Re: glossogenesis (was: Indo-European question)

On Sat, 23 Jun 2001 jesse stephen bangs wrote:
> 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.)
>
I'll address the Inuit case directly in a moment, but first I should
point out that all the societal languages spoken in the world today are
either tribal languages, or national languages decended from tribal
languages, or "creole" languages created by populations whose
native tongues were tribal and/or national languages.  So all languages
spoken in the world today are either tribal languages or languages
ultimately derived from tribal languages.  So we can't infer -- from the
facts we have about present-day languages -- what degree of
complexity existed in language during the pre-tribal "Proto-World" era.

The Inuit don't merely speak a tribal language: They also have all the
technological innovations wrought by the neolithic revolution that
tribalization spawned -- without which, survival in the arctic would be
impossible!  (Only a tribe of intermarrying bands could hold together
for countless generations, and thereby build up a large base of
technical knowledge and sophisticated techniques, and that's why
we lived so primitively throughout the pre-tribal Proto-World era.)

A large base of technical knowledge is imbedded in any tribal
language's vocabulary, and any tribal language embodies a large
base of sophisticated techniques in its grammar.  Such a vocabulary,
and such a grammar, surely takes many generations to build up.
And since only a tribe -- and not a pre-tribal band -- could hold
together for generation after generation, there's no reason to
believe that we were capable of creating such languages before
tribalization occurred.  (We had the necessary mental equipment,
but we lacked the sufficient social system until we formed tribes.)

-- Tommie

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