All tagged Origins

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, and how it made itself indispensable to humanity has spanned various scientific disciplines, from linguistics to genetics.