Carme Jiménez Huertas on Language


An international team of researchers have analyzed ancient DNA from almost 300 individuals from the Iberian Peninsula, spanning more than 12,000 years, in two studies published today in Current Biology and Science. The first study looked at hunter-gatherers and early farmers living in Iberia between 13,000 and 6000 years ago. The second looked at individuals from the region during all time periods over the last 8000 years. Together, the two papers greatly increase our knowledge about the population history of this unique region.

The Iberian Peninsula has long been thought of as an outlier in the population history of Europe, due to its unique climate and position on the far western edge of the continent. During the last Ice Age , Iberia remained relatively warm, allowing plants and animals -- and possibly people -- who were forced to retreat from much of the rest of Europe to continue living there. Similarly, over the last 8000 years, Iberia's geographic location, rugged terrain, position on the Mediterranean coast and proximity to North Africa made it unique in comparison to other parts of Europe in its interactions with other regions. Two new studies, published concurrently in Current Biology and Science, analyze a total of almost 300 individuals who lived from about 13,000 to 400 years ago to give unprecedented clarity on the unique population history of the Iberian Peninsula[...]

Between about 2500-2000 BC, the researchers observed the replacement of 40% of Iberia's ancestry and nearly 100% of its Y-chromosomes by people with ancestry from the Pontic Steppe, a region in what is today Ukraine and Russia. Interestingly, the findings show that in the Iron Age, "Steppe ancestry" had spread not only into Indo-European-speaking regions of Iberia but also into non-Indo-European-speaking ones, such as the region inhabited by the Basque . The researchers' analysis suggests that present-day Basques most closely resemble a typical Iberian Iron Age population, including the influx of "Steppe ancestry," but that they were not affected by subsequent genetic contributions that affected the rest of Iberia. This suggests that Basque speakers were equally affected genetically as other groups by the arrival of Steppe populations, but retained their language in any case. It was only after that time that they became relatively isolated genetically from the rest of the Iberian Peninsula[...].
 
I read her book Romance Did Not Begin in Rome: A critique of the Latin origin of Romance languages and found it quite interesting. Her theory is that Romance languages originated from Iberian. She refers several times in the book to Le français ne vient pas du latin ! : Essai sur une aberration linguistique written by Yves Cortez and available only in French. This guy suggested that Romance languages came rather from Ancient Italian. He even shows that they intentionally changed French spelling during Middle Ages to imply Latin origin of French.

Anyway, both books are worth reading.
 
She refers several times in the book to Le français ne vient pas du latin ! : Essai sur une aberration linguistique written by Yves Cortez and available only in French. This guy suggested that Romance languages came rather from Ancient Italian. He even shows that they intentionally changed French spelling during Middle Ages to imply Latin origin of French.

I think you were referring to his book in this question, yes?

(Ze Germans) Did the Romance languages originate from the same language? If so, was it ancient Italian?

(L) Okay, first question: Did the Romance languages originate from the same language?

A: Further back in time than your question allows, yes.

Q: (Chu) Was it Iberian?

A: Close. Landing place of ancient Atlantean survivors.

Just to give my humble take on it, I think he is wrong about his "ancient Italian" theory. His book is excellent, but unfortunately, when it comes to coming up with an alternative story, he does exactly what he blames others of doing! He "reconstructed" that "ancient italian" from similarities among the Romance languages. Good guess, but it's still a guess. Not only that, but he assumes that all Roman invaders spoke that language. AFAIK, there is zero evidence for that, and more for the possibility that Italy was quite multilingual during Roman times. So, I think Carme Huerta may have gotten closer in her explanation, when she says that it's impossible that the legions, soldiers, etc taught any "Latin" (or any language) to the conquered peoples.

