The Origins Of Language

The Origins Of Language 

“ Chewing, licking and sucking are extremely widespread mammalian activities, which, in terms of casual observation, have obvious similarities with speech.”~MacNeilage (1998).

In short, those kind of actions show the observation that can lead to interesting speculations about the origins of spoken language.

As far as I am concerned, there were six early speculations ;

a) The Divine Source

b) The Natural Sound Source

c) The Physical Adaptation Source 

d) Teeth, lips, mouth, larynx and pharynx 

e) The Human Brain

f) The Genetic Source

         In term of "The Divine Source, in the biblical tradition, God created Adam and "whatsoever Adam called every living creature,that was the name thereof". While for Hindu tradition, language came from Sarasvati, wife of Brahma, creator of the universe. Therefore, in most religions, there were appears to be a divine source who provides humans with language.

         In term of "The Natural Sound Source",  all modern languages have some words with pronunciations which naturally occurring sounds could be used to support this theory. In English, in addition to cuckoo, we have splash, bang, boom, rattle buzz, hiss, screech, and forms such as bow-wow that holds those vocabularies developed from imitations of animal sounds. In other words, the first human words were a type of index, a sign whose form is naturally connected with its meaning in time and space. Therefore, one term so-called onomatopoeic (echoing natural sounds) has come up right away.

         In term of "The Physical Adaptation Source", one scholar named Theodosius Dobzhansky has summarized “Adaptation” as the evolutionary process whereby an organism becomes better able to live in its habitat or habitats. Extend to that, the humans possess some physical features in order to provide the ability of speech production. In the evolutionary development, the Neanderthal is supposed to be developed from apes where the physical adaptation of a human being is more relevant to speech than the one of apes. Therefore, language has started with the human evolution.

        

 In term of "Teeth, lips, mouth, larynx and pharynx”, basically the teeth  themselves serve to rip, tear, grind and chew any food before entering our body. It was also very helpful in making sounds such f or v. Human lips have extra special intricate muscle in making sounds such as p or b. The human mouth is usually quite small among all which it can be opened and closed rapidly as well as containing a smaller, thicker and more muscular tongue which can be used to shape a wide variety of sounds inside the oral cavity. While larynx or voice box consists vocal cords and pharynx which acts as a resonator for increasing range and clarity of the sounds produced via the larynx.

In term of "The Human Brain", it is lateralized  and has specialized functions in each of two hemispheres. These two hemispheres will control motor movements such as speaking and object manipulation (making or using tools) . The left hemisphere of the brain was quite prominent part for most human as it was known as an evolutionary connection between language-using and tool-using abilities of humans.

Lastly, in term of "The Genetic Source", it looks like to indicate that human offspring are born with a special capacity for language. This kind of innateness hypothesis leads upon something in human genetics especially crucial mutation (the act or process of being altered or changed) as the source. For instance, a computer is known as hard-wired or being pre-programmed which indicates how language moving away from the physical source of basic human sounds. As a result, this kind of investigation leads into the special “language gene” which is only human possess.

#ByGabriel