ANT102H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Arbitrariness
10 Dec 2018
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Speculation or origin of language has been common throughout 19th century but received no results. The speeches of half men who would be living fossils of human evolution might tell something about the origins of language. No where in the world there has been any discovery of language which could be termed as primitive. Between two languages the similarities are sometimes so extensive and orderly that they can"t be attributed to to chance or parallel development. They could be however termed as two divergents of single earlier language. Example : english , dutch , german and scandinavian. The comparative method makes it possible to to examine a group of related languages. This method might not trace the origins of speech but can surely trace back some of the primitive languages. Items for such comparison can"t be things such as word for sky . They should have basic features of design that be present or absent in communication system.
