On Thu, 8 May 1997, Thomas R Jefferys wrote:

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.

Need to sociallize? I don't doubt that something like it happened. Why?

Because humans are both _built_ and _wired_ to speak!

True.  But if we're built to speak and none of the other animals are,
that makes it doubly unlikely that something like this just "happened".
See below.

Ahhh, the Argument by Design. Sorry, not buying it. It's an old argument
and it's not valid anymore. See "The Selfish Gene" and "The Blind
Watchmaker". They basically argue and support that complex systems aren't
neccessarily designed.

Well, the reason why other animals don't evolve language is for one of two
reasons: They don't have enough brainpower (this is certainly true of
lizards), or language doesn't give them an edge. An adeptation isn't made
for the hell of it; adaptations cost energy and materials in investment and
upkeep, which is taken away from the animal's reserves for breeding. A
creature with a useless adeptation will not survive because it's spending a
certain amount of energy on a system that doesn't increase it's
reproductive success, and subtracts energy that could've been used to
breed.

Language can't be afforded by the smaller creatures. It requires too much
brainpower. Nonsociable animals such as tigers don't interact with each
other often enough to make a language system pay off. If simple signals are
enough to convey your point, then langauge is overkill.

There's also a luck factor involved. We were the first; SOMEone has to be
first, and our history is too short for another animal to hit on the same
idea. There is no reason why we should be favored over other animals.

Finally, there are cases where identical twins have invented their own
unique language which are, on the outset, very sophisticated. Considering
the arbitrariness of sound and meaning, it's very likely that languages
_can_ spring up this way spontaneously, and likely did a million years ago.

There's one problem with this last.  While this may be true (and I
haven't done the research to know or not), such "languages" will not be
as suited to communication as the languages extant today.  Why?  Lack of
terminology, and lack of flexibility.  While I admit that there will
probably be *some* amount of terminology in these "autogenerating"
languages, as you say, and that there will be *some* amount of
flexibility, there won't be very much.

Those languages are a century old at most (lifetime of the twins, it's
usually much less). They're competing against already fully-developed
languages. Of COURSE they're not going to be as sophisticated or survive as
long as our present languages; they're squeezed out. However, such
languages are better than no language at all, ne? In the Land of the Deaf,
the One Eared Man is king.

The point is that humans have a built-in instinct to name things. If we
can't name it with a combination of words in our native language, we have
no choice but to choose random sounds. Once a sound is assigned, however,
we call it that. Would that which we call a rose by any other name, right?
You can call a rose a dog and it'll still smell the same way as when you
called it a rose.

All of the languages in the
world today, and I do mean ALL of them, are equally capable of
communicating whatever thoughts and ideas you care to convey.  They are
all equally "old" as well, if you will.

Languages are not equally old. The Romance languages only developed as
distinct languages within the last two thousand years. Sanskrit and Hebrew
have been around for at least four thousand years. Furthermore, there is no
measuring stick by which we can tell how old a language is from it's
features alone. We have to refer to historical record.

 Does that mean that all of the
approximately 100 language families in existence sprung up within a
short span of time from each other, and that it hadn't happened before,
and hasn't since?  Hardly.

Nope, it's STILL happening. We're not getting completely new languages
because they're TOO new. The major languages have a monopoly, like the
robber-barons at the turn of the century. But if there was a language
vacuum, then the new languages have a fighting chance.

 Sorry
folks, languages *simplify* over time.

It depends. Languages _evolve_ to fit the need of the culture. Whether
languages get complex or complicated depends on the circumstances.

Of course.  My point was that these highly complex languages are used by
very primitive peoples, like the American Indians, the aborigines in
Australia, and the natives of Africa.  Why do they need such complexity?
Answer:  they don't.  So why did it "evolve"?  And why do the languages
of more advanced cultures *de*volve, in a sense?  This doesn't make
sense.  UNLESS...evolution ain't the way it happened.

*sigh* Someone who doesn't know what evolution actually means.

Evolving -=*#DOES NOT#*=- mean to increase the complexity of something.
Evolving means to *optimize* a system to fit a certain purpouse (ie, give
you the highest payoff for the least investment and maintainance).
Devolution is a myth conjured by people who don't know better.

