[lbo-talk] Kenneally, some notes and background

[ravi]

On Jun 10, 2009, at 4:33 AM, Chuck Grimes wrote:
> Piece by piece, through a process of genetic mutation and cultural
> legacy, they talked and gestured language into existence. No genetic
> change has ever been too great to break the chain, so when the babies
> became mothers themselves and had babies of their own, their babies
> also grew up and passed the legacy on.

This seems to be an amazingly bold claim especially stated with such  
certainty. Is there any analysis provided to justify it?


> ``August Schleicher (1821-1868) and his 'Stammbaumtheorie' are often
> quoted as the starting point of evolutionary linguistics. Inspired by
> the natural sciences, especially biology, Schleicher was the first to
> compare languages to evolving species. [2] He introduced the
> representation of language families as an evolutionary tree in
> articles published in 1853. Joseph Jastrow published a gestural theory
> of the evolution of language in the seventh volume of Science,
> 1886.[3]
>
> The Stammbaumtheorie proved to be very productive for comparative
> linguistics, but didn't solve the major problem of evolutionary
> linguistics: the lack of fossil records.

W.r.t the above, let me point out a difference: the above, it seems,  
pertains to the evolution of languages. The controversies surrounding  
Chomsky is whether the facility for language is an adaptation i.e.,  
biological evolution in human beings, in response to natural selection  
pressures, is the source of our language capability. More in response  
to Aaron.

	--ravi