Linguists seek a time when we spoke as one

[Simple_lan]

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-07-20-linguists-one-
-language_N.htm

[Peter T. D]

On Jul 23, 11:51 am, "simple_langu...@yahoo.com"
<simple_langu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-07-20-linguists-o-
> ne-languag...

Oh, jeez. Ruhlen and Bengston. Their PR machine must be
cranking up again -- they must have new books to foist on an
unsuspecting public.

How did Gell-Mann allow himself to get sucked into their
ambit?

[John Roth]

On Jul 23, 9:51 am, "simple_langu...@yahoo.com"
<simple_langu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-07-20-linguists-o-
> ne-languag...

It looks like a reasonably balanced article: the objective is
indeed very controversial. My take on it is that it can't be
done in any meaningful fashion.

The other point that jumps out at me is that Ruhlen is
talking out of his field of expertise when he posits a
major transition at 50 kya. The first thing is that it's
much too late: the migration from Africa that's recorded in
the mtDNA and Y chromosome is at least 10 ky earlier, and
possibly as much as 30 ky earlier. The 50kya date appears
to be based on European fossils; I beleve there are much
earlier ones in Africa.

However, regardless of whether they achieve their objective
(very doubtful), the freely accessable linguistic data base
ought to be quite useful.

John Roth

[Day Brown]

Inasmuch as field studies of chimps show different groups with
different sets of calls, the idea that hominids once had a
universal language seems like nonsense.

[Peter T. D]

On Jul 23, 11:37 pm, Day Brown <daybr...@hughes.net> wrote:
> Inasmuch as field studies of chimps show different groups
> with different sets of calls, the idea that hominids once
> had a universal language seems like nonsense.

Do you have reason to believe that the neural architecture
underlying chimp calls is evolutionarily akin to the neural
architecture underlying language?

The fact that every human infant everywhere can learn any
human language perfectly tells me that all modern humans
possess the _same_ evolved biological support of language. If
different language abilities evolved in different populations,
the others didn't survive (not necessarily because their
linguistic ability specifically wasn't better).

[Marc]

On 7 25 , 1:39, John Swindle <jcswin...@msn.com> wrote:

> . . . whereas "ak=E4" in Hawaiian is a common word meaning
> "but,"

Obviously a cognate with English "a caboose," which also
means "butt."

Alert the language scientists in Santa Fe!

Marc

[John Swind]

On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:45:20 -0000, Marc
<marc.adler@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Jul 23, 10:51 am, "simple_langu...@yahoo.com"
><simple_langu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-07-20-linguists--
>> one-languag...
>
>Quote ...In Latin it's "aqua"; in Japanese, "aka" means
>"bilge water"... Unquote
>
>"Aka" broadly means "grime" and is used euphemistically by
>sailors out of a superstitious fear of calling water in a
>boat "water."
>. . .

. . . whereas "akä" in Hawaiian is a common word meaning
"but," "however," "nevertheless." (Read the dieresis as a
macron, marking a lengthened vowel.)

Surely the subject line doesn't imply that all linguists once
spoke a common language?

[Marc]

On Jul 23, 10:51 am, "simple_langu...@yahoo.com"
<simple_langu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-07-20-linguists-o-
> ne-languag...

Quote ...In Latin it's "aqua"; in Japanese, "aka" means "bilge
water"... Unquote

"Aka" broadly means "grime" and is used euphemistically by
sailors out of a superstitious fear of calling water in a
boat "water."

There must be some kind of academic full moon out over
Santa Fe...

Marc

[Peter T. D]

On Jul 24, 2:45 pm, Marc <marc.ad...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jul 23, 10:51 am, "simple_langu...@yahoo.com"
>
> <simple_langu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-07-20-linguists--
> >one-languag...
>
> Quote ...In Latin it's "aqua"; in Japanese, "aka" means
> "bilge water"... Unquote
>
> "Aka" broadly means "grime" and is used euphemistically by
> sailors out of a superstitious fear of calling water in a
> boat "water."
>
> There must be some kind of academic full moon out over
> Santa Fe...

It's been shining for at least a decade.

[benlizro]

On Jul 25, 6:45 am, Marc <marc.ad...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jul 23, 10:51 am, "simple_langu...@yahoo.com"
>
> <simple_langu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2007-07-20-linguists--
> >one-languag...
>
> Quote ...In Latin it's "aqua"; in Japanese, "aka" means
> "bilge water"... Unquote
>
> "Aka" broadly means "grime" and is used euphemistically by
> sailors out of a superstitious fear of calling water in a
> boat "water."
>
> There must be some kind of academic full moon out over
> Santa Fe...
>
> Marc

And it seems to make scientific progress run backwards. At
least, the one example they cite is signficantly LESS
impressive than the ones that used to be standard a few years
ago. Whatever happened to *MELQ and *TIK?

Ross Clark

[Richard Wo]

"DKleinecke" <dkleinecke@gmail.com> wrote:

> What Peter said ("Every human infant can acquire any human
> language perfectly, ... barring severe brain damage.") is a
> commonplace among linguists - you might ask him for a
> reference.

The tabula rasa model of the newborn human mind and the
uninheritedness of intelligence were commonplace assertions
when I was young. That did not make them true.

Richard.

[Peter T. D]

On Aug 7, 5:35 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
<jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> "DKleinecke" <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > What Peter said ("Every human infant can acquire any human
> > language perfectly, ... barring severe brain damage.") is
> > a commonplace among linguists - you might ask him for a
> > reference.
>
> The tabula rasa model of the newborn human mind and the
> uninheritedness of intelligence were commonplace assertions
> when I was young. That did not make them true.

Can you provide a single example, from the entire history of
humanity, of a(n unimpaired) human infant who did not acquire
a language?

Or of a baby adopted into a different culture who did not
perfectly acquire the language of its new environment?

[Dkleinecke]

On Aug 7, 3:29 pm, "Peter T. Daniels"
<gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Aug 7, 5:35 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
> <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > "DKleinecke" <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > What Peter said ("Every human infant can acquire any
> > > human language perfectly, ... barring severe brain
> > > damage.") is a commonplace among linguists - you might
> > > ask him for a reference.
>
> > The tabula rasa model of the newborn human mind and the
> > uninheritedness of intelligence were commonplace
> > assertions when I was young. That did not make them true.
>
> Can you provide a single example, from the entire history of
> humanity, of a(n unimpaired) human infant who did not
> acquire a language?

You are using a circular definition of impaired. There are
hundreds, maybe thousands, of people in the United States who
show no overt sign of defects, except what is now called
developmental disability, who do not speak. That these people
are in some sense impaired is deduced from their disability. I
do not know the administrative jargon elsewhere, but in
California you can find them in practically any level 4I
community care home.

There are serious statistical problems with the metrics
involved in measuring developmental disability. The
difficulties lie at the low end of the scale. General
principles lead us to expect that any metric for intelligence
that we might use should be in some symmetric around a norm.
But for all the tests for intelligence that I know there is
very poor symmetry between the ends of the scale.

This is usually explained by assuming damage being done at the
lower end and, indeed, considerable damage can be observed to
be happening. But damage is not observable in, I believe, a
majority of cases other than that "intelligence" is reduced.
It seems to be perfectly possible that a human being who is
unfortunate enough to fall several sigmas (metaphorically) to
the wrong side of the norm might not be able to master speech.

I hasten to add that there is, so far as I know, no evidence
supporting this speculation. But neither is there any evidence
precluding it. The noise from trauma events masks the effect I
am talking about - remember something like 5% of all births
involve defects of one kind or another.

Probably we need to restate what I called a commonplace of
linguistics as something like "No human child who develops
normally fails to learn human speech". This includes an overt
recognition that I am assuming "develops normally" includes
speech and is just as circular as the preceding statement. I
observe that Peter has changed his statement from "damaged" to
"impaired". This is a more in the right direction but we need
to go a little further.

> Or of a baby adopted into a different culture who did not
> perfectly acquire the language of its new environment?

[Peter T. D]

On Aug 8, 1:07 pm, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
> Am Tue, 07 Aug 2007 15:29:00 -0700 schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>
> > On Aug 7, 5:35 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
> > <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >> "DKleinecke" <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> What Peter said ("Every human infant can acquire any
> >>> human language perfectly, ... barring severe brain
> >>> damage.") is a commonplace among linguists - you might
> >>> ask him for a reference.
>
> >> The tabula rasa model of the newborn human mind and the
> >> uninheritedness of intelligence were commonplace
> >> assertions when I was young. That did not make them true.
>
> > Can you provide a single example, from the entire history
> > of humanity, of a(n unimpaired) human infant who did not
> > acquire a language?
>
> That's not possible for logical reasons: if the infant
> didn't acquire a language, it would be called impaired for
> that fact.

