Re: [tied] Pat's ProtoWorld Playland

From: Steve Woodson
Message: 6219
Date: 2001-02-28

As a matter of fact I did miss you. Welcome back.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2001 8:50 PM
Subject: [tied] Pat's ProtoWorld Playland


>
> Hi, everyone! I'm back. Miss me? (boo, hiss, boo) I had midterms. Then I
had
> my midterm break so I drew out a bubble bath and sank in. The next few
weeks
> are a blur. Let me say, I'm feeling particularily sudsy today.
>
> > The link to Stetsyuk's map of Nostratic languages didn't work.
> > Here is Pat Ryan's article on Germanic and Semitic:
> >http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/c-AFRASIAN-3_germanic.htm
>
> Since when has Pat Ryan become a respectable authority on long-range
> comparison? He's not. At all. I won't mince words about him. Pat (whose
> alias may in fact be none other than Dizzy Cohen) is a lunatic. And I
> seriously wonder about others who can't immediately see the logical
> paradoxes involved in his "theory"... if we can indeed call it a theory
> without laughing hysterically?
>
> Let me explain. Pat assumes monogenesis. There is nothing wrong with this
> idea because assuming ONE origin to language is simpler and more
> Occam-compliant than assuming more than one origin. However, Pat then
> quickly goes too far, in the lunatic style that only he can deliver. He
> comes to the amazing revelation that the original language must have been
> perfectly regular in every way like Esperanto. He doesn't once think that
> maybe this "Proto-World" is not alone but rather the only surviving
language
> amongst many others that may have once existed tens of thousands of years
> ago. He doesn't consider that maybe this Proto-World was as natural, as
> perfectly IRREGULAR and as developed as modern languages now spoken. He
> doesn't once think that sound on its own is abstract by nature, void of
any
> meaning, thereby providing any rational thinking person with the
paradoxical
> question: "... But, Pat? Where did your Proto-World come from in the first
> place?" Time for a logic pill, folks!
>
> To explain the origin of language (that is, _spoken_ language) we must
> accept a slow, gradual evolution over millions of years. Language didn't
> come from grunts and ughs, per se, although our ancestors probably
happened
> to grunt now and then :) Language slowly developed over an immense span of
> time, far beyond the timespan of our human species. Even our primate
> brethren have capacity for language (even my dog Spot understands
language),
> however these animals do not have the voicebox to initiate speech like we
> can. One thing primates do have is hands, mobile hands, very functional
> hands, that can contort and twist with dexterity... perfect for language.
> It's been demonstrated that they CAN be used for language. This brings us
to
> the likeliest way I know of how our most primitive ancestors could
"speak".
> They would mostly use sign language - a more visual, less abstract
language
> form whose meaning is more readily understandable by someone else because
> the symbolism is quite visual, not oral. Remember: It takes two to speak a
> language and if the other one doesn't understand the gibberish you're
> saying, you aren't communicating, are you.
>
> Anyways, this early sign language was probably spoken with some vocal
> accompaniment for emphasis or expressing emotion. As time went on, focus
> could easily change from sign to spoken as our throats became better
adapted
> to speech and as the "vocal accompaniments" began to take on a meaning all
> on their own.
>
> There! Everything solved. No need for an esperantized ProtoWorld. No need
> for Pat's website wonderland of insanity.
>
> Now, I heard along the grape vine that geneticists and anthropologists
take
> it that there was a "bottleneck" in the human population. A point when the
> human population took a mondo nosedive. The human species is some 200,000
> years old but it would appear that somewhere within this time-frame, we
> might have almost went extinct as a species. I was watching an interesting
> program on "super-volcanoes" which provided a link between the bottleneck
> and the explosion of some super-vulcano in Sumatra around 74,000 BCE which
> would have crashed the world temperature by as much as five degrees
because
> of all the ash. This would also provide an excellent date for the
> theoretical proto-world language. There were surely other humans that
> existed besides our "Eve" but whose descendants didn't make it to the
modern
> day. This is exactly the same with language and so there should be no
> awesome mystery to solve here.
>
> Anyways, everyone, please forget about Pat. He doesn't even try to make
> sense.
>
> - gLeN
>
>
>
>
>
>
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