‘ie2020 The Origin of Langu erwinharikurniawan erwinharikurniwan BELAJAR, BEKERJA, BERDOA DAN TAWAKAL The Origin of Language 017 | Education Erwin Hari Kurniawan_/ February 14, 2013March 22, 2( T don’t get it. We've had language for a few hundred years now, What's taking the men ¢o long? ar Chapter 1 The Properties of Language Five thousand is a fair guess as to how many languages are in active use in the world today in-in Colombia, for example, almost two hundreds separate languages and dialects have been identified. But “dialect” is a key word-what is “ a language” really? Swedish and Norwegian have a high degree of mutual intelligibility, but we count them as two. “One language”, Chinese, includes Cantonese and Mandarin, which are about as dissimilar as Portuguese and Italian. To be scientific we have to ignore politics and forget that Sweden and Norway have separate flags and mainland China one. True differences are quantitative: how much should we allow before graduating X from “a dialect of Y” to “a language, distinct from Y"? However this is reckoned, the number of different languages is formidable and awesome if we include the tongues once spoken but now dead. Languages are like people: for all their underlying similarities, great numbers mean great varieties. Variety confronts us with these questions: Do we know enough hpss/lewinharkuriawan.wordpress.com/2013/02/14the-oign-cFlanguage/#~tex'=Chapter 1 10‘ie2020 The Origin of Langu about languages to be able to describe language? Can we penetrate the differences to arrive at the sameness underneath? erwinharikurniwan ‘The more languages we study, the more the answer seems to be yes. Variety is enormous, but similarities abound, and we can even attempt a definition-something like "Human language is a system of vocal- auditory communication, interacting with the experiences of its users, employing conventional signs composed of arbitrary patterned sound units and assembled according to set rules.” However we word and obviously no one-sentence definition will ever be adequate-there is enough homogeneity to make some sort of definition possible. 1, Language is human Languages are alike because people have the same capacities everywhere. All infants babble-even those deaf at birth. The incredibly complex system that constitutes every known language is largely mastered before a child learns to divide ten by two. No one knows yet how far the great apes may progress in communicating with people and with other apes using human being language, but for all their skill in using it, they did not invent it. 2, Language is thought and activity A language can disappear without a trace when its last speaker dies. This is still true of the majority of the world’s languages, in spite of the spread of presses and tape recorders. Written and spoken recordings to ently; but the essence of language is a way of thinking and acting. Our linguist, but in a sense it is false. What is the something thing-like, because it is transmitted from speaker to speaker, is the system that underlies the thinking and acting: the competence each of us acquires that enables us to perform at any given moment. Competence is to performance as a composer's skill is to an improvisation or the writing, of a musical work. This is what makes language so special, so different from inborn abilities like breathing, grasping, and crying. With language, all we are born with is a highly specialized capacity to learn. As the child acquires language, the system is probably engraved somehow on the brain; if we had the means to make the system visible we could interpret it. For the present we can only listen to our thoughts and observe how others act, and linguists are useful because, since we are not mind readers, we need specialist to study the behavior and infer the system. Alll languages use the same channel for sending and receiving: sound waves, the vibrations of the atmosphere. All set the vibration moving by the activity of the speech organs. And all organize the vibrations in essentially the same way into small units of sound that can be combined and recombined in distinctive ways. Except for this last point, human communication is the same as that of many other warm blooded creatures that move on or over the earth’s surface What sets human speech apart also sets it above dependence on any particular medium: the capacity for intricate organization. The science of phonetics, whose domain is the sound of speech, is to linguistics what numismatics is to finance: it makes no difference to a financial transaction what alloys are used in coin, and it makes no difference to the brain what bits of substance are used as triggers for language-they could be pebbles graded for color or size, or if we had a dog's olfactory sense, a scheme of discriminated smells, The choice of sound is part of our human heritage, probably for good reason. We do not have to look at touch the signaler to catch the signal, and we do not depend on wind direction as with smell; nor, as with smell, are we unable to turn it off once it is emitted. Most important, we can talk and do other things at the same time. This would be difficult if we could only make signs with our hands. hpss/lerwinharkurriawan.wordpress.com/2013I02/14the-oign-ct-languagelt ater 1 240‘ie2020 The Origin of Langu Language is sound in the same sense that a given house is wood, we can conceive of other materials, but itis the only tools we had were woodworking ones. If we learn a language we must learn to produce sounds. Other mediums are used only as incidental helps, except among the deaf, whose sign language rivals spoken language in intricacy and efficiency. So part of the description