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All Languages Linked To Common Source

Posted by Soulskill on from the mitochondrial-chomsky dept.

Old Wolf writes "A New Zealand evolutionary psychologist, Quentin Atkinson, has created a scientific sensation by claiming to have discovered the mother of all mother tongues. 'Dr Atkinson took 504 languages and plotted the number of phonemes in each (corrected for recent population growth, when significant) against the distance between the place where the language is spoken and 2,500 putative points of origin, scattered across the world (abstract). The relationship that emerges suggests the actual point of origin is in central or southern Africa, and that all modern languages do, indeed, have a common root." Reader NotSanguine points out another study which challenges the idea that the brain is more important to the structure of language than cultural evolution.

7 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. All Languages Linked To Common Source by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Humans!

  2. Patent nonsense. by Eunuchswear · · Score: 5, Funny

    Everybody knows the original language is English, as used by God to write the Bible.

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    Watch this Heartland Institute video
    1. Re:Patent nonsense. by Zeek40 · · Score: 3, Funny

      All the Jesuses I know read around Spanish language versions of the bible, not English.

    2. Re:Patent nonsense. by Zeek40 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Jesus Gonzales, Jesus Guardarez and Jesus Alvaraz all confirm, they read a Spanish bible.

  3. So BASIC, C, and Lisp are all related? by thomasdz · · Score: 4, Funny

    I didn't RTFA since, after all, I am on Slashdot.... but I didn't realize that Fortran & C were both part of the Algol language family.

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  4. language by circletimessquare · · Score: 3, Funny

    that great spark of power, that has propelled mankind from fetid caves, cruel and dark,

    to chariots, to sailing ships, to steam locomotives, to automobiles, to jet engines, to the moon...

    and eventually to fetid internet comment boards, cruel and dark

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  5. Re:Here's to human unity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I wouldn't read too much into it.

    We also share a common genetic origin with mushrooms.