THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE

There are 2 796 languages in the world. How did these languages originate? There are
a lot of theories but the origins of language remain a speculation. What we know is that
spoken language developed well before written language
THE DIVINE SOURCE
According to one view God created Adam and whatsoever Adam called every living
creature, that was the name thereof as it is said in bible. If we follow a Hindu tradition,
language came from wife of Brahma who was the creator of the universe. It is similar in most
religions because there appears to be a divine source which provides humans with language.
There were attempts to rediscover this original, divine language but the results were rather
conflicting.
THE NATURAL SOUND SOURCE
The other theory says that the beginnings of human speech is based on the concept of
natural sounds that means that early men and women imitated the natural sounds heard around
them, e. g. when they heard a flying object making cuckoo sound, that natural sound was
adopted to refer to that object. In all modern languages there occur some words pronunciation
of which seem to echo natural sounds e. g. bang, hiss, buzz, splash... This theory is called
BOW-WOW theory and the words echoing natural sounds are called onomatopoeic. There
are a lot of abstract words so we are rather sceptical about the view that a language is only
a set of words which are based on natural sounds.
One other natural sound proposal is known as YO-HEAVE-HO THEORY. These are
sounds of a person involved in physical effort when that effort had to be coordinated (to pull
a rope, lift a log, push a big stone...)
THE ORAL-GESTRURE SOURCE
One suggestion regarding the origins of the sounds of language involves a link
between physical gesture and orally produced sounds. Physical gesture involving the whole
body could have been a means of indicating a wide range of emotional states and intuitions.
Many of our physical gestures, body using hand and face are a means of non-verbal
communication. Some gestures can be very clear but there are a lot of words and messages
that cannot be visualized using only gestures.
PHYSIOLOGICAL ADAPTATION
Humans are the only creatures that posses physical features for speech. HUMAN
TEETH are upright and they are roughly even in height. This feature is extremely helpful in

making sounds such as f, v, th. THE HUMAN MOUTH is relatively small can be open and
closed rapidly and contains a very flexible tongue that can be used to shape a wide variety of
sounds. THE HUMAN LARYNX, or voice box (containing the vocal cords) differs in
position from that of other creatures. THE HUMAN BRAIN is lateralized which means it
has specialized functions in each of the two hemispheres. Analytic functions are in the left
hemisphere. THE HUMAN LIPS have much more intricate muscles that help with sounds p,
b, w.
By now we have dealt with the problem of the origins of language. Although HOW
language began is a puzzle, WHY language began seems rather clearer. Humans needed
a greater degree of cooperation with each other in order to survive and this cooperation
required efficient communication.
TRANSACTIONAL FUNCTION means that we use our linguistic abilities to communicate
knowledge, skills, and information.
INTERACTIONAL FUNCTION means how we use language to interact with each other
socially or emotionally, how we indicate friendliness, cooperation, pain or pleasure.
One of the definitions of language says it is the system of human communication by means of
a structured arrangement of sounds (or their written representation) to form larger units e.g.
morphemes, words, sentences.
LINGUISTICS is the study of language as a system of human communication. Recently this
science has been accepted as an independent discipline. It tries to answer the basic questions:
What is language?; How does language work?; What do all languages have in common?;
Why do languages change? Linguistics cover a wide range of topics and its boundaries are
difficult to define:
PHONETICS the study oh human speech sounds;
PHONOLOGY the study or description of the distinctive sound units of a language and
their relationship to one another;
SYNAX rules of sentence formation;
SEMANTICS the study of meaning;
MORPHOLOGY the rules of word formation;
LEXICOLOGY study of the vocabulary items of a language, including their meaning and
relations;
STYLISTICS study of variation in the use of language.