QED, no?

No infant acquires part of a language and stops. If it's taken
to a different environment, it acquires the new language. If
it's in a multi-lingual environment, it acquires multiple
languages.

[Peter T. D]

On Aug 8, 1:23 pm, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 7, 3:29 pm, "Peter T. Daniels"
> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > On Aug 7, 5:35 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
> > <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > > "DKleinecke" <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > What Peter said ("Every human infant can acquire any
> > > > human language perfectly, ... barring severe brain
> > > > damage.") is a commonplace among linguists - you might
> > > > ask him for a reference.
>
> > > The tabula rasa model of the newborn human mind and the
> > > uninheritedness of intelligence were commonplace
> > > assertions when I was young. That did not make them
> > > true.
>
> > Can you provide a single example, from the entire history
> > of humanity, of a(n unimpaired) human infant who did not
> > acquire a language?
>
> You are using a circular definition of impaired. There are
> hundreds, maybe thousands, of people in the United States
> who show no overt sign of defects, except what is now called
> developmental disability, who do not speak. That these
> people are in some sense impaired is deduced from their
> disability. I do not know the administrative jargon
> elsewhere, but in California you can find them in
> practically any level 4I community care home.

"Hundreds, maybe thousands" out of three hundred million?
What's your point?

You seem obsessed with mutism.

Do such people have no _understanding_ of language, either?

> There are serious statistical problems with the metrics
> involved in measuring developmental disability. The
> difficulties lie at the low end of the scale. General
> principles lead us to expect that any metric for
> intelligence that we might use should be in some
> symmetric around a norm. But for all the tests for
> intelligence that I know there is very poor symmetry
> between the ends of the scale.

Do you still believe in some single (measurable?) quantity
called "intelligence"? Are you a fan of the "thinking" that
produced *The Bell Curve*? Need I refer you to S J Gould's
review of it in The New Yorker, reprinted in the 2nd edition
of *The Mismeasure of Man*?

> This is usually explained by assuming damage being done at
> the lower end and, indeed, considerable damage can be
> observed to be happening. But damage is not observable in, I
> believe, a majority of cases other than that "intelligence"
> is reduced. It seems to be perfectly possible that a human
> being who is unfortunate enough to fall several sigmas
> (metaphorically) to the wrong side of the norm might not be
> able to master speech.

Perfectly possible, but unattested?

> I hasten to add that there is, so far as I know, no evidence
> supporting this speculation. But neither is there any
> evidence precluding it. The noise from trauma events masks
> the effect I am talking about - remember something like 5%
> of all births involve defects of one kind or another.

You have not identified any "effect" whatsoever!

> Probably we need to restate what I called a commonplace of
> linguistics as something like "No human child who develops
> normally fails to learn human speech". This includes an
> overt recognition that I am assuming "develops normally"
> includes speech and is just as circular as the preceding
> statement. I observe that Peter has changed his statement
> from "damaged" to "impaired". This is a more in the right
> direction but we need to go a little further.

No, I am not interested in playing educationalese jargon
games. That sort of terminology is adapted to conform to
existing legislation.

> > Or of a baby adopted into a different culture who did not
> > perfectly acquire the language of its new environment?-

[Joachim Pe]

Am Tue, 07 Aug 2007 15:29:00 -0700 schrieb Peter T. Daniels:

> On Aug 7, 5:35 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
> <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> "DKleinecke" <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> What Peter said ("Every human infant can acquire any human
>>> language perfectly, ... barring severe brain damage.") is
>>> a commonplace among linguists - you might ask him for a
>>> reference.
>>
>> The tabula rasa model of the newborn human mind and the
>> uninheritedness of intelligence were commonplace assertions
>> when I was young. That did not make them true.
>
> Can you provide a single example, from the entire history of
> humanity, of a(n unimpaired) human infant who did not
> acquire a language?
>

That's not possible for logical reasons: if the infant didn't
acquire a language, it would be called impaired for that fact.

Joachim

[Joachim Pe]

Am Wed, 08 Aug 2007 10:53:59 -0700 schrieb Peter T. Daniels:

> On Aug 8, 1:07 pm, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu>
> wrote:
>> Am Tue, 07 Aug 2007 15:29:00 -0700 schrieb Peter T.
>> Daniels:
>>
>>> On Aug 7, 5:35 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
>>> <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>>>> "DKleinecke" <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> What Peter said ("Every human infant can acquire any
>>>>> human language perfectly, ... barring severe brain
>>>>> damage.") is a commonplace among linguists - you might
>>>>> ask him for a reference.
>>
>>>> The tabula rasa model of the newborn human mind and the
>>>> uninheritedness of intelligence were commonplace
>>>> assertions when I was young. That did not make them true.
>>
>>> Can you provide a single example, from the entire history
>>> of humanity, of a(n unimpaired) human infant who did not
>>> acquire a language?
>>
>> That's not possible for logical reasons: if the infant
>> didn't acquire a language, it would be called impaired for
>> that fact.
>
> QED, no?
>

Depends on what you want to prove. An infant that is
capable of acquiring a language is capable of acquiring a
language. So, what?

Joachim

[Peter T. D]

On Aug 2, 11:30 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
<jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in message-
> news:1185249095.794181.177370@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...
>
> > On Jul 23, 11:37 pm, Day Brown <daybr...@hughes.net>
> > wrote:
> >> Inasmuch as field studies of chimps show different groups
> >> with different sets of calls, the idea that hominids once
> >> had a universal language seems like nonsense.
> > Do you have reason to believe that the neural architecture
> > underlying chimp calls is evolutionarily akin to the
> > neural architecture underlying language?
>
> How genetic and how cultural are these chimpanzee
> differences?
>
> > The fact that every human infant everywhere can learn any
> > human language perfectly...
>
> What evidence do you have for this claim? What do you
> actually mean? Grammar is still maturing in one's teens, so
> I have grave doubts about the truth of the claim even if
> there be no idiosyncratic hereditary bias in how one speaks.
>
> In fact, the claim appears to be trivially false - 'A
> significant number of individuals have unexplained
> difficulties with acquiring normal speech and language,
> despite adequate intelligence and environmental
> stimulation.' -http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/-
> 10.1146/annurev.neuro.26....
> . Google for FOXP2 for popular discussion. Or does the
> claim assert that afflicted individuals are not human?

I don't know what _you're_ talking about.

Do you have any evidence that, say, a Korean-ancestry child or
a Cree- ancestry child or a Dyirbal-ancestry child or a
Yoruba-ancestry child has any difficulty acquiring English as
its first language? or vice versa?

Or that FOXP2 affects speakers of language A but not
language B?

[Dkleinecke]

On Aug 3, 3:43 am, "Peter T. Daniels"
<gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Aug 2, 11:30 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
> <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>
> > "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in mess-
> > agenews:1185249095.794181.177370@22g2000hsm.googlegroups-
> > .com...
>
> > > On Jul 23, 11:37 pm, Day Brown <daybr...@hughes.net>
> > > wrote:
> > >> Inasmuch as field studies of chimps show different
> > >> groups with different sets of calls, the idea that
> > >> hominids once had a universal language seems like
> > >> nonsense.
> > > Do you have reason to believe that the neural
> > > architecture underlying chimp calls is evolutionarily
> > > akin to the neural architecture underlying language?
>
> > How genetic and how cultural are these chimpanzee
> > differences?
>
> > > The fact that every human infant everywhere can learn
> > > any human language perfectly...
>
> > What evidence do you have for this claim? What do you
> > actually mean? Grammar is still maturing in one's teens,
> > so I have grave doubts about the truth of the claim even
> > if there be no idiosyncratic hereditary bias in how one
> > speaks.
>
> > In fact, the claim appears to be trivially false - 'A
> > significant number of individuals have unexplained
> > difficulties with acquiring normal speech and language,
> > despite adequate intelligence and environmental
> > stimulation.' -http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/ab-
> > s/10.1146/annurev.neuro.26....
> > . Google for FOXP2 for popular discussion. Or does the
> > claim assert that afflicted individuals are not human?
>
> I don't know what _you're_ talking about.
>
> Do you have any evidence that, say, a Korean-ancestry child
> or a Cree- ancestry child or a Dyirbal-ancestry child or a
> Yoruba-ancestry child has any difficulty acquiring English
> as its first language? or vice versa?
>
> Or that FOXP2 affects speakers of language A but not
> language B?

Among people with developmental disabilities one can find mute
persons with rather good intelligence. These people
demonstrate that it is necessary to add some qualifications to
the statement that all children can learn any language.

But, as Peter points out, no one has ever detected any
differences between target languages. Moreover these people,
although mute, often seem to understand all, or least much,
speech spoken around them.

