Aspects of Lingyj Mig w signals, and gestures of the a ssiv nee started in bis creation of language, In the say. plain rage ctianged MOF slowly than in’ historical tine, times, Le million years to come off from the old ¢, h of the Middle and New Stone At to come up to th iM, , ther 5, ee eB and it took another S000 32°" | 1 the Iron Age from the fore ir, Age a Since the Industriat Ages the pace of change has been dizzy Under some influence of generic expression uo Privvitives tend to have words for the specific events or situations of life. Accorg, ing to C. L. Barber? following seven theories explain the genes, of language : I. The Bow-Wow Theory 2, The Pooh-Pooh Theory 3. The Ding-Dong Theory 4. The ¥o-He-Ho Theory 5. The Gesture Theory 6. The Musical Theory 7. The Contact Theory 1. The Bow-Wow Theory a This theory explains that the primitive language was an act of imitation of the natural sounds, such as the cries of animals. Words like quack, cuckoo, peewit and some such imitative words of natura! sound explain that a primitive hunter wishing to sigoal h ee about the kind of game he found might have cael m ee and sound of such. animals—horse sovze, rustle hs eaten sludge, slush, grumble, grunt, bua? Word like fume, fare, fash, fal ep taunt, Say, an flame fluctuate, furry, crear flap, flaunt, flay, flick wo motion or flying. Of nd soon suggest a kind of ¥t course, words like flank, flannel, fs ’ , ¢ noises, flesh flimsy, flinch and Care flock have nothing to do with flame! 2, The Pool-Pooh Theory 1 This theory states th: cs that language arose front instinctive“ A tional cries ex, i pressive or symboli . lic of pai A esebIr Pain or joy.. And the, this theory suggests some of tj ied rather than the provesgte® StU wi © Process by which i mia ye) sen. Scanned with CamScannerThe Genesis of Language ss a does not explain the articulatory nature of language and thus fails to motivate further explanation and investigation. ‘The Ding-Dong Theory This theory beings with the fact that there exists an apparen- tly mysterious barmouy between sound and sense in a language ic. every external impression, a man réveives, impels him to give ‘a yooal expression, This isa pscudo-theory explaining nothing mote signifiant about language-development, 4, The Yo-He-Ho Theory The nineteenth century scholar Noire enunciated a theory called the Yo-He-Ro theory which suggests that language evolved from the noises made by the man: engaged in joint endeavour. While doing some “work, men make some involuntary vocal ‘sounds, This is usually observable when certain group of labourers Joad or unload 8 wagon or shift a huge weight: or log of wood, ‘A. SC Diamond? agrees that the first articulated words were com- mands uttered simultaneously with the performance accompanied with the violent movement of the arms. _He does not speculate ‘on the:exact nature of the situation— presumably ‘this might be tool-making, or crcting or lifting a tree, trunk or so oa, 8, Tue Gesture Theory ~"Adherents of this theory think that the animals use many gesture and some of them were likewise used by the primitive men too in their developed form : the chimpanzee makes signals ‘and expresses its feelings by its bodily movements as well as’ by yocal noises and perbaps the same is tenable: for earliest speech of the primitive men. Sir Richard Paget argues that primitive men at first communicated by gestures. At the very outset, mouth and hands were separately or jointly employed to gesticul: ate, Later, with development of their intelligence and general awareness about the experiences of life-situation, they needed exact gestures, Darwin’s book The Expression of the Emotions mentions + «,,.Persons cutting anything with a pair of scissors may be seen to move their jaws simultaneously the blades ‘of the scissors, Children learning to write often twi about their tongue as their fingers move, in a ridiculous fashi Language, thus, is stated to have developed oul tof a sort of Scanned with CamScannerao Pantomimothe ton, ue ” . handa in a gosture, Pree! NDS mimicking the movernen works of no Kiiid—mayum eet 8 1 analyse n fargo, numb Se maee m mnyum argo number of gesture, When air jy or mnya mnya produced by vadergoi ‘going the said Movement of Hips and t On gue, This theory hj dusorves serious attention tbe amount of phiusibitity and in terms of link between oud aad esi genesin of language 6. The Musical Theory es Otto Se! wow, ooh $Perserr put forth this theory and says that the ‘Bow wow, pooh-pooh, and yo-he ho: theorie : ihe part of language. “Lang ea 6 do explain the origins of : tages” ho writ 5; courting days of mankind ; the first atleranaad Sra ae to myselflike something between the nightly love lyrics of puss upon the tiles and:the melodious love-songs. of the Nightingale,”* It is a romantic view, His theory suggests that some sost of general changes have played an all languages throughout the hu- man history. Nothing is known beyond the Bronze Age. He thinks. that primitive words were long words fulk of diff cult jaw-breaking; passionate and more musical than the words of Jater languages. To support this, one ean.ithink of Igye—the most powerful emotion for eliciting gutburst of .the, saddest thought. \ 7. The Contact Theory G. Re've'sz—a former professor of psychology advanced this theory and contends that hunguage ari individual’s need for contact with his fellowmen ao mating calls and the cries of young nestlings in danger. ingly, language develops through a series of stages: contact language (which is not communicative), then ery (which is on municative). then calls of the birds and animals, and finally ¥ which are symbolic of human acts and thought. Re've'sz thinks that perbaps the earliest spect was a “iar | tive’ language, consisting only of commands and later the wd tive and interrogative terms were developed. with matur widening of man’s thought. wa? Scholars, lite Charles Burber think that we should. * - | Scanned with CamScanner blown through voealeavity while at Amsterdam ses through cites thea esis of Language -gseaf weight (o the question of motivation in the genesis of langu- age. But what are‘we'to make Of the welter of the theories? It és gbvious no consensus of opinion at present is feasible. Since the basic fuitetfon of language is to influence the behaviour of our fellow men, we should opt for the theories that stress the origin cof language in life-situation, of social cooperation and coordin- ation 3 as such the yo-he-ho theory appeals to be more convino- jng than others to explain the origin. Function of Language Psychology, sociology, and anthropology have each discovered Janguage both as a type of human activity and as a system in- teracting with personality, society and culture. Language bas even, intruded upon technological problems and engineers bave found ‘themselves motivated to basic research on human speech. ‘The nature of language is intimately linked with the demands ‘that we make on it and the function it has to serve. In the con- crete terms, the functions are specific to the culture. We cannot explain language by simply listing its uses. As Halliday contends: Malinowsk:’s evhnographic account of the functions of language based on the distinction between “pragmatic”? and “magical” or Bubler’s well-known tripartite division into the “represeotation- al”, “expressive” and ‘‘conative” functions . are directed towards sociological or psycholcgical inquiries and are not intended pri- marily to throw light on the nature of linguistic structure.® That is, we would like to consider language in terms of its uses, Linguists, for sometime, have been preoccupied with the study of structural aspect of language, but the usefulness of a synthesis of structural and functional approaches has long beca apparent from the Prague linguists (Vachek, 1966).? It is obvious that language is used to serve a variety of needs- for expression of “content”; that is, of the speaker’s experience of the real world, including the inner world of his own conscious- ness, This is what M.A. K. Halliday® calls the “jdeational” func- tion and what Firth® thinks easily intelligible both in behavioural: 4nd conceptual terms, Language also serves to establish and metitain social rélations, which include expression of social roles and communication roles created by Language itself and is retet~ aed to as “interpersonal” function of language. Social growps'ate delimited and the individual is identified Scanned with CamScanner a |