Grammar Traces Language Roots

mlewan writes "Researchers use grammar to trace relations between Papuan languages. What is interesting is not that much that they use grammar features to do this, but that they seem to have given up using vocabulary as a help."

Comments

Makes sense.

[HugePedlar]

Even in England, different regions use different words and pronunciations (which could count as different words). But we all use the same grammar. It's easy to change the sounds of a sentence, but to change the structure requires hefty evolution, and hence a separation of culture.

Re:Ramsey Theory

[ciroknight]

The problem here is, we know it's not just "fuzz". These people are communicating, but like Dolphins (for a good example of undecypherable language), it's very hard for outsiders to have any clue of how to translate.

If we stop looking for how to translate it, we lose all that society has generated in terms of culture and myth, we lose another piece of humanity. Of course, people will argue that this doesn't matter, and I'm certain people will live without it, but it's still humanity, and we should be looking for ways to unite our people and not seperate ourselves.

Lastly, the tools we use to break the code of earthly languages will be invaluable if we ever make contact with other civilizations and intellegences. We can't even decrypt dolphin banter here on earth, and yet when ET phones us we're expected to pick up the phone and talk to him in plain English? Perhaps we've been bombarded by alien signals for hundreds of years now in a multitude of frequencies and different alien languages and simply can't decypher any of them because our linguistics aren't that well developed. And if our linguistics aren't that developed what does that tell you about the rest of our societies? Food for thought.

Language and Communication are two of the most important and employable sciences we humans can study and use. But yes, there's always a chance you can be over examining the issue. I just feel that this isn't one of those cases.