EDIT: I realized that this post was basically a personal reply that was not only off topic but of no relevance to anyone other than the member I was replying to, so I deleted it.
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What Drove the Evolution of Language?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
Copernicus
Industrial Strength Linguist
I think you need to be cautious about making generalizations about substratum influences. It is pretty easy to prove that English has a French substratum, since we have written records, but claims of a Celtic substratum tend to be little more than educated guesses. In the case of Spanish, I suspect that you need to consider the linguistic influence of migrations of British Celts fleeing the crumbling of the Roman Empire in the British Isles during the 5th and 6th centuries, not necessarily the Celtic dialects that predated Roman conquest.
It is fairly well-documented that most loan words came from the Parisian dialect, not Norman French.
The erosion of suffixes in English and other European languages had complex causes, but the syncretism probably had more to do with changes in phonology--the pronunciation of words--than a drive to "simplify" syntax.
Don't confuse casual speech with lazy speech. All languages have casual styles of speech, and such "simplifications" are actually governed by very complex rules. If you want to speak another language with native-sounding sloppiness, you actually have to work quite hard to get it right.
Chinese has some very complex syntactic rules. It has all the tenses that English or any other language has, but it does not express them in the same way. You could say that the English verb is much simpler now than it used to be when it had all of those conjugations. What isn't simple about English is the very complex system of verbal auxiliaries, which can be extremely difficult for non-native speakers to master. The auxiliary verbs do the work that suffixes used to do at an earlier stage of the language.
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I'm not saying Celtic is the substrate of Spanish; I referred to pre-Roman Iberian languages. Celtic was non-native to Iberia. Or that French is the substrate of English. English is clearly Germanic with a predominance of Latin words via French, though almost half of English vocabulary is still Germanic. The 'zh' sound as in 'pleasure' is neither Germanic nor Latin, but French. These are my usages of substratum and superstratum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratum_(linguistics)
I once said elsewhere that using auxiliaries and modals for a non-native English speaker is "a bear". We sometimes can't even use it right... "I could have went"... !?
It seems we derive our information from different sources and perspectives, and have different p.o.v. which is OK. There is a lot of non-consensus and different p.o.v. among linguists of every discipline... historical, comparative, etc. Linguistics like any science is not cut and dried. Hell, theoretical physicists can't even agree if the speed of light is constant or not, or what gravity is, and those are more testable than the urheimat of PIE. But in the end I don't think we're far apart, just saying it differently. :namaste
I once said elsewhere that using auxiliaries and modals for a non-native English speaker is "a bear". We sometimes can't even use it right... "I could have went"... !?
It seems we derive our information from different sources and perspectives, and have different p.o.v. which is OK.
There is a lot of non-consensus and different p.o.v. among linguists of every discipline... historical, comparative, etc. Linguistics like any science is not cut and dried. Hell, theoretical physicists can't even agree if the speed of light is constant or not, or what gravity is, and those are more testable than the urheimat of PIE. But in the end I don't think we're far apart, just saying it differently. :namaste
Copernicus
Industrial Strength Linguist
I believe that the other pre-Roman Iberian languages other than Basque were Celtic, but it is possible that there were other non-Celtic tribes of people there. As for the 'zh' sound, there are many ways that it arises in languages. Languages don't usually borrow phonemes from other languages. Rather, their phonology changes in ways that permit the phoneme to be borrowed. That's a rather subtle point, but there are issues here that require a more sophisticated understanding of how speech pronunciation works. Look at it this way. The 'zh' sound had to come from somewhere in French. As you point out, it wasn't native to Latin. Similarly, the 'zh' sound in English came from somewhere. Was it French, or was it the fact that English speakers came to find 'zy' sequences pronounceable as voiced palatal fricatives? After all, "As you like it" tends to be pronounced as "A[zh]ou like it". Palatalization is a live process in English pronunciation.
What makes you think that that isn't "right"? It is just a dialectal variant of standard English. It is right for the community of speakers that uses it. It is wrong for the broader community of English speakers.I once said elsewhere that using auxiliaries and modals for a non-native English speaker is "a bear". We sometimes can't even use it right... "I could have went"... !?