In general I believe linguists have failed to investigate the
speech capabilities of the developmentally disabled. Some
valuable insights might be being overlooked.

[phoglund]

On 5 elo, 14:37, "Peter T. Daniels"
<gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Aug 5, 6:37 am, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>
>
>
> > Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > > On Aug 3, 5:25 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
> > > <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > > > "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in
> > > > messagenews:1186137802.712284.310870@22g2000hsm.googl-
> > > > egroups.com...
>
> > > > > On Aug 2, 11:30 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
> > > > > <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > > > >> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in
> > > > >> messagenews:1185249095.794181.177370@22g2000hsm.go-
> > > > >> oglegroups.com...
> > > > >> > The fact that every human infant everywhere can
> > > > >> > learn any human language perfectly...
> > > > >> What evidence do you have for this claim? What do
> > > > >> you actually mean? In fact, the claim appears to be
> > > > >> trivially false - 'A significant number of
> > > > >> individuals have unexplained difficulties with
> > > > >> acquiring normal speech and language, despite
> > > > >> adequate intelligence and environmental
> > > > >> stimulation.' -http://arjournals.annualreviews.org-
> > > > >> /doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.neuro.26....
> > > > >> . Google for FOXP2 for popular discussion. Or does
> > > > >> the claim assert that afflicted individuals are
> > > > >> not human?
> > > > > I don't know what _you're_ talking about. Do you
> > > > > have any evidence that, say, a Korean-ancestry child
> > > > > or a Cree- ancestry child or a Dyirbal-ancestry
> > > > > child or a Yoruba-ancestry child has any difficulty
> > > > > acquiring English as its first language? or vice
> > > > > versa?
>
> > > > Purl Gurl?
>
> > > > You didn't just claim that every human infant could
> > > > learn any language as its first language. You claimed
> > > > any language could be learnt perfectly. That strains
> > > > my credulity.
>
> > > Every human infant can acquire any human language
> > > perfectly. (There is always the proviso, Barring severe
> > > brain damage. The language faculty is incredibly robust,
> > > and it takes _very_ severe brain abnormality to
> > > interfere with language acquisition.)
>
> > > > Most of us are well aware of idiosyncratic failures to
> > > > acquire one's first language perfectly - e.g 'Woy'
> > > > Jenkins. In some cases there may be systematic trends
> > > > in these imperfections inherent in the language - any
> > > > work on that? Languages in Southern China (and
> > > > North-Eastern SE Asia) have a tendency to lisping -
> > > > what drives that? On the other hand, I find it hard to
> > > > see that the tendency to eliminate /r/ from SE Asian
> > > > phoneme inventories is genetic.
>
> > > ?? Languages lisp?? I can't even imagine what you mean.
>
> > Well, Turkmen does lisp. His Excellency Saparmurat
> > Niyazov's name is in correct standard Turkmen pronounced
> > as Thaparmurat Niyathov. Turkmen is not even a
> > particularly exotic language - it is closely related to
> > Turkish proper.-
>
> What does that have to do with "lisping"?

Lisping means using [T] instead of [s]. In Turkmen, [T] is a
recognized variant of [s] - in fact, [T] is the mainstream
allophone of the [s] phoneme (i.e. the phoneme that is in the
neighboring languages and in dialects realized as [s]). In
this particular sense, Turkmen can be said to "lisp",
especially from the point of view of the speakers of other
Oghuz Turk languages, who AFAIK don't recognize
[T] as a valid standard representation of the [s] phoneme.

[Richard Wo]

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:1185249095.794181.177370@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...
> On Jul 23, 11:37 pm, Day Brown <daybr...@hughes.net> wrote:
>> Inasmuch as field studies of chimps show different groups
>> with different sets of calls, the idea that hominids once
>> had a universal language seems like nonsense.

> Do you have reason to believe that the neural architecture
> underlying chimp calls is evolutionarily akin to the neural
> architecture underlying language?

How genetic and how cultural are these chimpanzee differences?

> The fact that every human infant everywhere can learn any
> human language perfectly...

What evidence do you have for this claim? What do you actually
mean? Grammar is still maturing in one's teens, so I have
grave doubts about the truth of the claim even if there be no
idiosyncratic hereditary bias in how one speaks.

In fact, the claim appears to be trivially false - 'A
significant number of individuals have unexplained
difficulties with acquiring normal speech and language,
despite adequate intelligence and environmental stimulation.'
- http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-
.neuro.26.041002.131144?cookieSet=1&journalCode=neuro
. Google for FOXP2 for popular discussion. Or does the claim
assert that afflicted individuals are not human?

Richard.

[Brian M. S]

On Wed, 08 Aug 2007 15:41:59 -0700, "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@verizon.net> wrote in
<news:1186612919.863787.220320@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> in
sci.anthropology.paleo,sci.lang:

> On Aug 8, 6:11 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
> <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in mess-
>> agenews:1186525740.750507.197730@r34g2000hsd.googlegroup-
>> s.com...

[...]

>>> Can you provide a single example, from the entire history
>>> of humanity, of a(n unimpaired) human infant who did not
>>> acquire a language?

>> The Nariokotome boy?

> The what?

Also known as the Turkana boy, I believe; a nearly complete
skeleton of an 11- or 12-year-old male hominid dated to about
1.5 million years ago. Generally classified as H. erectus or
H. ergaster, according to various online sources.

[...]

>> We can provide examples of apparently unimpaired
>> individuals who did not *perfectly* acquire the language of
>> the environment into which they were born! Some of the
>> deficiencies are minor - faulty selection of the Canadian
>> English /ai/ allophones, making them clearly phonemically
>> contrastive in one idiolect, as opposed to relying on the
>> potential minimal pair of 'writer' and 'rider'; /tUf/ for
>> 'tooth' in one British idiolect; Japanese /s/ pronounced
>> [T] in many idiolects.

> No idea what you're referring to, but don't bother to
> explain.

They certainly look to me like prima facie examples of
imperfect acquisition of the surrounding language.

[...]

Brian

[AntóNio Ma]

Joachim Pense wrote:

> Depends on what you want to prove. An infant that is capable
> of acquiring a language is capable of acquiring a language.
> So, what?

It's a bit irritating that you all pretend not to understand
him, and he doesn't bother to be more explicit.

The issue was 1) whether human languages all derive from a
single ancestor, and 2) how much of human language is inborn.
(1) is implied by the reasonable degree of similarity between
them all, while (2) might explain said similarity wihtout
recourse to (1), but would also make (1) more likely.

In defense of (2), he pointed out that a child's ability to
learn a given language is per se unrelated to the parents'
proficiency in that language. That is, just because your
parents speak Korean, that doesn't make you any more or less
gifted to learn Korean or Swahili. This point may be debated,
but it's plain to see that it has *no relation whatsoever* to
'imperfect 1st language acquisition' and derived issues.

Stick to the point, damnit. Has the LSDisease become
contagious?

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

[Richard Wo]

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:1186137802.712284.310870@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...
> On Aug 2, 11:30 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
> <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in mess-
>> agenews:1185249095.794181.177370@22g2000hsm.googlegroups-
>> .com...

>> > The fact that every human infant everywhere can learn any
>> > human language perfectly...

>> What evidence do you have for this claim? What do you
>> actually mean?

>> In fact, the claim appears to be trivially false - 'A
>> significant number of individuals have unexplained
>> difficulties with acquiring normal speech and language,
>> despite adequate intelligence and environmental
>> stimulation.' -http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs-
>> /10.1146/annurev.neuro.26....
>> . Google for FOXP2 for popular discussion. Or does the
>> claim assert that afflicted individuals are not human?

> I don't know what _you're_ talking about.

> Do you have any evidence that, say, a Korean-ancestry child
> or a Cree- ancestry child or a Dyirbal-ancestry child or a
> Yoruba-ancestry child has any difficulty acquiring English
> as its first language? or vice versa?

Purl Gurl?

You didn't just claim that every human infant could learn any
language as its first language. You claimed any language could
be learnt perfectly. That strains my credulity.

Most of us are well aware of idiosyncratic failures to acquire
one's first language perfectly - e.g 'Woy' Jenkins. In some
cases there may be systematic trends in these imperfections
inherent in the language - any work on that? Languages in
Southern China (and North-Eastern SE Asia) have a tendency to
lisping - what drives that? On the other hand, I find it hard
to see that the tendency to eliminate /r/ from SE Asian
phoneme inventories is genetic.

Such claims as there are of genetic bases to language
differences tend to assume slowly working effects. But why
should something as recently developed as language have a
uniform genetic basis? Has the best achievable already
been achieved?

At the simplest, consider the notion of 'universal grammar'
with language-dependent switch settings. Is there any reason
that the preferences for various settings should not be
affected genetically? It would be most unlike other human
charactersitics if there were no genetic component.

