Proto-Human language
Encyclopedia
The Proto-Human language (also Proto-Sapiens, Proto-World) is the hypothetical most recent common ancestor
of all the world's languages.
The concept of "Proto-Human" presupposes monogenesis of all recorded spoken human languages.
It does not presuppose monogenesis of these languages with unrecorded languages, such as those of the Paleolithic or hypothetical Neanderthal languages.
Advocates of linguistic polygenesis do not accept the notion of a fully developed Proto-Human language and consider the world's language families independent developments of a proto-linguistic form of communication used by archaic Homo sapiens
.
If the assumption of a "Proto-Human" language is accepted, its date may be set anywhere between 200,000 years ago (the age of Homo sapiens) and 50,000 years ago (the age of behavioral modernity
).
has been using the term Proto-Sapiens.
, in his book L'unità d'origine del linguaggio, published in 1905 (cf. Ruhlen 1994:263). Trombetti estimated that the common ancestor of existing languages had been spoken between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago (1922:315).
Monogenesis was dismissed by many linguists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the doctrine of the polygenesis
of the human races and their languages
held the ascendancy (e.g. Saussure 1986/1916:190).
The best-known supporter of monogenesis in America in the mid-20th century was Morris Swadesh
(cf. Ruhlen 1994:215). He pioneered two important methods for investigating deep relationships between languages, lexicostatistics
and glottochronology
.
In the second half of the 20th century, Joseph Greenberg
produced a series of large-scale classifications of the world's languages. These were and are controversial but widely discussed. Although Greenberg did not produce an explicit argument for monogenesis, all of his classification work was geared toward this end. As he stated (1987:337): "The ultimate goal is a comprehensive classification of what is very likely a single language family."
Notable living American advocates of linguistic monogenesis are Merritt Ruhlen
, John Bengtson
, and Harold Fleming
.
(1922:315), who concluded it was spoken between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. This estimate happens to agree with current estimates on the age of Homo sapiens.
While earliest known fossil
s of anatomically modern humans
date from around 195,000 years ago, the matrilinear most recent common ancestor
shared by all living humans (dubbed Mitochondrial Eve
), is dated to about 120-150 thousand years ago. The divergence of the three main descendant lines within Africa, L1
/A
in Southern Africa (Khoisan
/Capoid
peoples), L2
/B
in Central and West Africa (Niger–Congo- and Nilo-Saharan-speaking peoples, Mbuti
pygmies), and L3
(East Africa, Out-of-Africa migration), dates to about 100 to 80 thousand years ago.
It is uncertain or disputed whether the earliest members of Homo sapiens had fully developed language. Some scholars link the emergence of language proper (out of a proto-linguistic stage that may have lasted considerably longer) to the development of behavioral modernity
towards the end of the Middle Paleolithic
or at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic
, roughly 50,000 years ago.
Thus, in the opinion of Richard Klein, the ability to produce complex speech only developed some 50,000 years ago (with the appearance of modern man or Cro-Magnon man).
and Afroasiatic).
Some linguists (e.g. Ruhlen 1994) claim that this difficulty can be overcome by means of mass comparison and internal reconstruction
(cf. Babaev 2008).
The relatively few linguists who have discussed the subject disagree on how much can be known of the ancestor language. A conservative position, taken by Lyle Campbell
, is that it would have shared the "design features" of known human languages, such as grammar
, defined as "fixed or preferred sequences of linguistic elements", and recursion, defined as "clause
s embedded in other clauses", but that beyond this nothing can be known of it (Campbell and Poser 2008:391). Less conservative linguists have advanced proposals on the vocabulary
and syntax
of the ancestor language. There are no serious current proposals on its grammar
and phonology
.
Based on these correspondences, Merritt Ruhlen (1994b:105) lists these roots for the ancestor language:
and Merritt Ruhlen
argued that the ancestral language had subject–object–verb (SOV) word order. The reason for thinking so is that the world's major language families nearly all reconstruct back to SOV word order in their earliest stages. Their proposal develops an earlier one made by Talmy Givón
(1979:271-309).
