Re: glossogenesis (was: Indo-European question)

About the isolating nature of Proto-World... there is an objection
against it which for some reason I've never heard clearly formulated
while it appears quite natural to myself.

If linguistic ability evolved, that was probably a process of many stages;
on the analogy with other cultural (and biological) phenomena, it can be
imagined that each previous stage wasn't shorter than the subsequent
one(s).

I'd assume that the last stage before a "real human" lang was, roughly,
a "real human" lang *minus* a few most difficult features.

When I try to figure out what those difficult features could be, I think,
rather, of certain types of subordinate sentences, complex sets of rules
for tense/mood coordination, perhaps the ability to operate extensive
lexica and the like. But I *don't* think sound alternations, or cases,
or noun classes were as hard to process for the "next-to-human" brains.
We are suited to see such features as main "difficulties" of a given
lang, but in fact even in learning a foreign lang they constitute only
the top of the iceberg (and, conspicuously, first chapters of our
manuals).

Now, the last "next-to-human" stage wasn't shorter than the "real human"
one. That is, it lasted longer than all the linguistic evolution since
neolithic times that has produced whole macrofamilies of quite diverse
langs.

And indeed, on that stage language must have already been something
taught-and-learnt rather than biologically inherited. Therefore, it
evolved like "real human" langs do. By the moment of the last step
towards "real human", the language, most probably, has been evolving
for many, many millennia, and the features that could evolve included
nearly everything a modern language has - *except* a few "real difficult"
things!

So I don't see why Proto-World couldn't be a nightmare blend of
incorporation, apophony, some weird role assignment system and
whatnot. It had enough time to develop all this even if it was an
isolating lang at some stage earlier than the "next-to-human" one.

What do you folks think of the above?


Basilius