On 8/17/10 8:36 AM, "Krimel" <[email protected]> wrote: > [Dave] > Agreed. All I'm saying is since language more than likely emerged such a > long, long, long, long, time ago and leaves no discernable traces its > unlikely that we will ever nail down exactly when. How do you excavate a > sound? Time machine, right? > > [Krimel] > The two avenues of excavation that seem most promising to me are > phylogeneticially, by looking at the social and communicative practice of > our closest primate relatives. > And ontogenetically, in terms of the development of communicative practices > in infants and young children. [Dave] That's what Alda's brain special was all about. That work while very interesting and informative establishing the differences between animal brains and human brains does little to establish timeframe.
> [Krimel] >In either case I think it is a safe > conclusion that humans, as humans, have never been without language. > [Dave] In general I agree that once humans were physiologically modern (125,000 years ago more or less) they more than likely had language. But full blown language with grammar, syntax, etc. requires a brain capable of a high level of abstraction. Might there be another process that helped the capacity develop other than language? And one that might narrow the timeframe down? Dave Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
