4 ms·

Study finds 'mother of all languages' (spoken in pre-historic Africa)

39 points by sebkomianos 16y ago

JoeAltmaier 16y ago
BASIC has a lot of different statement types (phonemes). It must be the mother of all languages!
- ppod 16y ago
  statements would be morphemes wouldn't they? I think characters would be phonemes... perl?
  - JoeAltmaier 16y ago
    Assembler then - hundreds of opcode mnemonics. And you could actually make a case for it being the mother language.
  - sp332 16y ago
    APL, no doubt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_syntax_and_symbols#Monadic_functions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_syntax_and_symbols#Monadic_... Here's a video that shows how to make Conway's Game of Life in a single line of APL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?fmt=18&v=a9xAKttWgP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?fmt=18&v=a9xAKttWgP4
- sukuriant 16y ago
  I'm sorry, but that award goes to another: PL/1
Afton 16y ago
gah! "He analysed the number of phonemes found in 504 world languages, and hypothesized that languages with the most phonemes were the oldest. Also, the dialects furthest away from the 'mother tongue' were found to be less complicated." I'd like to see the original study, since this sounds like simplistic analysis and circular reasoning. long-story short: there's no reason to think that we started out with lots of phonemes and that these have been whittled away over time. Historical change shows lots of instances of new phoneme generation in languages. This 'historical change is simplification' meme is either wrong or contentless.
- sp332 16y ago
  Put that way, it sounds like a scene from Pygmalion where the doctor can distinguish a bunch of distinct vowel sounds in a continuous "eeeooouuu" sound, and is therefore esteemed an expert in spoken languages - at least by himself. If your summary is true, it's a bit more like this parody: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=280 http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=280
- athom 16y ago
  there's no reason to think that we started out with lots of phonemes and that these have been whittled away over time I suspect the reasoning is more along the lines of languages picking up more phonemes over time, such that older languages, having been around longer, would have picked up more phonemes.
  - Afton 16y ago
    Same problem. No reason to think that historical change is 'complexification' either. Lots of evidence in both directions.
hansengel 16y ago
If you're into this sort of stuff, John McWhorter describes this theory and many others in his introductory book to (mostly historical) linguistics, The Power of Babel [http://www.amazon.com/Power-Babel-Natural-History-Language/dp/006052085X http://www.amazon.com/Power-Babel-Natural-History-Language/d...].
techtalsky 16y ago
Study finds 'language with a lot of phenomes'.
ximeng 16y ago
This article is better: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704547604576262572791243528.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870454760457626... Comments from someone who reviewed the paper and was skeptical of the findings are available at: http://www.cslu.ogi.edu/~sproatr/newindex/atkinson.html http://www.cslu.ogi.edu/~sproatr/newindex/atkinson.html There are links to some of his other papers on the guy's home page (http://www.psych.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/quentin-atkinson/ http://www.psych.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/quentin-atkinson/), here's two on related topics: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/04/01/rspb.2010.0051.full.pdf http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/04... http://www.isita-org.com/jass/Contents/2010vol88/PDFonline/Jass2010_18_Atkinson.pdf http://www.isita-org.com/jass/Contents/2010vol88/PDFonline/J... Interesting quote from the second paper, which looks at vocabulary changes in languages: "Recent work has also shown that rates of lexical change are predictable based on the frequency of use and part of speech (Pagel et al. 2007) and that some meanings have a lexical ‘half-life’—the time after which there is a 50 per cent chance that the word is replaced—in excess of 20 000 year"
irickt 16y ago
http://gameswithwords.fieldofscience.com/2011/04/missing-linking-hypothesis.html http://gameswithwords.fieldofscience.com/2011/04/missing-lin... raises some questions about the reasoning. In short, while it's a very interesting data set and a plausible conclusion, a number of conjectures need to be studied further. AKA the progress of science.
rlpb 16y ago
I had assumed that the first language would only have one sound (say for "danger") and thus only one phoneme. Why would the first language develop the most phonemes, and then lose them as people migrate out of the area?
- ebiester 16y ago
  So. One sound. "Danger!" Another sound. "Help!" Another sound. "Food!" Coming up with a new sounds becomes progressively more difficult, not to mention the problems with similar sounds when in a loud area (IE rushing river, the hunt). Some protohuman gets the idea to combine two phonemes. Well, that's going to make things simpler later on, but you already have all these phonemes, you're going to use them. As people move, they encounter more needs for words (new animals, etc) so each group figures out the phonemes that work best for their combinations (The clicks go out of style) but stagnant groups tend not to change as much. Thus, the phonemes stay in sub-Saharan Africa, and disappear elsewhere.
nivertech 16y ago
Ubykh has 84 consonants, a record high amongst languages without click consonants, but only 2 vowels. Ubykh has the largest inventory of consonants outside Southern Africa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubykh_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubykh_language

