Postby Lur » 2012-05-18, 15:34
Better. That's only for the sapiens, but when they were in Africa there were people everywhere, who would have languages with their own distinct sounds (different species)(*). When, for example, the sapiens got out of Africa, they could have started to receive influence (or the other way around) from Neanderthal and Denisovan languages groups. And further east, from Red Deer People, and Homo floresiensis. And I don't know if at some point during the existence of sapiens there were still late forms of Homo erectus. Given that there was exchange of genetic material, I think it's fairly possible these "main modern" linguistic groups, which maybe had distinct protolinguistic origins, influenced each other before the sapiens people entered America from the North.
Now. All these other people, they came from Africa too, apparently. But I don't know if when their ancestors got out of Africa they had a protolanguage or not. If they didn't then we could have entirely different language families that appeared outside of Africa.
But in the end, their non sapiens protolanguage would have come from a pre-protolanguage of African origin. And I don't think there's even a clear point of language apparition. When I see other primates interacting, I'm under the impression that I'm seeing a sort of pre-pre-pre-protolanguage...
(*) Now this is an amazing thought. Today, when only one species remains, all our languages are within our phonetic borders, they belong in the sapiens group. But go back a few thousand years and there are entire biological groups of languages, containing each their own language lineages. For example, Neanderthal language is supposed to have a more general nasal sound that ours, because their way of producing sounds would be a bit different to ours.
Geurea dena lapurtzen uzteagatik, geure izaerari uko egiteagatik.