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.

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.  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.  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.

 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.

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.

 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.

 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.  How did they acquire such a
complicated language?

 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.

 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.

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"?

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.  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.

Reasoning:

Hell is described as having "pools of brimstone".

In what text are you looking?

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. ;)

Okay...  Here's an example.  A few years ago, I had come down with a
stomach ulcer during Spring Break from all of the stress in college.  As
you know, stomach ulcers are nasty things.  They're a thinning or a
hole in the mucous layer protecting the stomach lining from the
acids the stomach generates.  They develop somewhat slowly and they heal
even *more* slowly.  Now, I woke up one morning around 4:30, in intense
pain.  There was no food or medicine in the house to soothe my stomach,
and no way of getting any.  I couldn't go back to sleep.  I did the only
thing I could think of at the time:  I prayed and asked to be healed.
In that very INSTANT, I was.  I even had a hamburger that evening for
supper.  Hamburgers are very greasy, and grease is one of the worst
possible things you can have if you have an ulcer.  The hamburger didn't
bother me in the slightest.

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

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