Adam’s Tongue
How human made language, how language made humans.
Let’s do another experiment. There must have been a time when the first system broke the ACS mold-the first protolanguage, let’s call it-had ten units or fewer. So think of any of ten words or signs, singly or in combination, would increase the survival chances and or procreative capacities of their user.
There are some constrains on this exercise, of course. There’s no point in saying that could equally well be conveyed without words. Expressions like “I’m hot!” or “Check this for size?” don’t qualify; nonlinguistic means can express them m ore than adequately. Also, first words have to be plausible as first words; they can’t be abstract, but be things whose meaning could easily be demonstrated, by mimicry, pointing, or whatever. Finally their message can’t depend on the way they’re assembled; most people in the field agree that words came before syntax. So while you’re allowed to string words together in a hoc fashion, the final meaning can’t depend on the position the words hold with respect to one another.
No prizes, I’m afraid. If I were to offer prizes, you have to swear you hadn’t read the past chapter 5, and I have to believe.
Why this experiment is important? Why “ten words or fewer”? Why not “twenty” or “fifty” or “hundred”? I mean, give the language a break; what use would expect you fewer than ten words to have?
Well, the point is that if the first few words did not have some immediate and tangible payoff that couldn’t have been obtained by simpler means, language would never have gotten past ten words, or even that far. Evolution has no foresight. It doesn’t think, well, if we can crank language up to say fifty or maybe hundred words, here’s all the nifty things we can do with it. Actually I’m being generous with ten. From word one, language had to pull its adaptive weight, confer some kind of benefit. If not, then nobody would have bothered to invent any more words.
Marre prej Librit “Gjuha e Adamit” me autor Derek Bickerton.
"Moreover, you scorned our people, and compared the Albanese to sheep, and according to your custom think of us with insults. Nor have you shown yourself to have any knowledge of my race. Our elders were Epirotes, where this Pirro came from, whose force could scarcely support the Romans. This Pirro, who Taranto and many other places of Italy held back with armies. I do not have to speak for the Epiroti. They are very much stronger men than your Tarantini, a species of wet men who are born only to fish. If you want to say that Albania is part of Macedonia I would concede that a lot more of our ancestors were nobles who went as far as India under Alexander the Great and defeated all those peoples with incredible difficulty. From those men come these who you called sheep. But the nature of things is not changed. Why do your men run away in the faces of sheep?"
Letter from Skanderbeg to the Prince of Taranto ▬ Skanderbeg, October 31 1460
Gjuha e Adamit
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Orakulli
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