Re: Darwinistic or ancient strata?

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Raivo Seppo <uiracocha@H...> wrote:
>
> Does some conlangs, or even natlangs, reflect Darwinistic views? That
> is,
> the words designating apes and men, birds and reptiles, could they be
> cognate? I don´t mean figurativeness ("apeman") but really ancient
> strata in
> language.
1. First, you are confusing Darwinistic views with Linnaean
classification.

That makes a simple yes-or-no answer to your question complicated;
either answer would be false.

2.  As for the question; Does any natlang designate apes and men by
basically the same or very similar words?  The answer is "Yes; indeed
some people are of the opinion that most languages spoken by peoples
who have no reading nor writing, but do have contact with great apes,
call great apes 'people'".  An example is "orang-utan", "man of the
forest".

3.  Linnaeus's taxonomy classifies living things into Kingdom, Phylum,
Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species.  There are two different and
competing forces involved in this nomenclature; cladism and
systematism.  Systematism has no underlying theory; but cladism
basically believes that more similar organisms descended from a more
recent common ancestor than dissimilar organisms.

4.  Cladism need not be Darwinian.  Lamarkianism was a different
evolutionary theory than Darwinism.  Cladism need not even be
evolutionist.

5.  Please don't get annoyed by all my numbered paragraphs.  I wasn't
bawling you out; I was just trying to make my thoughts clear while the
librariy's loudspeaker was telling me I had to leave in ten minutes.  I
actually enjoyed your question.

-----

Tom H.C. in MI