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J. JOHN SEKAR
THE AMERICAN COLELGE

Theories on the Origin of Language

Introduction
There had been innumerable stories about origin, development and
reasons behind diversity in languages today. The myths have
similarities, recurring themes, and differences passed on to
successive generations through oral tradition. Recurring themes
about language dispersal are floods and catastrophes that caused
the people to scatter over the face of the planet. God’s punishment
for wrong doing is another recurring theme.
Christian myth
1. The Hebrew Bible attributes the origin of language per se to
human beings. Adam was asked to name the creatures God
had created.
2. The Tower of Babel from Genesis tells of God punishing
humanity for arrogance and disobedience by confusing
tongues. “And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and
they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and
now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have
imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound
their language, that they may not understand one another's
speech. (Genesis 11:5-6).
Hindu myth
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1. God Brahma punished a proud tree and then differences in

language and diversity in culture and customs into being.
2. Vāc is the Hindu goddess of speech, or "speech personified."
She is presented as the consort of Prajapati, who is likewise
presented as the origin of the Veda. She became conflated
with Sarasvati in later Hindu mythology.
Greek myth
1. People had lived without law under the rule of Zeus and
spoke one language. It was gifted to them by gods.
2. The god Hermes brought diversity in speech and along with
it separation into nations and discord ensued.
Native American myth
Native American tribes share the Great Flood stories of many
cultures and civilizations that after water subsided speech was
diversified.
African myth
In the beginning the peoples of the earth knew only one language,
but after a severe famine, madness struck the people causing them
to wander in all directions and this brought about languages.
Folklore myths
1. Bow-wow theory: Discourse emerged from individuals
mirroring the sounds that things influence. Language began
when our ancestors started imitating the natural sounds
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around them. The first speech was onomatopoeic—marked

by echoic words such as moo, meow, splash,
cuckoo, and bang
Limitations
Relatively few words are onomatopoeic, and these words
vary from one language to another. For instance, a dog's bark
is heard as au au in Brazil, ham ham in Albania, and wang,
wang in China. In addition, many onomatopoeic words are of
recent origin, and not all are derived from natural sounds.
2. Pooh-pooh theory: Discourse originated from the
programmed vocal reactions to torment, dread, shock, or
different feelings. Speech began with interjections—
spontaneous cries of pain ("Ouch!"), surprise ("Oh!"), and
other emotions ("Yabba dabba do!").
Limitations
No language contains very many interjections, and, Crystal
points out, "the clicks, intakes of breath, and other noises
which are used in this way bear little relationship to
the vowels and consonants found in phonology."
3. Ding-dong theory: Discourse mirrors some magical
reverberation associated with things on the planet. Speech
arose in response to the essential qualities of objects in the
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environment. The original sounds people made were

supposedly in harmony with the world around them.
Limitations
Apart from some rare instances of sound symbolism, there is
no persuasive evidence, in any language, of an innate
connection between sound and meaning.
4. Yo-he-ho theory: Discourse began with cadenced serenades
and snorts individuals use to arrange their physical activities
when they cooperated. Language evolved from the grunts,
groans, and snorts evoked by heavy physical labor.
Limitations
Though this notion may account for some of the rhythmic
features of the language, it doesn't go very far in explaining
where words come from.
5. La-la theory: Discourse rose up out of the hints of roused
energy, adore, graceful sensibility and tune. The Danish
linguist Otto Jespersen suggested that language may have
developed from sounds associated with love, play, and
(especially) song.
Limitations
As David Crystal notes in "How Language Works" (Penguin,
2005), this theory still fails to account for "... the gap
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between the emotional and the rational aspects of speech

expression..."
Paris Linguistic Society
1) Such speculation was restricted when the Paris Linguistic
Society was established in 1866.
2) Shortage of empirical evidence treats such hypotheses as
unsuitable for serious study.
3) The Society banned existing and future debates on the subject
and it remained influential across much of the western world.
In the late 20th century, a number of hypotheses were again
proposed, of course with a lot of scientific basis.
20th Century Hypotheses on the Origin of Language
1. Mother tongue & Father tongue hypotheses
Mother tongue hypothesis means that the language usage
follows matrilineal inheritance while father tongue
hypothesis means that paternal lines dominate the local
language in an already-populated region. They are based on
genetic and anthropological researches. The maternal
lineages are associated with their pronunciation while the
paternal lineages are correlated to the vocabulary of their
languages.
2. Obligatory reciprocal altruism hypothesis
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It refers to the relationship that is nurtured between people or

individuals who interact constantly. However, language
development at community level requires universal
reciprocity rather than individual.
3. Gossip & grooming hypothesis
It is based on the principle “if you scratch my back, I will
scratch yours.” According to Robin Dunbar, gossiping
achieves the same objective for a group of humans living
together as grooming in other primate species. He explains
that when human social groups began to swell up and
become extremely large, the practice of grooming one’s
associates became tiresome and problematic. To counter this
challenge, the early humans invented verbal communication
as an efficient and cheap form of grooming. Thus, to impress
friends and other acquaintances, one only needed to utter
some sounds. This would ensure that a large number of
friends are kept happy simultaneously. Vocal grooming then
gradually evolved into spoken language.
4. Ritual/speech co-evolution
Chris Knight, anthropologist, developed the thesis on the
important consideration of novel forms of group cooperation,
and corresponding conflict in the emergence of human
language, analogous to signaling in other species. It explains
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the evolutionary emergence of spoken language. It rests on

