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The Evolution of Language – Unit 1

DP English A Language and Literature K Brotherton 2012

Unit 1 – Readings

The Evolution of

Language Grade 11

Higher Level: 2nd -20th of September 2012

Standard Level: 2nd -27th September 2012

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=old+english+text&hl=en&sa=X&gbv=2&biw=1024&bih=651&tbm=isch&tbnid=v0JTdZDv1uCrOM:&imgrefurl=http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/culture/english-language/old-english-modern-english&docid=eu-xA6SX3PeyjM&imgurl=http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/images/Beowulfpage.jpeg&w=453&h=720&ei=u32WT5_ELtT78QOy6K2RCg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=755&vpy=236&dur=1611&hovh=283&hovw=178&tx=101&ty=115&sig=112892001458230229697&page=1&tbnh=133&tbnw=84&start=0&ndsp=17&ved=1t:429,r:9,s:0,i:111



The impact of technology on the English language

by Paul Parry on July 28, 2010

Here are some statistics for you:

■More people currently have a mobile phone capable of accessing the internet than have a PC with

net access (source: Mobile Top Level Domain, the organisation charged with overseeing the ‘.mobi’

domain name registration)

■Sending text messages is now almost as common as talking on mobile phones

■Only 12% of mobile users never use their phone for texting (and virtually half of these people are

over 65).

■70% of 15-24 year-olds say they ‘could not live’ without their mobile phone

■There are an estimated 110 million-150 million blogs in existence (although many of these are

abandoned soon after they are established)

Technology’s role in our lives is astonishing. Its effect on the way we communicate has changed the

English language forever.

To be more specific, the way we speak today is, by and large, the way we spoke before the internet

became what it is, albeit with an enriched vocabulary. Conventions of telephone conversations have,

to my mind, changed little: we still use the same methods – if not words – to greet and sign off, for

example.

What is hugely different, however, is the way we write today. That is the area where technology has

had the biggest impact.

Email altered the structure of the letter as a communicative tool. It brought with it a whole new

etiquette, as well as new conventions and new abbreviations, such as IMO (in my opinion), FWIW

(for what it’s worth), IIRC (if I remember correctly) and FYI (for your information).

And it introduced the idea that WORDS IN UPPER CASE MEAN WE ARE SHOUTING, while lower case

writing is the accepted form.

But email English is nothing compared to the impact upon language driven by mobile phone users.

The rate and extent of change this has had is truly astounding.

The way we write our text messages is now so widely accepted that it has infiltrated mainstream

advertising. Here are two examples I can think of immediately:



Virgin Media, the British company, ran a campaign several months ago for its provision of broadband

(or Brdbnd, as it called it) and, a little more locally to me, a council campaign advised us: ‘Dnt B

Wstfl’.

And then we have the meteoric rise of blogging. There are now well over 100million blogs

worldwide. Add to that the even-more-baffling growth of the key social networking websites –

MySpace, Bebo, Facebook – and we start to see the whole picture. The watch-words today are ‘user-

generated content’ (UGC).

So, to sum up…email + texting + blogging + social networking sites = people writing more how they

speak and less like they used to write. And, essentially, less like they had to write – either for a boss,

a parent or a teacher.

Also, let’s remember one of the basic driving elements in this transition: the screen size of mobile

phones is small and, therefore, text messaging was always, by default, short. And short, inevitably,

becomes shorter.

People frequently writing the same things would reduce the length of those words and phrases so

that the meaning remained intact while the effort required to communicate – and the amount of

screen space used – were both minimised.

So why have I written numerous ebooks, articles and tips offering help for better writing and

detailing the intricacies of English grammar?

Because while mainstream, digital communication alters language use, it does not eradicate the

traditional; it merely sits alongside convention. And there are plenty of people who are still

interested in English as we have known it since before the 1990s, when mobiles and Messrs Page

and Brin (Google’s founders) came to prominence.

And of course, if there were no rules in the first place, where would we be now? Gd only knws.



January 16, 2010

Experts Divided Over Internet Changes to Language

Rachel Abrams | Los Angeles

Since the first web browser appeared on computer screens in 1994, the Internet has radically

changed global communication. With instant access to messaging and email, the ability to circulate

commentary and opinion has revolutionized the way people communicate. This has had an affect on

language and writing, but people still debate the scope of these changes, and whether or not they're

for the better.

Eleanor Johnson is a professor in the English and Comparative literature department at Columbia

University who attributes a growing misuse of language to the explosion of electronic

communication.

"I think that text messaging has made students believe that it's far more acceptable than it actually

is to just make screamingly atrocious spelling and grammatical errors," she said.

Johnson says that her students, over the past several years, have increasingly used a more informal

English vocabulary in formal assignments. University-level research papers, she says, are now being

peppered with casual phrases like "you know" and words like "guy" informal usages that were

absent almost a decade ago. She attributes the change to instant and casual communication. She's

also seen an increase in incorrect word use, with students reaching for a word that sounds correct,

whose proper meaning is just a bit off from what they intend to say.

"For instance, using the word 'preclude' to mean 'precede.' Yeah, it sounds like 'precede,' but it

means 'prevent.' And yet 'preclude' is not a particularly erudite term. It just sounds a tiny bit fancier

than precede and actually means something totally different," she said.

Johnson says this kind of inaccurate word choice is happening so often now that she devotes a

section of her class to the problem.

David Crystal is a British linguist and author of over 100 books, including 2001's Language and the

Internet. Crystal says the dynamic nature of the Internet makes it difficult for comprehensive

analysis of its effects to stay up-to-date. He had to revise the book in 2006 to keep up with the

changing technology. But Crystal believes that the impact of the worldwide web on language

remains minimal. "When we look at the specific effect of the Internet on language, languages asking

the question, has English become a different language as a result of the Internet, the answer has to

be no," he said.

Crystal says linguistic changes caused by the Internet run parallel to changes in the existing lexicon.

What we are not seeing is an alteration, but additions to the language. Crystal also points to several

studies by scholars of the Coventry University in England and University of Washington that support

the same theme.



"The main effect of the Internet on language has been to increase the expressive richness of

language, providing the language with a new set of communicative dimensions that haven't existed

in the past," he said.

Erin Jansen, founder of Netlingo, an online dictionary of Internet and text messaging terms, also

says the new technology has not fundamentally changed existing language but added immensely to

the vocabulary. Jansen has worked in the Internet industry since 1994 and agrees with Crystal that

what we're seeing is more ways to use language to communicate.

"Basically it's a freedom of expression," she said.

Jansen says that while she has heard from frustrated educators about the new kinds of mistakes in

spelling and grammar in student work, the expanding means of expression brings benefits to the

classroom as well.

"I always advocate, don't get angry or upset about that, get creative. If it's helping the kids write

more or communicate more in their first draft, that's great, that's what teachers and educators

want, to get students communicating," she said.

Both Crystal and Jansen point to email as an example of people misunderstanding the Internet's

overall effect. They say that electronic mail is often informal, and so many people do not use proper

spelling or grammar. But they say this is more a reflection on the nature of the message then the

writer's ability to use language correctly.

"If you say, just because I'm using abbreviated forms, as I do, and change my punctuation, as I do,

when I'm sending email, that it's affecting the rest of my written language, that, I'm afraid, simply

doesn't happen," he said.

While Eleanor Johnson believes there is a strong connection between widespread mistakes in writing

and Internet usage, she concedes that the scientific evidence might not exist yet to confirm her

suspicions. As an educator, however, Johnson says that there is no other widespread cultural

innovation to explain the radical shift in language usage she's seen over the past few years.

While the Internet's use of language might change rapidly over the next few years, Johnson, Crystal

and Jansen all point out that educators need to ensure that students maintain an academic

understanding of the use and rules of language.