If this thesis is correct, it would have wide-ranging implications. Since a key article by Joseph Greenberg
in 1963, it has been known that SOV word order is commonly associated with a series of other phenomena (Gell-Mann and Ruhlen 2003:3-4). Among these, some of the most important are:
For example, instead of saying The man goes to the wide river, as in English, Proto-Human speakers would have said Man wide river to goes.
quality of certain words. Lyle Campbell
points out that many established proto-languages do not contain an equivalent word for *putV 'vulva' because of how often such taboo words are replaced in the lexicon, and notes that it "strains credibility to imagine" that a proto-World form of such a word would survive in many languages.
Using the criteria that Bengston and Ruhlen employ to find cognates to their proposed roots, Lyle Campbell
finds seven possible matches to their root for woman *kuna in Spanish, including cónyuge 'wife, spouse', china 'girl', and cana 'old woman (adjective)'. He then goes on to show how what Bengston and Ruhlen would identify as reflexes of *kuna cannot possibly be related to a proto-World word for woman. Cónyuge, for example, comes from the Latin roots for 'with' and 'yoke', so its origin had nothing to do with the word 'woman'. China is a loanword from Quechua and thus cannot be an example of a Spanish inheritance from Proto-World. Cana comes from the Latin word for 'white', and again shows a history unrelated to the word 'woman' (Campbell and Poser 2008:370-372). Campbell's assertion is that these types of problems are endemic to the methods used by Ruhlen and others.
There are some linguists who question the very possibility of tracing language elements so far back into the past. Campbell notes that given the time elapsed since the origin of human language, every word from that time would have been replaced or changed beyond recognition in all languages today. Campbell harshly criticizes efforts to reconstruct a Proto-human language, saying "the search for global etymologies is at best a hopeless waste of time, at worst an embarrassment to linguistics as a discipline, unfortunately confusing and misleading to those who might look to linguistics for understanding in this area" (Campbell and Poser 2008:393).
Most recent common ancestor
In genetics, the most recent common ancestor of any set of organisms is the most recent individual from which all organisms in the group are directly descended...
of all the world's languages.
The concept of "Proto-Human" presupposes monogenesis of all recorded spoken human languages.
It does not presuppose monogenesis of these languages with unrecorded languages, such as those of the Paleolithic or hypothetical Neanderthal languages.
Advocates of linguistic polygenesis do not accept the notion of a fully developed Proto-Human language and consider the world's language families independent developments of a proto-linguistic form of communication used by archaic Homo sapiens
Archaic Homo sapiens
Archaic Homo sapiens is a loosely defined term used to describe a number of varieties of Homo, as opposed to anatomically modern humans , in the period beginning 500,000 years ago....
.
If the assumption of a "Proto-Human" language is accepted, its date may be set anywhere between 200,000 years ago (the age of Homo sapiens) and 50,000 years ago (the age of behavioral modernity
Behavioral modernity
Behavioral modernity is a term used in anthropology, archeology and sociology to refer to a set of traits that distinguish present day humans and their recent ancestors from both living primates and other extinct hominid lineages. It is the point at which Homo sapiens began to demonstrate a...
).
Terminology
There is no generally accepted term for this concept. Most treatments of the subject do not include a name for the language under consideration (e.g. Bengtson and Ruhlen 1994). The terms Proto-World and Proto-Human are in occasional use. Merritt RuhlenMerritt Ruhlen
Merritt Ruhlen is an American linguist known for his work on the classification of languages and what this reveals about the origin and evolution of modern humans. Amongst other linguists, Ruhlen's work is recognized as standing outside the mainstream of comparative-historical linguistics...
has been using the term Proto-Sapiens.
History of the idea
The first serious scientific attempt to establish the reality of monogenesis was that of Alfredo TrombettiAlfredo Trombetti
Alfredo Trombetti was an Italian linguist active in the early 20th century.He was born in Bologna on January 16, 1866 and died in Venice on July 5, 1929.Trombetti was a professor at the University of Bologna...
, in his book L'unità d'origine del linguaggio, published in 1905 (cf. Ruhlen 1994:263). Trombetti estimated that the common ancestor of existing languages had been spoken between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago (1922:315).
