One of the great questions in life, which, paradoxically, the majority of people never think about, is this: where did human language come from? Over the years, many different theories have been proposed, including the idea that language was a gift from the divine (“Experience to Imagination” 107); however, without a time machine to take us back to the dawn of language, we can never know for certain how it came to be. Despite this limitation, what we do know is what language is. Essentially, language can be thought of as a system which employs symbols to permit communication and expression. These symbols can take a spoken, written or signed form, and are combined in conventional ways known as grammar.
In his book From Hand to Mouth: The Origins of Language, and in this Tedx talk (shown below), psychologist Michael Corballis theorises that early human language was born when Homo sapiens began to make use of gestures to communicate information about the world around them to others. Eventually, this system became a fully-fledged sign language, and as time went on, the language users slowly started to accompany their signs with vocal noises. According to Corballis, speech as we know it today developed from these noises and first appeared only around 50,000 years ago.
Other theories disagree with Corballis’ perception of the origin of language. According to one theory, early humans tried to imitate the sounds they heard in nature in an onomatopoeic fashion, which would have given rise to utterances such as “moo” in imitation of the sound a cow makes (Nordquist). An alternative theory is linked within human anatomy. At a certain point in time, human vocal tracts started to differentiate from those of primates, allowing for the production of sounds that primates are unable to make. Some linguists propose that this physical change prompted early humans to make noises and start to speak (Nordquist).
One theory that has emerged is grounded in social and behavioural roots. This view sees language as a tool for bonding between members of a group; in this way, early humans would have developed language with the aim of forming a more tight-knit and cohesive community (Nordquist). The question of where language came from is so important that even the most respected (and sometimes controversial) linguists have weighed in. One such linguist is Noam Chomsky. According to Chomsky, the development of language was not a gradual process, but rather an instantaneous one. He theorises that, after a large evolutionary jump, early humans suddenly found themselves with the ability to produce sounds and use them to communicate with others. This is related to Chomsky’s idea of a universal grammar; that is, that all humans are born with an intrinsic knowledge of human grammar and acquire language with the help of that knowledge.
The above theories all have their merits, as well as their deficiencies. It is impossible to say which one, if any, holds the truth. However, it seems most likely that language evolved due to a need to interact in a meaningful way with other members of a group, and a changing vocal tract permitted this communication. Israeli linguist Daniel Dor has used this idea of language as a communicative tool to formulate a theory of language function that explains how language came into existence.
Dor first publicised his theory in his 2015 book The Instruction of Imagination: Language as a Social Communication Technology, expanding on the ideas expressed in the book with several journal articles in the following years. The basic backbone of his theory is this: as human societies evolved and became more collective, early humans gradually developed a new technology to allow more complex communication between society members. For Dor, this language technology is equally comparable to ancient human technologies, such as cooking, the controlled use of fire and tool-making (“The Role of the Lie” 48), as it is to modern “man-made” technologies which allow for “experiential communication”, including photography, painting and filming (“The Role of the Lie” 47).
At some point, ancient humans realised that their survival depended less and less on “individual behaviour” and more on “collective cooperation”. In this way, they revolutionised the human community to bring it closer to what we know today (“The Role of the Lie” 48). These new developments in human societies meant an increased need for communication, which came in the form of mimetic communication: “a combination of mimicry, imitation, gesture, tone of voice, facial expression, bodily movement, and eye contact” (“Experience to Imagination” 113). However, as human communities continued to grow and become more complex, mimetic and experiential communication reached the climax of their usefulness; this was the point at which early language, as we recognise it today, began to form (“Experience to Imagination” 109).
As communicative content began to go beyond the realm of experiential expression, trust had to be established between speaker and listener; in Dor’s words, “the will and capacity to imagine what you cannot see with your own eyes” emerged (“Experience to Imagination” 114). This development of trust between interlocutors allowed for the expression of more complex ideas, which in turn required more complex communicative patterns. From these patterns, proto-language arose. As Dor aptly points out, “[t]he entire process [of language evolution] was pushed forward by the constant need to raise the levels of success in instances of instruction” (“Experience to Imagination” 115).
However, language didn’t crop up instantaneously as a fully-fledged entity. No technology can be used without first creating and assembling its constituent parts; language as a technology follows the same process (“Experience to Imagination” 110). For Dor, human language is made up of two parts: the symbolic landscape (commonly known as the lexicon), and the communication protocol (commonly known as grammar) (“Experience to Imagination” 110). These had to develop over time and were gradually conventionalised by communities. The different conventions agreed upon for the construction of an utterance using the symbolic landscape, for example, would eventually become the grammar (communication protocol) of a language. As human societies spread out across the globe, different symbolic landscapes and communication protocols were developed, and it is thanks to this that we have approximately 7,000 languages in the world today.
Despite the plethora of theories about the birth of human language, one thing is clear: it is a wonderful gift that allows us to make the most of the world we live in today. As Dor says, language “constructs bridges over the experiential gaps between its users” (“Experience to Imagination” 109) and allows us to “communicate directly with [our] interlocutors’ imaginations” (“Experience to Imagination” 108). Without it, the world would be a very different place.
Works Cited
Daniel Dor. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=bczL0diWUnM
Dor, Daniel. “From Experience to Imagination: Language and Its Evolution as a Social Communication Technology.” Journal of Neurolinguistics, vol. 43, Elsevier BV, Aug. 2017, pp. 107–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2016.10.003.
– – -. “The Role of the Lie in the Evolution of Human Language.” Language Sciences, vol. 63, Elsevier BV, Sept. 2017, pp. 44–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2017.01.001.
Early Human Society. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, https://humanorigins.si.edu/human-characteristics/social-life
Language poster. The Open University, https://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/describing-language/content-section-overview?active-tab=description-tab
Noam Chomsky. Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Noam-Chomsky
Nordquist, Richard. “Where Did Language Come From? (Theories).” ThoughtCo., 26 April 2018, https://www.thoughtco.com/language-origins-theories-1691047.
Nordquist, Richard. “Five Theories on the Origins of Language.” ThoughtCo., 29 June 2020, https://www.thoughtco.com/where-does-language-come-from-1691015.
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