unit 1. the origins of language Flashcards
the divine source
there are many theories about how the language started related to religion. in the biblical theory, god gave the knowledge to the human to put name to the animals of the garden. in the hinduism, sarasvasti was a goddess who gave the capacity of speaking to humans.
there are some stories about experiments with newborn kids that are not exposed to human language and growing without it. we can learn two cases from the greek writer herodotus and king james the fourth of scotland.
the experiment of king james of scotland was like one made by an egyptian pharaoh. he had a newborn that was not exposed to human language but it is told that he started to speak in hebrew, something that king james thought because he believed that was the original language of the god’s garden. and of course there is no evidence of this and we can not try this kind of experiments.
the natural sound source
this theory is based on the natural sounds from the environment and how the earlier humans tried to imitate this sounds and creating words.
onomatopoeia
it is a characteristic of a word that is written as the sound is. we have many of words of this kind in many languages but we know that our languages are not just sounds from things of the environment but also abstract things.
the social interaction source
(the “yo-he-ho” theory) theory based on the cries that we produce or joy. for example, if you hit a part of your body with an object or if you feel pain. of course we see this just in these moments of emotions but in the common language spoken is not used.
the physical adaptation source
this theory says that the earlier human set a series of hums, grunts and groans by making efforts and that this in a community used to develop language that is necessary to live in a community.
but we can see too that primates live in communities and used groans and grunts but they have not developed the ability to speak.
this theory is about how human features have been developed through the time and that are different from animals. one of this important develops is the change to and upright posture to be bipedal.
the tool-making source
this theory is based on manual gestures, and it says that this could be a precursor of language.
since thousands and thousands of years there is evidence that human have created many tools, as stone tools, and that we are good at tool-making. in addition, the human has developed the right hand as the most used.
the genetic source
during the time, newborns are developing their bodies passing through an upright position to walk and talk.
this theory established that as humans we have an innate capacity of speaking, more than just development of human features.
scientists are looking for an innate “language gene” for explaining the ability of speaking.
the “bow-wow” theory
in this scenario, when different objects flew by, the early human tried to imitate the sounds and then used them to refer to those objects even when they were not present, and the fact that all modern languages have some words with pronunciation that seem to echo naturally occurring sounds could be used to support this theory.
the “pooh-pooh” theory
this theory by Jespersen proposed that speech developed from the instinctive sounds people make in emotional circumstances. that is, the original sounds of language may have come from natural cries of emotion such as pain, anger and joy.
the musical source
some scholars think that musical ability developed before the ability to create words.
we do have evidence that intonation, and hence (the ability to create melody, develops in the human infant before other aspects of language. our first musical instrument was the human voice, or more specifically, control of the vibration of the vocal folds. control of the respiratory system to produce extended sound was also required.
there are observations that suggest that early humans may indeed have learned and used melody to express themselves before they added words to their songs. however, other creatures also produce songs. one motivation to wonder what prompted humans to go beyond melody and develop a more elaborated means of interacting with each other may have been the need to cooperate.
the innateness hypothesis
it would seem to point out to something in human genetics, possibly a crucial mutation or two, as the source. in the study of human development, a number of gene mutations have been identified that relate to changes in the human diet. these changes are believed to have enhanced blood flow in the brain, creating the conditions for a bigger and more complex brain to develop.
as we consider this hypothesis, we find our speculations about the origins of language moving away from fossil evidence or the physical source of basic human sounds towards analogies with how computers work and concepts have taken from the study of biology and genetics. the investigation of the origins of language then turns into a search for the special “language gene” that only humans possess.