of language must acknowledge that the sound that enters into the organization of language is as indispensable as the organization itsclf. erwinharikurniwan 3. Language is Hierarchic ‘Though fluent speakers may seem to talk in a continuous stream, language is never truly continuous. To convey discrete meanings there have to be discrete units, and the first task in breaking the code of anew language is finding what they are. At the lowest level are bits of distinctive sound meaningless in themselves-the hum of an m or the explosion of a p, which occurs in clumps that we call syllables. A syllable is the smallest unit that is normally spoken by itself. It is the poet’s unit, the unit of rhythm and audibility. Above the level of meaningless sounds and syllables are the levels that are segmented both for sound and for meaning. Firs are words and parts of words that we recognize as having meaningful shape, such as the prefix frans- or the suffix — ism. Above the word level is the level of syntax, itself a complex of levels, since the unit that we call a sentences is often made up of a combination of simpler sentences, usually in some abbreviated form; and these in turn contain smaller units termed phrases, such as the prepositional phrases, such as the prepositional phrase fo the west and the verb ran fast. Still higher units have to be recognized-question-and answer, paragraph, discourse-but the larger they get, the harder itis to decide just what the structure is supposed to be. Most linguistic analysis up to very recently has stopped with the sentence. Stratification-this organization of levels on levels-is the physical manifestation of the “infinite use of finite means,” the trait the most distinguishes human communication and that provides its tremendous resourcefulness. Dozens of distinctive sounds are organized into scores of syllables, which become the carriers of hundred of more or less meaningful segments of words, and which in turn are built into thousands of words proper. With thousands of words we associate millions of meanings, and on top of those millions the numbers of possible sentence and discourses become astronomical. One linguist call this scheme of things “multiple reinvestment” Underlying multiple reinvestment is the “structural principle”, whereby instead of having unique symbols for every purpose, which would require as many completely different symbols as there are purposes, we use elementary units and recombine them. With just two units at the word level, meanings in answer to the request Describe the house: IWsbrick. It’s brick red. Ws red Its red brick. 4, Language changes to outwit change Every living language is in a state of dynamic equilibrium. Infinite _ changes occur in every act of speech and rarely make an impression-they are not imitated or perpetuated, because hearers ignore them (for example, the fumbling of someone who talks in a hurry or coughs in the middle of the word). Now and then a scintilla is captured and held. We hear a novel expression and like it. It is adaptive-fits a style or hpsslerinharkurriawan.wordpress.com/2013I02/14the-oign-ct-languagelt ater 1 m0‘rarz000 ‘Tha Origin of Langu names a new object or expresses an idea succinctly. Others take it up and it “become part of the language,” the equilibrium is temporarily upset but reestablishes itself quickly as the new expression marks out its territory, and the older inhabitants defend what is left of theirs. erwinharikurniwan The vast open-endedness of language that results from multiple reinvest ments makes it both systematic and receptive to change. The parts are intricately interwoven, and this maintains the fabric; but they are also infinitely recombinable, and this makes for gradual, nondestructive variation. The linguistic code is like the genetic code-so much so that geneticists refer to “the syntax of the DNA chain.” The hierarchical organization of meaningful units in language — from words through phrases and sentences and on up to discourses-is paralleled by ranks of genetic sequences with their inherited messages that control growth and development. Underlying both codes are meaningless subunits, called phonemes in language and nucleotide bases in genetics . Changes in language and mutations in genetics serve a similar purpose: to outwit the random changes in society in a nature. One cannot predict an accident, but one can provide enough to survive. This is no guarantee against disaster; and languages as well as species do perish. But it suffices to cope with the normal rate of random intrusions. 5, Language is embedded in gesture If language is an activity, we cannot say that it stops short at the boundary of verbal speech activity, or human actions are not so easily compartmentalized. In a primary language encounter-face to face speech-the language is reinforced by both audible and visible gesture. Even when speaking on the telephone a person may sneer, and we will hear the sneer because the sound wave is distorted in characteristic ways. Audible and visible gestures are usually termed paralanguage and kinesics, respectively. Body language is another word for kinesics, but is generally reserved for movements that communicate without being part of a clearly established social code-we might say that they are unconscious. Even when nothing appears to be going on at all, something may be communicated-there is a language of silence. Skilled comedians know exactly when and for how long to pause to let a point sink in; spoken language demands time for decoding as well as time for speaking. But silence is affective only when one commands the field and fends off would-be interrupters. To avoid being interrupted while gathering