Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer)
Subject: Re: Proto-World: several?
Message-ID: <CyH1At.86E@inter.NL.net>
Organization: NLnet
References: <38uooh$fc4@tardis.trl.OZ.AU>
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 1994 05:44:52 GMT
Lines: 29

In article <38uooh$fc4@tardis.trl.OZ.AU>,
Jacques Guy <jbm@newsserver.trl.oz.au> wrote:
>
>Yes indeed, why not. Saying that language must have had a single
>origin strikes me as equivalent to saying that the ability to
>fly must have had a single origin. It is patently silly. But
>silliness has never stopped anyone. 
>
>Le ridicule ne tue pas. 
>

The structure of bird's wings is clearly different from
bat's wings, or pterodactyl's wings or insect's wings,
and we know they had different origins.  In the case of
human language, it has not been demonstrated (as far as I
know) that a certain group or groups of languages are
fundamentally different from other groups.  The study of
language universals at least seems to part from the basis
that all languages are comparable with all other languages.
This does not prove that language *must have had* a single
origin (the little I know about sign languages of the deaf
seems to indicate that they share a common "structure", but
that they arose independently [can anyone comment on that?]),
but it does not rule the possibility out, either.

-- 
Miguel Carrasquer         ____________________  ~~~
Amsterdam                [                  ||]~  
mcv@inter.NL.net         ce .sig n'est pas une .cig 
