IN THE BEGINNING: THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE
We simply do not know how language originated. We do not know that spoken language developed well
before written language. Yet, we have no physical evidence relating to the speech of our ancestors and
because of this absence of evidence speculations about the origins of human speech have been
developed.
Danish Linguist Otto Jespersen, “linguistic science cannot refrain forever from asking about the whence
(and about the whither) of linguistic evolution”
It is where speculations about language started.
SPECULATIONS TO THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE
1. Divine gift
a. Judeo-Christian beliefs, God created Adam and gave the power to name all the things.
b. Egyptians – the creator of speech was the god, Thoth.
c. Babylonians – believed that the language giver was the god Nabu
d. Hindu – female god, the wife of Brahma who was the creator of the universe, Sarasvati gave
language to us.
2. Plato
In ancient time, a “legislator” gave the correct, natural name to everything, and that words
echoed the essence of their meanings.
3. Panini
First linguist known who wrote a descriptive grammar of Sanskrit in the fourth century B.C.E that
revealed the earlier pronunciation, which could then be used in religious worship.
4. Greek history
a. Historian Herodotus mentioned Psamtik as an example. During his travel to Egypt,
Herodotus heard that Psammetichus sought to discover the origin of language by
conducting an experiment with two children. Allegedly, he gave two newborn babies to a
shepherd, with the instruction that no one should talk to them, but that the shepherd
should feed and care for them while listening to determine their first words.
b. The hypothesis was that the first word would be uttered in the root language of all people.
c. Bekos- bread, a Phrygian word (older people than the egyptians)
5. King James IV
King James the Fourth of Scotland carried out the same experiment and discovered the children
spoke Hebrew. The Divine Source of Language could not be confirmed.
HUMAN INVENTION OR THE CRIES OF NATURE?
French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposed that the earliest manifestations of language were
“cries of nature”
a. Bow-wow Theory
Primitive words could have been imitations of the natural sounds which early men and
women heard around them. E.g., cuckoo, splash, bang, and boom.
These words echoing natural sounds are called “onomatopoeic words”
The original sounds of language came from natural cries of emotion such as pain, anger
and joy. E.g., ouch! , Ah…
b. Yo-he-ho Theory
The sounds of a person involved in physical effort could be the source of our language.
The importance of yo-he-ho theory is that it places the development of human language
in some SOCIAL CONTEXT.
Early people lived in groups. Groups offered better protection from attack. Groups are
social organization. In a group, communication is required. So human sounds were
produced.
c. The Physical Adaptation Source
The focus is on the biological basis of the formation.
Human teeth, lips, mouth, tongue, larynx, pharynx and brain have been created in such
way to coordinate in producing speech sounds.
d. The Genetic Source
The innateness hypothesis is a linguistic theory of language acquisition which holds that
at least some knowledge about language exists in humans at birth. This hypothesis
supports linguistic nativism and was first proposed by Noam Chomsky.
A human might have (language gene) that makes him speak.
LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Whorf. They claim that the structure of a language influences
how its speakers perceive the world around them is most closely associated.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis holds that the particular language we speak determines or
influences our thoughts and perceptions of the world. Much of the early evidence in support of
this hypothesis has not stood the test of time. More recent experimental studies suggest that
the words and grammar of a language may affect aspects of cognition, such as memory and
categorization.
In 1929, Sapir wrote:
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor in the world of social activity as ordinary
understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium
of expression for their society….we see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do
because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.
Whorf made even stronger claims:
The background linguistic system (in other words, the grammar) of each language is not merely the
reproducing instrument for voicing ideas but rather is itself the shaper of ideas, the program and guide
for the individual’s mental activity, for his analysis of impressions, for his synthesis of his mental stock in
trade … We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages.
Linguistic determinism – the strongest form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis because it holds that the
language, we speak determines how we perceive and think about the world. On this view, language acts
like a filter in reality.
Linguistic relativism – a weaker form of the hypothesis which says that different languages encode
different categories and that speakers of different languages therefore think about the world in different
ways.
At present we do not know if there was a single original language – the monogenetic hypothesis – or
whether language arose independently in several places, or at several times, in human history. Myths of
language origin abound; divine origin and various modes of human invention are the source of these
myths. Language most likely evolved with the human species, possibly in stages, possibly in one giant
leap.
