Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!rutgers!news.sgi.com!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!netcom.com!petrich
From: petrich@netcom.com (Loren Petrich)
Subject: Re: Language hard-wired in the brain?
Message-ID: <petrichDxv3qC.3Dv@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <51ik58$lvc@scream.auckland.ac.nz>
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 05:39:47 GMT
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In article <51ik58$lvc@scream.auckland.ac.nz>,
 <drc@antnov1.auckland.ac.nz> wrote:

	[Language replacement in Australia: Pama-Nyungan langs by an
Indo-European language]

	And there are plenty of examples of essentially complete language 
replacements in several places with long written histories. Perhaps the 
most extreme might be what is now southeastern Iraq:

Some pre-Sumerian language (?) -- Sumerian -- Akkadian -- Aramaic (?) -- Arabic

The pre-Sumerian language is inferred from internal evidence in Sumerian, 
while Aramaic had been used as a language of administration by the 
Persian Empitre and its successors (I don't know how widely it was used 
among the general population, however).

	However, place names are the main linguistic survivors, often 
surviving many linguistic replacements.
-- 
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