Good data on language acquisition is likely to be hard to
obtain - it would probably have to be based on interracial
adoption of babies.

Richard.

[Richard Wo]

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@verizon.net> wrote:

> No, LANGUAGES do not lisp. PEOPLE with "speech
> defects" lisp.

Do people who copy their example lisp? If so, it seems
entirely natural to also apply the word to languages.

> Your claim is no more than that /s/ (not "[s]") is realized
> [T] in this language. That is not a "speech defect" (any
> more than it is in some varieties of Spanish).

Are there normal varieties of Spanish that have /T/ but not
/s/? In the context of [s]-like sounds, I can see two useful
meanings to the statement that a lanuage lisps. One is the
diachronic meaning that it has replaced /s/ by /T/ (e.g.
Burmese). The second is the synchronic statement that it has
[T] (or [s<lat>]) rather than [s] as the only roughly dental
fricative. It seems that both statements apply to Turkmen.

Richard.

[Brian M. S]

On Thu, 09 Aug 2007 04:34:24 -0700, "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@verizon.net> wrote in
<news:1186659264.222467.143470@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> in
sci.anthropology.paleo,sci.lang:

> On Aug 8, 11:34 pm, "Brian M. Scott"
> <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:

>> On Wed, 08 Aug 2007 15:41:59 -0700, "Peter T. Daniels"
>> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in <news:1186612919.863787.2-
>> 20320@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com> in
>> sci.anthropology.paleo,sci.lang:

>>> On Aug 8, 6:11 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
>>> <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

[...]

>>>> We can provide examples of apparently unimpaired
>>>> individuals who did not *perfectly* acquire the language
>>>> of the environment into which they were born! Some of the
>>>> deficiencies are minor - faulty selection of the Canadian
>>>> English /ai/ allophones, making them clearly phonemically
>>>> contrastive in one idiolect, as opposed to relying on the
>>>> potential minimal pair of 'writer' and 'rider'; /tUf/ for
>>>> 'tooth' in one British idiolect; Japanese /s/ pronounced
>>>> [T] in many idiolects.

>>> No idea what you're referring to, but don't bother to
>>> explain.

>> They certainly look to me like prima facie examples of
>> imperfect acquisition of the surrounding language.

> Except that he didn't bother saying what the examples were.

???

> I don't see what regional dialectal variation has to do with
> imperfect acquisition anyway.

Look again: he wrote 'idiolect(s)'. I have no reason to doubt
that at least in the first two examples he's talking about
specific individuals who failed to aquire the surrounding
language perfectly.

[...]

Brian

[Richard Wo]

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Aug 8, 11:34 pm, "Brian M. Scott"
> <b.sc...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>> On Wed, 08 Aug 2007 15:41:59 -0700, "Peter T.
>> Daniels" wrote:
>> > On Aug 8, 6:11 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
>> > <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> >> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

>> >>> Can you provide a single example, from the entire
>> >>> history of humanity, of a(n unimpaired) human infant
>> >>> who did not acquire a language?
>> >> The Nariokotome boy?
>> > The what?

>> Also known as the Turkana boy, I believe; a nearly complete
>> skeleton of an 11- or 12-year-old male hominid dated to
>> about 1.5 million years ago. Generally classified as H.
>> erectus or H. ergaster, according to various online
>> sources.

Yes - specimen number KNM-WT 15000.

> Oh. Wasn't he being clever.

I was making the point that at some stage in our history we
have shifted from not having language to typically having
language. In the latter case there will at some stage
frequently have been individuals having language having full
siblings who did not have language, which raises the issue of
whether full siblings are either both human or both non-human.
(I gather that there is a form of baptism for when it is not
clear that the creature being baptised has a soul, so we
should not require that a full sibling of a human being be
human.) Now, I suspect there need not be a clean-cut
distinction between having and not having language - just as
there are useful intermediate stages between having a
vertebrate eye and not having one. (The vertebrate eye has
been claimed as a system that could not have come into being
by evolution because it is useless if any major component is
missing.) I could be wrong - language, in the wider sense
including sign language, might conceivably be an exaptation of
another ability and requiring just a single change to bring it
about. Becoming capable of articulating modern human speech
does seem to be a complicated matter.

>> >> We can provide examples of apparently unimpaired
>> >> individuals who did not *perfectly* acquire the language
>> >> of the environment into which they were born! Some of
>> >> the deficiencies are minor - faulty selection of the
>> >> Canadian English /ai/ allophones, making them clearly
>> >> phonemically contrastive in one idiolect, as opposed to
>> >> relying on the potential minimal pair of 'writer' and
>> >> 'rider'; /tUf/ for 'tooth' in one British idiolect;
>> >> Japanese /s/ pronounced [T] in many idiolects.

>> They certainly look to me like prima facie examples of
>> imperfect acquisition of the surrounding language.

> Except that he didn't bother saying what the examples were.
> I don't see what regional dialectal variation has to do with
> imperfect acquisition anyway.

Who suggested it did?

The examples I gave all appear to be individual failures, not
dialect differences.

Canadian English is the background for the example of a fault
(or, at the very least, anomalous) allocation of what are
normally regarded as allophones of Canadian English /ai/.

The key point of /tUf/ is that it was /tUf/ (subsequently
modified to /tUT/ when the speaker deliberately acquired the
distinction between /f/ and /T/) rather than /tu:f/ for
'tooth'. I cannot determine whether the failure to
distinguish /f/ and /T/ was an individual failure in language
acquisition or peer influence. This merger seems to be
spreading through England.

Richard.

[Jimbo.Tyso]

On Aug 3, 4:14 pm, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 3, 3:43 am, "Peter T. Daniels"
> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Aug 2, 11:30 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
> > <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > > "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in mes-
> > > sagenews:1185249095.794181.177370@22g2000hsm.googlegrou-
> > > ps.com...
>
> > > > On Jul 23, 11:37 pm, Day Brown <daybr...@hughes.net>
> > > > wrote:

[snip for brevity]

> In general I believe linguists have failed to investigate
> the speech capabilities of the developmentally disabled.
> Some valuable insights might be being overlooked.

I think you overstate the case. Plenty of linguists of various
subspecialisms have studied developmental disorders. You could
find introductory material in most psycholinguistics text
books and there are plenty of journals in the field (Clinical
Linguistics and Phonetics comes to mind). A few names off the
top of my head Heather van der Lely, Bill Wells, Lydia White,
Irene Tsimpli...well any number really.

[Peter T. D]

On Aug 3, 5:25 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
<jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in message-
> news:1186137802.712284.310870@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Aug 2, 11:30 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
> > <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in mess-
> >> agenews:1185249095.794181.177370@22g2000hsm.googlegroups-
> >> .com...
> >> > The fact that every human infant everywhere can learn
> >> > any human language perfectly...
> >> What evidence do you have for this claim? What do you
> >> actually mean? In fact, the claim appears to be trivially
> >> false - 'A significant number of individuals have
> >> unexplained difficulties with acquiring normal speech and
> >> language, despite adequate intelligence and environmental
> >> stimulation.' -http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/a-
> >> bs/10.1146/annurev.neuro.26....
> >> . Google for FOXP2 for popular discussion. Or does the
> >> claim assert that afflicted individuals are not human?
> > I don't know what _you're_ talking about. Do you have any
> > evidence that, say, a Korean-ancestry child or a Cree-
> > ancestry child or a Dyirbal-ancestry child or a
> > Yoruba-ancestry child has any difficulty acquiring English
> > as its first language? or vice versa?
>
> Purl Gurl?
>
> You didn't just claim that every human infant could learn
> any language as its first language. You claimed any language
> could be learnt perfectly. That strains my credulity.

Every human infant can acquire any human language perfectly.
(There is always the proviso, Barring severe brain damage. The
language faculty is incredibly robust, and it takes _very_
severe brain abnormality to interfere with language
acquisition.)

> Most of us are well aware of idiosyncratic failures to
> acquire one's first language perfectly - e.g 'Woy' Jenkins.
> In some cases there may be systematic trends in these
> imperfections inherent in the language - any work on that?
> Languages in Southern China (and North-Eastern SE Asia) have
> a tendency to lisping - what drives that? On the other hand,
> I find it hard to see that the tendency to eliminate /r/
> from SE Asian phoneme inventories is genetic.

?? Languages lisp?? I can't even imagine what you mean.

> Such claims as there are of genetic bases to language
> differences tend to assume slowly working effects. But why
> should something as recently developed as language have a
> uniform genetic basis? Has the best achievable already been
> achieved?
>
> At the simplest, consider the notion of 'universal grammar'
> with language-dependent switch settings. Is there any reason
> that the preferences for various settings should not be
> affected genetically? It would be most unlike other human
> charactersitics if there were no genetic component.

