The Origin of Language

Dr. Lynn Burley

Some books you might want to check out for more on this subject:

The Seeds of Speech : Language Origin and Evolution
by Jean Aitchison (Paperback - August 2000)


The Origin of Language : Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue 
by Merritt Ruhlen (Paperback - August 1996)

The Origins of Complex Language : An Inquiry into the Evolutionary Beginnings of
Sentences, Syllables, and Truth 
by Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy.  Oxford University Press; (April 1999) 

The Human Inheritance : Genes, Language, and Evolution 
by Bryan Sykes (Editor), Brian Sykes (Editor) Oxford University Press (December 1999)

 

Questions to consider:

1.      Why did we start talking? Why language? 

2.      How did we start talking?

3.      When did we start talking?

      Our own genus Homo is a subdivision of the hominid family

      3 million years ago—we split from apes

      2 million years ago—a tool-using Homo called Homo habilis (handy man)  

emerged.

      1 ½ million years ago—Homo erectus (upright man) who used fire came

      About 300,000 years ago—Archaic Homo sapiens (archaic wise man) arrived 

                     followed by modern humans, Homo sapiens sapiens.  About 50,000 years

ago, we started using not just stone but also other raw materials such as bone and clay.  Paintings on cave walls started and living sites increased at this time.

4.      Did language come all of a sudden (rabbit-out-of-the-hat idea) or was it built

up one word at a time (the amoeba idea)?

a.       The pooh-pooh theory—language began from instinctive cries of pain,

joy, fear, etc.

b.      The bow-wow theory—language began as imitation of animals

c.  The yo-he-ho theory—language began as involuntary grunts such as when lifting something heavy or hauling

d.      The pop theory (Stephen Jay Gould)—language just popped into existence all at  once. 

5.      How did language diffuse?

 

Language Facts 

There are about 6,000 languages in the world today
The earliest guesses are humans started talking 250,000 years ago, the average is 100,000 and some believe 50,000.
The naming insight—we assume things have names, but kids don’t know that the sounds coming out of the mouths around them refer to things—they have to discover that.  Chimps have to be taught to name and mostly don’t like to do it or don’t want to (like us swinging through trees).  We don’t know how or why humans developed  this.
Once we began naming a bunch of things, laid the ground work to start combining.  Rules for combining were probably random, eventually becoming fixed from habit.
There may be pre-linguistic mind-sets, which would explain why out of so many languages, preferences emerge (example—about 85% of the world’s languages prefer SOV or SVO word order)