UNIT 1

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE

Language is fundamental way of interaction and communication, both are organized
and systemized. However, we are not sure about the origin of language or how our
ancestors communicated. Some researchers assumed that about 100.000 years ago,
early human had used their musical ability to charm each other before they produced
language (Yule, 2006:1). We can only trace the origin of language through theories
about how language originated.

A. Theories of Language Originated

a. The Divine Source
This theory believes that the human speaking ability is a gift from God.
Hindu tradition claimed that language came from Sarasvati, the wife of this
universe’s creator, Brahma. Charstairs and Mccarthy (2008:2) revealed that in
Judeo-Christian tradition, Adam was given Garden of Eden by God and He
consisted naming dominion. Furthermore, The Tower of Babel stated that the
diversity form of language is assumed as the punishment from God to human
arogance (Charstairs and Mccarthy, 2008:2)
Herodotus reported that Psammetichus (an Egyptian pharaoh of 664 –
610 BC) did an experiment on two newborn babies. He put the babies in the
company of goats and mute sheperd (some informed that the sheperd was not
allowed to produce any sounds). After two years, the babies were reported to
have spontaneously uttered a word, bekos which means bread in Phrygian, the
part of modern Turkey. So the pharaoh concluded that Phrygian must be the
original of language. But the syllable “kos”was added in Greek version. So it is
assumed that the syllable ‘be’ was imitated from the sound of goat by the
babies.
King james, the fourth king of Scotland, also carried out the quite similar
experiment. Furthermore, he expected that the isolated children would grow up
speaking Hebrew, the language of Garden of Eden. Therefore, those cases of
experiment on children had a different result from what was expected.
 b. The Natural Sound Source
Noam Chomsky in 1960s critisized the believe of “clean slate” by Lockean
and Skinner. This grammarian proposed another theory that human are able to
produced languages by learning and still regarded this privililege as miracle that
distinguish between human and animal (Taylor,1997:2). Here are several
theories of Natural Sound Source :

The “bow-bow” theory (onomatopoeic)

This theory asserts nature and animals sounds as the starting point of language.
Early human imitated nature sounds and use it to refer to the thing related to
the sound. When they saw an object flew and produced ‘caw caw’ sound, they
would call it as its sound. This phenomena developes in modern times as English
has boom, splash, buzz, hiss an other forms as bow bow. The words that similar to
its sound is usually called as onomatopoeic.

The original sound of language (emotion)

This theory proposes that human spontanously emotional reactions are the
basic of language. The sounds are usually done in sudden intake breath. Ouch!
sound is recognized as the sound of painful thing felt by human. The same forms
are Ah! Wow! Yuck!, etc.

“Yo-he-ho” theory (social Interaction sound)

“Yo-he-ho” theory assumes the sound that comes after or in the same time of
human physical efforts as the first early human language. Especially the sounds
of grunts and grouns which are produced through interaction of several people.
This theory also discussed the development of human language which can be
found in a social context.

B. The Tool Making Source

Language is produced by a collaboration of several speech features.
However, human physical features are different from other creatures. This kind of
features enable human to develop their language ability. The features that support
them are:
The Brain
Generally, the special function of brain is to control human motoric movement. If
we split the brain into two equal parts, we will find right and left hemispheres.
Eventhough they have same size, these hemispheres have different function.
Speaking and tool-using ability happen in left hemisphere on most human. All
languages, including sign language, needs the organizing and combining sounds or
sign in certain arrangement. If there is a kelainan of damage in part of this
hemisphere, it will afffect human speaking ability.

Teeth, Lips, Mouth. Larynx and Pharynx

Human teeth are not only used for chewing, ripping or tearing food. They are also
helpful for speaking activity. Teeth help human to produce sounds for ƒ and ν. Lips
have intricate muscle that makes it flexible to produce sounds like p and b. Human
mouth has smalles size than other primates. It can open and close rapidly and the
tongue inside helps producing wide variety of sounds.
Another speech organs is larynx. It is placed lower than mouth and it is near throat.
Larynx produces vocal cords, so it is also called as “voiced box”. Pharynx acts a
resonator to increase range and clarity of sounds. It is a long cavity placed below
larynx.

