Origin of language

The origin of language (glottogony) is a topic that has attracted considerable speculation throughout human history. Writing is the most direct evidence of language but it has only been in existence for no more than 5,000 years, much too recent to shed any light on the origins of spoken language. Unlike writing, spoken language leaves no trace. Hence linguists have to resort to indirect methods in trying to decipher the origins of language.

At some stage of human evolution, one or more systems of verbal communication emerged from proto-linguistic or non-linguistic means of communication. Chimpanzees and humans split from a common ancestor 4 million years ago. Since then all other hominids, who may have given clues as to how language developed, have gone extinct. Eurocentric scholars of the 19th century once believed the other languages of the world represented more primitive stages in the development of language and that Indo-European languages were the most advanced form of language. Today linguists agree that there are no primitive languages. All current human populations speak languages that are of equal complexity. While existing languages differ in the size and subjects covered in their several lexicons, all human languages possess the grammar and syntax needed, and can invent, translate, or borrow the vocabulary needed to express the full range of their speakers' concepts.

All humans possess similar linguistic abilities and no child is born with a biological predisposition favoring one language or type of language. Any child that is removed from his or her parents' language community at a young age can acquire natively the language that he or she is exposed to regardless of the parents' native language. The use of language is one of the most conspicuous and diagnostic traits that distinguish H. sapiens from many other animals.

Speech and language

It is necessary to make a minor distinction between speech and language. Speech involves producing sounds from the voicebox. Talking birds, such as some parrots, can imitate human speech but for the most part have little understanding of what they are saying. On the other hand, the deaf do not use speech but are able to communicate effectively using sign language, which is considered a fully modern language. What this entails is that the evolution of modern human language required both the development of the anatomical apparatus and also neurological changes in the brain.

Animal communication

Main article: Animal language

Human language likely developed from some form of animal language. Though all animals use some form of communication researchers generally do not classify their communication as language. However the communication systems of a few animals do share some attributes in common with modern human language.Dolphins using echolocations are able to communicate like humans by calling each other by name.

Primate language

Main article: Great ape language

The great apes are the closest living relatives to humans. Not much is known about great ape communication in the wild, however in captivity they have been taught sign language and also to use lexigrams(keyboards with symbols). Some apes such as Kanzi have been reported to be able to learn several hundred words. However they do lack grammar or syntax. Furthermore the anatomical structure of their larynx does not enable apes to make many of the sounds that humans do..

In the wild, the communication of vervet monkeys has been the most studied. They are known to make up to ten different sounds. Many of these are sounds used to warn other members of the troupe about oncoming predators. These include a "leopard call" , a "snake call" or an "eagle call". Each alarm triggers a different defensive strategy. Scientists were able to elicit predictable responses from the monkeys using loudspeakers and prerecorded sounds. Other sounds may be used for identification. If an infant monkey calls, its mother turns toward it, but other vervet mothers turn instead toward that infant's mother to see what she will do.

Human evolution

The first hominid in the genus homo is homo habilis, who lived 2.5 million years ago. He was succeeded by homo erectus, who arrived about 1.8 million years ago. Erectus dominated the world for the next 1 million years until about 800,000 years ago, when Homo heidelbergensis evolved. Heidelbergensis is considered the direct ancestor of homo neanderthalis. The Neanderthals evolved in Europe about 300,000 years ago. Lastly, homo sapiens evolved in Africa 200,000 years ago.

Archaic humans

There is considerable speculation about the language capabilities of Ancient hominids. Some scholars believe the advent of hominid bipedalism would have brought changes to the human skull, allowing for a more L-shaped vocal tract. The shape of the tract and a Larynx positioned relatively low in the neck are necessary prerequisites for many sounds humans make, particularly vowels. Since hominids have been bipedal for 3.5 million years, this would allow archaic humans to produce some of the vocal abilities similar to humans. Other scholars believe that, based on the position of the larynx, not even the Neanderthals had the anatomy to make the full range of sounds modern humans make .

