Spudboy100 wrote:
You guys are hinting at what seems to be
a Platonic discovery of certain memes that
get developed in various peoples.Interesting.
According to Ibn Hazm in the beginning
there existed a single language given by God,
thanks to which Adam was able to understand
the quiddity of things. This tongue provided
a name for every thing, and a thing for each name.
But if such a prior language existed, why should
have men undergone the unprofitable task of inventing
other idioms? And if it did not exist, which was the
source of our natural languages? The only explanation
is that there was an original language which included
all others. The confusion did not depend on the
accidental invention of new languages, but on the
fragmentation of a unique tongue that existed
ab initio and in which all the other were already
contained. - Umberto Eco -
In Genesis 11 we are told that after the Flood,
"the whole earth was of one language, and of
one speech". Yet, human beings in their vanity
conceived a desire to rival the Lord, and thus to
erect a tower that would reach up to the heavens.
To punish their pride and to put a stop to the
construction of the Babel tower, God confused
their languages.
About the first language and those theories
of L.L. Cavalli-Sforza and J.H. Greenberg
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2120glang.html
http://www.fsbassociates.com/fsg/genespeoplelanguages.htm
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.pinker.html
http://www.friesian.com/trees.htm
http://www.italynet.com/columbia/dream.htm
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:50:18 MDT