their thoughts, speakers use a kind of audible gesture called a hesitation sound, usually a low-pitched wh or unh. Sometime words are employed for the same purpose; well or ya know in English, este (‘this’) in American Spanish. If you are asked what time it is and you know, you will reply without hesitation. But if you have to look your watch, you may say it’ now-zo-w fen fifteen, using a drawled now to keep command of the situation. The amount or verbalized makeweight with which speaker packs a conversation gesture to keep from yielding the floor is incalculable. This is one of the great stylistic differences between spoken and w1 language, and is why the latter appears so carefully pruned. Gesture may occur alone as when we nod assent, or may accompany verbal speech. If the sentence still, he did his best is accompanied by a pouting lower lip and a shrug of the shoulders, visible gesture turns the words into an ironic apology. If oh, Jack’s all right, but hell..... is spoken with a deprecatory grimace on the last two words and with a drop of pitch on fell, the result is a trio of verbal language, visible gesture, and audible gesture. Gesture systems that are substitutes or virtual substitutes for spoken language are a study in themselves. ‘The American Sign Language used by the deaf and the sign languages of the Plains Indians are the best- known examples. Whistle languages and African drum languages are based in their own particular ways hpss/lerwinharkurriawan.wordpress.com/2013I02/14the-oign-ct-languagelt ater 1 4140‘rarz000 ‘The Origin of Language ~ eruinhanurniswan on speech, and telegraphic and semaphoric signaling are based on writing-that is, on spelling. The finger-spelling used by the Japanese is similar, but is used along with speech to clear up ambiguities caused by the many sound-alike words in that language (like the English deign and Dane) The gesture, both audible and visible, that accompany ordinary speech are of two main types and four subtypes. The first main type is learned gesture. These are acquired as part of a speaker's culture, just as words are; and those of the first subtype, which can be called lexical, resemble words closely enough to have standard spelling: uh-huh for “yes,” huh? For ‘what? ‘hmm for ‘I wonder’ tsk-tsk for the click of tongue used to show disapproval. Visible gestures in this subclass include waving the hand for ‘good- bye,’ holding both hands out with palms up and shoulders raised for ‘I don’t know’, and putting the index finger against the lips for ‘Be quite’ (often accompanied by the audible lexical gestures sh), or similar ones with different meanings. Our gesture for ‘come here’ is holding the hand out cupped palm up with the fingers beckoning; in some other areas- for example, Mexico-it is the same except that the hand is cupped palm down. The second main type of gesture is instinctive, with subtype involuntary and voluntary. No one has to learn to laugh or smile or cry or dodge a blow or blink when an object comes unexpectedly toward the eyes. These actions are controlled by the autonomous nervous system and frequently cannot be avoided even with practice. People who blush easily betray embarrassment in spite of themselves. But the line between involuntary and voluntary is a shifting one. In human beings the limbic system of the brain, which controls involuntary actions, is overlaid by higher systems, and this leads to some measure of voluntary control of reactions that in other animals are purely automatic. A sign of adulthood is the ‘insincerity’ of originally autonomous actions. A smile may no linger be a symptom of feeling but a purposive act intended to please. The hollow laugh and the crocodile tear are instinctive gestures acquire a social significance and take on local modifications, one reason why members of one culture may behave awkwardly when-transplanted to another. All gesture, but instinctive gestures especially, cooperate with language in a total communicative act. While we can usually guess a speaker's intend, we may be unsure if the gestural part is extracted. In the following utterance, You don’t it. pssiewinharkuriawan wordpress. com/2013/02/"4ithe-origin-chlanguage/#—text=Chapter 1 a0‘182020 ‘The Origin of Language - erwinharkurniawan Table 1-1 Summary of Gesture types Lexical LEARNED Iconic involuntary INSTINCTIVE Voluntary Audible uh-huh shhh buzz cough sneeze cough for getting attention Visible nod of head finger to lips hand indicates height from ground blink of eye blush smile to please Everything can remain the same, yet with one’s head slightly forward, eyes widened, and mouth left open after the last word, the resuit is a half-question (‘you surely don’t mean it, do you?), while with the head erect, eyes not widened, and mouth closed afterward, it is a confident assertion. In the first case, cooperation is asks. When this happens the gestural meaning is usually closer to the heart of the matter htpssewinharkuriawan wordpress. com/2013/02/"4the-oign-cFlanguage/:~tex’=Chapter 1‘ie2020 ‘The Origin of Language - erwinharkurniawan than the meaning of the words and syntax-sentence like he’s « great guy can be the reserved in meaning by a knowing look (we call such remarks ironic). Gestures of pointing are often indispensable. The sentence He doesn’t know you're on my side immediately precede by a sidewise toss of the head in the direction of the person referred to makes it clear, by pointing, who he is. Gestures of the hands and head are also used to reinforce the syllables on which an accent falls. A person too far away to hear a conversation can often tell what syllables are being emphasized by the way the speaker hammers with a fist or jabs downward with