The higher vertibrates have lost the ability to regenerate whole limbs.
Why? Because a) a regeneration system has to be maintianed, and that takes
energy, and b) if your arm gets cut off, you bleed to death anyway before
you can regenerate the thing. A regeneration system that good isn't worth
the cost of maintaining it, so its capabilities are downsized to only be
able to heal cuts and wounds, but not amputations.

Sometimes the principle of Keep It Simple, Stupid is the best way to
optimize, and thus to evolve.

(PS: Don't let the term "higher vertibrate" fool you. The term is just a
convention.)

In view of this, let's examine the complexity issue in the above languages.

When you get down to this, the complexity that you're talking about that
gets weeded out when contacted is _incidental_ complexity. This includes
irregular verbs, different noun formation patterns, and so on. There's no
particular reason why they're pronounced this way and not that. They're not
corrected because they're not WORTH the time and trouble to regularlize
them. Once widespread communication starts, making languages consistant
starts paying off.

The
Inuit language is adapted to life in the arctic, not for the modern world.
The 200+ "words" (actually, it's heavily affixed) for snow is neccessary
for survival, so it's good for talking about snow. It's not so good at
talking about automobiles, however. Conditions in a high-tech world favor
simplicity in grammar over complexity in lexicon.

It's equally capable of talking about automobiles, though.  More
difficult, but certainly capable.  See above.

EXACTLY! It's more difficult. Although languages are capable of expressing
every concept you can think of, some languages are more verbose than others
in communicating certain ideas. The closer that the concept comes to
dealing with concepts that the speakers deal with on a day-to-day basis,
the less verbose the speech becomes. In Inuit, it's far easier to talk
about snow than to talk about cars. Then again, cars weren't a thing that
the Inuit were used to dealing with on a regular basis. Snow _was_ (and for
the most part, still is), and knowing exactly what kind of snow you're
dealing with is critical to survival. The language optimized (evolved) to
make expressing those concepts easier.

 Just look at Chinese.  It used
to be polysyllabic and had a complex grammar.  Now it's monosyllabic and
with few (some might say zero) rules of grammar to speak of.

Ohhhhh, no. Chinese has LOTS of rules for grammar, and is FAR from
monosyllabic. Both of your assertions are myths. I've seen Chinese grammars
and they are comparable to English grammars. As for the accusation of
"monosyllabic", the monosyllables are RARELY spoken alone. A fairly simple
concept like "meat" is rendered: "shiyong roulei", "shizhi", and "yaodian".
A single, monosyllabic word in Chinese is a rare thing. The discrete
Chinese characters disguise the language's true complexity.

Those discrete characters used to be represented by polysyllabic sounds.
As for the grammar, I'd have to check my sources again.

So did Phonician script, the direct ancestor to Roman script. Aleph, the
first letter of the Phonician alphabet, meant ox, and the symbol looked
like an ox. (turn a picture of an "A" upside-down). Do you imagine what our
lives would be like if we had a letter for _every_ _singe_ _WORD_?!
AAAAAARRRRRGHHHHHH!!!

Chinese script used to represent ideas as well as sounds. They used to have
_50000_ characters in the Chinese dictionary. @_@ If I remember correctly
(i'm separated from the book this is in by a thousand miles), to be called
"literate", you had to be able to recognize about 10000 of them. By dumping
the meaning and polysyllabry, that number was reduced to less than 3000.
KISS; it's a step forward.

The change occured because the Chinese changed pens and started to become
lazy. The ancient characters had graceful lines and many strokes. However,
slowly the original characters were simplified (less is more). Then the
pens were changed to brushes (cheaper), and they could no longer draw curvy
lines. The characters became squared off, and then further simplified. All
during this time, the script usage was changed from polysyllabic to
monosyllabic. The words themselves, however, didn't change in that way.

Chinese has rules. You can't put words in any order you please and expect
to get a meaningful sentance, right? It's got very specific rules for
counting things, for example. You use a different suffix to count long,
thin things, like pencils, than to count large, flat things, like paper.
The suffix provides meaning that the number otherwise wouldn't have.

 The less
advanced the culture, the less quickly their language tends to simplify
over time.  One of the Bantu languages spoken by primitives in Africa
has 26 different noun types.  26!

Actually, all those different "noun types" are actually _affixes_ which
modify the meaning of the nouns, and there are only a few sets of them.
Same with Inuit (sp?). The noun-formation rules are actually very
straightforward. In many ways, they're much simpler than English. Many of
the Bantu languages are rated level one, the simplest and easiest to learn
languages.