I do not consider "the notion of 'universal grammar' with
language- dependent switch settings" ["parameters"]. It's yet
another English- based analysis that very shortly becomes
unworkable when applied to other languages (see Mark Baker,
Atoms of Language).

> Good data on language acquisition is likely to be hard to
> obtain - it would probably have to be based on interracial
> adoption of babies.

Good data on language acquisition have been being collected
for many decades. See, for instance, many many books by
Loraine K. Obler.

[Marc]

On Aug 3, 9:46 pm, "Peter T. Daniels"
<gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

> ?? Languages lisp?? I can't even imagine what you mean.

I think he's mistakenly extrapolating some genetic basis for a
phenomenon that can be explained much more simply: allophony
of /s/ and /th/ in many languages.

In Japan there are people with what would be considered a
lisp here in the US, but since /s/ and /th/ are allophonic in
Japanese, it's not recognized as a problem (since it isn't
one), and isn't corrected in school, the way it is here. In
fact, a lot of Japanese people can't even tell that someone
is lisping.

Marc

[Dkleinecke]

On Aug 3, 7:46 pm, "Peter T. Daniels"
<gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

> Every human infant can acquire any human language perfectly.
> (There is always the proviso, Barring severe brain damage.
> The language faculty is incredibly robust, and it takes
> _very_ severe brain abnormality to interfere with language
> acquisition.)

I reply to both Peter and Jimbo.

There are many people around who are mute. I am speaking now,
not of infants, where language acquisition is the matter being
discussed, but of functioning adults. So far as I know, all of
these people are developmentally disabled (who used to be
called "retarded" or worse things).

I don't know of any systematic study of mute adults which
extends to the point of trying to determine just how much
brain damage can be detected. I know of no cases where brain
damage was detected by any medical test. The brain damage is
inferred from the fact that the person is mute. This is, of
course, a circular definition.

The same applies to persons who are verbal, but only in
restricted ways. I know one young man whose normal speech is
almost incomprehensible but who, when he imitates the
conversation he has heard on fire department broadcast bands,
speaks perfectly (in the phonetic sense). Thus we know he can
articulate English perfectly, given the right circumstances,
but his normal speech is quite defective.

So speaking English perfectly is a matter of, infortunately,
how you define "perfectly". Perhaps a testable definition
would be useful.

Jimbo points to a literature of speech therapy, not one of
linguistic analysis. Most of these articles seem to me to be
hard-core Chomskian trivia which, as Peter points out, is not
a valid linguistic construct.

[Jimbotuk20]

On Aug 4, 5:03 pm, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 3, 7:46 pm, "Peter T. Daniels"
> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > Every human infant can acquire any human language
> > perfectly. (There is always the proviso, Barring severe
> > brain damage. The language faculty is incredibly robust,
> > and it takes _very_ severe brain abnormality to interfere
> > with language acquisition.)
>
> I reply to both Peter andJimbo.
>
> There are many people around who are mute. I am speaking
> now, not of infants, where language acquisition is the
> matter being discussed, but of functioning adults. So far as
> I know, all of these people are developmentally disabled
> (who used to be called "retarded" or worse things).
>

I think we need some clarification. Not all adult mutes are
developmentally disordered/disabled. Not all developmental
disorder leads to mutism. Mutism as the result of
developmental disorder is _relatively_ rare (specific language
impairments short of a complete loss of linguistic
communication is _far_ more common.)

> I don't know of any systematic study of mute adults which
> extends to the point of trying to determine just how much
> brain damage can be detected. I know of no cases where brain
> damage was detected by any medical test. The brain damage is
> inferred from the fact that the person is mute. This is, of
> course, a circular definition.

Well, I haven't looked but I will. Of course, there's nothing
particularly linguistic about such an enterprise. I have never
seen any literature inferring brain damage from muteness but
I'll look for that too. Could you please give some references?

>
> The same applies to persons who are verbal, but only in
> restricted ways. I know one young man whose normal speech is
> almost incomprehensible but who, when he imitates the
> conversation he has heard on fire department broadcast
> bands, speaks perfectly (in the phonetic sense). Thus we
> know he can articulate English perfectly, given the right
> circumstances, but his normal speech is quite defective.

People who stutter (ie have a motor coordination based
dysfluency) very often perform differentially given different
contexts: this is _very_ well covered in the standard
literature on the subject.

>
> So speaking English perfectly is a matter of, infortunately,
> how you define "perfectly". Perhaps a testable definition
> would be useful.
>

Actually the "testable definition" in much of the literature
is to do with interaction: does someone's performance appear
to lead to _repair_ situations in spoken interaction (one of
the many influences of conversation analysis on language
pathology studies.)

> Jimbopoints to a literature of speech therapy, not one of
> linguistic analysis. Most of these articles seem to me to be
> hard-core Chomskian trivia which, as Peter points out, is
> not a valid linguistic construct.

I am surprised that you think this. Bill Wells is a
phonologist who's work is grounded in ethnomethodology: about
as far form a hard-core Chomskian as you can get. I suppose
that Irenen Tsimpli would count although iirc she currently
works in Optimality and Relevance Theoretic frameworks.
Heather van der Lely is a psycholinguist who I think is
theoretically probably pretty agnostic on the detail of
syntactic theory but in general closer to Pinker's stance than
Chomsky's. The literature I mentioned specifically is
*linguistic* and not the literature of speech therapy -
although there is inevitably some overlap when linguists study
pathological cases. I am disappointed that you appear to me to
be both moving the goal posts (ie language dealing with
clinical data is not linguistics but speech therapy) and
dismissing inconvenient data (ie if there appears to be
linguistic research in the field it's Chomskyan trivia and
irrelevant). Peter has an informed adversarial view of
Chomskyan linguistics - as do many other linguists. At the
same time large numbers of linguists hold views close to
Chomsky's (even one or two who contribute here occasionally).
Whether you agree with Chomskyan views or not they are
currently perfectly mainstream linguistics.

I responded to your observation with a suggestion that you
overstated the case and I gave some informal evidence that
this was so. You have made a riposte but I haven't yet seen
any evidence for what you say whether about adult mutes or
about research in speech and language pathology. Can you
perhaps tell us where we can find reports supporting your
assertions?

Thanks in advance,

Jimbo

[phoglund]

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Aug 3, 5:25 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
> <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in mess-
> > agenews:1186137802.712284.310870@22g2000hsm.googlegroups-
> > .com...
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > > On Aug 2, 11:30 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
> > > <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > >> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in me-
> > >> ssagenews:1185249095.794181.177370@22g2000hsm.googlegr-
> > >> oups.com...
> > >> > The fact that every human infant everywhere can learn
> > >> > any human language perfectly...
> > >> What evidence do you have for this claim? What do you
> > >> actually mean? In fact, the claim appears to be
> > >> trivially false - 'A significant number of individuals
> > >> have unexplained difficulties with acquiring normal
> > >> speech and language, despite adequate intelligence and
> > >> environmental stimulation.' -http://arjournals.annualr-
> > >> eviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.neuro.26....
> > >> . Google for FOXP2 for popular discussion. Or does the
> > >> claim assert that afflicted individuals are not
> > >> human?
> > > I don't know what _you're_ talking about. Do you have
> > > any evidence that, say, a Korean-ancestry child or a
> > > Cree- ancestry child or a Dyirbal-ancestry child or a
> > > Yoruba-ancestry child has any difficulty acquiring
> > > English as its first language? or vice versa?
> >
> > Purl Gurl?
> >
> > You didn't just claim that every human infant could learn
> > any language as its first language. You claimed any
> > language could be learnt perfectly. That strains my
> > credulity.
>
> Every human infant can acquire any human language perfectly.
> (There is always the proviso, Barring severe brain damage.
> The language faculty is incredibly robust, and it takes
> _very_ severe brain abnormality to interfere with language
> acquisition.)
>
> > Most of us are well aware of idiosyncratic failures to
> > acquire one's first language perfectly - e.g 'Woy'
> > Jenkins. In some cases there may be systematic trends in
> > these imperfections inherent in the language - any work on
> > that? Languages in Southern China (and North-Eastern SE
> > Asia) have a tendency to lisping - what drives that? On
> > the other hand, I find it hard to see that the tendency to
> > eliminate /r/ from SE Asian phoneme inventories is
> > genetic.
>
> ?? Languages lisp?? I can't even imagine what you mean.

Well, Turkmen does lisp. His Excellency Saparmurat Niyazov's
name is in correct standard Turkmen pronounced as Thaparmurat
Niyathov. Turkmen is not even a particularly exotic language -
it is closely related to Turkish proper.

