tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post6988081568636968887..comments2024-01-04T04:11:55.717+02:00Comments on Dienekes’ Anthropology Blog: The Mystery of Language evolution (Hauser et al. 2014)Dienekeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02082684850093948970noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-72590000076558797912014-05-20T21:50:35.296+03:002014-05-20T21:50:35.296+03:00This paper seems mostly concerned with "how a...This paper seems mostly concerned with "how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved" or, as I read it, "originated". And I guess that's still a huge mystery.<br /><br />How languages have since "evolved" or "developed" seems much less a mystery in principle, even if linguists can't (yet?) reconstruct very far back in time.<br /><br />Anyway, this all reminded me of a long-time bee in my bonnet about the drivers of language change. The most usually invoked are drift and contact "borrowing" (more accurately theft). Isn't it true that much less attention is given to language replacement?<br /><br />The little we know of ancient migrations suggests to me there would have been countless occasions of wholesale and partial replacement in whirlpools like India, Southeast, East and Central Asia.<br /><br />My pet modern-day example is the spread of English in India where "original" forms have been modified in pronunciation (widespread intrusion of retroflex) and syntax (over-use of continuous relative to simple present tense). No doubt a real linguist could detect many more changes than I'm aware of. And if India had been the only place where English survived it would probably be nearly unrecognisable by now.<br /><br />Another example, perhaps. It has bugged me for years that Thai unvoiced consonants p, t, k simply don't sound quite like their European counterparts: they have a certain quality of strength (or sharpness or explosiveness) that I find really difficult to replicate.<br /><br />Though I'm much less familiar with other Southeast Asian languages, my impression is that Burmese and Mandarin lack that "strength" but something similar is detectable in Indonesian and Tagalog (probably Mon and possibly also Khmer).<br /><br />You can believe the excitement on finding Pittayaporn's 2009 paper on Proto-Thai phonology where he constructs a series of implosive/glottalized stops contrasting with both voiced and voiceless!<br /><br />I'm left wondering just how much of a language sea-change occurred when the Tai expansion from South China progressively overwhelmed SEA's former Austroasiatic cultures, and can well imagine that tone splitting would have resulted from all that consonantal havoc.<br /><br />Maybe I'm talking nonsense.dbnuthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17967508556822408469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-12507483421478387622014-05-08T03:24:26.850+03:002014-05-08T03:24:26.850+03:00@DocG
" there is NO evidence anywhere in Afr...@DocG<br /><br />" there is NO evidence anywhere in Africa for tonogenesis."<br /><br />True. But considering that there's plenty of evidence for recurrent tonogenesis in Asia and America, proto-African tones had likely evolved in Asia before modern humans colonized Africa.German Dziebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10703679732205862495noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-53187249250593518582014-05-07T10:38:04.182+03:002014-05-07T10:38:04.182+03:00The earliest languages were probably tone language...The earliest languages were probably tone languages. This can be inferred from the fact that almost all African languages are tone languages, and there is NO evidence anywhere in Africa for tonogenesis. The "experts" have been looking in the wrong way for the wrong things. Which is what "experts" do, I suppose.DocGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17359004200002936544noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-35984386218667087832014-05-02T17:17:05.344+03:002014-05-02T17:17:05.344+03:00This is bad science defending itself.
It’s of cou...This is bad science defending itself.<br /><br />It’s of course false that other animals don’t provide strong clues as to how “human language” evolved. <br /><br />You can get this kind of weird conclusion only if you insist that language is not basically about communication. Animals can communicate and understand communication very well. Not as effectively as humans, but effectively enough to show the evolutionary value of communally sharing information.<br /><br />Chomsky’s concept of language seems to have nothing to do with communication. It’s all about structure, grammar and syntax. So, those supposedly unique aspects of the “universal” human language show up no where else but in humans. Never mind that they serve the same functions that communication does in other animals.<br /><br />Simply take the position that grammar is nothing but disambiguation of reference or sense in communication and the problems disappear. The evolutionary advantages of more precise communication between individuals becomes obvious. It becomes a quantitative difference that appears to be a qualitative difference.<br /><br />As Darwin pointed out, language can only be partly “instinctive.” It’s partly hardware, but an important part is the software. And the function of the software shapes the hardware. This group needed a Ray Kurzweil to unravel their mystery.LivoniaGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05589404219598229067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785493.post-51424316272302162302014-05-01T15:38:59.635+03:002014-05-01T15:38:59.635+03:00Concerning the use of language, all I have to add ...Concerning the use of language, all I have to add is that I would have chosen <i>"paucity"</i> over <i>poverty,</i> but then again, I am not a native speaker. <br /><br />More seriously, I largely agree with the abstract.eurologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03440019181278830033noreply@blogger.com