The Orgin Of Language (1998)

Autors: Agnis Leonovičs

The topic of where, when, and how human speech first developed has been of one of which every human al least at some point has been wondering about. This problem has also been one of the major concerns of various scientific disciplines – linguistics, philology, theology, biology, and  anthropology. The question has attracted a vast amount of speculation but none of the thories produces much and believable evidence in support.

       

        These speculations could be devided basically into two parts – scientific and theological. But before we take a closer look at these thories it would be useful to define what is it we are seeking the origin of. 

II  Introduction into the problem

1. what is language?

          We seek the origin of something we call language. But how should one delimit the phenomenon of language? Say: the expression of some internal process, the internal reception of some externally-perceived structured activity, speaking, hearing, understanding. A relation between what is going on 'in our heads' and a bodily activity of ours perceivable by others and interpretable by them. A relation between a perceivable activity of others and what consequently goes on in our heads. Language more specifically as words, and the patterns into which words can be combined (semantics and syntax, lexicon and grammar). 'Speech' is different from 'language'; similarly gesture is different from language; and written forms are different from language. Or say that speech is a part of a language. Language is the capacity of one individual to alter, through structured sound, gesture or visual emission, the mental organisation of another individual.

What would count as the origin of language? To answer this question we must assume that we can recognise language and distinguish it from other forms of communication. Let us further assume that language is a complex system with many aspects: the articulatory, the serially-organised the lexically-structured, the expressive, the conceptual and so on.

The other official definitions of language are the following:

Ø "Vocal and audible medium of human communication"

Robertson & Cassady

Ø "Words, pronunciation, and ways of combining them used and understood by a considerable community"

Webster's

Ø "Aspect of human behavior that involves the use of vocal sounds in meaningful patterns and, when they exist, corresponding written symbols to form, express, and communicate thoughts and feelings"

American Heritage

Ø "Language, communication among human beings that is characterized by the use of arbitrary spoken or written symbols with agreed-upon meanings. More broadly, language may be defined as communication in general; it is regarded by some linguists as a form of knowledge, that is, of thought or cognition."

Microsoft Encarta, 1993 editon

Ø "A system of conventional vocal signs by means of which human beings communicate"                                Pyles & Algeo

2.  traceability of the origin of language

So, do we conceive of language as having come into existence full-blown or as the result of the accretion of elements gradually coming to constitute some thing recognisable as language? What, after all, counts as the origin of any thing? Darwin's answer on the origin of species was in essence that there was no origin and there were no species. His answer was not a direct one: there is only an unending, infinitely complex, process of change and accommodation, leading to divergence of form and function over immense periods of time, with apparent separation of species in space and time produced by the disappearance of intermediate forms.

If we assume the continuity of nature (and hence of life), and the evolution of man as part of a general evolution, then we will not expect any distinct origin of particular human forms or functions. Language development would be a continuum from the simplest form of inter-individual communication to a more and more complex one. Clearly, in a sense there is evidence of a sharp discontinuity in language: humans speak and animals do not. But the discontinuity is a contemporary one. We have no reason to believe that there was as sharp a discontinuity in the emergence of language. No doubt the development of speech was a very important part of the process of language emergence - but the circumstances surrounding the development of speech cannot be identified as the origin of language, or even the originating situation.

So, in study of the origins of language, we already have much material drawn from very different disciplines, which may or may not be relevant or may have a relevance quite different from what the authors of the evidence believe it to have. For example, research directed towards a protolanguage and monogenesis may have relevance for the biological rather than the cultural development of language. No objective research is without value and no systematic examination of the subject is to be disregarded. It is not a matter of determining that one particular approach is wrong: we are all casting around and all wrong. Truth even in the most rigorous areas of science can at best be only provisional and will seem wrong in the light of later knowledge. The synergistic approach is to look sympathetically at whatever has been done or suggested and see how it can be fitted into a larger picture, or how far it suggests questions which might be tackled in other disciplines.