Monogenesis was dismissed by many linguists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the doctrine of the polygenesis
Polygenism
Polygenism is a theory of human origins positing that the human races are of different lineages . This is opposite to the idea of monogenism, which posits a single origin of humanity.- Origins :...
of the human races and their languages
Polygenesis (linguistics)
In the field of linguistics, polygenesis is the view that human languages evolved as several lineages independent of one another. It is contrasted with monogenesis, which is the view that human languages all go back to a single common ancestor....
held the ascendancy (e.g. Saussure 1986/1916:190).
The best-known supporter of monogenesis in America in the mid-20th century was Morris Swadesh
Morris Swadesh
Morris Swadesh was an influential and controversial American linguist. In his work, he applied basic concepts in historical linguistics to the Indigenous languages of the Americas...
(cf. Ruhlen 1994:215). He pioneered two important methods for investigating deep relationships between languages, lexicostatistics
Lexicostatistics
Lexicostatistics is an approach to comparative linguistics that involves quantitative comparison of lexical cognates. Lexicostatistics is related to the comparative method but does not reconstruct a proto-language...
and glottochronology
Glottochronology
Glottochronology is that part of lexicostatistics dealing with the chronological relationship between languages....
.
In the second half of the 20th century, Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguist, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.- Early life and career :...
produced a series of large-scale classifications of the world's languages. These were and are controversial but widely discussed. Although Greenberg did not produce an explicit argument for monogenesis, all of his classification work was geared toward this end. As he stated (1987:337): "The ultimate goal is a comprehensive classification of what is very likely a single language family."
Notable living American advocates of linguistic monogenesis are Merritt Ruhlen
Merritt Ruhlen
Merritt Ruhlen is an American linguist known for his work on the classification of languages and what this reveals about the origin and evolution of modern humans. Amongst other linguists, Ruhlen's work is recognized as standing outside the mainstream of comparative-historical linguistics...
, John Bengtson
John Bengtson
John D. Bengtson is a historical and anthropological linguist. He is a past president and currently a vice-president of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory, and has served as editor of the journal Mother Tongue...
, and Harold Fleming
Harold C. Fleming
Harold Crane Fleming is an American anthropologist and historical linguist, specializing in the cultures and languages of the Horn of Africa. As an adherent of the Four Field School of American anthropology, he stresses the integration of physical anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, and...
.
Date and location
The first concrete attempt to estimate the date of the hypothetical ancestor language was that of Alfredo TrombettiAlfredo Trombetti
Alfredo Trombetti was an Italian linguist active in the early 20th century.He was born in Bologna on January 16, 1866 and died in Venice on July 5, 1929.Trombetti was a professor at the University of Bologna...
(1922:315), who concluded it was spoken between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. This estimate happens to agree with current estimates on the age of Homo sapiens.
While earliest known fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
s of anatomically modern humans
Anatomically modern humans
The term anatomically modern humans in paleoanthropology refers to early individuals of Homo sapiens with an appearance consistent with the range of phenotypes in modern humans....
date from around 195,000 years ago, the matrilinear most recent common ancestor
Most recent common ancestor
In genetics, the most recent common ancestor of any set of organisms is the most recent individual from which all organisms in the group are directly descended...
shared by all living humans (dubbed Mitochondrial Eve
Mitochondrial Eve
In the field of human genetics, Mitochondrial Eve refers to the matrilineal "MRCA" . In other words, she was the woman from whom all living humans today descend, on their mother's side, and through the mothers of those mothers and so on, back until all lines converge on one person...
), is dated to about 120-150 thousand years ago. The divergence of the three main descendant lines within Africa, L1
Haplogroup L1 (mtDNA)
In human mitochondrial genetics, Haplogroup L1 is a human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup common in Central and West Africa.-Origin:Haplogroup L1 is believed to have appeared approximately 110,000 to 170,000 years ago...
/A
Haplogroup A (Y-DNA)
In human genetics, Haplogroup A refers to a group of y-chromosome lineages that were among the first to branch off from the root of the human y-chromosome phylogeny...
in Southern Africa (Khoisan
Khoisan
Khoisan is a unifying name for two ethnic groups of Southern Africa, who share physical and putative linguistic characteristics distinct from the Bantu majority of the region. Culturally, the Khoisan are divided into the foraging San and the pastoral Khoi...
