Re: Neanderthal and PIE

somebody mentioned clan of the cave bear earlier, and the main character
does exactly that. She only speaks Clan (a neanderthal sign language), but
being human has a natural propensity to make sounds, so she makes a conlang
imitative of all those things around her (like birds).
I think the only thing the Neanderthals in those books used sound for was
certain intensifying adverbs and most names.

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 8:29 PM, Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:

> Lars Finsen wrote:
>
>> ROGER MILLS wrote:
>>
>>> What if, by some freak of evolutionary development, the Neanderthal
>>> language was transmitted _genetically_?
>>>
>>
>> Not a bad idea. The whole thing about human language as we know it is that
>> it's so inherently redefinable. Let's say that these Neanderthals never
>> innovated that redefinability, and communicated with instinctive signals
>> like any monkey, except that they had evolved into a degree of complexity
>> approaching a real symbolic language. Theoretically the grammatical
>> structures of this lingo could be entirely different from normal ones -
>> makes my mouth go watery when I think about it. But that isn't relevant to
>> your context, of course.
>>
>
> Well, some bird songs have a good amount of complexity, so it's quite
> possible that a complex phonology could develop for whatever reason (e.g.,
> as a sign of a well-developed memory and fine coordination), and over
> generations the different sound-sequences could acquire specific
> associations of meaning. Bird songs are not entirely genetic (birds raised
> without hearing the songs of their parents might sing an imperfect variation
> of their song), but they are specific enough to the species that it's
> possible to recognize many birds just by listening to them. So the common
> ancestor of Neanderthals and humans in this hypothetical world could have
> had a similar sort of communication system. Many kinds of birds are able to
> learn new songs, even adopting the songs of other birds -- the mockingbirds
> in North Carolina imitate North Carolina birds, while those in Texas imitate
> Texas birds. So the ancestors of modern humans could have been more like
> mockingbirds in that respect and adopted many of the Neanderthal words. It's
> still a stretch, but it's getting closer to the sort of thing that could be
> plausible for a story.
>