Similarly for the question of the origin of spoken language. Looked at intently, as I have said, there of course can be no absolute origin, e.g. on the 1st of April 40,000 BP or 500,000 BP. The whole of vertebrate evolution, of body, brain and behaviour, was the 'material cause' or origin of language development, the evolution of the lungs, pharynx, larynx, tongue, mouth etc. as well as the neural control for these. But what we can profitably look for are the possible distinctive features of human development, the interconnection of elements which led to the successful elaboration of a specifically human communication system with the capacity to grow in power throughout the millennia.

To summarise: we need not worry very much about the definition of language. We are concerned with ordinary human spoken language in the first place, though we need not exclude wider aspects of language and communication. We need not aim for a precise dated origin of language or a single event origin of language. We should recognise that language-capacity was composed of a mosaic of structural, anatomical, neural, behavioural and environmental features and be concerned to propose a plausible sequence of events in the evolutionary history of language. We need not suppose that once language was achieved, it had no further significant development to undergo; it is likely that the same factors which led to the appearance of language have continued to operate to increase its power. The essence of language development is lexical development (in size, in range of reference, in discrimination and in interconnectedness) linked to the possession of the concepts to which the words in the lexicon refer.

III theories about the origin of language

1. divine theory – myth or fact?

A good many of people in all parts of the world share a belief that the origin of language can be traced to a Garden of Eden, where the first woman and the first man spoke the language originally given upon them by their creator. Even among people who may give little credence to that story, many are persuaded that language originated in a paradise where its pristine form was perfectly logical and perfectly grammatical.

          But how did this theory begin and reached the nowadays, and where is its place in the modern world?

          At a very early period in the evolution of civilization men began to ask questions regarding language; and the answers to these questions were naturally embodied in the myths, legends, and chronicles of their sacred books. Among the foremost of these questions were three: "Whence came language?" "Which was the first language?" "How came the diversity of language?"

          The answer to the first of these was very simple: each people naturally held that language was given it directly or indirectly by some special or national deity of its own; thus, to the Chaldeans by Oannes, to the Egyptians by Thoth, to the Hebrews by Jahveh.

The Hebrew answer is embodied in the great poem which opens our sacred books. Jahveh talks with Adam and is perfectly understood; the serpent talks with Eve and is perfectly understood; Jahveh brings the animals before Adam, who bestows on each its name. Language, then, was God-given and complete. Of the fact that every language is the result of a growth process there was evidently, among the compilers of our sacred books, no suspicion,

The answer to the second of these questions was no less simple. As, very generally, each nation believed its own chief divinity to be "a god above all gods,"--as each believed itself "a chosen people,"--as each believed its own sacred city the actual centre of the earth, so each believed its own language to be the first--the original of all. This answer was from the first taken for granted by each "chosen people," and especially by the Hebrews: throughout their whole history, whether the Almighty talks with Adam in the Garden or writes the commandments on Mount Sinai, he uses the same language--the Hebrew.

The answer to the third of these questions, that regarding the diversity of languages, was much more difficult. Naturally, explanations of this diversity frequently gave rise to legends somewhat complicated.

The "law of wills and causes," formulated by Comte, was exemplified here as in so many other cases. That law is, that, when men do not know the natural causes of things, they simply attribute them to wills like their own; thus they obtain a theory which provisionally takes the place of science, and this theory forms a basis for theology. Examples of this recur to any thinking reader of history. Before the simpler laws of astronomy were known, the sun was supposed to be trundled out into the heavens every day and the stars hung up in the firmament every night by the right hand of the Almighty. Before the laws of comets were known, they were thought to be missiles hurled by an angry God at a wicked world. Before the real cause of lightning was known, it was supposed to be the work of a good God in his wrath, or of evil spirits in their malice. Before the laws of meteorology were known, it was thought that rains were caused by the Almighty or his angels opening "the windows of heaven" to let down upon the earth "the waters that be above the firmament." Before the laws governing physical health were known, diseases were supposed to result from the direct interposition of the Almighty or of Satan. Before the laws governing mental health were known, insanity was generally thought to be diabolic possession. All these early conceptions were naturally embodied in the sacred books of the world, and especially in our own.[[170]]

So, in this case, to account for the diversity of tongues, the direct intervention of the Divine Will was brought in. As this diversity was felt to be an inconvenience, it was attributed to the will of a Divine Being in anger. To explain this anger, it was held that it must have been provoked by human sin.

