Archaic Actual Humans or Apes in Human Shapes?

Theological Consequences · Jimmy Akin on Patristic and Scientific Expertise. · Child Adam? · Archaic Actual Humans or Apes in Human Shapes? · What If Adam Became a Man - When he Became a Man? · Tolkien's Elves Are Not the Key to Cain's Wife or Adam's Growth

It seems some could consider this as about the scenario "Adam got his manhood when fullgrown" rather than, as mainly, about Adam growing up as a human child among anatomically strictly similar non-humans, only a paragraph deals with "when fullgrown" which is complemented by next part, What If Adam Became a Man - When he Became a Man?. This may not be what someone combining Evolution and Christianity actually at this moment believes, it is still not a strawman, this option should also be refuted for completeness. The impossibility of non-humans having an adequate preparation for human language is also dealt with. It had also been dealt with in the links given in the beginning of Theological Consequences, namely An Ambiguous Term, "Language Development" · Is Gradualism Really That Impossible? · Was Jean Aitchison Calling Bird-Song Doubly Articulated?/HGL

I Have Seen Things on Quora that Would Look Like Objections (Though Not Adressed to Me as Such) on the previous discussion

Take a look at this question on quora:

Given a linguistic clean slate, no learned language in generation 1, how many generations would it take for a "language" to develop?
https://www.quora.com/Given-a-linguistic-clean-slate-no-learned-language-in-generation-1-how-many-generations-would-it-take-for-a-language-to-develop

I'll first give my comments on two other answers.

P N from Kapodistrian University of Athens first of all answered that such a total clean slate never ever existed historically:

What I mean is that not only EVERY person in the recorded history had a first language (so we would never be able to find a non gen 1 language situation in our recorded history) but also Languages are theorised that there is a correlation between brain size and language acquisition….Language acquisition is after all a geneticall predestined action for humans happening naturally once there are sufficient language stimuli for the infant in a specific critical period which spawns 3–5 years….That to put it simply means that every person can and will acquire a language if he/she /they hear it as an infant because he/she/it is predestined to do so…

He actually mentions feral children himself, but I missed it:

All that means that there might never be homo sapiens sapiens with no language unless we cout extreme cases of kids surviving all alone in the wilderness like the historic kid of Avignon….

Which I then mentioned in my comment too, not seeing he had already done it:

Hans-Georg Lundahl

“What I mean is that not only EVERY person in the recorded history had a first language”

Not feral children.

Dina Sanichar, discovered among wolves in a cave in Sikandra (near Agra) in Uttar Pradesh, India in 1872, at the age of 6. He went on to live among humans for over twenty years, including picking up smoking, but never learned to speak and remained seriously impaired for his entire life.

Feral child - Wikipedia

Note, Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja had already learned Spanish before being raised from 12 to 19 by wolves, after running away from abuse. So, he was not feral while the language acquisition slot was his age.

P N

Did you really missed the ‘’.All that means that there might never be homo sapiens sapiens with no language unless we cout extreme cases of kids surviving all alone in the wilderness like the historic kid of Avignon’’ part of my comment,or are you just a contrarian ?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

I actually genuinely missed it, since I was tired and didn’t read next line.

Now, you speak of creoles, but they definitely don’t come about in a total lack of linguistic input, they are theorised to come about when pidgins are the most consistent input for new generation - and this theory of Chomsky has been contested in a book by John McWhorter called “The Missing Spanish Creoles” - according to him, castle slaves in Africa actually did teach slaves different European languages, but limited to vocabulary, using a West African and Isolating grammar, as in their (and the slaves’) own languages. Even if McWhorter were wrong, we would have children completing an incomplete grammar, not initiating a language learning with no input at all. I think McWhorter could well be right though.

P N

Well.This is exactly what I am writing here let me say it as simple as possible since you are tired…‘’NO -IMPUT LANGUAGES ARE IMPOSSIBLE BUT CREOLES ARE CONSTRUCTED WHEN PIDGINS BECOME THE L1 OF A NEW GENERATION THEREFORE CREOLES ARE SCREATED WITHIN A GENERATION BECAUSE PIDGIN ARE ISSUFICIENT AS L1. I am glad that you agree with me.Since you are tired would you like me to stop responding to our other threads here on quora for now?

P N

Thanks for the upvote I saw it just now.I wish you have a nice day !

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Same to you!

E. Allwell brought up the Nicaraguan Sign Language.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Sorry, but the children developed this common sign language as a second language, after already being familiar with …

Home sign - Wikipedia

… and Spanish fingerspelling.