Cortez also makes a mistake in the dating, I think. After proving pretty well that Latin couldn't have changed so fast into Romance languages, because no language ever does, suddenly he expects us to believe that "ancient Italian" split into each of the Romance languages in the same length of time! It doesn't make sense to me. Sure, the change wouldn't have been so drastic as from Latin to Romances, but still. There are big differences too among the Romance languages. He even mentions some of them, only to brush them off later (eg. the formal "you" in Italian being formed exactly like in German: "lei" in Italian, meaning also "he, "sie" in German). Those "aberrations" and details hold important clues, me thinks.

For Iberian (and there is a possible link with Basque too), at least there are archaeological findings and some deciphering done. It could have been spoken or just written, but at least we know for sure it existed, unlike "ancient Italian". And that it is much older.

I LOVED Cortez's book, though! Just not his "solution".

As to what the Cs meant exactly in their answer, I don't know! :-[
 
I think you were referring to his book in this question, yes?
Yes, I meant Le français ne vient pas du latin ! : Essai sur une aberration linguistique by Yves Cortez.
As to what the Cs meant exactly in their answer, I don't know! :-[
You mean this one?

A: Further back in time than your question allows, yes.
I'm not sure, either. They could have meant Kantekkian language:

Q: (Ze Germans) What was the first Indo-European language created by the gene builders?

A: Indo-European was not "created". Language emerged into your reality.

Q: (L) It "emerged"...

A: Indo-European was a misnomer for the remnants of the Kantekkian language.
 
You mean this one?

No, I meant this one:

A: Close. Landing place of ancient Atlantean survivors.
Iberian ("close") is the language, and as far as I undertand, the records were only found in present Spain and Portugal, and Basque region (both in France and Spain). I don't know that it can explain Romanian or Italian. And the Cs are talking about a location on the second sentence, so maybe an even smaller area? I don't know.

This one:
A: Further back in time than your question allows, yes.

Yes, I think that may refer to waaaay back when. I.e. kantekkian arrival. Or at least 20.000 BC.
 
Read Cortez’s and Huertas’s books as well.

There’s a good deal of info that I’m trying to make sense of. In time, I’d like to make a list of the seeming ‘anomalies’ or clues that point to the truth. (E.g.: basque-etruscan-hungarian connection, C’s saying alien’s and giants’ language being similar to Basque, Elfdalian lgg, etc)

In the mean time, there’s a possibly big ramification from Romance not coming from Latin, and I’d love to know your thoughts.

The discrepancy between Latin and Romance is very akin, as far as I can tell, to the discrepancy between:

• Old German (inflexional, with 4 cases) and present nordic languages (analytical, with two cases)
• Old Slavic (inflexional, with around 7 cases) and some present “Slavic” languages (analytical, 1/no case)
• Old Irish (inflexional, 5 cases) and present Gaelic languages (analytical, two cases)

So, what do you think of the possibility that those present languages with a mostly analytical grammar (Romance, Bulgarian, Gaelic, Nordic, etc) has one linguistic origin, and the highly inflexional ones (Russian, Latin, Baltic, etc) has a different one?
 
There’s a good deal of info that I’m trying to make sense of. In time, I’d like to make a list of the seeming ‘anomalies’ or clues that point to the truth. (E.g.: basque-etruscan-hungarian connection, C’s saying alien’s and giants’ language being similar to Basque, Elfdalian lgg, etc)

I look forward to you sharing your discoveries.

In the mean time, there’s a possibly big ramification from Romance not coming from Latin, and I’d love to know your thoughts.

The discrepancy between Latin and Romance is very akin, as far as I can tell, to the discrepancy between:

• Old German (inflexional, with 4 cases) and present nordic languages (analytical, with two cases)
• Old Slavic (inflexional, with around 7 cases) and some present “Slavic” languages (analytical, 1/no case)
• Old Irish (inflexional, 5 cases) and present Gaelic languages (analytical, two cases)

Agreed! And not only does the grammar reflect that, but what is also interesting is that the so-called evolution and transition is supposed to have happened at roughly the same times, with similar "jumps" for all of those language branches. Very mysterious. I'm not good at history, but if there was really an important cometary impact at 540AD, then about 300-400 years added, periods of famine, plague and lots of death, that makes it even less likely that the chronology of languages is as it is often believed to be.

