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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: books on history of language?
In-Reply-To: damastro@unix.amherst.edu's message of 7 Mar 1995 11:05:34 -0500
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In article <3ji08e$6u2@amhux3.amherst.edu> damastro@unix.amherst.edu
(David A. Mastroianni) writes:

>I've tried looking in my library recently for books on the development of
>language, but the books usually seem to be about the development of language
>ability in babies.  I'm trying to find speculation on the development of
>language over the course of human development, ideas about how complex the
>earliest languages might have been, research on the ancestry of modern
>languages, you know?  Can anyone recommend any good titles?

The reason that you have trouble finding books on the topic of the origin of
language is that it is an area linguists have shied away from, for what seem
good reasons:

Language arose long before any writing system, so that all writing systems show
languages at essentially a modern stage of development with respect to original
or "primitive" states of hominid development.  It is now thought by many that
language may have originated more than 200,000 years ago.

With no non-modern hominids to provide a check on hypotheses, any arguments set
forth on the question of language origin will in essence be the beliefs of the
author alone.

That said, two authors who have tackled the question are Derek Bickerton (who
uses the term "protolanguage" in a way other than its definition in historical
comparative linguistics, so beware confusion), and Morris Swadesh.  They should
be easy enough to find in a reasonable university library.

Unfortunately, I don't have ready to hand references to two papers which
discussed some issues of early hominid language ability.  One was by Hockett
(and a second author whose name escapes me), discussing the opening of primate
call systems into full language; the other was a discussion of Neandertal
laryngeal anatomy, which concluded that Neandertals would not have been able to
produce language like modern H. sap.  This latter claim is discussed by
Trinkhaus & Shipman in their book _The Neandertals_, with the conclusion that
the reconstruction of the N. vocal tract proposed was incorrect.

Aside from that, you should pick up a book or two on historical linguistics,
such as Bynon, or Jeffers & Lehiste, or Hock, or Anttila.  (I found the second
edition of the last very hard to read, but the first edition was quite usable.)
These will acquaint you with what we *can* do.

(NB:  I did not say "all that we can do."  That's a matter of controversy in
the field.  Take positive statements at face value; take negative statements
with the proverbial grain.)
-- 
Rich Alderson		[Tolkien quote temporarily removed in favour of
alderson@netcom.com	 proselytizing comment below --rma]

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