Re: glossogenesis (was: Indo-European question)

Vasily Chernov wrote:
>
>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?
I think that the term "Proto-World" implies that we're talking about a
language stage BEFORE any branching etc had taken place.

But apart from that terminological bit, I think you're probably right, but
it does still not really address the question whether inflection etc has
been around as long as content morphemes*. Despite Ray's and others' posts,
I still find it rather natural to assume that things like number, tense and
mood haven't been arround quite as long as nouns and verbs. After-all, you
won't need, say, tense until you've introduced verbs.

*Is "content morpheme" a correct English terms? I refer, basically, to noun,
verb etc stems as opposed to affixes for additional information like case,
tense and number.

                                                Andreas


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