There must be an Ur-language in here some place (you'd think).

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_cs.ucc.ie>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 01:38:34 +0000


From: Julian Lord <jlord_at_free.fr>
> > > This permeates every single part of linguistics, but to give a simple example
> > > it's assumed that the Romance languages evolved from Latin, which in turn
> > > evolved from an earlier group, itself derived from Indo-European etc.
> >
> > Well, I can hear the "linguistic is a respectable science, honest" mob
> > reaching for their revolvers up and down the land. These aren't
> > _assumptions_, these are hypotheses that can be verified to some
> > reasonably high degree.
 

> Technically, they constitute a _model_.
>
> No model, no science.

No, _those_ examples are (part of) a model; 'language has a single origin' is _not_ a universally accepted part of the linguistic model, unless everyone that thinks the contrary, or that it's an untestable irrelevance, have dropped dead or recanted of their sins.

> QED
I think you're getting your quods a little mixed up. Not seeing how this is relating to what erat demonstrandum at all.  

> > > The notion of Multiple Origins is pretty much an anti-linguistic one.
> >
> > Evidence, please.
>
> Please consult the entire corpus of Western Philosophy, from Plato
> onwards. Technically, the ur-language theory is the paradigm of Speech.

I'm tempted just to write this of as flamebait, but here goes...

	o  How is this relevant to the claims of, and more precisely,
	   your claims _about_, 'modern linguistics'?

	o  Do you suppose that strong evidence of multiple pre-historical 
           origins of language would persuade a (neo-)Platonist to shut
           up shop and go home?  (Much less 'all Western Philosophers',
           heaven forbid.)  And if not, again, how is this relevant?  Heck,
           if _so_, how is it relevant?

 

> > nor am I aware of
> > any methodological reason for having it in linguistics.
>
> No model : no science. It's a set of working hypotheses
> (not always 100% compatible) functioning as the bases
> of the historic and genetic analyses, much as the Big Bang
> explains the universe, and the single-cell organism the
> current diversity of life on Earth.

I don't see how you can characterise it so, when you've just _stipulated_ it's not testable. Your aphorism might be more aptly put, no falsifiability, no science. Your other examples are testable, and indeed have been tested to a reasonably strong degree. Y'know, predictions, experiments, consequent revisions, the things actual scientists actually do with actual models. And yet, I don't think many people would say 'the Big Bang is an assumption of cosmology', or that some other hypothesis would be "anti-astronomical'. In other words, you're making a much stronger characterisation, on a much weaker basis.

> > Please distinguish this from some linguist saying something to the
> > effect of "I reckon there's probably a single origin of language, but
> > it's completely unprovable", which is common enough, but almost the
> > exact opposite of your assertion.

> Exactly the same, had you not interpreted me otherwise ...

Sorry, but they're demonstrably not the same at all. Other linguists reckon otherwise, and so far as I know, none of them claim to have any even moderately firm evidence one way or the other. Were it established to be one way or the other, neither camp would find it necessary to amend anything much in their work beyond that single not-really-a- hypothesis.

And to get this back (kicking and screaming) to Glorantha: if it's established, or to be taken as a given, that there are multiple mythic/ pre-historical origins of language in that world, that invalidates or renders inapplicable essentially _nothing_ in 'modern lingistics', as we might apply that to Glorantha (don't ask me how or why we'd even be doing this, but...). So far as I can see, neither tells us anything at all about the other in that respect. Though if one wants to take the God Learners as the acme of 'western thought' in Glorantha, one might suppose something about what _they_ might have believed...

Cheers,
A.

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