So, what do you think of the possibility that those present languages with a mostly analytical grammar (Romance, Bulgarian, Gaelic, Nordic, etc) has one linguistic origin, and the highly inflexional ones (Russian, Latin, Baltic, etc) has a different one?

It think it's possible, but that we would still end up with a missing link. There are several grammatical similarities between English and Latin, for example. Yet, we couldn't put English in the inflexional camp. So, what would we do with those? And what about the small differences that many ignore, such as the "question word" in Latin, that also exists in Chinese? Talk about a big coincidence in totally unrelated languages... We've got a mess. They may be details, but those same problems are ignored across other types, like the agglutinative one. Lots of similarities, with no known common origin.

That said, it would be interesting to see if those two branches you propose would be more coherent than the current trees. My guess is that yes, they would be, to a large extent. I don't know that it would prove a common ancestor, though. Maybe it was just different ways of thinking, since grammar has to do with our deeper cognitive processes, how we view the world, organize our thoughts, etc.?

Perhaps you could expand a little?

Have you read Rulhen's Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue?

I found it very interesting in the content of what is discussed in this thread. Right from the very beginning, he explains how one of the ways to make linguistic trees is to base oneself in the KNOWN changes that are indisputable (like Latin---> Romance Languages), and then extrapolate that into the hypothetical mother of each pair of cognates they find. Big problem, eh? IF the chronology and relationship of those languages are wrong, then the whole tree is wrong, and even the methods used to deduce it. :umm: He doesn't consider that, but he makes really good points nonetheless. I'm not convinced about his unique "mother tongue", but it does bring up the possibility (if you don't stick to just what he is saying), that there may be several "mother" tongues, or at least 3. Perhaps your idea above is related to that.

Unfortunately, you also have to take that with a grain of salt. The genetic studies that lead to those 3 possible "mothers" are based, to my knowledge, on the assumptions that the out of Africa theory is correct. So, they calculate the age of a language and the "age" of genes based on an assumption (the differences between chimpanzees to modern humans). They don't take into account any Intelligent Design. And if you ask me, they don't even know how racist they are as much as they stick to the politically correct narrative. By saying that Africans are the oldest, they are saying that they are closer to chimps?! Anyway, I have to read more about it myself. But here is an example if you are interested: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjjxaP__uL9AhUNU6QEHWu4Cs8QFnoECAoQAQ&url=http://materiais.dbio.uevora.pt/Genetica/LeiturasGenetica/Cavalli-Sforza_1997_Genes_peoples_languages.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3BtMGYQ3JeuB6Jl3rSAaGA

I hope this helps! I'll reply to your other post too, for what it's worth.
 
Ok, I'll put here a list of unexplained linguistic phenomena I can think of now:

- the existance of elfdalian (a germanic lgg with 4 cases in the middle of Sweden)

- the persistance of some languages such as Basque and Maltese
about Basque: why was this the only pre-aryan language to remain in Europe? How come it wasn't crushed in colonizing efforts?
For Maltese, similar question. How come 800 years of European rule were fine with speaking arabic in the island to this day?

- the extremely effective linguistic-imperial measures in Brazil
That is, how come they can make a region the size of Europe have 99+% of whole people speak a single language? As far as I know, this is unique in the world today, as for example Russian has its many Federations inside it, and 25% of the US pop learns Castillian as first language. Maybe China could be similar, proportionally.

- How did the Brazilians stop speaking the "lingua geral", the indinginous-portuguese mix that's supposed to have lived from the inception of the colony until 1850 here. Supposdely, this Marquis of pombal guy decreed people should speak portuguese, and in 50 years it was said and done in a millions, million and million of square kilometers of a country

- If analyitical languages could have a different origin as fusional ones, then why are the pronouns usually quite flexional as well? Most romance cases have at least 4 cases in their pronouns (Cast.: el (nom.), lo (acc.), le (dat.), su (gen.))
And why some aryan languages have up to 10 cases, and some have only 4?