File:Chimp-vocal-tract.png

Comparison of orangutan, chimpanzee and human vocal anatomy (a–c, respectively). Red indicates the tongue body,yellow the larynx and blue the air sacs (apes only). Note the longer oral cavity and much lower larynx in the humans (c), with concomitant distortion of tongue shape compared with orangutans (a) and chimpanzees (b). These differences allow a much greater range of sounds to be produced by humans, which would have been significant in the evolution of speech.

The recent discovery of a Neanderthal hyoid bone suggested that the Neanderthals may have been anatomically capable of producing sounds similar to modern humans. Studies indicate that by 300,000 years ago the Hypoglossal canal of living hominids had reached the size that exists in modern humans. The Hypoglossal canal transmits nerves to the brain and its size is said to be related to speech abilities. Hominids who lived before 300,000 years ago had Hypoglossal canals more similar to chimpanzees than to humans.

However, though Neanderthals may have been anatomically able to speak, many scholars doubt that they possessed a fully modern language. They largely base their doubts on the fossil record of the archaic humans and their stone tool kit. For 2 million years following the emergence of homo habilis, stone tool technology of later hominids changed very little. Richard G. Klein, who has worked extensively on ancient stone tools, describes the crude stone tool kit of archaic humans as impossible to categorize. It was as if when the Neanderthals went to make a stone tool they weren't really concerned about its final form. Klein uses the analogy of a computer to describe the Neanderthals. Though the hardware was ready, the software required for complex speech had not kicked in. He argues that the Neanderthal brain may have not reached the level of complexity to deliver speech. They cite as evidence the fact that Neanderthal hunting was very inefficient because they had no projectiles. Their population density was very low, possibly indicating a lack of a complex social structure. In addition, they left no art, which is considered evidence of self-awareness. However, some evidence shows that Neanderthals did bury their dead and cared for the elderly and ill.

Anatomical features such as the L-shaped vocal tract have been continuously evolving as opposed to a sudden appearance. This gradual evolution must have taken place for a reason. Even though archaic humans used crude stone technology, it was still more advanced than that of chimpanzees or gorillas. Hence it is most likely that archaic humans possessed some form of communication intermediate between humans and primates.

Modern humans

See also: behavioral modernity

Anatomically modern humans first appear in the fossil record 200,000 years ago in Ethiopia. However, though modern in anatomy, these humans continued to behave just as the hominids who existed before. They used the same crude stones and hunted inefficiently. However, starting at about 100,000 years ago, evidence of more sophisticated behaviour begins to emerge, and by 50,000 years ago fully modern behaviour is noted in various parts of Africa. Stone tools now show regular patterns that are reproduced or duplicated with more precision. Tools made of bone and antler appear for the first time. After 50,000 years Klein notes that he could easily sort the human artifacts into many different categories, such as projectile points, engraving tools, knife blades, and drilling and piercing tools. These new stone tool types have been described as being distinctly differentiated from each other, as if each tool had a specific name. Teaching offspring how to manufacture such detailed tools would have required complex language.

There is still some debate on whether language developed gradually over thousands of years or whether it appeared suddenly. This is because at the 50,000 year mark evidence of modern tools suddenly becomes more abundant. Though hominids had lived around fish in rivers, lakes and oceans for millions of years, there is no undisputed evidence that they fished until 50,000 years ago, when fish hooks made from bone become abundant. Critics of the "sudden appearance" hypothesis argue that materials that fossilize only represent a small fraction of human culture. Items such as wood and bark may equally be used as tools but since they do not fossilize, it is impossible to tell the extent of their use.

According to the Out of Africa hypothesis, around 80,000 years ago a group of humans left Africa and proceeded to colonize the rest of the world, including Australia and the Americas, which were never populated by archaic hominids. (before Homo sapiens, Homo erectus had already colonized all of Eurasia, about one million years ago).

Some scientists believe that Homo sapiens did not leave Africa before that, because they had not yet attained modern brain and language and did not have the skills or the numbers required to migrate.

