----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@...>
To: "NOSTRATICA" <mail@...>; "NOSTRATIC-L"
<Nostratic-L@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 3:16 AM
Subject: RE: LAPIS PHILOSOPHORUM


> All of us on this list presumably affirm the possibility of reconstructing
> a language, which we call Nostratic. Nostratic will be the parent of PIE
> and PAA at a minimum, and include several other language families
> depending on the source.
>
> Many of us believe that all language began with one language some 100-150k
> BPE in Africa, which, with the dispersal of homo sapiens throughout the
> Old World, became the de facto parent of all human language on earth.
>
> I prefer to call this theoretical language simply: the Proto-Language.
>
> Without at this time debating whether it is even possible to reconstruct
> this language, I would like to propose a thought experiment through which
> we shall seek to define the phonological inventory such a language would
> have had.
>
> Obviously, this is a deductive rather than the customary inductive
> approach to the problem.
>
> My first premise will be that the phonological inventory of the
> Proto-Language can be determined as a working hypothesis through the
> application of the
>
> -Law of Linguistic Entropy-,
>
> which will state:
>
> ONLY THE _LEAST_ NECESSARY EFFORT TO ACHIEVE EFFICIENT COMMUNICATION WILL
> BE MADE.
>
> Would any care to comment on this proposal?
>
>
> Patrick