the jaw. In most accounts of language, gesture has been underrated or ignored. Body language, along with other bodily functions, has been a partially tabooed subject; even today we would feel embarrassed by saying to someone, “why did you trust your head forward when you said that?” though a question like “why did you say absolutely “when you weren't sure? is commonplace. As a reflection of this, linguists have traditionally concentrated on the language of information-prepositional language-which is the only kind writing can convey with a high degree of efficiency, but even this kind of language, when spoken, is signaled as true false, positive or doubtful, welcome or unwelcome, by gesture; and all other forms of language-questions, commands, wishes, exclamations, denials-are heavily dependent on it. 6, Language is both arbitrary and non-arbitrary If people are to cooperate the must understand one another by sharing values. Sometimes we deliberately agree to agree, as in learning the mathematical formula c= nr” or the symbols HO for water. In such a case the arbitrariness and conventionality of the symbols and their relation to reality stand out boldly. Language is similarity conventionality and arbitrary. There is no need for us to worry about our different perceptions of what a dog looks like, feels like, or sounds like, in order to refer to one. If we are agreed on calling it dog we can give socially vital warnings like Mad dog with assurance. Dog has an arbitrary, conventional value in our society, as do most of the words in any language. The obvious exceptions are few, if there were always a close connection between the sound of a word and its meaning, we would not need to know the language to guess the word if we knew the meaning and guess the meaning if we knew the word. Now and then we can do this: meow in English and mieow in French sound the same and mean the same. Yet even with words that imitate sounds this seldom happens (lo caw in English is croasser in Frenchy to giggle in English kitchen in German). With other words is practically never found: square and box-shaped have similar meanings but no resemblance in sound. Axbitrariness comes from having to code a whole universe of meanings. The main problem with such vast quantities is to find not resemblances but differences, to make a given combination of sounds sufficiently unlike every other combination so that no two will be mistaken for each other. It is more important to make wheat and barley sound different than to use the names to express a family relationship as a botanist might do. Syntax -the grammar of arrangement-is somewhat less arbitrary than words, especially in the order of elements. We say He came int and sat down because that is the sequence of the actions; if we said He sat down and come in it would have to mean that the opposite sequence occurred-perhaps he decided to get into his wheelchair to proper himself into the room. To reserve the order we need a specific grammatical instruction, say the word after :He sat down after he came in. But arbitrariness lingers even without such traffic signs: ground parched corn has first been parched and then ground, hpsslerinharkurriawan.wordpress.com/2013I02/14the-oign-ct-languagelt ater 1 80‘ie2020 ‘The Origin of Language - erwinharkurniawan The most rigidly arbitrary level of language is that of the distinctive units of sound by which we can distinguish between skin and skim or spare and scare. It was noted earlier that using sound for this purpose, while practical, was not necessary for the system. And even when sound became the medium, particular sounds did not matter so long as they could be told apart. What distinguishes skin from skim is the sound of [n] versus the sound of [m], but could just as well as be [b] versus [g]- there is nothing in the nature of skin that decrees it shall be called skin and not skib. The only “natural” fact is that human beings are limited by their speech organs to certain dimensions of sound. But given the sets of sounds we can make (not identical, of course, from one language to another, but highly similar), arbitrariness frees us to combine them at will. The combinations do not have to match anything in nature, and their number is therefore unlimited. Still, arbitrariness has its limits. Whenever one thing stands for another-as pictures, diagram and signals do-it is normal to look for resemblances. A for a television set represents each part and connection in detail. If someone asks directions and the right, the direction of travel is also to the right. Most gestures have at least an element of guess ability about them; the lexical gesture for’ I don’t know’ described earlier uses empty hands to mean ‘I have no information’ Even the distinctive units of sound are not always arbitrary. There seems to be a connection, transcending individual languages, between the sounds of the vowels produced with the tongue high in the mouth and to the front-especially the vowel sound in wee, teeny-and the meaning of ‘smallest, while those with tongue low suggest ‘largeness’. The size of the mouth cavity-this ee sound has the smallest opening of all-is matched with the meaning. We chip a small but chop a large one; a slip is smaller than a slab and a nib is smaller than a knob. Examples crop us spontaneously ~ “A freep is a baby frope”, said a popular entertainer in a game of scrabble The curious thing about the balance between arbitrariness and its opposite is that, given language (or anything else) as a fact of life, much of the arbitrariness falls away. We can say that the shape of an apple is arbitrary because it. "Might as well” be square. But apples are a fact of life, and they are