All human populations from the Australian aboriginals to the Fuegians living at the Southern tip of Argentina possess language. This includes populations, such as the Tasmanian aboriginals or the Andamanese, who may have been isolated from the old world continents by as long as 40,000 years. Thus, the multiregional hypothesis opposing "Out of Africa" would entail that modern languages evolved independently on all the continents, a proposition widely rejected as implausible. Rejecting "multiregional" origin, language must have a common origin, evolving in Africa prior to the dispersal of humans around the world.

Genetic studies have revealed that the San people of the southern Africa were the first group to branch off from the ancestral population and have the oldest mitochondrial DNA lineages. Until recently they may have remained genetically and culturally relatively isolated from other African populations. Their languages are unique in that they employ extensive use of the click consonant. It has been suggested by some scholars, including Merritt Ruhlen that click sounds may have been a component of the first languages.

Monogenesis

Main article: Proto-World language

A related question concerns the possibility of linguistic monogenesis, a hypothesis that holds that there was one single protolanguage (the "Proto-World language" or "Mother Tongue Theory") from which all other languages spoken by humans descend. The linguists Joseph Greenberg and Merritt Ruhlen have advocated such a position. However it remains a controversial hypothesis that many other mainstream scholars have disputed.

According to scientists all humans alive today are descended from a woman named Mitochondrial Eve, who lived in Africa 150,000 years ago. This raises the possibility that if she did speak any language, it would have been the Proto-World language from which all languages are descended. Furthermore, genetic evidence suggests that within the last 100,000 years the human race almost went extinct due to a population bottleneck. Some estimates put the number of humans at no more than 2000 at one point in the last 100,000 years. It has been suggested that the last ice age brought severe drought to Africa. Water was locked in the ice caps, lowering sea levels by about 150 meters and consequently reducing rainfall. The Sahara desert spread, covering a much larger portion of Africa, and tropical rainforests shrank. These severe conditions meant increased competition for scarce food resources and it may have been the catalyst evolutionary changes. Thus natural selection would have favored those hominids who could cooperate and organize themselves to face these challenges. Those humans who did survive may have discovered the benefits of modern language. Once a language was established homo sapiens would spread out of Africa. From that first language, all world languages would eventually be derived.

Proponents of the proto-world language hypothesis include Merritt Ruhlen. They have produced hypothetical reconstructions of the proto-languages of the world's major language families in an attempt to reconstruct the proto world language. However this hypothesis is highly controversial, since many linguists believe that languages change so rapidly that is impossible to reconstruct any language after 10,000 years evolution. Ruhlen contends that similarities found between any two languages can arise by three mechanisms - convergence, borrowing or common origin. Convergence entails that two distant languages can evolve similar sounding words for the same object. Consequently the probability of convergence is relatively low, and it is more likely that the two languages have a common origin. For example the root word "Akwa" for water is found in the proto languages of Eurasiatic, Afro-Asiatic and Amerind languages.

Ruhlen also suggests a common origin from Africa. He argues that Africa has very divergent language families confined to a comparatively small geographic region. The language families include Afro-Asiatic, such as the semitic languages, Niger-Kordofanian languages, the Nilo-Saharan and the Khoisan languages, that use clicks.

In contrast he proposes only one language family for Europe and Asia, the Eurasiatic. This is based on a number of grammatical similarities. For example the Eurasiatic use the pronominal form M/T for "me" and "you" respectively. In English "me" and "thee" and in French "moi" and "te" and in Japanese "mi"[3]. In Amerind, N-words predominate in first person pronouns I/mine/we/ours and M words predominate in thou/thine/you/yours. In Eurasiatic languages K words represent questions, Latin interrogatives begin qu-, such as in quid pro quo. In Finnish, -ko is added to a verb to indicate a question. In Japanese the same role is played by -ka. The word for 'who?' is kim in Turkish, kin in Aleut.

Eurasiatic languages are also characterized by N words that represent negation. For example in Japanese

• wakaru understand
• wakaranai I don't understand.

