Re: Re[4]: [tied] How should Nostratic be viewed?

Andrew:

>I said "if" because there are so many opinions on the origin of
>language -- when did it originate? where did it originate?

When and where it originated is irrelevent to whether it exists
or not. I've already explained why it must have.

Accepting that, we may talk about "when". I've concluded so far
that 80,000 BCE is a reasonable guess, after the Out of Africa
event. This doesn't mean that I think that we were speechless in
Africa. I just think that only a certain linguistic line survived
to the modern day. The rest died out.

>Is the origin of language tied to the "Out of Africa" theory?

I say "no".

>Were there multiple languages before the "Out of Africa" event[...]

Yes, and we were speaking languages long before this too.

>[...]and only the language that the (probably) small "Out of Africa" group
>spoke survive?

Not necessarily.

>Or, would "Out of Africa" only apply to non-African language
>families (Hamito-Semitic being considered non-African for the
>sake of simplicity)?

No. Forget the "Out of Africa" event. I'm talking about a
surviving linguistic line more recent than this.

>Or, is there another explanation for the origin of language?

Not unless you believe in aliens.

>These are basically rhetorical questions, by the way.

Ooops, sorry. :)

>You can answer them if you want, but I phrased them thus in order
>to try to show why it's hard to know what to believe.

Belief has nothing to do with this. Logic brings us to the
likeliest answers.


- gLeN


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