Noun formation may be simpler, but as I said there are more types than
needed for only a primitive culture.

You don't know that. Are you an Eskimo? Do you speak Inuit? Do you live in
an igloo? Have you at least studied their culture? No? Then shut up.

(sorry about that.)

Unless you're in the know, you've got no right to assume that their
complications are "not needed."

It's true the distinctions between the different types of snow are trivial
to us, but an Inuit might find it vital to know exactly what kind of snow
he's dealing with. And they probably do. One of the most critical is the
difference between dry, loose snow and wet, compact snow. If wet, compact
snow lies atop dry, loose snow, you get avilanches! So, what was this you
were saying about needless complications?

 How did they acquire such a
complicated language?

I don't know, but it must've had some purpouse or it would've been
simplified by now, ne? We know that there is a purpouse, the trouble is
finding it.

 Romance languages, for comparison,
have three:  masculine, feminine, and neuter.

Romance languages are usually level two. A language compensates for
complexity of derivation for complexity of syntax and lexicon.

Either order of words indicates their function, or specific particles
do.  Yes, I know.  But instead of a complicated system of declension,
like Greek has, English is relatively simple.  "I travel", "you travel",
"he travels", "they travel", "we travel".  And so on.  The verb hardly
changes depending on the person and number of the noun.  Although
English isn't very regular (yet!), it's better than Greek.  The Romance
languages are midway between the two.

Don't be deceived. We have a major complication in that selfsame example.
Namely, that obligatory subject. In Germanic languages like ours, that "I",
"you", "he/she/it", "we", "they" is required. Guess what! Some languages do
perfectly fine without them. Heck, they do perfectly fine without changing
the verb. Now, where did it come from?

English used to be declined just like Greek. When we lost the complicated
verb endings, we had to keep the pronouns, and make them obligatory, to
preserve the full meaning.

 The Tower of Babel was
the way it happened, folks.

Nah, this stuff predates the Babel Tower. Language evolved before
agriculture. You need agriculture to produce enough food to stay in one
place long enough to build towers.

The languages were unified before then.

How do you know this?

You have made a claim, and you are the one who has to back it up.

The Bible runs into trouble with history and physical reality because it's
a religious book, not a historical chronicle or physics article.

It's a historical chronicle too.  Why do you think two of the books are
called I and II "Chronicles"?

Then how come it can't get some simple measurements right, like solomon's

Take hell. Now, either hell is A) not hot, or B) there's no
physicists in hell.

Depends on whether you're going with "orthodox" Christian dogma, or the
facts.

What facts? They seem equally valid to me.

 The valley of Hinnom, Gehenna, was given as a type of hell fire.
The fires there were never put out, never quenched.  The maggots always
had garbage and the flesh of criminals to feed on.  But in "hell", you
die.  You are burned up and destroyed.  NOT tortured forever.  That's a
false, "orthodox" Christian dogma.

I was talking about Physics, pure and simple. IF my discription of hell was
indeed correct (and you seem to be asserting that it isn't, but this is
hypothetical), then it's not hot or there are no physicsists in hell.

Besides, my argument can still work if I know one thing: Are those
multiple, discreet fires, or one big honkin' bonfire?

Reasoning:

Hell is described as having "pools of brimstone".

In what text are you looking?

Apparently, in the book that you think is the incorrect one. Gomen.

And my point is, these same people will look at a miracle of healing,
and call it magic.  *sigh*

...and other people will ask those two groups, "What miracle/magic?"

There is a difference between thinking and believing. I've learned the
difference. I don't THINK that miracles occur, but I do BELIEVE that
amazing things can happen. ;)

There's no explanation for it other than God.  ;)

Spontaneous remission. Ulcers and tumors have disappeared with no
provocation and without praying. It happens.

Taking Zantac, however, increases the cure rate of healing by statistically
significant amounts.

And just to show that hamburgers are food and not proof: I've eaten two
hamburgers in one sitting with an ulcer and nothing happened to me, either.
The ulcer was still there the next day. :)=

Until clinically prove in a double-blind test that praying increases your
healing rate (kinda hard to do, tho. What the heck is a placebo pray?), or
that something like a supporting limb regenerating with the help of faith,
you don't have a leg to stand on. ^_-

----

Uh, one more question. EXACTLY what religion are you?

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