Thus Ruhlen contends that despite the enormous geographic distribution of Amerind and Eurasiatic languages, each is characterized by a single pattern of the personal pronouns "me" and "you". In Africa the personal pronoun patterns are more diverse, even within single language families. Thus by the age area hypothesis the region of greatest diversity is likely to be the region of origin.

Gestural theory

The gestural theory states that language developed from gestures that were used for communication. During the time language developed, humans lived in social groups, and provided for themselves by hunting and foraging. Some kind of communication system was needed, which was the drive to develop language.

Two types of evidence support this theory.

1. Gestural language and vocal language depend on similar neural systems. The regions on the cortex that are responsible for mouth and hand movements are bordering to each other.
2. Nonhuman primates can use gestures or symbols for at least primitive communication.

Research found strong support for the idea that verbal language and sign language depend on similar neural structures. Patients who used sign language, and who suffered from a left-hemisphere lesion, showed the same disorders with their sign language as vocal patients did with their spoken language. Other researchers found that the same left-hemisphere brain regions were active during sign language as during the use of vocal or written language.

There is also evidence for the use of gestures by primates. The theory assumes that if spoken language evolved from gestures used by our ancestors, those gestures are likely to have been transferred genetically rather than culturally. In this case, the same gestures should still be transferred genetically in humans and should still be found in all human groups, and also apes should use some of this group of gestures. A likely example of this gesture is the begging gesture that both humans and chimpanzees use, with their hands stretched out.

The important question for gestural theories is why there was a shift to vocalizing. There are two likely explanations:

1. Our ancestors started to use more and more tools, meaning that their hands were occupied and could not be used for gesturing.
2. Gesturing requires that both can see each other. There are many situations in which individuals need to communicate even without visual contact, for instance when a predator is closing in on somebody who is up in a tree picking fruit.

Humans still use hand and facial gestures when they speak, especially when people meet who have no language in common.

Pidgins and creoles

See also: creoles

A pidgin is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups who do not share a common language, in situations such as trade. The vocabulary of the pidgin is derived from the shared languages. Each group has its own native language which it uses when communicating within the group. The pidgin would only be used to communicate with members of other groups. The manner in which pidgins develop is of interest in understanding the origin of human language.

Pidgins are generally invented by adults, who have since lost much of the capabilities that young children have to quickly learn a new language. Consequently they are very much simplified languages with rudimentary grammar and restricted vocabulary. In its early stage pidgins mainly consist of nouns, verbs and adjectives with few or no articles, prepositions, conjunctions or auxiliary verbs. The grammar consists of words with no fixed word order and the words have no inflectional endings.

for example a pidgin from Hawaii:

• wai you go dakta?
• Why are you going to the doctor?The pidgin lacks the words "are", "to" and "the".

Pidgins often die out if the two language groups cease to have contact. However, if contact is maintained for longer periods the pidgins may become more complex over many generations. If the children of one generation adopt the pidgin as their native language it develops into a creole language, which in subsequent generations may supplant the original languages it was derived from. The creole then becomes fixed and acquires a more complex grammar, with fixed phonology, syntax, morphology, and syntactic embedding. The syntax and morphology of such languages may often have local innovations not obviously derived from any of the parent languages.

Studies of creole languages around the world have suggested that they display remarkable similarities in grammar and are developed uniformly from pidgins in a single generation. These similarities are apparent even when creoles do not share any common language origins. In addition creoles share similarities despite being developed in isolation from each other. Syntactic similarities of creoles include Subject Verb Object word order. Even when creoles are derived from languages with a different word order they often develop the SVO word order. Creoles tend to have similar usage patterns for definite and indefinite articles, and similar movement rules for phrase structures even when the parent languages do not.

Universal grammar

Since children are largely responsible for creolization of a pidgin, scholars such as Derek Bickerton and Noam Chomsky concluded that humans are born with a Universal grammar hardwired into their brains. This universal grammar consists of a wide range of grammatical models that include all the grammatical systems of worlds' languages. The default settings of this universal grammar are represented by the similarities apparent in creole languages. These default settings are overridden during the process of language acquisition by children to match the local language. When children learn a language they first learn the creole-like features more easily than the features that conflict with creole grammar.

