Re:Study finds 'mother of all languages' (spoken in pre-hist...
by sp332 on Friday April 15, 2011 @05:39PM
(#2452319)
Put that way, it sounds like a scene from Pygmalion where the doctor can distinguish a bunch of distinct vowel sounds in a continuous "eeeooouuu" sound, and is therefore esteemed an expert in spoken languages - at least by himself. If your summary is true, it's a bit more like this parody: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=280
Re:Study finds 'mother of all languages' (spoken in pre-hist...
by athom on Saturday April 16, 2011 @01:48AM
(#2453311)
there's no reason to think that we started out with lots of phonemes and that these have been whittled away over time
I suspect the reasoning is more along the lines of languages picking up more phonemes over time, such that older languages, having been around longer, would have picked up more phonemes.
"He analysed the number of phonemes found in 504 world languages, and hypothesized that languages with the most phonemes were the oldest. Also, the dialects furthest away from the 'mother tongue' were found to be less complicated."
I'd like to see the original study, since this sounds like simplistic analysis and circular reasoning.
long-story short: there's no reason to think that we started out with lots of phonemes and that these have been whittled away over time. Historical change shows lots of instances of new phoneme generation in languages. This 'historical change is simplification' meme is either wrong or contentless.