"One of the biggest things that should happen in relation to the Internet is that kids and adults, too,

should be taught to manage it," he said.



The evolution of the English language

Love it or loath it, the English language is evolving, says Christopher Howse.

The Evolution of English. Language is there to be played with, and a game is not worth playing

without rules

By Christopher Howse

The Telegraph

7:00AM BST 29 Oct 2010

What is the most annoying thing you hear people say? “I was sat”, or “between you and I”, or “for

free” or “Can I get a coffee?” or controversy stressed on the wrong syllable, or perhaps simply the

name of the letter aitch pronounced “haitch”?

It does seem odd that other people cannot speak their own language properly and so career (or

careen as foolish folk say) like wildebeest into the crocodile-infested shallows of the latest wrong

turning of the English language. This is of more than amateur interest.

Untouchables in India, as we reported yesterday, are to open a temple to the Goddess English. It will

contain an idol of Lord Macaulay. This has put the cat among the pigeons, for Macaulay, when he

went to India in 1834, took no interest in Indian literature or antiquities except as evidence of the

superiority of all things European.

His Minute on Indian Education urged upon the colonial administration the wisdom of establishing

“a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in

intellect” to be made fit for “conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population”.

No wonder many Indian nationalists revile the name of Thomas Babington Macaulay. Yet the

argument put forward by his nephew George Trevelyan in The Competition Wallah (1864) is the

same as that of one of the leaders of today’s Untouchables, Chandra Bhan Prasad: “We believe

English is an empowering language.”

Transfer the argument to Britain, and what do you get? A cast of academics, sociologists and

educationists on one side who declare that one child’s pronunciation is as valid as the teacher’s, that

spelling doesn’t count, and that English classes are valuably spent in composing rap lyrics. These

politically correct forces are equivalent to Indian Nationalists who wouldn’t dream of calling the

Indian Mutiny anything but the First War of Independence.

On the other side are teachers, employers and media columnists who agree with the Untouchables

(whom we must call Dalits today). They know that a child in Bradford or Southwark will never get a



good job unless he spells the words in a letter of application correctly, can string two sentences

together in an interview without lapsing into: “It was, like, massive.” (By he, they mean “he or she”,

to the rage of those for whom so-called inclusive language is to be as inviolable as the virtue of a

Victorian maiden.)

Which side of the argument, then, is supported by these typical hip-hop lyrics from the song Take

Me Back by the popular Tinchy Stryder? “Look I know you got played and that, /And it’s only right

you ain’t feeling let alone rating that, / But babe it’s a fact you on with the latest map / I had to live

by that I spend night in your bredrin’s flat.”

Mr Stryder’s real name is Kwasi Danquah, for he was born in Ghana. His English forms part of that

global tongue being celebrated in a big exhibition called Evolving English: One Language, Many

Voices at the British Library. A two-and-a-half hour event at the end of November linked to the

exhibition is called “Voices of rap and hip hop”. The evening includes “a discussion of how words

impact at street level”. It is already sold out.

But of course, Tinchy Stryder’s lyrical language is not Ghanaian English. He was educated at St

Bonaventure’s Catholic Comprehensive School in Forest Gate, once in Essex, now in the London

Borough of Newham. His lyrics are not in the English of Essex (which centuries ago influenced so

strongly the language of the court, and hence that of the upper classes).

No, Tinchy Stryder’s argot is carefully acquired from the mixture of West Indian dialects and the

black gangsta slang of the United States.

Enjoy it or loathe it, hip-hop lingo is a cultural construct. In this it is identical with the sporting slang

embraced by the fast set at Oxford in the 1840s, as retailed in the bestselling Adventures of Mr

Verdant Green (1853). “There’s a squelcher in the bread-basket that’ll stop your dancing, my kivey,”

exclaims their pugilistic hero during a Town and Gown punch-up.

Of course, the language of Tinchy Stryder is as much to do with class as that of Verdant Green’s

fashionable sportsmen. The funniest sketch in the Armstrong and Miller show on television depicts

in black and white two wartime RAF pilots conversing in clipped tones, but with the vocabulary of

street bredren: “Hurricane pilots are, like, you know – their Mums go down the chippie in their

slippers. Isn’it?” Class has changed.

“See this creature with her kerbstone English,” says Henry Higgins of Eliza in Pygmalion, “ – the

English that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days.” Today, Higgins, the practical

phonetician, would be booked up months ahead, bringing down the patrician accents of the Ed

Stourtons of this world a social notch or two, to make them acceptable to déclassé employers.

As for politicians, their idiolects are now as awash with glottal stops as high tide in Canvey Island. Ed

Balls was educated at Oxford and Harvard, but there’s no’ a lo’ of evidence in his pronunciation. The

Conservatives are as bad in their profligate manipulation of the upper trachaea to produce this

substitute for orthodox consonants. Henry Higgins himself could hardly detect traces of George

Osborne’s roots in the Irish Ascendancy or his studious hours in the schoolrooms of St Paul’s and the

lecture rooms of Magdalen, if Magdalen has lecture rooms. Mr Osborne might look like the dastardly

baronet of Victorian melodrama, but he talks like a Brentwood boy from the HR department.



It’s funny that politicians feel they have to do this in order to get on. Tony Blair is much to blame for

the trend, gliding as he did in his actor’s way into what he imagined was the speech pattern of the

audience before him. But if politicos are so linguistically sensitive to the imagined sensibilities of

class, how is that they talk such awful bilge by way of administrators’ jargon. It’s worse than

management-speak. They are forever rolling out flagship proposals and rafts of measures, or

delivering targets on renewables, going forward.

That is a disease of the mind far more alarming than dropping your t’s or over-aspirating your

aitches. That is not to say pronunciation doesn’t matter. I have on the shelf beside me Broadcast

English, first published in 1928 as the fruit of a committee that included Robert Bridges (the Poet

Laureate), George Bernard Shaw, and Professor Daniel Jones (the phonetician who inspired Shaw’s

Henry Higgins). In 51 pages it lists some “recommendations to announcers regarding certain words

of doubtful pronunciation”.

Among them are the still troublesome kilometre, which they correctly recommended to be stressed

(with the stress-mark before the stressed syllable): 'kilometre. It is hard to think that fabric, florist,

thug, legend and fragile were “words of doubtful pronunciation”, but there they are. Would we now

agree, though, with the pronunciations represented by 'pomgrannat, 'vaitamin, swayve, shee (for

ski), kwaaf (for quaff), 'flaksid (for flaccid), 'gibberish with a hard g, 'cundit (for conduit), arti'san or

'teenet (for tenet)?

I have never met anyone who pronounces ski as shee. If someone did, interlocutors might be

puzzled. On the other hand, most people pronounce flaccid as flassid, and they ought not to. These

things matter.

That is why some listeners to Today yesterday morning detected a certain trahison des clercs in the

moderate opinions of Professor John Wells, the successor of Daniel Jones (alias Henry Higgins) at

University College, London. He wouldn’t say kil'ometre himself, he admitted, but that was because

he was getting on a bit. (He is 71.) He knew better than to say mischievious, but he breathed no

word of criticism of those who did.

Professor Wells also knows enough to realise that if all the world says ski or kil'ometre, there is

nothing that can be done about it. That will not stop us all playing the game of spotting our least

favourite pronunciations and perhaps subjecting the perpetrators to excoriating (or coruscating as

people say by mistake) criticism.

For my taste, the Mrs Grundies of the Queen’s English Society, for example, protest too much. But

language is there to be played with, and a game is not worth playing without rules.