Another issue that is often cited as support for the Universal grammar theory is the recent development of Nicaraguan Sign Language. Beginning in 1979, the recently installed Nicaraguan government initiated the country's first widespread effort to educate deaf children. Prior to this there was no deaf community in the country. A center for special education established a program initially attended by 50 young deaf children. By 1983 the center had 400 students. The center did not have access to teaching facilities of any of the sign languages that are used around the world; consequently, the children were not taught any sign language. The language program instead emphasized spoken Spanish and lipreading, and the use of signs by teachers limited to fingerspelling (using simple signs to sign the alphabet). The program achieved little success, with most students failing to grasp the concept of Spanish words.

The first children who arrived at the center came with only a few crude gestural signs developed within their own families. However, when the children were placed together for the first time they began to build on one another's signs. As more younger children joined the language became more complex. The children's teachers, who were having limited success at communicating with their students, watched in awe as the kids began communicating amongst themselves.

Later the Nicaraguan government would solicit help from Judy Kegl, an American sign-language expert at Northeastern University. As Kegl and other researchers began to analyze the language, they noticed that the young children had taken the pidgin-like form of the older children to a higher level of complexity, with verb agreement and other conventions of grammar .

According to Steven Pinker:

We've been able to see how it is that children, not adults, generate language, and we have been able to record it happening in great scientific detail. And it's the first and only time that we've actually seen a language being created out of thin air.

Idioglossia

There have also been accounts of twins who spoke an unintelligible language that only their sibling understood. These cases are better documented; in the 1970s, the Kennedy twins, whose given names were "Grace" and "Virginia", called each other Poto and Cabengo; it was determined that their idiosyncratic speech was a deeply altered form of English, with some influence from their grandmother's German. It appeared to be a well-formed language, with rules governing grammar and syntax. Similarly idiosyncratic speech patterns were reported from the twin writers June and Jennifer Gibbons.

Even in the absence of the unusual social lives of twins, many people have found it relatively easy and natural to construct new languages, with lexicons either derived from pre-existing languages, or wholly imagined. The author J. R. R. Tolkien and his several languages of Middle-earth is one well known creator; there are many others.

The evolution of language

According to some scholars the progression from animal grunts to fully modern human language may have proceeded as follows. The first step by early hominids would be represented by vervet monkeys, who produce at least ten different sounds under voluntary control. These sounds were once thought to be instinctive reactions, however, studies show that the vervets are known to lie or to fake calls for specific reasons. For example a predator call may be used to break up a fight between two rival groups, sending the vervets running up a tree.

On two occasions during the course of human evolution brain size increased rapidly in a short period, bringing forth a new species. The first was the arrival of homo erectus 1.8 million years ago and the next was the appearance of homo sapiens 500,000 years ago. The increase in brain power would have enabled the hominids to increase their vocabulary, and progress from one word statement to two word or even multiple word statements. Judging by their artifacts the level of communication must have been low but possibly intermediate between humans and primates. Similarly to pidgins it may have consisted of only nouns, verbs and adjectives, with reference only to physical objects. In contrast, half of human speech consists of words that have nothing physical to point to, such as "the", "may" and "by". These include articles, prepositions, conjunctions and auxiliary verbs. Captive apes using lexigrams produce strings of symbols to communicate in a pidgin like manner.

The greatest step would have been the progression from this simplified pidgin like communication to a creole like language with all the grammar and syntax of modern languages. Many scholars believe that this step could only have been accomplished with some biological change to the brain such as a mutation. It has been suggested that the a gene such as FOXP2 may have undergone a mutation allowing humans to communicate. Evidence suggests that this change took place somewhere in Africa around 50,000 years ago, which rapidly brought about significant changes that are apparent in the fossil record. For example the bones of dangerous big game animals such as African buffalo now begin to be discovered in caves after 50,000 years, even though buffaloes were present in abundance. Before that, only Eland bones were found, since Elands are relative docile animals and easy to hunt. However, to lightweight humans, buffaloes are extremely dangerous, requiring the cooperative hunting of a few individuals, and the use of finely constructed projectiles. Such cooperation could have only succeeded with effective communication between group members. A similar pattern is found at later years as humans moved into Europe.

