Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | I really don't see how you would need more than a baseline utilitarian means of communication in the Paleolithic. |
Agreed.
What if we go back further, before the Paleolithic. Starting on Day One of the Human Speakers? Every word is a neologism. Every metaphor is new. Every analogy requires the hearer to share the analogized common experience. Utility was the thing they had to build from scratch.
| Like now you mean? Writing is considered more advanced than speaking. |
Agreed that writing loses intonation, compared to speaking. It is "more advanced" because it has a higher degree of difficulty. You have to convey your meaning to anonymous people, who are not present.
But when speaking, you usually know who you're talking to, they can ask questions if they don't understand, and you can be certain you got your point across because the other person's gestures, intonations, and words can tell you so.
When someone tries to add intonation into their writing, they use adverbs or typesetting choices. Both are considered unliterary, a sign of your failure to do it right.
| If the whole world is at it and they've got an eternity of time to do it, you might expect something a wee bit better to emerge. |
In the Paleolithic, using the voice allows up close communication and fairly distant communication (100 yards?). Sign language loses because it has to be closer than that, and a line of sight must be maintained.
| Which raises the next question, why didn't we keep it alongside? |
Because a better system was always available (in the case that the vocal cords pre-dated the emergence of human language). Or if speaking had to overtake the proto-sign-language, then the new spoken word system solved all of the problems of sign language (proximity, line of sight, intonation).
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