History of the English Language

A short history of the origins and development of English

The history of the English language really started with the arrival of three Germanic tribes

who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. These tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the

Jutes, crossed the North Sea from what today is Denmark and northern Germany. At that time

the inhabitants of Britain spoke a Celtic language. But most of the Celtic speakers were

pushed west and north by the invaders - mainly into what is now Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

The Angles came from Englaland and their language was called Englisc - from which the

words England and English are derived.

Germanic invaders entered Britain on the east and south coasts in the 5th century.

Old English (450-1100 AD)



The invading Germanic tribes spoke similar

languages, which in Britain developed into

what we now call Old English. Old English did not sound or look like English today. Native

English speakers now would have great difficulty understanding Old English. Nevertheless,

about half of the most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots. The

words be, strong and water, for example, derive from Old English. Old English was spoken

until around 1100.

Middle English (1100-1500)

In 1066 William the Conqueror, the Duke of

Normandy (part of modern France), invaded

and conquered England. The new conquerors

(called the Normans) brought with them a

kind of French, which became the language

of the Royal Court, and the ruling and

business classes. For a period there was a

kind of linguistic class division, where the

lower classes spoke English and the upper

classes spoke French. In the 14th century

English became dominant in Britain again,

but with many French words added. This

language is called Middle English. It was the

language of the great poet Chaucer (c1340-

1400), but it would still be difficult for native

English speakers to understand today.

Modern English

Early Modern English (1500-1800)

Towards the end of Middle English, a sudden and distinct change in pronunciation (the Great

Vowel Shift) started, with vowels being pronounced shorter and shorter. From the 16th

century the British had contact with many peoples from around the world.

Part of Beowulf, a poem written in Old English.

An example of Middle English by Chaucer.



This, and the Renaissance of Classical

learning, meant that many new words and

phrases entered the language. The invention

of printing also meant that there was now a

common language in print. Books became

cheaper and more people learned to read.

Printing also brought standardization to

English. Spelling and grammar became fixed,

and the dialect of London, where most

publishing houses were, became the standard.

In 1604 the first English dictionary was

published.

Late Modern English (1800-Present)

The main difference between Early Modern

English and Late Modern English is

vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from two principal factors:

firstly, the Industrial Revolution and technology created a need for new words; secondly, the

British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the earth's surface, and the English

language adopted foreign words from many countries.

Varieties of English

From around 1600, the English colonization of North America resulted in the creation of a

distinct American variety of English. Some English pronunciations and words "froze" when

they reached America. In some ways, American English is more like the English of

Shakespeare than modern British English is. Some expressions that the British call

"Americanisms" are in fact original British expressions that were preserved in the colonies

while lost for a time in Britain (for example trash for rubbish, loan as a verb instead of lend,

and fall for autumn; another example, frame-up, was re-imported into Britain through

Hollywood gangster movies). Spanish also had an influence on American English (and

subsequently British English), with words like canyon, ranch, stampede and vigilante being

examples of Spanish words that entered English through the settlement of the American

West. French words (through Louisiana) and West African words (through the slave trade)

also influenced American English (and so, to an extent, British English).

Today, American English is particularly influential, due to the USA's dominance of cinema,

television, popular music, trade and technology (including the Internet). But there are many

other varieties of English around the world, including for example Australian English, New

Zealand English, Canadian English, South African English, Indian English and Caribbean

English.

Hamlet's famous "To be, or not to be" lines, written in

Early Modern English by Shakespeare.



The Germanic Family of Languages

English is a member of the Germanic family of languages.

Germanic is a branch of the Indo-European language family.

A brief chronology of English

55 BC Roman invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar. Local inhabitants

speak Celtish AD 43 Roman invasion and occupation. Beginning of Roman

rule of Britain.

436 Roman withdrawal from Britain complete.

449 Settlement of Britain by Germanic invaders begins

450-480 Earliest known Old English inscriptions. Old English

1066 William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, invades and

conquers England.

c1150 Earliest surviving manuscripts in Middle English. Middle English

1348 English replaces Latin as the language of instruction in

most schools.

1362 English replaces French as the language of law. English

is used in Parliament for the first time.

c1388 Chaucer starts writing The Canterbury Tales.

c1400 The Great Vowel Shift begins.

1476 William Caxton establishes the first English printing

press.

Early Modern

English

1564 Shakespeare is born.

1604 Table Alphabeticall, the first English dictionary, is

published.

1607 The first permanent English settlement in the New World

(Jamestown) is established.

1616 Shakespeare dies.

1623 Shakespeare's First Folio is published

1702 The first daily English-language newspaper, The Daily

Courant, is published in London.

1755 Samuel Johnson publishes his English dictionary.

1776 Thomas Jefferson writes the American Declaration of

Independence.

1782 Britain abandons its colonies in what is later to become

the USA.

1828 Webster publishes his American English dictionary. Late Modern English

http://www.englishclub.com/esl-forums/viewtopic.php?f=235&t=50476



1922 The British Broadcasting Corporation is founded.

1928 The Oxford English Dictionary is published.



20 December 2010 Last updated at 01:04 GMT

How English evolved into a global language

Michael Rosen

As the British Library charts the evolution of English in a new major exhibition, author

Michael Rosen gives a brief history of a language that has grown to world domination with

phrases such as "cool" and "go to it".

The need for an international language has always existed. In the past it was about religion

and intellectual debate. With the technologies of today, it's about communicating with others

anywhere in the world in a matter of moments.

Two events, separated by nearly 400 years, show how this need has always been present.

Firstly, sitting in front of me I have a copy of the celebrated book Utopia, by Sir Thomas

More. This particular edition is published in 1629 in Amsterdam, not in English, not in Dutch,

but in Latin.

The second event was a talk I recently had with a German scientist. He said that he knew of

scientific conferences taking place in Germany, where all the people attending were German

and yet the conference was conducted in English.

Pride

The Latin of this edition of Utopia was a written code, though its most accomplished users

could adopt it to conduct intellectual and religious debate.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=g9_GdKoTihwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=utopia+thomas+more&source=bl&ots=uVb5q6aAnx&sig=VFV0HHtr_6grjuYFwyRjkqgcV9Q&hl=en&ei=TjsPTfiXJIqAhQfgluG3Dg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=g9_GdKoTihwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=utopia+thomas+more&source=bl&ots=uVb5q6aAnx&sig=VFV0HHtr_6grjuYFwyRjkqgcV9Q&hl=en&ei=TjsPTfiXJIqAhQfgluG3Dg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false



“The technologies of telephones, radio, TV, records, CDs, mobile phones and the

internet have enabled most people in the world to get access to each other's language

in a matter of moments”

During the previous 1,300 years it had been the main language of the Western Christian

tradition - the language of prayer, hymn, sacred texts and religious debate. It was also the

language with which Renaissance scientists spoke to each other.

However, this hold on religious and intellectual minds was broken by the rise of national

cultures. The peoples of the countries where Latin was being used, spoke their own

languages and dialects.

Once these came to be written down, more and more people started to ask their churches

and religious authorities to speak, write and deliver some, most, or all religion in those local

languages.

Two of the most famous texts to come out of this was the King James Bible (soon to

celebrate its 400th birthday) and Martin Luther's German Bible, from a little less than 100

years earlier than the King James.

Part of this process to establish the power and influence of these local languages was the

effort to produce standardised forms for them, so that teachers, merchants, lawyers,

ministers of religion and politicians could write to and for each other in ways that were

instantly comprehensible.

This seemed then, and now, to require consistent ways of presenting the language on the

page - spelling and punctuation - and consistent ways of delivering the grammar of the

words and sentences.

As a result, standardised English writing became a powerful tool in the hands of government,

church and school in asking the peoples of the British Isles to see themselves as one.

Esperanto

But nation went on speaking to nation in peace, war, trade, migration, religion and the world

of ideas. A lot of effort went into the production of foreign language dictionaries, grammars

and translations of important, or the most interesting books.

