How did language begin?

Words don’t leave artifacts behind—

writing began long after language did—so theories of language
origins have generally been based on hunches. For centuries there
had been so much fruitless speculation over the question of how
language began that when the Paris Linguistic Society was
founded in 1866, its bylaws included a ban on any discussions of
it. The early theories are now referred to by the nicknames given
to them by language scholars fed up with unsupportable just-so
stories.

1. The bow-wow theory

The idea that speech arose from people imitating the sounds that
things make: Bow-wow, moo, baa, etc. Not likely, since very few
things we talk about have characteristic sounds associated with
them, and very few of our words sound anything at all like what
they mean.

2. The pooh-pooh theory

The idea that speech comes from the automatic vocal responses to
pain, fear, surprise, or other emotions: a laugh, a shriek, a gasp.
But plenty of animals make these kinds of sounds too, and they
didn't end up with language.

3. The ding-dong theory

The idea that speech reflects some mystical resonance or harmony
connected with things in the world. Unclear how one would
investigate this.

4. The yo-he-ho theory

The idea that speech started with the rhythmic chants and grunts
people used to coordinate their physical actions when they worked
together. There's a pretty big difference between this kind of thing
and what we do most of the time with language.

5. The ta-ta theory

The idea that speech came from the use of tongue and mouth
gestures to mimic manual gestures. For example, saying ta-ta is
like waving goodbye with your tongue. But most of the things we
talk about do not have characteristic gestures associated with
them, much less gestures you can imitate with the tongue and
mouth.

6. The la-la theory

The idea that speech emerged from the sounds of inspired

playfulness, love, poetic sensibility, and song. This one is lovely,
and no more or less likely than any of the others.
These Days
About a century after banishment of the language origin question,
scientists started to consider it again, but this time using evidence
from paleontology about the likely brain and vocal tract features
of early humans and hominids. Rather than speculate about which
kinds of vocalizations gave rise to speech sounds, they consider
which physical, cognitive, and social factors must first be in place
in order for there to be language.

This doesn't make the question of how language started any easier
to answer, but it does make you appreciate that whatever those
necessary factors are, we got all of 'em. Phew! La la la la. Ta ta!

……

What was the first language? How did language begin—where and when?
Until recently, a sensible linguist would likely respond to such questions with
a shrug and a sigh. As Bernard Campbell states flatly in Humankind
Emerging (Allyn & Bacon, 2005), "We simply do not know, and never will,
how or when language began."

It's hard to imagine a cultural phenomenon that's more important than the
development of language. And yet no human attribute offers less conclusive
evidence regarding its origins. The mystery, says Christine Kenneally in her
book The First Word, lies in the nature of the spoken word:

"For all its power to wound and seduce, speech is our most ephemeral
creation; it is little more than air. It exits the body as a series of puffs and
dissipates quickly into the atmosphere... There are no verbs preserved in
amber, no ossified nouns, and no prehistorical shrieks forever spread-eagled
in the lava that took them by surprise."
The absence of such evidence certainly hasn't discouraged speculation about
the origins of language. Over the centuries, many theories have been put
forward—and just about all of them have been challenged, discounted, and
often ridiculed. Each theory accounts for only a small part of what we know
about language.

Here, identified by their disparaging nicknames, are five of the oldest and
most common theories of how language began.

The Bow-Wow Theory

According to this theory, language began when our ancestors started imitating
the natural sounds around them. The first speech was onomatopoeic—marked
by echoic words such as moo, meow, splash, cuckoo, and bang.

What's wrong with this theory?

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.

The Ding-Dong Theory

This theory, favored by Plato and Pythagoras, maintains that speech arose in
response to the essential qualities of objects in the environment. The original
sounds people made were supposedly in harmony with the world around
them.

What's wrong with this theory?

Apart from some rare instances of sound symbolism, there's no persuasive
evidence, in any language, of an innate connection between sound and
meaning.

The La-La Theory

The Danish linguist Otto Jespersen suggested that language may have
developed from sounds associated with love, play, and (especially) song.

What's wrong with this theory?

As David Crystal notes in How Language Works (Penguin, 2005), this theory
still fails to account for "the gap between the emotional and the rational
aspects of speech expression."

The Pooh-Pooh Theory

This theory holds that speech began with interjections—spontaneous cries of
pain ("Ouch!"), surprise ("Oh!"), and other emotions ("Yabba dabba do!").

What's wrong with this theory?

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."

The Yo-He-Ho Theory

According to this theory, language evolved from the grunts, groans, and snorts
evoked by heavy physical labor.

What's wrong with this theory?

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.

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."
But does this mean that all questions about the origin of language are
unanswerable? Not necessarily. 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."
In a future article, we'll consider more recent theories about the origins and
development of language—what William James called "the most imperfect and
expensive means yet discovered for communicating a thought."