Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

i think i agree with you. if nothing else, every language is a unique exemplar of the possibilities of human language. there's three-valued logic in aymara, click-language phonology (which still sound to me, a native english speaker with a few years' linguistic education, like somebody making funny noises with their mouths), tactile languages such as tadoma, osv syntax from the amazonian basin, and lack of color and counting words in piraha. without these, our ideas about what language *can* be is impoverished. i think your analogy to individuals is very apt.