THE ORIGINS OF

LANGUAGE
1.10.2025
«The suspicion does not appear improbable that the progenitors of man, the
males or females, or both sexes, before they had acquired the power of
expressing their mutual love in articulate language, endeavoured to charm
each other with musical notes and rhythm.» Darwin (1871)

We simply don’t know how language originated. We do know that the ability to produce sound
and simple vocal patterning (a hum versus a grunt, for example) appears to be in an ancient part
of the brain that we share with all vertebrates. But that is not human language. We suspect that
some type of spoken language must have developed between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago,
well before written language (about 5,000 years ago).
Genie
The Boy Aveyron
Divine source
In the biblical tradition, as described in the book of Genesis, God created Adam and
«whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that the name thereof.» Alternatively, following
a Hindu tradition, language came from Sarasvati, wife of Brahma, creator of the universe. In
most religions, there appears to be a divine source who provides humans with language.
The basic hypothesis seems to have been that, if human infants were allowed to grow up
without hearing any language around them, then they would spontaneously begin using the
original God-given language.
Experiments 1
The Greek writer Herodotus reported the story of an Egyptian pharaoh named Psammetichus
(or Psamtik) who tried the experiment with two newborn babies more than 2,500 years ago.
After two years of isolation except for the company of goats and a mute shepherd, the children
were reported to have spontaneously uttered, not an Egyptian word, but something that was
identified as the Phrygian word bekos, meaning «bread.» The pharaoh concluded that Phrygian,
an older language spoken in part of what is modern Turkey, must be the original language. That
seems very unlikely. The children may not have picked up this «word» from any human source,
but as several commentators have pointed out, they must have heard what the goats were
saying. (First remove the –kos ending, which was added in the Greek version of the story, then
pronounce be- as you would do the English word bed without –d at the end. Can you hear a
goat?)
Experiments 2
King James the Fourth of Scotland carried out a similar experiment around the year 1500 and the
children were reported to have spontaneously started speaking Hebrew, confirming the king’s
belief that Hebrew had indeed been the language of the Garden of Eden. It is unfortunate that all
other cases of children who have been discovered living in isolation, without coming into contact
with human speech, tend not to confirm the results of these types of divine-source experiments.
Very young children living without access to human language in their early years grow up with no
language at all. This was true of Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron in France, discovered near the end
of eighteenth century, and also of Genie, an American child whose special life circumstances came
to light in the 1970s.
From this type of evidence, there is no «spontaneous» language. If human language did emanate
from a divine source, we have no way of reconstructing that original language, especially given the
events in a place called Babel, «because the Lord did there confound the language of all the
earth,» as described in Genesis (11:9).
The natural sound source
The human auditory system is already functioning before birth (at around seven months). That
early processing capacity develops into an ability to identify sounds in the environment, allowing
humans to make a connection between a sound and the thing producing that sound. This leads
to the idea that primitive words derive from imitations of the natural sounds that early men and
women heard around them. Among several nicknames that he invented to talk about the origins
of speech, Jespersen (1922) called this idea the «bow-wow» theory.
The bow-wow theory
In this scenario, when different objects flew by, making a caw-caw or coo-coo sound, the early
human tried to imitate the sounds and then used them to refer to those objects even when they
weren’t present. The fact that all modern languages have some words with pronunciations that
seem to echo naturally occurring sounds could be used to support this theory. In English, in
addition to cuckoo, we have splash, bang, boom, rattle, buzz, hiss, screech, and of course bow-
wow.
Words that sound similar to the noises they describe are examples of onomatopeia. While it is
true that a number of words in any language are onomatopoeic, it is hard to see how most of
the soundless things (e.g. «low branch») as well as abstract concepts (e.g. «truth») could have
been referred to in a language that simply echoed natural sounds. We might also be rather
skeptical about a view that seems to assume that a language is only a set of words used as
«names» for things.
The pooh-pooh theory
Another of Jespersen’s nicknames was the «pooh-pooh» theory, which proposed that speech
developed from the instinctive sounds people make in emotional circumstances. That is, the
original sounds of language may have come from natural cries of emotion, such as pain, anger
and joy. By this route, presumably, Ouch! Came to have its painful connotations. But Ouch! and
other interjections such as Ah! Ooh! Phew! Wow! or Yuck! are usually produced with sudden
intakes of breath, which is the opposite of the ordinary talk. We normally produce spoken
language as we breath out, so we speak while we exhale, not inhale. In other words, the
expressive noises people make in emotional reactions contain sounds that are not otherwise
used in speech production and consequently would seem to be rather unlikely candidates as
source sounds for language.
The social interaction source
Another proposal involving natural sounds was nicknamed the «yo-he-ho» theory. The idea is that
the sounds of a person involved in physical effort could be the source of our language, especially
when that physical effort involved several people and the interaction had to be coordinated. So, a
group of early humans might develop a set of hums, grunts, groans and curses that were used
when they were lifting and carrying large bits of trees or lifeless hairy mammoths.
The appeal of this proposal is that it places the development of human language in a social
context. Early people must have lived in groups, if only because larger groups offered better
protection from attack. Groups are necessarily social organizations and, to maintain those
organizations, some form of communication is required, even if it is just grunts and curses. So,
human sounds, however they were produced, must have had some principled use within the life
and social interaction of early human groups. This is an important idea that may relate to the uses
of humanly produced sounds. It does not, however, answer our question regarding the origins of
the sounds produced. Apes and other primates live in social groups and use grunts and social calls,
but they do not seem to have developed the capacity for speech.
The physical adaptation source
Instead of looking at types of sounds as the source of human speech, we can look at the types of
physical features humans possess, especially those that are distinct from other creatures, which
