeed
"wiped out", the chances that we modern humans nevertheless 
adopted their language is rather remote.  But *were* they
wiped out?
I'm no expert, but I'd be surprised if the Neanderthals didn't
speak language.  Whether Homo Erectus had developed languages,
I don't know.  Let's assume not: that would put the origins of
human language at roughly 500,000 BP.
The big question is then: were all previous human languages
replaced with the language (*Proto-World) spoken by the first
"modern men" in Africa, 50,000 years ago?  Too little is known
about how the "modern" genes spread around the world to be
sure.
My own guess, for what it's worth, would be that there is
indeed a correlation between genes and language (the Neander-
thal's genes were replaced, and so were their languages),
but that the date is too early.  If the time depth for *Proto-
World were a "mere" 40 or 50 thousand years, it would be more
evident.

-- 
Miguel Carrasquer         ____________________  ~~~
Amsterdam                [                  ||]~  
mcv@inter.NL.net         ce .sig n'est pas une .cig 
