h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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Well, linguists would say that there is only one language in the history of the Earth - the Human language - and that all of our "languages" today are merely dialects. But that's a bit complicated, and I'm too tired to go into it now. Read a bit of Noam Chomsky's works, or Steven Pinker, if you're all that interested (or try to catch me later ).

I seem to recall reading an essay by a linguistics student that said that the oldest language family was the "Afroasiatic", and among those languages, the Cushitic was the oldest. The author seemed to place these languages before Kartvelian and Sumerian. However, I don't know how entirely accurate this is, so I would recommend trying to find some support for this before handing it in to your teacher

I've had to delete my comments on your teacher as everything I wrote made it seem I was commenting on the teaching, not the awfulness of the task. The truth is, nobody knows what the oldest language was/is. There's no way of telling whether the hominid remains that have been dig up in various places belonged to people who could speak to each other Measuring voice boxes isn't an option. On the lines that all human languages have some things in common, try making out a case for Spanish.No-one can prove it wasn't. It's all a case of weighing up possibilities.

Spanish is not generally reckoned to be the first spoken language, because Spanish is a direct descendant of the language Latin. Latin itself descended from something older, usually called Indo-European. Also descended from Indo-European are every other European language (except Basque) and many Indian languages. It is impossible to trace the direct ancestor of Indo-European.

The first spoken language had only one word, "Ugh". Seriously, at what point do the grunts and squeaks of primitive proto-man start to be considered a language? When there are words? When there are sentences? Does your cat speak a language? (Ears back, tail twitching). It's all just too vague for words!

We certainly have written records of Latin and many other now dead languages, but how do you know anyone ever spoke them?
The first language we can prove was spoken is actually English (I think) but some canny Spaniard might have made a recording he didn't say anything about.Cats may well have languages (depending on your definition) but they don't speak.

Surely, any language with the verb "to speak" must have been spoken, and Latin does. I don't know what this verb is, as I was thrown out of Latin class after about 10 minutes - a fact that has greatly improved my life (probably).
Also - is it not reasonable to assume that spoken language and writen language evolved at about the same (geological) time?
It may have been ancient Egyptian and gone something like "bird sun papyrus papyrus bearded cat water" or something. (Oddly this computer doesn't support many heiroglyphs...have to upgrade!)

Good point.
It is the same with animals. We say they don't have languages (therefore they are inferior).
But who says?
I think, we just don't understand them, that's all.

BTW, never heard of indo-european. I'm Austrian, I've learned "indo-germanisch".
Might be a bit of a chauvinism here. (quite a typical German - and Austrian - feature)

Well, I read somewhere that the neandertals buried items with their dead, showing a belief in life after death. And as they said, it is pretty hard to express the idea of life after death using simply grunts. About the animals, they do have some body language, and body language also have a big influence on our own spoken language. It sometimes determine the meaning what we mean when we say different things. But they once did an experiment where they let a dolphin solve a task. And when they had learned it they put another dolphin in the tank, seperated from the other by a net. Then they gave it the same test. If they were able to communicate the new dolphin should be able to solve the job quickly. But there was no difference. So ppl are probably wrong when they think that dolphins and whales can communicate. I think parrots are the only animals that have potential.

OK, I bite
I remember a case with cattle. I forgot the source, sorry.
There was a new electric fence. One cow touched it once and avoided it from then on. Of course. But after some time came the rest of the herd. None of the animals had seen the fence before. The interesting thing was, that *none* of the other animals touched the fence. Why? They couldn't possibly know, that it was electric. So the cow somehow had to 'tell' them.
I think it is from Watzlawick, this psychiatrist with general interest in communication and such stuff.
There are *hundreds* of such examples and AFAIK it is generally accepted, that animals can communicate _some sort_ of abstract ideas. In fact it is certain, that dolphins and whales do have some sort of 'code' to communicate, but the literature is huge and confusing
This example (and all the others) don't prove anything, though, because it es extremely difficult be sure how exactly information is passed on.
Wait a minute... *looks up the book* .... yes, there.
Watzlawick also writes about bees. It's body language, all right, but some crazy researcher found out, that they have some sort of grammar, don't laugh, and that there are even different dialects! Italian bees cannot understand Austrian ones and vice versa. Fascinating stuff.
Anyone who's interested:
Paul Watzlawick, Wie wirklich ist die Wirklichkeit (lit. How real is reality), 1978

As a student of psychology, especiallyone who is studying psycholinguistics, I might be able to clear up a bit about the animals.

