In this post, I shall summarize the different ideas and theories behind the origins of language. After reading, I would recommend you to watch my lectures if you don't understand something. I am adding the links of my You Tube channel UMAIR LINGUISTICS. The lectures are in both languages Urdu/Hindi and English.

YOU TUBE LECTURES:

1. THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE  [ URDU/HINDI ]

2. THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE [ ENGLISH ]

      THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE

Language Beginning:

                                                     It is believed that the human beings might have developed spoken language between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago while the written language is believed to be developed around 5,000 years ago. As we do not have any solid evidence about the origins of language; therefore, there is no limit of speculations. Here, we shall discuss all these ideas behind the language origins.

1. The Divine Source:

                                  As the name suggests, "divine" means something invisible and supernatural force which we usually called God. The idea behind the divine source of language is that the language might have been given to human beings by a divine source. It means that the original language was that which was given by God to human beings. In Christianity, it is believed that whatever Adam named the different things that was the language (in other words the language in which Adam spoke was the original language or the first language ), in Hinduism, it is believed that the language came through Sarasvati, the wife of Brahma. Islam holds the belief that God created Adam and taught him the name of the things so that was the language but Islam also suggests that the different languages around the world is a sign of God (Chapter 2:31, Chapter 30:22).

Experiments:

                        To find out the original language many people have conducted experiments. An Egyptian pharaoh (2,500 years ago) named Psammetichus kept two newborn babies in the isolation in a company of  a goat and a mute shepherd. After two years, the babies were reported speaking a Phrygian (an older language spoken in  Modern Turkey) word bekos, meaning bread. It seems almost impossible that children might be speaking this word, as another version of story suggests that the babies might have taken be- from goat and the -kos is an addition in Greek version of the same story. We know the goats usually produce be- sound and the children might have heard goats saying it and then they imitate it.

King James the Fourth of Scotland also carried out somewhat similar experiment (1500 years ago) and the children were reported to speaking Hebrew and the king believed that Hebrew was the original language.

Mogul emperor, Akbar the great also conducted and experiment keeping the babies in silence and the babies spoke no language at all. The results of Akbar were closed to today's findings. We shall discuss such findings in Neurolinguistics, chapter 12.

2. The Natural Sound Source:

                                                                 The concept that humans might have learnt language from the natural sounds around them and would have tried to imitate them and thus they started speaking language in this way. We also know from today's research that our auditory system start working even before birth (after 7 months in womb).

The Bow-Wow Theory:

                                        Otto Jespersen (1934) was a Danish linguist and he proposed this idea of natural sound source, he called this idea as bow-wow which suggests that humans might have tried to imitate when they heard sounds like CAW-CAW, COO-COO of birds around them. In all modern languages there are some words which have pronunciation that echo like natural sounds, such words are called onomatopoeic, e.g., in English we have splash (the natural sound of water falling), bang, boom, rattle (the sound of rattle snake), buzz, hiss, screech, bow-wow (the braking of dog), etc. If we believe this theory and what about other words which are not onomatopoeic like truth, beauty, ball and many other countless words. In fact, there are only a few number of onomatopoeic words in all languages.

The Pooh-Pooh Theory:

                                        Another theory given by Jespersen is known as pooh-pooh theory which suggest that we might had learnt to produce speech by the sounds of natural cries and emotions. We know that we produce sudden sounds of pain, anger and happiness like Ah!, Ouch!, Wow! Oh!, Yuck!, etc. The reason why this theory seems not be the source of language is that most of our speech is exhaled (we produce speech sounds while pushing out air out of mouth), but such sudden sounds are produced with sudden in takes of breath.

3. The Musical Source:

                                 The problem with natural sound source is that we do not produce words just in the beginning of language acquisition; therefore, the idea of natural sound source arises which suggests that we might have learn language through music or it is the original source of how we might have started producing speech. We know that there is a long period when infants interact with adults by producing single segments of sounds ma, na, da, etc. That is the reason Charles Darwin (1871) also said that humans might have used music in the beginning to charm each other. The studies of infants also exhibit that they recognize the intonation patterns of their mother's voice and also show a preference towards this. These ideas seem to have some weight; however, the sounds are also produce by other creatures as well, but they are unable to speak like humans.

4. The Social Interaction Source:

                                                                                                         The early human beings used to live in larger groups for protection and to work together. The idea behind the social interaction source is the sounds such as grunts, groans which are usually produce while lifting large parts of trees and heavy stones. These activities involve collective physical effort, which suggest that early human beings might be living in groups have to communicate with each other and thus they were using language of some kind. The fact is that Apes and other animals also live in groups, but they do not have such ability to speak like human beings.

5. The Physical Adaptation Source:

                                                                                                            This idea suggests that human beings have adapted a physical structure which makes them able to produce a wide range of speech sounds. 

If we talk about our vocal tract which takes part in speaking, our teeth are upright, much smaller, and not slanting outwards unlike apes and monkeys. Our lips have flexible muscles, therefore, we can create many shapes (you can notice the different shapes of lips while speaking a stretch of speech in front of mirror). The human mouth is small which can open and close rapidly, tongue is thick and muscular which moves in different manners in the mouth. Moreover, human can close the air passage of nasal cavity to create more pressure in the mouth (we shall discuss this in speech mechanism).All these features including face enable human beings to produce a large range of speech sounds.

Larynx and Pharynx:

                                    The larynx of humans is much lower in throat while in apes like chimpanzees, the larynx is significantly above in the throat. This creates an advantage and disadvantage both for animals and humans

1. Animals do not suffer from choking and they can breathe and eat at the same time. In humans, the larynx is much lower and we might have problem of choking if we try to speak during eating. but we have a very big advantage of this, we have a longer cavity called pharynx which acts as a resonator. Animals thus cannot produce such wide range of sounds like human beings.

6. The Tool-Making Source: 

                                                         About two million years ago, there is the evidence that humans were able to make stone tools, thus the brain was working. Now let us analyze human brain.

The Human Brain:

                                     The human brain is large relatively to body size, it is lateralized which means each part of brain has specific functions. The left hemisphere and right hemisphere have different functions. In left hemisphere the part which controls the motor movements while speaking, is very close to the part used in object making. In a recent study which was conducted on the experienced stone-cutters noted the pattern of blood flow towards brain when they were making tools from a technique known to be existed 500,000 years ago. Interestingly, the pattern of blood flow towards the brain was same as during speaking. So, this experiment also gives us the idea that the early human beings might had been able to produce speech.

7. The Genetic Source:

                                             This theory suggests that we might have some kind of gene for speaking. In other words, the development of human child indicate that we have been genetically made in a way to speak language. At birth, our brain is only the quarter of its total weight, larynx is higher in throat, so we are able to breathe and feed at the same time. After some time, the larynx goes down and we started walking and talking, this almost automatic development leads to the view that there is something more prevalent than just physical structure of human beings. We can observe that even the children who are born deaf become very fluent in sign language.

Innateness Hypothesis:

                                               This hypothesis suggest that human are genetically able to acquire language. There are some studies which shows that there are mutations in some genes occurred due to change in human diet which has resulted in increase in glucose production. These changes are thought to increase blood flow towards brain resulting in a bigger and complex brain. Interestingly, considering this hypothesis we are moving away from fossils to rely on studying genes. It is possible that we might have a "language gene."

Reference: Yule, G. (2020) The Study of Language (7th edition) Cambridge University Press