Out of this conception explanatory myths and legends grew as thickly and naturally as elms along water-courses; of these the earliest form known to us is found in the Chaldean accounts, and nowhere more clearly than in the legend of the Tower of Babel.

The inscriptions recently found among the ruins of Assyria have thrown a bright light into this and other scriptural myths and legends: the deciphering of the characters in these inscriptions by Grotefend, and the reading of the texts by George Smith, Oppert, Sayce, and others, have given us these traditions more nearly in their original form than they appear in our own Scriptures.

The Hebrew story of Babel, like so many other legends in the sacred books of the world, combined various elements. By a play upon words, such as the history of myths and legends frequently shows, it wrought into one fabric the earlier explanations of the diversities of human speech and of the great ruined tower at Babylon. The name Babel (bab-el) means "Gate of God" or "Gate of the Gods." All modern scholars of note agree that this was the real significance of the name; but the Hebrew verb which signifies to confound resembles somewhat the word Babel, so that out of this resemblance, by one of the most common processes in myth formation, came to the Hebrew mind an indisputable proof that the tower was connected with the confusion of tongues, and this became part of our theological heritage.

In our sacred books the account runs as follows:

"And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

"And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

"And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.

"And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

"And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

"And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

"Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

"So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

"Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth." (Genesis xi, 1-9.)

Thus far the legend had been but slightly changed from the earlier Chaldean form in which it has been found in the Assyrian inscriptions. Its character is very simple: to use the words of Prof. Sayce, "It takes us back to the age when the gods were believed to dwell in the visible sky, and when man, therefore, did his best to rear his altars as near them as possible." And this eminent divine might have added that it takes us back also to a time when it was thought that Jehovah, in order to see the tower fully, was obliged to come down from his seat above the firmament.

As to the real reasons for the building of the towers which formed so striking a feature in Chaldean architecture--any one of which may easily have given rise to the explanatory myth which found its way into our sacred books--there seems a substantial agreement among leading scholars that they were erected primarily as parts of temples, but largely for the purpose of astronomical observations, to which the Chaldeans were so devoted, and to which their country, with its level surface and clear atmosphere, was so well adapted. As to the real cause of the ruin of such structures, one of the inscribed cylinders discovered in recent times, speaking of a tower which most of the archaeologists identify with the Tower of Babel, reads as follows:

"The building named the Stages of the Seven Spheres, which was the Tower of Borsippa, had been built by a former king. He had completed forty-two cubits, but he did not finish its head. During the lapse of time, it had become ruined; they had not taken care of the exit of the waters, so that rain and wet had penetrated into the brickwork; the casing of burned brick had swollen out, and the terraces of crude brick are scattered in heaps."

We can well understand how easily "the gods, assisted by the winds," as stated in the Chaldean legend, could overthrow a tower thus built.

It may be instructive to compare with the explanatory myth developed first by the Chaldeans, and in a slightly different form by the Hebrews, various other legends to explain the same diversity of tongues. The Hindu legend of the confusion of tongues is as follows:

"There grew in the centre of the earth the wonderful `world tree,' or `knowledge tree.' It was so tall that it reached almost to heaven. It said in its heart, `I shall hold my head in heaven and spread my branches over all the earth, and gather all men together under my shadow, and protect them, and prevent them from separating.' But Brahma, to punish the pride of the tree, cut off its branches and cast them down on the earth, when they sprang up as wata trees, and made differences of belief and speech and customs to prevail on the earth, to disperse men upon its surface."

Still more striking is a Mexican legend: according to this, the giant Xelhua built the great Pyramid of Cholula, in order to reach heaven, until the gods, angry at his audacity, threw fire upon the building and broke it down, whereupon every separate family received a language of its own.