The Genetic Source

The genetic source refers to innateness hypothesis that differenciate between
human and other creatures. Human are born with special ability for language. It is
automatically placed in young children. When a baby was born, his brain was only a
quarter of its normal weight. When he grows up, baby’s brain develops and
normally can adapt to the variety of language.
In the earlier experiment to human language originated, there was no direct
evidence about the speech of our distance ancestor. We can only infers that human
special tools of speech support human to develop their language ability and speech.
C. Animals And Human Language
One character that distinguish between animal and human is the use of
language. By verbal communcation, they can show their existence in sociaty.
However, verbal communication or speech involves several properties.
In fact, we often see animals communicate each other in certain occasion. This
communication does not only happen among animals, but also between human and
animal. However, the communication done by animals is different from human that
use verbal communication. It indicates that human posses propreties that animals
don’t.
a. Communication
There are two kinds of communication, they are:
Informative Signal (Unintentionally)
It is a signal which we give without any certain intention. People can receive the
the signal through numbers of unconsious things we send, for instance sneeze
(we have a cold), accent (we are from different area), nod (to show agreement),
etc.

Communicative Signal (Intentioanally)

When we want to communicate something accompanied by certain intention, it
is called as communicative signal. We use language to infom other people to
express many any kinds of things. We might say “I don’t like the movie we’ve
just watched” to inform our feeling of certain thing.

b. Properties of Human Language

Eventhough animals and human do the same kind of communication, they both
have different properties of communication.
Displacement
Animals communication is designed for this moment, here and now. A hungry
cat will say meow in the morning. It will also say meow to welcome you home at
night. A cat can only produce one sound to inform different things in different
time and place because animals communication system seems to have one
design.
It is different when human want to inform various things, such as I’m leaving
tommorow at 6, we had a great holiday last year, or I am hungry now. Human
communication signal is able to give detail information about past, now and
future intention. This design enables human to develop their language. This
difference of animals and human is considered as displacement.

Arbitrariness
The character of language is arbitrer. Arbitrariness is the relationship aspect
between linguistic sign and its object in the world (onomatopei is the
exception). The same object maight have different name in different area or
country. A woody parennial plant with few or no branches is called a tree in
English. Meanwhile in China, it is called shù . There is also no iconic connection
between an adjective and its size. When we write “big”, it is not typed in its
meaning form.
Meanwhile, animals convey a message through signal they give. The set of
signals are considered the same all around the world. This property is finite for
animals, for example establishing territory or finding mate in mating season.

Productivity
Human language continously develop all the time. There are numbers of new
vocabularies and expresses which are invented to describe objects or situation.
This ability possessed by human is described as productivity or creativity.
Therefore, the human language ability is infinite.
Furthermore, animals have a certain gesture considered as habbit to
communicate. If there is a new gesture, it can not be infered by other animals.
Since animals do not have ability to produce language, it is called as fixed
reference.

Cultural Transission
Cultural transmission of language deals with a language inherited from
generation to generation. Human needs this process to acquire language since
human is not born with ability to produce specific language. A good ilustration is
a Japanesse baby born in Europe and is adopted and grown up by English
 speaking family will speak English better than Japanese. He only inherits his
biological parents physical characteristics, but not the language.
Animals are born with a set of certain property to produce signals instinctively.
If they live with different breed, they might imitate the gestures of animals they
live with. However, it will be weird since animals are born with specific signals.

Duality
Duality is human ability to develop individual sound into various vocabularies.
The individual sound such as a, s, t, r do not have any intrinsic meaning. Those
individual sounds will have intrinsic different meaning when they are combined
into a word, for instance star, arts or rats. This can be concluded that human has
two levels. The first level is in line with ability to pronounce the invidual sound
and the second level is indicated by human ability to create the individual sound
into various words.
Animals clearly do not have this property. when a dog is happy, it will sound
‘woof’. If a dog is sad, it will also sound ‘woof’. The dog will not change the sound
into different arangement letter such as ‘oowf’ or ‘foow’.

