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LANGUAGE LAUGHS (was: LANGUAGE LAWS)

From:Raymond A. Brown <raybrown@...>
Date:Thursday, October 29, 1998, 18:33
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.