[Peter T. D]

On Aug 5, 6:37 am, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Aug 3, 5:25 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
> > <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > > "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in mes-
> > > sagenews:1186137802.712284.310870@22g2000hsm.googlegrou-
> > > ps.com...
>
> > > > On Aug 2, 11:30 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
> > > > <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > > >> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in
> > > >> messagenews:1185249095.794181.177370@22g2000hsm.goog-
> > > >> legroups.com...
> > > >> > The fact that every human infant everywhere can
> > > >> > learn any human language perfectly...
> > > >> What evidence do you have for this claim? What do you
> > > >> actually mean? In fact, the claim appears to be
> > > >> trivially false - 'A significant number of
> > > >> individuals have unexplained difficulties with
> > > >> acquiring normal speech and language, despite
> > > >> adequate intelligence and environmental stimulation.'
> > > >> -http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146-
> > > >> /annurev.neuro.26....
> > > >> . Google for FOXP2 for popular discussion. Or does
> > > >> the claim assert that afflicted individuals are
> > > >> not human?
> > > > I don't know what _you're_ talking about. Do you have
> > > > any evidence that, say, a Korean-ancestry child or a
> > > > Cree- ancestry child or a Dyirbal-ancestry child or a
> > > > Yoruba-ancestry child has any difficulty acquiring
> > > > English as its first language? or vice versa?
>
> > > Purl Gurl?
>
> > > You didn't just claim that every human infant could
> > > learn any language as its first language. You claimed
> > > any language could be learnt perfectly. That strains my
> > > credulity.
>
> > Every human infant can acquire any human language
> > perfectly. (There is always the proviso, Barring severe
> > brain damage. The language faculty is incredibly robust,
> > and it takes _very_ severe brain abnormality to interfere
> > with language acquisition.)
>
> > > Most of us are well aware of idiosyncratic failures to
> > > acquire one's first language perfectly - e.g 'Woy'
> > > Jenkins. In some cases there may be systematic trends in
> > > these imperfections inherent in the language - any work
> > > on that? Languages in Southern China (and North-Eastern
> > > SE Asia) have a tendency to lisping - what drives that?
> > > On the other hand, I find it hard to see that the
> > > tendency to eliminate /r/ from SE Asian phoneme
> > > inventories is genetic.
>
> > ?? Languages lisp?? I can't even imagine what you mean.
>
> Well, Turkmen does lisp. His Excellency Saparmurat Niyazov's
> name is in correct standard Turkmen pronounced as
> Thaparmurat Niyathov. Turkmen is not even a particularly
> exotic language - it is closely related to Turkish proper.-

What does that have to do with "lisping"?

Sounds like you're ready for the NRA: "People don't
lisp, languages
do."

[Peter T. D]

On Aug 5, 2:54 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
<jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Aug 5, 6:37 am, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
> >> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >> > On Aug 3, 5:25 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
> >> > <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >> > > You didn't just claim that every human infant could
> >> > > learn any language as its first language. You claimed
> >> > > any language could be learnt perfectly. That strains
> >> > > my credulity.
> >> > Every human infant can acquire any human language
> >> > perfectly. (There is always the proviso, Barring severe
> >> > brain damage. The language faculty is incredibly
> >> > robust, and it takes _very_ severe brain abnormality to
> >> > interfere with language acquisition.)
> >> > > Most of us are well aware of idiosyncratic failures
> >> > > to acquire one's first language perfectly - e.g 'Woy'
> >> > > Jenkins. In some cases there may be systematic trends
> >> > > in these imperfections inherent in the language - any
> >> > > work on that? Languages in Southern China (and
> >> > > North-Eastern SE Asia) have a tendency to lisping -
> >> > > what drives that? On the other hand, I find it hard
> >> > > to see that the tendency to eliminate /r/ from SE
> >> > > Asian phoneme inventories is genetic.
> >> > ?? Languages lisp?? I can't even imagine what you mean.
> >> Well, Turkmen does lisp. His Excellency Saparmurat
> >> Niyazov's name is in correct standard Turkmen pronounced
> >> as Thaparmurat Niyathov. Turkmen is not even a
> >> particularly exotic language - it is closely related to
> >> Turkish proper.-
> > What does that have to do with "lisping"? Sounds like
> > you're ready for the NRA: "People don't lisp, languages
> > do."
>
> I think we have an issue here with transferred epithets. (I
> presume one may use the term of verbs that are semantically
> akin to adjectives.) Some of us find them grammatical; Peter
> Daniels claims to find the transfer above incomprehensible.
> Are we to attribute this linguistic difference to the way
> our parents and playmates spoke? Or is the use of
> transferred epithets ruled out as a language feature?

Maybe we have an issue of someone pretending to be a poet in a
technical discussion. Languages are not pictographic,
languages are not hieroglyphic, languages are not phonetic
(well, _all_ languages are phonetic), languages do not lisp.

Repeating such idiotic formulations in the presence of people
who don't (yet) know better is not helpful.

[Richard Wo]

"Marc" <marc.adler@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1186241718.670151.22190@r34g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
> On Aug 3, 9:46 pm, "Peter T. Daniels"
> <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:

>> ?? Languages lisp?? I can't even imagine what you mean.

> I think he's mistakenly extrapolating some genetic basis for
> a phenomenon that can be explained much more simply:
> allophony of /s/ and /th/ in many languages.

Actually it's a lack of contrast with one of three members
being taken as 'standard' [s] ~ [T] ~ [s<lat>].

> In Japan there are people with what would be considered a
> lisp here in the US, but since /s/ and /th/ are allophonic
> in Japanese, it's not recognized as a problem (since it
> isn't one), and isn't corrected in school, the way it is
> here. In fact, a lot of Japanese people can't even tell that
> someone is lisping.

What's interesting is that in Southern China there seem to be
many dialects (of various language families) for which [s] is
not the typical sound. This may be an areal phenomenon, and I
actually doubt that it this has a genetic basis. In some
cases there may actually be phonetic motivation, as one can
see in Turkmen, where pronouncing /s/ as [T] increases the
contrast with /S/, and something of this sort presumably
happened in Burmese.

Richard.

[Richard Wo]

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Aug 5, 6:37 am, phogl...@abo.fi wrote:
>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>> > On Aug 3, 5:25 pm, "Richard Wordingham"
>> > <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>> > > You didn't just claim that every human infant could
>> > > learn any language as its first language. You claimed
>> > > any language could be learnt perfectly. That strains my
>> > > credulity.

>> > Every human infant can acquire any human language
>> > perfectly. (There is always the proviso, Barring severe
>> > brain damage. The language faculty is incredibly robust,
>> > and it takes _very_ severe brain abnormality to interfere
>> > with language acquisition.)

>> > > Most of us are well aware of idiosyncratic failures to
>> > > acquire one's first language perfectly - e.g 'Woy'
>> > > Jenkins. In some cases there may be systematic trends
>> > > in these imperfections inherent in the language - any
>> > > work on that? Languages in Southern China (and
>> > > North-Eastern SE Asia) have a tendency to lisping -
>> > > what drives that? On the other hand, I find it hard to
>> > > see that the tendency to eliminate /r/ from SE Asian
>> > > phoneme inventories is genetic.

>> > ?? Languages lisp?? I can't even imagine what you mean.

>> Well, Turkmen does lisp. His Excellency Saparmurat
>> Niyazov's name is in correct standard Turkmen pronounced as
>> Thaparmurat Niyathov. Turkmen is not even a particularly
>> exotic language - it is closely related to Turkish proper.-

> What does that have to do with "lisping"?

> Sounds like you're ready for the NRA: "People don't lisp,
> languages
> do."

I think we have an issue here with transferred epithets. (I
presume one may use the term of verbs that are semantically
akin to adjectives.) Some of us find them grammatical; Peter
Daniels claims to find the transfer above incomprehensible.
Are we to attribute this linguistic difference to the way our
parents and playmates spoke? Or is the use of transferred
epithets ruled out as a language feature?

Richard.

[Richard Wo]

"António Marques" <m.ap@sapo.pt> wrote:

> It's a bit irritating that you all pretend not to understand
> him, and he doesn't bother to be more explicit.

> The issue was 1) whether human languages all derive from a
> single ancestor, and 2) how much of human language is
> inborn. (1) is implied by the reasonable degree of
> similarity between them all, while (2) might explain said
> similarity wihtout recourse to (1), but would also make (1)
> more likely.
>
> In defense of (2), he pointed out that a child's ability to
> learn a given language is per se unrelated to the parents'
> proficiency in that language. That is, just because your
> parents speak Korean, that doesn't make you any more or less
> gifted to learn Korean or Swahili. This point may be
> debated, but it's plain to see that it has *no relation
> whatsoever* to 'imperfect 1st language acquisition' and
> derived issues.