c. Talking to Animals and Its Controversy

We have already discussed that the language properties of human and
animals are different. In fact, we often see a lot of human spoken language direct
to animals. The question is, do animals really understand human language?
The general explanation is that animals show particular behaviour or
gestures as a respond to particular stimulus of sound without really understand
the meaning of the sounds. A dog might seem following human instruction, for
example to sit or to stand, in fact the dog only respond to those differant sound.
Several scientists did experiment to chimpanzees which perform physically
similar to human appearance. Luealla and Winthrop Kellog raised Gua together
with their baby son. After years, Gua was able to respond to hundred words, but
non of those words are spoken. Compared to Washoe, a chimpanzees which was
raised by Beatrix and Allen Gardner. Washoe was taught Americal Sign
Language (ASL). After three and half years, Washoe were able to respond to
hundred ASL and use them into simple sentences.
 If a dog is only able to respond to different sounds, Hubert Terrace
provides different fact about chimpanzees. The animals are clever. They often
act as they respond to trainer instruction, but sometimes they actually
manipulate the their trainer just to get reward. They will do the things which the
trainee usually will give them reward without the trainee command just to get
the reward.

D. The Development of Writing

Early people started to think to standardize their spoken language into written
language. About 5.000 years ago, Geofrey Nunberg refered to cuneiform marked on
clay tablet. Since that time, writing experienced its development.
a. Pictograms (Pictures)
The first form of written language is started from the concept of pictogram.
Pictogram is a picture that represent particular image or object consistently.
The picture ⊙ might represent sun. The esential thing of the pictogram is
everyone should use similar form to refers to sun.
Nowadays, there are many modern pictograms. The intention of the modern
pictograms, placed in alot of different place, are easy to recognize because they
have same basic conventional meaning. For example :

These symbols are pictograms because they represent particular object and
everyone knows what image do the symbols represent for.

b. Ideograms (Idea)
Ideogram is the extend concept of pictogram. When a pictogram moves from
something visible to something conceptual, it is called as ideogram. It derives
from pictogram to inform something about an object. Here is the example of
Chinese ideograms :
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c. Logograms (Words)
When a symbol represents word in a language, it is called as logogram. This
representation is arbitrer because the meaning of a logogram in a language
depends on in which area a logogram is used. Chinese writing is the example of
logogram.

d. Rebus Writing
Rebus writing is formulating a symbol to represent sound of language. In this
process, the symbol is used as a spoken sound word. A good illustration is the
sound of “betina goat” which is pronunced similar as the word “you”. Here is
the illustration of how modern rebus writing work :
e. Alphabetic Writing
Alphabet is is a set of written symbol which each symbol represents one letter
sound. The similarity in letter shape between early alphabetic symbols and
hieroglyphs raised assumption that alphabet derived from Egypt, “alpha’ and
“beta’. These words were the development of Semitic language writing system.
At first, these symbols only consisted of consonant, ommited vowel sounds.
Then, Phoenician maritime merchant occupied and spreaded this alphabet into
Greece. The Phoencian alphabet then assimilated with Greek. Some phoenician
were kept and others were removed. Here is the process of how early alphabet
turn into modern Latin.

f. Syllabic Writing
Syllabic writing is a writing system which contains a set of symbol that
represent pronunciation of the syllable. For example, consonant (f) and vowel
(a). Those individual symbol might represent a combination (fa) as in father. A
syllable may consist of three consonant individual sounds, for instance in the
word physics.
 g. Written English
If syllabic writing contains a combination of consonant and vowel sound, some
English vocabularies contains double consonant and vowel or double vowel.
This condition due to the history of written English that happened in fifteenth
century. Most of English vocabularies were influenced by Latin and French.
Therefore, a large numbers of spoken English pronunciation met several
changes and adaptation. If Latin has iland, English adapted it into island.
The spelling reforer, Noah Webster, in America revolutionary was successful in
revising English form. A British English spelling honour becomes honor in
Webster’s revision is a case in point.

Summary
The absence of physical evidence of the language origin leads to devine theory and
natural sound sources theory. The first theory comfirms that human speech ability
comes from God, meanwhile the second theory believes that the ability derives from
echoing nature through several adaptatation, especially on human physical features of
speech. These human features are difference from animals features. These differences
result on human and animals speaking ability and its development. Writing is one of
language development form. Early writing form (known as cuneiform) was marked on
clay tablets 5,000 years ago. Started from the concept of pictogram, writing then
experienced long developement become a set of symbols known as alphabet.

Excercise
1. What do you know about the difference of devine theory and nature sound source
theory?
2. State an example of genetic source situation!
3. What kind of evidence is used to support the idea that language is culturally
transmitted?
4. Which property of language enables people to talk about ‘the future’?
5. What is the basic difference between pictogram, ideogram and logogram?
6. What happens in the process of rebus writing?