LET’S ALL TRY TO SPEAK NEANDERTHAL!

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

I’ll never ceased to be amazed by what some palaeoanthro/linguists can come up with: (CLICK HERE).

I suppose the next step will be for these people to come up with a detailed description of the evolution of Neanderthal dialects in the course of a rather long tenure over a very large portion of Eurasia (+).

Jacques

[Jacques Cinq-Mars]

I’ll never ceased to be amazed by what some palaeoanthro/linguists can come up with: (CLICK HERE).

I suppose the next step will be for these people to come up with a detailed description of the evolution of Neanderthal dialects in the course of a rather long tenure over a very large portion of Eurasia (+).

Jacques

And, as mentioned in a much earlier message, I'll never ceased to be amazed by the silence of the few linguists who are Forum members.

Jacques

[trehinp]

Thanks for the reference article Jacques,

First of all, there seems to be some controversy with regard to the methodology. Perhaps it would be useful to see a replication of the experimental simulation of Neanderthal's voice by another research team. It would also be interesting to have the scientific paper that was published. This one is interesting but not precise enough. f

Second remark: the identification of Fox P2 gene variation in Neanderthals by the Max Plank Institute is an interesting addition to hypothesis about the speech of Neanderthals. But the Fox P2 gene variation that enables language production is only one aspect of language communication.

Some birds have a much closer variation of Fox P2 genes to modern humans than do the chimpanzees and other primates. There were several papers analysing Fox P2 in birds that learn their songs, comparing them to other birds with an innate song and to modern human. But that doesn't mean that birds language has communication capabilities similar to that of human beings.

Another point on the fact that Fox P2 may be a necessary condition but not a sufficient one for developping a meaningfull communicative language: as many of you know, I am quite involved in the domain of autism. Research on possible Fox P2 problems was not successful. Fox P2 in people with autism is no different from other human beings with a "normal" language. Yet language in autism is not functionning appropriately, even when they develop language.

This is just to say that while Fox P2 is an important factor in language development, it isn't a sufficient one.

One extremely important aspect of developping a pertinent communicative language is the capacity called "Theory of Mind". That is the capacity of guessing an other person state of mind by observing attitudes and tones of voice state. Something that is extremely difficult for most people with autism.

Yet, it will be extremely difficult to determine if Neanderthal had that capacity or not.

Note that the development of theory of mind occurs only around the age of 3 in "normal" children.

It would be interesting to develop some kind of analysis that could let us reasonably understand if Neanderthals had developped such a "theory of Mind" capacity.

Yours sincerely.

Paul