The origins of language

The divine source

The divine source
• Language is given by God
• Experiments were carried out
isolating children. They thought
this way they would speak the
original God-given language
WRONG
 The divine source
• Once upon a time there was a pharaoh
called Psammetichus. He came up with
the idea of isolating two newborn
babies.
• These children uttered the word bekos.
Hallelujah! They speak Phrygian! But
what actually happened?
• Bekos (removing suffix –kos added
later in Greek versions of the story) is
actually the onomatopoeia /be/
The natural sound source
 Two theories (Jepersen, 1922)
1. The “bow-wow” theory (dog’s 2. The “pooh-pooh” theory
bark, in Spanish “guau-guau”) • Producing instinctive sounds
• Imitating naturally occurring made in emotional situations.
sounds (onomatopoeias).
The musical source
 The musical source (melody)
1. Babies
• Based on intonation. Babies get
used to their mother’s intonation
and initially only respond to them.
• Before they learn to speak, they
practise with sounds. “mama” and
“papa” are actually the results of
this training.
2. Early humans
• Based on the notion that human
beings used melodic output to
charm each other.
• They need to control the vocal
cords and breathing.
The social interaction
source
 The social interaction source
• Based on Jepersen’s (1922) “yo-he-ho” theory, it involves the utterance of
physical effort sounds, for example, grunts.
• They worked in groups, so early human beings uttered distinct grunts
when they needed to coordinate activities such as carrying dead animals.