languages and our ability to speak, read, understand and thus use them always fascinated me a bit. sometimes when i am talking to someone, listening to a lecture or even watching a movie with subtitles i think to myself: "wow i understand those noises, why?" and even though it might seem like a weird thing to think about, i certainly wasn't the first one.
FOR CENTURIES PEOPLE HAVE ASKED THEMSELVES THE WHAT THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE IS, HOW LANGUAGES DEVELOP AND THEIR CULTURAL EVOLUTION. there is even the famous biblical story of the tower of babel that tells that in order to stunt the construction of a tower that could reach higher than god and punish man for his arrogance, god made everyone speak different languages so they could no longer work together. eVOLUTIONARY lINGUISTICS IS THE FIElD THAT STUDIES THIS, AND THE FIELD ITSELF HAS AN INTERESTING STORY. it made it s debut in the mid 1800s, with a published paper by biologist August scheleicher that related changing languages to evolving species. however, the thing with this field is that spoken languages, that have been used for a much longer time in human history than written language, leaves absolutely zero traces once they die out. i'd assume some manage to make it into neighbouring languages, but how can we truly know?
because of this difficulty the field was abandonned and the question of the orgin of languages deemed unsolvable by scholars. The societe linguistique de paris even refused any papers related to the topic in 1866.
and so for over a century the field was abandonned, only to be brought back to life in the 1980s due to advances in other fields such as neurolinguistics, evolutionary pschycology, anthropology and others. there is now the evolang conferences, dedicated to the sharing of knowledge related to language development, that have been held bianually since 1998 and the oxford university press has been publishing ever since 2001 the studies in the evolution of language series. the problem of lack of physical evidence has been overcome through the use of computer simulations, which are now the most widely used source of evidence. so the field really came a long way!
And isn't it amazing to think that humanity was able to land on the moon before being able to answer the questions related to the origins and development of language - something that every human being for thousands of years has used in order to communicate with others, the single ability that most notably differentiates humans from other animals? and i bet we know more about space and rocket science that the histories of the languages we speak every day.
research in the 80s more or less picked up from where it left off in the 1800s, calling for an adaptionist look at the development of language, however, there are other branches of thought, including that the question of how language originated will forever remain unsolvable if we continue to tackle it the way we currently do.
because of this difficulty the field was abandonned and the question of the orgin of languages deemed unsolvable by scholars. The societe linguistique de paris even refused any papers related to the topic in 1866.
and so for over a century the field was abandonned, only to be brought back to life in the 1980s due to advances in other fields such as neurolinguistics, evolutionary pschycology, anthropology and others. there is now the evolang conferences, dedicated to the sharing of knowledge related to language development, that have been held bianually since 1998 and the oxford university press has been publishing ever since 2001 the studies in the evolution of language series. the problem of lack of physical evidence has been overcome through the use of computer simulations, which are now the most widely used source of evidence. so the field really came a long way!
And isn't it amazing to think that humanity was able to land on the moon before being able to answer the questions related to the origins and development of language - something that every human being for thousands of years has used in order to communicate with others, the single ability that most notably differentiates humans from other animals? and i bet we know more about space and rocket science that the histories of the languages we speak every day.
research in the 80s more or less picked up from where it left off in the 1800s, calling for an adaptionist look at the development of language, however, there are other branches of thought, including that the question of how language originated will forever remain unsolvable if we continue to tackle it the way we currently do.
Recent Findings
The following are summaries of some recent findings and links to sources that can provide further information.
A relationship has been found with the size of the brain and specific shape of the vocal tract with the ability of producing more than grunts and just "sounds". anthropological studies show that homo habilis was the first of the branch of human ancestors that was deemed "language ready".
language typology - the evolution of language
new Light has been shed on whether a specific gene is responsible for the development of language with the discovery of foxp2 gene. a family in england with a serious language dysfunction called developmental verbal dyspraxia has been found to have a faulty copy of the gene. research done in animals also has found that the gene is responsible for size and rate of vocalization. however there is little evidence the gene is responsible for grammar or syntatical speech.
foxp2 and the development of language
research into phonemes, the basic unit in which sound is words is measured, and their abundance in languages around the world has shown that the further languages are from africa, the less phonemes seem to survive, which seems to indicate that languages originated in a single spot, only once, in southeastern africa. to put it into perspective, languages in that region have more than 100 phonemes, while languages in oceania have only 13. english has 45.
phonemes and the origin of language
A relationship has been found with the size of the brain and specific shape of the vocal tract with the ability of producing more than grunts and just "sounds". anthropological studies show that homo habilis was the first of the branch of human ancestors that was deemed "language ready".
language typology - the evolution of language
new Light has been shed on whether a specific gene is responsible for the development of language with the discovery of foxp2 gene. a family in england with a serious language dysfunction called developmental verbal dyspraxia has been found to have a faulty copy of the gene. research done in animals also has found that the gene is responsible for size and rate of vocalization. however there is little evidence the gene is responsible for grammar or syntatical speech.
foxp2 and the development of language
research into phonemes, the basic unit in which sound is words is measured, and their abundance in languages around the world has shown that the further languages are from africa, the less phonemes seem to survive, which seems to indicate that languages originated in a single spot, only once, in southeastern africa. to put it into perspective, languages in that region have more than 100 phonemes, while languages in oceania have only 13. english has 45.
phonemes and the origin of language