Peter Daniels made the claim, 'Every human infant can
acquire any human language perfectly, ... barring severe
brain damage,' in defence of (2). I am saying that this very
strong statement is false. As it is false, it cannot be used
to counter the weaker claim that languages come to reflect
their speakers' genetic make-up, which differs from language
to language.

However, this may not very relevant to (2), as human
populations do not vary greatly. Indeed, one could turn it
round. Suppose very different languages arose, with different
underlying acquisition systems. Now let the populations
intermingle. The people of one population would mangle or
simply fail to acquire the peculiarities of another
population's language, and they would be lost. The languages
would be homogenised by the heterogeneity of the language
acquistion systems!

I can make a prediction from this model. Populations showing
strong founder effects should come to have more exotic
languages (e.g. grammar and phonology). Is there any example
of this? A defect of this model is that it makes no prediction
of how long it should take to develop these exotic features.

> Stick to the point, damnit. Has the LSDisease become
> contagious?

I think rather that we have nothing new to say on monogenesis
versus polygenesis.

Richard.

[Dkleinecke]

On Aug 5, 3:30 am, jimbotuk2000 <jimbo.ty...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 4, 5:03 pm, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Aug 3, 7:46 pm, "Peter T. Daniels"
> > <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > Every human infant can acquire any human language
> > > perfectly. (There is always the proviso, Barring severe
> > > brain damage. The language faculty is incredibly robust,
> > > and it takes _very_ severe brain abnormality to
> > > interfere with language acquisition.)
>
> > I reply to both Peter andJimbo.
>
> > There are many people around who are mute. I am speaking
> > now, not of infants, where language acquisition is the
> > matter being discussed, but of functioning adults. So far
> > as I know, all of these people are developmentally
> > disabled (who used to be called "retarded" or worse
> > things).
>
> I think we need some clarification. Not all adult mutes are
> developmentally disordered/disabled. Not all developmental
> disorder leads to mutism. Mutism as the result of
> developmental disorder is _relatively_ rare (specific
> language impairments short of a complete loss of linguistic
> communication is _far_ more common.)

I am curious how many developmentally disabled adults you have
actually become familiar with.

Of course, you can explain that that you mean 1 or 2 per
thousand of total human population (I am guessing) by
"relatively rare". Considering how many people there are, this
is a usage of rare that is dangerously misleading. I suppose
that is is possible for a person to be made mute by throat
damage or some such mechanism (even religious vows) but no
examples have ever been offered for my attention.

> > I don't know of any systematic study of mute adults which
> > extends to the point of trying to determine just how much
> > brain damage can be detected. I know of no cases where
> > brain damage was detected by any medical test. The brain
> > damage is inferred from the fact that the person is mute.
> > This is, of course, a circular definition.

> Well, I haven't looked but I will. Of course, there's
> nothing particularly linguistic about such an enterprise. I
> have never seen any literature inferring brain damage from
> muteness but I'll look for that too. Could you please give
> some references?

What Peter said ("Every human infant can acquire any human
language perfectly, ... barring severe brain damage.") is a
commonplace among linguists - you might ask him for a
reference. I regret that I do not have easy access to any
research library where I could scan things like popular books
on linguistics.

> > The same applies to persons who are verbal, but only in
> > restricted ways. I know one young man whose normal speech
> > is almost incomprehensible but who, when he imitates the
> > conversation he has heard on fire department broadcast
> > bands, speaks perfectly (in the phonetic sense). Thus we
> > know he can articulate English perfectly, given the right
> > circumstances, but his normal speech is quite defective.
>
> People who stutter (ie have a motor coordination based
> dysfluency) very often perform differentially given
> different contexts: this is _very_ well covered in the
> standard literature on the subject.

Well known and, as far as I can tell, completely irrelevant.
>
> > So speaking English perfectly is a matter of,
> > infortunately, how you define "perfectly". Perhaps a
> > testable definition would be useful.

> Actually the "testable definition" in much of the literature
> is to do with interaction: does someone's performance appear
> to lead to _repair_ situations in spoken interaction (one of
> the many influences of conversation analysis on language
> pathology studies.)

What is a "repair situation"? And THAT is a definition of
perfect knowledge of a language?

> > Jimbopoints to a literature of speech therapy, not one of
> > linguistic analysis. Most of these articles seem to me to
> > be hard-core Chomskian trivia which, as Peter points out,
> > is not a valid linguistic construct.
>
> I am surprised that you think this. Bill Wells is a
> phonologist who's work is grounded in ethnomethodology:
> about as far form a hard-core Chomskian as you can get. I
> suppose that Irenen Tsimpli would count although iirc she
> currently works in Optimality and Relevance Theoretic
> frameworks. Heather van der Lely is a psycholinguist who I
> think is theoretically probably pretty agnostic on the
> detail of syntactic theory but in general closer to Pinker's
> stance than Chomsky's. The literature I mentioned
> specifically is *linguistic* and not the literature of
> speech therapy - although there is inevitably some overlap
> when linguists study pathological cases. I am disappointed
> that you appear to me to be both moving the goal posts (ie
> language dealing with clinical data is not linguistics but
> speech therapy) and dismissing inconvenient data (ie if
> there appears to be linguistic research in the field it's
> Chomskyan trivia and irrelevant). Peter has an informed
> adversarial view of Chomskyan linguistics - as do many other
> linguists. At the same time large numbers of linguists hold
> views close to Chomsky's (even one or two who contribute
> here occasionally). Whether you agree with Chomskyan views
> or not they are currently perfectly mainstream linguistics.

My point of view on Chomsky's baleful influence on linguistics
is very close to Peter's - perhaps even a bit more jaded.

I may owe somebody an apology. I surveyed the literature once
maybe twenty years ago and found a vast wasteland. It may have
changed - but I consider the probability that it has too small
to spend any time on.

> I responded to your observation with a suggestion that you
> overstated the case and I gave some informal evidence that
> this was so. You have made a riposte but I haven't yet seen
> any evidence for what you say whether about adult mutes or
> about research in speech and language pathology. Can you
> perhaps tell us where we can find reports supporting your
> assertions?

In summary: I do not recommend any reports. I suggest
face-to-face contacts with real linguists and real adult
developmentally-disabled people.

[Joachim Pe]

Am Thu, 09 Aug 2007 11:40:08 +0100 schrieb António Marques:

> Joachim Pense wrote:
>
>> Depends on what you want to prove. An infant that is
>> capable of acquiring a language is capable of acquiring a
>> language. So, what?
>
> It's a bit irritating that you all pretend not to understand
> him, and he doesn't bother to be more explicit.
>

I think a slogan like "any unimpaired infant is capable of
acquiring language" is in a category similar to "Lithuanian is
a particularly old language".

Joachim

[AntóNio Ma]

Richard Wordingham wrote:
> "António Marques" <m.ap@sapo.pt> wrote:
>
>> It's a bit irritating that you all pretend not to
>> understand him, and he doesn't bother to be more explicit.
>
>> The issue was 1) whether human languages all derive from a
>> single ancestor, and 2) how much of human language is
>> inborn. (1) is implied by the reasonable degree of
>> similarity between them all, while (2) might explain said
>> similarity wihtout recourse to (1), but would also make (1)
>> more likely.
>>
>> In defense of (2), he pointed out that a child's ability to
>> learn a given language is per se unrelated to the parents'
>> proficiency in that language. That is, just because your
>> parents speak Korean, that doesn't make you any more or
>> less gifted to learn Korean or Swahili. This point may be
>> debated, but it's plain to see that it has *no relation
>> whatsoever* to 'imperfect 1st language acquisition' and
>> derived issues.
>
> Peter Daniels made the claim, 'Every human infant can
> acquire any human language perfectly, ... barring severe
> brain damage,' in defence of
> (2).

Of which the relevant parts are 'every' and 'any', clearly
being used to convey the opposite of 'some human infants
can acquire a certain language better than they can
acquire others'.

> I am saying that this very strong statement is false. As it
> is false, it cannot be used to counter the weaker claim that
> languages come to reflect their speakers' genetic make-up,
> which differs from language to language.
>
> However, this may not very relevant to (2), as human
> populations do not vary greatly. Indeed, one could turn it
> round. Suppose very different languages arose, with
> different underlying acquisition systems. Now let the
> populations intermingle. The people of one population would
> mangle or simply fail to acquire the peculiarities of
> another population's language, and they would be lost. The
> languages would be homogenised by the heterogeneity of the
> language acquistion systems!
>
> I can make a prediction from this model. Populations showing
> strong founder effects should come to have more exotic
> languages (e.g. grammar and phonology). Is there any example
> of this? A defect of this model is that it makes no
> prediction of how long it should take to develop these
> exotic features.