Yes, animals can comminucate. That is nothing new - it makes perfect sense. Cats miao (meow?), dogs bark, cows moo, etc. No one would think that they do that just for kicks. But animals do not have language. It's very common to mistake communication for language. Language is the ability to communicate an idea or concept that has never been previously communicated. So I could say, "On Tuesday, a pruple alligator ate a green fire hydrant on the corner of Main Street near the gas station", and you can be fairly certain that no one has ever said that before (and probably never will agian ). But animals only have a set repertoire. Bees, for example. They have these little dances that the do, to tell other bees where food is. A certain wiggle to tell the distance, facing a certain way to show the direction, etc. So when a cow walks into an electric fence, and then NO other cows do, it is probably because the cow has said, "OW! Be careful - something there hurts", but not that it said "hey, fellows, watch out for that electric fence". It doesn't know what fences are, it doesn't know what electricity is, and it certainly can't combine the two. A fence, to a cow, is just something that's in the way - that prevents it from grazing elsewhere. It could be a house, a haystack, a fallen tree, etc.

As for spoken languages, it is known that older languages were spoken well before english. Even old english is only what, 1500 years old? That's a baby in terms of languages. Asian languages, like chinese, have been spoken for thousands of years, as have semitic languages like hebrew. Sumerian, which was the old babylonian language (I think - I'm not positive about this one) is generally regarded as one of the oldest, but I don't know of anyone that actually says it's the oldest.

And just to make a comment about the different dialects of bees That also makes sense, if you think about it. This communication in animals must have somehow evolved, and different bees in different regions of the world would have evolved different forms of communication, depending on the ecology of their environment. You wouldn't need a symbol for mountains if you lived in the plains, right?

Hello, colleague
I disagree.
Some ancient cave men (not living in a cave ) from let's say 5.000 years ago surely spoke some language. Nevertheless your alligator, the hydrant and certainly the corner of Main would mean nothing to them. They'd say this there, big! Or something similar. Being able to tell WHAT something is is not necessary to talk about it - in a language, that is. And *every* language is really just some set of codes.
Though I agree, there is something like meta-language, talking about one's language - we do it at the moment - that animals probably cannot do. I'm not sure, though, if you have to be able to meta-communicate, to call it a language... but this really is just a thing of interpretation and definition.

You misunderstood me.

I didn't say that when I spoke about the alligator, that EVERYONE would understand me. What about people who only speak chinese? Or german? Or who just don't understand english? The point I was making is that language is generative. You can make an infinite number of sentences, say an infinite number of things. Ask any psychologist. Does that mean that everything will be understood by humans? Not at all. Two auto mechanics could sit and discuss their trade all day, and I wouldn't have the faintest idea of anything they said. Similarly, two people from ancient Babylonia could discuss their daily lives, and I wouldn't understand anything they said. Not only because I don't speak ancient Babylonian, but because their lives were so vastly different from ours - I couldn't relate.

The words we speak are representations of our thoughts and our experiences. A caveman wouldn't know anything about it, because he'd never have seen a fire hydrant. But to someone who had seen a fire hydrant, it would have a meaning. I'll give you another example. Back in the days when the first steam engines were making their appearance, and trains were being used as a mode of long distance travel, people from small towns had very little contact with trains. Most of the small townsfolk never saw a train, because only the big city people really used them (in general, and in the beginning). So when villagers saw trains, they had no idea what they were. Also, think about the classical protrayal of Native American Indians, and how they would be shown to call guns "fire sticks", or something like that. Al it means is that they had never experienced a gun before, so they didn't know what it meant.

