Do the Khoisan languages resemble the world's first language?

Question

I have read somewhere that if there ever was a world's first language^*, that language must have had very much in common^** with the Khoisan languages. Arguments in support of this hypothesis are:

1. Khoisan languages have click consonants, a feature that has not developed independently in other languages. Bantu languages, for example, have borrowed them from Khoisan. So, this was probably some sort of an "early invention" that was not very "fit" and got abandoned along the way.
2. If you look at a map depicting where Khoisan languages are spoken, you will see a major area over parts of Namibia (eastern part, mostly), Botswana and South Africa and two small pockets (one in central Tanzania and one in the western coast of Namibia). These small pockets suggest that Khoisan languages once dominated most parts of Africa and then got replaced by Bantu languages (which, in fact, sorround those pockets).
3. Genetic and archeological evidence suggests that Homo Sapiens originated in that part of the world.

Are these arguments generally accepted among linguists? How much of this is "good science" and how much is just "pop science"?

* In the sense of a single language from which all other languages of the world came out.

** The first version of this question contained the expression "direct ancestor". But, as was pointed out in the answers and comments, this is not an appropriate term.

Answer 1

Let's assume what's sometimes called the "proto-World" hypothesis: language arose only once, in once community of speakers, and spread from there. If that's true, then — like Alek Storm says — every human language has proto-World as a direct ancestor. So the Khoisan languages wouldn't be unique in that regard.

When linguists talk about a connection between Khoisan and the hypothetical proto-World, what they're suggesting is that the Khoisan languages must be especially conservative — that they've preserved some features of proto-World more or less unchanged. One feature that usually comes up is the one you mention: the presence of clicks.

The implicit argument here is roughly: "Well, Khoisan languages are spoken in the birthplace of the human species. So it stands to reason that they would be the most conservative languages in the world."

But there's a problem with that argument. There is no clear connection between migration and language change. Sitting still won't prevent language change, and moving around won't make your language change any faster than normal. (For instance: British English is more conservative than American English in some ways, and less conservative in others. If migration and language change were connected, we'd expect British English to be much more conservative across the board.)

So in fact there's no particular reason to expect the Khoisan languages to be the most conservative, just because its speakers have stayed in one place. For all we know the most conservative language in the world is one spoken in South America, or Australia, or ... well, wherever. We just can't tell.

Answer 2

Regarding point #1:

Clicks have arisen in at least one other language: Damin. It was a special form of the Lardil language in aboriginal Australia used only by men who had gone through their initiation rites. Damin had four different click sounds (and one spurt and one pulmonic ingressive). No other languages anywhere in the region use clicks.

Obviously clicks are very rare, but if they were innovated for Damin, they could have been innovated for Proto-Khoisan (if such a thing ever existed - the status of the language family is in doubt).

Furthermore, if click sounds were not fit for human language use, how have they persisted this long in the Khoisan languages, and even spread into neighboring unrelated ones?

Answer 3

I don't think there's enough data to say anything:

• pick any language family, you'll find it has some common property within that doesn't appear in -any- other family, and if it does appear elsewhere (like any true scotsman!) can be explained by borrowing (like the clicks in Bantu).

• pockets of one language type surrounded by another, could be explained by all sorts of different historical/cultural migrations.

• how long was it from the last excursions from Africa and the earliest known reconstructed proto-language? 60K yoa (by genetic evidence (wikipedia) to 6K yoa (PIE is the only one I know of (again wikipedia)). That's a long time, where a lot of things can happen (population movement, language change).

Answer 4

I agree, not enough data to say anything an too much time depth. But despite not being a historical linguist, I can say re question 1 that where a feature is found in only one language family (if Khoisan is a language family!) and there's no evidence of it in others (apart from borrowing), the default assumption is usually that it was an innovation of the ancestor of that language family. So it makes sense to say that clicks were probably an innovation of proto-Khoisan and therefore pretty recent, at least compared to 'proto-World'. The spread of the Bantu languages was even more recent, so they were able to borrow them. The fact that they were borrowed and have been stable in those languages for some time suggests that they aren't that 'unfit'.