Throughout this time one of the most significant events in the history of world languages was

happening: English-speaking soldiers, sailors and colonisers were travelling to, and settling

in countries right the way across the globe.

Only in the places that either kept their independence or where the Spanish, Portuguese,

French, and Dutch had done the same, was English not spoken.

If the 20th Century can be described as a savage flowering of the demands of nationalism -

including pride in national languages and literature - it also saw the rise of utopian dreams

about international co-operation as seen first by the League of Nations and then the United

Nations.

http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/



However, in these places it wasn't so much that nation spoke unto nation, as interpreter

spoke unto interpreter. In response, inventors of international languages tried to bring about

world peace with their inventions, the most famous of which is Esperanto. It didn't catch on

sufficiently for the world's politicians to need or want to learn it.

Slowly, another international language emerged, spoken by diplomats, scientists, artists,

business people and many more. Benefiting from the legacy of the British Empire, and the

rise in influence of the most powerful member of that Empire - the USA - English (or kinds of

English) is being spoken all over the globe.

In truth, they speak what the linguist David Crystal calls "Englishes", though some ways of

talking are what have been called "creoles", "pidgins" and "patois". I was watching an

Austrian pop music channel recently and the comments and ads were in an Anglo-German

Creole whose core was German, but which was full of "go to it", "cool", "be there" and the

like.

Most of this has gone on without direction from governments. The technologies of

telephones, radio, TV, records, CDs, mobile phones and the internet have enabled most

people in the world to get access to each other's language in a matter of moments.

Through these channels, millions of young people across the world have grown to like the

sounds produced by English-speaking bands. Sub-titled films from Hollywood have given

millions of non-English speakers the chance to imitate James Cagney, Marilyn Monroe,

Robert De Niro and Harrison Ford.

But will it last? Perhaps in 100 years, the world's population will have come to love the

subtleties and beauty of one or both of the standard Chinese languages - Mandarin and

Cantonese. We just don't know.



'Oldest English words' identified

Some of the oldest words in

English have been identified,

scientists say.

Reading University researchers

claim "I", "we", "two" and "three"

are among the most ancient,

dating back tens of thousands of

years.

Their computer model analyses

the rate of change of words in English and the languages that share

a common heritage.

The team says it can predict which words are likely to become

extinct - citing "squeeze", "guts", "stick" and "bad" as probable first

casualties.

"We use a computer to fit a range of models that tell us how rapidly

these words evolve," said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at

the University of Reading.

"We fit a wide range, so there's a lot of computation involved; and

that range then brackets what the true answer is and we can

estimate the rates at which these things are replaced through time."

Sound and concept

Across the Indo-European languages - which include most of the

languages spoken from Europe to the Asian subcontinent - the vocal

sound made to express a given concept can be similar.

New spoken words for a concept can arise in a given language,

utilising different sounds, in turn giving a clue to a word's relative

age in the language.

At the root of the Reading University effort is a lexicon of 200 words

that is not specific to culture or technology, and is therefore likely to

represent concepts that have not changed across nations or

millennia.

"We have lists of words that linguists have produced for us that tell

us if two words in related languages actually derive from a common

ancestral word," said Professor Pagel.

Medieval manuscripts give linguists clues about more recent changes

When we speak to each other

we're playing this massive

game of Chinese whispers



"We have descriptions of the ways

we think words change and their

ability to change into other words, and those descriptions can be

turned into a mathematical language," he added.

The researchers used the university's IBM supercomputer to track

the known relations between words, in order to develop estimates of

how long ago a given ancestral word diverged in two different

languages.

They have integrated that into an algorithm that will produce a list of

words relevant to a given date.

"You type in a date in the past or in the future and it will give you a

list of words that would have changed going back in time or will

change going into the future," Professor Pagel told BBC News.

"From that list you can derive a phrasebook of words you could use

if you tried to show up and talk to, for example, William the

Conqueror."

That is, the model provides a list of words that are unlikely to have

changed from their common ancestral root by the time of William

the Conqueror.

Words that have not diverged since then would comprise similar

sounds to their modern descendants, whose meanings would

therefore probably be recognisable on sound alone.

However, the model cannot offer a guess as to what the ancestral

words were. It can only estimate the likelihood that the sound from

a modern English word might make some sense if called out during

the Battle of Hastings.

Dirty business

What the researchers found was that the frequency with which a

word is used relates to how slowly it changes through time, so that

the most common words tend to be the oldest ones.

For example, the words "I" and "who" are among the oldest, along

with the words "two", "three", and "five". The word "one" is only

slightly younger.

Mark Pagel, University of Reading



The word "four" experienced a

linguistic evolutionary leap that

makes it significantly younger in

English and different from other

Indo-European languages.

Meanwhile, the fastest-changing

words are projected to die out and

be replaced by other words much

sooner.

For example, "dirty" is a rapidly

changing word; currently there are

46 different ways of saying it in

the Indo-European languages, all

words that are unrelated to each

other. As a result, it is likely to die out soon in English, along with

"stick" and "guts".

Verbs also tend to change quite quickly, so "push", "turn", "wipe"

and "stab" appear to be heading for the lexicographer's chopping

block.

Again, the model cannot predict what words may change to; those

linguistic changes are according to Professor Pagel "anybody's

guess".

High fidelity

"We think some of these words are as ancient as 40,000 years old.

The sound used to make those words would have been used by all

speakers of the Indo-European languages throughout history,"

Professor Pagel said.

"Here's a sound that has been connected to a meaning - and it's a

mostly arbitrary connection - yet that sound has persisted for those

tens of thousands of years."

The work casts an interesting light on the connection between

concepts and language in the human brain, and provides an insight

into the evolution of a dynamic set of words.

"If you've ever played 'Chinese whispers', what comes out the end is

usually gibberish, and more or less when we speak to each other

we're playing this massive game of Chinese whispers. Yet our

language can somehow retain its fidelity."

Time-travellers would find a few sounds familiar in William's words

Taken from BBC News online



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7911645.stm

English as the Global Language:

Good for Business, Bad for Literature

English is well on its way to becoming the dominant global language. Is this a good thing? Yes, in

fields such as science where a common language brings efficiency gains. But the global dominance of

the English language is bad news for world literature, according to CEPR researcher Jacques Mélitz

(Centre de Recherche en Economie et Statistique, Paris and CEPR). Why? Because if the English

language dominates world publishing, very few translations except those from English to other

languages will be commercially viable. As a result, virtually only those writing in English will have a

chance of reaching a world audience and achieving ‘classic status’. The outcome is clear, Mélitz

argues: just as in the sciences, those who wish to reach a world audience will write in English.

“World literature will be an English literature”, Mélitz warns, “and will be the poorer for it – as if all

music were written only for the cello”. His work appears in "English-Language Dominance, Literature

and Welfare," (CEPR Discussion Paper No. 2055). By literature, he refers to imaginative works of an

earlier vintage that are still read today, and therefore the accumulation of world literature refers to

the tiny fraction of currently produced imaginative works which will eventually be regarded as

‘classics’. According to Mélitz, the tendency of competitive forces in the global publishing market to

privilege the translation of English fiction and poetry into other languages for reading or listening

enjoyment may damage the production of world literature and in this respect make us all worse off.

Mélitz makes the following points:

Language matters: In the case of literature, as opposed to other uses of language, language does

not serve merely to communicate content (say, a story line) but is itself an essential source of

enjoyment. Therefore, it is futile to argue that nothing would change if all potential contributors to

literature wrote in the same language. “We might as well pretend that there would be no loss if all

musical composers wrote for the cello” said Mélitz. Translations can only approximate the rhythms,

sounds, images, allusions and evocations of the original, and in literature, those aspects are

essential.

