Re: Baby Babble Early Human Language?

I sympathize with and agree with the proposition that, contra Chomsky,
language evolution was not a single sudden leap from no language to
English, but I think that some really silly statements are made in the
article, such as that certain words mean the same thing in every
language, and so on.

In a certain sense, the reasoning is circular.  If certain sounds
are easy to pronounce mechanically, couldn't that fact ALONE
account for the fact that (1) babies babble them, and (2) they
appear very commonly in many languages?

Why postulate the adittional nonsense about them constituting
a "cave man language"?

It's very possible that a lot of good reasoning and contextualizing
got lost between the scientific article and the discovery.com
soundbite, though.

Ed


On Mon, May 01, 2000 at 04:43:05AM -0700, Barry Garcia wrote:
> Did any of you read this article, found here:
> http://www.discovery.com/news/briefs/20000420/misc_babble.html
>
> If, and when you do, what are your thoughts on it?
>
> ________________________________________________
>
>  The rattan basket criticizes the palm leaf basket, still both are full of
> holes.