Tue, 20 Feb 2024 10:28:39 -0000 (UTC): Christian Weisgerber
<naddy@mips.inka.de> scribeva:

>On 2024-02-20, Ruud Harmsen <rh@rudhar.com> wrote:
>
>>>Den Danske Ordbog
>>>https://ordnet.dk/ddo
>>
>> Ordnung muss sein!
>
>No, that's a "wordbook".

I know, just kidding.

>Old Norse lost initial /w/ (but not /hw/)
>before back vowels. Compare wolf ~ ulf, Woden ~ Odin.

Interesting to see those other examples.
--
Ruud Harmsen, https://rudhar.com

On Monday, February 19, 2024 at 8:30:08 AM UTC-5, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> On 2024-02-19, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.com> wrote:
>
> >>(0n editing Wikipedia)
> >
> > Strange though it may seem, in general it actually is reliable. And
> > very comprehensive. And so is Wiktionary.
> The various language editions of Wiktionary are a mixed bag.
>
> The French edition is very good for French (where TLFi is a bit
> overwhelming), not so much for anything else. The German edition
> is inferior to DWDS.de for German and very incomplete even for
> English. I don't think the Spanish and Italian editions cover their
> respective languages very well. The English edition has by far the
> best overall coverage, but still trails off quickly.
>
> Etymology is always to be taken with a grain of salt, but that
> applies to traditional dictionaries as well.
>
> --
> Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de

Yes, etymology is both a scientific and artistic endeavor.
Paleo-etymology requires as well Paleo-anthropological and Primatological understanding.

https://www.quora.com/How-do-we-know-that-the-first-human-spoke-and-used-language-Is-it-possible-that-they-used-symbols-or-gestures-to-communicate-before-spoken-languages-were-developed?ch=10&oid=182033286&share=73d0ceee&srid=RPhZF&target_type=question

My answer post at Quora

Daud Deden
Naturalist, Forester, Paleo-etymologist

Listen to our primate relatives, their calls, their murmurs, their songs, their screams, their pauses between sounds.

Most primates are diurnal, active during daylight, so they share visual facial & body gestures not common in noctural animals.

Our closer genetic kin, the hominoid arboreal apes, tend to have laryngeal airsacs (throat pouches) which enable them to make repeated loud calls without hyperventilating (avoiding getting dizzy and falling from treebranches).. The small gibbons, like humans, don’t have airsacs, they sing like duetting humans every evening, announcing their presence & territory.

Chimpanzees spend much time grooming with each other while murmuring & chuckling.

Humans are unique to other primates and hominoids, in that we moved our sleeping places from arboreal ape bowl nests to the ground and inverting them into dome covers, making shelters, better protecting our young against wind, cold, heat, flying biting insects etc. which is when humans began losing the mandatory thick fur coat, since the shelters replaced those defensive functions.

During that transition, visible gestures became less important and oral communication became more important, since sound carried through the thin wicker & leaf shells, so vocalizations became more articulate, song became joined chants and melodious crooning, age-based harmony calling & answering developed, stories & information shared throughout the band’s camp, day or night.

Large nocturnal predators of the forest wandering nearby would be detected and announced, early humans would move their “domeshields” from the inside, crawling like tortoises, with sharp sticks to poke through the walls into the face and paws of the enemy, in unison, yet staying shielded and shouting & screaming together, while the small children & babies were lifted up a central climbing tree to safety.

With daylight, the domeshields were partly dismantled into foraging baskets, sunshades- rainsheds, leaf bundles & throwing spears, all carried while chattering during their treks along forest trails and streams, and setup along beaches while gathering seafoods or forest openings during hunting forays for small game.

Only by understanding the ecology and social environment of early humans can language evolution thus be deciphered. We are visual vocal mammalian primate anthropoids that evolved from branch-grabbing bowl-nesting forest canopy hominoids to stick-bearing dome-shielded forest floor hominins to spear-wielding dome-hutted humans, and we have been chattering & singing all along the way.