Such explanatory myths grew or spread widely over the earth. A well-known form of the legend, more like the Chaldean than the Hebrew later form, appeared among the Greeks. According to this, the Aloidae piled Mount Ossa upon Olympus and Pelion upon Ossa, in their efforts to reach heaven and dethrone Jupiter.

Still another form of it entered the thoughts of Plato. He held that in the golden age men and beasts all spoke the same language, but that Zeus confounded their speech because men were proud and demanded eternal youth and immortality.

Naturally the version of the legend which most affected Christendom was that modification of the Chaldean form developed among the Jews and embodied in their sacred books. To a thinking man in these days it is very instructive. The coming down of the Almighty from heaven to see the tower and put an end to it by dispersing its builders, points to the time when his dwelling was supposed to be just above the firmament or solid vault above the earth: the time when he exercised his beneficent activity in such acts as opening "the windows of heaven" to give down rain upon the earth; in bringing out the sun every day and hanging up the stars every night to give light to the earth; in hurling comets, to give warning; in placing his bow in the cloud, to give hope; in coming down in the cool of the evening to walk and talk with the man he had made; in making coats of skins for Adam and Eve; in enjoying the odour of flesh which Noah burned for him; in eating with Abraham under the oaks of Mamre; in wrestling with Jacob; and in writing with his own finger on the stone tables for Moses.

So came the answer to the third question regarding language; and all three answers, embodied in our sacred books and implanted in the Jewish mind, supplied to the Christian Church the germs of a theological development of philology. These germs developed rapidly in the warm atmosphere of devotion and ignorance of natural law which pervaded the early Church, and there grew a great orthodox theory of language, which was held throughout Christendom, "always, everywhere, and by all," for nearly two thousand years, and to which, until the present century, all science has been obliged, under pains and penalties, to conform.

         

2. various evolutionary theories 

Now when we look at modern, scientific  views of the language origin we can recognize many theories about how did language originate and develop. Generally looking, we could say that all of these theories consistute evolutionary factor. Let’s take a brief look at these theories.

1.      Echoic (“Bow-Wow”):

Ø It argues that speech arose through people imitating the sounds of enviroment, especially animal calls. The main evidence is the use of onomateopeic words

Ø This theory may account for certain kinds of vocabulary, but it doesn't account in any way for speech articulation or grammatical systems.

2.      Interjectional (“Pooh-pooh”)

Ø It argues that speech arose through people making instinctive sounds caused by pain, anger, or other emotions. First words then were interjections

Ø Again, this theory doesn't suggest any motivation for language development. It would only let people describe their own conditions. The main evidence is the use of interjections, but no language contains many of these

3.      Nativistic (“Ding-dong” or “Bucket”)

Ø This theory considers the relationship between sound and sense of certain words (like bow-wow), and it argues that primitive people had a peculiar instinctive faculty by which every external impression resulted in a vocal expression (like striking a bell).

Ø The trouble with this theory is that it explains nothing: it merely describes the facts in a different terminology, and so is only a theory.

4.      Labor (“Yo-he-ho”)

Ø Proposed by Noiré (19th century)

Ø Theory proposes that language arose from noises made by people engaged in joint effort.

Ø Two advantages of this proposal:

1.      grunts and groans usually contain consonant and vowel sounds

2.      supposes human inter-action

Ø Arguments against: postulates too advanced a form of social cooperation: language is needed before men could be in these situations

5.      Jespersen's Hypothesis (“Woo-woo”):

Ø Developed by Otto Jespersen (Danish).

Ø Jespersen observed that more primitive (and supposedly earlier) languages are more musical (long words, difficult jaw-breaking sounds, more use of tone/pitch).

Ø From this, he concluded that language was originally song without words; expressive but not communicative. Love in particular was the most powerful emotion for eliciting outbursts of music and song.

