Language and Culture Prof. R. Hickey ss 2006 The evolution of language

Summary

• Language began when words were combined.
• There are several theories on how grammar could have arisen:
• -out of ‘build-ups’: putting individual words together,
• -out of ‘re-analyses’ of combined nouns.
• At first many word combinations were possibly repetitive and inconsistent.
• The examples of the chimp and the child Vincent show how rules may have became fixed: optional orders became strong preferences which later became rules.
• The original preferences were probably on pre-linguistic ‘mind-sets’ => explains why so many languages show similarities