Prepared by Koray AKCA
Hypotheses and Theories of
Language Origin
BOW-BOW THEORY
Under the
light of my research, according to this theory, language began when our
ancestors started imitating the natural sounds around them. According to Bow-Wow
theory the first speech was onomatopoeic--marked by echoic words such as moo,
meow, splash, cuckoo, and bang. We call this theory “bow-bow theory” because
Max Müller called first, a philologist who was critical of the notion. The
bow-wow theory is discredited as an account of the origin of language.
THE POOH-POOH THEORY - Interjectional theory
According
to this theory, speech arose through people making instinctive sounds, caused
by pain, anger, or other emotions. This theory holds that speech began with
interjections--spontaneous cries of pain ("Ouch!"), surprise
("Oh!"), and other emotions (‘Yabba dabba do!’). The main evidence
would be the universal use of sounds as interjections, such as ooh or tut-tut,
but no language contains many of these, and also there is a little relationship
with the phonology. There are differences on vowels and consonants if we
consider today’s languages.
Ernst
Cassirer had a sentences about the pooh-pohh theory which is “All attempts at
explaining the language in this way have been fruitless. There is no tangible
evidence, historical or other, tending to show that the mass of speech elements
or processes has evolved out of interjections.”
ü Theory is coming from emotional
nature of humankind.
THE DING-DONG THEORY
This theory
was also proposed by Friedrich Max Müller and later wisely abandoned by him.
According to this theory speech arose because people reacted to the stimuli in
the world around them, and spontaneously produced sounds (oral gestures) which
in some way reflected or were in harmony with the environment. The main
evidence would be the universal use of sounds for words of a certain meaning.
For example; mama is supposed to reflect the movement of the lips as the mouth
approaches the breast, and bye-bye or ta-ta show the lips and tongue respectively
‘waving’ good-bye.
Ø There is a weak point of this theory
which is innate connection between sound and meaning.
THE YO-HE-HO THEORY
According
to this theory, language evolved from the grunts, groans, and snorts evoked by
heavy physical labour. The main evidence would be the universal use of poetic
features, especially of rhythm.
Ø Here is the problem about this
theory that though this notion may account for some of the rhythmic features of
language, it doesn't go very far in explaining where words come from.
THE LA-LA THEORY
According
to Otto Jespersen, language might arise from the romantic side of life–sounds associated
with love, play, poetic feeling, perhaps even song. He said that because human
initiated the language and probably it must come from the human feelings and
sensibility.
Ø Linguists think that the emotional
and the rational aspects of speech expression about this theory have gaps.
THE TA-TA THEORY
According
to Ta-Ta theory; speech came from the use of tongue and mouth gestures to mimic
manual gestures. For example, saying ta-ta is like waving goodbye with your
tongue. But the difficulty of ta-ta theory is that it requires that a fairly
sophisticated repertoire of gestures be in place already for humans to imitate
with their mouth gestures.
v This theory was being proposed by
Sir Richard Paget who influenced by Darwin.
Ø The Problem is that gestures contain
quite arbitrary symbols and have vastly different meanings in different human
cultures.
The 'mother tongues'
hypothesis
According
to my research; this theory holds that one original language spoken by a single
group of Homo sapiens perhaps as early as 150 thousand years ago gave rise to
all human languages spoken on the Earth today. As humans colonized various
continents, this original mother tongue diverged through time to form the
numerous languages spoken today. The 'mother tongues' hypothesis was
proposed in 2004 as a possible solution to where the languages come by W. Tecumseh
Fitch suggested that the Darwinian principle of 'kin selection'. Mothers and
their own biological offspring have to communicate with each other. To the
theory genetic inherits of mother had passed to infants.
Ø Critics of this theory point out
that kin selection are not unique to humans. Ape mothers also share genes with
their offspring, as do all animals, so why is it only humans who speak?
v So even if we accept Fitch's initial
premises, the extension of the posited 'mother tongue' networks from relatives
to non-relatives remains unexplained.
The 'obligatory reciprocal
altruism' hypothesis
Reciprocal
altruism can be expressed as the principle that if you scratch my back, I'll
scratch yours. In linguistic terms, it would mean that if you
speak truthfully to me, I'll speak truthfully to you. It points out a relationship
established between frequently interacting individuals which is Ordinary
Darwinian reciprocal altruism.
