Basically, linguists in the last few decades of the 20th century have amassed and published increasing evidence that all known present, recent, and historically recorded human languages are descended from a "Proto-World," "Mother Tongue," or Ursprache spoken about 60,000 years to 100,000 years ago. Moreover, they have gathered evidence that there may be a neurologically hardwired"universal grammar" or "linguistic bioprogram" preceding the development of other linguistic structures tens of thousands of years ago, and still rather closely reflected in contemporary Creole languages. This "bioprogram," they add, is also reflected in the grammatical "mistakes" made by small children learning standard English, French, Spanish, etc.

Also, it seems that there is some evidence for a kind of natural sound-symbolism, with certain sounds or sound-sequences suggesting the same qualities throughout the world. Thus, respected linguists like Otto Jespersen (1860-1943) and Morris Swadesh (1909-1967) have pointed out that the front vowels i, e, ä (as in the vowels of English sit, keep, neck, cat) are used in words denoting or suggesting "small, near, light-weight, bright, quick) in languages all over our planet. Conversely, they noted, the back vowels u, o, a (as the vowels in English push, rule, home, more, law, cup, car, father) denote or suggest "large, far, heavy, dark, slow" in languages world-wide. Jespersen and Swadesh also suggested other near-universal sound/sense harmonies like, for instance, the world-wide use of the nasal consonants m, n, ng for both the first-person pronouns "I, me, my, we, us, our" and the negatives "no, not, none, un-, non-" Again, Swadesh noted, there is a world-wide tendency among the "continuant" sounds l~n~r in many languages for l to be used in words denoting or suggesting "soft, smooth, small, gentle, female," r in words denoting or suggesting "hard, rough, large, harsh, male," and n to suggest a neutral or intermediate quality.

For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, "mainstream" and "Establishment" linguists conceded that it was theoretically quite possible that all known human languages might be ultimately related, in all being distantly descended from the grunts of the same Pliocene or Pleistocene ape-man. However, they were also quite sure that linguistic changes in thelast few tens of thousands of years would have altered the words of the earliest articulate human languages irrevocably beyond any possible hope of modern recognition or reconstruction.  This remained the predominant, quasi-official view of linguists throughout most of the 20th century.

However, a few maverick linguists—Wilhelm Schmidt (1869-1954), Alfredo Trombetti (1866-1929), Otto Jespersen (1860-1943), Morris Swadesh (1909-1967), Joseph H. Greenberg (1915-2001), Vladislav-Illich-Svitych (1934-1966), Derek Bickerton (1925-), Merritt Ruhlen (1944)--challenged this dogma throughout the 20^th century. Defying the “official” taboos of the linguistic profession, they dared to speculate about the origins of language, the ultimate common origin of all languages, and the possibility of proving that common origin even now by the accepted methods of comparative and historical linguistics, tens or even hundreds of millennia after the original human dispersal, whether from the Near East (Trombetti, Schmidt, Swadesh) or Africa (Greenberg, Ruhlen). Some, like Jespersen, Swadesh, and Bickerton, theorized about the origins of human speech and the probable characteristics of the earliest stages of language. Some,  like Schmidt, Trombetti, Swadesh, Greenberg, Illych-Svitych, and Ruhlen, amassed evidence for the probable common origin of all languages  and attempted to reconstruct the basic vocabulary of the Ursprache, “Mother-Tongue” or “Proto-World.”

Alfredo Trombetti launched modern attempts to prove the common origin of all languages, citing many reconstructed proto-words, with L'Unità d'origine del linguaggio (Bologna: Libreria Treves di Luigi Beltrami, 1905). In the mid-20^thcentury, Morris Swadesh argued for the concept among American linguists, culminating in his posthumously published The Origin and Diversification of Language (Chicago and New York: Aldine-Atherton, 1971). Like Trombetti, Swadesh cited many reconstructed proto-words in numerous articles and in The Origin and Diversification of Language, broadly similar to Trombetti’s though often with small differences of detail. In the 1960’s, 1970’s, and 1980’s, the project was continued by Stanford University’s Joseph Greenberg and Merritt Ruhlen, and by a number of Russian linguists including Vladislav Illich-Svitych, Vitaly Shevoroshkin (now at the University of Michigan), Sergei Starostin, and Aron Dolgopolsky. The  Russian linguists were at first mainly interested in proving a “Nostratic” language phylum or superfamily comprising the Indo-European, Hamito-Semitic, Uralic, Altaic, Japanese-Korean, and Eskimo-Aleut families—but soon expanded this into a search for even broader world-wide relationships. Greenberg's protégé and disciple Ruhlen, again citing many reconstructed proto-words, summed up these late 20th century researches with two 1994 books: the semi-popular The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue (New York, etc.: John Wiley & Sons) and the similarly titled but much more technical On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy (Stanford University Press).

