There are many theories in the field of historical linguistics as to the
origin of language.  One is that all languages stem from a common source,
a so-called "Proto-world" language.  Some linguists go so far as to try and
figure out what this speculative language was like, and how long ago it was
spoken.  Others laugh at them and say the idea is ridiculous.  Do you think
it is plausible that all languages of the world come from a common source?
Why or why not?  And if not, what is your own personal theory on where
we got language variation?

Griz

72 responses total.

How we got language variation?  That part is easy.  Any two groups with the
same language that are isolated from each other for a few generations will
diverge linguistically to a greater or lesser extent.  Given the level of
transportation and communication technology that prevailed until only 150
years ago or so, conditions of relative mutual isolation were readily
established.

The question of why we got specific KINDS of language variation is a whole
lot harder.  Beyond simple geography, what explains the differences between
French and Spanish, or Polish and Russian?  (And how can we avoid the issue
of ethnic character or culture, and how the formation of that culture and
the formation of the language interacted and reinforced each other?)

The first part could be understood by a high school student.  The second
part requires a highly trained and brilliant linguist, like, well, like
jennie, say.

I think you are missing something here Larry.  I think Jennie was referring 
to differences between languages such as Chinese, which is largely 
pictographic in written form and European languages which are character 
based.  Furthermore, a language such as Hebrew relies heavily on the 
speaker to determine verbal tense from the context, whereas Latin and
especiallyGreek rely on specific verbal structures to convey very distinct
meaning.

From the reading I have done, I tend to favor the theory that starts with
the Indo-European parent language.

(I was referring to anything you want me to be referring to.  So long as it
gets a conversation started.:  :-)

Griz

I think enough isolation over enough time can produce deep and fundamental
differences.

Essentially (to reveal my underlying bias), I find it hard to imagine that
language popped up spontaneously in very different forms among humans who
were already spread across the globe.  More likely, a group with that degree
of intelligence, organization and adaptation already had some kind of proto
language before that.  It's not hard to see how different groups in different
regions evolved very different languages in response to their specific needs
and cultures.

re :2, not necessarily...there are a lot of languages that do not related
to the Indo-European family, and many that relate to no known language
at all.  It's interesting to speculate on whether such languages somehow
relate very old, now mostly lost,  parts of a proto-language, or whether
they sprung up on their own.

Is it true that the human species separated into widely scattered
groups before the development of language?  If true, I'd say the
most plausible hypothesis is that language developed independently
in different places, and that there was no single "Proto-world"
first language.

Re 6.  That's essentially the question: which came first, proto-language
(of some form) or the scattering.  My instinct tells me that language came
first.

Hey man, haven't you ever read about the Tower of Babel?

How about BOTH a dominant proto-language, from which most languages were
derived, as well as some independent isolated developments?

Re #9:
Okay, so what's the theory?

Griz

The theory is that languages can and did develop independently. However,
one language proved to be very "successful", either because of the properties
of the language or because of the abilities of the speakers to spread it.
This highly successful tongue was the postulatedproto-language. The other
languages still endure as isolated fossils.

(Have your cake and eat it too)

Let them eat cake.

There seems to be a great deal of biological evidence that people
evolved to speak language.  That is to say, there are certain biological
features that evolved specifically to allow people to speak better.
That means, language didn't spontaneously break out in modern man, but
instead, primitive man started speaking, and this became enough of a
survival advantage that the ones with wierd mutations that allowed them
to speak better, are our ancestors.

Chances are very good that language did not suddenly break out in full
flower, as we know it today.  Something like a Chimpanzee is very close
to learning to speak -- it's capable of enough symbolic processing to
make a good start.  So I think people probably started to "speak" when
they were only slightly more advanced.  Perhaps well before they started
making stone tools and mastered fire.  Both of those activities require
a good deal of planning and education, so I'm tempted to think some form
of "speech", beyond the grunts of modern chimpanzees, would have been
necessary to ensure success across generations.

I also think all modern language would have to be related, in some
fashion, somehow.  People have just been speaking far too long for
accidents of war, marriage, and so forth to allow otherwise.  After all,
all modern people are very closely related--as good an argument as any
that an awful lot of mixing has to have happened since speech first got
started.  Just look at English--it's related to old-German, and it's
also related to Latin.  It's about equally correct to say it's descended
from either.