Great authors write in only one language: Remarkably few people have ever made contributions to

world literature in more than one language. Beckett and Nabokov may be the only two prominent

examples. Conrad, who is sometimes mentioned in this connection, is a false illustration in a glaring

regard: he never wrote in his native Polish. Quite conspicuously, expatriate authors generally

continue to write in their native language even after living for decades away from home. This holds

not only for poets, such as Mickiewicz and Milosz, which may not be surprising, but also for

novelists. Mann went on composing in German during a long spell in the US. The list of authors who

have inscribed their names in the history of literature in more than one language since the beginning

of time is astonishingly short.

English is much more likely to be translated: For straightforward economic reasons, only works that

enjoy exceptionally large sales have any notable prospect of translation. Heavy sales in the original

language represent an essential criterion of selection for translation, though not the only one. As a

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7911645.stm



result, translations will be concentrated in original creations in the major languages. Since English is

the predominant language in the publishing industry, authors writing in English have a much better

chance of translation than those writing in other tongues.

English dominance of translations has increased: The dominance of English in translations has

actually gone up over the last 30 years, despite a general decline in the market share of English in

the world publishing market. When English represented about a quarter of the world publishing

market in the early 1960’s, the percentage of English in translations was already 40%. With the

general advance of literacy and standards of living in the world, the share of English in world

publishing fell to around 17% in the late 1980’s. Yet the language's share in translations rose to

surpass 50% during this time.

If you want to reach a world audience, write in English: In science, as in literature, a person writing

in a minor language has a better chance of publication than one writing in a major tongue, but will

necessarily have a much smaller chance of translation and international recognition. The result in

science is clear. Those who strive to make a mark in their discipline try to publish in English. By and

large, the ones who stick to their home language – English excepted, of course – have lower

ambitions and do less significant work. The same pressure to publish in English exists for those

engaged in imaginative writing who wish to attain a world audience.

English dominance may cause the world pool of talent to dry up: However, the evidence shows that

in the case of literary writing, the gifted – even the supremely gifted – in a language other than

English generally cannot turn to English by mere dint of effort and will-power. Thus, the dominance

of English may sap their incentive to invest in personal skills and to shoot for excellence. Working

toward the same result are the relatively easier conditions of publication they face at home. If so,

the dominance of English in translations may cause the world pool of talent to dry up.

Literature may become just another field where the best work is in English: In other words, the

dominance of English poses the danger that literary output will become just another field where the

best work is done in English. In this case, the production of imaginative prose and poetry in other

languages may be relegated to the same provincial status that such writing already has acquired in

some other areas of intellectual activity. But whereas the resulting damage is contestable in fields

where language serves essentially for communication, such as science in general, the identical

prospect is alarming in the case of literature.

Along with the advances in telecommunications in the last thirty years, the dominance of English in

auditory and audiovisual entertainment has become far greater than in books. Does the argument

about translations in literature apply more generally and explain this wider ascension of English too?

The answer is partly positive as regards television, but mostly negative in connection with the

cinema. US television series indeed benefit from an unusually large home audience and only travel

abroad when successful domestically. On the other hand, a film need not succeed in the home

market before being made available to foreign-language cinema audiences. Hollywood achieved an

important place in the cinema in the era of the silent film.



The death of language?

By Tom Colls

Today programme

Bbc.co.uk

An estimated 7,000 languages are being spoken around the

world. But that number is expected to shrink rapidly in the

coming decades. What is lost when a language dies?

In 1992 a prominent US linguist stunned the academic world by

predicting that by the year 2100, 90% of the world's languages

would have ceased to exist.

Far from inspiring the world to act, the issue is still on the margins,

according to prominent French linguist Claude Hagege.

"Most people are not at all interested in the death of languages," he

says. "If we are not cautious about the way English is progressing it

may eventually kill most other languages."

According to Ethnologue, a US organisation owned by Christian

group SIL International that compiles a global database of

languages, 473 languages are currently classified as endangered.



Among the ranks are the two

known speakers of Lipan Apache

alive in the US, four speakers of

Totoro in Colombia and the single

Bikya speaker in Cameroon.

"It is difficult to provide an

accurate count," says Ethnologue

editor Paul Lewis. "But we are at a

tipping point. From here on we are

going to increasingly see the

number of languages going down."

What is lost?

As globalisation sweeps around

the world, it is perhaps natural

that small communities come out of their isolation and seek

interaction with the wider world. The number of languages may be

an unhappy casualty, but why fight the tide?

"What we lose is essentially an

enormous cultural heritage, the

way of expressing the relationship

with nature, with the world,

between themselves in the

framework of their families, their

kin people," says Mr Hagege.

"It's also the way they express

their humour, their love, their life.

It is a testimony of human

communities which is extremely

precious, because it expresses

what other communities than ours

in the modern industrialized world

are able to express."

For linguists like Claude Hagege, languages are not simply a

collection of words. They are living, breathing organisms holding the

connections and associations that define a culture. When a language

becomes extinct, the culture in which it lived is lost too.

Cross words

The value of language as a cultural artefact is difficult to dispute, but

is it actually realistic to ask small communities to retain their

culture?

The death in 2008 of Chief Marie Smith Jones signalled her language's death

WAR OF WORDS

6% of the world's languages are

spoken by 94% of the world's

population

The remaining 94% of languages are

spoken by only 6% of the population

The largest single language by

population is Mandarin (845 million

speakers) followed by Spanish (329

million speakers) and English (328

million speakers).

133 languages are spoken by fewer

than 10 people

SOURCE: Ethnologue



One linguist, Professor Salikoko Mufwene, of the University of

Chicago, has argued that the social and economic conditions among

some groups of speakers "have changed to points of no return".

As cultures evolve, he argues,

groups often naturally shift their

language use. Asking them to hold

onto languages they no longer

want is more for the linguists' sake

than for the communities

themselves.

Ethnologue editor Paul Lewis,

however, argues that the stakes

are much higher. Because of the

close links between language and

identity, if people begin to think of

their language as useless, they

see their identity as such as well.

This leads to social disruption, depression, suicide and drug use, he

says. And as parents no longer transmit language to their children,

the connection between children and grandparents is broken and

traditional values are lost.

"There is a social and cultural ache that remains, where people for

generations realize they have lost something," he says.

What no-one disputes is that the demise of languages is not always

the fault of worldwide languages like our own.

An increasing number of communities are giving up their language

by their own choice, says Claude Hagege. Many believe that their

languages have no future and that their children will not acquire a

professional qualification if they teach them tribal languages.

"We can do nothing when the abandonment of a language

corresponds to the will of a population," he says.

Babbling away

Perhaps all is not lost for those who want the smaller languages to

survive. As the revival of Welsh in the UK and Maori in New Zealand

suggest, a language can be brought back from the brink.

The story of Babel bestowed great power on societies with one language



Hebrew, says Claude Hagege, was

a dead language at the beginning

of the 19th century. It existed as a

scholarly written language, but

there was no way to say "I love

you" and "pass the salt" - the

French linguists' criteria for

detecting life.

But with the "strong will" of Israeli

Jews, he says, the language was brought back into everyday use.

Now it is undeniably a living breathing language once more.

Closer to home, Cornish intellectuals, inspired by the reintroduction

of Hebrew, succeeded in bringing the seemingly dead Cornish

language back into use in the 20th Century. In 2002 the government

recognised it as a living minority language.

But for many dwindling languages on the periphery of global culture,

supported by little but a few campaigning linguists, the size of the

challenge can seem insurmountable.

"You've got smallest, weakest, least resourced communities trying to

address the problem. And the larger communities are largely

unaware of it," says Ethnologue editor Paul Lewis.

