tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989966954446423670.post8131093230263765903..comments2024-03-02T00:44:55.128-08:00Comments on Pleiotropy: Contact with hobbits simplified languages?Bjørn Østmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08859177313382114917noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989966954446423670.post-59362895790751222792009-04-15T02:36:00.000-07:002009-04-15T02:36:00.000-07:00Peter, thanks for sharing those links. I will chec...Peter, thanks for sharing those links. I will check them out.Bjørn Østmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08859177313382114917noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989966954446423670.post-19926491495109205222009-04-13T01:03:00.000-07:002009-04-13T01:03:00.000-07:00Bjørn,This was a really interesting post, many tha...Bjørn,<BR/><BR/>This was a really interesting post, many thanks. I am somewhat late to the party :)<BR/><BR/>Two things I would like to add. The first regard's John Whorter's first point (regarding overlapping Human and Hobbit populations as late as the 1500s):<BR/><BR/>--- quote ----<BR/>Bert Roberts, of the University of Wollongong, whose team carried out the dating, said there were a lot of detailed folk tales on Flores about little people.<BR/><BR/>"These stories suggest there may be more than a grain of truth to the idea that they were still living on Flores up until the Dutch arrived in the 1500s," Professor Roberts said. "The stories suggest they lived in caves. The villagers would leave gourds with food out for them to eat, but legend has it these were the guests from hell. They'd eat everything, including the gourds."<BR/><BR/>- http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/28/1098667866340.html<BR/>--- end quote ---<BR/><BR/>The second, and to me, far more exciting is the possibility that some remnant population of Hobbits still exists on Flores:<BR/><BR/><BR/>--- quote ---<BR/>Chief Epiradus Dhoi Lewa (...) on the remote Indonesian island of Flores, he recalls how people from his village were able to capture a tiny woman with long, pendulous breasts three weeks ago.<BR/><BR/>"They said she was very little and very pretty," he says, holding his hand at waist height. "Some people saw her very close up."<BR/><BR/>The villagers of Boawae believe the strange woman came down from a cave on the steaming mountain where short, hairy people they call Ebu Gogo lived long ago.<BR/><BR/>"Maybe some Ebu Gogo are still there," the 70-year-old chief told the Herald through an interpreter in Boawae last week.<BR/><BR/>The locals' descriptions of Ebu Gogo as about a metre tall, with pot bellies and long arms match the features of a new species of human "hobbits"<BR/><BR/>- http://www.smh.com.au/news/Science/Hobbits-Weve-got-a-cave-full/2004/12/05/1102182161157.html?oneclick=true<BR/>--- end quote ---<BR/><BR/><BR/>Picking up on one other point you raise regarding inter-species communication: sign language is not the only way humans directly communicate with others. Bonobos (and chimps I think) have been taught to use pictograph keyboards. TED have an interesting video "Susan Savage-Rumbaugh: Apes that write, start fires and play Pac-Man". Its about 17mins long (all good) but you may like to skip forward to about 8 mins in - http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/susan_savage_rumbaugh_on_apes_that_write.html<BR/><BR/>We can now also speak with bees using robot bees (and have been able to for 10 or more years).<BR/><BR/>Most startling however is Dr Irene Pepperberg's work with (the late) Alex (lots of refs on this, I link to the wikipedia entry) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Pepperberg<BR/><BR/>The work with Alex may have bearing on brain size vs functionality issues that have been raised re hobbits because some birds (eg Alex) have demonstrated neo-cortical functions without the requisite neo-cortex.Peter McKellarnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989966954446423670.post-45071602633441378832009-04-02T13:22:00.000-07:002009-04-02T13:22:00.000-07:00Ranka, I contacted John McWhorter for a reply to y...Ranka, I contacted John McWhorter for a reply to your comment. Here is what he had to say:<BR/><BR/>The answer here is:<BR/> <BR/>1. There are folkloric reports of the "little people" existing as recently as when Europeans first reached the area in the 1500s, which would allow that the "little people" could have had contact with Austronesian.<BR/> <BR/>2. Actually, there is no process in language change that automatically replaces morphological complexity with syntactic complexity. Languages of Flores like Keo are undoubtedly complex in ways (as I have written about), but it would be quite impossible to say that they are anywhere near as grammatically complex as, say, Russian, syntactically, morphologically or otherwise.<BR/> <BR/>Complexity is a tricky concept when it comes to language, of course, and a language without affixes can be hugely complex regardless (like many languages of Southeast Asia). But all one has to do in this case is take a look at the dissertation devoted to Keo grammar and then look at maybe the first twenty pages of a Berlitz self-teacher of Russian. There's simply no comparison. All languages are complex, but all languages are not equally complex.<BR/> <BR/>In any case, what's weird is that Keo and some other languages are so devoid of affixation when that is so unusual in the whole Austronesian family; it suggests that there was some kind of unusual occurrence.Bjørn Østmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08859177313382114917noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989966954446423670.post-35915601911218552482009-04-02T08:53:00.000-07:002009-04-02T08:53:00.000-07:00But, if I'm not mistaken, H. floriensis died out t...But, if I'm not mistaken, H. floriensis died out tens of thousands of years ago. That's far too long for any contact-induced simplicity to remain. And analytic doesn't mean simple, anyways. It generally means that complexity in morphology is exchanged for complexity in syntax.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989966954446423670.post-76271711982613448072009-03-27T19:01:00.000-07:002009-03-27T19:01:00.000-07:00"Mind-blowing" is how I think of it."Mind-blowing" is how I think of it.Bjørn Østmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08859177313382114917noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4989966954446423670.post-42888742180376423682009-03-26T14:12:00.000-07:002009-03-26T14:12:00.000-07:00This is a fascinating idea!This is a fascinating idea!Monadohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12523329434641725631noreply@blogger.com