Linguistics and Protolanguage

even more so than most scientists even believe, interspecies similarities between
             sapiens and the lower forms of the hominoid class. Ape communication, although nothing
             compared to the language that of the erectus or early neanderthals, shows a phylogenic glimpse
             of the origins of language. Although many linguistics and scientists argue that learned language of
             apes does not make use of grammatical items, those Bickerton refers to as holding equal values to
             lexical items, this could only represent (how ironic) the lack of any research teams expending
             energy on teaching the apes those grammatical items; "The absence of grammatical items from
             ape 'language' may reflect nothing more than a failure to teach such items" (Ibid 108). True,
             however, that apes' inability to perform syntactic communication disproves the theory of their
             possessing language; "The longest utterance recorded from an ape ( a sixteen-sign string by
             Herbert Terrace's chimp Nim) has no discernible structure at all: give orange me give eat orange
             me eat orange gave me eat orange give me you" (Ibid 109). Thus, we can conclude from this
             ample amount of evidence: apes, although representative in the phylogeny class of
             communication, do not have language. Genie, a child who had been excluded from language and
             society beyond the maximum language "box filler"–the maximum amount of time necessary to fill
             the language void–had tremendous difficulties completely learning language; therefore, it can be
             concluded, that language is sometimes a learned phenomenon disinnate in some grammatical
             categories. The second means of grasping protolanguage comes from the interpretation of ESL
             language, sometimes similar to that of children, which exemplifies itself in the creation and
             dissendence of Creole languages. Some Creole languages, such as that of Hawian speakers,
             ramancifcates the...

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