Ø Critics point out that this theory
fails to explain when, how, why or by whom 'obligatory reciprocal altruism'
could possibly have been enforced.
The gossip and grooming
hypothesis
According
to Robin DUNBAR, the size of the human brain is not the result of the daily
exigencies of food gathering, but rather the result of language and gossip. It’s
a hypothesis claim that for early humans, grooming as a way to social success
posed a problem: given their large social groups and also gossiping was the
ways of social interaction. What Dunbar suggests--and his research, whether in
the realm of primatology or in that of gossip, confirms--is that humans
developed language to serve the same purpose, but far more efficiently.
Ø The difficulty about this theory is
that that the very efficiency of vocal grooming would have undermined its
capacity to signal commitment of the kind conveyed by time-consuming and costly
manual grooming.
Ritual/speech coevolution
The
ritual/speech coevolution theory was proposed by Roy Rappaport. According to
theory, language is not a separate adaptation but an internal aspect of
something much wider — namely, human symbolic culture as a whole.
Tower of Babel hypothesis
The theory
is dealing with the one ancestor of the languages and it records how God gave
the people new languages to speak. Groups speaking the same language moved away
together. There is a belief Once in Babel, everyone spoke the same language; it
says ‘the whole world had one language and a common speech’. It has been
suggested that language might have evolved to block communication, to set someone's
own tribe aside from contamination from the others
Gestural theory
The
gestural theory states that human language developed from gestures that were
used for simple communication. This is because Gestural language and vocal
language depend on similar neural systems and nonhuman primates can use
gestures or symbols for at least primitive communication.
Research
has found strong support for the idea that verbal language and sign language
depend on similar neural structures. Humans still use hand and facial
gestures when they speak, especially when people meet who have no language in
common. There are also, of course, a great number of sign languages still in
existence. The proposal is that our ancestors started to use more and more gestures,
meaningful.
Ø Critics of gestural theory note that
it is difficult to name serious reasons why the initial pitch-based vocal
communication (which is present in primates) would be abandoned in favour of
the much less effective non-vocal, gestural communication.
Putting the baby down
theory
According
to Dean Falk's 'putting the baby down' theory, vocal interactions between early
hominin mothers and infants sparked a sequence of events that led, eventually,
to our ancestors' earliest words. The basic idea is that evolving human mothers,
unlike their monkey and ape counterparts, couldn't move around and forage with
their infants clinging onto their backs. Frequently, therefore, mothers had to
put their babies down. As a result, these babies needed to be reassured that
they were not being abandoned. Mothers responded by developing 'motherese' – an
infant-directed communicative system embracing facial expressions, body
language, touching, patting, caressing, laughter, tickling and emotionally
expressive contact calls. The argument is that language somehow developed out
of all this.
In addition to research
There are two kinds of
theories have dominated discussion of the origin of language a continuity
approach and its counterpart, a discontinuity approach.
The continuity
approach has often labelled itself Darwinian and looked for predecessors of
language, in animal communication systems. It claims that language is such a
big system, that it could not have evolved out of nothing. Just as we cannot
conceive often eye jumping into existence, so we cannot conceive of language as
having no precursors. According to Darwin, the primary similarity is that
languages share a common ancestry, having become distinct languages over time.
The relation between Latin and its children (French, Italian, Spanish, etc.)
had been known for centuries, and the Germanic languages were similarly linked.
More recently, a relationship between Sanskrit and Latin had been recognized,
linking many languages into a common, Indo-European, family. The implication of
the idea is that languages share a common ancestry. Also Darwin claims that the
earth’s great age came, not from geology, but from the linguistic speculation and
even Chinese and English languages share a common ancestry. He was also
interested in the relationship between geology and language.
The opposite position
argues that language is unique among the communication systems of the biosphere,
and that to claim continuity between, say, bee language and human language is
to claim evolutionary development from breathing to walking as remarked by
Chomsky. Chomsky proposed that all humans have a language acquisition device
(LAD). The LAD contains knowledge of grammatical rules common to all languages.
The LAD also allows children to understand the rules of whatever language they
are listening to. Chomsky also developed the concepts of transformational
grammar, surface structure, and deep structure.
Chomsky theorized that
language is an inborn natural skill that develops on its own when given
adequate nurturing. And also, Chomsky believed that language has a universal
grammar. Chomsky’s claim is that the human brain is somehow equipped at birth
with a Universal Grammar out of which all human languages later develop.
