Not even the linguists at the top of their field, can ascertain ‘why’ language came about, or how, or even where: I’ve read the theories on the language instinct, but they don’t shed much light on the matter…
I’m inclined to believe that language evolved from grunts and groans, and the human tendency to form associations between symbols and that which they signify. So a growl eventually becomes a symbol - a word - for “I’m angry” or “I’m gonna kick yo ass”.
Of course, language continues to evolve from this point forward, but at what point would hysteria fit in?
I don’t believe there is any reason why language should of came about through a objective origin.
I believe it is entirely possible that it came about through emotional responses to somthing which could of possibly been a individual subjective origin which spreaded to others.
I think it is entirely possible that language could indeed be a emotional cultural byproduct.
That makes sense but sometimes I wonder if “reason” itself is a accidental manifestation or atleast the part that we call sapience anyways.
All organisms have some form of reason even if it may be rudimentary or elementary in our own perceptions but what we as men pride ourselves in is our sapience through invention and in my studies the more I look at the existence of sapience I find its origins are purely derived from that of religious custom.
It just may well be that the first person who called a natural manifestation god might have also been the first person to conceive sapience.
Today we clearly can show that god does not exist and therefore we can clearly show all religions as being nothing more than accidental manifestations of the hysterical ignorant but if we can show that god was a accidental creation what does this say for sapience which owes its very existence to religious thought?
If it came about through necessity why don’t we see other animals constructing forms of languages beyond moans,grunts and other forms of bellowing?
I personally believe language came out of some form of emotional response which could of possibly been a individual subjective act which was then passed on through the generations by memetics.
People come to acquire language by imitating afterall not by biological processes.
Religion was the first systematic organization that classified,categorized and studied the enviroment around men however uneffective it may of been in its application.
The first alphabetical systems of written syntax were religious displays of poetry, moral law, and mythological stories.
What if the hysteria of religion was the creator of sapience and the origin of things which transformed instinctual grunts or moans into syntactic languages?
Clearly we see the first oral traditions being centered around shamans telling mythological stories amongst tribes.
At what point does this happen though? I mean, does it begin at the point when man is still grunting and groaning, or can man progress to the point where he uses simple words like “food”, “danger”, “friend”, “rock”, etc. before the hysterical force takes over?
And when it does take over, how does it play out? I’m getting the impression that you think words, and perhaps syntax and grammatical rules, are an outgrowth of religious experiences. So, for example, a primitive man sees a volcano. He gets excited about this. He starts entertaining thoughts of godly intervention or supernatural manifestations, and somehow language comes out of this. How? Does he feel he needs to invent words to communicate his experiences? Are words the result of the same old grunts and groans man has always used, but in a emotionally heightened state, they get contorted and embellish with more complex and varied phonemes?
without it ‘men’ would not beable to communicate through speech.
animals communicate without speech but humans acuired the larynx through evolution without it humans would not be able to make the sounds needed for speech
It’s a combination of both learning and biology. The neural wiring makes learning language happen more quickly. You allow a child to grow up in the wild, away from all other people, he will not develop language. You allow a group of children to grow up in the wild, away from society, they will develop their own language but at a much slower rate.
groups of kids learn at the pretty much the same rate as when their integrated into society, often-times superior in function/flexibility as the language their parents are speaking.
Obviously its a situation of both environment and biology, but to say that we learn language through socialization is nonsensical, of course we do, but the claim I was addressing was that it isn’t totally biological. Learning is a biological process ontop of the super adaptation to aquire it.
When Steven Pinker says “Children grow language as much as aquire it” he means exactly that.
I don’t even know what book TV is past combinating the words and coming to an educated guess.
I haven’t suggested otherwise, I just meant to suggest that the learning of a language is a biological adaptation that people almost ‘grow’ opposed to ‘socially learn’. Though which type of language you learn, is.
I like that 