I disagree with a lot of what my fellow linguists say, but most of the points I am making here are pretty much standard across the field. There are a lot of generalizations that physicists agree on when it comes to talking about gravity. Ditto for linguists and language. Not everything is just a different perspective. As for the urheimat of PIE, one can actually use linguistic and archeological evidence to prove certain things--for example, that it was not in northern India. However, the 'urheimat' of linguistic theory was.It seems we derive our information from different sources and perspectives, and have different p.o.v. which is OK.
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cablescavenger
Well-Known Member
I think these guys started it, passed it on to us and we ran with it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lsF83rHKFc
http://richarddawkins.net/videos/471222-can-monkeys-talk
apophenia
Well-Known Member
OK. I am no linguist, so I'm unaware of these distinctions . However, the research I am referring to was done by linguists, and was considered to be pretty significant evidence of language, so either these researchers did not know the distinction you made, or you are unaware of this particular research.
Copernicus
Industrial Strength Linguist
Honestly, that is not the case. If bona fide linguists conducted the research, they would have been thoroughly familiar with the differences between animal call systems and human language. It is not improper to call any communication system a "language", but there is a huge difference between what we usually call "language" (English, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, etc.) and those kinds of communication systems. They are certainly very much worth studying, but we should remember that humans have an extremely complex universal (primate) call system that exists independently of conventional languages. We are, after all, a variety of apes.
God spoke to Adam in a language Adam understood and could speak. He was able to create names for the animals, showing his ability to coin new words. Certainly as man's Creator, it was God who gave Adam this ability.
The Neo Nerd
Well-Known Member
You know what we were having an intelligent conversation there.
Then you come along with a vague reference from unconfirmable, unreliable source.
If you don't have anything intelligent to add to a discussion, don't say anything, you just make yourself look stupid.
I was responding to your question. If you don't want an answer, then don't ask.
Sorry, I wasn't aware you were the authority on what is intelligent and what is stupid.
The Neo Nerd
Well-Known Member
You had nothing useful to add the conversation, yet you felt the need to inject your religious beliefs into it anyway.
And it seems that you couldn't find a verse that directly relates to the topic, yet you STILL felt the need to inject your religious beliefs into it.
So you found a verse that has two entities speaking to each other and decided that that would be good enough.
That's kinda pathetic.
And it seems that you couldn't find a verse that directly relates to the topic, yet you STILL felt the need to inject your religious beliefs into it.
So you found a verse that has two entities speaking to each other and decided that that would be good enough.
That's kinda pathetic.
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Under the influence of God's holy spirit, men and women were able to speak languages they did not know. (Acts 2:5-12) Since God created man with his ability to speak, I should think it self-evident that he also created language. As to how we have so many languages today, the historical account at Genesis 11:6-9 explains that God caused this.
outhouse
Atheistically
we know language evolved with our species as it evolved.
over a million years before hewbrews existed to write their mythical legends
The Neo Nerd
Well-Known Member
Nope that talks about how the people were able to understand what was being said in their own language.
Ok now that's better. Honestly i would have opened with this.
Now, do you have anything to add on how the languages evolved from there.
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painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
My guess would be the increasing complexity of human social structure and technology drove it. And it drove them as well.
When you have a large number of individuals to track it helps to have words to describe them and what they are doing and need to do.
You also need language to pass down intricate technologies and ideas. Knapping stone is a very complex process and you have to be able to explain what stones are good and what stones are bad for it as well as where to get them.
My guess is that improved spoken language is what brought us from simple pebble tools that later Australopiths used to the elegant hand axes of early Homo.
wa:do
Copernicus
Industrial Strength Linguist
In the first half of the 20th century, the dominant perspective among linguists was that languages were purely human conventions and could differ from each other in just about any way conceivable. In the second half, research revealed an astonishing number of "universals" that seemed to govern all levels of linguistic description.** We can make predictions about which adult phonemes (basic speech sounds) children will acquire early and late. They almost always begin to speak at around 12-18 months, and their vocabulary expands dramatically in the first few years. At the age of puberty, most people quickly lose their natural ability to acquire perfect pronunciation through immersion in a language community. In other words, language has all of the hallmarks of being an instinctive behavior in humans, just as birdsongs are instinctively acquired (and can have dialectal variation) by many varieties of birds.
