Lecture 5. The origin of language

Lecture 5. The origin of language

1. 
   Ancient Greeks about the Origin of Language
   
2. 
   Wilhelm Wundt and the Origin of Language
   
3. 
   The Origin of Language in Ludwig Noire’s Interpretation
   
4. 
   Van Ginneken and V.A.Bogoroditzky on the Origin of Language
   

The origin of language is hidden in the depths of antiquity. But even the ancient civilized peoples, driven by the thirst for knowledge, tried to answer the questions: how did language originate? The first impulse in Ancient Greece to understand the origin of language was based not on scientific research but on general philosophical premises.

The ancient Greeks made bold and persistent speculations on the origin, history and structure of language, and there were many legends on which language was the first to be spoken on the globe.

The Greek historian Herodotus (5^th century B.C.) tells us that King Psammetichus of Egypt isolated two newborn infants to find out by their language which was the oldest nation on earth; when they began to speak, they uttered the word "bekos: which turned out to be Phrygian for "bread".

This was the first native attempt to determine which was the earliest language.

In his dialogue Cratylus, Plato (427-347 B.C.) discusses the origin of words, and particularly the question of whether the relationship between things and the words which name them is natural and necessary, or they are merely the result of human convention. This dialogue gives us the first glimpse of a century-long controversy between the various idealistic and materialistic trends in ancient Greece. For example, the Epicureans and the Stoics argued over the questions of whether language had its origin in primitive natural cries which gradually became associated with specific material objects, or in more or less conscious attempts to imitate the sounds made by objects.

The problem of the origin of language was so controversial that its discussion was forbidden at one time by several learned societies.
2. Wilhelm Wundt and the Origin of Language

It was the German scientist Wilhelm Wundt in the nineteenth century (1832-1920) who prepared the ground for a classification of theories of the origin of language. He distinguished between theories of invention and imitation, miraculous and evolutionary theories. Since his time, the problem of the chronological sequence of the two forms of language, phonetic and gestural, have occupied a special place in theories of the origin of the language.

Here are some of the pseudo-scientific theories of the past.

a) The "Bow-wow" Theory. It holds that language arose in imitation of the occurring in nature. A dog barks; his bark sounds like "bow-wow" to a primitive man. So he referred to the dog as "bow-wow". The trouble with this theory is that the same natural noise is, apparently, heard differently by different people. What is, "cook-a-doodle-doo" to an Englishman is "cocorico" to a Frenchman and "cucarecu" to a Russian.

b) The "Pooh-pooh" Theory. It holds that language consisted at first of ejaculations of surprise, fear, pleasure, pain, etc. It is linked with the "sing-song" theory, that language arose from primitive chants accompanying labour [see pages 126, 127].

All the imitation theories are based on the assumption that there is a causal connection between the original words of the language and the purely sensory impressions of the sounds of nature.

The theoretical impossibility of building a doctrine of the origins of language on the onomatopoeic theory (from the Greek onomatopoeia "making names") is easily proved. Imitative sound can only relate to natural processes producing sounds, so they represent processes producing sounds, so they cannot represent silent phenomena. It is not for communication. Neither statements nor questions can be expressed by onomatopoeia. These considerations should be enough to show the utter impossibility of a primeval language based on imitation.

c) Gesture Language. The theory of the priority of gesture language asserts that inward conditions and external objects and processes were initially indicated by a system of motor signs, i.e. by gestures.

There is no person on earth that even primarily, let alone exclusively, uses gesture language as a means of communication. It is true that gesture language seems to be a widespread form of speech among primitive peoples, although only a few of them really deserve the name "gesture language". The fact that the extremely primitive, mainly monosyllabic African Ewe language possesses greater clarity and immediate comprehensibility when used with gestures than words and sentence structures, tells us little about the priority of gesture over phonetic language.

From the point of view of practical life, the unscientific theory of the priority of gesture language is really absurd, because this would have allowed communication only with people in the immediate neighbourhood, necessarily excluding conversation with people at a distance or in the dark.

When prehistoric Man became aware that pointing gestures were no longer adequate for intercourse with others of his kind he began to search for more appropriate means of communication. The means at his disposal were sound and gesture; so it is thought that he had to adapt these means of expression for his purposes. Thus sound and gesture came to be used simultaneously in the very earliest stages of speech. According to some linguists, the two forms of expression went hand in hand from the beginning, supporting and supplementing each other, until sound language gained the upper hand and gradually pushed gestures into the background without completely eliminating them. But we must recognize that language, even in its most primitive form, was phonetic language supplemented by gestures, mimic and pantomimic movements.
3. The Origin of Language in Ludwig Noire’s Interpretation

The German linguist Ludwig Noire (1829-1889) tried to explain the origin of language with reference to the labour activity of primitive man. He saw the origin of language in the rhythmical cries or sounds made by a body of men in the course of common work – such sounds as we hear from sailors drawing a boat or pulling at an oar.