/Capoid
Capoid
The Capoid race is a historical racial category proposed in 1962 by anthropologist Carleton S. Coon and named after the Cape of Good Hope; these people had formerly been regarded as a sub-type of the historical racial category Negroid....
peoples), L2
Haplogroup L2 (mtDNA)
In human mitochondrial genetics, Haplogroup L2 is a human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup typical of Africa. Its subclade L2a is a somewhat frequent and widespread mtDNA cluster in Africa, as well as in the African diaspora Americans . et al.-Origin:L2 is a common African lineage. It is believed to...
/B
Haplogroup B (Y-DNA)
In human genetics, Haplogroup B is a Y-chromosome haplogroup.-Distribution:Haplogroup B is localized to sub-Saharan Africa, especially to tropical forests of West-Central Africa. After Y-haplogroup A, it is the second oldest and one of the most diverse human Y-haplogroups...
in Central and West Africa (Niger–Congo- and Nilo-Saharan-speaking peoples, Mbuti
Mbuti
Mbuti or Bambuti are one of several indigenous pygmy groups in the Congo region of Africa. Their languages belong to the Central Sudanic and also to Bantu languages.-Overview:...
pygmies), and L3
Haplogroup L3 (mtDNA)
In human mitochondrial genetics, Haplogroup L3 is a human mitochondrial DNA haplogroup. Haplogroup L3 has played a pivotal role in the history of the human species...
(East Africa, Out-of-Africa migration), dates to about 100 to 80 thousand years ago.
It is uncertain or disputed whether the earliest members of Homo sapiens had fully developed language. Some scholars link the emergence of language proper (out of a proto-linguistic stage that may have lasted considerably longer) to the development of behavioral modernity
Behavioral modernity
Behavioral modernity is a term used in anthropology, archeology and sociology to refer to a set of traits that distinguish present day humans and their recent ancestors from both living primates and other extinct hominid lineages. It is the point at which Homo sapiens began to demonstrate a...
towards the end of the Middle Paleolithic
Middle Paleolithic
The Middle Paleolithic is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Paleolithic in African archeology. The Middle Paleolithic and the Middle Stone Age...
or at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic
Upper Paleolithic
The Upper Paleolithic is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. Very broadly it dates to between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity and before the advent of...
, roughly 50,000 years ago.
Thus, in the opinion of Richard Klein, the ability to produce complex speech only developed some 50,000 years ago (with the appearance of modern man or Cro-Magnon man).
Characteristics
The difficulty in making any statement on particulars of Proto-Human lies in the time depth involved, which is far beyond what linguists can trace back today (between five and ten millennia in the cases of Indo-EuropeanProto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses
The Proto-Indo-European Urheimat hypotheses are designed to explain the origins of the Proto-Indo-European language and the people. The identity of the Proto-Indo-Europeans has been a recurring topic in Indo-European studies since the 19th century. Many hypotheses for an Urheimat have been...
and Afroasiatic).
Some linguists (e.g. Ruhlen 1994) claim that this difficulty can be overcome by means of mass comparison and internal reconstruction
Internal reconstruction
Internal reconstruction is a method of recovering information about a language's past from the characteristics of the language at a later date...
(cf. Babaev 2008).
The relatively few linguists who have discussed the subject disagree on how much can be known of the ancestor language. A conservative position, taken by Lyle Campbell
Lyle Campbell
Lyle Richard Campbell is a linguist and leading expert on indigenous American languages—especially those of Mesoamerica—and on historical linguistics in general. He also has expertise in Uralic languages. He is presently Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.-Life and...
, is that it would have shared the "design features" of known human languages, such as grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
, defined as "fixed or preferred sequences of linguistic elements", and recursion, defined as "clause
Clause
In grammar, a clause is the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete proposition. In some languages it may be a pair or group of words that consists of a subject and a predicate, although in other languages in certain clauses the subject may not appear explicitly as a noun phrase,...
s embedded in other clauses", but that beyond this nothing can be known of it (Campbell and Poser 2008:391). Less conservative linguists have advanced proposals on the vocabulary
Lexis
Lexis may refer to:*Lexis , the total bank of words and phrases of a particular language, the artifact of which is known as a lexicon*Lexis *Lexis.com, part of the LexisNexis online information database-People with the name:...
and syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
of the ancestor language. There are no serious current proposals on its grammar
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
and phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
.