may have been able to support speech production. We can start with the observation that, at
some early stage, our ancestors made a very significant transition to an upright posture, with bi-
pedal (on two feet) locomotion, and a revised role for the front limbs.
Some effects of this type of change can be seen in physical differences between the skull of a
gorilla and that of a Neanderthal man from around 60,000 years ago. The reconstructed vocal
tract of a Neanderthal suggests that some consonant-like sound distinctions would have been
possible. We have to wait until about 35,000 years ago for features in reconstructions of
fossilized skeletal structures that begin to resemble those of modern humans. In the study of
evolutionary development, there are certain physical features, best thought of as partial
adaptations, which appear to be relevant for speech. They are streamlined versions of features
found in other primates. By themselves, such features wouldn’t guarantee speech, but they are
good clues that a creature with such features probably has the capacity for speech.
- Teeth and lips
Human teeth are upright, not slanting outwards like those of apes, and they are roughly even in
height. Such characteristics are not very useful for ripping or tearing food and seem better
adapted for grinding and chewing. They are also very helpful in making sounds such as f or v.
Human lips have much more intricate muscle interlacing than is found in other primates and
their resulting flexibility certainly helps in making sounds like p, b and m. In fact, the b and m
sounds are the most widely attested in the vocalizations made by human infants during their
first year, no matter which language their parents are using.
- Mouth and tongue
The human mouth is relatively small compared to other primates and can be opened and closed
rapidly. It is also part of an extended vocal tract that has much more of an L-shape than the
fairly thin flat tongue of other large primates, humans have a shorter, thicker and more muscular
tongue that can be used to shape a wide variety of sounds inside the oral cavity. In addition,
unlike other primates, humans can close off the airway through the nose to create more air
pressure in the mouth. The overall effect of these small differences taken together is a face with
more interlacing in the lips and mouth, capable of a wider range of shapes and a more rapid and
powerful delivery of sounds produced through these different shapes.
Larynx and pharynx
The human larynx or «voice box» (containing the vocal folds or vocal cords) differs significantly
in position from the larynx of other primates such as monkeys. In the course of human physical
development, the assumption of an upright posture moved the head more directly above the
spinal column and larynx dropped to a lower position. This created a longer cavity called the
pharynx, above the vocal folds, which acts as a resonator for increased range and clarity of the
sounds produced via the larynx and the vocal tract. Other primates have almost no pharynx.
One unfortunate consequence of this development is that the lower position of the human
larynx makes it much more possible for the human to choke on pieces of food. Monkeys may
not be able to use their larynx to produce speech sounds, but they do not suffer from the
problem of getting food stuck in their windpipe. In evolutionary terms, there must have been a
big advantage in getting this extra vocal power (i.e. a larger range of sounds) to outweight the
potential disadvantage from an increased risk of choking to death.
The tool-making source
In the physical adaptation view, one function (producing speech sounds) must have been
superimposed on existing anatomical features (teeth, lips) previously used for other purposes
(chewing, sucking). A similar development is believed to have taken place with human hands
and some believe that manual gestures may have been a precursor of language. By about two
million years ago, there is evidence that humans had developed preferential right-handedness
and had become capable of making stone tools. Wood tools and composite tools eventually
followed. Tool-making, or the outcome of manipulating objects and changing them using both
hands, is evidence of a brain at work.
The human brain
The human brain is not only large relative to human body size, it is also lateralized, that is, it has
specialized functions in each of the two hemispheres. Those functions that control the motor
movements involved in complex vocalization (speaking) and object manipulation (making or
using tools) are very close to each other in the left hemisphere of the brain. That is, the area of
the motor cortex that controls the muscles of the arms and hands is next to the articulatory
muscles of the face, jaw and tongue. It may be that there was an evolutionary connection
between language-using and tool-using abilities of humans and that both were involved in the
development of the speaking brain. Most of the other speculative proposals concerning the
origins of speech seem to be based on a picture of humans producing single noises to indicate
objects in their environment. This activity may indeed have been a crucial stage in the
development of language, but that it lacks is any structural organization. All languages, including
sign language, require the organizing and combining sounds or signs in specific arrangements.
We seem to have developed a part of our brain that specializes in making these arrangements.
The genetic source
We can think of the human baby in its first few years as a living example of some of these
physical changes taking place. At birth, the baby’s brain is only a quarter of its eventual weight
and the larynx is much higher in the throat, allowing babies, like chimpanzees, to breathe and
drink at the same time. In a relatively short period of time, the larynx descends, the brain
develops, the child assumes an upright posture and starts to walking and talking.

This almost automatic set of developments and the complexity of the young child’s language
have led some scholars to look for something more powerful than small physical adaptations of
the species over time as the source of language. Even children who are born deaf (and do not
develop speech) become fluent sign language users, given appropriate circumstances, very early
in life.
The genetic source
This seems to indicate that human offspring are born with a special
capacity for language. It is innate, no other creature seems to have
it, and it isn’t tied to a specific variety of language. Is it possible that
this language capacity is genetically hard-wired in the newborn
human?
Innateness Hypothesis
As a solution to the puzzle of the origins languauge, this innateness hypothesis would seem to
point to something in human genetics, possibly a crucial mutation, as the source.

This would not have been a gradual change, but something that happened rather quickly. We
are not sure when this proposed genetic change might have taken place or how it might relate
to the physical adaptations described earlier. >>>> we find our speculations about the
origins of language moving away from fossil evidence or physical source of
basic human sounds toward analogies with how computers work >>> being
pre-programmed or hard-wired

The search of a special «language gene»