Please do not hound on me terribly if this has already been stated before, or is not terribly "correct", but I have an idea about reconstructing the phonic and phonology of proto-languages.

When one talks in their sleep, they seem to babble an incoherent mumble. My idea is that these are remnants subconsciously stored of a primitive language. When we can pick out words in other languages, even if one or two, my thought is that we subconsciously use this primitive "sleep language" in their minds.

Another thing is that when we speak, we speak reasonably, the language we first picked up. But when this is in our subconscious, we can sometimes (in my theory) use this incoherent language in correlation to our reasonable speech.

My idea is that if we record sounds of people of various languages in the same family (i.e. English, German, Norwegian for Germanic languages), we can find similar phonology in this sleep talk. Moving further and further up the language tree, we can, so to speak, distill the phonetics until we have a common set of phonetics, therefore seeing what some of the proto-language of any group or family sounded like.

Well, guys, what do you think?

subconscious logic of a conscious is not the same as a conscious without strong logic ..

What makes you think that people mumbling in their sleep are mumbling a language other than their own?

Where would we have heard this language before to be able to subconsciously use it while we are sleeping?

Where would we have heard this language before to be able to subconsciously use it while we are sleeping?

He's talking about something like genetic memory.

no, in fact it has more to do with emergence. all premises for a reaction define results with different probabilities. any language in the world has for example a high probability to have simple sounds like a and o. so the question is if you can trackback from the spreading of sounds in all languages together to the first language or to the dependencies between brain and anatomy ..

If we mumble in P.I.E in our sleep then what did the proto-indo europeans mumble in? Did they mumble in their daily spoken language? Do our mumbles resemble the mumbles of apes?

Proto languages are reconstructed via comparative linguistics and internal reconstruction. For example, you observe how some words are similar in spanish portuguese and french with only a slight sound difference(cognates), and notice this same sound difference in dozens of other words, and use that comparison to reconstruct a proto word. In internal reconstruction you compare things within the same language like suffixes and prefixes, and make an educated guess about what came before that.

no, in fact it has more to do with emergence. all premises for a reaction define results with different probabilities. any language in the world has for example a high probability to have simple sounds like a and o. so the question is if you can trackback from the spreading of sounds in all languages together to the first language or to the dependencies between brain and anatomy ..

That makes more sense. I guess that's what the OP was trying to describe. I personally don't believe in any " first" language. Also, wouldn't we be able to correlate some of our sounds with those of our closest primate relatives?

no, in fact it has more to do with emergence. all premises for a reaction define results with different probabilities. any language in the world has for example a high probability to have simple sounds like a and o. so the question is if you can trackback from the spreading of sounds in all languages together to the first language or to the dependencies between brain and anatomy ..

Zay, can you translate this?

Zay, can you translate this?

Ultimately, they're likening language to a tree. Ie reasoning that everything can be traced back to a trunk, our modern languages being branches.

I personally believe that our first languages sprang up as people pointed at shit and standardized their gibberish. Obviously I'm oversimplifying it, and not even covering things like the needs of groups of hunters to be able to communicate and abstractly express strategies and plans, or alternate theories like complex language developing as all guys were strong enough and healthy enough to mate and women started gaining attraction to whatever man was the most "artistic" with language(kind of like how the male bird that sings best attracts the she-birds).

My point is that our brains have been the same size for tens of thousands of years, and that there is no " root" language, but what the OP is theorizing is the possibility that there is a root, and that it can be traced back by studying mumbles across various languages.

Come on, I know you like to pick on his english but this is very clear:
"any language in the world has for example a high probability to have simple sounds like a and o. so the question is if you can trackback from the spreading of sounds in all languages together to the first language or to the dependencies between brain and anatomy .."

The last point is the most interesting though.

Zay, can you translate this?

there´s a difference between instinct and given possibilities. a human baby has no instinct to know how to walk from the start. but eventually it will learn how to get faster to an interesting object by using it´s legs. and if there is competition with other babys it will even learn how to run.
now think about language. there is no instinct, except to cry when in danger or pain. we have a given range of sounds we can make by our anatomy. to our ears different people have huge differences in their voice. to be true, compared to the whole frequency range they are very small. they are all the same due to the anatomy. think of 30 glasses filled with 10% water. the glasses are like the anatomy, the water is the variety of the voice. due to gravity the level and the shape of the water will always be the same in all the glasses (premise). now being tought how to use your voice is like increasing the level of the water. voice change, singing etc increases it even more. talking while you sleep, or somniloquy, is a dysfunction. this means a full glass of water is shaken randomly.

finding a possible version of the proto language means breeding kids with no language support in several different camps, and the average might be it ..

That could be true. The point is is that speech mumbling in sleep usually comes about at the same time as speech in one's dream. I'm not saying that we all speak P.I.E. in our sleep. But it could be a start, subconscious memory. Ah, I've only been made an idiot out of, so I'm not even sure why I'm posting on this anymore.

Ah, I've only been made an idiot out of

the concept of emergence is describing huge complex systems any human mind is not capable of. you don´t make an idiot of yourself by speaking out a theory, you´re only an idiot if you stay with it when proven wrong ..