The answer is no, far from it. Kung, whose click sounds are numerous and varied and appear in language names themselves. Vocabularies of such languages are typically extensive, especially when it comes to semantic fields important to those peoples, such as local flora and fauna. For a detailed description of this language, see R. For starters, consider the case system of a more familiar language, English. Pronouns, however, still do: compare he for subject, him for object as in He saw him.
In Dyirbal, nouns and pronouns alike wear their structural position on their sleeve by changing for subject- and object-ready forms. Thinking of the way pronouns work in English e. But this is only the beginning when it comes to the head-spinning Dyirbal grammar. Note also that in sentences with pronouns the word order is different from those with nouns, Subject-Object-Verb rather than Object-Subject-Verb.
Stringing such simple sentences into coordinated structures comes with its own complications in Dyirbal. These claims are controversial, in part because a small number of obscure languages play important roles in the debate, and different linguists working on the same languages come to different conclusions about them. It is perhaps safer to say that there is no debate about one thing: all modern languages are structured in a way perfectly suited to the needs and desires of the people who speak them, and in that sense, all languages spoken today are behaviorally modern.
But might there be a space-age technological civilization to speak a language with no phrasal hierarchy or embedding? Having trouble seeing this post or reblogging? Just go to my basic-format blog. Follow Me:. You are a gem, Nicholas! With your never ending interest in knowledge a real Greek Geek! Lol Sorry, today i just had listened to a radio feature with a Serbian philosopher, about the real usage of love in the history of humans.
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No-one has ever found one of these tribes that speak primitive rudimentary languages, but myths about them keep turning up. One of the first things I learnt when I began studying linguistics in the s was that all languages are complex. It doesn't matter where speakers live or what kind of lifestyle they have, the languages the speakers use have internal structures which are systematically ordered by rules.
So this means that there's no such thing as a primitive language. I was taught another principle of linguistics. All languages are equally well equipped to say the things their speakers want to say. If a language can't do this, then it will change it will adapt.
When computers appeared, people weren't suddenly rendered speechless because they didn't have the words to describe the new technology. I'm old enough to remember the arrival in New Zealand of the word "smorgasbord". There was a new trendy custom to lay the food out on a table so you could help yourself.
This didn't mean that food had never been laid out on tables before and people in the past couldn't describe this. Frequency of occurrence produced a more convenient name.
I am not saying that all languages are equal in all situations. An Arab might have a complex vocabulary for describing different kinds of camel.
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