Posted on 01/29/2006 3:25:28 PM PST by mlc9852
Chapter One: The Human Paradox
An Evolutionary Anomaly
As our species designation--sapiens--suggests, the defining attribute of human beings is an unparalleled cognitive ability. We think differently from all other creatures on earth, and we can share those thoughts with one another in ways that no other species even approaches. In comparison, the rest of our biology is almost incidental. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution have produced hundreds of thousands of species with brains, and tens of thousands with complex behavioral, perceptual, and learning abilities. Only one of these has ever wondered about its place in the world, because only one evolved the ability to do so.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Darwinists are in a panic, trying to keep their weak and fragile theory safe behind a door they keep sealed up by papering it over with threadbare conjectures presented as proof.
Every day, ten new articles. Ten new jokes.
The original differentiation of human language from other species was evolutionary, but not sure if I totally agree with your point.
I think it was Noam Chomsky who said that the babbling of babies contain every single sound used by all the languages of the world. As the child learns any specific language, the other sounds fade away because they are not used or needed.
However, human language change itself, including the various dialects might be due entirely to external forces. It is geographic dispersion that creates different languages to become distinct, but like you said, contain some sounds or words that might be similar to those of near by geographic locations. For example, the romance languages of Europe are similar.
Oh, well, there's always Google...
...eventually. I have 3000 pages or so of reading new stuff given to me as Christmas presents and from other Freepers since Christmas, and I've only read about 200 of it...
Cheers!
That's my understanding, too.
However, human language change itself, including the various dialects might be due entirely to external forces.
Not entirely. For example, when I'm tired, I say "Imput" instead of "Input". There's a general rule, not only in English, that "N" before "P" will change into an "M" - it's simply easier to pronounce.
(EG in Swahili the word for "dog" is "mbwa", even though grammatically the names of animals begin with "N").
It is true that sounds are "borrowed" between neighboring languages (EG Zulu and a few other Bantu languages have "click" sounds that come from Khoisan).
The point was, that there is nothing that corresponds to the hydrodynamic forces that make sharks, porpoises and mesosaurs look so similar.
There are recognized sound changes that seem to occur everywhere (EG "TI" becomes "SHI", like "Presidential"), sounds and words are borrowed, but (except for onomatopoeia), there's nothing connecting the sound and its meaning.
This arbitrariness is one of the hallmarks of human language.
It's also the reason that Greenberg, Bergston, Ruhlen, et al, feel confident that there was a common ancestor of all languages, and in it something like "tik" meant "finger", something like "bunku" meant "knee" or "bend", (probably behind English "bend", "bow" (both N. or V.), "bough", and "elbow") and something like "putV" meant "vulva (as in the Spanish word "puta" meaning "whore" and vulgar English "pu$$y").
It seems good to me. Coincidence is possible, but there are too many to make it plausible. Borrowing between, say, the ancestor languages of Vietnamese, English, Hausa, and Mohawk (all have the "tik" morpheme) is *highly* unlikely. There's no onomatopoeia involved. So we're left with common inheritance.
BTW, I find this stuff fascinating.
Yeah, it's not listed there.
This seems to be his publisher's page. The demon essay is a "Featured Article".
**Lots** of essays there.
I agree. But maybe that common ancestor is us. Not sure what you mean by those common sounds. The babbling of babies contains all common sounds.
Interesting about onomatopoeia, the way such things as a rooster crowing have different sounds in different languages.
I think that language is a cultural phenomenon, and it evolves over time, but not sure if the physiological basis of language changes that much. The real differentiation is between humans and other species.
I think, just as a possibility, that the real evolution going on is communication beyond language. A higher consciousness beyond language, because I believe we are limited by our language. We just don't have the words to describe many of our thoughts or intentions.
Ancestral language, not species. No one has any clue whether H. habilis or H. erectus spoke, or if they did how it was like or unlike what we speak.
Sometimes called "Proto-Sapiens".
There's a theory that the human population went through a bottleneck something like 70000 years ago. Proto-Sapiens may have been the only language to survive.
I think that language is a cultural phenomenon, and it evolves over time, but not sure if the physiological basis of language changes that much. The real differentiation is between humans and other species.
Absolutely
..communication beyond language...
There's art and poetry
Math is a kind of language, some of it is only written.
Not sure what you mean by those common sounds. The babbling of babies contains all common sounds.
What did I say that you didn't get? I agree that babies make all possible sounds, then instinctively restrict themselves to the ones in their linguistic environment.
Have to get to sleep to get to work in the morning, but that is very interesting stuff. Thanks.