Let alone define what is exotic, and anyway such a trend might
also come about without that model, so unfortunately it may be
useful only for disproving it.

>> Stick to the point, damnit. Has the LSDisease become
>> contagious?
>
> I think rather that we have nothing new to say on
> monogenesis versus polygenesis.

Then at least make it clear that the scope of debate has
changed (to something it isn't obvious that all participants
are interested in).

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

[Jimbo.Tyso]

On Aug 6, 5:02 am, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 5, 3:30 am, jimbotuk2000
> <jimbo.ty...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Aug 4, 5:03 pm, DKleinecke <dkleine...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
>
> > > On Aug 3, 7:46 pm, "Peter T. Daniels"
> > > <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > > Every human infant can acquire any human language
> > > > perfectly. (There is always the proviso, Barring
> > > > severe brain damage. The language faculty is
> > > > incredibly robust, and it takes _very_ severe brain
> > > > abnormality to interfere with language acquisition.)
>
> > > I reply to both Peter andJimbo.
>
> > > There are many people around who are mute. I am speaking
> > > now, not of infants, where language acquisition is the
> > > matter being discussed, but of functioning adults. So
> > > far as I know, all of these people are developmentally
> > > disabled (who used to be called "retarded" or worse
> > > things).
>
> > I think we need some clarification. Not all adult mutes
> > are developmentally disordered/disabled. Not all
> > developmental disorder leads to mutism. Mutism as the
> > result of developmental disorder is _relatively_ rare
> > (specific language impairments short of a complete loss of
> > linguistic communication is _far_ more common.)
>
> I am curious how many developmentally disabled adults you
> have actually become familiar with.
>

For the record, five years once a week observation at a clinic
for adults with communication disorders; seven years
supervising undergraduate and post graduate research in speech
and language disorder - both developmental and adult. I didn't
become familiar with all of the adults who had some
developmental disorder but I encountered a hell of a lot.

> Of course, you can explain that that you mean 1 or 2 per
> thousand of total human population (I am guessing) by
> "relatively rare".

It is relatively rare wouldn't - relative (as I intended the
context to imply) to the occurence of language impairement in
general. But where does the figure come from. I did a crude
google scholar/PubMed search and couldn't find figures for
this within the first 200 results.

> Considering how many people there are, this is a usage of
> rare that is dangerously misleading.

It isn't dangerous it's just accurate.

> I suppose that is is possible for a person to be made mute
> by throat damage or some such mechanism (even religious
> vows) but no examples have ever been offered for my
> attention.
>
> > > I don't know of any systematic study of mute adults
> > > which extends to the point of trying to determine just
> > > how much brain damage can be detected. I know of no
> > > cases where brain damage was detected by any medical
> > > test. The brain damage is inferred from the fact that
> > > the person is mute. This is, of course, a circular
> > > definition.
> > Well, I haven't looked but I will. Of course, there's
> > nothing particularly linguistic about such an enterprise.
> > I have never seen any literature inferring brain damage
> > from muteness but I'll look for that too. Could you please
> > give some references?
>
> What Peter said ("Every human infant can acquire any human
> language perfectly, ... barring severe brain damage.") is a
> commonplace among linguists - you might ask him for a
> reference. I regret that I do not have easy access to any
> research library where I could scan things like popular
> books on linguistics.
>

How does this commonplace address the question? I am beginning
to wonder if you aren't just making this stuff up. What
literature is there that no medical tests ever detect brain
damage in cases of developmental mutism? What literature is
there that absent such damage it's being inferred from
language deficit?

> > > The same applies to persons who are verbal, but only in
> > > restricted ways. I know one young man whose normal
> > > speech is almost incomprehensible but who, when he
> > > imitates the conversation he has heard on fire
> > > department broadcast bands, speaks perfectly (in the
> > > phonetic sense). Thus we know he can articulate English
> > > perfectly, given the right circumstances, but his normal
> > > speech is quite defective.
>
> > People who stutter (ie have a motor coordination based
> > dysfluency) very often perform differentially given
> > different contexts: this is _very_ well covered in the
> > standard literature on the subject.
>
> Well known and, as far as I can tell, completely irrelevant.
>
>
>
> > > So speaking English perfectly is a matter of,
> > > infortunately, how you define "perfectly". Perhaps a
> > > testable definition would be useful.
> > Actually the "testable definition" in much of the
> > literature is to do with interaction: does someone's
> > performance appear to lead to _repair_ situations in
> > spoken interaction (one of the many influences of
> > conversation analysis on language pathology studies.)
>
> What is a "repair situation"? And THAT is a definition of
> perfect knowledge of a language?
>

Roughly a "repair situation" is in the literature of
Conversation Analysis, where the behaviour of the participants
in a communicative situation is interpreted as indicating a
problem in speaking, hearing or understanding. There is a lot
of literature on CA and repair is an important topic.

> > > Jimbopoints to a literature of speech therapy, not one
> > > of linguistic analysis. Most of these articles seem to
> > > me to be hard-core Chomskian trivia which, as Peter
> > > points out, is not a valid linguistic construct.
>
> > I am surprised that you think this. Bill Wells is a
> > phonologist who's work is grounded in ethnomethodology:
> > about as far form a hard-core Chomskian as you can get. I
> > suppose that Irenen Tsimpli would count although iirc she
> > currently works in Optimality and Relevance Theoretic
> > frameworks. Heather van der Lely is a psycholinguist who I
> > think is theoretically probably pretty agnostic on the
> > detail of syntactic theory but in general closer to
> > Pinker's stance than Chomsky's. The literature I mentioned
> > specifically is *linguistic* and not the literature of
> > speech therapy - although there is inevitably some overlap
> > when linguists study pathological cases. I am disappointed
> > that you appear to me to be both moving the goal posts (ie
> > language dealing with clinical data is not linguistics but
> > speech therapy) and dismissing inconvenient data (ie if
> > there appears to be linguistic research in the field it's
> > Chomskyan trivia and irrelevant). Peter has an informed
> > adversarial view of Chomskyan linguistics - as do many
> > other linguists. At the same time large numbers of
> > linguists hold views close to Chomsky's (even one or two
> > who contribute here occasionally). Whether you agree with
> > Chomskyan views or not they are currently perfectly
> > mainstream linguistics.
>
> My point of view on Chomsky's baleful influence on
> linguistics is very close to Peter's - perhaps even a bit
> more jaded.

So what? Why is this about work that *you* judge to be
Chomskyan? How much of the work did you investigate before
making your judgment?

>
> I may owe somebody an apology. I surveyed the literature
> once maybe twenty years ago and found a vast wasteland. It
> may have changed - but I consider the probability that it
> has too small to spend any time on.

You owe the idea of scholarship an apology. It speaks ill of
your intent that you should have behaved like this.

>
?
>
> In summary: I do not recommend any reports. I suggest
> face-to-face contacts with real linguists and real adult
> developmentally-disabled people

I've been around here long enough to draw a line under
this. You don't know what you are talking about and you
have the audacity to patronise someone with professional
expertise who does.

*Shakes the dust from his shoes*.

Jimbo

[Dkleinecke]

On Aug 6, 3:04 am, "jimbo.ty...@gmail.com"
<jimbo.ty...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've been around here long enough to draw a line under this.
> You don't know what you are talking about and you have the
> audacity to patronise someone with professional expertise
> who does.
>
> *Shakes the dust from his shoes*.
>
> Jimbo

The professionals always say that it isn't the developmentally
disabled that cause trouble. It's their parents.

Parents on the other hand are inclined to think it is the
professionals who are the source of all the problems.

Where is Solomon when we need him?

[Richard Wo]

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@verizon.net> wrote:

> If different language abilities evolved in different
> populations, the others didn't survive (not necessarily
> because their linguistic ability specifically wasn't
> better).

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA
(PNAS) on 30 May 2007 contained the paper 'Linguistic tone is
related to the population frequency of the adaptive
haplogroups of two brain size genes, ASPM and Microcephalin'
by Dan Dediu and D. Robert Ladd. The paper is available
on-line via http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~s0340638/tonegenes/tone-
genessummary.html . Some or all of the data used is available
at http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~s0340638/tonegenes/LingData.pdf (I
haven't studied it myself).

Although some of the discussion of the paper claims it is
based on nothing but correlation there is actually some
discussion of a physical mechanism in the paper itself. I
suspect the evidence that lead to the hypothesis is not
important in its high statistical significance - though a good
check would be to remove the Afroasiatic data (Mediterranean
atonality versus sub-Saharan tonality) and check for the
significance of the rest of the data.

It would be interesting to see how the tonal Indo-European
languages fit in.

Richard.