The Proto-World reconstructions of Trombetti, Swadesh, Shevoroshkin, and Ruhlen differed in some details. Some cited proto-words not listed by some of the others. There also were some differences in the exact phonetic form reconstructed for some for some proto-words. Thus the proto-word for "woman, wife" was variously reconstructed as k^wen, kuna, küni, or kuanai. Similarly, that for "dog" was variously reconstructedas kuan, k'üina, kuri, or kuari, that for "know, perceive, think" as ken, kena, kina, gon, or gnô, and that for “think, feel, wish” as mena or manu.  For the most part, however, there has been considerable broad agreement on many proto-words, and despite small differences in exact phonetic form ("man, male, husband" as mano, mäno, meno, or mar?) the reconstructions have been broadly similar. Short of building a time-machine and going back to East Africa 70,000 years ago, we will probably never know the EXACT pronunciation of most Proto-World words (was “big, strong” mek, mag, or maga?)—but we are getting a fairly good idea of their approximate form. Ultimately, it does not matter that much if women were called kwen, kwena, küni or kuna in Proto-World, if there is an overwhelming preponderance of world-wide linguistic evidence that the word was SOMETHING of that GENERAL  sort.

<<...when these people wanted to refer to the water they were crossing, they may have used a word that sounded something like “aqwa.” When they pointed to the flight of a bird overhead, they could have used a word similar to “par.” When they gestured toward the ground, they might have said something like “tika.” In fact, here’s a question in a pidgin version of the language they may have spoken: “Kun mena mana? Kun mena aqwa?” It means: “Who thinks we should stay? Who thinks we should go across the water?” >>

Derek Bickerton described the remarkably similar and consistent grammar and syntax of Creoles throughout the world in his 1981 book Roots of Language (Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma Publishers, 1981) and his 1983 Scientific American article on "Creole Languages"(Derek Bickerton. “Creole Languages,” Scientific American, July 1983, Vol. 249, No. 1, pp. 116-122). Bickerton distinguished sharply between pidgins and Creoles. A pidgin is a crude makeshift language used in their relatively restricted and infrequent contacts with each other by native speakers of different normal languages--e.g., between Chinese and European traders in the Far East, between Norwegian and Russian sailors in the Arctic, between European or White American overseers and gangs of slave laborers or indentured workers in tropical or subtropical plantation settings, or between slaves or indentured laborers of different ethnic or "tribal" origins on the plantations. A Creole is a language, generally based in its vocabulary on that of the local dominant colonialist or slave-owning group, routinely used as their normal native language by slaves, indentured laborers, or their descendants who have grown up all their lives in a given colony, plantation, or former colony. Pidgin speakers are fluent adult native speakers of fully-developed "normal" languages, but Creole speakers use the Creole as their own normal native language and have no other native language. If a Creole speaker learns standard English or French--or, for that matter, an African or Asian language like Yoruba or Chinese, some of the traditional "usual suspects" for non-standard-European features of Creoles--it will be as a second language.

These two language types, Bickerton emphasized, are very different in structure. Pidgin sentences are typically random sequences of basic words for concrete objects, actions, or qualities loosely strung together in no consistent order with no real grammar or syntax, in "me Tarzan you Jane," "me Ugg big hunter me hit you head you die,""meat bad me hurt stomach" fashion. Creoles, on the other hand, have a definite, consistent grammar and syntax, following definite grammatical and syntactic rules. Their grammar and syntax are quite different from those of standard English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, or Dutch, and often give ethnocentric observers a "baby-talk" impression of simply being pidgin-like simplified structures. However, Bickerton demonstrated, they actually all have a very definite, quite regular and logical grammar--which moreover is nearly identical in Creoles throughout the world, whether in Hawaii, Haiti, the Guyanas, Mauritius, or Portuguese Guinea, and whether in Creoles with vocabularies of predominantly English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, or Arabic origin. These remarkable Creole grammatical similarities, he argued, reflect the hard-wired universal human linguistic "bioprogram." They are independently re-invented on the basis of the "bioprogram" by children in multi-ethnic colonies or plantations developing Creoles, and, Bickerton demonstrates, are NOT a reflection of Yoruba, Chinese, etc., grammar as often traditionally believed.  Moreover, the regular occurrence of similar patterns in the grammatical "mistakes" of small children learning standard French, English, Spanish, etc., suggests to Bickerton that intrinsic child grammar and Creole languages may have much in common, both reflecting the spontaneous (re-)emergence of the same underlying "bioprogram."

