Parlor Game: The Unknown Language Genie

[ol bofosh]

Proto-World

You realize it'd have like 200 words and hardly anything in the way of syntax, right?

That'd be funny. Or maybe the first language Out of Africa. Or the first one Into America.

Proto-Celtic. I'd like that.

[Neek]

The amazing thing about all these Proto-Languages is that the reconstruction that we have it as is so timeless, devoid of veracity and completely rife with internal controversy. To be blessed with an unverifiable truth, no matter how amazingly close to our reconstructions or musings get, without the ability to verify it, you're going to be a crazy person. Just a straight up crazy person. The genie might as well given you a handbook of Basque anagrams. And Proto-Basque is more Basque Anagrams! (Not because that is the truth--but because the truth would feel like that. Either that, or the genie is just a cruel bastard that perverts all wishes.)

I would possibly reject the genie's offer. Not for any real reason other than how depressing it would feel to hold a grammar of an ancient language, so dead and gone in the world, that there isn't a shred left of it in. Nothing to discover from it, nothing to read with it, no real opportunity to learn it. To know a language in absence of any evidence of its existence other than through postulation, but to have it so concretely before you, but yet with nothing to read, nothing to write on it (not like you can just reference a grammar in your doctorial thesis that was written by Dr. Reginald Genie Coxblox, III, Psy.D., Esq., because again genies are cruel bastards and that's how he would sign his name), and no real way to convince any other person in the world of it--unless they too are mad or are in possession of a Nationalistic or otherwise idealogical motive that your little grammar there might prove useful. And this, of course, is the curse of the Genie. To grant you knowledge and closure, but with little to do with it.

Having said that, just to sate my own curiosity: A Historical Grammar of Etruscan; an Etymological Dictionary of the Etruscan Language. I want to figure out where this sunavabitch came from. And while I'm at it, a copy of Paleo-Socio-Linguistics: A Case Study of the Proto-Indo-European People, Language, and Migration, complete with CDs on the back flap of interviews with the natives and the field research. If I'm going to ask for a grammar, I might as well make it one I have to piece together myself from field notes.

[Vuvuzela]

Forget anagrams, I want a list of Basque palindromes.

[Xephyr]

Coptic

What?

[brandrinn]

Proto-World

You realize it'd have like 200 words and hardly anything in the way of syntax, right?

[/quote]
You know what Proto-World means, right? It's not the first language ever. It's the most recent common ancestor of all extant languages. Unless 90% of what makes human language what it is was coincidentally evolved the same way independently many times, Proto-World is likely to have been a full-fledged language, IF it ever existed to begin with.

[Aldwinkle]

More wishes!

[patiku]

To spite Torco I would like a grammar of whatever was the dominant language of any nonhominid sapients which may have evolved on this planet before their extinction; if there were none, then I would like the grammar of a language spoken by a future race of Terrestrials.

[Xephyr]

Proto-World

You realize it'd have like 200 words and hardly anything in the way of syntax, right?

You know what Proto-World means, right? It's not the first language ever. It's the most recent common ancestor of all extant languages.

Yeah I know what Proto-World means, thanks for that. Why must "the most recent common ancestor of all extant languages" be a fully developed one with complicated syntax and a beefy vocabulary? Once people had developed Simple Language, what exactly would prevent that population from splitting up and evolving their own separate Slightly-Less-Simple Languages?

"Wait, everyone we have to stick together until we've figured out how to say conditional sentences!"

Unless 90% of what makes human language what it is was coincidentally evolved the same way independently many times, Proto-World is likely to have been a full-fledged language, IF it ever existed to begin with.

Seeing as how human languages have bewilderingly-diverse, variegated, and creative ways to express "90% of what makes human language", I don't consider that to be much of a coincidence at all.

[Imralu]

"Wait, everyone we have to stick together until we've figured out how to say conditional sentences!"

"If we don't stick together ... wait ... how do I finish this sentence? I want to tell you about the consequences. Stop! Why are you leaving?"

[Vuvuzela]

"Wait, everyone we have to stick together until we've figured out how to say conditional sentences!"

Okay, If one of us forms a conditional sentence then you can- guys? Guys? Fine. I guess I'll just stay here and develop clicks. And tones. Yeah, my descendants are going to have the biggest phonology ever! And none of you guys are going to be nearly as cool as me! And by the way, Nilo-Saharan, no-one needs your fancy fucking collective number! Yes, Amerind, those affixes DO make your verbs look fat! And, Nostratic, I only pretended to like your ablauts. CAN YOU HEAR ME? I. NEVER. LIKED. YOU! They're gone. That's just dandy, they're all gone. Their dialects are all languages by now. I bet they've already forgotten me.
Guess I'll just wander this desert alone- oh, hey there! Have you heard of this cool new thing I came up with. It's called "language". I made it. I guess, if I'm alone, and, well, you're alone, I guess we could be alone... together. So how was your day? If you tell me about it, I'll tell you about mine. That, just there, was a conditional sentence. Final piece of the puzzle, that. All the people I thought were my friends, them. Yeah, they were just waiting for me to say one. And then they left. Never did catch your name. What was it? Khoi? I'm San, pleasure to make your acquaintance.

[linguofreak]

Once people had developed Simple Language, what exactly would prevent that population from splitting up and evolving their own separate Slightly-Less-Simple Languages?

Nothing. But simple attrition might well lead to only one of those branches surviving long enough to show up in the historical record, let alone the set of currently spoken languages. We only have the sketchiest idea of Pre-Indo-European languages in Europe, for example. 1000 years from now, there may well not be any extant languages in Europe that aren't Indo-European. So today "Proto-European" may be very close to Proto-World, but in a thousand years, it may well be the same as PIE. The MRCA of the set of living languages in an area tends to become more recent as time goes on and various branches die out, and the same will apply if we define our area to be "the world" instead of "Europe". Depending on the time depth between the first human speech and the modern day, and such things as migration patterns and however-many-millennia worth of world events, there may be quite a number of languages that are sister/cousin languages to Proto-World that have no living descendants. An analogy is how the MRCA of living dinosaurs (a bird) is much more recent than the earliest dinosaur.

(Incidentally, my bet is on the Babel story being true and there not being any MRCA to the set of living languages, but using the assumptions typical of secular linguistics, most importantly that the origins of human speech are at a much greater time depth than recorded history, the above paragraph applies).

[Vuvuzela]

Basically, humanity managed to resolve their differences to work on one particular project, and God got mad, so He knocked down the thing that all his children had worked really really hard on, and then said "Hey, you guys shouldn't talk to each other any more", so He changed their languages into different ones. Personally, I would have just restructured their mouths so that they couldn't pronounce each other's languages, but apparently He created the Universe, and I've created exactly zero actual universes, so there's that.

[Xephyr]

Once people had developed Simple Language, what exactly would prevent that population from splitting up and evolving their own separate Slightly-Less-Simple Languages?

Nothing. But simple attrition might well lead to only one of those branches surviving long enough to show up in the historical record, let alone the set of currently spoken languages. We only have the sketchiest idea of Pre-Indo-European languages in Europe, for example. 1000 years from now, there may well not be any extant languages in Europe that aren't Indo-European. So today "Proto-European" may be very close to Proto-World, but in a thousand years, it may well be the same as PIE. The MRCA of the set of living languages in an area tends to become more recent as time goes on and various branches die out, and the same will apply if we define our area to be "the world" instead of "Europe". Depending on the time depth between the first human speech and the modern day, and such things as migration patterns and however-many-millennia worth of world events, there may be quite a number of languages that are sister/cousin languages to Proto-World that have no living descendants. An analogy is how the MRCA of living dinosaurs (a bird) is much more recent than the earliest dinosaur.