Historical experiments to discover the origin

History contains a number of anecdotes about people who attempted to discover the origin of language by experiment. The first such tale was told by Herodotus, who relates that Pharaoh "Psamtik" (probably Psammetichus I) caused two children to be raised by deaf-mutes; he would see what language they ended up speaking. When the children were brought before him, one of them said something that sounded to the pharaoh like bekos, the Phrygian word for bread. From this, Psamtik concluded that Phrygian was the first language. King James V of Scotland is said to have tried a similar experiment; his children were supposed to have ended up speaking Hebrew. Both the medieval monarch Frederick II and Akbar, a 16th century Mughal emperor of India, are said to have tried a similar experiment; the children involved in these experiments did not speak. [4] [5]

In 1866 the Linguistic Society of Paris banned discussion of the origin of language, deeming it to be an unanswerable problem.

In religion an mythology

Main article: Mythical origins of language

According to Genesis, the observed variety of human languages originated at the Tower of Babel with the confusion of tongues. (Image from Gustave Doré's Illustrated Bible).

Religions and ethnic mythologies often provide explanations for the origin and development of language. Most mythologies do not credit humans with the invention of language, but know of a language of the gods (or, language of God), predating human language. Mystical languages used to communicate with animals or spirits, such as the language of the birds, are also common, and were of particular interest during the Renaissance.

Abrahamic faiths

See also: Divine language and Adamic language

One of the best known examples in the West is the Tower of Babel passage from Genesis in the Bible or Torah. The passage, common to all Abrahamic faiths, tells of God punishing man for the tower's construction by means of the confusion of tongues.

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.^[6]

Local variations of this passage are found to have followed Christian missionaries on their journeys across the world, although the extent to how much of the tradition existed prior to the arrival of the missionaries is still discussed.

A group of people on the island of Hao in Polynesia tell a very similar story to the Tower of Babel, speaking of a God who, "in anger chased the builders away, broke down the building, and changed their language, so that they spoke divers tongues" ^[7].

In the early years of the Soviet Union, it was said that, "with the advent of the spirit of labor, the proletariat could fuse heaven and earth and build god-mankind without suffering the discord of a Confusion of Tongues. Enthusiasm would guarantee universal understanding regardless of language".

Sources

• Cangelosi, A., Greco, A. & Harnad, S. (2002) Symbol Grounding and the Symbolic Theft Hypothesis. In: Cangelosi, A. & Parisi, D. (Eds.) Simulating the Evolution of Language. London, Springer.
• Crystal, David (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. ISBN 0-521-55967-7
• Deacon, T., (1997)The symbolic species: the coevolution of language and the brain, Norton, New York.
• Harnad, S, Steklis, H.D. & Lancaster, J.B. (1976) Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 280.
• M.D. Hauser, N. Chomsky and W.T. Fitch, (2002) The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?, Science 298, pp. 1569–1579.
• Hurford, Jim, Nativist and functional explanations in language acquisition In Logical Issues in Language Acquisition (Roca, I., ed.), pp. 85–136, Holland Foris publications, Dordrecht (1991) [8]
• Pinker, S., (1994) The Language Instinct, HarperCollins, New York (1994).
• Dawkins, R. (2004). All Humankind. In The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life (pp. 36 – 87) ISBN 0-297-82503-8
• "Human language born from ape gestures Cosmos Magazine, 1 May 2007
• Robin Dunbar "Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language", Harvard University Press (October 1, 1998)
• The first human migrations - paleogenetics

See also

• Evolutionary linguistics
• Language acquisition
• Proto-World language
• Sound change
• Human evolution
• Constructed language
• Introspection
• Animal communication