The Nostratic Languages

The Nostratic languages constitute a proposed language family that is at present extremely controversial among historical linguists. According to its proponents, Nostratic includes a high proportion of the language families of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. The hypothetical ancestral language of the Nostratic family is called Proto-Nostratic, following standard linguistic practice. Proto-Nostratic would necessarily have been spoken at a time depth greater than the language families descended from it, which would place it toward the end of the Paleolithic period. Nostratic is sometimes called a macrofamily or a superfamily, to denote a language family that groups two or more other language families and is not (or not yet) generally accepted by those linguists who have concerned themselves with the question.

DEIXIS

"DEIXIS IS WHAT SPEAKERS DO to locate themselves in space and time, with respect to things, events, and each other. When speaking, it is impossible not to be deictic, not to "be in" the context of one's discourse. Not being deictic is not communicating, not being in a situation, not being. This is what happens in some narratives, whose narrator disappears behind the events of the story and which seem to be deploying themselves without the intervention of any speaker. Such narrative, however, is strictly a written achievement, made possible by the fictional space that writing creates. In oral narrative, it is just as impossible for a narrator to disappear as it is for any speaker, and to discover the signs of that presence is, I believe, an important aspect of the study of oral traditions that have come down tous in the form of text."

Egbert J. Bakker
Homeric Oytos and the Poetics of Deixis
Classical Philology, Vol. 94, No. 1. (Jan., 1999), p. 1.

A Quote from Neil Postman's Book

"I mean by 'narrative' a story. But not any kind of story. I refer to big stories-stories that are sufficiently profound and complex to offer explanations of the origins and future of a people; stories that construct ideals, prescribe rules of conduct, specify sources of authority,and, in doing this, provide a sense of continuity and purpose. Joseph Campbell and Rollo May, among others, called such stories 'myths.' Marx had such stories in mind in referring to 'ideologies.' And Freud called them 'illusions.' No matter. What is important about narratives is that human beings cannot live without them."
- Building a Bridge to the 18th century (p 101) by Neil Postman

The whole chapter (entitled "Narratives") essentially deals with the subject of this blog and the term which I frequently use in writing, "metanarrative." The differentiation between Postman's term and mine is only that my own use is distinguished from approximately five layers of narrative with the metanarrative 'layer' as the top and framed artistic expression as the bottom layer. I'll go into this further in future entries.