Creoles, as described by Bickerton, have a grammar superficially resembling that of standard English in some respects (even when they have predominantly French-, Spanish-, Portuguese-, or Dutch-based vocabularies), Chinese in a few others, and West African languages like Yoruba in still others. In the past,  linguists ordinarily assumed Chinese to be the model for Pacific island and rim creoles, and Yoruba as the model for Atlantic and Caribbean Creoles. Bickerton, however, saw these analogies as superficial, coincidental, and not warranted by a closer study of Creole grammars. They could be far better explained, he argued, as expressions of the "bioprogram."

By far the most interesting feature of Creole grammars as described by Bickerton is their system of verb tenses, modalities, and aspects. Creole tenses, modalities, and aspects are always expressed, given those languages' analytic structure, by particles (comparable to English have, had, will, shall, must, may in we have seen, he had gone, he will come, etc.) coming before the main verb. Creoles lack verb endings like English -s, -ed, -ing in sees, looked, sitting. Aspect, always expressed by a particle immediately before the main verb, distinguishes continuing, repeated, habitual, or uncompleted actions, events, states, or process fro momentary or completed ones. Momentary or completed events or actions have no special marker, but continuous, repeated, habitual, or uncompleted actions, states, or processes are marked by a "nonpunctual" particle--stay in Hawaiian Creole, ap in Haitian Creole--immediately before the main verb.  It expresses something of the meaning of English "is x-ing," "was x-ing," "always x-es," or "used to x."

Nect, Creoles invariably distinguish between "real" and "irreal" modality of actions or events. A "real" action or event is an observed or remembered present or past action or occurrence that actually happens or happened, and is not specially marked. The "irreal" modality, on the other hand, describes possible, potential, hypothetical, or expected (but not yet actually occurred) events or states of affairs, and roughly corresponds to the English conditional or future tense. It is marked by a particle--go in Hawaiian Creole, av or ava in Haitian Creole--always coming before the main verb--or the nonpunctual aspect marker. For example, English "If I had a car, I would drive home," is Hawaiian Creole If I bin get car, I go drive home.

Finally, in place of English past tense, Creoles all use an "anterior tense," somewhat corresponding to the English "past perfect," and used to denote an event or action that had taken place before another one. It is always expressed by an anterior marker--bin or wen in Hawaiian Creole, té  in Haitian Creole--coming before the main verb--or before the irreal and nonpunctual markers. Ordinary English-type present and past tenses, on the other hand, take no special marker. English "had walked" is bin walk or wen walk in Hawaiian Creole, but English "walk" is simply walk in Creole.

All Creoles, Bickerton notes, have 3 invariant particles that serve as auxiliary verbs for anterior tense, nonpunctual aspect, and irreal modality, playing the role of Hawaiian Creole bin anterior, go irreal, and stay nonpunctual. In Haitian Creole, for instance, té marks the anterior tense of the verb, av~ava marks irreal modality, and ap marks the aspect of the verb as nonpunctual. In all Creoles, the anterior tense particle precedes the irreal modality particle, and the irreal modality particle in turn precedes the nonpunctual aspect particle.

This invariant order, Bickerton suggested in Roots of Language, marks the phylogenetic order of noticing and mentioning stimuli of different immediacy, urgency, or salience, with unmarked forms for more immediate, insistent, or urgent events, and special markers for less immediately urgent ones. We notice sudden, unexpected noises, light flashes, touches, pain twinges, etc., possibly signalling sudden dangers or sudden opportunities for food, sex, etc., more than routine, continuous sounds, aches, etc. we can usually safely dismiss as unimportant background noise neither threatening danger nor promising opportunity. Next, we distinguish between dreams, fantasies, hypotheses, and speculations versus actually occurring real-world events. Finally, we learn to distinguish between earlier and later events among our memories, and to mentally bracket the earlier ones as part of the "background" or "prehistory" of presumably more important later developments.  We usually find that it is more urgently, critically important to respond to sudden crises, emergencies, or opportunities than to on-going long-term situations, to things actually happening right now than to imaginary, fantasied, future, potential, or contingent situations, and to things that happened recently than to things that happened a long time ago. This Creole (and "bioprogram") distinction between "urgent" versus "less urgent" events or situations by unmarked for "urgent," marked for "less urgent"recalls an observation somebody once made about use and non-use of profanity by soldiers in wartime. Soldiers in routine complaining and conversation freely use profanities and obscenties, continually talking for instance about their "goddamn" or "fucking" rifles in barracks. However, when under enemy attack, they will yell "Get your rifles!," not "Get your fucking rifles"! Creoles use the same principle!    

