The Origin of Language: Retrospective and Prospective - A Historical Perspective - Prof. P, Apuntes de Lingüística

¡Descarga The Origin of Language: Retrospective and Prospective - A Historical Perspective - Prof. P y más Apuntes en PDF de Lingüística solo en Docsity! 13 The Origin of Language: Retrospective and Prospective Il linguaggio . . . è l’archivo più copioso e più sicuro dell’umanità. —Alfredo Trombetti (1905) The question of the origin of language—all discussion of which was banned by the Société de Linguistique de Paris in 1866—has always been one of the few linguistic problems of interest to the general public.* Perhaps because of this widespread but uncritical attention, coupled with much amateurish work of no scientific value and the general reluctance of scholars to deal with such matters, the question has remained in a muddled state, its various components often not even clearly distinguished. I will explore here but a single aspect of the question, namely, whether or not all of the world’s presently extant languages share a common origin. I will be seeking neither the locus of that origin nor its antiquity. THE PROBLEM The striking parallels between biology and linguistics, particularly in their evolutionary aspect, have been generally recognized since at least the mid- nineteenth century. In one of his few references to language, Charles Darwin * A preliminary version of this chapter was presented at an International Conference on Language Change and Biological Evolution, Torino, Italy, May 1988. A Russian translation was published in Voprosy Jazykoznanija 1 (1991): 5–19. 262 13. The Origin of Language pointed out in 1871 that “the formation of different languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel.” Were it not for these “curious” similarities it is doubtful that biologists and taxonomic linguists would ever conceive of a joint conference; historians and mathematicians seldom confer. Yet my focus here is on an area where the biological and linguistic perspectives appear to clash rather than to complement one another. For biologists the monogenetic origin of Homo sapiens sapiens is now generally accepted (though supporters of “Multiregional Evolution” would dispute this point), and for them, the notion that the Indo-European peoples have no known biological relatives would be ludicrous. Yet for most linguists a common origin of all human languages is very much in doubt, and the belief that Indo-European has no known linguistic relatives is not only a safe position, but practically a merit badge for sober scholarship. In practice, if not in theory, the linguistic approach is pre-Darwinian, in the sense that dozens, or even hundreds, of linguistic taxa are treated as if they were historically independent developments. Linguists seldom go so far as to deny the possibility that all these taxa are ultimately related; what they deny is that there is any linguistic evidence for such a hypothesis. To be sure, the monogenetic origin of Homo sapiens sapiens need not nec- essarily entail the monogenesis of human language; the two topics are, and should be kept, distinct, and when we find correlations between biology and linguistics, we insist that these correlations be arrived at independently. Yet there is something strange about the spectacle of hundreds of supposedly un- related language families, when the biological differences among the people who speak the tongues of the various language families are often minuscule. Surely no one imagines that each of these hundreds of language families rep- resents an independent creation of language. But if they are not independent developments is it plausible, or even possible, that they have all been sepa- rated from each other for so long that any trace of deeper relationships has vanished? Is it not also strange that the comparative method, which was discovered in its broad outlines over two centuries ago, largely in terms of the Indo-European family, has never been able to connect that family with any other—at least to the satisfaction of the linguistic community? This mystery is compounded by the fact that Indo-European is in no sense an archaic or poorly distinguished family. I believe the general rejection of attempts to connect Indo-European with other families, encouraged in an earlier day by chauvinistic arrogance, has effectively blocked consideration of the question of monogenesis by acting as a dike against all long-range comparison. For if Indo-European—that most studied and best understood of all families—cannot be convincingly connected 13. The Origin of Language 265 and in 1987 he presented substantial evidence for an Amerind phylum that would include all New World languages except those belonging to the Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut families. He is currently at work on a book on Eurasiatic, a vast grouping that differs from Nostratic by the exclusion of Afro-Asiatic, Kartvelian, and Dravidian, and by the inclusion of Japanese, Ainu, Gilyak, Chukchi-Kamchatkan, and Eskimo-Aleut. A CLOSER LOOK AT THE PROBLEM Despite the pathbreaking work of these scholars, the majority of the lin- guistic community still adheres to the belief that Indo-European has no known linguistic relatives, and none is likely ever to be demonstrated, because—so the argument goes—beyond the time depth of Indo-European all trace of genetic affiliation has been obliterated by ceaseless phonetic and semantic erosion. This belief is so strong that even linguists in possession of evidence to the contrary will often provide an ad hoc explanation of the contradictory evidence rather than challenge the reigning tenets of comparative-historical linguistics. The Australian language phylum is instructive in this regard. Humans have occupied Australia continuously since at least 40,000 years bp (before present), and there is no reason to think that Proto-Australian does not date from about that time (though the fact that Australia was not permanently cut off from New Guinea until about 10,000 years ago must be borne in mind). At the very least, Proto-Australian must be twice as old as Indo-European, and more likely seven or eight times as old. At this time depth, evidence of a primitive unity can no longer exist, according to the standard view of linguistic evolution, and yet the Australian phylum is universally accepted as a valid taxon. In order to reconcile this clear contradiction R. M. W. Dixon (1980) dis- carded the principle of linguistic uniformitarianism and proposed that, be- cause of their isolation, Australian languages have changed much more slowly than have languages elsewhere in the world: Proto-Australian was probably spoken a considerable time in the past, perhaps some tens of millennia ago. It is this which makes it unlikely that it will ever be possible to demonstrate a genetic connection between Australian and any other language family. Any sister language that Proto-Australian may have left behind in South-East Asia, say, is likely to have changed out of all recognition over the intervening period, so that there would be insufficient points of similarity remaining for any connection to be recognizable. (Or it could well be that relatives of Proto-Australian have no living descendants.) Generally, languages change at such a rate that after more than about three or four thousand years of separation genetic links are no longer recognizable. Australian languages have been relatively isolated from contact with other languages and cultures, and may well have changed at a comparatively slow 266 13. The Origin of Language rate; but any relative that they left behind in regions that were more linguistically cosmopolitan would not have been sheltered in this way. (p. 237) This romantic notion of Australia as a Land That Time Forgot is most certainly unsupportable, and one should not lose sight of the fact that it is based on expectations rather than evidence. In any event, Dixon is categorical in his belief that “there is absolutely no evidence for a genetic connection between Australian languages and anything outside the continent; there is not even any remote ‘possibility’ that scholars could argue about. It seems that the languages of Australia have been so long in their present location that any evidence of connection with other languages has been, through time, eroded away.” (p. 238) Though the number of roots that have been reconstructed for Proto-Austra- lian is rather small, some of these would appear to be cognate with roots found in other families (see Chapter 14). Consider, for instance, Proto-Australian *bungu ‘knee,’ which in various modern languages has semantic extensions to things that bend (wave, bend in a river, hump in a snake’s body). This form is very similar in sound and meaning to the Indo-Pacific etymology for ‘knee,’ which includes forms such as Tobelo buku, Koianu poku, and Teri Kawalsch bugu. Traces of this root are also found in Eurasia. Ainu (he-) poki(-ki) ‘bow down’ appears to belong here, as do Proto-Indo-European *bheug(h) ‘to bend,’ and Proto-Altaic *bük(ä) ‘to bend’ (including forms such as Uighur bük ‘to kneel,’ Yakut bük ‘to bend,’ Khalkha bȯx(ȯn) ‘hump of a camel,’ and Evenki buku ‘bent, crooked’). In Africa, Proto-Bantu *bóngó ‘knee’ is virtually identical with the Australian form in both sound and mean- ing, and in the West Atlantic branch of Niger-Congo we find forms such as Baga -buÑ ‘knee.’ One may anticipate that additional reflexes of this root will be found elsewhere in the Niger-Congo family, but the lack of any kind of Niger-Congo etymological dictionary makes this difficult to verify for the moment. Finally, this same root is well attested in the Amerind family, where we find North American forms like Chumash (si-)buk ‘elbow’ and Walapai (mi-)puk ‘knee’ and South American forms like Guamaca buka ‘knee, elbow’ and Iranshe poku ‘bow’ (n.). This example is by no means the only genetic connection between the Australian phylum and the rest of the world’s languages. Dixon reconstructs *bula ‘2’ for Proto-Australian, and Blake (1988) shows how this number has been used to form dual pronouns in the Pama-Nyungan subgroup: *nyuN- palV ‘you-2’ and *pula ‘they-2.’ Two of the extinct Tasmanian languages (considered by Dixon unrelated to Australian languages) exhibit similar forms, Southeastern boula ‘2’ and Southern pooalih ‘2.’ In the context of his Austro- Tai hypothesis Paul Benedict (1975) pointed out the similarity of the number 2 in all of the major families of Southeast Asia. Benedict reconstructs *÷(m)bar 13. The Origin of Language 267 ‘2’ for Proto-Austroasiatic (cf. Santali bar, Jeh bal, Khmu’ bār, Old Mon ÷bar) and *(a)war ‘2’ for Proto-Miao-Yao. He also considers Daic forms like Mak wa ‘twin’ and Austronesian forms like Javanese kĕmbar ‘twin’ to be cognate with the preceding. In Africa one of the pieces of evidence that Edgar Gregersen (1972) offered in support of Congo-Saharan (his proposal for joining Niger- Kordofanian and Nilo-Saharan in a single family) was forms for the number 2 that hardly differ from those we have seen so far. In Niger-Congo we have Temne (kë)bari ‘twin,’ Nimbari bala ‘2,’ Mano pere ‘2,’ and Proto-Bantu *bàd́ı ‘2’; Nilo-Saharan has forms such as Nubian bar(-si) ‘twin,’ Merarit warē ‘2,’ and Kunama barā ‘pair.’ In Eurasia one of Illich-Svitych’s Nostratic etymologies appears related to the forms discussed so far, but in these families the meaning has shifted from ‘2’ to ‘half,’ ‘side,’ and ‘part.’ Specifically, Illich- Svitych (1967) connects Proto-Indo-European *pol ‘half, side’ (cf. Sanskrit (ka-)palam ‘half,’ Albanian palë ‘side, part, pair,’ Russian pol ‘half,’) with Proto-Uralic *pälä/*pole ‘half’ (cf. Yurak Samoyed peele ‘half,’ Hungarian fele ‘half, one side of two,’ Vogul pääl ‘side, half,’ Votyak pal ‘side, half’) and Proto-Dravidian *pāl ‘part, portion’ (cf. Tamil pāl ‘part, portion, share,’ Telugu pālu ‘share, portion,’ Parji pēla ‘portion’). Finally, cognate forms are found in Amerind languages of North and South America (cf. Wintun palo(-l) ‘2,’ Wappo p’ala ‘twins,’ Huave apool ‘snap in two,’ Colorado palu ‘2,’ Sabane pa÷lin ‘2’). The final piece of evidence I would like to offer for the proposition that the Australian phylum is demonstrably related to the rest of the world’s languages involves an interrogative whose most usual form is mi(n) or ma(n) and whose meaning is ‘what?, who?,’ or some other interrogative. This root has been discussed in the work of Trombetti, Illich-Svitych, and Greenberg and appears to be one of the most broadly distributed formatives in human language. For Proto-Australian Dixon reconstructs *miNHa2 ‘what,’ with modern reflexes such as Dyirbal minya ‘what’ and Pitta-Pitta minha ‘what.’ These forms are strikingly similar to those contained in one of Greenberg’s Indo-Pacific etymologies that includes forms such as Matap mina ‘what,’ Arapesh mane ‘what,’ Nyaura mëndë ‘what, thing,’ Kati man ‘something,’ Biada min ‘thing,’ and Laumbe mina ‘thing.’ In Eurasia there are a variety of forms that are in all likelihood cognate with those just mentioned. In the Austroasiatic phylum one can point to Kurku amae ‘who,’ Mon mu ‘what,’ Central Sakai mā/mō ‘what.’ Two iso- lated languages of the Indian subcontinent, Burushaski and Nahali, show reflexes of the interrogative under discussion. Burushaski has men ‘who’ and 2 NH represents a correspondence between lamino-interdental nh and lamino-palatal ny that is found in the modern Australian languages. 270 13. The Origin of Language No one would deny that the member languages of low-level groups like Ro- mance often display cognates that are very similar or even identical. What is in dispute is (1) whether supposedly independent, higher-level groupings (e.g. Indo-European, Australian, and Amerind) can share cognates that are similar in form and meaning and (2) whether a reconstructed proto-language (e.g. Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Nostratic, or Proto-Australian) can show reflexes in its extant daughter languages that are similar or identical to the reconstructed form. The answers to both of these questions depend on the rate and nature of linguistic change. As Dixon’s comments indicate, many lin- guists believe that the rate of linguistic change is such that all trace of genetic affiliation is effaced after only several thousand years, so for him the answer to both questions is no. But if all of the supposedly independent linguistic families do derive from a common origin, then the fact that the earliest recon- structable items in the various families look alike should hardly be surprising. Greater convergence with greater depth is what one would expect. As regards the second question I would point out only that, in every et- ymological dictionary I have examined, some of the reconstructed forms for the proto-language are similar or identical to some of the reflexes in its ex- tant daughter languages. Pokorny (1959) reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *nepōt ‘nephew, grandson,’ a form that must have existed at least 5,000 years ago. Yet this same form, with the same meaning, is preserved to this day in- tact in Rumanian nepot ‘nephew, grandson.’ At least in this instance Dixon’s inexorable erosion seems not to have taken place. And even phyla that are much older than Indo-European show the same phenomenon. In the first ety- mology above, for example, Proto-Australian *bungu ‘knee’ shows the reflex bungu ‘knee’ in many modern languages (e.g. Guugu Yimidhir, Yidiny, Dyir- bal). Now if Proto-Australian, which in all likelihood dates from 40,000 bp or more, can be accorded reflexes in contemporary languages that are iden- tical to the reconstructed form, on what grounds can one object to a similar phenomenon between Proto-Sapiens and modern languages, given that Proto- Sapiens could be only 20,000–30,000 years older than Proto-Australian? Furthermore, the assumption that linguistic change has been constant and continuous since the emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens may be incorrect. It is well known among anthropologists, archaeologists, and even historians that cultural evolution in general appears to have developed at an ever accel- erating pace as one approaches the present, and the same may well be true for linguistic evolution. Biological evolution, too, is no longer necessarily con- ceived of as a very long, slow process of gradual and constant change; scholars like Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould have argued instead for a more episodic character to evolution, in which little change may occur over very long periods of time (see Eldredge 1985), and recent research on catastrophes 13. The Origin of Language 271 and mass extinctions tends to support that mode. Given that we do not know what linguistic evolution was like during the past 100,000 years, it would seem premature to rule out any of the possibilities on a priori grounds. Some linguists, of course, are simply unaware that other language families often have roots similar to those in the family they are interested in, and I suspect that this is the case with Dixon. Other linguists, however, are aware of such roots but choose to ignore them. One of the most cogent pieces of evidence that Greenberg (1987) offered in support of the Amerind phylum was the presence of first-person n and second-person m in all eleven branches. As noted in Chapter 12, the first- and second-person pronouns are known to be among the most stable meanings over time. Dolgopolsky (1964) found that the first-person pronoun is the most stable item, and the second-person pronoun ranked third in stability (following the number 2). It is also well known that initial nasal consonants are among the most stable sounds, and the conjunction of stable sounds with stable meanings has meant that even after 12,000 years these pronouns have been preserved in every branch of the Amerind phylum. Greenberg did not claim to be the first to notice the broad distribution of these two pronouns in North and South America. Swadesh (1954) had underscored their distribution in an article containing additional evidence for Amerind (not yet so named), and a year later Greenberg, unaware of Swadesh’s article, discovered the same distribution. Greenberg observes, “That two scholars should independently make the same basic observation is an interesting sidelight in the argument for the Amerind grouping as I have defined it” (1987: 54). Lyle Campbell, an Amerindian scholar and one of Greenberg’s chief critics, sees things differently: “The widespread first-person n and less widespread second-person m markers . . . have been recognized from the beginning with- out significant impact on classification” (Campbell 1986: 488). Lamentably, Campbell is correct, but that such crucial evidence has been overlooked—or, worse, scorned—is not something to take pride in. Were a biologist to re- mark smugly, “That group of animals you keep mentioning, the ones with a backbone, has been recognized for a long time and I am not