Re: Italian vs Turkish

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 12/30/04 

Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 12:03:33 GMT

John Atkinson wrote:
>
> "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote :
> > >
> > > Isn't it highly probable that all languages did not have one common
> > > ancestor?
> >
> > No.
>
> For something about which we have absolutely no evidence one way or another,
> and can see no way in which we're ever likely to get any, to say it's
> "probable" or "improbable" is rather meaningless.
>
> Though, if I had to make a bet on this (which I wouldn't, because it could
> never be determined who'd won), I'd plump for monogenesis like Peter, as the
> (marginally) more economical hypothesis.

It's indisputable.

If a language capacity had evolved more than once, then there would be
sets of languages that arose within one or another, and they would
differ in some small but essential way(s), and infants' automatic
learning of languages would differ at least in efficiency, if not in
possibility at all. It has never been observed that infants from one
speech community (or ethnic group) have the slightest difficulty
learning the language of any other. 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net

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