GENERAL LINGUISTICS

ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE

Presented to:

Mr Riaz Hussain

Presented by:

Zahida Parveen, Saima Asghar, Shazia Faiz, IqbalKhan, Sher Alam Jan

WHAT IS A LANGUAGE?Wayne Weiten:"A language consists of symbols that convey meanings plus

rules for combining those symbols, that can be used to generate an infinite variety of messages.“

Any means of conveying or communicating ideas; specifically, human speech; the expression of ideas by the voice; sounds, expressive of thought, articulated by the organs of the throat and mouth.

The expression of ideas by writing, or any other instrumentality.

The forms of speech, or the methods of expressing ideas, peculiar to a particular nation.

Definitions of Language: The inarticulate sounds by which animals inferior to

man express their feelings or their wants.

The suggestion, by objects, actions, or conditions, of ideas associated therewith; as, the language of flowers.

The vocabulary and phraseology belonging to an art or department of knowledge; as, medical language; the language of chemistry or theology.

The characteristic mode of arranging words, peculiar to an individual speaker or writer; manner of expression; style.

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HOW LANGUAGE CAME INTO BEING?

It can't be proven that language is as old as humans, but it is definitely true that language and human society are inseparable. Wherever humans exist, language exists. Every stone age tribe ever encountered has a language equal to English, Latin, or Greek in terms of its expressive potential and grammatical complexity. Technologies may be complex or simple, but language is always complex.

Bernard Campbellsays in

“Humankind Emerging”, that "We simply do not know, and never will, how or when language began."

A CHANLLENGE Quentin D. Atkinson, a biologist at the

University of Auckland in New Zealand, challenges a long-held belief by linguistics that the origin of spoken language only dates back some 10,000 years. Atkinson hints that if African populations began their dispersal from Africa to Asia and Europe 60,000 years ago, perhaps the spoken language had to exist around that time and, as Atkinson hints at, may have been the catalyst for their dispersion and subsequent migration.

How does a new human learn to speakFirst recorded language experiment conducted by a Pharaoh named Psammetichus I. Human ability to communicate through speech sets him apart from other animals, language experts, historians and scientists can only hypothesize how, where and when it all began.

MAIN HYPOTHESES Belief in Divine Creation

Natural Evolution Hypothesis

Belief in divine creation. Many societies believed that

language is the gift of the gods to humans.

Continued…… Judeo-Christian: The most familiar is found in

Genesis2:2, which tells us that Adam gave names to all living creatures. This belief predicates that humans were created from the start with an innate capacity to use language.

This belief predicates that humans were created from the start with an innate capacity to use language.

The Judeo-Christian tradition:An explanation on why there are so many different languages in the world. Genesis11 tells the story of the Tower of Babel. According to the Old Testament (Genesis 11:1 - 9), the tower was erected on the plain of Shinar in Babylonia by descendants of Noah. The builders intended the tower to reach heaven. Their arrogance and presumption, however, angered Yahweh, who interrupted construction by causing among them a previously unknown confusion of languages. He then scattered those people, speaking different languages, over the face of the earth.

Ancient Egypt: The god Thoth of ancient Egypt was a

moon god as well as the inventor of writing and scribe to the gods. As both the ibis bird and ape were considered sacred to him, he has also been depicted as a baboon. When the dead were tried in the Hall of Judgment, it was Thoth who wrote down the details. It was also believed that Thoth inscribed the number of years a pharaoh had allotted to him for his reign. Arguably the most learned of the gods, Thoth was believed to have a book containing all the wisdom of the world within it.

Thoth, Creator of Speech, The Great Scribe

According to Islam: Words of God in his word:

“We never sent a prophet, but with the language of his people, so that he can explain clearly to them. So God astray whom He pleases, and gives guidance to whom He will. and He is God Almighty, the Wise.” (QS. Ibrahim, 4)

The language issue has been confirmed of God in the Qur’an, that one proof of his power is the existence of differences in language and skin color.