not square; and this relates them, non-arbitrarily, to the other fruits in the universe of fruit. The letter F “might as well” have the shape L, but it does not, and this relates it non-arbitrarily to the other shapes of the same letter, F and f. if we accept the initial arbitrariness of the existence of almost anything, non arbitrariness follows in most of its subsequent connections. The English language seems inexcusably arbitrary to the speaker of French. Yet it is a word to itself, and within that world there are countless more or less self- evidence relationships. For example, given the set of words bolt (of lightning), (frisky) colt and jolt, itis natural to the tie a similar jarring meaning to volt (named for Alessandro Volt). The more volts the bigger the jolt. Almost nothing about language is arbitrary in the sense that some person sat down on some occasion and decided to invent it, for virtually everything in language has a non arbitrary origin. Some things evolve to ward greater arbitrariness, others toward less. 7. Language is vertical as well as horizontal When we hear and look at a display of speech or writing, the dimension we are most conscious of is a horizontal one-the stream of time in speech, the span of lines in writing. Almost everything that we put in a message has to go to the right or left of something else. Much that happens when a language changes is due to collisions or confusions along this course. It may be only a lapse, as when a speaker, hpss/lerwinharkurriawan.wordpress.com/2013I02/14the-oign-ct-languagelt auao‘rarz000 ‘Tha Origin of Langu intending to say discussing shortly, say discoing, bringing a sound that belongs on the right over to the left. Or it may be permanent, as is in horseshoe, in which everybody sounds the s of the first element so that it disappears into the sh of the second. erwinharikurniwan If people merely parroted and never assembled utterance on their own, language might have just a single dimension. But they do assemble, and the question is, where do they go for the parts? It must be toa stockroom of some sort. And stockrooms require a scheme for storage, or we could never find what ‘we are looking for. This is the vertical dimension of language. It is everything that our brains have hoarded since we learned our first syllable, cross-classified in a wildly complex but amazingly efficient way. Nothing less depends on it than the means to summon whatever we need the instant we are framing our ideas for the next phrase and probably still uttering the last one. This vast storehouse of items, categories, and connections is the competence that we identified earlier. When we utter a sentence, we choose from a sort of vertical array of word; Small leaped Tiny jumped The miniature dog hopped in to my lap Toy flew etc. etc The number of vertical sets runs into the thousands, and the classes they represents may be small, tight, highly structured ones whose alternative follows some fairly strict grammatical rule, or loose and partially open semantic ones that may even cause speakers to hesitate at times in making a selection. An example of the former is the set of possessives that are used as nouns, which fill the slots in I had mine, you had We had and They had an example of the latter is the set of “coin” (penny, nickel, dime, quarter) versus the set of “values” (eight cents, two bits, a dollar seventy five) The horizontal dimension of language is the domain of syntax which is literally a “putting together”. The vertical dimension is the domain of paradigms, any of the vertical sets that we have just discussed as well as the sets that are tied together by some grammatical rule, such as pronoun with their cases, or verbs their inflections for number, tense, and person. 8, Languages are similarly structured Language can be related in three ways: genetically, culturally, and typologically. A genetic relationship is one between parent and child or between two siblings or cousins; there is common ancestor somewhere the family line. A cultural relationship arises from contacts in the real world at a given time; enough speakers command a second language to adopt some its features, most often terms of cultural artifact but sometimes other features as well (the borrowed words may contain an accustomed sounds, which are the domesticated in the new language if conditions are favorable). A typological relationship is one of resemblances regardless of where they came from. English is related genetically to Dutch through the common ancestry of Germanic and Indo-European. In the United States it is related culturally to North American Indian languages, from which it has taken many place names and terms (Wisconsin, moose, squash, sequoia). And it is related typologically to Chinese, which it resembles more than it resembles its own cousin Latin in the comparative lack of inflections on words. hpss/lerwinharkurriawan.wordpress.com/2013I02/14the-oign-ct-languagelt ater 1 oi40‘rarz000 ‘The Origin of Language ~ eruinhanurniswan Though genetic and cultural relationships tend to parallel typological ones, it often happens that languages of the sane family diverge so radically in the course of time that only the most careful analysis, will demonstrate their kinship. The opposite happens too: languages unrelated genetically may “converge” to a high degree of similarity. Typological resemblance reveals traits that are universal to all humankind. If we find that languages in scattered parts of the world, which could hardly be related historically, use the pitch of the voice to distinguish questions from statements, or show a predilection for certain vowel sounds over others, or manifest without exception a class