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From: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Subject: Re: Any one-way linguistic evolutionary trends?
Message-ID: <E31J0J.Io8@scn.org>
Sender: news@scn.org
Reply-To: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Organization: Seattle Community Network
References: <32BB00C2.154E8E4C@ocrat.com>  
Date: Thu, 26 Dec 1996 21:43:19 GMT
Lines: 27


In a previous article, ocrat@ocrat.com (Ochlocrat) says:

>So are there any trends that evolve in one direction only?
>How about "difficult" consonant clusters?  In Slavic languages,
>many of the most difficult consonant clusters seem to occur
>in the "fundamental" (presumably original) vocabulary, eg:
>	pSenitsa "wheat"
>	ptSela "bee"
>
>So, a priori, this seems like a trend away from difficult
>consonant clusters.  Are there any counterexamples in
>Indo-European or other language families?

And if this is truly such a unidirectional change, can we use 
glottochronology to recover a time when all languages, or at least all 
ancestral proto-Slavic ones, contains *only* consonants--before Piltdown 
Man or whoever realized it would be easier to speak if you threw in a few 
vowels...?  

Or would this mean that Polynesian languages were "more advanced" than 
English?
--
Liland Brajant ROS'    			Ae, ka manu iluna oka hale,
P O Box 30091      			"O" ku'u leo "E moe maika'i," 
Seattle, WA 98103 Usono			Kani ku'u leo, ku'u hoapu,
Tel. (206) 633-2434  			Ae, ka manu iluna oka hale.
