Grex Language Conference

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Grex Language Item 71: interconnectedness
Entered by stevil on Tue Feb 7 06:25:40 UTC 1995:

I'm new here so i hope i'm doing this rght.  This is directed to the
conversaton on language origins.  You all seem to have skirted around what i
feel to be a crucial point (or it's a point you all know the answer to so you
needn't discuss it.  Did humans have on or many origins?  If one, i think it
likely that  there is  a monogenetic solution to our query.  If humans started
in many  different places, they polygenetic answer seems the most likely.  How
does  that fit?

14 responses total.

#1 of 14 by srw on Wed Feb 8 03:08:46 1995:

Welcome to our conference about Language, Stephen. 
I think what you really wanted to do is to enter this as a response to the 
item you were reading. You just type r at the Respond or Pass? prompt and
then enter it there, rather than creating a new item.

I am not sure which item you were reading, but the question you ask is
one that is being researched by scientists. Many do think that
Homo sapiens arose in one single area and radiated by migration
throughout most of the world. The genetic makeup of these people diverged as 
they radiated and lost contact with each other.

At some point language became common, but we do not know that it was at
the same time that this radiation began. It may have been later, and thus
languages  could exist that could not be traced to a common origin, despite
the genetic connection. We don't really know.

It is true that once language was in common use, we know that languages
also radiated as groups of people lost contact with each other, producing
modern languages that are realted and *do* have a common ancestor, much 
like the genetics.

#2 of 14 by brighn on Wed Feb 8 15:35:20 1995:

The continued problem has been working in language isolates, such as
Basque, which is not obviously linked to any neighboring languages,
as well as significicantly different grammatical structures between
languages... much more work has been done on the evolution of words 
over time than on the evolution of syntax over time, so it's not clear
who Japanese, a verb-final (very staunchly!) language, could be ultimately
related to German, a verb-second (fairly strictly) language, etc.
(One way, of course, is that German does have verb-final behavior in 
dependent clauses, something which has falling out of practice in English.

#3 of 14 by simcha on Fri Mar 17 19:12:58 1995:

In northern spain, the languages are reported to have some similarities to
Gaelic.  The regional dances of Asturias, Basque region, and Catalunya are
also similar to the Irish jig, and bagpipes are used.

#4 of 14 by kami on Fri Mar 17 20:52:09 1995:

I'd really love to study the language, culture, myths,etc. of Galecia and
see how it intersects with that of Ireland and/or Scotland.

#5 of 14 by keesan on Tue Feb 24 04:47:16 1998:

I think the Celtic languages (Gaelic included) were once spoken over a wide
area of southern Europe, including Spain and Italy, before the spread of Latin
and German.  Bagpipes are still played in southern Italy (or Sicily?), and
the Balkans (Macedonia, Greece, Bulgaria, Albania) and were probably also
widely played all over Europe but have only remained at the periphery.

#6 of 14 by rcurl on Tue Feb 24 05:05:05 1998:

So, did the Gaels get the bagpipes from Greece, via the Romans, or
vica versa? Or, most likely, independently?

#7 of 14 by mdw on Mon Jan 17 05:39:50 2000:

Probably independently.  The ancient greeks believed they were actually
pretty closely related to the celts, and they may well have been
somewhere in pre-history.

#8 of 14 by orinoco on Mon Jan 17 16:55:00 2000:

The same basic kinds of instruments tend to crop up all over the world
independently.  Harps and flutes, for instance, are found almost everywhere,
and both would be "rediscovered" pretty quickly by a five-year-old with a good
enough supply of rubber bands and coke bottles.  

(How did the ancient Greeks know about the Celts?  Did some of them make it
that far north, or was this by way of rumor through some other peoples?)

#9 of 14 by happyboy on Mon Jan 17 19:57:27 2000:

heh...they use to kick eachothers asses pretty regular.

Alexander the Great:

"What do you fear above all other things?"
(meaning "pay homage to me, mothers")

Some Celt:

"Above all, we fear that the sky may fall on us."
(meaning "kiss my cracker-white ass, shorty")

#10 of 14 by keesan on Mon Jan 17 20:25:28 2000:

The Celts used to live all over Europe until they got pushed to the
extremities by the Germanic tribes.  Celtic is linguistically closer to
Iranian than to Germanic, I think.  THere were Celts in Italy.

#11 of 14 by orinoco on Tue Jan 18 01:57:54 2000:

Ah, that's the part I was missing.  Thanks.

#12 of 14 by kami on Tue Jan 18 20:45:36 2000:

The "Indo-Europeans" had an "Indo'Iranian" branch, seem to have made it to
China, as well as spreading all over Europe. They were in Scandinavia, the
Urals, the Balkans, Northern Italy, Northern Spain, France, Germany, and the
British Isles, of course.  There were, and are still, non Indo-European peole
tucked away in those places, too. Which I think is neat; Lithuanian and
Latvian are, Estonian isn't.  Poland, Russian, Scandinavia may be (I forget
the details), Lappish and Finnish aren't.  And so on.

#13 of 14 by happyboy on Tue Jan 18 21:44:18 2000:

hungarian.

#14 of 14 by keesan on Tue Jan 18 23:30:39 2000:

Basque in Spain/France is non-IndoEuropean, as was Etruscan.  Basque, French,
and Albanian count in twenties (ten fingers, ten toes?), presumably the system
used by whatever language(s) preceded IndoEuropean.  80 - 4 x 20.
Tocharian is the IndoEuropean language spoken in what is now China, I think
as late as about 1000 AD.  Etruscan lasted until some time during the Roman
Empire.  Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian were brought in later from the east.
Slavic and Scandinavian languages are Indoeuropean, along with Armenian,
Albanian, Greek.

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