Vocabulary
A fairly large number of words have been tentatively traced back to the ancestor language, based on the occurrence of similar sound-and-meaning forms in languages across the globe. The best-known such vocabulary list is that of John Bengtson and Merritt Ruhlen (1994), who identify 27 "global etymologies". The following table, adapted from Ruhlen (1994b), lists a selection of these forms.| Language | Who? | What? | Two | Water | One/Finger | Arm-1 | Arm-2 | Bend/Knee | Hair | Vagina/Vulva | Smell/Nose |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Khoisan Khoisan languages The Khoisan languages are the click languages of Africa which do not belong to other language families. They include languages indigenous to southern and eastern Africa, though some, such as the Khoi languages, appear to have moved to their current locations not long before the Bantu expansion... |
!kū | ma | /kam | k´´ā | //kɔnu | //kū | ≠hā | //gom | /ʼū | !kwai | č’ū |
| Nilo-Saharan Nilo-Saharan languages The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of African languages spoken by some 50 million people, mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers , including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of Nile meet... |
na | de | ball | nki | tok | kani | boko | kutu | sum | buti | čona |
| Niger–Congo Niger–Congo languages The Niger–Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. They may constitute the world's largest language family in terms of distinct languages, although this question... |
nani | ni | bala | engi | dike | kono | boko | boŋgo | butu | ||
| Afroasiatic | k(w) | ma | bwVr | ak’wa | tak | ganA | bunqe | somm | put | suna | |
| Kartvelian South Caucasian languages The Kartvelian languages are spoken primarily in Georgia, with a large group of ethnic Georgian speakers in Russia, the United States, the European Union, and northeastern parts of Turkey. There are approximately 5.2 million speakers of this language family worldwide.It is not known to be related... |
min | ma | yor | rts’q’a | ert | t’ot’ | qe | muql | toma | putʼ | sun |
| Dravidian Dravidian languages The Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and... |
yāv | yā | iraṇṭu | nīru | birelu | kaŋ | kay | meṇḍa | pūṭa | počču | čuṇṭu |
| Eurasiatic Eurasiatic languages Eurasiatic is a language macrofamily proposed by Joseph Greenberg that includes many language families historically spoken in northern Eurasia. The eight branches of Eurasiatic are Etruscan, Indo-European, Uralic–Yukaghir, Altaic, Korean-Japanese-Ainu, Gilyak, Chukotian, and Eskimo–Aleut, spoken in... |
kwi | mi | pālā | akwā | tik | konV | bhāghu(s) | bük(ä) | punče | p’ut’V | snā |
| Dené–Caucasian | kwi | ma | gnyis | ʔoχwa | tok | kan | boq | pjut | tshām | putʼi | suŋ |
| Austric Austric languages The Austric language superfamily is a large hypothetical grouping of languages primarily spoken in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and the eastern Indian subcontinent. It includes the Austronesian language family of Taiwan, the Malay Archipelago, Pacific Islands, and Madagascar, as well as the... |
o-ko-e | m-anu | ʔ(m)bar | namaw | ntoʔ | xeen | baγa | buku | śyām | betik | iǰuŋ |
| Indo-Pacific Indo-Pacific languages Indo-Pacific is a hypothetical language macrofamily proposed in 1971 by Joseph Greenberg. Supporters of Indo-Pacific see it as an extremely ancient and internally diverse family... |
mina | boula | okho | dik | akan | ben | buku | utu | sɨnna | ||
| Australian | ŋaani | minha | bula | gugu | kuman | mala | pajing | buŋku | puda | mura | |
| Amerind Amerind languages Amerind is a higher-level language family proposed by Joseph Greenberg in 1960. Greenberg proposed that all of the indigenous languages of the Americas belong to one of three language families, the previously established Eskimo–Aleut and Na–Dene, and with everything else—almost universally believed... |
kune | mana | p’āl | akwā | dɨk’i | kano | boko | buka | summe | butie | čuna |
-
-
- Source: Ruhlen 1994b:103. The symbol V stands for "a vowel whose precise character is unknown" (ib. 105). Clicking on the symbols in the top line will order the forms alphabetically.
