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From: petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)
Subject: Re: Etruscans [was: Re: The Coming of the Greeks]
Message-ID: <petrichE11CLL.46F@netcom.com>
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References: <54q9ou$85o_002@dialin.csus.edu> <56e16h$5d2@fridge-nf0.shore.net> <petrichE0v26r.BDp@netcom.com> <56n631$5cs@fridge-nf0.shore.net>
Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 22:17:45 GMT
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Sender: petrich@netcom21.netcom.com
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.archaeology:56024 sci.lang:64405

In article <56n631$5cs@fridge-nf0.shore.net>,
Steve Whittet <whittet@shore.net> wrote:
>In article <petrichE0v26r.BDp@netcom.com>, petrich@netcom.com says...

>>        Irrelevant; there is an abundance of evidence of evolution of 
>>historically-attested languages -- and often evolution in fields that 
>>show no need for evolution, such as phonology, grammar, basic vocabulary, 
>      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>etc.

>You don't think language evolves. Are you a creationist?

	I never claimed that they don't. I pointed out that they _do_, and
often in fields where one would not expect any real need for change. 
Compare Old English and modern English. Or Latin and the Romance
languages. Or Mycenaean Greek, Classical Greek, and Modern Greek. Or
Sanskrit and the present-day Indo-Aryan languages. There are a host of
sound shifts and grammatical changes, and it is not clear why they were
worth making. And Mr. Whittet, if you devoted _half_ the effort you devote
to collecting archeological tidbits to studying historical linguistics,
you'll see what I mean. 

>>        However, there's been a lot of controversy over simian linguistic 
>>abilities; it's not clear that chimps are able to construct coherent 
>>sentences, even with sign language.

>Not since the mid sixties when Washoe began to construct coherent
>complex sentences, or aren't you familiar with the work of Allen
>and Beatrice Gardiner? I don't know how many times the experiment
>has been replicated since then but to label it contraversial is
>simply uninformed.

	Some people _have_ tried to repeat it, and have got much _worse_ 
results. Furthermore, some skeptics have labeled the results a case of 
the Clever Hans effect, where the chimps are picking up clues from their 
interrogators, or projections of interpretations onto long sequences of 
random signs.

	[a lot of Whittetian ink-squirting deleted]
-- 
Loren Petrich				Happiness is a fast Macintosh
petrich@netcom.com			And a fast train
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