of thing-words that may be called nouns we can be fairly sure that this somehow reflects the physical and mental equipment that all speakers are born with, regardless of their linguistic heritage. ‘Typological similarities can be found at all levels; the degree and number of them make it possible to classify languages by types. We can match them in terms of the numbers and kinds of distinctive sounds that they have, the way they buid words, and the way they arrange sentences. The second of these three methods was long the favorite; languages have been classified as analytic( modifications of meaning expressed by separate words: English 1 will go versus French firai); synthetic (modifications built in: English went or departed versus did go or did depart); and polysynthetic (extremely complex internal structure, roughly as in English antidisetalishmentarianism). Cutting accross these categories are others depicting how modifications of meaning are handled: isolating (arrangement alone distinguish relationships, as in English show me Tom versus Show Tom me); agglunative (relationships are shown by attaching clements that nevertheless retain a clear identity, as in greenish); fusional (clements are attached that virtually lose their identity in the process, as in dearth from dear +—th; darling from dear + -ling); and modulating (internal changes are made without the addition of anything readily seen as having an identity of its own, as in_ steal, stole). It is significant that examples of all these types of structure can be found in English. They are useful as statistical generalizations: most languages are typically more or than another ~for example, Chinese is isolating and analytic, Latin and synthetic-but all are mixture to some extent More recently, interest has shifted to sentence structure, in particular the sequence of subject, verb, and object in simple declarative sentences. Languages are classed as SVO, SOV, or VSO. These arrangements are somehow basic, since other facts of structure can be predicted from them. For example, taking V and as the most essential elements, it generally happens that a qualifier will use whichever one of these the elements it qualifies as a fulcrum and will occur on the opposite the other elements. A negative, for example, which primarily modifies the verb will adjectives, uses the noun (the object) as a fulcrum, resulting in the order AdjOV or VOAdj. These are some of the large-scale generalizations that can be made about similarities in structure. There are small-scale ones as well. For example, itis predictable that even if a language has a linking verb, young children will not use it; they will say Daddy here, not Daddy is here. 9. Language is heard as well as spoken Though every speaker is also a hearer, the psychology of one role is not always the same as that of the other. The principle of least effort decrees that speakers will work no harder than they have to in order to make themselves understood. This form of laziness results in blurring of sounds. But the same principle decrees that listeners will work no harder than they have to in order to understand. And this form of laziness compels speakers to use care if they expect cooperation and if they do not want to have to repeat themselves. These are the radical and the conservative forces in language, which account for change and for resistance to change. As they are never quite evenly balanced at any one time, changes do occur, but then the conservative force steps in and reestablishes a norm. hpss/lewinharkuriawan.wordpress.com/2013/02/14the-oign-cFlanguage/#~tex'=Chapter 1 002020 ‘The Origin of Language ~ ervinharkuniawan Key terms and concepts ‘Competence types of languages Performance analytic Phonetics synthetic syllable polysynthetic Paralanguage isolating Kinesics (body language) _agglutinative Gesture fusional Axbitrariness vs. non-arbitrariness Syntax, syntagmatic Paradigm, paradigmatic Study Questions and Discussion Topics 1. Can the sense of touch be used for communicating in language? Consider the reading of Braille. Can the temperature sense be so used? If not, why? 2. What type of gesture is a handshake? Could one male be sure, if he held out his hand to a male member of some unknown culture, that the other male would not take it as a challenge to a wrestling match? 3. Is the supposed “cooperation” between language and gesture sometimes contrapuntal, in that one says one thing and the other says the opposite? Think of another example. 4, IE we think of families of words related in meaning as being less arbitrary if the relationship shows somehow in the word form, how do the families inch, foot, yard, mile and milimeter, centimeter, meter, kilometer compare? List two other opposing series like these (say popular versus the scientific names a family of plants). 5. A gesture may imitate an actual event. In kissing, for example. We have the real thing; then the perfunctory kiss; then the kiss in the air, which may be “tossed”. Think of another example. 6. A story by Robert Louis Stevenson contains the sentence As the night fell, the wind rose. Could this expressed As the wind rose, the night fell? If not, why? Does this indicate a degree of non arbitrariness about word order? 