Linguistically…the phonetic phrases in the Bayanov essay sound a lot like proto-Arkanasawyer to me…..LOL

ole bub

Let the non-scientists do the heavy lifting and leg work…the experts can take the credit….it ain’t about the glory…JMHO

If Loren and others with credentials and experience… respect the Russians and their preliminary research…why shouldn’t we…IMHO

seeing is believing…

ole bub, Sheba and the new rescue dawg with no name

Might be a good idea to find some one fluent in the language of the realm….most “country folks” are put off by “city folk”….

Beats the hell outta chasing a shadow blobsquatch….three weeks after the fact…JMHO

There are plenty of folks here and on the Yahoo board….competent to participate….in a fact finding visit….assuming Ms. Coy would invite a small group….if she genuinely wants to preserve and protect her “tenants” she might be open to a logical proposal.

Those who know….want to protect….those who believe…want to know….IMHO

buena suerte…

ole bub, Sheba dawg, and a new rescue dawg with no name…yet

My own biggest problem by far with Janice Carter Coy’s story of the Carter farm Bigfoot family is the claim of language for hominids that seem to anatomically resemble _Gigantopithecus blacki_ or _Paranthropus boisei_, more than any known type of genus _Homo_, modern or prehistoric. I would have a bit less of a problem associating language with hominids resembling palaeoanthropological reconstructions of _Homo erectus_, _Homo heidelbergensis_, _Homo neandetalensis_, or _Homo floresiensis_, i.e., with a human-habituated band of _kaptar_, _almas_, _orang pendek_, _ebu gogo_, or _nuk-nuk_, representatives of Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe’s “Erectus Hominid,” “Proto-Pygmy,” and “Neandertaloid” types in _The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates_ (Anomalist Books, 2006). But with a relict _Gigantopithecus_ or _Paranthropus_ clan, from Coleman and Huyghe’s “Neo-Giant” category? As I wrote earlier, language use of some sort has indeed been traditionally ascribed in local folklore to Sri Lanka’s _nittaewo_ and Flores Island’s _ebu gogo_, both “Proto-Pygmies” in Coleman and Huyghe’s classification.

However, be all that as it may, the likelihood is that if any “Manimals” or “Hairy Hominids” use language, it would probably be some sort of “Proto-Language,” as contrasted with fully developed language. “Proto-Language,” as used by linguists, anthropologists, and palaeontologists speculating about the origins and very early history of human language, designates a presumed primitive and rudimentary form of language, intermediate between animal grunts and cries on the one hand and fully developed human languages like Latin, Greek, English, Russian, Finnish, Estonian, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Swahili, Yoruba, Malay, Hawaiian, Inuit (Eskimo), Navaho, Cherokee, and Lakota on the other. “Proto-Languages” in this sense consisted of a few dozen or couple of hundred basic words loosely strung together with no connectives (prepositions, conjunctions, articles, etc.) and next to no grammar or syntax. They would have closely resembled the “me Tarzan, you Jane,” “me Ugg, me big hunter, me hit you head, you die,” “meat bad, me stomach hurt” type language stereotypically attributed to “cave-men” in science-fiction and exotic-adventure literature and movies. No normal human languages in our time have this rudimentary character–not even languages of so-called “stone age” groups like the Australian Aborigines, Southern African Khoi-San “Bushmen,” or Andaman Island Negritos. Native Australian languages, indeed, are noted for their great grammatical complexity. Native American languages, too, almost invariably show extreme grammatical complexity. However, “pidgins” used in sporadic contact situations typically have a “Proto-Language” type structure. A good description of “Proto-Language,”and its differences from fully developed language, is given by University of Hawaii linguist Derek Bickerton in _Language and Species_ (University of Chicago Press, 1990).

Anyway, it is widely believed by linguists, anthropologists, and palaontologists that pre-sapiens species of genus _Homo_, like _H. erectus_, _H. heidelbergensis_, and _H. neandertalensis_, most likely used some form of “Proto-Language” in this sense. Fully developed language is generally believed to have first been created by our own species _Homo sapiens_, evolving in East Africa between 100,000 and 150,000 years ago out of _H. erectus_ or _H. heidelbergensis_ precursors. _Homo sapiens_ then introduced fully developed language into the rest of the world in its “Out of Africa” migrations starting about 60,000 or 70,000 years ago. The use of fully developed language is believed to have been the main competitive advantage of _Homo sapiens_ versus other hominid species in southern Africa and in Asia, Europe, Oceania, Australia–and maybe also the Americas. The greater scope for social cooperation, cultural advance, and technological innovation conferred by fully developed language helped _Homo sapiens_ to displace and virtually eliminate hominids restricted to using “Proto-Language,”reducing them to small relict groups of Bigfoot, Yeti, _kaptar_, _almas_, _orang pendek_, _ebu gogo_, and the like hiding out in remote corners of a _H. sapiens_ dominated planet.