I read of a study regarding our words for numbers. You know ... one, two, three ... those words. The idea is that if all languages had a common origin, then there should certainly be some similarity regarding number-words, because there's no reason for people to re-invent that stuff. Yet between, say, Latin and Japanese, there is zero in common. I don't recall any other examples, so don't rely on this post for anything except that such a paper was once published. So there you are.
The common ancestor of all languages...The idea of the three cradles of civilizations comes to mind. Here is another debate on wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_of_Humanity
Has anyone ever checked about the sounds babies make?
Or is this just an authoratative declaration?
Here's your chance to DIY.
Numbers from 1-10 in Over 5000 Languages compiled by Mark Rosenfelder
http://www.zompist.com/numbers.shtml
I have a printout to play with in odd moments. So far what I see is that there seems to be a tendency for the word for one to involve either a t/d/k type sound or an n type sound but not both. Never did a proper analysis, though.
Good find. Now ... to bookmark, or not to bookmark ...
You -know- what'll happen if you don't
Yes, from the Wiki article on babbling:
Steven Pinker compares a child babbling to a person fiddling with a complex hi-fi system in an attempt to understand what all the controls do. Most babbling consists of a small number of sounds, which suggests the child is preparing the sounds it will need to speak the language it is exposed to.
Here's a link to an essay by Pinker:
( BTW, he says that Darwin was one of the first researchers to keep a diary of his children's language acquisition.)
...begins, logically enough, with the acquisition of a language's sound patterns. The main linguistic accomplishments during the first year of life are control of the speech musculature and sensitivity to the phonetic distinctions used in the parents' language. Interestingly, babies achieve these feats before they produce or understand words, so their learning cannot depend on correlating sound with meaning. That is, they cannot be listening for the difference in sound between a word they think means bit and a word they think means beet, because they have learned neither word. They must be sorting the sounds directly, somehow tuning their speech analysis module to deliver the phonemes used in their language
Or is this just an authoratative declaration?
When I posted it, it was from memory; I was agreeing with Phantom worker's post 20.
Most of what I found via Google has more to do with the acquisition of syntax and vocabulary than phonemes.
From the above, it seems we were wrong, or at least had the emphasis in the wrong place. If I understand Pinker correctly, it sounds more like the kid is imitating sounds, although during this process he must be making some that won't be needed later.
I imagine the kid is making all sorts of sounds, and repeating those that sound like the ones he's hearing. But I really don't know.
another Wiki article, this one on the ability to distinguish phonemes. I'll quote all the interesting part:
...A child referred to his inflatable plastic fish as a fis. However, when adults asked him, "Is this your fis?" he rejected the statement. When he was asked, "Is this your fish?" he responded, "Yes, my fis."
This shows that although the child could not produce the phoneme /sh/, he could perceive it as being different from the phoneme /s/. This has important implications for the acquisition of phonology. In short, it means that children have more, not fewer, phonological processes (or rules) applying in their speech than adults, and that part of the task of acquiring a language is figuring out which processes to allow to apply and which to suppress.
Make of it what you will.
Thanks for all the references.
Piaget is also another prominent writer on stages of child development.
http://tip.psychology.org/piaget.html
http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/piaget.html
As a psych major I took a course on Developmental Psych. Another interesting subject showing how genetic and gender differences do exist in humans and evolutionary how we are differentiated from other species. So much to read and so little time. ;)
http://psych.athabascau.ca/html/aupr/developmental.shtml#Theories%20of%20Development
http://online.sfsu.edu/~psych200/unit2/21.htm
Thanks. I was referring to Chomsky, not you in reference to authorative declarations. Too often someone with a "name" says something and everyone believes it.
Frankly, althought my experience is anecdotal and limited, I've never heard a baby making a "rolled" r sound.
Thanks... I think.
Way more to read than I should spend time on, but fascinating stuff.
No offense taken. Ol' Noam is given to pontificating.
I find languages fascinating, but I never could see the "point" of chomsky. All his examples are **English**!
Give me the late Joseph Greenberg any day!
EG, first google response to "language universals chomsky greenberg" contains:
Both Chomsky and Greenberg use abstract terms (noun, language origin etc) and conduct abstract analyses (finding language universals). However, Chomsky additionally postulates the existence of rules and categories that cannot be observed directly (Deep Structure) and have to be inferred from the overt linguistic material (Surface Structure). The status of these rules and categories is putative and to a large extent cannot be verified empirically.
Cannot be verified empirically!? This is science!?
Greenberg (1960?): If a language has genitive, it also has accusative
Chomsky The head position is different from language to language, which is governed by parameter rule.
Greenberg rules!
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