"We would spend an awful lot of money to preserve a very old

building, because it is part of our heritage. These languages and

cultures are equally part of our heritage and merit preservation."

Hebrew was successfully revived from a written to a living language



Preserving Languages Is About More Than Words

By Kari Lydersen

Washington Post

Monday, March 16, 2009

The traditional Irish language is everywhere this time of year, emblazoned on green T-shirts and

echoing through pubs. But Irish, often called Gaelic in the United States, is one of thousands of

"endangered languages" worldwide. Though it is Ireland's official tongue, there are only about

30,000 fluent speakers left, down from 250,000 when the country was founded in 1922.

Irish schools teach the language as a core subject, but outside a few enclaves in western Ireland, it is

relatively rare for families to speak it at home.

"There's the gap between being able to speak Irish and actually speaking it on a daily basis," said

Brian O'Conchubhair, an assistant professor of Irish studies at the University of Notre Dame who

grew up learning Irish in school. "It's very hard to find it in the cities; it's like a hidden culture."

Irish is expected to survive at least through this century, but half of the world's almost 7,000

remaining languages may disappear by 2100, experts say.

A language is considered extinct when the last person who learned it as his or her primary tongue

dies. Last month, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

launched an online atlas of endangered languages, labeling more than 2,400 at risk of extinction.

Hot spots where languages are most endangered include Siberia, northern Australia, the North

American Pacific Northwest, and parts of the Andes and Amazon, according to the Living Tongues

Institute for Endangered Languages, a nonprofit partnering with National Geographic to record and

promote disappearing tongues.

Language extinction has been a phenomenon for at least 10,000 years, since the dawn of agriculture.

"In the pre-agricultural state, the norm was to have lots and lots of little languages," said Gregory

D.S. Anderson, director of the Living Tongues Institute. "As humans developed with agriculture,

larger population groups were able to aggregate together, and you got larger languages developing."

Languages typically die when speakers of a small language group come in contact with a more

dominant population. That happened first when hunter-gatherers transitioned to agriculture, then

during periods of European colonial expansion, and more recently with global migration and

urbanization. The spread of English, Spanish and Russian wiped out many small languages.

"As long as people feel embarrassed, restrained or openly criticized for using a particular language,

it's only natural for them to want to avoid continuing to do what's causing a negative response,

whether it's something overt like having your mouth washed out or more subtle like discrimination,"

Anderson said.



Russian-language-only policies have virtually extinguished many Siberian languages, including Tofa,

which lets speakers use a single word to say "a two-year-old male, un-castrated, ridable reindeer."

In the United States and Australia in past decades, the government forced native peoples to

abandon their languages through vehicles such as boarding schools that punished youth for speaking

a traditional tongue. Many Native American and aboriginal Australian languages never recovered.

The United States has lost 115 languages in the past 500 years, by UNESCO's count, 53 of them since

the 1950s. Last year, the Alaskan language Eyak disappeared with the death of the last speaker.

Indigenous groups also may abandon localized tongues for a dominant indigenous alternative, such

as Quechua in South America. Or they might shift to a pidgin, or hybrid, of various local languages.

Extinct languages can be revived, especially when they have been recorded.

"But when you skip a generation, it's hard to pick a language back up again," said Douglas Whalen,

president of the Endangered Language Fund, which gives grants to language-preservation projects.

"You need a community that is really committed and will bring children up from birth in the second

language, even if they themselves are not the most fluent speakers."

Michael Blake, an associate professor of philosophy and public policy at the University of

Washington, said languages have always changed and disappeared over time, and he argues against

the idea that all languages should be preserved.

"When we have indigenous languages in danger because of what we've done to these communities,

that's the real reason" behind preservation pushes, he said. "But it's a much more complicated

argument. It doesn't mean every language now has the right to be immortal."

Preservation proponents say there are cultural and pragmatic reasons to save dying languages.

Many indigenous communities have in their native tongues vast repositories of knowledge about

medicinal herbs, information that could provide clues to modern cures. The Kallawaya people in

South America have passed on a secret language from father to son for more than 400 years,

including the names and uses of medicinal plants. It is now spoken by fewer than 100 people.

Preserving languages is also key to the field of linguistics, which could offer a window into the

workings of the brain.

The Living Tongues Institute recruits youth who are not fluent in their traditional tongue to become

"language activists," using digital equipment to document their elders' voices and learn the language

themselves. This creates a record and builds pride in the language.

Such pride has been key to a modest popular resurgence of the Irish language. Paddy Homan, an

Irish musician and social worker who immigrated to Chicago two years ago, thinks the 1990s' "Celtic

Tiger" economic boom was a major boost for Irish.

"It used to feel like a sin to speak the Irish language; the English made us feel bad about ourselves,

like we were just a nation of alcoholics," said Homan, 34. "Now we feel proud, and speaking Irish is

the fashionable thing to do."



Fitch, Tecumseh. "How Do We Study Language Evolution?." New Scientist 208.2789 (2010): 02. MAS

Ultra - School Edition. Web. 24 Apr. 2012.

How do we study language evolution?

Features

Linguists define language as any system which allows the free and unfettered expression of thoughts

into signals, and the complementary interpretation of such signals back into thoughts. This sets

human language apart from all other animal communication systems, which can express just a

limited set of signals. A dog's barks, for example, may provide important information about the dog

(how large or excited it is) or the outside world (that an intruder is present), but the dog cannot

relate the story of its puppyhood, or express the route of its daily walk.

For all its uniqueness, human language does share certain traits with many animal communication

systems. A vervet monkey, for example, produces different calls according to the predators it

encounters. Other vervets understand and respond accordingly -- running for cover when a call

signals an "eagle", for example, and scaling the trees when it makes a "leopard" call. This

characteristic, known as functional referentiality, is an important feature of language. Unlike human

languages, however, the vervets' system is innate rather than learned. This makes their system

inflexible, so they cannot create a new alarm call to represent a human with a gun, for example.

What's more, vervets do not seem to intentionally transmit novel information: they will continue

producing leopard calls even when their whole group has moved to the safety of the trees. Thus,

although the vervet communication system shares one important trait with human language, it still

lacks many other important features.

Building time lines

Similarly, the honeybees' complex dance routine offers some parallels with human language. By

moving in certain ways, bees can communicate the location of distant flowers, water and additional

hive sites to their hivemates -- a system that is clearly functionally referential. More importantly, the

bees are also communicating about things that aren't present. Linguists call this characteristic

"displacement", and it is very unusual in animal communication -- even vervets can't do this.

Nonetheless, since bees can't communicate the full range of what they know, such as the colour of a

flower, their system cannot be considered a language.

Looking at shared traits helps biologists to work out how those traits might have first evolved.

Different animals might exhibit the same features simply because a common ancestor had the trait,

which then persisted throughout the course of evolution. Such traits are called "homologies".

Obvious examples include hair in mammals or feathers in birds. Alternatively, similar traits can

evolve independently without being present in a common ancestor, a process called convergent



evolution. The emergence of wings in both birds and bats is an example of this kind of evolution, as

is the displacement seen in the bee's dance and human language.

Homologies allow us to build a time line of when different features first evolved. The fact that fish,

mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians all have skeletons, for example, suggests that bones

evolved before lungs, which most fish lack but the other groups all share. Comparing creatures with

convergent traits, by contrast, helps identify the common selection pressures that might have

pushed the different species to evolve the trait independently.

This "comparative approach" has been instrumental in understanding where our abilities to learn,

understand and produce new words came from. Together, these distinct traits allow free expression

of new thoughts, so they are fundamental to human language, but they are not always present in

other types of animal communication. Which other creatures share these abilities, and why?

