Re: Dune Conlang

Charles wrote:

> "Thomas R. Wier" wrote:
>
> > In any event, even granting such people complete truth to their
> > theory, I would still say even 10000 years is a more or less total
> > solvent on what might have originally been the status of the
> > protolanguage from which English, or for that matter Galach,
> > come.  IMO there is simple too much assuming that's going on
> > and too little empiricism as one progresses backwards in history.
>
> Most of the non-kook linguists seem to agree with you.
> But ... populations were much smaller, which tends to slow
> language innovation, so I wonder, thinking of the Austronesian
> family which is probably (?) much older than Semitic and PIE,
> if some isolated remaining dialects of it show some unusually
> "time-deep" commonalities?
Like what?  Certainly, the commonalities may exist, but as for
their importance to us, they only exist insofar as we can prove
they exist.  At some point, IMO it simply becomes impossible
to distinguish the data that are similar because logical relations
make them likely to appear in any language, those that are similar
because of the hypothesized inbuilt biological language mechanisms
that may exist, and those that exist simply because the synchronic
form of the language inherited them from its ancestor.  All the more
so, since any or all three of those phenomena could be affecting
the data at any given period.

> Or maybe rock paintings with a
> similar ordering of motifs suggestive of a linguistic analogy?
> Kinda far-fetched.
Yeah, I'd say so.  How is one to say that right-to-left
is the correct interpretation is correct, rather than left-to-right
or some variation of a palaeoboustrophedon?  Or, like
Dal=ED, whether structure has any meaning at all?

It really all depends on the data, but I'd say that without strong
empirical evidence saying so, who knows?

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

Non cuicumque datum est habere nasum.
It is not given to just anyone to have a nose.
        -- Martial
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D