Noam Chomsky was not the first or only linguist to propose that the capacity for language was biologically innate in humans, but he came to be credited with popularizing that view in the 1960s. He made it his early life's work (as opposed to politics, which had come to consume far more of his time later) to construct a theory that could explain linguistic universals. Although many of us are critical of the specific theoretical approach that he came up with, there is no question that he revolutionized our thinking about how natural languages work.
Nowadays, nobody questions that language is a biologically-driven trait of the human species, but they do question precisely what aspects of language are biologically inherited and what aspects are purely conventional. Our brains are built to acquire and process language. It was never something that some group of humans discovered (like fire or electricity). It was most likely a phenomenon that existed and grew in the wide variety of hominids that roamed the Earth. We just happened to be the sole survivors of that lengthy competition among hominids to populate the planet, and I don't doubt that our linguistic ability played a central role in helping us to win that competition.
** In 1970, I witnessed the renowned linguist, Kenneth Pike, demonstrate his grasp of phonological universals. He did this by selecting an individual from the audience who spoke a language that he had never studied. He sat that person down in front of the audience, and asked him to say some sentences in his native language. Dr. Pike then proceeded to make all sorts of predictions about what the speaker could and could not say. The demonstration I saw was with an African tone language, and Dr. Pike illustrated pronunciation constraints by playing tones on a slide whistle. The young man who spoke the language was quite impressed with the accuracy of his predictions.
Noam Chomsky was not the first or only linguist to propose that the capacity for language was biologically innate in humans, but he came to be credited with popularizing that view in the 1960s. He made it his early life's work (as opposed to politics, which had come to consume far more of his time later) to construct a theory that could explain linguistic universals. Although many of us are critical of the specific theoretical approach that he came up with, there is no question that he revolutionized our thinking about how natural languages work.
Nowadays, nobody questions that language is a biologically-driven trait of the human species, but they do question precisely what aspects of language are biologically inherited and what aspects are purely conventional. Our brains are built to acquire and process language. It was never something that some group of humans discovered (like fire or electricity). It was most likely a phenomenon that existed and grew in the wide variety of hominids that roamed the Earth. We just happened to be the sole survivors of that lengthy competition among hominids to populate the planet, and I don't doubt that our linguistic ability played a central role in helping us to win that competition.
** In 1970, I witnessed the renowned linguist, Kenneth Pike, demonstrate his grasp of phonological universals. He did this by selecting an individual from the audience who spoke a language that he had never studied. He sat that person down in front of the audience, and asked him to say some sentences in his native language. Dr. Pike then proceeded to make all sorts of predictions about what the speaker could and could not say. The demonstration I saw was with an African tone language, and Dr. Pike illustrated pronunciation constraints by playing tones on a slide whistle. The young man who spoke the language was quite impressed with the accuracy of his predictions.
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painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
There are some interesting aspects of language that are seen in other species.
Names are the most common feature of animal language... Dolphins, Elephants, Horses and even fish all have "names" (ie. particular sounds that identify them to others).
Syntax is known in Dolphins and my be understood by other species as well. And many aspects of language such as cultural transmission are also found.
I'm not suggesting that other animals are using language to the same degree as we do, but the evolutionary bedrock is firmly in place in the animal kingdom.
wa:do
Names are the most common feature of animal language... Dolphins, Elephants, Horses and even fish all have "names" (ie. particular sounds that identify them to others).
Syntax is known in Dolphins and my be understood by other species as well. And many aspects of language such as cultural transmission are also found.
I'm not suggesting that other animals are using language to the same degree as we do, but the evolutionary bedrock is firmly in place in the animal kingdom.
wa:do
outhouse
Atheistically
Absolutely
Im sure every one of our ancestors had language that progressed and became more evolved as brainsize grew.
CynthiaCypher
Well-Known Member
Not necessarily. Corvids and psittances have complex language and problem solving skills. It's more a matter of genetics than brain size. Birds and human share the same language gene
Copernicus
Industrial Strength Linguist
I agree that language has more to do with brain complexity rather than brain size, although you do need a lot of neurons to service the needs of language users. As far as I know, there is no such thing as a "language gene". I suspect that the capacity for language relies on abilities that are controlled by more than one gene. Birdsong can come in "dialects" that are acquired through exposure to a specific version, but there is no evidence that it is used to communicate anything like the complex tactical and strategic information that humans communicate.