Re: glossogenesis (was: Indo-European question)

Tommie L Powell sikayal:

> Those terms -- pidgins, creoles, sprachbunds -- can't apply
> in this context, because they can't arise until after language
> becomes substantially differentiated between groups.  Before
> tribalization, no band -- no seasonally migrating group of from
> 50 to 150 people -- could have spoken much differently from
> any other nearby band, since each band had to communicate
> with each other such band at various food sources where
> their separate annual migratory circuits overlapped.
You have some good ideas, but unfortunately they don't hold up to facts
which we currently have.  The situation you describe still exists in many
parts of the world, and the people use a language every bit as complex as
the ones we have.  I'm thinking specifically of the Inuit languages, which
are stretched in a series of languages from Alaska all the way across
northern Canada (I think).  Each region speaks a dialect nearly identical
with the dialects around it, but mutual intelligibility decreases linearly
the further you go from your starting point.  And these languages are some
of the most complex and difficult languages known (from a European
perspective.)


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton