On Thu, 8 May 1997, Ken Arromdee wrote:

Even if your magic comes from God, it's still magic.  If you pray for rain
and get it, do you also say that the water isn't water in the same way that
magic isn't magic?

Um, are you trying to explain to a Christian what his theology is
supposed to be?

Ah.  Myself, I'm still amazed that people can look at, say, the origin
of languages, and say we got it from imitating animals, or from a need
to "socialize", or something else equally inane and unlikely.  Sorry
folks, languages *simplify* over time.

Yes, they do.  So?  So languages started complex.  You're obviously trying
to say that grunts and groans aren't complex, but you're not thinking it
through.

A language with, say, 1000 nouns and 26 genders is pretty complex.  That's
26 rules to know.  If it had fewer genders it'd be less complex.

So what would be _more_ complex?  The _most_ complex you could get is to have
1000 nouns and 1000 "genders"--1000 rules which apply to one noun each.  Which
is of course exactly what you'll get if language _does_ start as a series of
sounds completely unrelated to one another.

I meant complexity, grammatically speaking.  If a language is regular
*and* highly complex...say, for example, Greek?

But my point was, a primitve culture's language is highly complex *and
also* highly regular, nowadays.  A more advanced culture's language is
regular but simple, grammatically speaking.  Over time, the languages of
the more advanced cultures tend to simplify faster than the languages of
the more primitive ones.  So, right around several thousand years ago,
you start off with approximately 100 languages (since linguists are
guessing that there are about 100 families of languages in existence
nowadays) all highly regular, highly complex, and highly *different*
from one another.

This does not spell "a product of evolution" to me.  But then, that's
just me.  *shrug*

Damon Casale, damoo@carmelnet.com
Spam, spam!  WONDERFUL spam!  ^_^