Btw, is it a sort of threshold? I don't know about an Aryan langauge that has one 3 cases. It's either 1/2, or 4+

- I saw the thread here about the cognates in Basque, Etruscan, Minoan. If that's correct, its speaks for itself

- Why Brazilian Romance especially analytical? probably the most I know. Even if we write in a more flexional matter, we don't speak like that. In Southern urban areas, the less educated somebody is, the more analyitcal they speak. In Northern areas, sometimes it's actually the opposite.

- Why is Br romance so different from portuguese romance? There are syntactical constructions that are just mutually impossible. And it's easy to hear how they sound different. How come there's not a single place in Br that people speak like portuguese do? How come there's not a single place in portugal that hey speak like Br do?

- How come there's not A SINGLE place in Br that people speak an African language? It has only been preserved lithurgically. I suppose this same question applies to all nations with high level of ex-slave populations

- Why were the languages chosen for writing usually fusional instead of analytical?

- Why was the chronology (according to mainstream academia) usually 700 hundread years from a language starting being written and then "becoming" more analytical?

- Bulgarian, Macedonian and Romanian share 3 genders (different from other romance language, similar to other Slavic), and a noun in the end of the word. They're neighbors.

- How come the word for Mother and Father is so similar around the globe? It's not just Ma and pa, it's also Anna and Atta. I'd have to look it up, but from the top of my head, almost 80% of all langauges have a word from Mother that's either Ma or Anna (or slight variations), and for Father pa or Atta (or slight variations)

- How come different languages from supposedly large differing branches have N meaning negation? That's the case of Tokyonese ("Japanese"), Tupi (pre-colombian people in S. America), Aryan Languages, and in Hungarian if I'm not mistaken. I think there are more, that I don't remember

- English. Oooooh English. Well, let's open that padonra's box.
First, the pronunciation. It's the only language I know people can't say /e/ and /o/ and /u/ straight, they have to say /ey/ or /ow/ or /uw/
the /r/ is not only retroflex, but it doesn't touch the palate and it's rounded (!?)
at the same time, it has lots of vowels. It's a combination I've never seen of many vowel, but not being able to pronounce some very common vowels, but being able to pronounce uncommon ones.

the phonetics in the end become quite... windy. Speaking English feels like you're taking winds and turns. Very different from speaking Castillian for example.

On that note, I was doing some simple experiments with writing mantras in different languages, and English turned out to be one of the most difficult ones. For prayers or recitations, only rarely it'd more powerful than in other languages. The experimetns were rudimentary, and I was going most for feeling and raw output of energy, but I still found it significant.

It has 50% of vocab from latin-romance-greek origins. that's similar to Maltese... but Maltese having about 50% european vocab... but they are a tiny island under Euro rule for 800 years!
It has very simple verb conjugation. Only scandinavian langauges are simpler in that regard, that I know.

It supposedly borrowed prounouns (!) and 'to be' conjugations (!!?) from old nordic. So it was 'thou bist', and then become 'thou art'... and until some time ago, or even today, in some small enclaves in England, people still spoke not only 'thou', but 'thou bist' (????!!!!!)

I can't remember the points exactly, but I find it also easy to see that english is a lot more similar in grammar to Scandinavian languages than the West Germanic ones.

Buuut at the same time, (I don't remember the specifics for this one either), there's a lot of core vocab that's typical West Germanic

And like many other languages, it's supposed to have gone through rvolutionary change in, what, 100 years or something? Great vowel shift, grammatical changes, etc... and then stay almost the same for 800 years

Enlgish seems to simply fly on the face of all mainstream academia says how languages evolve.

