A fusional proto-language?

[joey]

My understanding of inflections is that they are morphologically morph which represent multiple grammatical/semantic distinctions/concepts, and that they do so because they are contractions of what originally were strings of affixes.

If that's true, how can a proto-language, in theory, be fusional, since contractions come from sound change?

In general, I'm just having trouble grasping how something which AIUI can only come from sound change can occur in a proto-language. I have a feeling that the above question might be a little vague, so maybe answers/questions from you guys could help me narrow it down...

(Also, is there anything above that I have wrong?)

[zelos]

If that's true, how can a proto-language, in theory, be fusional, since contractions come from sound change?

I cant remember the name but I think it was "Linguistic Equilibrium" I read about which is the idea that basicly in ancient human civilizations (in the losest sense of the term, more like groups as it was prior to real civilizations) there were a constant change of languages which divided to near infinite amount since everyone barely had contact with those outside their close proximity.

so after sometime like that it is fusuional but the "proto" of any modern language comes when the equilibrium is broken, one group starts moving, expanding and more becoming dominant, thier language influences others and more speak theirs.

Our reconstruction methods are unable to go prior to that point because there is no more to compare with hence the proto can be technicly at any state of development already.

Huumans after all have spoken for 200 thousand years or so.

Imagen how much changed during that time to about 10 thousand years ago which is when most modern language families grew

[Whimemsz]

(note that there's another thread beginning with the same post already, Zelos; I think Entwistle just mistakenly hit "submit" twice or something)

What you're thinking of is R. M. W. Dixon's The Rise and Fall of Languages, which basically attempts to apply the biological theory of punctuated-equilibrium to language evolution. But it doesn't do a very good job of actually arguing the case, and as far as I know the large majority of linguists reject his arguments to some degree at least.

[zelos]

(note that there's another thread beginning with the same post already, Zelos; I think Entwistle just mistakenly hit "submit" twice or something)

What you're thinking of is R. M. W. Dixon's The Rise and Fall of Languages, which basically attempts to apply the biological theory of punctuated-equilibrium to language evolution. But it doesn't do a very good job of actually arguing the case, and as far as I know the large majority of linguists reject his arguments to some degree at least.

I cannot deny it but it doesnt matter wether or not it is 100% correct you still got 190 thousand years of accumilation of sound changes and more before you got the protolangs you can use which can give you the entire range from isolating to polysynthetic as the protolang

[Whimemsz]

Oh, okay, I guess I didn't quite understand your post then. Sorry. I agree with you on that point: a reconstructable protolanguage is only going to be at a time-depth of a few thousand years, so it's just like any other human language. The same point is made better than I can do in the other thread, as well.