LANGUAGE LAUGHS (was: LANGUAGE LAWS)

Before I went to France I was thinking Tommie's Stone Age stuff was serious
& was respondinng accordingly.  But when I read through the couple of
hundred mails waiting for me, I noticed these & all becomes clear - it's
all got to be a bit of legg-pulling, surely!

At 6:13 pm +0000 23/10/98, Tommie Powell wrote:
>Raymond A. Brown wrote:
......
>> there.  Certainly it's difficult to believe the polysynthetic structure of
>> (some of) the native American languages was a retention of the structure of
>> the 'Ursprach'.
>
>I don't know what "retention of the structure of the 'Ursprach'" could
>possibly
>mean in this context.
About as much as "Stone Age Language" means, I guess  ;)


And at 5:36 pm +0000 23/10/98, Tommie Powell wrote:
........
>
>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").
:-D     :-D    :-D     :-D

It makes the Flintstones look tame stuff!

Now let's get back to conlanging.

Ray.