Origins of language

So Baloo, the Teacher of the Law, taught him the Wood and Water Laws: how to tell a rotten branch from a sound one; how to speak politely to the wild bees when he came upon a hive of them fifty feet above ground; what to say to Mang the Bat when he disturbed him in the branches at midday; and how to warn the water-snakes in the pools before he splashed down among them. None of the Jungle People like being disturbed, and all are very ready to fly at an intruder. Then, too, Mowgli was taught the Strangers' Hunting Call, which must be repeated aloud till it is answered, whenever one of the Jungle-People hunts outside his own grounds. It means, translated, 'Give me leave to hunt here because I am hungry'. And the answer is, 'Hunt then for food, but not for pleasure'.

(Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, chapter 3, Kaa's Hunting)

Introduction

As you read this book you need to understand that there are contained within it very few facts and fewer truths. That is not so say that I have set out to write a book full of lies and untruths, but rather you need to understand the difference between a fact and a theory. Most textbooks are based on theory and conjecture rather than fact. Critically any text discussing such a complex and multifaceted topic such as language development is going to be based more on inference, and the so-called experts' 'best guess' of the process, and you need to start reading this knowing what we do not know. There has been a great deal of research into the field of language acquisition, which you will notice if you type 'language development' into Google, but in reality this research only serves to create more questions and very few answers. All of us are capable of thinking critically and we do so every day of our lives: how often have you put on a new outfit and considered whether it suits you, whether it suits the occasion, what others will think of you if you wear it and what sort of message you are creating by wearing it? Yet somehow we find it hard to apply the same principles to academic reading and writing, often because we are afraid, or even embarrassed, to question the unquestionable. The whole premise of this book is to help you to do just that, and as you read on you need to keep this in mind, read between the lines, weigh up the arguments, reflect on the issues and remain sceptical. Only then can you reach analytical conclusions and take a reasoned stance within the debate.

Some questions that you might like to keep in your mind as you read through the chapters in this book could be:

1. What is the writer trying to say?

2. What are the key points and ideas?

3. Has the writer offered a range of points of view?

4. Can you see an alternative explanation for what you have read?

5. Has the writer offered well-founded evidence for the conclusions drawn?

What is language?

What appears to be such a simple question is perhaps not so easy to explain. We are all skilled and proficient in our mother tongue, but what does this really mean? Language is clearly made up of symbols, but these symbols have no meaning in themselves. You could use a nonsense word such as 'drun' and depending upon your tone and attitude it can mean anything that you want it to. On its own 'drun' means nothing, but if you put it into context you can begin to narrow down the variables:

I want to eat drun on my toast for my breakfast.

Now it has limitations to its meaning and becomes more than just a noise but involves representation and understanding. You can then combine these noises and symbols into strings of sound, but they mean something only if individually and societally we have all agreed their meaning. Of course language is changing and expanding all the time, as society and culture demand. You only have to look at the following words to see how they have changed even in the period of your lifetime: gay; cool; wicked; fantastic. But you need more than just symbols to make a language; you need systems of organising the symbols, so that means creating a system of rules and order, and you also need underlying mental representations for those words, if they are to mean anything to anyone.

Is language used exclusively by humans?

Language appears on the surface to be a uniquely human means of communication and can be spoken, listened to, read or written. But above all it is the ability to understand language that makes it such a powerful medium for human communication, setting us apart from all other species. I would suggest that this is one reason why the human species has succeeded, in an evolutionary sense, over all other animals. Language could literally be a matter of life and death; as humans we are born totally helpless and depend on our ability to communicate to get the attention of those around us for our survival. Think of the baby giraffe which has to be up on its feet and running within minutes of birth or the dolphin which has to swim from the moment of birth. Compared to other mammals at delivery, our brains are very underdeveloped, and some estimates suggest that to have a comparable neurological development to a newborn chimpanzee, a human foetus would have to gestate for 18–21 months, compared to the usual 9 months. Not something most of you would want to contemplate! Despite this it is important to realise how comparatively little we really know about the origins of language. The genus for our own species, Homo sapiens (translated as the 'wise man'), appeared approximately 1.9 million years ago, and although impossible to confirm, it is unlikely that any language that you would recognise today was around then. Archaeologists have, however, found ancient cave drawings, dating back to around 35,000 years ago which some researchers have proposed are the precursors to written symbolism, which suggests that an oral tradition was prevalent prior to this. Archaeological evidence (Lieberman, 1998) would indicate that Homo sapiens originated in Africa, and it took a considerable period of time before they spread to other areas of the globe, as noted in Table 1.1.

Clearly the sophisticated systems of communication that you are familiar with today have not always been there. Looking at the drawings of the cave men you can see the possible beginnings of a symbolic system of communication, which today you might regard as primitive and confusing. The existence of language also depends upon the anatomical evidence of suitable structures in the articulatory organs, which are the mouth, tongue, throat (pharynx) and larynx, of a certain shape and size, alongside a minimum brain size and capacity. This would place the emergence of language not earlier than 120,000–100,000 years ago. Clearly language could have emerged in different...