Re: glossogenesis (was: Indo-European question)

Raymond Brown wrote:
>
>At 3:18 pm -0400 18/6/01, Andreas Johansson wrote:
> >Raymond Brown wrote:
>[snip]
> >>
> >>I think not.  Just popular modern mythology.  Moderns like to think that
> >>they are so wise and all preceeding generations are less so; the further
> >>back, the more stupid - therefore primitive man couldn't possibly handle
> >>"grammar".
> >
> >One problem with that - the arguments for primitive man* being stupid are
> >quite good. The Australopithecines had smaller brains than us, they had
>less
> >complex brains than us, they had a lower brain-to-body ratio than us, and
> >despite existing for millions of years they only ever developed a dozen
>or
> >so different tools.
>
>...and, I'm told, Neanderthal man had higher brain-to-body ratio.
Well, they certainly had bigger average brain size at least (being roughly
the same size and build, I suspect that the brain-to-body ratio difference
between Neanderthal man and us may be very small compared to the spread
among individuals of either species/subspecies). Indeed, the only argument
I've seen to the effect the Neanderthals couldn't've been (at least as)
intelligent as us is that despite existing for hundreds of thousand sof
years, they achieved much less technological development than H. Sapiens did
during a much shorter time span*. However, other theorists explain this as
being due to cultural or climatological factors.

But, strictly speaking, the Neanderthals are irrelevant, because they're not
our ancestors. Of course, you COULD postulate that modern H. sapiens LEARNT
language from Neaderthals, but apart from being totally hypothetical, it
makes it even harder to understand how the weaker, less cold-resistant and
smaller-brained Cro Magnon humans could relatively quickly take over western
Eurasia from the Neanderthals.

* In some 100,000 years, they went from Erectus-style stone-axes to the
brink of the Neolithic Revolution. Then, of course, population figures
exploded (and the explosion is not over yet ...), which's undoubtedly the
main reason for the increased speed of development thereafter, in
combination with the larger and more complex societies made possible by
argiculture and husbandry.
>
> >But there's a better argument. If we accept evolutionism, humans have
> >developed from moncellular organisms that most certainly couldn't speak.
>
>I don't think we need go back to monocellular organism.  We can get much
>closer; no primates, other than Homo Sapiens has AFAIK evolved anything
>comparable to human speech.  I'm not expert in this field, but I'm told
>that chimps have mentalities comparable to five-year old kids; but
>five-year old humans talk pretty fluently - no chimp does.
Well, it's not unlikely that the early members of the genus Homo had some
sort of language, and not impossible that the Australopithecines had. I went
back to the monocellular level simply to assure 100% certainty of finding a
non-speaking ancestor.

                                                       Andreas
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.