The Origins Of Language.pptx
- 1. T h e O r i g i n s O f L a n g u a g e ‘’Where did the language originate from? When did it start and how did it evolve?’’ ➷ The Birth Of Language ➷ The Theories on The Origin Of Language ➷ The Universal Grammar ➷ Q&A’s
- 2. Everything has a beginning. Stories, people, and arguably time all have a beginning, and so does language. But, when and where did human language start evolving? What is the story when it comes to the origin of language? ✪ The Birth Of Language The language dates back to roughly 150,000 years ago. However, all the linguistic evidence dates back to around 6000 years ago, when writing began. Consequently, the major history of language is discovered through guesses and written evidence that is much newer than the era that the linguists study.
- 3. The origin of language can be sub-divided according to some underlying assumptions. There have been a lot of discussions of the origin of language. Some people think that the origin of words is onomatopoeias. Meanwhile, according to expressive theories, the origin of words and language is the innate cries of pain or pleasure produced by nonhuman animals. Others insist that language originated as a means of communication. Another theory holds that a learned vocalization systems, more like birdsong than innate calls, formed a middle term in language evolution. (Araki Naoki, 2017.)
- 4. ✪ Theories On The Origin Of Language ˗ˏˋ꒰Divine source꒱ ˗ˏˋ꒰Natural sound source꒱ ˗ˏˋ꒰The social interaction source꒱ ˗ˏˋ꒰The physical adaptation source꒱ ˗ˏˋ꒰The tool making source꒱ ˗ˏˋ꒰The genetic source꒱
- 5. ➳ Divine source: ꕥ The oldest theory ꕥ Miracle theory ꕥ In Christianity, God gave Adam the kingdom of all animals in the ꕥ Garden of Eden and the first thing Adam did was to name these animals. That is how language started according to religious sources. (A painting of Adam naming the animals by St. Nicholas Anapavsa Monstery )
- 6. ꕥ Today people speak many different languages rather than only one language because ancient humans became too proud and they tried to build the Tower of Babel in order to reach God. So, God punished them by separating their languages (A painting of Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel The Elder)
- 7. ꕥ Herodotuse, the Greek historian, wrote about an Egyptian pharaoh. He had these newborns isolated to see what language they would speak. The language they first spoke was primordial language, and they thought that was the first language. Supposedly their first word was “bread” in Phrygian. This was false however since if you take “bekos” and remove “kos” it just becomes “be” which sounds like the noise a goat makes, proving that the kids weren't speaking any language but just mimicking the goats they were isolated with Frederick the second, king of cecil and germany concluded that children cannot be raised without verbal communication. ꕥ Kings james the fourth also did an experiment. He raised children on the island in Scotland, by mute Women. The children ended up speaking Hebrew However, people are skeptical since similar experiments did not prove the same results
- 8. ➳ Natural Sound Source 1-) Bow-wow Theory: The idea behind it is that the first humans imitated animal sounds in order to refer to a certain animal. For example, when thet heard a dog barking they imitated the ‘’bow-wow’’ sound. ⚠ What's wrong with this theory? Relatively few words are onomatopoeic, and these words vary from one language to another. For instance, a dog's bark is heard as au au in Brazil, ham ham in Albania, and wang, wang in China. In addition, many onomatopoeic words are of recent origin, and not all are derived from natural sounds.
- 9. 2-) pooh-pooh Theory: According to this assumption language originated with the use of sounds that reflect emotions such as pain, fear, hunger, surprise, and the sounds of laughter and crying, etc. For example: Yabba dabba do, Ha Ha, Ouch… And some Turkish examples: Vay, Ayy, Yaa… It coincides with Darwin's theory of evolution, he argued that there was a continuity between monkey and ape vocalization systems and the vocalization systems of humans ⚠ What's wrong with this theory? No language contains very many interjections, and, Crystal points out, "the clicks, intakes of breath, and other noises which are used in this way bear little relationship to the vowels and consonants found in phonology."
- 10. 3-) Ding-Dong Theory: This theory, favored by Plato and Pythagoras, maintains that speech arose in response to the essential qualities of objects in the environment. The original sounds people made were supposedly in harmony with the world around them. For example: Boom, Splash, Peep Peep… ⚠ What's wrong with this theory? Apart from some rare instances of sound symbolism, there is no persuasive evidence, in any language, of an innate connection between sound and meaning.
- 11. ➳ The Social Interaction Source According to this theory, children learn language out of a desire to communicate with the world around them. Language emerges from, and is dependent upon, social interaction. “yo-he-ho” theory: According to this proposal, early human beings used some sounds when they were doing some collaborative work. For example, when they were lifting a huge animal that they hunted, they used sounds to do their task for physical coordination and to reach their message to their friends that they share the burden of their job. It is claimed that these sounds eventually turned out into a language.
- 12. ⚠ What's wrong with this theory? Though this notion may account for some of the rhythmic features of the language, it doesn't go very far in explaining where words come from. As Peter Farb says in "Word Play: What Happens When People Talk" (Vintage, 1993): "All these speculations have serious flaws, and none can withstand the close scrutiny of present knowledge about the structure of language and about the evolution of our species." But does this mean that all questions about the origin of language are unanswerable? Not necessarily. Over the past 20 years, scholars from such diverse fields as genetics, anthropology, and cognitive science have been engaged, as Kenneally says, in "a cross-discipline, multidimensional treasure hunt" to find out how language began. It is, she says, "the hardest problem in science today." As William James remarked, "Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought."
- 13. ➳ The physical adaptation source Unlike human beings, no other species can use language because other animals have a very different physiology than human beings. Modern human beings have vocal tract for speaking. Human mouth is small, which makes it easier to open and close for fast speech production. Human teeth are in upright position and are regular in size, which allows us to produce sounds such as, f and v. Human mouth has a complicated muscle system, which allows us to produce various vowels. Our tongue can move backwards, forwards, up and down. This allows us to produce various speech sounds. In fact without these speech organs, human beings could not have spoken. In addition, to these changes, human brain has gone through a number of changes, it became much bigger and specialized for language. Researchers have claimed that human beings adapted all these physiological changes throughout their history and these changes caused the emergence of human language.
- 14. The larynx or voice box is an organ in the neck housing the vocal folds, which are responsible for phonation. In humans, the larynx is descended, it is positioned lower than in other primates. This is because the evolution of humans to an upright position shifted the head directly above the spinal cord, forcing everything else downward. The repositioning of the larynx resulted in a longer cavity called the pharynx, which is responsible for increasing the range and clarity of the sound being produced. Other primates have almost no pharynx; therefore, their vocal power is significantly lower. Humans are not unique in this respect: goats, dogs, pigs and tamarins lower the larynx temporarily, to emit loud calls. Several deer species have a permanently lowered larynx, which may be lowered still further by males during their roaring displays. Lions, jaguars, cheetahs and domestic cats also do this. However, laryngeal descent in nonhumans (according to Philip Lieberman) is not accompanied by descent of the hyoid; hence the tongue remains horizontal in the oral cavity, preventing it from acting as a pharyngeal articulator.
- 16. ➳ The Tool-Making Source: Humans started making tools and manipulating objects while using both hands. Manual gestures may have been a precursor of language (oral gesture theory). Bringing words together like bringing two rocks together to make a tool. The functions for object manipulation and for speaking are very close to each other in the left hemisphere of the brain. Lateralisation: There may have been an evolutionary connection between the use of tools and the use of language in early humans. This theory allows for structural organisation inherent to all language (even sign languages), not only articulation of sounds to donate objects.
- 17. ➳ The genetic source innateness hypothesis: It proposes that humans are born with a special capacity for language, so language is genetic. Even children who are born deaf become fluent in sign language. There is one gene that may be involved in language, it is known as FOXP2. (The gene FOXP2, was initially identified in 1998 as the genetic cause of a speech disorder in a British family designated the KE family. FOXP2 affects the development of speech and language starting in early childhood.)
- 18. ✪ The Universal Grammar It is the idea that human languages, as superficially diverse as they are, share some fundamental similarities, and that these are attributable to innate principles unique to language: that deep down, there is only one human language. For example, every language has a way to ask a question or make something negative. In addition, every language has a way to identify gender or show that something happened in the past or present.
- 19. Universal grammar is a genetic related theory in which the human brain contains an innate mental grammar, that is basic and common between babies all around the world. ⚠ What's wrong with this theory? Universal grammar has no coherent formulation and is indeed unnecessary. Universal grammar is in conflict with biology: it cannot have evolved by standardly accepted neo-Darwinian evolutionary principles.
- 20. 1-) How did language start according to Christianity? (Hint: Divine source) 2-) What were the changes needed for humans to be able to speak? (Hint: Physical adaptation source) 3-) What is the idea behind the Universal Grammar? And how is it related to the Genetic source?
- 21. ❥ Best Wishes !! 2/B ELT Reva Davut