|
Humans may speak a universal language, say scientists
The discovery challenges the fundamental principles of linguistics, which state that languages grow up independently of each other, with no intrinsic meaning in the noises which form words. But research which looked into several thousand languages showed that for basic concepts, such as body parts, family relationships or aspects of the natural world, there are common sounds - as if concepts that are important to the human experience somehow trigger universal verbalisations. "These sound symbolic patterns show up again and again across the world, independent of the geographical dispersal of humans and independent of language lineage," said Dr Morten Christiansen, professor of psychology and director of Cornell's Cognitive Neuroscience Lab in the US where the study was carried out. "There does seem to be something about the human condition that leads to these patterns. We don't know what it is, but we know it's there." The study found, that in most languages, the word for ’nose’ is likely to include the sounds ’neh’ or the ’oo’ sound, as in ’ooze.’ Posted by: Besoeker 2016-09-13 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=467441 |