Glen:
>>No. This isn't politics, this is pure reasoning.
Gerry:
>Yes, Glen. And in your earlier post today you stated that anyone who
>speaks a language can comment on linguistics. How do we draw the >line
>between someone who *knows* what he's talking about vs someone >who's *out
>to lunch*?
But one hopes that this judgement is not drugged by politics. I'm not sure
who you are refering to when you say "out to lunch" but if a person doesn't
know how to use reasoning to judge a theory then automatically I guess it
can't be helped. However, I believe that since comparitive linguistics is a
theoretical science, anyone can come along and think up something to solve a
problem whether formally trained or not as long as they understand their
subject. Yet, who knows their subject 100%? No one. So who's to judge. The
insane one here is only the one that refuses to learn further.
Look at Einstein. Maybe he was out to lunch but thank god he wasn't
discouraged by nay-sayers or we wouldn't know about the curvature of
space-time, time dilation or E=mc2. And nobody would have eventually come up
with cool new drug-induced theories like 10-dimensional superstring theories
or the concept of "virtual particles" existing in a vaccuum. Why, Star Trek
wouldn't exist! All because of that kooky Einstein.
One's reasoning when evaluating a theory has to be based on some sort of
knowledge of the subject plus the ability to think realistically in terms of
likeliest probability (since we are dealing with a theoretical subject here
and there are often no absolutes). To think realistically about probability
one has to understand Occhim's Rasor. It basically says not to multiply
hypotheses and to not give in to wild assumption that ignores the greatest
probability.
For instance, here's Occhim's Rasor at work: It's most logical that there
was no first human language since it cannot arise out of the blue amongst a
mute population without the meanings of its words being conveyed first but
this cannot be done without language - a chicken-and-the-egg paradox (or so
it seems).
The most rational solution is that it must have evolved slowly from a less
abstract form - gestural language. Therefore, vocal language has bubbled
forth in different populations in different areas independantly, giving rise
to many Proto-Worlds over a vast period of time amongst a vocal but
predominantly signing population. In this muddle, it would be quite
impossible with comparative linguistics to work back to any early sign
language form, nor to pick apart the intermediary but partially
sign-dependant forms of vocal language from the gestural signs themselves.
However, despite the certainty of polygenesis, we cannot pretend to know in
our present knowledge whether the languages that have survived to the
present day are or are not derived from some common ancestor (even though
this is assuredly not THE Proto-World). Thus, it is still quite possible for
a monogenetic origin of modern languages (a kind of "Eve hypothesis" in
linguistic terms) but it is not possible for vocal language to have been
anything other than polygenic.
Soon everyone will be assimilated into Glen's World Order of Linguistic
Theory.... HAHAHAHAHA!!!!
- gLeN
______________________________________________________