Re: LANGUAGE LAWS

Mathias M. Lassailly wrote:

> Nik wrote :
>
> Mathias M. Lassailly wrote:
> > > I strongly agree with you [Tommie]. Also, these languages often refer to one
> > > specific context by means of a locution made of several morphemes.
> > > For instance, 'to give' would be referred to as 'hand...give' and
> > > 'cow' as 'animal-cow'. I think that Europeans often underestimate
> > > these 'classifiers' as 'redundant', whereas I do believe they are an
> > > inherent part of the concept evoked. It's not a question of compounding
> > > but of limiting and identifying the concept meant. Maybe 'grammar'
> > > originate from some of these parts of words having gained mandatory
> > > syntactic role ?
>
> > Actually, I think that polysynthetic is the newest type.  My personal
> > theory is that the first language was a few words, no grammar.  Much
> > like pidgins, relying on context...  Nouns and verbs, perhaps, were the first
> > words.
>
> I think first words were unaspective, so you could not tell a verb from a noun.
>
So far, I entirely agree with you, Mathias. Now I will attempt to explain to Nik
why his theory -- that the "first language" consisted of a few "nouns and
verbs" with "no grammar" -- is highly unlikely (and perhaps even impossible).

We conlangers can make up a noun or verb quite easily: We just define such words
in terms of words that we already know. And, if you look up a word in the
dictionary, you will see that it is always defined in terms of other words in
that dictionary, so that you cannot figure out what any word means unless
you already know what other words mean.

Nor can you define a word by physically pointing to an example of it -- or even by
pointing to several examples of it -- without putting the word in some sort of
grammatical context to help the listener figure out what sort of meaning you're
trying to convey.

So I don't believe that the first language had any defined (or definite) words:
Instead, I believe (as Mathias says) that "first words were unaspective, so you
could not tell a verb from a noun." Specifically, I believe that we originally
used language to refer to activities that we (and/or other animals)
engaged in, and that the first words (other than perhaps a few pronouns, numbers and
grammatical devices) were unaspective words which each referred to some such
activity. I'll give some examples.

During their seasonal migrations, Stone Age people needed to know what direction they
were traveling. One way to "orient" yourself is to face toward the "Orient" --
the direction in which the sun rises -- when you begin each day of travel, so
Indo-Europeans inherited both the verb "to orient oneself" and
the noun for the Far East, "the Orient", from that activity.

Alternative explanations -- that the noun came from the verb, or that the verb came from
the noun -- do not make sense, for there are far too many other ways to orient
oneself, and there are far too many ways, other than orienting oneself, to
define the Far East.

Another example: When Stone Age people gathered food and brought it back to their
camp, the put it in a pile. Then whoever had to cook the food went to that pile
and selected some items to be eaten at the next meal. Because they were
generally right-handed, they put each selected item to the right as they
took it out of that pile, thereby making a second pile (of selected food) to the
right of that first pile. The unselected food was, of course, "left" in the
"left" pile, while the selected food -- the "right" food to eat -- was put in
the "right" pile.

>From that activity, we Indo-Europeans inherited our words for the "right" and
>"left" directions, and for "right" (good or correct) and "left"
>(remaining/abandoned or, in variants used by many Indo-European languages,
>"sinister").
The alternative explanations -- that "right=correct/good" and
"left=abandoned/sinister" came from the words for the "right" and "left"
directions, or vice versa -- are far too lidicrous to seriously discuss (IMO).

-- Tommie