- Irish is supposed to have a lot of commonalities with Hebrew

- Old Irish is supposed to have many idysioncrasies, which I don't remember now, that some people see that it's clearly not even an Aryan language

- What the heck happened to phonetics in French? The grammar stayed pretty much the same as the neighboring romance languages, but the sounds changed quite a lot, and made so many words much shorter

- French spelling is of course not very transparent, and if you read for example Fulcanelli's work, he hints that this is very much on purpose, for both STO and STS reasons

- How come Castillian is quite similar in the whole Latin America?

- How come there are not MORE enclaves of languages like Elfdalian, Basque and Maltese?

- How come does Faroese have phonemes that are supposed to share only SOME rare linguistic innovations with Icelandic? (such as the sounds of a double "LL", but not the /ski/ becoming [shi], such "ski" become "shi")

- Why is Faroese and Danish so... unclear when spoken? I read about a Danish saying that they themselves don't know how they can understand each other, considering how unclearn some phonemes are (such as their version of "th" which sounds almost exactly like /l/), and how much they just mumble when they speak. Many ending syllable in Faroese become just mmhhmhm

--------


I made an effort to keep all of those observations, not speculations, or unexplained possibilites based on speculation, even if the speculation is quite well-founded. For example, IF Icelandic is not just a very conservative descendant of Old Nordic, then how come does everybody speak it up there? But that takes some speculation, so I left those out
 
Sorry for the small mess. I posted the above, but then noticed it could have been made a lot neater.
I started editing it, but didn't know there's a 10min limit for editing. Editing took more than 10mins. So I'll repost in a more organized manner:


---------------------------------------------------------


Ok, I'll put here a list of unexplained linguistic phenomena I can think of now:

1) the existence of elfdalian (a germanic lgg with 4 cases in the middle of Sweden)

2) the persistence of some languages such as Basque and Maltese
about Basque: why was this the only pre-aryan language to remain in Europe? How come it wasn't crushed in colonizing efforts?
For Maltese, similar question. How come 800 years of European rule were fine with speaking Arabic in the island to this day?

3) the extremely effective linguistic-imperial measures in Brazil.

That is, how come they can make a region the size of Europe have 99+% of whole people speak a single language? As far as I know, this is unique in the world today, as for example Russian has its many Federations inside it, and 25% of the US pop learns Castillian as first language. Maybe China could be similar, proportionally.

4) How did the Brazilians stop speaking the "lingua geral", the indinginous-portuguese mix that's supposed to have lived from the inception of the colony until 1850 here. Supposdely, this Marquis of pombal guy decreed people should speak portuguese, and in 50 years it was said and done in a millions, million and million of square kilometers of a country.

5) If analytical languages could have a different origin as fusional ones, then why are the pronouns usually quite flexional as well? Most romance cases have at least 4 cases in their pronouns (Cast.: el (nom.), lo (acc.), le (dat.), su (gen.))
And why some aryan languages have up to 10 cases, and some have only 4?

Btw, is it a sort of threshold? I don't know about an Aryan langauge that has one 3 cases. It's either 1/2, or 4+

6) I saw the thread here about the cognates in Basque, Etruscan, Minoan. If that's correct, its speaks for itself

7) Why Brazilian Romance especially analytical? probably the most I know. Even if we write in a more flexional matter, we don't speak like that. In Southern urban areas, the less educated somebody is, the more analyitcal they speak. In Northern areas, sometimes it's actually the opposite.

8) Why is Br romance so different from portuguese romance? There are syntactical constructions that are just mutually impossible. And it's easy to hear how they sound different. How come there's not a single place in Br that people speak like portuguese do? How come there's not a single place in portugal that hey speak like Br do?

9) How come there's not A SINGLE place in Br that people speak an African language? It has only been preserved liturgically. I suppose this same question applies to all nations with high level of ex-slave populations.

10) Why were the languages chosen for writing usually fusional instead of analytical?

11) Why was the chronology (according to mainstream academia) usually 700 hundred years from a language starting being written and then "becoming" more analytical?

12) Bulgarian, Macedonian and Romanian share 3 genders (different from other romance language, similar to other Slavic), and a noun in the end of the word. They're neighbors.

