Re: THEORY: Question about the evolution of language

JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON wrote:
> Well, the first human language(s) had to come from somewhere, I guess.
> The questions for your hypothetical experimenter to answer are:  What
> is the critical mass, and what sort of time period are we talking
> about?  Would the original isolated group of children develop a full-
> blown language, given their 'hard-wiring', or would the development
> of a full-blown language take a few - or few hundred - generations
> to come about?
Well, given observations about the development of languages from the
pidgin level, I suspect that development would be pretty rapid, at
least, once it reached a certain minimum.  MAYBE, it might take a few
dozen generations to reach the crude-pidgin-level, but then it would
take off to full creolization.  My guess would be that at a certain
population level, a few of the children would hit on the idea of
language, fashioning a crude language, this would then provide the
"linguistic input" you mentioned earlier to give rise to full
creolization.

> Well, I think you're seriously downplaying the significance of the
> linguistic input the Nicaraguan children received, however limited it
> might have been.  (And anyway, I doubt it was really so limited.
> 'Homesign' systems usually consist of more than a few dozen signs;
> IIRC, some of the better studied homesign systems ran into the
> hundreds of signs.
Really?  Interesting!  I'd been led to believe they were rarely more
than a few dozen.  Perhaps you're right after all.

Speaking of sign languages, what is the origin of "standard" SL's like
ASL?

> What I'm disputing is your characterisation of NSL as having arisen sui
> generis, as it were.  NSL definitely developed out of a pidgin, which
> in turn grew out of the sharing of certain common homesign conventions
> among students at the recently-established school for the deaf in
> Managua.  Just because NSL developed differently from spoken creoles
> that we know about is no reason not to call it a creole.
Hmm, you may be right.  However, there's still a dramatic difference, in
that most creoles come from simplified languages, while the homesign
systems on which NSL was ultimately based were essentially invented,
yes?  And were never full languages, even by your own admission, they
were only pidgin-level.

--
"If all Printers were determin'd not to print any thing till they were
sure it would offend no body, there would be very little printed" -
Benjamin Franklin
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files/
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ #: 18656696
AIM screen-name: NikTailor