----- Original
Message -----
Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2004 1:16 PM
Subject: Re: [Nostratic-L] Proto-World
> I personally do not believe in the monogenesis theory. I
believe in
> the polygenesis theory. I want to get input on what you guys
think.
I think that all world languages are ultimately related to each
other
and form a huge "language family" which represents the only
language
family to have survived some 80,000 years of development or more.
We
may call this language family "Proto-World" but it would not have
been
the only language even at that time, just the only _surviving_
language
group that would later create all these diverse languages we see.
I
personally don't see there being much value in reconstructing
Proto-World
until we can settle how more recent stages of languages had
developped.
This will naturally take centuries!
So... my view is in
summary monogenesis with a polygenetic flavour. It's
parallel to the idea of
Mitochondrial Eve in genetics, by the way.
The reason why I think this
way is because I recognize that vocal
communication is highly abstract and
unintuitive. We use a special set
of sounds to somehow represent both
tangible entities as well as
intangible concepts. This is not something that
would just spontaneously
develop in any community. Communication is a
two-person thing but how
can you convey to someone what a random string of
sounds is supposed to
represent in your mind unless... you use
sign.
I've noticed how gestural communication (such as sign language) is
less
abstract because it effectively paints visual pictures in air, as it
were.
I find it easier to pick up what a person speaking sign language might
be
conveying to another on the bus than someone speaking a foreign
language
without gesturing.
So what I've concluded is that language
was a long evolutionary shift from
body language (like animals in the wild)
to gestural communication (once
us monkeys stood upright) and then finally
vocal communication (once our
vocals chords were up to the
challenge).
The way this would work is that there would be no particular
geographical
area from which the first vocal languages would develop, but
rather it
would be an imperceptible, painfully slow change of focus over
millions
of years from languages where gesture is the focus and speech
compliments
it, to languages where speech is the focus and gesture adds to
it. Even
so, this evolution isn't even that straight-forward considering
that
many hunters still traditionally use sign language because in
this
situation it is more advantageous than speech. Any sound would
obviously
spook the animals you're chasing after and make your job
tougher.
= gLeN