Piotr:
> And the whole Nguni branch of Bantu (including Zulu and Xhosa) would
> have to disappear as well (not to mention Hadza and Sandawe, whose
> relatedness to any part of "Khoisan" is problematic). [...]
Mate:
> You're all hairsplitting... I should have written if there was no
> Khoisan group (including Hadza and Sandawe), and the Nguni branch
> of Bantu and Damin linguists would think that clics are impossibile.
Actually, Mate, you started the hairsplitting because I never mentioned
anything about clic sounds to begin with!
I simply said that a monovocalic vowel system is completely unattested.
This is the hard truth. Say "yes" to reality.
One-vowel systems really _are_ a nonreality. Now you may say something
childish like "Well, we just haven't found it yet" but this in itself
admits to the fact that even if it _did_ exist, it occurs once out of
every FEW THOUSAND languages or more! You can do the math, Mate, and
you're intelligent enough to have come across the term 'statistically
irrelevant'. This is the reason why we seldom even see protolanguages
with clic sounds too. What a coincidence, eh?
If Jens' idea isn't 0% probability, this still all equates to an
exceedingly, ridiculously low probability under 1%. And yet, despite the
statistical odds, you side with Jens for an "unattested"/"exceedingly
rare" vowel system?!
I question your logic and I question that of Jens for those reasons.
My objection should be easy to absorb both linguistically and
statistically unless it is at odds with personal pet-theory nostalgia.
The end.
= gLeN