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Development of The English Language

The document discusses the historical development of the English language from a Darwinian perspective. It explains that human language evolves similar to how biological species evolve, with parent languages giving rise to daughter languages over time. Charles Darwin contributed to the understanding of language evolution through natural and sexual selection, comparing how birds learn songs to how infants babble. While the exact origin of human language is unknown, fossil evidence suggests it emerged around 150,000-200,000 years ago in Africa. Debates continue around language centers in the brain and the linguistic abilities of animals.

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Jane Butalid
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64 views

Development of The English Language

The document discusses the historical development of the English language from a Darwinian perspective. It explains that human language evolves similar to how biological species evolve, with parent languages giving rise to daughter languages over time. Charles Darwin contributed to the understanding of language evolution through natural and sexual selection, comparing how birds learn songs to how infants babble. While the exact origin of human language is unknown, fossil evidence suggests it emerged around 150,000-200,000 years ago in Africa. Debates continue around language centers in the brain and the linguistic abilities of animals.

Uploaded by

Jane Butalid
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Good Morning Everyone!

Before we start, we pray first.


(Praying)
So, LET’S START
Today, we will talk about the Historical Development of English Language
Before we continue, naa koy 2 questions then e Identify ninyu kung unsa sya nga Theory.
Good Job!
So continue nata, The Darwinian Perspective Human language evolves through a modification process where mages gave
birth to new languages similar to biological species develop the language (Pagel, 2016). in which parent languages give
rise to daughter languages over time and in a manner that mimics the evolution of biological species/ kung saan ang mga
magulang na wika ay nagbubunga ng mga anak na wika sa paglipas ng panahon at sa isang paraan na ginagaya ang
ebolusyon ng biological species.

I have a question, What is human language?


Human language is unique among all forms of animal communication.
It is unlikely that any other species, including our close genetic cousins the Neanderthals, ever had language,
and so-called sign ‘language’ in Great Apes is nothing like human language. Language evolution shares many
features with biological evolution, and this has made it useful for tracing recent human history and for studying
how culture evolves among groups of people with related languages. A case can be made that language has
played a more important role in our species’ recent (circa last 200,000 years) evolution than have our genes.
When did human language evolve?
No one knows for sure when language evolved, but fossil and genetic data suggest that humanity can
probably trace its ancestry back to populations of anatomically modern Homo sapiens (people who would have
looked like you and me) who lived around 150,000 to 200,000 years ago in eastern or perhaps southern Africa.
CHARLES DARWIN
- was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist,[8] widely known for contributing to the
understanding of evolutionary biology.
- a British naturalist who developed a theory of evolution based on natural selection. His views and
“social Darwinism” remain controversial.
- described how language might have evolved through natural and sexual selection. He compared birds
learning to sing to infants babbling.
What is Charles Darwin famous for?
The theory of natural selection was explored by 19th-century naturalist Charles Darwin. Natural selection
explains how genetic traits of a species may change over time. This may lead to speciation, the formation of a
distinct new.
Darwinian or evolutionary linguistics

- is a socio-biological method scrutinizing a language.


Evolutionary linguists consider linguistics as a subfield of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. The
approach is also closely linked with evolutionary anthropology, cognitive linguistics and biolinguistics.

Proponents of this theory look at the linguistic field as sub-umbrella of evolutionary biology and psychology.
This is further linked to evolutionary anthropology, biolinguistics and cognitive linguistics. It assumes that
language is a product of nature and if centers on the biological nature of language.
However, this research lacks empirical data as proof Researchers have not found any archeological traces of
language that linked the existence of biology and human language forms.
there are no archaeological traces of early human language. Computational biological modelling and clinical
research with artificial languages have been employed to fill in gaps of knowledge. Although biology is
understood to shape the brain, which processes language, there is no clear link between biology and specific
human language structures or linguistic universals.

There is no clear evidence that language started from animals and developed into a form which human used even
up to the present.

It was in the late 1830s that Darwin started searching at the beginning of language. His focus of inquiry lies in the
communicative abilities of anima and their capacity to acquire new sounds and associate them with human words.
Darwin started thinking about the origin of language in the late 1830s. The subject formed part of his wide-ranging
speculations about the transmutation of species. In his private notebooks, he reflected on the communicative powers of
animals, their ability to learn new sounds and even to associate them with words. “The distinction of language in man is
very great from all animals”, he wrote, “but do not overrate—animals communicate to each other” (Barrett ed. 1987, p.
542-3).
Debates about the origin of language are still ongoing.
Are there specific language centres in the human brain?

- Research has identified two primary “language centers,” which are both located on the left side of the brain.
These are Broca's area, tasked with directing the processes that lead to speech utterance, and Wernicke's area ,
whose main role is to “decode” speech.
Are animals capable of using language in a structured way, and do they possess powers of reason?

- Researchers say that animals, non-humans, do not have a true language like humans. However they do
communicate with each other through sounds and gestures. Animals have a number of in-born qualities they use
to signal their feelings, but these are not like the formed words we see in the human language.
Did linguistic ability, such as the use of syntax, evolve gradually, or did it emerge rapidly or even all at once in some now
extinct progenitor of the human race? Such questions, addressed in a variety of scientific disciplines, such as neurology,
palaeoanthropology, and animal psychology, build upon the work of Darwin and his contemporaries, while taking that
work in new directions.

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