Re: glossogenesis (was: Indo-European question)

> Date:         Wed, 20 Jun 2001 18:26:26 +0000
> From: Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
>
> At 9:26 pm +0000 19/6/01, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
> >This opens the intriguing possibility that once the hominids started
> >out on the neotenic path, with longer childhoods and lifespans, the
> >proportion of language-ready individuals in each troop would rise
> >quickly, until language just caught like fire in one of them --- and
> >that language might have been surprisingly modern.
>
> I like that phrase "until language just caught like fire in one of them" -
> maybe even among a group of individual[s]
Well, by 'in one of them' I actually meant 'in one troop' --- perhaps
taking off from gestures used in cooperative ventures like hunting.

> To me the idea that early hominids spoke monosyllabic isolating B-movie
> 'cavemanese' is, as we say in this neck of the woods, a load of cobblers!
Indeed.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)