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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 ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTailor