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From: hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu (H. M. Hubey)
Subject: Re: Proto-World: several?
Message-ID: <hubey.783534813@pegasus.montclair.edu>
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References: <38uooh$fc4@tardis.trl.OZ.AU> <CyH1At.86E@inter.NL.net>
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 1994 16:33:33 GMT
Lines: 42

mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer) writes:

>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. 
>>

>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.

I suppose the first question is whether humans dispersed before
language. IF this is so, then the only way each language can
have a single parent descent tree is if there was absolutely
no convergence between languages at all. If there was any amount
of convergence among languages, then some of the existant
languages have multiple parents and we'd have many languages
"related" to one another.

If language existed before human dispersals, then for sure
all languages are related without even having to look for
signs of this. Even if there are no signs of this relationship
languages would still be related. So, proto-world, nostratic
etc wind up being dependent on extra-linguistic knowledge.
If on the other hand, someone can produce statistically
convincing evidence that all languages are related, then this
information would also be useful to the anthropologists.


--
						-- Mark---
....we must realize that the infinite in the sense of an infinite totality, 
where we still find it used in deductive methods, is an illusion. Hilbert,1925
