Hallo conlangers!

On Friday 11 January 2013 18:10:53 David McCann wrote:

> [...]
> 
> Neanderthals were certainly less versatile and more inclined to make do.
> If you compare their tool-kit with that of their sapiens
> contemporaries, it's much smaller. If they needed to make a hole in a
> piece of leather, the Neanderthal took the tool with the sharpest
> point, the Cro-Magnon took the tool he'd made for making holes in
> leather.

This is more or less correct, I think.  Neanderthal tools were less
specialized than those of Homo sapiens, it seems.

>       Cro-Magnons were also cleaner: they buried refuse away from
> the camp, instead of leaving it lying around to attract vermin.

I think this is no longer state of the art.  AFAIK, Neanderthals
*did* dispose of their wastes; they even buried their dead or at
least disposed of them.  In this regard, they were like us.  On
the other hand, many non-human sedentary animals also do these
things, not just humans.

>       As for
> art, there is evidence of engraved bone and of jewelry produced by late
> Neanderthals, but the quality is poor and it only appears after contact
> with H. sap. sap. They liked it when they saw it, but they'd not
> thought of it for themselves.

Yep.  Neanderthal art and jewelry begins only after contact with
Homo sapiens and is always a crude imitation of the latter's
artifacts.
 
On Friday 11 January 2013 18:41:55 R A Brown wrote:

> On 11/01/2013 16:31, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> > Hallo conlangers!
> 
> > On Friday 11 January 2013 14:40:46 R A Brown wrote:
> [snip]
> 
> >> Certainly having lexemes without syntax is not human
> >> language.
> > 
> > Certainly not!  This is what I call a "linear" language:
> > a communication system where lexemes are just uttered
> > in a random order to express an idea.
> 
> But if the order is truly random, how is the hearer to know
> how the lexemes relate to one another?  Surely ambiguity
> would make all but the very basic utterances impossible.

Indeed, only very simple utterances are possible in such a
linear language.  Even simple transitive sentences such as
"the hunter killed the lion" are beyond the capabilities of
such a "language": without context, you cannot tell who
killed whom!  Only when you see whether what your fellows
drag home is the body of a lion or of a hunter, you know ;) 

> Can one indeed have _language_ without syntax?

It is of course not true language, only a very limited system
of communication.  I was using the word _language_ in the same
metaphorical sense as in _programming language_ ;)

> [snip]
> 
> >> There was a time in my past life when I held that H.N.
> >> did not have language (indeed, I think I stated this
> >> in my M.Litt. thesis of 1982.  But this was based on
> >> incorrect information about Neanderthal anatomy and
> >> very faulty (i.e. almost non-existent) understanding of
> >> Neanderthal society.  As I've come to know more about
> >> N.H. I've radically changed my opinion, and ...
> > 
> > He apparently at least was capable of producing a
> > similar range of speech sounds as we are; whether his
> > syntactical abilities were up to ours is anyone's guess.
> 
> It seems Neanderthals had the vocal equipment for producing
> much the same range of sounds that we modern humans can.

They did.

> Their brains were certainly large enough also.

Large enough, certainly; but that does not exclude the possibility
that Neanderthals were much more hidebound than we are.  Indeed,
the material remains seem to indicate this.
 
> There's an interesting article here:
> http://ebbolles.typepad.com/babels_dawn/2008/03/neanderthals--1.html

Interesting indeed.  Perhaps the seeming evidence of Neanderthals
being less imaginative than H. sapiens is misinterpreted.  At any
rate, Neanderthals were NOT stereotypical cavemen!

--
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