We notice the background noise versus sudden interruption antithesis first, and express it with a particle right before the main verb. We next distinguish between reality and fantasy, and devise an irreal particle to bracket and partly dismiss or distance the imaginary or merely possible. Finally, we distinguish between "main events" versus "preludes" or "prequels," and put the "prequels" at a bit of a psychological distance from the "main events," again by using a special particle. Distinctions learned later, Bickerton felt, are marked by particles coming before the ones invented or adopted for earlier distinctions of relative immediacy or urgency. As the Creole--and "bioprogram"--master word order is MODIFIER+MODIFIED, particles expressing phylogenetic and historical "afterthoughts" or "further refinements" get tacked on before particles representing earlier, more primitive  distinctions. In the cases of aspect, modality, and tense alike, "unmarked" signifies  "more immediate, more urgent, more salient, more insistently here-and-now, more just plain fact without qualifications," while "marked" signifies  "less immediate, less urgent, less salient, less insistently here-and-now." Creole auxuliaries, in effect, put events at a bit of a mental distance, or a bit more "on the back burner."

One would therefore expect children to utter ungrammatical sentences such as “I liking Mommy” and “I wanting candy.” Remarkably, such errors are almost never heard. Children seem to know implicitly that English verbs such as “like” and “want,” which are  called stative verbs, cannot be marked by the suffix -ing to indicate duration. The distinction between stative and nonstative verbs is fundamental to Creole languages, however, and no marker of continuing action can be employed with a stative verb in Creoles, either.

The distinction between specific and nonspecific reference, Bickerton points out, is an important one in Creoles. In English, he notes, the distinction can be subtle, but young children nevertheless acquire it with ease. For example, the sentence “John has never read a book,” which makes nonspecific reference to the noun “book,” can be completed by the phrase “and he never will read a book”; it cannot be completed by the phrase “and he never will read the book.” Similarly, the sentence “John read a book yesterday,” in which a specific book is presupposed, can be completed by the phrase “and he enjoyed the book”; it cannot be completed by the phrase "and he enjoyed a book." Children as young as 3 years were able to make such distinctions correctly about 90% of the time. When a feature of the local language matches the structure of Creole, children avoid making errors that would otherwise seem quite natural. For example, children learning English acquire the suffix -ing, which expresses duration, at a very early age. Even before the age of 2 many children say things such as “I sitting high chair,” where the verb expresses a continuing action. One would expect that as soon as the suffix -ing was acquired it would be applied  to every possible verb, just as the suffix -s that marks the English plural is frequently overgeneralized to nouns such as "foot" and "sheep."

The challenge is now clear for us. Can we design an auxlang/conlang with a basic core vocabulary resembling the Proto-World reconstructions of Alfredo Trombetti, Morris Swadesh, Vitaly Shevoroshkin, and Joseph Greenberg, and Merritt Ruhlen, and a grammar and syntax  resembling the Hawaiian or Haitian Creole grammars described by Derek Bickerton? If we do devise such a conlang, how must we modify it to make it suitable for the needs of a technological society undreamt-of by our ancestors 60,000 years ago or by the laborers on 17th, 18th, 19th, and early 20th century plantations? To eke out its vocabulary with Electronic and Space Age borrowings or coinages, should we use some of the methods used by Loglan and Lojban?

And how should we deal with the somewhat ambiguous and conflicting, though still suggestive, evidence for Proto-World pronouns--e.g., MI, NI, or NGI  for "I, me"? And what is the specific phonetic shape we should give to Proto-World Words? Should we, for instance, prefer KWI, KWE or KU, KO type sequences? Should we heed or ignore hints of ancient phonetic distinctions between velar k, kw and postvelar q, qw?--e.g., should we represent "water" by akwa or aqwa, keeping in mind that aqwa may be more historically accurate but akwa easier for modern English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, or Japanese speakers? Should we restrict the vowel inventory to A, E, I, O, U as in Spanish, Italian, and Japanese, or should we also adopt front rounded vowels Ö,Ü as in French & German, and back unrounded vowels Ë, Ï as in Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese (conventional Romanized Korean transliteration ǒ, ŭ,  Vietnamese side-hooked or "bearded" o', u')? Such vowels have been reconstructed, after all, by some linguists for Proto-World. Should Spanish, German, Russian, Turkish, or Thai, in other words, be our vowel repertory model?  Should or shouldn't we use aspirated and/or glottalized stops ph, th, čh, kh, kwh, qh and/or  p', t', č', k', kw', q' as postulated in some Proto-World reconstructions? My own personal preference, for a 21st century "auxlang" if not necessarily a scientifically precise reconstruction of probable actual ancient usage, would be to have a simple "Latin," "Spanish," or "Italian" vowel system A, E, I, O, U, and simple voiceless (surd) versus voiced (sonant) stops P-B, T-D, Č-Ĵ, K-G, KW-GW,  without the added complication of aspiration or glottalization. Still, we will now need to choose between KWE, KWI versus KO, KU, in words like kwena versus kuna "woman"!