Linguists and palaeoanthropologists have also become increasingly sympathic in recent decades to the view that all known modern and historically recorded languages are decended from a single “Proto-World,” “Proto-sapiens,” or “Mother Tongue” spoken by the first “Out of Africa” _Homo sapiens_ migrants 60,000 or 70,000 years ago. “Proto-World” is considered the common ancestor alike of Native American, Australian Aboriginal, Andamanese Negrito, and Khoi-San “Bushman” languages, as well as of languages like English, Russian, Arabic, Swahili, Yoruba, Chinese, and Japanese. As _Homo sapiens_ had almost certainly already developed a fully developed “modern” language by the time they started leaving East Africa to overrun the rest of the world 60,000 or 70,000 years ago, naturally, all the subsequent descendants of “Proto-World” would be fully developed languages in the modern sense–including the languages of “stone age” groups like the Australian Aboriginese, Andamanese Negritos, and Khoi-San “Bushmen.” Their vocabularies, too, would reflect many still recognizable “Proto-World” words. Representative “Mother Tongue” words still recognizable in modern languages all over our planet include _KU_ or _KUN_ “who?,” _MI_ or _MIN_ “what?,”_AQWA_ “water,” _KUNA_ or _KWENA_ “woman, wife” _KUAN_ or _KWINYA_ “dog, wolf,”_MENA_ “think, feel, like, love, practice magic,” _MANA_ “stay, remain,” _KWEN_ or _GWEL_ “neck, throat, swallow,” _PUR_ “fly, feather, wing,”_TIK_ “hand, finger, pointing, one, five, ten,” and _PEL_ or _PEN_ “two, pair, couple, half, side.” A good recent overview of the “Proto-World” or “Mother Tongue” hypothesis was given by Stanford University linguist Merritt Ruhlen in his two 1994 books, the semi-popular _The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue_ (New York: John Wiley and Sons) and his similarly titled but much more technical _On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy_ (Stanford University Press). However, a couple of still interesting early works in the same vein include Alfredo Trombetti’s _L’Unità d’origine del linguaggio_ (Bologna, 1905) and Morris Swadesh’s The Origin and Diversification of Language (Chicago & New York, 1971).

However, all of these “Mother Tongue” words just cited were originally the local regional words of a small population in what is now Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania 60,000 or 70,000 years ago. It would thus be not at all surprising if relict hominid groups using “Proto-Languages” as described by Derek Bickerton had words for basic concepts quite different from those of “Proto-World.” If Jane Carter Coy’s Bigfoot vocabulary bore no discernible similarity to the “Mother Tongue” reconstructed by linguists like Alfredo Trombetti, Morris Swadesh, Vitaly Shevoroshkin, Joseph Greenberg, and Merritt Ruhlen, that would not itself invalidate her list! If Bigfoot indeed spoke a “Proto-Language” as defined by Bickerton, it could well have been locally well-established in North America a couple of hundred thousand years before the comparatively Johnny-come-lately “Out of Africa” emergence of the _Homo sapiens_ “Mother Tongue” a “mere” 60,000 or 70,000 years ago!

This, of course, this still leaves the possibility of ancient _Homo sapiens_/”Manimal” linguistic contacts in the Americas in the last few thousand years. Early Native Americans might have borrowed some Bigfoot words from their big, hairy neighbors–and ancient Bigfoot may have similarly borrowed some Native American words and phrases. The same may well have taken place in other parts of the world as well. Thus, the Crô-Magnons may well have borrowed some Neandertal “Proto-Language” words and phrases 35,000 years ago and incorporated them into the earliest _Homo sapiens_ languages of Western Europe. It is possible that some modern Basque, French, German, English, Welsh, or Gaelic words for “ghost,” “witch,” or “ogre” may ultimately reflect Neandertal words for “mammoth,” “cave bear,” “woolly rhinoceros,” or “shaman’! Similarly, many modern East and Southeast Asian languages may still preserve words ultimately of “Peking Man” or “Java Man” origin. Might, say, a Vietnamese , Thai, or Indonesian word for “dragon” ultimately reflect a “Java Man” word for “crocodile” or “giant monitor lizard”? Likewise Southern Africa’s Khoi-San “Bushman” and “Hottentot” languages may still preserve words borrowed from the somewhat Neandertal-like _Homo rhodesiensis_. Could even the celebrated Khoi-San “click” sounds themselves be a _Homo rhodesiensis_ borrowing?