Well yeah, but that's entirely speculation. Of course, so is stating that the basal split could've occurred very early on in the development of language, so fair enough. But, the point is that Brandrinn's assertion that it MUST have occurred a good deal later is untenable.

(Incidentally, my bet is on the Babel story being true and there not being any MRCA to the set of living languages, but using the assumptions typical of secular linguistics, most importantly that the origins of human speech are at a much greater time depth than recorded history, the above paragraph applies).

... uh-huh.

[brandrinn]

"Wait, everyone we have to stick together until we've figured out how to say conditional sentences!"
"What oof we just split up and take over the world?"
"Don't talk to me about 'what oofs,' Bolgor!"

[Pole, the]

PIE during the ablaut arising.

Most recent common ancestor of Korean and Japonic, if they form a family.

Most recent common ancestor of Altaic and Korean, if they form a family.

[linguofreak]

Well yeah, but that's entirely speculation. Of course, so is stating that the basal split could've occurred very early on in the development of language, so fair enough. But, the point is that Brandrinn's assertion that it MUST have occurred a good deal later is untenable.

As far as what can be proven, yes, it's untenable. As far as what is *probable* given the time depths involved, I'm not so sure.

[brandrinn]

Well yeah, but that's entirely speculation. Of course, so is stating that the basal split could've occurred very early on in the development of language, so fair enough. But, the point is that Brandrinn's assertion that it MUST have occurred a good deal later is untenable.

As far as what can be proven, yes, it's untenable. As far as what is *probable* given the time depths involved, I'm not so sure.

Why do people keep putting strong claims in my mouth when I merely talk about possibilities? Sal did the same thing in another thread. I never said it must be the case. I said it was unlikely to be otherwise. I know it's a lot easier for you to be right about something when other people say more confident things, but I'm afraid I cannot accommodate you in that this time.

[Melteor]

The Language of Atlantis

[ccaccus]

The Language of Atlantis

http://www.freewebs.com/keran_shadlag/o ... rammar.htm

You're welcome.

[linguofreak]

Why do people keep putting strong claims in my mouth when I merely talk about possibilities? Sal did the same thing in another thread. I never said it must be the case. I said it was unlikely to be otherwise. I know it's a lot easier for you to be right about something when other people say more confident things, but I'm afraid I cannot accommodate you in that this time.

My bad. I responded to Xephyr's comment on what you had said without checking back on exactly what you had said.

[Xephyr]

Why do people keep putting strong claims in my mouth when I merely talk about possibilities? Sal did the same thing in another thread. I never said it must be the case. I said it was unlikely to be otherwise. I know it's a lot easier for you to be right about something when other people say more confident things, but I'm afraid I cannot accommodate you in that this time.

Hmmm...

You know what Proto-World means, right? It's not the first language ever. It's the most recent common ancestor of all extant languages. Unless 90% of what makes human language what it is was coincidentally evolved the same way independently many times, Proto-World is likely to have been a full-fledged language, IF it ever existed to begin with.

Yeah, you're right, you never said that proto-world necessarily had to have been a fully fledged language. However, the reason why it does not necessarily have to have been simpler, either, I think is due more to the argument Linguofreak was using, and not because "Unless 90% of what..." etc etc.

I still think that Proto-World is likely to have been closer to the Simple side of the spectrum. But that's not really based on much of anything and can't be proven.

[Kezdő]

Bordurian.

...Along with several maps of the country.

[Pinetree]

Bordurian.

...Along with several maps of the country.

Or Proto-Bordurio-Syldavian.

[brandrinn]

It's all cool, Xeph. You right in any case that Proto-World probably wouldn't be that interesting. I was half joking when I brought it up anyway. Something like Proto-Nostratic (again, if it existed, which it probably didn't) would be more enlightening.

[Tropylium]

Any language indigenous to Baltia/Western Russia (ie. excluding IE and Uralic)
Hunnic
Proto-Afrasian

(And for joke requests: Hyperborean, Lemurian and Middle R'lyehian.)