The Origins Of Langauage

The origins of language

Human language, originated while humans were actually enjoying themselves, is one of the most endearing spaculations concerning the origins of language. We simply do not know how language originated.

As there’s not any phisical evidence, there has been no shortage of spaculation about the origins of human speech. In this chapter, we shall consider the merits of some of those speculations.

The Divine Source

In most religions, it’s believed that language is a God-given gift to human species. In Christianity, God gave Adam the kingdom of all animals in the Garden of Eden and the first thing Adam did was to name these animals. That is how language started according to religious sources. Today people speak many different languages rather than only one language because ancient humans became too proud and they tried to build the Tower of Babel in order to reach God. Therefore, God punished them by separating their languages. According to this theory, if infants were allowed to grow up without hearing any language, then they would spontaneously begin using the original God given language.


The natural-sound source

The suggestion is that primitive words could have been imitations of the natural sounds which early man and women heard around them. When an object flew by, making a CAWCAW, the early human imitated the sound and used it to refer to the object associated with the sound. In english, in addittion to cuckoo, we have splash, bang, boom, rattle, buzz, hiss, screech and forms such as bow-wow. In fact, this type of view has been called the “bow-wow theory” of language origin. Also, it proposes that some other words come from sounds that reflect emotions such as pain, fear, hunger, surprise, and the sounds of laughter, crying, etc.

The oral gesture source

People use some nonverbal communication when they speak. For example, we wave hands to say good-bye; we nod our heads to show our approval or to mean 'yes', we produce a sound by our tongue when we mean 'no'. Then, a set of oral gestures involving the mouth, developed in which the movements of the tongue, lips and so on were recognized according to patterns of movements similar to physical gestures.





Glossogenetics:

Glossogenetics focuses on the biological basis of the formation and development of human language. With the changes of the human body and posture (differences that we can see between the skull of a gorilla and a Neanderthal man around 60, 000 B.C.), it has been possible for man to produce vowel and consonant sounds in human languages. Human language developed because of this evolutionary change.

Physiological Adaptation:

Unlike human beings, no other species can use language because they have a very different physiology. Modern human beings have vocal tract for speaking. Human mouth is smaller than the one from other species, which makes it easier to open and close for fast speech production. In addition, its flexibility allows us to produce various vowels. Human teeth are in upright position and are regular in size, which allows us to produce sounds such as, f and v. Our tongue can move backwards, forwards, up and down, allowing us to produce various speech sounds. In fact, without these speech organs, human beings could not have spoken.

In addition to these changes, human brain has gone through a number of changes; it became much bigger and specialized for language. Researchers have claimed that human beings adapted all these physiological changes throughout their history and these changes caused the emergence of human language.

Interactions and Transactions:

Interactional function: it has to do with how humans use language to interact with each other, socially or emotionally; how they indicate friendliness, cooperation or hostility, annoyance, pain or pleasure.

Transactional function: it is about how humans use their linguistic abilities to communicate knowledge, skills and information.

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Here you will find information about the book of George Yule : “The Study of Language”

This is a Linguistics interactive webpage where you will find a funny and creative way of studying linguistics.

You will find summaries about:

• The Origins of Language

• The Development of Writing

• The Properties of Language

• Animals and Human Language

• The Sounds of Language

• The Sounds Patterns of Language