:~}

On Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 11:17:17 AM UTC-5, Daud Deden wrote:
> https://www.quora.com/How-do-we-know-that-the-first-human-spoke-and-used-language-Is-it-possible-that-they-used-symbols-or-gestures-to-communicate-before-spoken-languages-were-developed?ch=10&oid=182033286&share=73d0ceee&srid=RPhZF&target_type=question
>
> My answer post at Quora
>
> Daud Deden
> Naturalist, Forester, Paleo-etymologist
>
> Listen to our primate relatives, their calls, their murmurs, their songs, their screams, their pauses between sounds.
>
> Most primates are diurnal, active during daylight, so they share visual facial & body gestures not common in noctural animals.
>
> Our closer genetic kin, the hominoid arboreal apes, tend to have laryngeal airsacs (throat pouches) which enable them to make repeated loud calls without hyperventilating (avoiding getting dizzy and falling from treebranches). The small gibbons, like humans, don’t have airsacs, they sing like duetting humans every evening, announcing their presence & territory.
>
> Chimpanzees spend much time grooming with each other while murmuring & chuckling.
>
> Humans are unique to other primates and hominoids, in that we moved our sleeping places from arboreal ape bowl nests to the ground and inverting them into dome covers, making shelters, better protecting our young against wind, cold, heat, flying biting insects etc. which is when humans began losing the mandatory thick fur coat, since the shelters replaced those defensive functions.
>
> During that transition, visible gestures became less important and oral communication became more important, since sound carried through the thin wicker & leaf shells, so vocalizations became more articulate, song became joined chants and melodious crooning, age-based harmony calling & answering developed, stories & information shared throughout the band’s camp, day or night.
>
> Large nocturnal predators of the forest wandering nearby would be detected and announced, early humans would move their “domeshields” from the inside, crawling like tortoises, with sharp sticks to poke through the walls into the face and paws of the enemy, in unison, yet staying shielded and shouting & screaming together, while the small children & babies were lifted up a central climbing tree to safety.
>
> With daylight, the domeshields were partly dismantled into foraging baskets, sunshades- rainsheds, leaf bundles & throwing spears, all carried while chattering during their treks along forest trails and streams, and setup along beaches while gathering seafoods or forest openings during hunting forays for small game.
>
> Only by understanding the ecology and social environment of early humans can language evolution thus be deciphered. We are visual vocal mammalian primate anthropoids that evolved from branch-grabbing bowl-nesting forest canopy hominoids to stick-bearing dome-shielded forest floor hominins to spear-wielding dome-hutted humans, and we have been chattering & singing all along the way.
>
> :~}
---

A post by Uma, a practising Linguist, at Quora

Yes, positively true. There is evidence to say that all modern human languages were derived from a common source that must have evolved along with Homo sapiens sapiens, the modern man. This is in accordance with various studies pertaining to the origin of Languages and the modern man. The modern man with the modern language skills evolved 65,000 to 100,000 years ago.

The three essentials in the language development include the following:

The evolution of modern language required the development of the following physical and physiological states in humans.

The development of hyoid bone connected by the tendons with the musculature of the tongue provides the pivotal position enabling the movement of the tongue.
The evolution of the structure of the skull base into a flexible vocal tract leading to the characteristic curvature of the base of the basicranium in homonids.
The evolution of language is preceded by cognitive revolution leading to the development of modern language.
The Nurture vs. Nature hypotheses:

The two remarkable proposals of Language development are "nurture" hypothesis and "nature" hypotheses. The nurture hypothesis says that the culture driven communication system lead to language development in humans. Against this hypothesis is the one of Noam Chomsky who thought the kind of human language grammar we have inherited cannot be acquired by any non-human primate, therefore, modern humans are genetically predisposed by nature to acquire language. In other words there is a genetic mutation in modern humans about 100,000 ya. This is also popularly known in linguistics as the Innate Language Faculty in humans.

The delayed PFC in humans:

The delaying of the development of the Pre-Frontal-Cortex or its slowing has predisposition for prolonging the language acquisition period. The PFC is fast in other non human primates. The delaying in modern humans enables the children for prolonged exposure to language (3.5-10), the critical period .

Where did the humans evolve:

The general understanding in the evolutionary biology is Africa which contains the greatest genetic diversity than the rest of the globe. Therefore, nothing surprising that human beings evolved in Africa and they have succeded than any other early human species because they had developed the linguistic ability.

The Gene for Language Evolution.

Humans have developed motor sensory organs that receive speech sounds, transmit to brain for processing, recognition, understanding and for responses. Humans have developed memory banks in the brain and vocal organs of speech that participate in the vocalization of our responses.

A gene that is said to be responsible for the complex language in humans is identified (Fisher and Monaco 2001) as FOXP2. This is the master controller gene that regulates many different genes that are responsible for speech. The FOXP2 gene proteins in humans have more amino acids than that of other primates. Experimental studies by altering the number of amino acids have had different effects on the neural networking in the brains and suttle changes in vocalization.

Humans with language spread across the planet.

Based on the greatest genetic diversity in northern Africa than in any other regions across the globe, paleoanthropologists working on Mitochondrial DNA analysis of aboriginal Andamanese suggest that they are the earliest human populations in Asia. They are considered as a chunk of population out of Africa that arrived at Andamans as part of the ancient great coastal migration 60,000 ya. finally ending in the highlands of South east Asia.

Modern Linguistic studies on the Universals of human Languages have come up with the proposal that all present human languages are traceable to a common source. The basis for this assumption comes from empirical evidence, which explicitly states that though we have about 7000 Languages, the variation in human Languages is not infinite or limitless. For example there are certain commonalities among the languages as in the following:

All languages have vowels and consonants.
All languages have nasal consonants.
All languages organize their vowels and consonants into syllables.
All languages have nouns and verbs and there are more nouns than verbs;
All languages have modifiers of nouns and verbs;
All languages have mechanisms to convert verb phrases into noun phrases and nouns into verb phrases;
All languages have mechanisms that can make adjectival phrases from other kind of phrases;
All languages have mechanisms to convert sentences into interrogatives;
All languages have pronouns;
All languages have a set interrogative words;
All languages have mechanisms to express subject, object and similar other thematic relations.
Most of the other characteristics of languages are derived from these common characteristics. Based on these common characteristics, it can be deduced that the present human languages have had one common source.