Making Sense of Theories of Language Origins
From sonnets to speeches to heart-quivering soliloquies, language is endowed with the ability to inspire, infuriate, assimilate, separate, or define the elusive human condition. Language is so much a part of our existence that its presence can slip under the beams of our attention, but its structure, its acquisition, and its origins have been the subject of intense debate among linguists for innumerable generations. Here, we will excavate this final question of language – its origins. This is because the machine that is language, how it made itself indispensable to humanity has spanned various scientific disciplines, from linguistics to genetics.
There are a great many questions associated with the emergence of language. Roughly when this skill appeared in our lineage is controversial, with estimates ranging from 20,000 years (Douglas) to as far back as four million years (Boeree). Of special importance as well is whether or not our close relatives the Neandertals possessed the power of speech. And did language appear in a single group and spread – called the theory of monogenesis – or did it sprout independently across many societies – the theory of polygenesis (Boeree)? Was the process the result of gradual or relatively fast natural selection?
Some researchers favor the notion of a faster sexual selection. University of Tokyo scientist Kazuo Okanoya works with Bengalese finches and their songs as his models, and has advanced the theory that our ancestors underwent self-domestication, which enabled more time for mate-based selection in which language emerged through these pressures (Douglas). In this case, domestication is a process of “genetic changes that arises as a species is bred to be friendlier and less aggressive” (Price). Thus self-domestication is a possible road taken by our ancestors to create tighter-knit, less aggressive communities, communities with the possibility for reproducing individuals to focus their efforts on appealing to potential mates as opposed to survival. This is one of the handful of theories that we will see throughout this article.
Before we proceed into the theories of linguistic origins, it is necessary to define language as it relates to other animal communication. This distinction is vital as researchers puzzle together whether human language evolved from this animal communication or else is a discrete human organ unrelated to things such as birdsong (as Noam Chomsky postulated).
From linguist to linguist, we see numerous definitions of what delineates speech from communication. Compared to animals, human language features affirmation and negation (the distinction between I go to the store and I do not go to the store), arbitrariness, and cultural transmission. Arbitrariness refers to the fact that there is no real reason that a ball must consist of the phonemes of the word b-a-l. In other languages, the concept of a round object used for play may be rendered with the sounds of k-u-r-a (Arabic) or b-a-l-t-i (Icelandic). Cultural transmission states that a specific language is not genetically encoded, meaning that the language of the parents is learned by the offspring. For example, if the parents speak French, their child will not spontaneously speak French if she is exposed to a different language growing up and learning to speak.
Classical theories of origins, as assembled by Max Müller and George Romanes (Boeree) in the 19th century feature whimsical titles, but their suppositions have held sway over many years. Some of these theories include:
The ding-dong theory, which states that there is a correlation between sound and meaning. As Boeree points out, objects that are small or even teeny tend to be represented with high front vowels across languages (much like the word teeny); likewise, larger object descriptors such as huge are frequently represented with back vowels (/u/). This is otherwise known as sound symbolism.
The bow-wow theory, wherein humans began to imitate the sounds of nature, as in onomatopoeia.
The pooh-pooh theory, which theorizes that language originated in “emotive” sounds such as a cry of pain or surprise.
The gesture theory, which simply asserts that gesture proceeded vocalization. We will see more of this below in the 2021 article by Burkhardt-Reed and colleagues.
Let us transition next to some more contemporary research published in academic journals. Beginning with Aboitiz and García (1997), who argued for a gradual development of language. In their article, they outlined the neuroanatomical evidence of this, directly contradicting the modular hypothesis of language proposed by Chomsky. Throughout their piece, the authors theorize that rather than highly discrete organs in the brain devoted solely to language (these two “organs” are Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area), we see instead great interconnectivity in different parts of the brain, including centers that control working memory. “One of our main suggestions,” they write, “is that selective pressure for the capacity to learn complex vocalizations through imitation and repeated practice was a key aspect in establishing a phonological working memory system that allowed to temporarily store phonological representations in order to rehearse them internally.” In other words, there is an intercortical dimension to language. There is more to language than Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area; there are more connections and more higher-level processes involved.
Next, we can examine the experimental research of Burkhardt-Reed and colleagues, which narrowed in on the role of development as a window into evolution. These authors focused on whether infants acquiring their first language used meaningful gestures (such as pointing) more than meaningful vocalizations across their first year of life. This sheds light on the question of language origins via demonstrating that widespread evolution is forged by developmental patterns, thus this is directly asking the question of whether gesture or vocalizations were the first human communicative acts.
The results of their experiment, which involved filming ten children at three points throughout that first year, showed that protophones (pre-language but meaningful sounds) outnumbered gestures quite dramatically. Thus their assertion is that language began with vocalizations, not gestures.
Our last journal article, authored by Ferretti and associates (2017), explores their hypothesis that language appeared as a way to tell stories. They theorize that human ancestors, identified as Homo narrans, had the cognitive substrates to devise narratives before they were able to fashion distinct sounds into language.
Working with the concept of Mental Time Travel – human capability of projecting ourselves across time, imagining ourselves in the future or past – they state that we evolved two separate capacities, Episodic Memory (recalling the past) and Episodic Future Thinking (envisioning ourselves). Episodic Memory and Episodic Future Thinking are essential in the craft of narratives, and Ferretti et al. suggest that these capacities include being able to project the Mental Time Travel of separate individuals. Humans have a well-developed facility to predict the actions of others. “If the ability to tell stories is the skill that distinguishes humans from other animals, the cognitive systems of our ancestral relatives had to be able to process information differently…” (Ferretti et al.). The authors note, however, that there is controversy as to whether or not Mental Time Travel is uniquely human. Nonetheless, these researchers locate the beginning of non-language storytelling in pantomime, which they define as a nonverbal transmission via gesture that is “communicatively complex.” In this case, they make a strong assertion that pantomime is human.
To conclude our survey of theories of language origins, it is essential to point out that the emergence of language continues to fascinate and mystify the diverse group of researchers who attempt to tackle this question. Language is at the center of what it means to be human, and therefore it is eternally the object of speculation. However, this is what is exciting about the scientific inquiry into what makes our species what it is: Because to understand our past is to understand who we are and where we are going.
References
Aboitiz, F. & García, R. (1997). The evolutionary origin of language in the human brain. A neuroanatomical perspective. Brain Research Reviews, 25, 381 – 396.
Boeree, C. G. (2003). The origins of language. Shippensburg University. https://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/langorigins.html
Burkhardt-Reed, M.M., Long, H.L., Bowman, D.D., Bene, E.R., & Oller, D.K. (2021). The origin of language and relative role of voice and gesture in early communication development. Infant Behavior and Development, 65, 1 – 13.
Douglas, K. (2014, February 8). The finch whisperers. New Scientist.
Ferretti, F., Adornetti, I., Chiera, A., Nicchiarelli, S., Magni, R., Valeri, G., & Marini, A. (2017).
Mental time travel and language evolution: A narrative account of the origins of human communication. Language Science, 63, 105 – 118.
Price, M. (2019, December 4). Early humans domesticated themselves, new genetic evidence suggests. Science.
