The Origins

of Languag

e

THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE

1/The Divine sources 2/ The natural sounds source3/ Social interaction source4/The physical adaption source5/ Tool making source 6/ Genetic source

Conlusion

CONTENTS :

The Divine Sourc

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Hindu TraditionLanguage came from Sarasvati, wife of Brahma, creator of the universe.

Base of Divine Source hypothesis

If human babies were allowed to grow up without hearing any language around them, then they would spontaneously begin using the original God-given language.

God-given language

Story of an Egyptian Pharaoh

Egyptian pharaoh named Psammetichus (or Psamtik) who tried the experiment with two newborn babies more than 2,500 years ago. After two years of isolation except for the company of goats and amute shepherd, the children were reported to have spontaneously uttered, not anEgyptian word, but something that was identified as the Phrygian word. King James’ experiment

King James the Fourth of Scotland carried out a similar experiment around the year 1500 and the children were reported to have spontaneously started speaking Hebrew

The natural sound source

When an object flew by , making a caw-caw sound, the early human tried to imitate the sound and used it to refer to the thing associated with the sound.

The fact that all modern languages have some words with pronunciations that seem to echo naturally occurring sounds could be used to support this theory.

The words like cuckoo, splash, bang , boom, rattle, buzz, hiss, screech and forms such as bow-wow.

The beginning of language is concept natural sound

(Bow wow)

Another theory suggests that the original sounds of language may have come from natural cries of emotion such as pain, anger and joy.

The sounds like: Ouch! Ah ! Ooh! Wow! or Yuck!

Basically, the expressive noises people make in emotional reactions

contain sounds that are not otherwise used in speech production

and consequently would seem to be

rather unlikely candidates as source

sounds for language

Social interaction source

The idea is that the sounds of a person involved in physical effort could be the source our language, especially when that physical effort involved several people and the interaction had to be coordinated. For eg: when they were lifting and carrying large bits of trees or lifeless hairy mammoths.

This theory wants to say: the development of human language can be within social context

Early people must have lived in groups, if only because larger groups offered better protection from attack. Groups are necessarily social organizations and ,to maintain those organizations, some form of communication is required

Yo-he-ho theory

But the theory does not fully answer our question as we see same kind of sounds produced by different animals but they can not have speech.

Weaker point of the theory

The Physical

Adaptation Source

Physical features humans possess, especially those that are distinct from other creatures, may have been able to support speech production.

For eg: compare the physically differences between Neanderthal Man with skull f Gorilla...

The Basic Assumption

our ancestors made a very significant transition to an upright posture, with bipedal (on two feet) locomotion, and a revised role for the front limbs.

Teeth ,lips ,mouth ,larynx ,pharynx

The tool-making source

The tool-making source: As early humans’ hands became occupied with tool use, they were less able to use hand gestures, so speech became a necessity

Lateralized brain: each hemisphere of brain has its own functions alternatively

Speech and tool-making : abilities are very close to one another in the left hemisphere (language using and tool using)

Human start using sign but even in sign language we needed organization so we needed our brain to organize the sign. So it is the proceed of language developing.

So we can say that human start using special noise for special object and they star combine these sounds and built complex message.

The Genetic Source

Let’s start this hypothesis with new born babyEven if baby born deaf he start become fluent in sign language!!

So there is something more than physical adaption!!!

Human born with capacity for language. Pre-programmed This hypothesis related to “human genetic” as an important

source of human language.

Turn the investigation from:

origin of language “language gene”

The innateness hypothesis

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