Re: glossogenesis (was: Indo-European question)

At 2:22 pm -0400 23/6/01, Andreas Johansson wrote:
[snip]
>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.
I thought Hopi & some other languages showed tense with nouns also.

But tense, as we westerners think of it, presupposes a _linear_ ordeing of
time.  There other other possibilities; thinking in cyclic terms has not, I
think, been uncommon; and early man whose life was dominated by the ever
recurring seasons, and by the daily setting & rising of the sun, may well
have had a cyclic rather than linear view of time.

Indeed, in many languages still tense is fairly undefined, but _aspect_ is
far more important, e.g. modern Chinese.  In Proto-Indo-European, aspect
was the important thing, not tense.  As for the latter, there seems merely
to have been an opposition between past and non-past.  Indeed, that's all
we do in modern English still!  The so-called 'future' is often expressed
by "present tense" (e.g. I'm going Boston next week) or is marked by using
the _modal_ verb 'will' (non-past) ~ 'would' (past).  The Romans developed
a past-present-future tense system; we anglophones still haven't done so.
Does that make us more primitive than the Romans?

I suspect, indeed, in earlier communities when technological progess was
slow, _mood_ and _aspect_ were far more important thing to show than
_tense_.

Number?  Oh dear, we still have 'primitive' languages like Chinese and
Japanese that don't mark number as we westerners do with our singular &
plurals!!

I somehow suspect even the most 'primitive' hominid could make out the
difference between a single bison, just two or three bison, a group of say
a dozen or so bison and a whole herd of bison.  If s/he spoke, I'm darn
sure that s/he'd be able to convey the difference to her/his fellows.
Whether this was shown grammatically as in English or contextually as in
Chinese is IMO quite irrelevant.  That early man didn't do advanced
mathematics is also IMHO quite irrelevant as regards glossogenesis.
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At 4:11 pm -0400 23/6/01, Nik Taylor wrote:
>Tommie L Powell wrote:
>> could create language
>> boundaries (so that each tribe could develop a distinct
>> language of its own).
>
>I don't get your argument.  For one thing, even today there are
>frequently no distinct borders between languages, but rather chains of
>dialects.
Yep - and many of the distinct boundaries have appeared because (a) a
standard _written_ form of a language has been developed in different
areas, and (b) political boundaries have been established, and (c) the
standard form is taught in all schools within the political boundary.

For example, at one time there was a chain of neo-Romance dialects from
northern France right through to southern Italy & Sicily.  Neighboring
dialects were intelligible but as one got further away, the differences
multiplied.  Now, of course, two standards have been estabished, one based
on dialects spoken around Paris and the other on dialects spoken in
Tuscany; you will find a boundary between Italy & France marked on maps.
In France, standard French predominates; in Italy, standard Italian is
universal, tho local dialects survive better.

But early man had no writing and thus there were no written standards and
thus chains of dialects are far more likely IMHO.

At 1:19 pm -0700 23/6/01, jesse stephen bangs wrote:
[snip]
>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.)
Quite so - and until someone gives me solid evidence to the contrary, I
still find it easier to believe that human language has always been complex.

Surely glossogenesis was only part of the larger phenemenon of noogenesis -
the birth of human intelligence.  Yet no one finds it so surprising. Don't
higher animals show some degree of intelligence?  Only yesterday, I was
watching a TV program where a guy was conducting experiments to test the
intelligence of octopuses.  Yet, it must be admitted, human intelligence is
of a qualitatively higher order.

Quite so - and do not higher orders of animals communicate?  Is there not
communication within the termite colony? Communication techniques have been
elvolving for billions upon billions of years. i.e. the faculty for
language had a very, very long evolution.

Lars talked of language catching like fire.  Long before hominids appeared
on this planet there were forest fires. The forests had all the
potentiality of being burnt; it needed a lightening strike to get the thing
going.

Throughout the eons of evolution, as I see it, the faculties for intellect
& language were evolving in wonderous ways.  Eventually there appeared
creatures with the all the latent potentiality to think, reason & speak;
and when the spark occurred language & thought spread like fire.

What was the spark?  Who can tell?  Maybe it was divine intervention; maybe
there is a 'natural' cause which will bring this about when all the natural
conditions are right.

At 12:42 pm -0400 23/6/01, Nik Taylor wrote:
[snip]
>That's also a possibility.  Since we have never observed language
>outside of Human beings, we can only guess.  Myself, I tend to go with
>the "divine gift" hypothesis.  :-)
However noogenesis & its concomitant glossogenesis came about, I too think
the gift of language & intellect, like life itself, is divine.

Ray.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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