Re: CHAT: proto-language

Joshua Shinavier wrote:
> A long time ago I saw a TV program about evolutionary linguistics where a
> scientist claimed to have found a word (the meaning had to do with milk,
> "to suckle", IIRC) which was common, in variation, to all families of languages;
Well, for one thing, a word like "suckle" has a lot of variation.  If
you're referring to Nostraic, the supposed cognate can vary in meaning
between words like "suckle", "milk", "breast", "mother", etc.  IMO, it's
most likely a case of sound-symbolism, like the fact that most languages
have nasal consonants in words for mother (e.g., "mama", "mother",
"nana", "anaanaq", etc.), presumably due to the fact that /m/ is among
the very first sounds made by infants, especially syllables like /ma/,
so that words for mother are often based on these sounds, i.e., an
infant says /mama/, and the parents interpret it as a word ("he said
mama").

> Do linguists generally think that language emerged in one place
Most linguists think so, but it's unprovable.  After tens of thousands
of years, its descendents would be unrecognizable.  Personally, I rather
like to think that God Himself gave us languages once and only once.

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