Re: Language change among immortals

On 11/22/05, tomhchappell <tomhchappell@...> wrote:

> According to some theorists, one of the major engines behind the rapid
> linguistic change in the Papua/New Guinea area and its nearby islands,
> and one of the major regions that this 1% of the world's inhabited land
> area contains 15% of the world's languages, is that when someone there
> dies, it becomes taboo to say their name -- and, of course, most
> people's names are words or short phrases (usually nominals or
> adjectivals, of course).
That sounds intriguing.  Do you remember where you read
about that?  Is this custom pretty much common to all the tribes
of Papua New Guinea?

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/esp.htm
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