impressed,” his colleagues would chuckle and move on to other business. Here we see perhaps one measure of the difference between biology and linguistics, especially as they present themselves today. Greenberg (1987) summarizes the fundamen- tal and obvious importance of the two Amerind pronouns as follows: It is the business of science to note non-random phenomena and to explain them. Were we to plot the occurrence of specific first- and second-person markers on a world map, we would not fail to notice a clustering of first-person m and second-person t (along with s) in Europe, northern Asia, and the northern part of North America as far as Greenland, with a second clustering of first-person n and second-person m covering the rest of the Americas, outside of the Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Dene areas. 272 13. The Origin of Language In my opinion, this observation alone would suffice to lead any historically minded anthropologist to the view that there must be at least one very large stock to account for the first set and another to account for the second set. (p. 55) AN END TO MYTHOLOGY I have suggested here that the currently widespread beliefs, first, that Indo-European has no known relatives, and, second, that the monogenesis of language cannot be demonstrated on the basis of linguistic evidence, are both incorrect. Belief in these erroneous assertions is based largely on extra- linguistic criteria and a priori assumptions, rather than on a serious survey of the world’s linguistic literature. A growing, though still small, number of linguists are coming to realize that all the world’s languages do share a com- mon origin, and they are beginning to work on that basis. In the remainder of this chapter I shall discuss several implications of monogenesis for linguistic taxonomy. First, the search for linguistic “relationships” is now over (or should be), since it no longer makes sense to ask if two languages (or two language families) are related. Everything is related, and the question to be investigated within or among different families is the degree of their relationship, not the fact of it. All taxonomic questions dissolve into one: discovering the hierarchical subgrouping of the human family on the basis of linguistic traits. Such traits may be either lexical (i.e. roots, affixes) or typological (e.g. nasal vowels, the SOV word order, an inclusive/exclusive distinction for ‘we’). The use of lexical evidence to support a particular subgrouping needs no justification, since it has long been an essential technique of the comparative method. It is the total distribution of a root that reveals its taxonomic significance, not its mere presence in this or that family. Within that total distribution, particular developments within particular subgroups, such as Grimm’s Law within Indo- European, may provide additional evidence for subgrouping. The use of typological traits in genetic classification is more controversial, the generally accepted view being that such traits are in fact not indicative of genetic relationships. As is well known, the use of typological traits in some of the earlier work on African linguistics led to classifications that were definitely not phylogenetic, but the error of those early taxonomists lay more in their reliance on too few traits (sometimes just one) than in the traits themselves. Thus from a strictly historical perspective the use of sex gender, nasal vowels, or word order alone to classify languages would lead to absurd results. Still, such features, no less than grammar or the lexicon, are genetically transmit- ted as a part of language, and thus have some, if not absolute, evidentiary value. It can hardly be an accident of nature that the 700 or so Papuan lan- guages are uniformly SOV in basic word order (with a few notable exceptions 13. The Origin of Language 275 REFERENCES Benedict, Paul K. 1975. Austro-Thai: Language and Culture. New Haven, Conn. Bengtson, John D., and Merritt Ruhlen. 1992. “Global Etymologies,” Chap- ter 14 of this volume. Blake, Barry J. 1988. “Redefining Pama-Nyungan: Towards the Prehistory of Australian Languages,” Yearbook of Australian Linguistics 1. Campbell, Lyle. 1986. “Comment,” on an article by Joseph H. Greenberg, Christy G. Turner, and Stephen L. Zegura, Current Anthropology 27: 488. Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., Alberto Piazza, Paolo Menozzi, and Joanna Mountain. 1988. “Reconstruction of Human Evolution: Bringing Together Genetic, Archeological and Linguistic Data,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 85: 6002–6. Darlu, Pierre, Merritt Ruhlen, and L. L. Cavalli-Sforza. 1988. “A Taxonomic Analysis of Linguistic Families,” ms. 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