The origins of language

about the origin of language. it mentions the sources that are believed the language is originated from and how developed.

1. The Origins of Language Presented by: Ibrahim T. ISMAIL Barozh S. GHADHBAN June 2015

2. Outline Introduction The origin of language The divine sources The natural sound source The oral-gesture source The physical adaption source The genetic (innateness) source Conclusion

3. What is Language ? When and how language begun ?

4. The origins of language : No one knows exactly when or how human beings came up with spoken language. One hypothesis is that language began between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, with the advent of modern man, i.e. homo sapiens . This is well before the invention of the written language, about 5,000 years ago. We have direct evidence and artifacts about writing.

5. The divine source: Genesis 2/19 : God created Adam and “whatsoever Adam called every living creature, was the name thereof.” The Qur’an : He said, “O Adam , inform them of their names.” And when he had informed them of their names… ( Al Baqarah , 2/31-33 ) A Hindu belief : language came from Saras w ati , wife of Brahma , creator of the universe.

6. The divine source (cont.) Attempts to find a divine, God-given language Psamtik carried out an experiment with two babies depriving them of human contact. They uttered the word bekos ‘ bread ’ in Phrygian !! King James the Fourth did a similar experiment and the kids were reported to speak Hebrew . The fact is children who are deprived of any language contact cannot learn any language .

7. The natural sound source: Language emerged from natural sounds. Primitive words are considered to be imitations of natural sounds that people hear around them. The natural sound a bird makes is argued to have been used to describe that particular animal. The fact that in many languages there are words such as drip , click , meow and honk that sound like what they mean supports this claim. Not every sound is onomatopoeic in languages!!

8. Some theories of origins of language invented by Max Müller

9. 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 .

10. The Yo -he-ho theory: based on the notion that speech arose from physical environmental needs which produced communal, rhythmical grunts which later on developed into chants

11. The oral-gesture source Originally a set of physical gestures was developed as a means of communication, Then a set of oral gestures, specifically involving the mouth, developed for expressing ideas. Physical gesture (except mouth) Physical gesture (including mouth) Speech sounds

12. The physical adaption Source Human beings are genetically with some physical features that are responsible of producing speech sounds.

13. The genetic (innateness) source According to Chomsky, language is partly innate and partly acquired.

14. Conclusion All presented theories do not precisely demonstrate what is the origin language, but that is clear-cut in the past people were only able do some gestures and produce a few sounds.

15. References Vajda , E. The Origin of Language , retrieved from: http :// pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test1materials/origin_of_language.htm Wijaya , A. (year). The Origins of Language . (article). Retrieved from: http:// awinlanguage.blogspot.com.tr/2013/04/the-origins-of-language.html Yule,G .,( 2010), The Study Of Language . 4th ed , Cambridge, Cambridge university press .