13) How come the word for Mother and Father is so similar around the globe? It's not just Ma and pa, it's also Anna and Atta. I'd have to look it up, but from the top of my head, almost 80% of all langauges have a word from Mother that's either Ma or Anna (or slight variations), and for Father pa or Atta (or slight variations).

14) How come different languages from supposedly differing branches have N meaning negation? That's the case of Tokyonese ("Japanese"), Tupi (pre-colombian people in S. America), Aryan Languages, and in Hungarian if I'm not mistaken. I think there are more, that I don't remember.

15) English. Oooooh English. Well, let's open that padonra's box.

First, the pronunciation. It's the only language I know people can't say /e/ and /o/ and /u/ straight, they have to say /ey/ or /ow/ or /uw/
the /r/ is not only retroflex, but it doesn't touch the palate and it's rounded (!?)
at the same time, it has lots of vowels. It's a combination I've never seen of many vowel, but not being able to pronounce some very common vowels, but being able to pronounce uncommon ones.

the phonetics in the end become quite... windy. Speaking English feels like you're taking winds and turns. Very different from speaking Castillian for example.

On that note, I was doing some simple experiments with writing mantras in different languages, and English turned out to be one of the most difficult ones. For prayers or recitations, only rarely it'd more powerful than in other languages. The experiments were rudimentary, and I was going most for feeling and raw output of energy, but I still found it significant.

It has 50% of vocab from latin-romance-greek origins. that's similar to Maltese... but Maltese having about 50% European vocab... but they are a tiny island under Euro rule for 800 years!
It has very simple verb conjugation. Only Scandinavian langauges are simpler in that regard, that I know.

It supposedly borrowed prounouns (!) and 'to be' conjugations (!!?) from old nordic. So it was 'thou bist', and then become 'thou art'... and until some time ago, or even today, in some small enclaves in England, people still spoke not only 'thou', but 'thou bist' (????!!!!!)

I can't remember the points exactly, but I find it also easy to see that English is a lot more similar in grammar to Scandinavian languages than the West Germanic ones.

Buuut at the same time, (I don't remember the specifics for this one either), there's a lot of core vocab that's typical West Germanic.

And like many other languages, it's supposed to have undergone revolutionary change in, what, 100 years or something? Great vowel shift, grammatical changes, etc... and then stay almost the same for 800 years.

English seems to simply fly on the face of all mainstream academia says how languages evolve.

16) Irish is supposed to have a lot of commonalities with Hebrew

17) Old Irish is supposed to have many idiosyncrasies, which I don't remember now, that some researchers say that it's clearly not even an Aryan language.

18) What the heck happened to phonetics in French? The grammar stayed pretty much the same as the neighboring romance languages, but the sounds changed quite a lot, and made so many words much shorter

19) French spelling is of course not very transparent, and if you read for example Fulcanelli's work, he hints that this is very much on purpose, for both STO and STS reasons

20) How come Castillian is quite similar in the whole Latin America? Maybe even generally more similar between countries, than Br Romance is between different states.

21) How come there are not MORE enclaves of languages like Elfdalian, Basque and Maltese?

22) How come does Faroese share only SOME linguistic innovations with Icelandic? (such as the sounds of a double "LL", which is a rare one, but not the /ski/ becoming [shi], such "ski" become "shi")

23) Why is Faroese and Danish so... unclear when spoken? I read a Danish guy saying that they themselves don't know how they can understand each other, considering how unclear some phonemes are (such as their version of "th" which sounds almost exactly like /l/), and how much they just mumble when they speak. Many ending syllable in Faroese become just mmrrhhmrhrm


----------------------------------------


I made an effort to keep all of those observations, not speculations, or unexplained possibilities based on speculation, even if the speculation is quite well-founded.

For example, IF Icelandic is not just a very conservative descendant of Old Nordic, then how come does everybody speak it up there? But that takes some speculation, so I left those out.
 
