Language Evolution - Absolutely New Way of Thinking

THE FAMILY TREE OF LANGUAGES IS WRONG - IT HAS NEVER SPROUTED The third chapter of my book "Sounds from the Garden of Eden" discusses the theme of language relations. The common, widely accepted theory tells us that almost every language is a part of a family of languages. Like, for instance, English belongs to the Germanic family, which by itself is a part of the Indo-European family. Every student of linguistics or anything that has to do with languages studies this theory as if it were an absolute truth. The theory of language family was invented two hundred years ago to be applied to the language families then known, the Indo European and Semitic. later all languages of the world were assembled in families, and also in macro families, like the Afro Asiatic which connects 6 different families of languages, 5 from Africa, and the Semitic. The theory principle is very simple. In the deep far past there was a language spoken by a quite small group of people. This langua...

This blog is dedicated to a new, absolutely new way of accounting for the evolution of language. The former posts gave the readers first clues to my attitude to language evolution. Here I show the book's table of contents. All three chapters, and especially the second take different roots in explaining the developments of human evolution and language evolution.     Sounds from the Garden of Eden: How Vocal expressions Evolved to Language Table of Contents Chapter 1 | Primordial Circumstances 7                                       The Magic of Words 7 1. The Scientific Approach. 8 2. The origin. 13 3. Factual Evidence. 15 4. What are we looking for? 19 5. What was the starting point? 25 6. What category of problem is it? 29 7. The Effects of Bipedalism. 33 8. A Foot Unable to Grasp. 36 9. Why do we use sound, of all means of communication? 40 10. The Initial Mot...

The making of a word  Etymology  is very popular. Almost everyone enjoys suggesting and learning of words' origins. We know the popular etymologists, and the professional. An instance of popular etymology we find in the Hebrew Bible. The name of the Israelite leader Moses was in Hebrew 'Moshe'. The Biblical writer  tied this name to the Hebrew root 'masha', meaning  "take out of the water", as the story tells about the daughter of Pharaoh who found the baby Moses in the river and brought him to the Egyptian palace. But surely, the Semitic research revealed  that 'moshe', or Moses is a biblical version of the Egyptian word for 'child', or 'son'. Are we satisfied with this resolution? and the Egyptian word, where had it come from? When we look for a word at the etymological dictionary, there is a list of the word's preceding forms in ancient languages, as well as cognates in contemporary languages. The word 'child' re...

What is the essence of language? What are we doing when we speak?  Is it "grammaring" as must be derived from the Chomskyan school? or "gossiping", as suggested by many scholars who try to theorize background conditions that were either necessary for or much more than that, did in fact cause language originating?  In order to answer the two questions at the article beginning, one should first of all listen to oneself and any other speaking person, just to find out the obvious, an obvious so many linguists and erudite people ignore.  It is meaning   that whoever speaks wants to deliver. Speech is intentional and voluntary. It has nothing to do with any kind of automation, biological necessities, or any other compulsions not directly connected to the performing of the actual act of speech.  A person starts speaking in order to deliver whatever meaning one has in mind, and all means of expressions, including words, grammar, gossip, voice raising, and whiche...

This blog will  bring a new way of thinking of and theorizing the subject of the origin and evolution of language. The blog is based on the content of the new book shown above.   When I started thinking about language evolution, I asked myself what could be said for granted about the subject. And three things came up: the first were the languages spoken today, which are quite well known and described.  The second was the first evidence of written languages of 5 thousands year ago, ancient Egyptian and Sumerian, of which what is most important for us is the fact that they were in many aspects very much similar to modern languages. The third sure fact that I could point out were...the voices of monkeys and apes.  As those troubling themselves with our subject know, the very famous Noam Chomsky has been desperated in advance of any hope of finding evidence for the evolution of language, and he dedicated much of his late writing to convince us there is no chance t...