Re: lexicon

Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:

> On Sat, May 31, 2003 at 12:24:50AM +0100, michael poxon wrote:
> > I'm not sure anyone knows what language was created for (does
> > there have to be a reason?) - but in any case that kind of
> > argument tends to imply a wilful act of creation. I think you'll
> > find that 'arts' came before everything, and included language.
>
> Only if you include Creation as an art and take literally
> something like the Genesis story of God creating through words.
> But if we restrict the discussion to Human language and Human
> art, then there's no doubt that language came first; it's
> a built-in instinct, whereas art is a cultural construct.
How can we be sure of this? Who says there can't have been cultural constructs
before hominids learned to speak? One might think that chimpanzees' "tool
traditions" might classify as cultural constructs, and chimps don't speak.

(Lest someone invokes the experiments regarding teaching captive chimps to
speak, let me point out that chimps out in the jungle certainly does not speak
anything like a Human Language, and it's they who have the "tool traditions",
by which I mean the fact that certain groups use tools/techniques that are
learnt from the earlier generation and does not occur in other groups.)

                                                                   Andreas

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