6.      Paget's Oral Gesture Theory :

Ø Developed by Sir Richard Paget and refined by Alexander Jóhannesson (Iceland)

Ø Early humans communicated by gesture, but as their world became more complex, the hands were needed for mechanical tasks. The lips, tongue, and mouth unconsciously mimicked the gestures, and when one blows air while making these mouth gestures, speech results.

Ø One example, a person who makes an oral gesture of chewing food and blows out air produces a sound like "mnyum mnyum"

7.      Résész's Contact Theory

Ø Developed by Dutch prof. of Psychology.

Ø Language arises from human's instinctive need for contact with fellow humans

Ø Four Stages:

1.      contact sound (expressive but not communicative); like "gregarious" animals

2.      Communicative cry directed to the environment in general, not to an individual. e.g., mating calls, nestlings in danger

3.      Call that demands satisfaction of some desire. e.g., domestic animals begging and infants crying for parents. "This cry is the beginning of music and language."

4.      Words – sounds with symbolic functions

          9.  “Babble-Lucky”

This theory supposes that the association of a speech sound randomly would be taken up and repeated for whatever reason and thus become nonrandomly significant. 

3.  the prerequisites for  language development

          If we assume that language was not given by some superiour power in its complete form than we are compelled to assume that it has developed. So, what is the nature of those abitities needed for language development?

Perhaps the first and most important of these abilities is that of imitation. Imitation seems to require at least four types of ability: 1) to perceive external patterning (looking or listening); 2)to analyse the perceived external patterning into discrete uniform elements; 3) to transfer the set of elements to another functional system in the brain, possibly transform them there and form them into a production program; 4) to activate the production program through the peripheral devices of the second functional system (produce imitated speech, facial expression, or other bodily action.)

          Next set of abilities that concerns articulation is: 1) to attend selectively to speech-sound as such; 2) to analyse the sound in some way to extract uniform elements from it; 3) to transfer the elements to another functional system or transform it in that system; 4) to recognise uniformities there; 5) to activate a discriminating response in the second functional system specific to the categorically distinct sound-element.

          Having these abitities next step is ability to form concepts which might constitute the following elements: 1. selective attention to a particular segment of visual or other experience. 2. analysis of perceptual information to produce separable contours; 3. transfer or transform for incorporation in an experience record-system (cognitive map, body-map or body-image); 4. abstract and generalise features from repetition of the experience; 5. establish a concept-structure for the percept (eliminating accidental features found in differing circumstances); 6. link the concept-structure to another functional system and to specific patterning there related to the concept; 7. activate the second functional system to produce a uniform response to the concept as instantiated in a particular percept.

          Thus, many of the abilities required for human speech are possessed in some degree by other animals (and particularly birds). If one considers more closely the nature of these abilities, there are certain general features that can be seen. First of all, the very great importance of cross-modal or transfunctional links. In imitation, there is transfunctional linking between visual perception and bodily action, between hearing and articulatory activity; in the discrimination of speech sounds, there is transfunctional linking between hearing and the action response. In the case of concept formation, there is transfunctional linking between vision (or other forms of perception) and action. So, why the animals are not speaking since they are capable of imitation, articulation and concept-formation? The answer is - cerebral reorganisation was decisive for the origin of speechlike communication with the ability to form cross-modal associations. The history of the development of human language then becomes a demonstration of E.M. Forster's words: 'Only connect', and one needs to examine the nature and the progress of this increase in the connections between the various parts of the human brain, which has resulted in the supreme cross-modal device, the linking of experience of the real world to the internal structure of language.

Bibliography.

Ø  “The Physical Foundation of Language”, Robin Allott, R.M. 1973.

Ø “Structural interrelationship of language and the processes underlying visual perception and action.” Paper for Symposium on Glossogenetics, Unesco, Paris. 1983.

Ø “Origins and evolution of language and speech.” H.D. Steklis and J.Lancaster (eds.). 1976.

Ø “The Origin of Language: The General Problem” (Cracow 1986), Robin Allot

Ø “A History of Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom” Andrew Dickson White

Ø David Crystal  “Language and Linguistics”