Re: Italian vs Turkish

From: Aidan Kehoe (kehoea_at_parhasard.net)
Date: 12/30/04 

Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 15:00:15 +0000

 Ar an triochadú lá de mí na Nollaig, scríobh Peter T. Daniels:

> > 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,

The language capacity evolving only once does not necessarily imply that
language came into existence only once.

Though now I think of it, the only cases that would prevent the common
ancestor existing would be something marginal like two hearing children
being raised by two deaf, non-signing parents in isolation from a wider
community, and developing their own language in that context.

In that context, monogenesis does still seem most likely, though not
indisputably so. (Replace “deaf, non-signing parents” above with “people
who didn’t have the language capacity” for a, perhaps, slightly more likely
hypothesis).

> there would be then 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. 

-- 
“Ah come on now Ted, a Volkswagen with a mind of its own, driving all over
the place and going mad, if that’s not scary I don’t know what is.”

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Italian vs Turkish
    ... >> If a language capacity had evolved more than once, ... >> learning the language of any other. ... > Every time all the speakers of a village were killed, ... Nathan Sanders ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Yet another reason to hate Yahoo
    ... >> It's been scientifically proven that English is the innate language of ... Infants are born with the ability to make all sounds that occur in every ... But the "English is innate" ...
    (comp.security.misc)
  • Re: Italian vs Turkish
    ... If a language capacity had evolved more than once, ... differ in some small but essential way, ... It has never been observed that infants from one ... learning the language of any other. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Yet another reason to hate Yahoo
    ... > Infants are born with the ability to make all sounds that occur in every ... > language. ... infants will try out all of those sounds as they begin ... guess the Romans did speak English. ...
    (comp.security.misc)
  • Re: You do not explain anything!
    ... not explained how infants and children learn language, ... able to formulate such as: ... to concentrate well, since concentration or focus comes strongly in ...
    (sci.lang)