18) What the heck happened to phonetics in French? The grammar stayed pretty much the same as the neighboring romance languages, but the sounds changed quite a lot, and made so many words much shorter

19) French spelling is of course not very transparent, and if you read for example Fulcanelli's work, he hints that this is very much on purpose, for both STO and STS reason
Yves Cortez proposes in Le français ne vient pas du latin ! : Essai sur une aberration linguistique that it was done on purpose during one of the language "reforms" in the Middle Ages to suggest Latin origin of French.
 
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Agreed! And not only does the grammar reflect that, but what is also interesting is that the so-called evolution and transition is supposed to have happened at roughly the same times, with similar "jumps" for all of those language branches.

Yes! Some similarities are just tremendous. I speak mostly Germanic and Romance languages, and I see them mostly as the same language - if you look at the syntactical aspects. Many of them we don’t quite realize because we’re like fish in the water, missing the water. Here’s just two:

1) “to have” as the most common aux. verb for composite past sentences. Some use “to have” and “to be”, such as French and German. AND almost always, when French used one of the aux., German uses the same. This must the case to many other lggs as well.

I have done
Ich habe getan
Je ai fait

I have gone
Ich bin gegangen
Je suis allé

2) Use of aux. verb to indicate necessity. “I must do this”. What’s the big deal about this one? Well, see how different it is in Tokyonese:

“Watashi wa kore o shinakereba narimasen”
Transliteration: I this not do doesn’t develop
Half-way translation: Me not doing this isn’t good
Semantic translation: I must do this

They use this double negation in many different forms to indicate necessity. But they don’t have an aux. verb. As Aryans languages do.

It is truly remarkable that so many lggs decided to leap! And then at the same time, to the same place!

if there was really an important cometary impact at 540AD, then about 300-400 years added, periods of famine, plague and lots of death, that makes it even less likely that the chronology of languages is as it is often believed to be
I find possibility quite compelling, given the evidence I’ve seen. Yes, that’d have tremendous implications as well. One of them of course it that lggs didn’t have all that time to change in the first place.

But I feel there are many more, that I’m missing rn.

They may be details, but those same problems are ignored across other types, like the agglutinative one
I’m curious, could you name a few? I know so lottle of agglutinative lggs.

That said, it would be interesting to see if those two branches you propose would be more coherent than the current trees. My guess is that yes, they would be, to a large extent. I don't know that it would prove a common ancestor, though. Maybe it was just different ways of thinking, since grammar has to do with our deeper cognitive processes, how we view the world, organize our thoughts, etc.?

I very rarely remember how important syntax is to organizing the mind. Before hearing Huertas talking about this, I grossly underestimated the power of syntax on the mind. I keep some awareness on it, in myself and others.

To expand a little on this, I think it’s necessary to kinda go back to square one in trying to answer of questions

1) What makes a lgg change?
2) How quickly does it change?
3) What are aspects of language that are more fundamental, and others more superficial?
4) Is there a limit to the directions a language can change?
5) How does language come to be?
6) What is the origin of language?

And many others that I can’t think of rn. I see 1) as important to adress, when looking for a common origin, because we’re trying to reverse-engineer lggs in a way, but if we don’t know forces shaped them, we can’t make inferences!

Here’s a short list of well-attested forces of change in a lgg (regardless if it’s deep or shallow change):

1) Internal phonetics processes: erosion, assimilation, conflation, etc.

2) Foreign influence, such as gen Z belgians using uvular /r/ instead of tap (influence from Dutch, French and German)

3) Cultural changes (Br Romance is becoming more ergative (not demanding an object) in general, some say because ergative verbs are descriptive of how machines work. Ex in English: “the TV turned off!” [by itself], “my OS just updated”, etc)

Here’s a few less well-attested but I’m fairly confident on:

1) Deliberate changing it. French spelling is a clear example, and Sanskrit (which supposedly means “cultivated”), if truly deliberately cultivated, is the prime example of how pervasive those changes are. I also suspect English is the victim of conflicting interests that ended up creating a beautiful, very useful abomination.