-
Based on these correspondences, Merritt Ruhlen (1994b:105) lists these roots for the ancestor language:
- ku = 'who'
- ma = 'what'
- pal = 'two'
- akwa = 'water'
- tik = 'finger'
- kanV = 'arm'
- boko = 'arm'
- buŋku = 'knee'
- sum = 'hair'
- putV = 'vulva'
- čuna = 'nose, smell'
Syntax
In a 2003 paper, Murray Gell-MannMurray Gell-Mann
Murray Gell-Mann is an American physicist and linguist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles...
and Merritt Ruhlen
Merritt Ruhlen
Merritt Ruhlen is an American linguist known for his work on the classification of languages and what this reveals about the origin and evolution of modern humans. Amongst other linguists, Ruhlen's work is recognized as standing outside the mainstream of comparative-historical linguistics...
argued that the ancestral language had subject–object–verb (SOV) word order. The reason for thinking so is that the world's major language families nearly all reconstruct back to SOV word order in their earliest stages. Their proposal develops an earlier one made by Talmy Givón
Talmy Givón
Thomas Givon is a linguist and writer. He is one of the founders of functionalism in linguistics...
(1979:271-309).
If this thesis is correct, it would have wide-ranging implications. Since a key article by Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguist, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.- Early life and career :...
in 1963, it has been known that SOV word order is commonly associated with a series of other phenomena (Gell-Mann and Ruhlen 2003:3-4). Among these, some of the most important are:
- AdjectiveAdjectiveIn grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s precede the nouns they modify. - Dependent genitivesGenitive constructionIn grammar, a genitive construction or genitival construction is a type of grammatical construction used to express a relation between two nouns such as the possession of one by another , or some other type of connection...
precede the nouns they modify. - "Prepositions" are really "postpositions", following the nouns they refer to.
For example, instead of saying The man goes to the wide river, as in English, Proto-Human speakers would have said Man wide river to goes.
Criticism
Many linguists reject the methods used to determine these forms. Several areas of criticism are raised with the methods Ruhlen and Gell-Mann employ. The essential basis of these criticisms is that the words being compared do not show common ancestry; the reasons for this vary. One is onomatopoeia: for example, the suggested root for 'smell' listed above, *čuna may simply be a result of many languages employing an onomatopoeic word that sounds like sniffing, snuffling, or smelling. Another is the tabooTaboo
A taboo is a strong social prohibition relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and or forbidden based on moral judgment, religious beliefs and or scientific consensus. Breaking the taboo is usually considered objectionable or abhorrent by society...
quality of certain words. Lyle Campbell
Lyle Campbell
Lyle Richard Campbell is a linguist and leading expert on indigenous American languages—especially those of Mesoamerica—and on historical linguistics in general. He also has expertise in Uralic languages. He is presently Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.-Life and...
points out that many established proto-languages do not contain an equivalent word for *putV 'vulva' because of how often such taboo words are replaced in the lexicon, and notes that it "strains credibility to imagine" that a proto-World form of such a word would survive in many languages.
Using the criteria that Bengston and Ruhlen employ to find cognates to their proposed roots, Lyle Campbell
Lyle Campbell
Lyle Richard Campbell is a linguist and leading expert on indigenous American languages—especially those of Mesoamerica—and on historical linguistics in general. He also has expertise in Uralic languages. He is presently Professor of Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.-Life and...
finds seven possible matches to their root for woman *kuna in Spanish, including cónyuge 'wife, spouse', china 'girl', and cana 'old woman (adjective)'. He then goes on to show how what Bengston and Ruhlen would identify as reflexes of *kuna cannot possibly be related to a proto-World word for woman. Cónyuge, for example, comes from the Latin roots for 'with' and 'yoke', so its origin had nothing to do with the word 'woman'. China is a loanword from Quechua and thus cannot be an example of a Spanish inheritance from Proto-World. Cana comes from the Latin word for 'white', and again shows a history unrelated to the word 'woman' (Campbell and Poser 2008:370-372). Campbell's assertion is that these types of problems are endemic to the methods used by Ruhlen and others.
There are some linguists who question the very possibility of tracing language elements so far back into the past. Campbell notes that given the time elapsed since the origin of human language, every word from that time would have been replaced or changed beyond recognition in all languages today. Campbell harshly criticizes efforts to reconstruct a Proto-human language, saying "the search for global etymologies is at best a hopeless waste of time, at worst an embarrassment to linguistics as a discipline, unfortunately confusing and misleading to those who might look to linguistics for understanding in this area" (Campbell and Poser 2008:393).