“And among the signs of His power is the creation of the heavens and the earth and diverse language and skin color. Surely, with that situation actually there are signs for people who know” (Surat ar-Rum, 22).

“THE ORIGINS OF HUMAN LANGUAGE: Islamic Perspective and Science”

by Abd. Ghofur

Natural evolution hypothesisAt some point in their evolutionary development humans acquired a more sophisticated brain which made language invention and learning possible. In other words, at some point in time humans evolved a language acquisition device, whatever this may be in real physical terms.

INVENTION HYPOTHESIS:

“Divine Creation or Evolution”

How might humans have devised the first language?

MAJOR THEORIES:Five of the oldest and most common theories of how

language began:

The Bow-Wow Theory

The Ding-Dong Theory

The La-La Theory

The Pooh-Pooh Theory

The Yo-He-Ho Theory

The Bow-Wow Theory

Language began when our ancestors started imitating the natural sounds around them. The first speech was onomatopoeic --marked by echoic words such as moo, meow, splash, cuckoo, and bang.

Limitations: Few words are

onomatopoeic. Vary from one language to

another. A dog's bark is heard as au au in Brazil, ham ham in Albania, and wang, wang in China.

Many onomatopoeic words are of recent origin,

not all are derived from natural sounds.

The Ding-Dong Theory Plato and Pythagoras,

maintains that speech arose in response to the essential qualities of objects in the environment. The original sounds people made were supposedly in harmony with the world around them.

Limitations:

Apart from some rare instances of sound symbolism, there's no persuasive evidence, in any language, of an innate connection between sound and meaning.

The La-La Theory

The Danish linguist Otto Jespersen suggested that language may have developed from sounds associated with love, play, and (especially) song.

Limitations:This theory still fails to account for "the gap between the emotional and the rational aspects of speech expression”.

The Pooh-Pooh Theory

This theory holds that speech began with interjections spontaneous cries of pain ("Ouch!"), surprise ("Oh!"), and other emotions ("Yabba dabbado!").

Limitations:No language contains very many interjections, "the clicks, intakes of breath, and other noises which are used in this way bear little relationship to the vowels and consonants found in phonology."

The Yo-He-Ho Theory

According to this theory, language evolved from the grunts, groans, and snorts evoked by heavy physical labor.

Limitations: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.

Peter Farb:says in Word Play: What Happens When People Talk(Vintage, 1993), "All these speculations have serious flaws, and none can withstand the close scrutiny of present knowledge about the structure of language and about the evolution of our species."

According to Edward VajdaFour imitation hypotheses

The "ding-dong" hypothesis

The "pooh-pooh" hypothesis

The "bow-wow" hypothesis

The "ta-ta" hypothesis.

The Ta-Ta Hypothesis: A somewhat different hypothesis is the "ta-ta"

hypothesis. Charles Darwin hypothesized that speech may have developed as a sort of mouth pantomime: the organs of speech were used to imitate the gestures of the hand. In other words, language developed from gestures that began to be imitated by the organs of speech--the first words were lip icons of hand gestures.

Necessity Hypotheses:Several necessity hypotheses of the invention of

language:

Warning hypothesis.

The "yo-he-ho" hypothesis.

The lying hypothesis.

Warning hypothesis.Language may have evolved from warning signals such as those used by animals. Perhaps language started with a warning to others, such as Look out, Run, or Help to alert members of the tribe when some lumbering beast was approaching. Other first words could have been hunting instructions or instructions connected with other work.

The lying hypothesis.E. H. Sturtevant argued that, since all real intentions or emotions get involuntarily expressed by gesture, look or sound, voluntary communication must have been invented for the purpose of lying or deceiving. The need to deceive and was the social prompting that got language started.

In Short:How language developed a complex grammar remains a

complete mystery. This means that how language developed is equally a mystery. We simply don't know how language may have actually evolved from simple animal systems of sounds and gestures.