39 points by sebkomianos 16y ago

JoeAltmaier 16y ago

BASIC has a lot of different statement types (phonemes). It must be the mother of all languages!

ppod 16y ago
statements would be morphemes wouldn't they? I think characters would be phonemes... perl?
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  Assembler then - hundreds of opcode mnemonics. And you could actually make a case for it being the mother language.
- sp332 16y ago
  APL, no doubt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_syntax_and_symbols#Monadic_functions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_syntax_and_symbols#Monadic_... Here's a video that shows how to make Conway's Game of Life in a single line of APL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?fmt=18&v=a9xAKttWgP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?fmt=18&v=a9xAKttWgP4
sukuriant 16y ago
I'm sorry, but that award goes to another: PL/1

Afton 16y ago

gah! "He analysed the number of phonemes found in 504 world languages, and hypothesized that languages with the most phonemes were the oldest. Also, the dialects furthest away from the 'mother tongue' were found to be less complicated." I'd like to see the original study, since this sounds like simplistic analysis and circular reasoning. long-story short: there's no reason to think that we started out with lots of phonemes and that these have been whittled away over time. Historical change shows lots of instances of new phoneme generation in languages. This 'historical change is simplification' meme is either wrong or contentless.

sp332 16y ago
Put that way, it sounds like a scene from Pygmalion where the doctor can distinguish a bunch of distinct vowel sounds in a continuous "eeeooouuu" sound, and is therefore esteemed an expert in spoken languages - at least by himself. If your summary is true, it's a bit more like this parody: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=280 http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=280
athom 16y ago
there's no reason to think that we started out with lots of phonemes and that these have been whittled away over time I suspect the reasoning is more along the lines of languages picking up more phonemes over time, such that older languages, having been around longer, would have picked up more phonemes.
- Afton 16y ago
  Same problem. No reason to think that historical change is 'complexification' either. Lots of evidence in both directions.

hansengel 16y ago

If you're into this sort of stuff, John McWhorter describes this theory and many others in his introductory book to (mostly historical) linguistics, The Power of Babel [http://www.amazon.com/Power-Babel-Natural-History-Language/dp/006052085X http://www.amazon.com/Power-Babel-Natural-History-Language/d...].

techtalsky 16y ago

Study finds 'language with a lot of phenomes'.

ximeng 16y ago

This article is better: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704547604576262572791243528.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870454760457626... Comments from someone who reviewed the paper and was skeptical of the findings are available at: http://www.cslu.ogi.edu/~sproatr/newindex/atkinson.html http://www.cslu.ogi.edu/~sproatr/newindex/atkinson.html There are links to some of his other papers on the guy's home page (http://www.psych.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/quentin-atkinson/ http://www.psych.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/quentin-atkinson/), here's two on related topics: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/04/01/rspb.2010.0051.full.pdf http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/04... http://www.isita-org.com/jass/Contents/2010vol88/PDFonline/Jass2010_18_Atkinson.pdf http://www.isita-org.com/jass/Contents/2010vol88/PDFonline/J... Interesting quote from the second paper, which looks at vocabulary changes in languages: "Recent work has also shown that rates of lexical change are predictable based on the frequency of use and part of speech (Pagel et al. 2007) and that some meanings have a lexical ‘half-life’—the time after which there is a 50 per cent chance that the word is replaced—in excess of 20 000 year"

irickt 16y ago

http://gameswithwords.fieldofscience.com/2011/04/missing-linking-hypothesis.html http://gameswithwords.fieldofscience.com/2011/04/missing-lin... raises some questions about the reasoning. In short, while it's a very interesting data set and a plausible conclusion, a number of conjectures need to be studied further. AKA the progress of science.

rlpb 16y ago

I had assumed that the first language would only have one sound (say for "danger") and thus only one phoneme. Why would the first language develop the most phonemes, and then lose them as people migrate out of the area?

ebiester 16y ago
So. One sound. "Danger!" Another sound. "Help!" Another sound. "Food!" Coming up with a new sounds becomes progressively more difficult, not to mention the problems with similar sounds when in a loud area (IE rushing river, the hunt). Some protohuman gets the idea to combine two phonemes. Well, that's going to make things simpler later on, but you already have all these phonemes, you're going to use them. As people move, they encounter more needs for words (new animals, etc) so each group figures out the phonemes that work best for their combinations (The clicks go out of style) but stagnant groups tend not to change as much. Thus, the phonemes stay in sub-Saharan Africa, and disappear elsewhere.

nivertech 16y ago

Ubykh has 84 consonants, a record high amongst languages without click consonants, but only 2 vowels. Ubykh has the largest inventory of consonants outside Southern Africa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubykh_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubykh_language