Re: glossogenesis (was: Indo-European question)

At 9:26 pm +0000 19/6/01, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
[Interesting stuff about chimps snipped]
>
>This opens the intriguing possibility that once the hominids started
>out on the neotenic path, with longer childhoods and lifespans, the
>proportion of language-ready individuals in each troop would rise
>quickly, until language just caught like fire in one of them --- and
>that language might have been surprisingly modern.
I like that phrase "until language just caught like fire in one of them" -
maybe even among a group of individual - and once the fire takes hold, then
there's no stopping it.  That's the sort of way I've thought, tho the fire
metaphore never occurred to me.  Yes, I like it!

And I most certainly agree: language might well have been surprisingly
modern.  Indeed, I'd be surprised if it had not been so.

>Perhaps relevant is the idea that the brain structures used for
>language, at least the syntax part, also serve to enable modelling of
>exterior events, planning, and ultimately consciousness --- which may
>explain the evolutionary advantage of developing them before language
>got started.
I agree.

To me the idea that early hominids spoke monosyllabic isolating B-movie
'cavemanese' is, as we say in this neck of the woods, a load of cobblers!

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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