See also
- Origin of languageOrigin of languageThe origin of language is the emergence of language in the human species. This is a highly controversial topic. Empirical evidence is so limited that many regard it as unsuitable for serious scholars. In 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris went so far as to ban debates on the subject...
- Oldest languageOldest language"Oldest language" is a term used informally for various concepts:*referring to the emergence of language itself in human evolution**origin of language**proto-language, a stage before the emergence of language proper**mythical origins of language...
- Linguistic universals
- Universal grammarUniversal grammarUniversal grammar is a theory in linguistics that suggests that there are properties that all possible natural human languages have.Usually credited to Noam Chomsky, the theory suggests that some rules of grammar are hard-wired into the brain, and manifest themselves without being taught...
- Recent African origin of modern humansRecent African origin of modern humansIn paleoanthropology, the recent African origin of modern humans is the most widely accepted model describing the origin and early dispersal of anatomically modern humans...
- Proto-languageProto-languageA proto-language in the tree model of historical linguistics is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead.Often the proto-language is not known directly...
- List of proto-languages
- Borean languagesBorean languagesBorean is a hypothetical linguistic macrofamily that traces the possible genetic relationships of the various languages of Eurasia and adjacent regions with languages spoken in the Upper Paleolithic in the millennia following the Last Glacial Maximum. The name "Borean", based on Greek βορέας,...
- Adamic languageAdamic languageThe Adamic language is, according to certain sects within Abrahamic traditions, the language spoken by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, i.e., either the language used by God to address Adam, or the language invented by Adam ....
- Polygenesis (linguistics)Polygenesis (linguistics)In the field of linguistics, polygenesis is the view that human languages evolved as several lineages independent of one another. It is contrasted with monogenesis, which is the view that human languages all go back to a single common ancestor....
General references
- Bengtson, John D. and Merritt Ruhlen. 1994. "Global etymologies." In Ruhlen 1994a, pp. 277–336.
- Bengtson, John D. 2007. "On fossil dinosaurs and fossil words." (Also: HTML version.)
- Campbell, Lyle, and William J. Poser. 2008. Language Classification: History and Method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Edgar, Blake. 2008 "Letter from South Africa." Archaeology 61.2, March–April 2008.
- Gell-Mann, Murray and Merritt Ruhlen. 2003. "The origin and evolution of syntax." (Also: HTML version.)
- Givón, Talmy. 1979. On Understanding Grammar. New York: Academic Press.
- Greenberg, Joseph. 1963. "Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements." In Universals of Language, edited by Joseph Greenberg, Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 58–90. (In second edition of Universals of Language, 1966: pp. 73–113.)
- Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. The Languages of Africa, revised edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (Published simultaneously at The Hague by Mouton & Co.)
- Greenberg, Joseph H. 1971. "The Indo-Pacific hypothesis." Reprinted in Joseph H. Greenberg, Genetic Linguistics: Essays on Theory and Method, edited by William Croft, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
- Greenberg, Joseph H. 1987. Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- Greenberg, Joseph H. 2000-2002. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family. Volume 1: Grammar. Volume 2: Lexicon. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- Klein, Richard G. and Blake Edgar. 2002. The Dawn of Human Culture. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
- McDougall, Ian, Francis H. Brown, and John G. Fleagle. 2005. "Stratigraphic placement and age of modern humans from Kibish, Ethiopia." Nature 433.7027, 733–736.
- Ruhlen, Merritt. 1994a. On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- Ruhlen, Merritt. 1994b. The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
- Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1986. Course in General Linguistics, translated by Roy Harris. Chicago: Open Court. (English translation of 1972 edition of Cours de linguistique générale, originally published in 1916.)
- Trombetti, Alfredo. 1905. L'unità d'origine del linguaggio. Bologna: Luigi Beltrami.
- Trombetti, Alfredo. 1922-1923. Elementi di glottologia, 2 volumes. Bologna: Zanichelli.
- Wells, Spencer. 2007. Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic.
- White, Tim D., B. Asfaw, D. DeGusta, H. Gilbert, G.D. Richards, G. Suwa, and F.C. Howell. 2003. "Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia." Nature 423:742–747.