In the Beginning:The Origin of Language

Nothing, no doubt, would be more interesting than to know from historical documents

the exact process by which the first man began to lisp his first words, and thus to be rid

forever of all the theories on the origin of speech.

                                    MAX MÜLLER, Lectures on the Science of Language, 1874

All religions and mythologies contain stories of language origin. Philosophers

through the ages have argued the question. Scholarly works have been written

on the subject. Prizes have been awarded for the “best answer” to this eternally

perplexing problem. Theories of divine origin, language as a human invention,

and evolutionary development have all been put forward.

Linguistic history suggests that spoken languages of the kind that exist

today have been around for tens of thousands of years at the very least, but

the earliest deciphered written records are barely six thousand years old. (The

origin of writing is discussed in chapter 12.) These records appear so late in

the history of the development of language that they provide no clue to its

origin.

Despite the difficulty of finding scientific evidence, speculations on language

origin have provided valuable insights into the nature and development of language,

which prompted the great Danish linguist Otto Jespersen to state that

“linguistic science cannot refrain forever from asking about the whence (and

about the whither) of linguistic evolution.” A brief look at some of these speculative

notions will reveal this point.

Divine Gift

According to Judeo-Christian beliefs, the one deity gave Adam the power to

name all things. Similar beliefs are found throughout the world. According to

the Egyptians, the creator of speech was the god Thoth. Babylonians believed

that the language giver was the god Nabu, and the Hindus attributed our unique

language ability to a female god: Brahma was the creator of the universe, but his

wife Sarasvati gave language to us. Plato held that at some ancient time, a “legislator”

gave the correct, natural name to everything, and that words echoed the

essence of their meanings.

Belief in the divine origin of language is intertwined with the supernatural

properties that have been associated with the spoken word. In many religions

only special languages may be used in prayers and rituals, such as Latin in the

Catholic Church for many centuries. The Hindu priests of the fifth century

b.c.e. believed that the original pronunciation of Vedic Sanskrit was sacred and

must be preserved. This led to important linguistic study because their language

had already changed greatly since the hymns of the Vedas had been written. The

first linguist known to us is Panini, 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. Even today Panini’s deep insights into

the workings of language are highly revered by linguists.

Although myths, customs, and superstitions do not tell us very much about

language origin, they do tell us about the importance ascribed to language.

There is no way to prove or disprove the divine origin of language, just as one

cannot argue scientifically for or against the existence of deities.

The First Language

For millennia, “scientific” experiments have reportedly been devised to verify

particular theories of the first language. The Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus

(664–610 b.c.e.) sought to determine the most primitive language by isolating

two infants in a mountain hut, to be cared for by a mute servant, in the belief

that their first words would be in the original language. They weren’t! History is

replete with similar stories, but as we shall see in chapter 2, all such “experimentation”

on children is unspeakably cruel and utterly worthless.

Nearly all “theories” of language origin, however silly and superstitious, contain

the implicit belief that all languages originated from a single source—the

monogenetic theory of language origin. Opposing this is the proposition that

language arose in several places, or at several times, in the course of history.

Which of these is true is still debated by linguists.

Human Invention or the Cries of Nature?

Language was born in the courting days of mankind; the first utterances of speech I fancy

to myself like something between the nightly love lyrics of puss upon the tiles and the

melodious love songs of the nightingale.

OTTO JESPERSEN, Language, Its Nature, Development, and Origin, 1922

Despite all evidence to the contrary, the idea that the earliest form of language

was imitative, or echoic, was proposed up to the twentieth century. A parallel

view states that language at first consisted of emotional ejaculations of pain, fear,

surprise, pleasure, anger, and so on. French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau

proposed that the earliest manifestations of language were “cries of nature.”

Other hypotheses suggested that language arose out of the rhythmical grunts

of men and women working together, or more charming, that language originated

from song as an expressive rather than a communicative need. Just as with

the beliefs in a divine origin of language, these proposed origins are not verifiable

by scientific means.

Language most likely evolved with the human species, possibly in stages, possibly

in one giant leap. Research by linguists, evolutionary biologists, and neurologists

support this view and the view that from the outset the human animal

was genetically equipped to learn language. 

What We Know about Human Language

Much is unknown about the nature of human languages, their grammars and

use. The science of linguistics is concerned with these questions. Investigations

of linguists and the analyses of spoken languages date back at least to 1600

b.c.e. in Mesopotamia. We have learned a great deal since that time. A number

of facts pertaining to all languages can be stated.

1. Wherever humans exist, language exists.

2. There are no “primitive” languages—all languages are equally complex

and equally capable of expressing any idea. The vocabulary of any language

can be expanded to include new words for new concepts.

3. All languages change through time.

4. The relationships between the sounds and meanings of spoken languages

and between the gestures and meanings of sign languages are for the most

part arbitrary.

5. All human languages use a finite set of discrete sounds or gestures that are

combined to form meaningful elements or words, which themselves may be

combined to form an infinite set of possible sentences.

6. All grammars contain rules of a similar kind for the formation of words

and sentences.

7. Every spoken language includes discrete sound segments, like p, n, or a,

that can all be defined by a finite set of sound properties or features. Every

spoken language has both vowel sounds and consonant sounds.

8. Similar grammatical categories (for example, noun, verb) are found in all

languages.

9. There are universal semantic properties like entailment (one sentence inferring

the truth of another) found in every language in the world.

10. Every language has a way of negating, forming questions, issuing commands,

referring to past or future time, and so on.

11. All languages permit abstractions like goodness, spherical, and skillful.

12. All languages have slang, epithets, taboo words, and euphemisms for them,

such as john for “toilet.”

13. All languages have hypothetical, counterfactual, conditional, unreal, and

fictional utterances; e.g., “If I won the lottery, I would buy a Ferrari,” or

“Harry Potter battled Voldemort with his wand by Hogwarts castle.”

14. All languages exhibit freedom from stimulus; a person can choose to say

anything at any time under any circumstances, or can choose to say nothing

at all.

15. Speakers of all languages are capable of producing and comprehending an

infinite set of sentences. Syntactic universals reveal that every language has

a way of forming sentences such as:

Linguistics is an interesting subject.

I know that linguistics is an interesting subject.

You know that I know that linguistics is an interesting subject.

Cecelia knows that you know that I know that linguistics is an interesting

subject.

Is it a fact that Cecelia knows that you know that I know that linguistics

is an interesting subject?

16. The ability of human beings to acquire, know, and use language is a biologically

based ability rooted in the structure of the human brain, and

expressed in different modalities (spoken or signed).

17. Any normal child, born anywhere in the world, of any racial, geographical,

social, or economic heritage, is capable of learning any language to which

he or she is exposed. The differences among languages are not due to biological

reasons.