The ability to learn to understand new signals is the most common. Typical dogs know a few words,

and some unusual dogs like Rico, a border collie, can remember hundreds of names for different

objects. The bonobo Kanzi, who was exposed from an early age to abundant human speech, can also

understand hundreds of spoken words, and even notice differences in word order. This suggests that

learning to understand new signals is widespread and broadly shared with most other mammals -- a

homology. But neither Kanzi nor Rico ever learned to produce even a single spoken word, as they

lack the capacity for complex vocal learning.

Many other species do have this ability, however. Almost everyone has seen a talking parrot, but

there are more unusual examples. Hoover, an orphaned seal raised by fishermen, learned to

produce whole English sentences with a Maine accent, and scientists have uncovered complex vocal

learning in a wide variety of other species, including whales, elephants and bats. The fact that close

relatives of these animals lack vocal learning indicates that this trait is an example of convergent

evolution. Crucially, most animals who learn to speak do not understand the meaning of what they

say. Hoover mostly directed his sentences at female seals during the mating period, for example,

suggesting that vocal production and meaning recognition are two distinct traits that use different

neural machinery. Only with specific training can animals learn to both produce and appropriately

interpret words. Alex, the African gray parrot (pictured, left) of psychologist Irene Pepperberg,

provides one example of a bird that used words for shapes, colours and numbers meaningfully.

In terms of creating a time line for human evolution, the evidence suggests our ability to recognise

sounds -- the homology -- probably arose in a mammalian common ancestor, while our ability to

produce complex sounds arose more recently in prehistory. Even more importantly, studying the

various convergent examples of vocal learning have uncovered what was necessary for one

important aspect of human language: speech.

Humans have wondered about the origins of our unique capacity for language since the beginnings

of history, proffering countless mythic explanations. Scientific study began in 1871 with Darwin's

writings on the topic in The Descent of Man. For nearly a century afterwards, however, most writing

on the subject was highly speculative and the entire issue was viewed with distrust by reputable

scholars.



Recently, we have moved towards specific, testable hypotheses. Because language does not

fossilise, only indirect evidence about key past events is available. But the situation is no worse off in

this respect than cosmology or many other mature empirical sciences and, as with these other

disciplines, scientists studying the evolution of language now combine many sources of data to

constrain their theories.

One of the most promising approaches compares the linguistic behaviour of humans with the

communication and cognition of other animals, which highlights shared abilities and the

characteristics that make human language unique. The comparisons allow us to build theories about

how these individual traits might have evolved.

"The ability to learn the meaning of new signals is widespread in the animal kingdom"

Three kinds of evolution

Language develops through time at three different rates, all of which have sometimes been termed

"language evolution". The fastest process is ontogeny, in which an initially language-less baby

becomes an adult native speaker. Then there's glossogeny: the historical development of languages.

This guide to language evolution, however, focuses on human phylogeny: the biological changes that

occurred during the last 6 million years of our lineage through which our species Homo sapiens

evolved from an initially language-less primate.

The mechanics of speech

Speech is just one aspect of human language, and is not even strictly necessary, since both sign

language and written language are perfectly adequate for the unfettered expression of thought.

However, since it is the normal medium of language in all cultures, it is reasonable to assume that its

emergence must have represented a big step in the evolution of language.

Because no other apes apart from us can learn to speak, some change must have occurred after we

diverged from chimpanzees, about 6 to 7 million years ago. The nature of the change has been

somewhat unclear. Darwin suggested two possible explanations: either it was a change in our vocal

apparatus, or there is a key difference in the brain. In each case, biologists have gained fundamental

insights by examining other animals.

Let's start with anatomy. Humans have an unusual vocal tract: the larynx (or voicebox) rests low in

the throat. In most other mammals, including chimpanzees, the larynx lies at a higher point, and is

often inserted into the nasal passage, creating a sealed nasal airway. In fact, humans begin life this

way: a newborn infant can breathe through its nose while swallowing milk through its mouth. But as

the infant grows, the larynx descends, and by the age of 3 or 4 this feat is no longer possible.

The reconfigured human vocal tract allows the free movement of the tongue that is crucial to make

the many distinct sounds heard in human languages. For a long time, the descended larynx was

considered unique to our species, and the key to our possession of speech. Researchers had even



tried to place a date on the emergence of language by studying the position of the larynx in ancient

fossils.

Evidence from two different sources of comparative data casts doubt on this hypothesis. The first

was the discovery of animal species with permanently descended larynges like our own. We now

know that lions, tigers, koalas and Mongolian gazelles all have a descended larynx -- making it a

convergent trait. Since none of these species produce anything vaguely speech-like, such changes in

anatomy cannot be enough for speech to have emerged. The second line of evidence is even more

damning. X-ray observations of vocalising mammals show that dogs, monkeys, goats and pigs all

lower the larynx during vocalisation. This ability to reconfigure the vocal tract appears to be a

widespread, and probably homologous, feature of mammals. With its larynx retracted, a dog or a

monkey has all the freedom of movement needed to produce many different vocalisations (see

diagram, right). The key changes must therefore have occurred in the brain instead.

Direct connections

The human brain is enormously complex, and differs in many ways from that of other animals. We

expect different neural changes to underlie each of the different components of language, like

syntax, semantics and speech. Others presumably underlie abilities like improved tool use or

increased intelligence. Determining the specific neural changes that correspond to particular

capabilities is often very difficult, and in many cases we don't even have good guesses about what

changes were needed.

Biologists have been more fortunate when studying the neural machinery of speech, however.

Motor neurons that control the muscles involved in vocalisation -- in the lips, the tongue and the

larynx -- are located in the brainstem, and after decades of painstaking research we now know that

humans have direct neural connections between the motor cortex and these brainstem neurons

which nonhuman primates lack. Could these direct neural connections explain our enhanced ability

to control and coordinate the movements necessary for speech? The explanation seemed plausible.

Fortunately, we can test the hypothesis with the help of other species that exhibit complex vocal

learning.

If direct neural connections are necessary for vocal learning, we predict they should appear in other

vocal learning species. For birds at least, this prediction appears to hold true: parrots or songbirds

have the connection while chickens or pigeons, which are not vocal learners, lack them. For many

vocal learning species, including whales, seals, elephants and bats, we don't know, because their

neuroanatomy has yet to be fully investigated, providing untapped sources to test the "direct

connections" hypothesis.

An ability to produce the correct sounds for speech is one thing, but complex vocal control in

humans also relies on our ability to control the different articulators in the correct, often

complicated, sequences. The discovery of the FOXP2 gene has recently provided insights into the

origins of this ability (New Scientist, 16 August 2008, p 38). Modern humans all share a novel variant

of this gene which differs from the one most primates have, and disruptions of this gene in people

create severe speech difficulties. But what does it do? Various studies have found that the gene

seems to be crucial for memory formation in the basal ganglia and cerebellum, which are involved in



coordinating the patterns of movements that are crucial for our complex vocalisations. Recently,

fossil DNA recovered from Neanderthals has shown that they shared the modern variant, suggesting

that they already possessed complex speech.

Speech is just one component of language, though, and similar questions must be asked about

syntax and semantics before we can hope to understand the evolution of language as a whole.

Speech comes so easily to adult humans that it's easy to forget the sheer amount of muscular

coordination needed to produce even the most basic sounds. How we came to have this ability,

when most other animals find it so difficult, is one of the key questions in language evolution -- and

one of the few that has yielded to empirical studies.

"A lower larynx allows the free movement of the tongue that is crucial to make complex sounds"

Protolanguages musical beginnings

When viewing language as a collection of many distinct components, it becomes clear that the

different linguistic traits must have appeared at different periods of human evolution, perhaps for

different reasons. But while most theorists agree that early humans passed through multiple stages

en route to modern language, there are major differences of opinion concerning the order in which

the different components appeared.

