Originally posted by scottishinnz
Of course this is true. However, language is a complex thing. It did not evolve spontaneously, it took many generations to evolve, and continues to do so. Old words drop out of the "word pool" whilst new ones are coined all the time. Language is not static, but develops and evolves. We can think therefore that language used to be simpler than now. few hundred years ago everything was read aloud, and we come back to our series of grunts.
Ofcourse it makes sense to me as well that a gang of babbies isolated together would probbably form their own private language, googelfudge. But they still will not be able to speek an any tipe of language that we know of today as no one has tought them.
In fact even if you give them a pen and paper to write with, then they will be more likely to injure themselves or eachother because they dont know how to write, because again no one is teaching them to do so.
Also even if they do eventualy manage to put pen to paper, they would still only manage to scribbel all over the place and never learn to write properly, because again there is no one to teach them to do this.
Scottishinnz I also agree with you that indeed language is not static and develops over time. English is a verry good example, it was not always "around" so to say but instead it was formed from a groop of languages, that was combined and "ajusted" so to speak over a long period of time to eventualy end up as English, not as we know it to day ofcourse but in a more "out dated" form so to speak like the English used in the old King James versions of the Bible.
But my point here is still although English as a language was new in that time, it was still formed over time by combineing groops of exsisting languages in order to form a new one.
In other words English needed an existing "base" of languages to "draw" from in order for it to have gotten started in the first place.
I also know that animals can comunicate with each other in their own way and indeed even with other species, like a cat and a dog for example that growl and hiss at each other in order to try an intimmedate one another.
Now like with my Enlish example, I think that primative man would also have needed an existing langauge (with actual words, like with modern languages and not just sounds, grunts etc.) that would have been tought to them by thier parents, to learn from and then even develop other languages.
As far as I know, animals today such as the primates for example still comunicate with each other in much the same way as they comunicated with each other from the biggining of recorded history and possibly even before that.
Therefore what I am tryinng to say is that if you start of with grunting and making noises etc as your form of cumunication, then your species will contineu doing so generation after generation untill you are tought otherwise, like a chimp learning sign language for example.
Lastly, say you have primative people form Europe that "bump" into primative people from Asia, now both groops use sounds, grunting etc as a form of cumunication. They do not understand each other how ever, because each groop has its' own specific way of using these sounds etc, that is uneeck to them (like a French person trying to talk to an English person, and each use their own language). Now I would also think that they will try to find a way of comunicating with eachother like hand gestures etc, but even if they live together for a few generations and in so doing form a new system of sounds, grunts etc that all of them understand (again like with the English example), then you are still left with them grunting etc at each other.
At least that is how I think of it, and that is what makes sense to me. 🙂