The origins of language

• Vertebrates


  Animals with a backbone, including fish, frogs, birds and other mammals
• We never found any direct evidence or artifacts related to the speech of our distant ancestors that might tell us how language was back then
• Divine source


  In most religions, there appears to be a divine source who provides humans with language
• Experiments with newborn babies

  • Pharaoh Psammetichus experiment
  • King James the Fourth of Scotland experiment
• Very young children living without access to human language in their early years grow up with no language at all
• Natural sound source


  Primitive words could have been imitations of the natural sounds which early men and women heard around them
• Bow-wow theory


  Words that sound similar to the noises they describe are examples of onomatopoeia
• Social interaction source


  The sounds of a person involved in physical effort could be the source of our language, especially when that effort involved several people and the interaction had to be coordinated
• Physical adaptation source


  Our ancestors made a significant transition to an upright posture, with bipedal locomotion and a revised role for the front limbs
• Physical features relevant for speech

  • Teeth
  • Lips
  • Mouth
  • Larynx
  • Pharynx
• Tool-making source


  Humans had become capable of making stone tools, which may have been crucial for the development of language
• The human brain is not lateralized, with specialized functions in each of the two hemispheres</b>
• Functions that control the motor movements involved in speaking and making tools are very close to each other in the left hemispheres of the brain
• The crucial additional step in language development was to bring another specific noise into combination with the first to build a complex message
• Genetic source


  Human offsprings are born with a special ability for language
• Human teeth


  • Upright and not slanting outwards like those of apes, which is helpful for making sounds such as f or v
• Human lips


  • Have more intricate muscle interlacing than is found in other primates, which is helpful for making sounds like p or b
• Human mouth


  • Small compared to other primates and contains a small, thicker and more muscular tongue, which can be used to shape a variety of sounds inside the oral cavity
• Human larynx


  • Differs significantly in position from the larynx in other primates, which allows for a longer cavity called the pharynx that acts as a resonator for increased range and clarity of the sounds produced
• The lower position of the human larynx makes it much more possible for the human to choke on their food
• Even children who are born deaf become fluent sign language users given appropriate circumstances