But none of these theories give a materialistic solution to this question. Materialism does not consider language an abstract creation of scholars or lexicologists but as something arising out of labour and practical needs of countless generations of Mankind.

Labour is the source of all wealth… But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence and this to such an extent that we have to say that labour created man himself.

The erect gait was the first premise for the birth of language and the development of consciousness.

But the hand is not only the organ of labour, it is also the product of labour. Only by labour, by adaptation to ever new operations… has the human hand attained the high degree of perfection that has enabled it to conjure into being the paintings of a Raphael, the statues of a Thorvaldsen, the music of a Paganini…

The mastery over nature, which began with the development of the hand, with labour, widened man’s horizon at every new advance. The development of labour necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by multiplying cases of mutual support, joint activity and by making clear the advantage of this activity to each individual. They had something to say to one another. The urge created its organ; the undeveloped larynx of the ape was slowly but surely transformed by means of modulation in order to produce constantly more developed modulation, and the organs of the mouth gradually learned to pronounce one articulate letter after another.

Neither onomatopoeic nor ejaculation theories can explain the origin of language; the first impulse was the need for communication.

First labour, after it and then with it speech – these were the two most essential stimuli under the influence of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man… By the cooperation of hands, organs of speech and brain, not only in each individual but also in society, human beings became capable of executing more and more complicated operations, and of setting themselves, and achieving, higher and higher aims.

Noire’s theory differs from other theories in that it considers that speech accompanied labour. The problem of the origin of language may be solved from one point of view alone, that of labour.

The most important was labour – first, the preparation and gradual improvement of tools and implements. The making of tools suitable for labour and adapted to specific purposes presupposes language. Man can only construct tools appropriate to a given end if he has the capacity to control his activity together with that of his kind, with whom he had to communicate.

One important question must be touched on briefly in connection with the problem of the origin of language, that of an original language.

Like "the first man" and "the first nation", the first language is a fantasy, an unfounded hypothesis. There is no evidence at all, either historically or from the comparative linguistics for such an hypothesis. The assumption of a single original language presupposes one particular geographical area forming Man’s original home. There are paleontological as well as geographical objections to this view.

It would be more sensible to speak of several original languages (polygenesis of language), such as the primitive forms of Indo-European, Semitic, Malayan, and other languages which are not derivable from one another.

To our mind, monogenesis and polygenesis are linked together from the beginning and determine the entire development of language.

While discussing the question of the beginning of speech and the interrelation between language and society and many other questions, scientists refer to observable facets of the contemporary speech of infants.

References to the language of an infant are of greater interest because by observing how the language of a child develops we can get some idea of how the main characteristics of human speech appeared, for the well-known principle says that ontogeny (the life-history of each individual) repeats phylogeny (the development of the species). The language of a child cannot represent the language of our primitive ancestors, as each generation in any community learns the language of his parents and passes it on the succeeding generation; this process goes for many tens of thousands of years and brings about changes in language.
4. Van Ginneken and V.A.Bogoroditzky on the Origin of Language

The Dutch scholar Van Ginneken, for example, tries in the 1940’s to develop a theory of the earliest speech sounds and languages on the basis of child psychology, linguistics and physiology. He envisages the earliest form of every phonetic language as similar to the babbling of children. The earliest oral language is supposed to have consisted originally of "clicks", sounds which are of the explosive rather than the fricative type. In Hottentot, Bushman, and some Bantu dialects clicks are common sounds.

Later, clicks were transformed into consonants and words and in the course of further development acquired the melodic character of language through the introduction of vowels. According to Van Ginneken, the original clicking sounds were the basic phonetic material of the earliest spoken languages. This theory has nothing to do with the original languages.

Van Ginneken thought that some consonants later resulted in laryngeal sounds that replaced the adjacent consonants. V.A.Bogoroditzky (1857-1941), the eminent Russian linguist, wrote:

"Front vowels developed first of all, then middle vowels; first there were only monosyllabic words; then two-syllabic words appeared with certain simplifications in words with a greater number of syllables".

Linguists dreamed to trace all languages back to a common source, and find out its phonetic system. The variability of languages in the course of time is such that classification is extremely difficult.

But man’s inquiring spirit will penetrate further and further into the depths of the past and with the help of other sciences it will attain a correct solution to the problem of the origin of language.