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A comment on Study finds 'mother of all languages' (spoken in pre-historic Africa). Parent comment

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.

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Re:Study finds 'mother of all languages' (spoken in pre-hist... by Afton on Monday April 25, 2011 @03:08PM (#2482487)
Same problem. No reason to think that historical change is 'complexification' either. Lots of evidence in both directions.
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