2) F(requency)R(essonance)V(ibration), as the C’s put it. I have little to no evidence for this, but somehow I’m tremendously confident that there are sources of vibration going on (from people, planets, machines or what have you) that affect lgg, like a sounding board affects the patterns of sand. That’d be another way to change lgg.

3) Changes in thought patterns. Syntax and mind interact vigorously, as you pointed out

As I write this, maybe a big part of the confusion is because we’re looking for a common origin. While it’s much more fruitful to look at common AFFINITY. Affinity and common affinity are quite close, but not the same thing.

So, would the AAL (analytical aryan lggs) have a common ancestor? By the gods, I don’t know. I suppose at least partly yes. The C’s say sth on the lines of “yes, but further than what [the timeline of] your line of questioning allows”.

A possible clue is that the C’s said Germanic lggs look the most like the proto-Aryan lgg. I thought that was very curious!

Then I remember proto-Germanic only has four cases, and even Icelandic has a definite article, which is missing in I(nflected)A(ryan)L(anguages). Maybe Germanic is like a middle-branch, and some languages relied more on inflection and developed more cases and dropped articles, while other relied on analytical structures and developed more articles, and all other grammatical aspects that are common to those two groups of lggs.

Lithuanian is said to have spontaneously created two extra cases… and to drop them 200 years later. This speaks to “what directions can a language change?”. My wild guess is: any! No need to stick to academic insistence that lggs tend to become “simpler” over time, and ONLY
become inflectional again when tremendous amounts of fossilization and phonetic erosion has happened.

Have you read Rulhen's Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue
Didn’t know it! Will take a look😁
Thanks for the pointer
By saying that Africans are the oldest, they are saying that they are closer to chimps
hah!

I hope this helps! I'll reply to your other post too, for what it's worth
That’s a lot of help! I was burning to have somebody at least to talk about this. I feel we’re already making some progress in this! Some already the answers to all this… but I don’t! Thank you so much for diving in as well!
 
Yves Cortez proposes in Le français ne vient pas du latin ! : Essai sur une aberration linguistique that it was done on purpose during one of the language "reforms" in the Middle Ages to suggest Latin origin of French.
Yes! That’s an example of STS motive, murking the waters. Or just plain ignorance, in case that’s incorrect.

I don’t remember the exact examples. But there are many, many double-entendres that come for instance from writing /e/ as ‘ai’, having unpronounced ‘s’ in the end of words, and many other unpronounced and non-etymological extra letters.

“Taureau”(bull) comes to mind, with the “eau” at the. Even the word “eau” (water) is quite mysterious in its spelling.

When I was in Montpellier, there was this fair, devoted JUST to engimas, and all kinds of puzzles - including practical puzzles and needing to ga places to find clues. This type of involvement with mystery and clash of STO and STS forces seems to run deep in French culture.

Using these letters as clued for the burning seekers to follow, would example of STO motives.
 
I'll try to add my 2 cents soon to all your questions and comments. In the meantime, sorry if it sounds as self-promoting :lol: but I think some of the things I described in videos might be of interest to you, in particular regarding the questions about phonetics and the problems in defining how language "emerged". See here for the links to the videos, transcripts and discussion:

About Basque, I had similar thoughts to you, and I think it may answer at least partially your question about Castillian and Brazilian, expect in the reverse way (the latter being less "tough" and resistant). See what you think:

And since you are so interested in this, I would like to recommend another book: "Cognitive Semantics", by Langacker. It's not an easy read, and too technical for the non-language nerd, but I'm reading it now, and I'm getting a lot out of it. I think it contains a few clues as to why language is not as volatile as the "evolutionists" want us to believe it is. AND, it's fascinating to think about how meaning is created and developed. I've had a few Aha moments, thinking about how it explains in part the mess we are in today, with people believing that a cold is a pandemic, that men can have children, that Russia is the evil guy, etc.
 
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