Plus, of course, there also still remains the possibility that, even if Janice Carter Coy is “on the level,” her friendly neighborhood Bigfoot family might actually have spoken a “pidginized” form of a Native American language! Maybe the Bigfoot weren’t quite “smart enough” to invent a language all on their own–but, they might still have been “smart enough” to notice the advantage conferred by language on the Indians, and to have picked up simplified versions of one or several Indian languages for their own use!This may well have initially taken place on the West Coast, Rockies, and western Great Plains, and spread by “cultural diffusion” to Bigfoot bands and clans further east! If this is true, there would naturally be nothing all that strange in Tennessee Bigfoot using words of ultimately mostly Kwakiutl, Kalispel, Nez Percé, Yakima, or Lakota rather than Cherokee or Shawnee origin! As I wrote earlier, all this has _Homo sapiens_ linguistic parallels–e.g., the use of their full-sized neighbors’ Bantu languages by African Pygmy groups who presumably originally spoke languages almost as different from Bantu as the Khoi-San languages! I still maintain that it might be interesting if some specialists on Native American languages examined Ms. Coy’s Bigfoot wordlist.

The growling, guttural, not-quite-human quality of Bigfoot speech, even when speaking English, recalls the suggestion of many linguists and palaeoanthropologists, including Derek Bickerton and Philip Lieberman, about _Homo erectus_ and Neandertal speech. The reconstructed vocal tracts of pre-sapiens species of _Homo_ were indeed somewhat “cruder” for producing fully human speech than our own–but could have still sort of “done the job” in a crude, rough-and-ready way! Yes, Philip Lieberman and Derek Bickerton would have had no serious quarrel with Janice Carter Coy’s description of the way the Carter farm’s Bigfoot guests talked and sounded!

Of course, maybe all that this really shows is that Ms. Coy was very much “up” on all the possibly relevant linguistic, palaeoanthropological, and hominological literature when she concocted her hoax! How many linguistics, palaeoanthropology, and Bigfoot/Yeti books does she own or has she checked out from her library?

Cheers,
T. Peter

I’m not saying that there are NO Sasquatch in Tennessee. What I am saying is that Bayanov doesn’t present enough compelling evidence in his article to convince me that Bigfoot are, in fact, human, and that there are huge holes in the entire story (that, I will concede, could possibly be patched up in the book).
The whole thing, right down to the limited speech that doesn’t sound human even when human words are spoken, just smacks toomuch of “Harry and the Hendersons.” (I’m sure you will recall the ending scene where “Harry” tells the family “OK” to the surprise of the Bigfoot hunter played by David Suchet.)

One skeptical commentator on Bayanov’s article in Loren Coleman’s blog, Matt K., cited what he considered a linguistic implausibility in Janice Carter Coy’s list of Bigfoot words and phrases. He quoted the Bigfoot phrases 132, “Nicinca Tonape He? = Do you have children?” and 146, “Waste Ce Dake = I love you,” and then remarked: >

As a matter of fact, however, many languages–including English!–have personal pronouns that change completely depending on their position in a sentence, on whether they refer to the Subject or the Object of the sentence, the Agent or Patient of an action. In English, for instance, “you” happens to be invariable–but we have I/me, we/us, and she/her–while a somewhat less drastic change is illustrated by he/him and they/them. Similarly, we have French je/moi, Spanish yo/me, Italian io/mi, Portuguese eu/me, German ich/mich, Russian ya/moya, all “I/me.” In German, the polite & plural second-person pronoun “you” takes the alternate forms Sie/Ihr. In Russian, English we/us is paralleled by my/nas. Of course, we have no way of knowing whether Bigfootese (if it exists) is an inflected language like English, French, German, Russian, etc., or not. My own personal hunch–but I freely admit it’s just an educated personal guess–is that Bigfootese (if it exists) might be what some linguists call a “Proto-Language,” such as may have been spoken by _Homo erectus_ and _Homo neandertalensis_, i.e., a “primitive” language somewhat rersembling modern pidgins in structure, consisting of a few dozen or couple of hundred hundred invariable words loosely strungtogether in “me Tarzan, you Jane,” “me Ugg, me big hunter, me hit you head, you die” fashion.

Cheers,
T. Peter

True, but the WORDS change form. There isn’t two different translations for any of those words. I/me for example is two seperate independent words. I is I, just as me is me, and you is you. If the translations are both for the word “you” there can only be one word representing “you”. If I’m translating the word “me” I’m not going to translate it as the word “I”. And do we really want to think that if Bigfoot does in fact have it’s own language that it has such complexities as various pronoun usage?