7. Consider the two headlines Woman Running Across Street Killed and Woman Killed Running Across Slreet. Does syntax tend to be non-arbitrary in terms of pulting together things that belong together? CHAPTER 2 THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE htpss/lewinharkuriawan wordpress. com/2013/02/14the-oign-cFlanguage/~tex’=Chapter 1 so‘rarz000 ‘The Origin of Language ~ eruinhanurniswan It remains, however, a speculation. We simply do not know how language originated. We do know that spoken language developed well before written language. Yet, when we uncover traces of human life on earth dating back half a million years, we never find any direct evidence relating to the speech of our distant ancestors. There are no dusty cassette tape fragments among the ancient bones, for example, to tell us how language was back in the early stages perhaps because of this absence of physical evidence, there has been no shortage of speculation about the origins of human speech. In this chapter, we shall consider the merits of some of those speculations. A. The divine source According to one view, God created Adam and “whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof” (Genesis, 2:19). Alternatively, following a Hindu tradition, language came from the goddess Sarasvati, wife of Brahma, creator of the universe. In most religions, there appears to be a divine source who provides human with language. Accordingly, it is also mentioned in the Holy Quran that “And He taught Adam the names of all things; then He placed them before the angels, and said: ‘Tell Me the names of these if ye are right.” (QS Al-Bagarah: 31). Therefore, Moslems also believe that language originated from the Creator of Adam, the first human being, In order to rediscover this original, divine language, a few experiments have been carried out, with rather conflicting result. The basic hypothesis seems to have been that, if infants were allowed to grow up without hearing any language, then they would spontaneously begin using the original God-given language. An Egyptian pharach named psammetichus tried the experiment with two newborn infants around 600 B.C. After two years in company of sheep and a mute shepherd, the children were reported to have spontaneously uttered, not an Egyptian word, but the Phrygian word bekos, meaning ‘bread’. The children may not have picked up this ‘word’ from any human source, but, as several commentators have pointed out, they must have heard what the sheep were saying. James IV of Scotland carried out a similar experiment around A.D, 1500 and the children were reported to have started speaking Hebrew. It is unfortunate that all other cases of children who have been discovered living in isolation, without coming into contact with human speech, tend, not to confirm the result of either of these ‘divine-source’ experiments. Children living without access to human speech in their early years grow up with no language at all. If human language did emanate from a divine source, we have no way of reconstructing that original language, especially given the events ina city called Babel, “because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth” (Genesis, 11:9). 2. The natural sounds source A quite different view of the beginnings of human speech is based on the concept of ‘natural sound’. The suggestion is that primitive words could have been imitations of the natural sounds which early men and women heard around them. When an object flew by, making a CAW-CAW sound, the early human imitated the sound and used it to refer to the object associated with the sound. And when another flying object made a CUCKOO sound, that natural sound was adopted to refer to that object. The fact that all modern languages have some words with pronunciations which seem to ‘echo’ naturally occurring sounds could be used to support this theory. In English, in addition to cuckoo, we have splal, bang, boom, mantle, buzz, hiss, screech, and forms such as bow-wow. In fact, this type of view has been called the “bow- wow theory” of language origin. While it is true that a number of words in any language are onomatopeeic (echoing natural sounds), it is hard to see how most of the soundless, not to mention htpss/lewinharkuriawan wordpress. com/2013/02/14the-oign-cFlanguage/~tex’=Chapter 1 a0‘rarz000 “The Orgn of Language abstract, entities in our world could have been referred to in language that simply echoed natural sounds, we might also be rather skeptical about a view which seems to assume that language is only a set of words which are used as ‘names’ for entities. erwinharikurniwan Ithas also been suggested that the original sounds of language came from natural cries of emotion, such as pain, anger and joy. By this route, presumably, OUCH came to have its painful connotations. However, it has been noted that the expressive noises people make in emotional reactions contain sounds which are not otherwise used in their language, and, consequently, seem to be unlikely candidates as source-sounds. One other ‘natural sound’ proposal has come to be known as the “yo-heave-ho theory”. The sound of a person involved in physical effort could be the source of our language, especially when that physical effort involved several people and had to be coordinated. So, a group of early humans might develop a set of grunts and groans and swear words which they used when lifting and carrying bits of trees of lifeless mammoths. The appeal of this theory is that it places the development of human language in some social context. Human sounds, however produced, and may have had some principled use within the social life of the human group. This is an interesting idea, though still a speculation, which may relate to the use of humanly, produced sounds. It does not, however, answer the question regarding the ins of the sounds produced. Apes and other primates have grunts and social calls, but they do not seem to have developed the capacity for speech. 