Animals, on the other hand, CAN'T say anything new. They don't have the capacity for thought like we do. Any animal has the capacity to understand danger - and that's exactly what an electric fence is.

(Sorry, this is quite long)
OK, hold on a minute.
I think we do agree on the point, that the basic elements of languages are abstract codes which are matched to certain meanings (abstract or material).
You said (two postings ago):

> Language is the ability to communicate an idea or
> concept that has never been previously communicated.

This is just *one* definition, but ok, let's play with it.

> [...]
> But animals only have a set repertoire

This is not really proven. I think we do not really know for sure, if they can create new codes or not. But even if they can not, it is still possible to express an infinite number of concepts with a finite number of codes (look at numbers). And you shouldn't forget that codes can change their meanings, when used in new contexts.

> [...]
> So when a cow walks into an electric fence, and then NO other cows do, it is probably
> because the cow has said, "OW! Be careful - something there hurts", but not that it
> said "hey, fellows, watch out for that electric fence".

Um. Why is the latter language and the previous not? If the cow can communicate the idea, that this fence over there causes pain to everyone who touches it, this is a) a new idea (there hasn't ever been a fence anywhere before) and b) fairly abstract, because the cow doesn't say, "PAIN, everyone get away", no the cow says, "Listen my dear fellow cattle, don't you touch this thing over there, this would hurt".

> It doesn't know what fences are, it
> doesn't know what electricity is, and it certainly can't combine the two.

It doesn't have to, as you said yourself, this has nothing to do with lanuage.

In your last posting you continued:

> The point I was making is that language is generative. You can
> make an infinite number of sentences, say an infinite number of things. Ask any
> psychologist.

I don't have to. It stands to reason. But who really knows, if animals are capable of generating knew meanings (ideas). The generative aspect of language refers to the ideas being expressed, not to the code itself. Since we do not understand the codes of animals fully (in many cases not at all), how should we know if they are used generatively or not? Many studies suggest not, if I recall correctly, but some do leave plenty of doubt.

> Animals, on the other hand, CAN'T say anything new.

You don't understand them, how can you be so sure.

> They don't have the capacity for thought like we do.

Probably. But if you take this as an argument, you have to define language as "the way human beings communicate with each other".

phw
(who always likes a good argument )

I love a good argument too and this is developing nicely.
Ok, there was a verb "to speak" in most ancient languages, but this demands great leaps of faith. Meanings of words change quite quickly (see "nice" or "awesome",for example, in English) We have no proof that anyone spoke anything before about 1890.
Written languages differ greatly from spoken languages. Just because Caesar wrote "All Gaul is divided into 3 parts" doesn't mean that anyone ever _said_ those words. If they did, we have no way of finding out what pronunciation they used {I find it surprising that different European countries with languages derived largely or partly from Latin pronounce Latin in differemt ways. Always allow for local accents)
Accept that people spoke proto-Indo-European , but these were not the earliest people we have burial remains from. We have no way of knowing what language Lucy spoke (if any). There is no way of knowing at what point we changed from being able to refer only to what we can see in front of us to talking about imaginary things,neither past, present nor future.

Back on track for a second...the oldest language still spoken is Koptic (sp?) which is now the language of the Egyptian Christian church.

Due to the efforts of those who decyphered the Rosetta stone it might be possible to speak ancient Egyptian which would then be the oldest spoken language....

And back off track...we do have evidence that people spoke before 1890 because many cultures have an oral tradition but no written language per se. Thus the aboriginal creation stories are proof that people have been talking since way back as there was no other transmission medium for these stories.

Cave paintings to you,sir!

Ah yes, but they are illustrations of the story but don't tell the story....
What of the Tain and other ancient Irish ring cycle stories - these were only written down when the Christians came along with their high minded book learning ...no cave paintings there.

There's no way we can _prove_ that the song lines didn't change.
Probably whatever language (some sort of Chinese??) they "spoke" in the Baan village near Xian 5,000 years ago was/is older than Coptic. For that matter I think Amharic is.
Does this fiendish teacher want a language that is still spoken?

Or perhaps your teacher is being cryptic...in which case the answer is probably "baby talk"?