Theories of the origins of Language

• The bow-bow theory: based upon the notion that speech arose
through people imitating the sounds of environment, especially
animal calls, the use of onomatopoeic words
• The pooh-pooh theory: based on the evidence that speech
arose through people making instinctive sounds
• The ding-dong theory: postulates that speech arose because
people reacted to the world around them, sound symbolism
• The yo-he-ho theory: based on the notion that speech arose
from physical environmental needs which produced communal,
rhythmical grunts which later on developed into chants
• The la-la theory: provides that if any single factor was
responsible to initiate human language, it would be romantic-side of
human life
 Scientific evolutionary approaches
Glosso-genetics: the study of the formation and
development of human language
• The Evidence from Paleontology: Comparison of bony
cavities and skulls of Neanderthal man, Cro-Magnon man
(pre-30,000 BC) and modern man
• No direct correlation between the size of a brain and the use
of language
• Whether primitive man had the physiological capacity to
speak?
 Casts of the nasal, oral and pharyngeal air
passages of
New born
An adult chimpanzee baby

An adult
man
A Neanderthal
reconstruction
 Nasal cavity
Oral cavity

pharynx
tongue

Soft palate
Vocal folds
epiglottis

Soft palate Nasal cavity

Oral cavity
tongue

epiglottis

Vocal folds
 Homo-Loquens

• Human vocal tract evolved from a non-human primate form

• Speech is not merely the result of a system designed for breathing
and eating
• Developmental evidence: modern man can choke from food lodged in
the larynx, monkey cannot
• Speech has the survival value
• Hominids: having human like vocal tracts as far back as 200,000 BC,
but not sufficiently developed nervous system to control it
• Singing, body movements be used as tools in the developmental
period of the language
Three possible viewpoints to observe Was there
ever an original language?
Monogenesis view: all languages have diverged from
a common source, the result of cultural evolution or
divine intervention; the difference in languages is
because of the wave of migration; language universals
Original language

L11
L1
L6
L7
L5
L2
L8
L10
L3 L9
L4
 Polygenesis: The Opposite View
• Language emerged more or less simultaneously in several
places
• Language universals are the result of constraints which must
have operated upon the early speakers; environmental or
psychological
• Convergence: as groups came into contact, their languages
would influence each other
Original languages

L1 L4
L3
L2

L4-1 L4-3

L2-1 L4-2

L1-1 L1-2 L2-3 L3-4

L2-2 L3-2
 Third possibility involving vast time-scale
• All existing languages may indeed have diverged from a
common source, but this may have been just one line of
descent from an earlier era when several independent
languages emerged

L1 Original Languages L3

L2

Source of
Al l extant
languages

extinct
 Human Language
• Would generalized clucks and grunts be universally
understood among all members of the same species?
• These two elements of language can be set off against each
other in a series of permutations and combinations to
generate language endlessly in a framework which is both
rule-governed and open-ended

Language

Commonly
Commonly
Accepted set
Accepted system
of words
Of organizing words
• Human language is much flexible and complete than animal language
even that of advanced animals
• Language differ from one another but their operating principles are
same
• All old languages were capable of doing everything
• People spoke languages long before writing systems were developed
• All people function on a binary system of utterance
• Language has in-built mechanisms for change, adaptation, synthesis
and compromise
• Body gesturing especially the elements of stress and intonation are
important in human communication and also grow side by side with
language
• Individual languages prosper or fade in parallel with the rising or
falling fortunes of the cultures that support them