A system which possesses some, but not all, components of language can be termed a

"protolanguage" -- a term introduced by anthropologist Gordon Hewes in 1973. Three potential

protolanguages dominate theories of language evolution.

This prominent model of protolanguage was offered by Darwin in 1871, and focused on the origins

of vocal learning, a capability assumed (but not explained) by word-based, or lexical, protolanguage.

Darwin realised that in most vocal learning species, complex learned vocalisations are not used to

communicate detailed information, but rather provide a display of the singer's virtuosity. While the

songs of some birds or whales rival human speech in acoustic complexity, they convey only a very

simple message, roughly "I'm an adult of your species and want to mate."

Based on this analogy, Darwin suggested that human vocal learning originated in the context of

sexual selection, territoriality and mate choice, and initially resembled song more closely than

speech. Only later, by this model, did the individual notes and syllables of these vocal displays take

on meaning, probably in an initially holistic manner. Since Darwin, many others have taken up the

musical protolanguage hypothesis, and it is attracting increasing support today. One virtue of this

hypothesis is that it also provides an explanation for music: another universal characteristic of our

species. By this model, music is a living reminder of an earlier stage of human evolution, preceding

true language.

Speech and music are universal characteristics of our species -- but did they evolve together?



First Words

One highly intuitive model suggests that early humans had words, but did not arrange them into

syntactically structured sentences. This model of "lexical protolanguage" parallels language

development in children, who start out with single-word utterances, move on to a two-word stage,

and then begin forming more complex sentences with syntax.

Linguist Derek Bickerton at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, is one of the main proponents of this

model. He once suggested that the addition of syntax in all of its complexity might have occurred

quite suddenly, due to a mutation with large effects on brain wiring, quickly catapulting our species

into full language. But linguist Ray Jackendoff at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts,

suggests a much finer and more gradual path to modern syntax, starting with simple word order and

progressing steadily to fine points of grammar that make modern languages difficult for adults to

learn.

Despite various other disagreements, all proponents of lexical protolanguage agree that language

began with spoken words, referring to objects and events. Most also agree that the purpose of

protolanguage was the communication of ideas. Although each of these assumptions seems

intuitive, they are challenged in other models of the evolution of language.

Eloquent Gestures

Another well-established model of protolanguage suggests that language was originally conveyed by

gestures, rather than speech. One avenue of evidence comes from observations of apes, which lack

vocal learning and speech, but use manual gestures in an intentional, flexible and informative way.

While attempts to teach apes spoken language fail completely, efforts to teach apes to communicate

via manual gesture have been much more successful.

Although no ape has ever mastered a full sign language, apes can learn and use hundreds of

individual manual gestures communicatively. The visual/manual mode is clearly adequate for full

human language, as sign languages convincingly demonstrate. These two features make gestural

protolanguage a popular alternative view today.

One prominent version of gestural protolanguage, offered by neuroscientist Michael Arbib at the

University of Southern California, Los Angeles, suggests that signs did not, initially, refer to individual

objects or actions, but rather to whole thoughts or events. This is an example of what is called a

holistic protolanguage, in which whole complex signals map directly onto whole complex concepts,

rather than being segmented into individual words.

This is precisely how early gestures and utterances are understood and used by infants in early

language acquisition. In such holistic models, whole sentences came first, and were only divided up

into words during a later "analytic" stage of biological evolution and cultural development. This

approach contrasts with the "synthetic" models of protolanguage, which have individual words from

the very beginning.



Gestural models face the difficulty of explaining why our species switched to using speech so

thoroughly. It may have been due to the need to communicate in darkness, or because hands

became occupied by tools. But speech has disadvantages too. Speaking aloud, we cannot safely

communicate with our mouths full, or in the presence of dangerous predators, or in loud

environments like waterfalls or storms. The selective pressures that might have driven humans to

rely so heavily on speech alone remain elusive.

Homo erectus, The protolinguistic ape?

The earliest writing, providing clear evidence of modern language, dates from just 6000 years ago,

but language in its modern form emerged long before then. Because all modern humans come from

an ancestral African population, and children from any existing culture can learn any language,

language must have preceded our emigration from Africa at least 50,000 years ago. But can we put a

date on the emergence of the first rudimentary protolanguages?

Whether gestural, musical or lexical, protolanguage considerably surpassed modern ape

communication in the wild. With all the cognitive challenges, and benefits, this would bring, we

would expect these early humans to differ considerably from their forebears in both anatomy and

culture. Using this logic, Homo erectus, which originated almost 2 million years ago, appears to be

the most likely candidate.

H. erectus were larger than their predecessors, and had brain sizes of 900 to 1100 cubic centimetres.

These approach the size of our own brains, which average about 1350 cubic centimetres. This

suggests a capability for flexible intelligence and culture. Their stone tools were vastly more

sophisticated than those of Australopithecus, suggesting they may have had more advanced

communication, though the tools were less sophisticated than tools made by Neanderthals and

modern humans.

Importantly, the H. erectus tools appeared to reach a kind of stasis -- their iconic Achulean hand axe,

which was a symmetrical all-purpose tool, persisted for a million years. This suggests they did not

have full language, which would have accelerated cultural and technological change. Hence they

might have had some, but not all, of the linguistic capacities modern humans possess -- a

protolanguage, in other words.

The Future

Each of the models of human protolanguages clearly has strengths and weaknesses. Contemporary

theorists mix and match among the possibilities, and the truth will probably incorporate elements

from each of these models. But since each model of protolanguage makes different predictions

about when particular new capabilities appeared during the course of human evolution, they are in

principle testable.

Genetics provides the most exciting source of new evidence for the origins of language. DNA

recovered from early human fossils allows us to estimate when particular mutations tied to

particular aspects of language arose, and when studying more recent genetic changes, it is also

possible to estimate the timing of evolutionary events by examining variation in modern humans.



Multiple genes have recently been linked to dyslexia, for example. Although dyslexia is identified by

difficulties with learning to read, it often seems to result from some more fundamental problems

with the way the sounds of language are processed. These genes may therefore be linked to the

phonological components of language, which Darwin's model would argue evolved early, but which

Michael Arbib's gestural model would predict to be latecomers. In contrast, genes linked to autism

lead to difficulties in understanding others' thoughts and feelings:

capacities linked to semantics. By Darwin's model the normal human form of these genes should be

latecomers, while in a gestural or lexical model they would have become involved in language at an

earlier stage. Determining when human-specific variations of such genes arose in the human lineage

may therefore allow us to test hypotheses about protolanguage directly.

So although we may never be able to write a Neanderthal dictionary, there is good reason to think

that, as our data improves in the coming decades, we will be able to test ideas about human

language evolution. The scientific study of language evolution appears to be coming of age.

Recommended reading

The Evolution of Language by W. Tecumseh Fitch (Cambridge University Press, 2010)

The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex by Charles Darwin (c. 1871)

Baboon Metaphysics by Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth (University of Chicago Press,

2007)

Language and Species by Derek Bickerton (Chicago University Press, 1990)

The Symbolic Species by Terrence Deacon (Norton, 1997)

Origins of the Modern Mind by Merlin Donald (Harvard University Press, 1991)

The Singing Neanderthals by Steven Mithen (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005)

"The Language Faculty: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?" by Marc Hauser, Noam

Chomsky and W. Tecumseh Fitch, Science, 2002, vol 298, p 1569

"Neural systems for vocal learning in birds and humans: a synopsis" by Erich Jarvis, Journal of

Ornithology, 2007, vol 148, supplement 1, p 35

"The derived FOXP2 variant of modern humans was shared with Neanderthals by Johannes Krause

and others, Current Biology, 2007, vol 17, p 1908

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