Natural Science Forum / Biology / Paleontology / July 2004

Family words came first for early humans
Anna Gosline

19:00 21 July 04

One of a Neanderthal baby's first words was probably "papa", concludes one
of the most comprehensive attempts to date to make out what the first human
language was like.

Many of the estimated 6000 languages now spoken share common words and
meanings, notably for kin names like "mama" and "papa". That has led some
linguists to suggest that these words have been carried through from humans'
original proto-language, spoken at least 50,000 years ago.

But without information on exactly how often these words occur across
distantly related languages, there has been little evidence to support that
claim.

What is more, some words of similar sound and meaning, such as the English
"day" and the Spanish "dia", are known to have arisen independently.

Now Pierre Bancel and Alain Matthey de l'Etang from the Association for the
Study of Linguistics and Prehistoric Anthropology in Paris have found that
the word "papa" is present in almost 700 of the 1000 languages for which
they have complete data on words for close family members.

Common ancestry

Those languages come from all the 14 or so major language families. And the
meaning of "papa" is remarkably consistent: in 71 per cent of cases it means
father or a male relative on the father's side.

"There is only one explanation for the consistent meaning of the word
'papa': a common ancestry," Bancel says. He presented the findings at the
Origins of Language and Psychosis conference in Oxford, UK, in July 2004.

But debate over whether modern languages carry the remnants of the language
spoken at the dawn of humanity is likely to continue. Don Ringe, a linguist
at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, says that babies may
simply associate the first sound they can make with the first people they
see - their parents. That, too, would lead to words like "papa" acquiring
similar meaning in many languages.

Even Bancel admits that there will never be conclusive proof. "We have no
Neanderthals around to ask."

From NewScientist
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996188

Comment:
I don't know why they mention Neanderthals, considering they were not in our
lineage.

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek