How did language begin?

Answer 1

This question has fascinated people for a long time. Language is essential to the human experience, all human cultures possess language. However, there is obviously no documentation, and all one can do is speculate.

(a) Rousseau (18th-century French philosopher) wrote a book-length essay on the origins of language, but speculations goes much further back.

(b) Even the Hebrew Bible comments on this in an indirect way, attributing the names of all the animals to the very first human being, Adam. The Christian Bible implies that language predates humanity, proclaiming "In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God." (The Hebrew Bible at least implies also that God possessed language before the creation of humanity, since creation is an act of language there: "And God said, 'let there be light'", etc.

(c) When we speak of this, we tend to forget that animals possess language also. My dog, for example, can communicate to me verbally whether she wants to eat or to go outside or to be petted. Scientists keep finding new complexity to animal communication practices. A recent experiment found that certain species of birds place a bird on a high tree whose role is to watch the sky. If a menace is seen, he gives the signal to the rest of the flock. The signal can apparently signal what sort of danger is approaching.

(d) As for human language, I personally believe it is evident that this grew out of the same kind of verbal communication we share with animals, by a process of progressive differentiation. The nature of human anatomy allows us to produce and control a wider range of sounds than most animals, just as our hands allow us a wider range of controlled movements.

(e) There are some 6000 different languages spoken in the world today, but they are dying out largely through loss of habitat as quickly as animal species are dying out. The 6000 languages can be traced back to a small number of parent languages. Almost all the languages native to the broad area between the Atlantic Ocean and the far reaches of India derive from less than two dozen ancient languages (Sanskrit, Latin, Ancient Greek, ...), which themselves derive from a single language which scholars call Proto-indo-European.

(f) Since this parent language evolved into separate entities before writing was invented, there is no tangible evidence for its existence. It can be deduced from the wide-spread parallels between all these languages both in terms of basic vocabulary (such as numbers, kinship terms) and grammar. The languages have evolved to such an extent that their interrelatedness is not evident to the casual observer. However, it is born out in practice: languages which do NOT belong to this vast family (e.g. Japanese, Turkish, any Amerindian language...) will strike even the most polyglot learner as strange and different from anything he is familiar with. I have experienced this myself. The mental categories are just very different. (For example, all I-E languages I know indicate whether an object is singular or plural, whereas in Chinese and Japanese the "number" is usually not indicated; I-E languages indicate the person (I, you, he...) in the verb form, but not gender, the Japanese verb indicates neither person nor gender (verb endings indicate the hierarchical relationship btn the two speakers, which we do not do), and as for Semitic languages, Hebrew and Arabic verbs change their endings according to the gender of the subject.)

--- The family relationships among African and Amerindian languages are less firmly established, partly because less scholarship ahs been devoted to them, and partly because we do not have a written record allowing us to go back to earlier times when they were closer to their parent. However, it is clear that they also can be organized in families descended from a small number of parent languages.

--- Do all the parent languages ultimately derive from one single language, or was human language invented independently in different parts of the world? Scientists are still debating this question.

--- It seems likely to me that the early human activity of hunting must have stimulated the development of language. Hunting is far more efficient when it is done by a coordinated group. The group will often be too distant from each other, and perhaps hidden from sight, to rely purely on hand gestures. From very primitive notions like "attack" or "watch out", humans would have naturally developed more specific terms such as "attack from the left" or "you hide and I attack" or "block the escape while I chase the animal." (As for ordering and buying specific weapons in exchange for food, a scientist has recently observed certain apes doing this also, presumably without the use of "human" language!)

Fascinating question.

Answer 2

The origin of language is still largely a mystery. One theory suggests that language evolved from early humans' need to communicate with one another for survival. Another theory proposes that language developed gradually over time through a series of complex cognitive and social processes. Overall, the exact origins of language remain a subject of ongoing debate and research in the field of linguistics.