3. The oral-gesture source One suggestion regarding the origins and of the sounds of language involves a link between physical gesture and orally produced sounds. It does seem reasonable that physical gesture, involving the whole body, could have been a means of indicating a wide range of emotional states and intentions. Indeed, many of our physical gestures, using body, hands and face, are a means of nonverbal communication still used by modern humans, even with their developed linguistic skill. The “oral-gesture theory”, however, proposes an extremely specific connection between physical and oral gesture. It is claimed that originally a set of physical gestures was developed as a means of communication. Then a set of oral gestures, specifically involving the mouth, developed, in which the movements of the tongue, lips and so on were recognized according to the patterns of movement similar to physical gestures. You might think of the movement of the tongue (oral gesture) in a ‘goodbye’ message as representative of the waving of the hand or arm (physical gesture) for a similar message. This proposal, involving what was called “a specialized pantomime of the tongue and lips” by Sir Richard Piaget (1930), does seem a bit outlandish now. We can, indeed, use mine of specific gestures for variety of communicative purposes, but it is hard to visualize the actual ‘oral’ aspect which would mirror many such gestures. Moreover, there is an extremely large number of linguistic messages which would appear to defy transmission via this type of gesturing. As a simple experiment, try to communicate, using only gesture, the following message to another member of your species: My uncle thinks he’s invisible. Be prepared for a certain amount of misunderstanding. 4, Physiological adaptation One further speculative proposal about the origin of human speech concentrates on some of the physical aspects of humans which are not shared with other creatures, not even with other primates. These physical features are best thought of as partial adaptation which, by themselves, would not lead to htpss/lewinharkuriawan wordpress. com/2013/02/14the-oign-cFlanguage/~tex’=Chapter 1 a0‘ie2020 ‘The Origin of Language - erwinharkurniawan ing such features probably has the speech production, but which are good clues that a creature posse capacity for speech. Human teeth are upright, not slanting outwards like those of apes, and they are roughly even in height. Such characteristics are not needed for eating, but the are extremely helpful in making sounds such as v and th. Human lips have much more intricate muscle interlacing that is found in other primates and their resulting flexibility certainly helps with sounds like p, b, and w. The human mouth is relatively small, can be opened and closed rapidly, and contains a very flexible tongue which can be used to shape a wide variety of sounds. The human larynx, or ‘the voice box’ (containing the vocal cords), differs significantly in position from that of monkeys. In the course of human physical development, the assumption of an upright posture by the human moved the head forward and the larynx lower. This created a longer cavity, called the pharynx, above the vocal cords, which can act as a resonator for any sounds produced via the larynx One unfortunate consequence is that the position of the human larynx makes it much more possible for the human to choke on pieces of food. Monkeys may not be able to use the larynx to produce speech sounds, but they do not suffer from the problem of getting food stuck in the windpipe. ‘The human brain is lateralized, that is, it has specialized functions in each of the two hemispheres. Those functions which are analytic, such as tool-using and language, are largely confined to the hemisphere of the brain for most humans. It may be that there is am evolutionary connection between the tool-using and language-using abilities of humans, and that both are related to the development of the human brain. Most of the other theories of the origin of the speech have humans producing single noises or gestures to indicate objects in their environment. This activity may indeed have been a crucial stage in the development of language, but what it lack is any ‘manipulative’ element. All languages, including sign language, require the organizing and combining of the sounds or sign in specific constructions. This does seem to require a specialization of some part of the brain. In the analogy with tool-using, it is not enough to be able to grasp one rock (make one sound); the human must also be able to bring another rock (other sounds) into proper contact with the first. In terms of linguistic structure, the human may first developed the naming ability, producing a specific noise (e.g. DEEr) for a specific object. The crucial additional step which was then accomplished was to bring another specific noise (e.g. ¢00d) into combination with the first to build complex message (bEEr g0Od). A few hundred thousand years of evolution later, man has honed this message-building capacity to the points where, on Saturdays, watching a football game, he can drink a sustaining beverage and proclaim this beer is good. Other primates cannot do this. CHAPTER 3 THE DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING When we consider the development of writing, we should bear in mind that a very large number of the languages found in the world today are only used in the spoken form. They do not have a written form. For those languages which do have writing systems, the development of writing, as we know it, is a relatively recent phenomenon. We may trace human attempts to represent information visually back to cave drawings which were made at least 20.000 years ago, or to clay tokens from about 10.000 years ago hpss/lewinharkuriawan.wordpress.com/2013/02/14the-oign-cFlanguage/#~tex'=Chapter 1 aiao