From: Christian Weisgerber (naddy@mips.inka.de)
Date: Wed Apr 16 2003 - 05:43:09 MDT
Ramez Naam <mez@apexnano.com> wrote:
> I'm using the common conjecture that grammatical language arose around
> 40,000 years ago and fueled the "great leap forward".
Huh? In what circles is this a common conjecture?
Has anybody bothered to tell the linguists?
> You're right that there is no firm proof that this was when
> grammatical language arose, but the circumstantial evidence appears to
> have convinced most anthropologists.
I'd love to know what this circumstantial evidence is.
Reasonable conjectures are:
* Fully developed human language on a par with today's languages
(this is somewhat stronger than grammatical language, I think)
is at least as old as Homo sapiens.
* The pre-language skills displayed by the modern great apes preserve
those of the common ancestor they share with genus homo.
* Thus, full-fledged language must have developed in the period
between the time when our ancestors split away from those of the
great apes, and the emergence of H. sapiens.
An extended period of language genesis within the timeframe of Homo
sapiens is implausible. When children are raised with a restricted
language such as a pidgin, they will expand this into a full-fledged
(creole) language. With Nicaraguan Sign Language there is also a
documented example of a language arising spontaneously. The limited
evidence suggests that if you simply put together a bunch of Homo
sapiens without language, they'll produce a fully developed language
from scratch within one or two generations of children. While
specific languages are passed on as a part of culture, language
ability itself is inherent in our species.
-- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de
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