Linguists seek a time when we spoke as one

The Christian Science Monitor ^ | 18 July 2007 | Moises Velasquez-Manoff

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

“There is a serious lack of an exhaustive etymological dictionary. Lacking that, meaningful communication is impossible.”
I fail to see why you think meaningful communication is impossible without such a dictionary.

[colorado tanker]

Around 50,000 years ago, something happened to our ancestors in Africa. Anatomically modern humans, who had existed for at least 150,000 years prior, suddenly began behaving differently. Until then, their conduct scarcely differed from that of their hominid cousins, the Neanderthals

So, is the author saying Neanderthals did not have language?

[Alouette]

HEBREW: Koneh=to acquire

[blam]

African click language `holds key to origins of earliest human speech'.(News)

[RightWhale]

I fail to see why you think meaningful communication is impossible without such a dictionary.

I don't know what you mean by meaningful.

[GOPJ]

Great post. Thanks.

[LiteKeeper]

We speak different languages because God mixed up the tongues of man at Babel. Would not advise trying to reverse what God has stirred up.

[agrace]

Proverbs 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

[SunkenCiv]

Iomega tried that too. ;’)

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

Neither do I! Time for my second cup of coffee. I’ve got to brush up on some law for a hearing tomorrow. Trying to decipher laws makes one wonder what the meaning of “meaning” is!

[RightWhale]

In law, it is something we created so we ought to know what we mean or at least mean what we know.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

I think I know what they mean. I mean, I used to know what they meant! Not so sure anymore!

[dfwgator]

Guess we're stuck with phrase books for now:

"My hovercraft is full of eels."

[SunkenCiv]

It's an unstated assumption underlying the entire thing. :')

The Neandertal Enigma
by James Shreeve

"Allan Wilson had always been described to me in superlatives, such as 'one of the real geniuses in science,' or 'the most arrogant guy I know...' [H]e apologized for putting me off so long and bluntly explained that the reason he had done so was that he did not trust me... 'The anthropological perspective on evolution is no longer valid; it has been overthrown. And yet the science writers who insist on talking to me come drenched in an anthropological perspective, and there is really no point in talking to them... It is paralytic. It prevents you from asking certain questions, and it forces you to ask others. The whole discipline invites you not to investigate.'

...A few months before my visit, Wilson had announced at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science... that the Neandertals were replaced because they could not speak... suggesting that a particular gene for language might have been carried in the mitochondria themselves. Since invading males would have been more likely to mate with resident females than the other way around, the offspring of sexual contact between the two groups would be 'linguistically deaf-mute,' like their Neandertal mothers. Thus disadvantaged, these 'village idiots' would face the same fate as the mothers: extinction. Only the language-endowed African lineage would continue. The language gene idea, and especially the unfortunate term 'village idiots,' elicited hoots of derision from the anti-Eve camp, and gave no joy to Wilson's colleagues." [pp 119-121]

The Neandertals
by Erik Trinkaus
and Pat Shipman

[Thomas Henry Huxley, "Darwin's Bulldog", while criticizing the idea that "Aryans" were a superior racial form, said:] "Physical, mental, and moral peculiarities go with blood and not with language. In the United States the negroes have spoken English for generations; but no one on that ground would call them Englishmen, or expect them to differ physically, mentally, or morally from other negroes." [pp 46-47]

[Rudder]

Both buried their dead; both used stone tools; and as social apes, both had some form of communication, which some think was gestural. But then, "almost overnight, everything changes very rapidly," says Merritt Ruhlen...

Try looking at the tense, Merrit, the language expert, Ruhlen.

[muawiyah]

It's called the "historic present". When used it means the speaker or writer ALSO reads, writes and speaks French (where it is exceedingly common).

Most Freepers are highly educated types who can usually read 5 to a dozen languages, but only speak 1 well (if that), and type 238 WPM.

[muawiyah]

Plus, when the first famine of the 19th century hit Eur-Asia the Napoleonic Wars were winding down and almost no one in the West noticed it.

In China, it was absolutely devastating and destructive. Hundreds of millions may have died.

Interestingly enough, this particular famine is so little known that the Second Famine to hit China in that century is usually identified as the First, and it involved little more than the meaningless death by starvation of about 50 million people.

China's backwardness in the 20th Century was a consequence of a string of vast disasters in the 19th Century.

They are only now recovering. In the 17th and 18th Centuries, they were a major player in the world economy.

[colorado tanker]

. . . and I thought speech was so simple even a cave man could do it. :-))

[muawiyah]

Up until very recently no one was looking at "timing" as a major element forcing change in the way words and phrases are spoken.

All the Semitic languages sound like they are spoken "backwards" to me (and they are certainly written that way). Whereas I can pretty much guess quite accurately what folks are talking about at a cocktail party where ANY Indo-European language is spoken, I can't even follow the prayers at a synagogue, but I'm pretty sure that if they turned the words around and filled them in with real vowels, it'd all become clear, or at least I could hear the breaks between the words.