Today, while I was reading the CBC news site, I came upon a fascinating biolinguistic discovery:
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/mar-23- ... -1.5065948
"Food" for thought when you're creating a language for a sapient people and taking their biology into account.
The rise of agriculture and labiodentals
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The rise of agriculture and labiodentals
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Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels
My Kankonian-English dictionary: 87,413 words and counting
31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels
My Kankonian-English dictionary: 87,413 words and counting
31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
Re: The rise of agriculture and labiodentals
I see what you did there! Interesting read for consideration indeed.Khemehekis wrote: ↑25 Mar 2019 00:43 Today, while I was reading the CBC news site, I came upon a fascinating biolinguistic discovery:
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/mar-23- ... -1.5065948
"Food" for thought when you're creating a language for a sapient people and taking their biology into account.
Though I do wonder how they decided [f] & [v] were basically invented 12000 years ago or so....
Re: The rise of agriculture and labiodentals
There's been some discussion of the paper on Languagehat, where they came to a somewhat less bold conclusion that the biological change simply caused a turnaround in the relative frequencies of [f], [v] vs. [ɸ], [β].
Languages:
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A linguistics enthusiast who occasionally frequents the CBB.
- Guide to Slavic accentuation
[:D], [;)], [:D], [:|], [:(], [:'(]
A linguistics enthusiast who occasionally frequents the CBB.
- Guide to Slavic accentuation
Re: The rise of agriculture and labiodentals
Those are the sorts of comments I've seen on "popular science" pages on Facebook and YouTube channels that have brought this up, i.e. "what about bilabial fricatives?". I haven't managed to read the original paper, however, so I can't say for certain whether this is something that's missed in the paper, or missed in the reporting.Zekoslav wrote: ↑25 Mar 2019 18:42 There's been some discussion of the paper on Languagehat, where they came to a somewhat less bold conclusion that the biological change simply caused a turnaround in the relative frequencies of [f], [v] vs. [ɸ], [β].
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
Re: The rise of agriculture and labiodentals
Sounds a little bit like the mountains = ejectives argument.
Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.
-JRR Tolkien
-JRR Tolkien
Re: The rise of agriculture and labiodentals
Right, there've been a lot of attempts to explain sound changes with biological, geographical, climate-related or other similar factors, and mostly they haven't really stood up to scrutiny. This one would seem at least sort of plausible, I guess... But probably requires further research, and ultimately might hit the same wall as most stuff in historical linguistics: sure, you can make all sorts of interesting hypotheses, but beyond about 10000 years back (at most), it just becomes impossible to gather enough evidence for anything for it to be truly convincing.