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From: petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)
Subject: Re: Invention of language
Message-ID: <petrichE0LB92.GJ2@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <55tqml$6ku@scream.auckland.ac.nz> <seagoat.689.020C3854@primenet.com>
Date: Sat, 9 Nov 1996 06:27:02 GMT
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Sender: petrich@netcom14.netcom.com

In article <seagoat.689.020C3854@primenet.com>,
John A. Halloran <seagoat@primenet.com> wrote:
>In article <55tqml$6ku@scream.auckland.ac.nz> drc@antnov1.auckland.ac.nz writes:

>>I'm confused now. Halloran does not believe in a Sumerian monogenesis
>>of language. If people could invent it more than once, why not many
>>times? Why not much earlier than in Sumeria? [Sumer]  And why is New Guinea
>>on the "tail end of a wave"? This still sounds like some kind of diffusion
>>rather than independent invention.

	Not to mention the question of what had triggered this alleged 
wave of invention, and why it succeeded in reaching all of humanity well 
before various other Fertile-Crescent inventions did.

>The concept of language may or may not have been invented more than once.  
>Once invented, I do believe that the concept diffused.  I will have to 
>investigate Proto-Afrasian more closely - I have Chris Ehret's 1995 book of 
>reconstructed PA on order (550 pages of reconstructed words).  The vowel-only 
>words of Sumerian devoted to water, food, and sex make me think that the 
>proto-Sumerians invented the language concept independently.

	There you go again. You don't seem to have learned anything from 
our discussion of Chinese and its numerous very short words.

>What did not always diffuse across populations is grammar and vocabulary.  Why 
>ask another people what is their word when you can more easily invent one 
>yourself?  I believe that in New Guinea the concept of language diffused, but 
>not very much of the specifics of language.

	What is more likely to happen is that words get borrowed. How 
many children end up inventing complete languages? They end up speaking 
the languages their elders speak, in the large majority of cases.

	And what motivates people who don't have language to think to 
themselves "The people over there have one, so we must invent one for 
ourselves" -- especially if they have no way to describe that sort of 
thought to others.

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