Unit 1 Language

1 SPEAKING c Choose the best answer.

1 It is impossible that humans
a Work in groups. Discuss the questions. A are directly related to chimpanzees.
1 What advantages would these developments have given early B created language by themselves.
humans over other animals? C would confuse sounds and language.
• fire • social structures 2 The evolution of language must have
• tools • language A been a long process.
• art B started millions of years ago.
C been connected to chimpanzees.
2 Which development do you think was most important to 3 Why couldn’t we speak 100,000 years ago?
human survival? Why? A We could not produce as many sounds as we can today.
B Our brains were not large enough to process information
2 READING quickly.
C We were reliant on sign language.
a Read the text on page 2. According to the author, 4 What kind of language could early humans have had?
which development was most important? Why? A None was possible.
B one which was more emotional
C one with a smaller set of sounds
b Match the questions (1–8) with the answers (a–h). 5 What is one of the factors important in learning vocabulary?
1 What is not the main d a Real language was A being able to empathize with others
issue, according to the impossible more than B being able to copy what you hear
text? 100,000 years ago. C being able to form close relationships
2 What is a feasible c b There are key differences 6 What is most generally believed today?
explanation for the origins between them. A Communication is a way for animals to build relationships.
of speech? c Sounds of pain and other B The ability to cooperate is a recent human development.
3 What is a barrier to e emotions C Humans have better social skills than other primates.
research in this area? d The creation of the unique 7 What is the status of the ‘single leap’ theory?
4 What do fossil skulls not human nature of speech A It has the support of a number of scientists.
tell us? g e The lack of evidence B It is the only theory which explains the development of
5 What does study of the a f Humans had become language.
vocal tract show? more intelligent. C It has no scientific credibility.
6 What can we agree b g The way that different 8 What does the creation of works of art show?
on about the parallels languages developed A the importance of ritual to language
between humans and h The way that the mind B Language must have evolved after a process of
animals? processes information civilization.
7 What is meant by the f C Humans changed so language became possible.
‘single leap’?
8 What does the ability to tell h
stories signify?

BETTER READING:
USING REFERENCE DEVICES TO UNDERSTAND HOW
TEXT LINKS TOGETHER
Writers use linking words to help readers follow the flow of
information and understand inferences. Look at it in the first
paragraph. What does it refer to?

Work out what the underlined reference devices refer to.

Cambridge English Empower C1 © Cambridge University Press PHOTOCOPIABLE 1


How Did
Language
Begin?
In asking about the origins of human
language, we first have to make clear what
the question is. The question is not how
languages gradually developed over time into
the languages of the world today. Rather, it is
how the human species developed over time
so that we – and not our closest relatives, the
chimpanzees and bonobos – became capable of
using language.
The question, then, is how the properties of human
language got their start. Obviously, it couldn’t have
been a bunch of cavemen sitting around and deciding
to make up a language, since in order to do so, they
would have had to have a language to start with!
Intuitively, one might reasonably speculate that
hominids (human ancestors) started by grunting or
hooting or crying out, and ‘gradually’ this ‘somehow’
developed into the sort of language we have today.
The problem is in the ‘gradually’ and the ‘somehow’.
Chimps grunt and hoot and cry out, too. What
happened to humans in the 6 million years or so since
the hominid and chimpanzee lines diverged, and when
and how did hominid communication begin to have
the properties of modern language?
The basic difficulty with studying the evolution of
language is that the evidence is so sparse. Spoken
languages don’t leave fossils, and fossil skulls only tell
us the overall shape and size of hominid brains, not
what the brains could do. About the only definitive
evidence we have is the shape of the vocal tract
(the mouth, tongue, and throat): Until anatomically
modern humans, about 100,000 years ago, the shape
of hominid vocal tracts didn’t permit the modern
range of speech sounds. But that doesn’t mean that
language necessarily began then. Earlier hominids
could have had a sort of language that used a more
restricted range of consonants and vowels, and the
changes in the vocal tract may only have had the effect
of making speech faster and more expressive. Some
researchers even propose that language began as sign
language, then (gradually or suddenly) switched to the
vocal modality.
These issues and many others are undergoing lively
investigation among linguists, psychologists, and
biologists. One important question is the degree
Unit 1
to which precursors of human language ability are found
in animals. For instance, how similar are apes’ systems
of thought to ours? A related question is what aspects of
language are unique to language and what aspects just draw
on other human abilities not shared with other primates. This
issue is particularly controversial. Some researchers claim that
everything in language is built out of other human abilities:
the ability for vocal imitation, the ability to memorize vast
amounts of information (both needed for learning words),
the desire to communicate, the understanding of others’
intentions and beliefs, and the ability to cooperate. Current
research seems to show that these human abilities are
absent or less highly developed in apes. Other researchers
acknowledge the importance of these factors but argue that
hominid brains required additional changes that adapted
them specifically for language.
How did these changes take place?
Some researchers claim that
they came in a single leap,
creating through one
mutation the complete
system in the brain
by which humans
express complex
meanings through
combinations of
sounds. These people
also tend to claim that
there are few aspects
of language that are not
already present in animals.
As for when this all happened,
again, it’s very hard to tell. We do
know that something important
happened in the human line between 100,000 and 50,000
years ago: this is when we start to find cultural artefacts such
as art and ritual objects, evidence of what we would call
civilization. What was the nature of this transformation to the
species at that point? Did they just get smarter (even if their
brains didn’t suddenly get larger)? Did they develop language
all of a sudden? Did they become smarter because of the
intellectual advantages that language affords (such as the
ability to maintain an oral history over generations)? At the
moment, we don’t know, and, perhaps more intriguingly, we
cannot predict how language as a communication system will
develop in the future.