How did language begin? What was it like long ago?
Did we come up with meaningful utterances first and then break them down, or did we build language from the words up? Did other pre-humans have language?
Researchers are working on exactly these questions, and one of them is Dr Mark Ellison, who joins Daniel and Ben on this episode of Talk the Talk.
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Show notes
People stayed on the Bering Strait for about 15,000 years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/science/linguistic-study-sheds-new-light-on-peopling-of-north-america.html?hpw&rref=science&_r=2
Some went on to the Americas, becoming the Na-Dene language group. Others went back to Siberia, becoming the Yenesian group.
http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/anthropology/science-back-migration-native-americans-01804.html
Linguistics helped to trace this human migration.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-to-retrace-early-human-migrations-50762656/?no-ist
Here’s the paper in PLOS One.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0091722
Mark Ellison’s paper from the conference (PPTX file)
http://comlab.me/ComLab/Presentations.html
Did Neanderthals have language? Link to Dan Dediu’s work
http://www.mpg.de/7448453/Neandertals-language
An Australian reference to the ‘sick tax’, earlier this year
http://www.unitedvoice.org.au/news/nothing-healthy-about-sick-tax
Here’s the chart from Google Trends.
https://www.google.com.au/trends/explore#q=sick%20tax
Google Ngram chart:
