Piotr,
You are right, humans are not an inbred species.
What I meant to say was something else, but I tried to be as brief as possible
(that letter was getting long enough; now I have to write an even longer
explanation, which means I've failed). The genetical diversity between
individual members of a small group of people is in fact large, but the
genetical difference between separate groups of people - let's say a group of
Eskimos and a group of Namibians - is very small. At the last turn of the
century, biologists believed that mankind was divided into distinct races, and
that each race had its own, genetically determined traits. Now biologists are
able to study genes directly and they have found that "the genetic difference
between blacks and whites is negligible as compared with the
polymorphism within each group." We are all closer related than we used to
believe. But the genetic differences between individuals are large enough to
make even a small group viable: "if everyone on Earth became extinct except
for the Kikuyu of East Africa, about 85 percent of all human variability would
still be present ---." Humans are not like wheat, we are like weed.
I brought this up to show
that I don't think there's anything wrong with the idea behind Greenberg's and
Ryan's work: since all people are related, all languages must be related as
well. Indo-European, Semitic and other known language families are not isolated,
like islands or ivory towers, they must have been related to each other,
even though the traces of their early development are lost to us. And I'm
sure we are able to learn at least a little more about how they are related to
each other, it's just that the stuff I've seen on the web so far has made
me disappointed. If this is all Greenberg does, like you said, well, give
me a couple of dictionaries and a couple of nights and I'll do it myself! And
Ryan is turning into a pet peeve... But I admit I don't know enough
to criticize him properly and perhaps I'm unfair to him. I'd appreciate if
you told me if I'm the one looking stupid.
Like you, I believe
language was not a conscious invention - and I think this is the reason why
language works at all. Some intellectuals (at least in my country) say that
language is an oppressive structure used by the powerful groups of society, that
it controls and constrains us, that language will never allow us to tell the
truth about what we feel or what we have experienced. Perhaps if language
was a consciously constructed invention it would be an oppressive structure like
they say, but I think there will always be some freedom left because language
has grown out of us more or less unconsciously. It developed out of us when we
were still animals. It's as natural to us as dreaming. No one can have
complete control over it. And it's still growing.
I imagine the development
of spoken language from the way animals communicate to have been a very gradual
process and apparently I'm not the only one doing this. Your message was
interesting, since you seldom talk about these things.
All the
best,
Hakan
Quotes are from "Not in our genes" by Steven
Rose, R. C. Lewontin and Leon J. Kamen, London 1990, pages 124 and 126.
Some feared that genetic research would confirm
racial differences and discover things that would make racists happy - it turned
out just the other way...