Re: R: Re: Baby Babble Early Human Language?
From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
Date: | Thursday, May 4, 2000, 17:17 |
Mangiat wrote:
> The simplest sounds to
> pronounce are, IMVeryHO, 'm' and the vowel 'a', which are also the first
> sounds a baby pronounce in words as 'mummy' /mam:i/
Actually, babies usually say things like "dada" before "mama", because
nasal consonants are more difficult for the infant vocal tract (infants
have a chimp-like vocal tract, which only later becomes the more
typically human vocal tract).
> perhaps primitives used a syllabic structure as simple as in this
> exemple.
Probably. Especially if language evolved very gradually, the first
primitive forms of language might've been spoken by people not capable
of the same complexity of sounds.
However, beyond that simple conclusion, there's not much to that
article. There's no way that we could get even the roughest idea of
what the first language(s) might've been like.
--
"If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men
believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of
the city of God!" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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