how did our language derive from nothing?

Cultural imperialism

Yes.. indeed.Ebonics is the same way. The cultural influence of the parents stays strong.On edit: the people who study it call it 'African American Vernacular English', not ebonics. Edited by ramoss, : added some extra info

There are alot of enormous gulfs that stand in between even the most intelligent creatures and humans. Language is certainly one of them. The unity of language provides a basis for how all languages are derived from one. This corrolary is evident by the similarity of roots words and grammatical structure. The similarity of the Indo-European family of languages, as well as Semitic, Hamitic and Sino-Asiatic all seem to have some root language at the base. Certain philologists seem to think that it was likely Sumerian and that other ancient languages including Hebrew, Akkadian, Egpytian and Sanskrit were offshoots of the original Sumerian language.Do I think that mans' language, both written and spoken, derived from a series of grunts, bellows, clicks and whistles? No, certainly not. The belief that it remains so is speculatitve, but it isn't based on empiricism; especially in lieu of language actually diminishing in sophistication. All that we know from the earliest manuscripts is that life seemed to explode already extant and complex in lower Mesopotamia some 5,000 years ago. History reveals this fact very well.

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“Always be ready to give a defense to
everyone who asks you a reason for the
hope that is in you.” -1st Peter 3:15

I think you might be overestimating the gulf between men and other intellegnet being. Dolphins have sounds sequences that are names.

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The similarity of the Indo-European family of languages, as well as Semitic, Hamitic and Sino-Asiatic all seem to have some root language at the base.

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It is true that it is believed that the Indo-European family has a root language at its base, as does the Afro-Asiatic family (which includes the Semitic and Hamitic languages), and the Sino-Tibetan family as well. There have been some proposals to group several of these, and other, language families together in a larger superfamily, but all of these proposals are extremely controversial among linguists and none are accepted by any large number.-

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Certain philologists seem to think that it was likely Sumerian and that other ancient languages including Hebrew, Akkadian, Egpytian and Sanskrit were offshoots of the original Sumerian language.

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This may be true, but the general consensus is that Sumerian is a language isolate, with no known affinities to any other known language.

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"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline

Yes. But how do they do it?

Because kidds learn to speak the local dialect fluently elsewhere in the world. Why wouldn't those kids do it? May be you were expecting them to learn official english "grammar" instead of the local dialect. It seems that this wouldn't be a fair expectation.

I suppose they have heard the nothern dialect often enough to learn it through Radio, TV, and other sources.

There is a trick to it. Let's consider a hypothetical case, to see how it works.Suppose that a group of professors invent a new language, with what they see as an especially desirable grammar. Then they form a community where they speak only that language. They do this to demonstrate the superiority of the grammar they have designed.Let's call this language NL1 (new language one).As time passes, the people of the community have children. And the children grow up hearing NL1 spoken. So naturally, NL1 is the language that these children try to acquire. And the do acquire it reasonably well, except that they flub the grammar.Let's call the children's language, with flubbed grammar, NL2.As these speakers of NL2 grow up, they eventually have children who grow up hearing some NL1 and a lot of NL2. They do their best, but flub the grammar.Let's call this grandchild language NL3. It is closer to NL2 than NL2 is to NL2.As the NL3 children grow up and have their own children, then in turn acquire a language. And it looks pretty close to NL3.So sure, the language continues to evolve (as all natural languages do). But after a couple of generations, it settles down to a language that children can easily acquire.

Ok. So the language goes through a process of acomodation because the original language was probabily too terse. How does that link to the absense of a specific (as oposed to general) mental capability being involved in the process?

I'm not claiming to be able to prove a negative. At present, I don't see that a hypothesized grammar organ explains anything, and I can find no evidence that there is such.

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If you ever visit the United States, make sure to visit the backwatered sections of states like Alabama, Tennessee, or Mississippi. There, you'd find 10 year olds that are still talking in baby language (or whatever language they use there). I'm not talking about just the difference in accent. I'm talking about extremely poor grammar and disjointed sentences.

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I find that hard to believe.

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I am interpreting what you said as finding what I said hard to believe.I, then, said

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I'd like to know what makes you think my assessment was not entirely accurate.

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You answered

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Because kidds learn to speak the local dialect fluently elsewhere in the world. Why wouldn't those kids do it? May be you were expecting them to learn official english "grammar" instead of the local dialect. It seems that this wouldn't be a fair expectation.

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You haven't answered my question at all. All I said was that these kids living in those areas speak in what appears to me to be broken English and disjointed sentences. You then said that you found it hard to believe that these kids were speaking the way I described it. Yet, now you are admitting that it was possible for these kids to have learned a different dialect. Then you went on to describe what you thought was my expectation. While what you said is true, I still don't see how that answered my question.So, let me ask again. Why do you think my assessment of how these kids in those areas talk was not entirely accurate?

rgb,Can you be a little more specific / detailed with what you're saying here? Statements like sound exactly the same as statements made by people who haven't taken the time to fully study and understand a language. Can you post something that can help the rest of us understand exactly what you're talking about? A technical paper, a reference, a transcript, movie, something?Thanks!

I think we can take studies of the nativization of Esperanto as backing up what you're describing here. For example, work by Ben Bergen:http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen/ In a sense, what was originally created was not a human language. It only approximated one.

Very interesting. Thanks for pointing me to that research.