the assumption that language can only evolve given novel
conditions of social cooperation widespread across human
communities—effectively cooperation between strangers.
5. Humanistic theory
Humanistic theories consider people as having ana agentive
role in the social construction of language. Language is
primarily seen as a sociocultural phenomenon. This tradition
emphasizes culture, nurture, creativity and diversity.
6. Chomsky’s single step theory
Chomsky claims that human language came about from a
single random mutation in the human brain. This mutation
gave way to what he calls “complex thought,” which gave
rise to the development of human language. Chomsky
presumes that this mutation created a small group of homo
sapiens who had the ability to speak, and through natural
selection and evolution, this mutation eventually spread to all
humans. He also maintains that there was no such thing as a
primitive ‘proto-language.’ This mutation gave humans the
innate ability to communicate with complex language due to
‘generative grammar.’
7. Romulus & Remus hypothesis
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It proposes that a genetic mutation slowed the development

of the prefrontal cortex in two or more children and triggered
a cascade of events that enabled the acquisition of recursive
language and modern imagination 70000 years ago. For
example, it is not possible to distinguish between the
sentences “A dog bit my friend” and “My friend bit a dog”
using grammar alone because the words and grammatical
structure are the same. The ability to understand the
misfortune of the first sentence and the humor of the second
sentence depends upon the ability to juxtapose the friend and
the dog mentally and that is only possible once the PFC
formed.
8. Gestural theory
The languages that humans speak today arouse from an
earlier form of communication that was expressed primarily
through arm and hand gestures. According to the gestural
theory of language evolution, our ancestors were able to
communicate intentionally through gestures but could not
control their vocalizations. Therefore, they primarily used
gestures to communicate purposefully; spoken language only
began to emerge from this primarily gestural form of
communication as our ancestors’ ability to control their
vocalizations increased.
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9. Motor theory
People perceive spoken words by identifying the vocal tract
gestures with which they are pronounced rather than by
identifying the sound patterns that speech generates.
10. From where to what theory
This language evolution model is derived primarily from the
organization of language processing in the brain into two
structures: the auditory dorsal stream and the auditory ventral
stream. The auditory dorsal stream is responsible for sound
localization in primates. The auditory ventral stream is
responsible for sound recognition. It hypothesizes seven
stages of language evolution. Only in humans (in the left
hemisphere), is it also responsible for other processes
associated with language use and acquisition such as speech
repetition and production, integration of phonemes with their
lip movements, perception and production of intonations,
phonological long-term memory, and phonological working
memory.
11. Grammaticalization theory
Grammaticalization is the continuous, gradual, historical
process through which languages generate grammatical
material like affixes, articles, pronouns, and prepositions. The
emergence of grammatical items is not arbitrary or sudden:
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they are not invented, as terms for new objects and activities
often can be, but instead develop from already existing
lexical items which are gradually modified to express
increasingly grammatical meanings.
12. Evolution progression model
It retraces evolutionary time to explain how primitive human
language began. The hypothesis is concise, logical, and
relevant.
13. Self-domesticated ape theory
Modern humans are docile and tolerant, like domesticated
species, our cooperative abilities and prosocial behavior are
key features of our modern cognition. Domestication results
in the enhancement of cognitive abilities and behaviors that
are crucial for language acquisition and use.
Conclusions
1) As Peter Farb says in "Word Play: What Happens When
People Talk" (Vintage, 1993): "All these speculations have
serious flaws, and none can withstand the close scrutiny of
present knowledge about the structure of language and about
the evolution of our species."
2) But does this mean that all questions about the origin of
language are unanswerable? Not necessarily.
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3) Over the past 20 years, scholars from such diverse fields as

genetics, anthropology, and cognitive science have been
engaged, as Kenneally says, in "a cross-discipline,
multidimensional treasure hunt" to find out how language
began. It is, she says, "the hardest problem in science today."
4) As William James remarked, "Language is the most
imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for
communicating thought."
References
1. Knight, C. (1998). Ritual/speech co-evolution: A solution to
the problem of deception. In J.R. Hurford, M. Studdert-
Kennedy, & C. Knight. (Eds.), Approaches to the evolution
of language: Social and cognitive bases (68-91). Cambridge
University Press.
2. Harrub, B., Thompson, B., & Miller, D. (2011). The origin of
language and communication: True origin archive.
<https://www.trueorigin.org/language01.php>.
3. Kenneally, C. (2007). The first word: The search for the
origins of language. Viking.
4. Liberman, P., McCarthy, R., & Strait, D. (2006). The recent
origin of human speech. Journal of Acoustical Society of
America, 119(5), 3441.