Yes, I’m aware that proper nouns are nouns… But thank you, professor! Hahaha… I mentioned them as a separate category because I noted that your initial list of nouns did not contain proper nouns. So your sentences could now have an extra dimension:
Who + Does What + To What
Yes, I knew that you did. 
In fact, I was very much agreeing with you. You rightly emphasized the critical distinction between a word used to refer to a specific person or thing (e.g. one’s friend, one’s mate, or even one’s self) and a word used to refer to a category (e.g., lions, mushrooms, trees, animals.) That proper noun distinction is indeed “an extra dimension.” Investigations into animal learning to understand ASL sign language and spoken languages have pondered whether they can recognize such distinctions between a specific X and a category of X. You made an excellent point, @Michael_Callen
Hahaha. Well, sorry for the confusion. Clearly I’m more Neanderthal in the language skill department than most.
… well, I doubt that… But thanks!
Presumably, it arose along side our very capable brain. We see an increase in brain size in the hominid lineage, as well as morphological changes as captured in cranium endocasts.
That is still quite a leap from other primates and other mammals. The only other mammalian branch that may be capable of the same sort of language use are certain cetacean species (e.g. dolphin).
I AM GROOT.
HELLO GROOT. I AM ELIZA. TELL ME MORE ABOUT WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE GROOT.
[Are we getting far too esoteric with this sub-thread? Or just nerdy?]
@jongarvey has already called me “Gut” this morning… there’s humor in malaprop accuracy. It’s just a bit early here to appreciate it! : )
I have great respect with what they are saying about the major issues with language having evolved. I also consider it entirely within the capabilities of an omnipotent and omniscient creator to design the universe and natural processes in such a way that language capabilities could evolve (even if we don’t understand how they evolved.)
Either way, I have no objections to God “simply ordaining” natural processes to evolve and produce all that we observe or for God to tweak wherever and whenever he wills to do so. Fine by me.
I’ll look at the article again, but I highly highly highly doubt that these researchers Fuz mentioned are arguing that there are problems with language EVOLVING. I think their problem is with it evolving gradually. Chomsky, Denton, Tattersal, etc. think it evolved suddenly, which contradicts Neo-Darwinism but not evolution.
You could well be correct. I may have mischaracterized it. Apologies if so.
No. This is not a example of half a language. its just a reduction in words and connecters.
half a language would be using sounds in a half way then we do.
Words are just pieces of sounds in combinations. So your “word” would be just using some sounds. Yet this is impossible. that would just be another word.
its impossible to have half a language because it just would be another language in good form.
half a language would have to be grunts which are not collectively memorized to mean something.
Anyways your still tripped up by the need to have language evolve with intelligence.
Language is simply, simply, simply, combinations of sounds from the tongue that we have agreed/memorized as to what they means.
Our language is no more prestigious then parrots. Its our thoughts/so expressed that is prestigious.
Then its unlikely there was ever a lag between our superior thoughts and sounds to express them.
Evolutionism really flunks with language origin claims.
Language began by indexing things - pointing at things and giving them names. Millions of years ago, homo erectus was pointing at animal droppings and saying - animal crap. Next came a symbol for animal crap. Then a word for animal crap. Language is born when two or more humans know what somebody means when they say “animal crap”.
All language is tonal. In fact thats what music taps into.it uses the more extreme tones to touch the spirit.
You are more accurate that its all tones. Yet to create words (pieces of tones) requires a memorized use of tones.
I mean its impossible to have a tonal range that allows words to be created without first a already great intelligence.
The “grunts to grammer” evolutionist can’t have evolving grunts. its too complicated.
An intermediate stage in “tones” is impossible. Its all or nothing in using sounds to make words.
This is not complicated. Language is simply combinations of sounds that are agreed/memorized to have meaning. We just are so smart that we can use these sounds/words into translating our thoughts.
However parrots can use the sounds/words also. the mechanism for sound creation and the memory for it are not so complicated.
Language is a reflection of organization of sounds relative to human thoughts.
Birds could talk as well as us but are too dumb and have nothing to say.
Facial expressions as part of language came way before grammar. Try saying important words without facial expressions. Language is full of facial expressions, gesture and indexing of symbols and words for those symbols. Human Language has been evolving for millions of years. Homo Sapiens are just more advanced Homo Erectus in terms of language ability. Do you realize that without language there is no God? How can God talk to humans without a mental language. How can a human being think about God without language? How could one human talk about God to another human without language - impossible. Language came first then God.
Robert, I must confess that I have great difficulty following your reasoning. In any case, have you considered examining the linguistics academy literature (as well as that of the evolutionary biology academy) to assess your position within the body of collected evidence and analysis?
I don’t know about that. Part of me genuinely feels the birds and lions and dinosaurs! And whales SOMEHOW know their God and praise him better than we do. Of course, I’m not making any statement that can be verified scientifically, I guess I just see the song of birds, the roar of a lion as ways that the animals bring praise to their God. They “speak” in their own way to their creator.
On a more scientific note, what do we think of self-organization? It sounds super cool to me, but I know that doesn’t make it true! Here’s Denton:
“In The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain, Terrence W. Deacon confesses: “The fact that hemispherectomized children can learn any aspect of language is a miracle.”1 And later in the same work he concludes: “We are not adapted just for symbolic learning but for fail-safe symbolic learning.“2 This is a phenomenal case of robust self-organization — the regeneration of the entire language organ via a novel route — and constitutes dramatic evidence that the generation of the language organ is primarily a matter of neural self-organization rather than of detailed genetic specification. The ability of children to reconstitute the language organ in a different part of the brain is an example of the profound general plasticity of the brain.”
@swamidass, thoughts?
Human Language: Linguistic Ability by Saltation | Evolution News
Human empathy does extend to animals and plants. We tend not to enjoy cruelty to animals especially our pets. And it seems like some animal truly want to help people especially human children. So empathy may have evolved prior to humans and many be a mammalian trait.
I know this stuff. lots of good youtube discussions on language by the famous ones.
They don’t collect more evidence then anyone!! They start from evolutionary presumptions and then error snowballs.
Deaf people using sign language will disagree with you.
Language is any agreed upon abstraction of reality. It can be written words, gestures, or sounds.