None of them was at a linguistic clean slate.

E. Allwell

Ok, maybe, but I don’t think most of them had enough home sign and fingerspelling for it to constitute a full language, and they did not have a language in common. I think this is as close as you’re going to get to children who are of normal intelligence and not suffering severe abuse to see what they do by way of a language.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Indeed, they had no language in common, but they would have had enough home sign to have a human language, and not be comparable to feral children.

E. Allwell

Yes. But there are no “feral children” who have not also suffered serious trauma.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Well, but the trauma comes precisely in the form of being deprived of language input (and some other human input as well). There need be no physical trauma beyond that, though there could in some cases be prior mental trauma (as with Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja).

And my own answer is here:

Given a linguistic clean slate, no learned language in generation 1, how many generations would it take for a "language" to develop?
https://www.quora.com/Given-a-linguistic-clean-slate-no-learned-language-in-generation-1-how-many-generations-would-it-take-for-a-language-to-develop/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

amateur linguist

Answered 33m ago

There is no probability for it developing at all, if there was no God to give the language.

I have seen Nicaraguan Sign Language cited, but it was from its beginning a second language for children that were already familiar with Home sign and with Spanish finger spelling.

Home sign - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_sign

That it later on became a first learned deaf language for some later deaf children means they are not generation one - and they were definitely not on a linguistic clean slate.

In order to have a language capacity, one needs to be a man. In order to have it stimulated, one needs to be before age 24 months among people who are men, since to have a language, they need to have language capacity. And it is constructed in such a way that the image of God is clearly involved. You see, the human language is given as three interacting levels (another fine image of the Trinity, like past, present and future or like three dimensions of space), these being a sentence that is composed of morphemes and these are then composed by phonemes. And the morphemes always involve lexica with words of meaning for curiosity, not just for immediate action or sentiment. A man can say "the grass is green" and will understand the statement as giving information, not just practical instructions. A beast can't. That is why beasts also don't have three level languages.

If "Adam's parents" were men, Adam wasn't the first man, but he would have escaped the problem.

Theology doesn't, since stating Adam was not the first man is a no no, Pius XII in 1941 (mislaid reference, sorry!) said (to Pontific Academy of Sciences, I presume) that if Adam had biological (and evolutionary) ancestry, this could in no way be real parents.

If "Adam's parents" were not men, Adam would have been not raised to say "the grass is green". He would have been a feral child. He would have been far worse off than children (theorised by Chomsky) growing up with mainly a Pidgin input and children (known by Nicaraguan case) having learned Home Sign, which would both be incomplete, but human, languages.

So, both Adam and theology would have this problem, which Adam cannot have merited before sinning, and it cannot have been even a "material cruelty" to a non-human, since Adam would "already from birth" have been a human.

If instead you posit Adam actually changed his created kind (meaning God changed it for him) when already an adult, it would have been cruel for him to have had a past as beast (and it would not make sense imagining he was unfamiliar with shame prior to sin, he would have had sth far heavier than nakedness to be ashamed for).

And if he was both "born human" and doubly raised, potentially ferally by physic ancestry and at the same time thanks to God giving him linguistic input in the end non-ferally, he would have been aware of a superiority over his own progenitors and therefore have had an incentive to pride prior to sinning.

So, in no way can theology admit that Adam is a product of Evolution : what we know about language excludes it.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Cyril of Jerusalem
18.III.2022

PS. On the same occasion, I also saw people bring up the case of "language evolution" in a completely other sense, namely Germanic and Italic (with Latin and Romance) and Celtic (not forgetting yesterday's feast) and Greek (not forgetting P N's nationality) "evolving" from Proto-Indo-European in a way similar to French and Italian and Spanish and Romanian "evolved" from Latin. I have my own other stake in preferring Trubetskoy, but it is a totally different issue. More like - Iavan would have spoken something vaguely like Greek and Gomer something vaguely like Celtic and Anatolic right after Babel, and all three of these are Indo-European, hence I prefer the idea of these influencing each other, in a Sprachbund way. Also, a question of how Magog identifies, I don't like the idea of Magog in Apocalypse 20 verse 7 being Indo-Europeans, all of us. It may be different for pre-Millennialists who see this at least 1000 years into the future, I believe we are at the end of the "1000" years (and some more) since Crucifixion, Harrowing of Hell and Resurrection of Our Lord. But for this issue, and for inherent possibility, Latin and Germanic are not at all impossible to evolve from a Proto-Indo-European language, even if the date "4000 BC" would go out, it's just that I prefer a Sprachbund view of Indo-European commonalities for these reasons./HGL