Do truly primitive languages exist?

Over in this thread debating the “humanity” of chimpanzees, I made the following statement:
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Correct on the lack of writing ability, which no culture has had (as far as we know) more than ~5000 years. But verbal ability is another matter. As far as I know there’s no known example of a technologically primitive tribe that speaks an accordingly “primitive” language, say one that would be equivalent to that of an 18-month old toddler in an more ‘advanced’ society. In other words, barring mental deficiency or other extroardinary circumstances, no human adult says the equivalent of “Og smash rock”. Instead, everyone says what in his/her language would mean, “Og smashed the rock.” If the given language doesn’t provide for tense and pronoun conjunctions, this meaning is provided through some other construction.
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But it occurred to me that I might be wrong, and that primitive languages might actually exist. I don’t mean primitive in the sense of not having words for “cell phone” or “frequent flyer miles” because the culture involved hasn’t been exposed to those things, but primitive in the sense of not being able to express the nuances of emotion and reason that we can in, say, English or German.

I’ve read extensively in this field, and from everything I’ve read you are quite right: there is no known example of a primitive language of the kind you describe.

From the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language:

On the contrary, your statement in the chimpanzee thread is right on the money. No human languages exist which cannot express the nuances of emotion and reason that are expressed in languages like English, Japanese, and Arabic.

Here’s one source for further reading on this very broad topic.

Although you didn’t ask this, the answer you got begs the question, what does this mean?

It means quite simply, that language ability is an inborn property of the human species, not a learned skill that will develop along different lines depending upon the impact of the enviornment.

I read about these ideas in Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct.

Is there any way to interpret the univerality of language ability among humans?

I remember reading somewhere about a language that had words for “one,” “two,” “three,” and “many” - with “many” meaning any amount greater than three.

Any truth to this?

Uh?

Heh, I was reading this myself. Thankfully it was in Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett and the language in question was Trollish. Pratchett was making the joke that many can be a number itself, as in one, two, three, many, many-one, many-two, many-three, many many, many many one, many many two, many many three, LOTS…

[Pedant]You’re using ‘begging the question’ wrong.[/Pedant] :wink:

Also I don’t think the lack of primitive languages show that language ability is an inborn property.
There are no ‘young’ languages in the world today. And by young I mean something that has only been around for a short time linguistically (neatly avoiding the fact that I have no idea what consititutes a long time linguistically) among people with no outside influences. So what it shows is human language develops to include all that interests us, and emotion obviously does.

Grammatic devices definitely do vary from language to language. In Japanese, for example, there’s no concept of gender. In Russian, on the other hand, even adjectives have gender forms. So, when you’re saying in Russian “look, there’s a cute [one] over there”, you implicitly make it clear if the cute one is a gal or a guy.

What I’m saying here, even if a language lacks a certain handy construct you’re used to, it does not necessarily render it “primitive”. First off, what grammar alone cannot express, extra words usually can. In the above example, while translating into English, you can amend the sentence to something like “look, there’s a cute boy over there”, and bingo, you’ve conveyed exactly the same meaning. Secondly, a different language might have its own set of handy devices, the kind that yours lacks…

I was going to suggest sign languageis young, but with a little
research, I found out that it’s been around for about 300 years.
Does that qualify as a “young” language?

Actually there is a young language. There was a group of deaf children from Central America (IIRC it was NIcaragua, but that is not important) who had been raised in various speaking communiites and had not been taught sign language. They all had a few “primitive” signs they had used with their parents for basic necessities, but since they were not raised together, these signs were all different. When they were put together in a schooling situation, in a relatively short time they had “created” a new sign language by interacting with each other. I don’t recall the tetails, but several linguists at least have testified that the new language was “fully nuanced”. This might even have been in Pinker’s book.

Also, you could consider “Creole”, the language spoken in much of the Carribean, to be a newly created language.

I don’t have a cite for this, but I’ve seen it reported in several contexts.

Whether there is a “language instint” or not is somewhat debated, but I think the majority of linguists would say yes. Is there any other way to explain how quickly children learn languages? Try to learn Russian as fast as a Russian kid does and see how your accent stacks up after 4 years.

Creoles are the “2nd generation” of pidgin languages; in other words, that language spoken by the children of those who use the pidgin language. Since the pidgin language itself is a contact language, it is derived from already existing languages. One can classify the pidgin (and thus the creole also) as “a mixed language.” So, although the language itself is young, it still is descended from other languages. That’s not surprising; after all, today’s English itself is descended from another form of English which in turn is descended from yet another form which itself is descended…etc.

Basically, spoken natural languages (to include the various creoles and pidgins) can be traced back quite far in time.

Oh, taking just one particular of the language to determine if it’s primitive isn’t too valid. So what if the language doesn’t have words for large numbers? There are languages without the copula verb, which is indispensable in English. Those languages are fully capable of expressing complex concepts.

Regarding the nascent Sign Language in Nicaragua: that’s the one which spontaneously developed (just like any other contact language) at Escuelita de Bluefields.

Monty:

Note that I said “could consider”. Pidgins can lack some of the nuances that “normal” languages have (as they are not the main language of the group speaking it). It’s the children growing up speaking a Pidgin and turning into a creole that fleshes out the nuances. Pidgins come about to allow communication in a limmited social context (eg, the local market), and creoles then allow that “language” to be used in all social situations.

However, it’s important to note that the original speakers of the Pidgin almost always have a fully nuanced language that they use when in their own family/tribe or whatever. So these people are not deprived of a fully nuanced language, but their kids would be if they didn’t improve on the Pidgin.

I’m not disagreeing, John, and I don’t see where what I posted and you just said are that different.

An added note though: Is it possible for the 2nd generation to not improve on the pidgin?

OK.

If it is not possible (and I think it isn’t) that would be a slam dunk for a lnaguage instict.

Too many negatives in those sentences to avoid confusion. To rephrase, I’d be supremely surprised if it were possible for the 2nd generation to not improve on Pidgin. Just look at how kids always improve on the slang of their elders.