Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: hubey@pegasus.montclair.edu (H. M. Hubey)
Subject: Re: Proto-World: several?
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References: <38uooh$fc4@tardis.trl.OZ.AU> <CyH1At.86E@inter.NL.net> <hubey.783534813@pegasus.montclair.edu> <3915tg$g32@tardis.trl.OZ.AU>
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 1994 03:54:43 GMT
Lines: 18

jbm@newsserver.trl.oz.au (Jacques Guy) writes:

>Not necessarily. Some might have lost language, and 
>rediscovered it later. Tasmanian aborigines lost
>a lot of technologies. Earliest middens show some 200
>types of artifacts. Latest only 19. Why shouldn't
>language be lost too, and rediscovered?

Come on now, Jacques. What did they do while they had lost
their language? Did they stop communication all together or
use sign language?  Many millenia of moving around and
mixing with other peoples and language convergence could
have wiped out almost all of the original language but then
it would still retain something from the other languages.
--
						-- 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