What I think is actually the interesting question is, did early language
cross some sort of "catastrophic barrier" of utility in proto-man, or
did it smoothly evolve out of grunts?  Both processes seem equally
possible.  Many higher mammals have fairly complicated grunts, and many
primates have indisputable evidence of "culture".  So it's certainly
possible to describe a fairly smooth evolutionary process, where grunts
slowly turn into words and short sentences, and then longer sentences
with more complicated distinctions being made, and eventually modern
speech as we know it -- and at each stage, the limit of the language
being basically the vocal equipment of the animal, and the intellectual
capacity of the animal for complicated ideas.  This process is
especially likely if language started very early.

But we all know that ideas in modern man don't work that way.  Light
bulbs, writing, making steel, are all cultural ideas invented by some
smart person, and then copied by the rest of us.  It's a "catastrophic"
process, mathematically -- one day nobody can, and the next day,
everybody can.  In such a case, we might presume, early non-speaking
man, for other reasons, acquired a very powerful symbol processing mind.
Perhaps he used it to hunt, or to stalk the wild vegetable, or whatever
-- there are certainly plenty of other reasons evolution might give him
a mind.  We next suppose he was in the habit of using random non-speech
grunts to communicate pleasure, or anger, or whatever.  Since most
higher mammals do that anyways, this is pretty much a given.  We now
suppose that, some early unsung genius got the bright idea to teach
everybody the same pattern of grunts, and that this shared pattern gave
them some really obvious advantage, whether in hunting, wiping the
neighboring tribe out, or in teaching all the little kids not to step in
the poison ivy.  This is the only context where it make sense to wonder
if language "started in more than one place" or not.  I'm inclined to
think the chances are still rather low.  Once started, such a
catastrophic process spreads to everybody else in fairly short order -
the only way one can really have multiple startup points is if
relatively isolated points get the idea at almost the same time.  That
happens in modern man because most ideas are based on others, so several
places can be "ripe" to have that same idea at about the same time.  In
the ancient past, with language presumably not based on anything else,
we might presume the invention of language was a much more unlikely
affair.

An interesting argument against the catastrophic theory, is that in
examples of modern man who have reached adulthood without learning a
language, it appears to be impossible to teach them language.  It seems
possible that, at least in modern man, whatever processing needs to be
done in the brain, has to either be learned at an early age, or the
ability is lost forever.  So if early man acquired speach
"catastrophically", it's possible that he would have had to have a mind
that was intrinsically much more flexible and better at symbolic
processing than ours -- or, in plain english, he was a lot smarter than
we are.

        A really useful idea will come into effect in many different places
at once, if it's possible in many places.  I wouldn't imagine just one
human "discovered" fire, for example, and then passed it around to
everyone else.  I'd imagine a lot of different groups discovered it
independently.
        Rudimentary language is just about as basic as fire, and just about
as useful.  As you pointed out, Marcus, communication in some form exists
in a lot of different animals.  I would speculate that probably every
group of anthropoids that had the capability, also had some speech
communication, quite possibly all different.  How many ideas do you need
to be able to communicate before it becomes useful in a survival sense?
Not very many, I'd say.  "Yes", "No", "Food", "Mine, keep your dang hands
off"... I would speculate that some groups got better at it and absorbed
the rest, or dominated them, or killed them, or drove them away, and that
a whole bunch of regional groups could be entirely independent, with
different languages, customs, cultures, etc, maybe not even knowing about
any others.  Large groups might even split up, with some of them
dwindling, forgetting all about language, then redeveloping it after a
generation or six or a hundred, when they come into contact with
competition that requires them to communicate in order to survive.  That
language might be descended from the previous group's, or it might be new
from scratch.
        It'd be interesting to know how intelligence got started up, in what
increments, and how much of an immediate advantage it was to those who
first possessed it.  Perhaps there were some people or groups who
developed *great* intelligence very quickly (much greater than those
around them, I mean), who managed to use it unwisely enough or
insufficiently in some manner to permit their own survival.  (Maybe their
women figured out what causes babies, and decided to have no part of it,
or the culture invented something it couldn't cope with -- indoor plumbing
without sanitation, for example.  The whole culture could have been
conversation crazy.  What would happen if all of Grex were transported to
another planet and left to fend for ourselves?  We'd all starve, arguing
about what planet we were on, except a few of the bright ones who'd devote
all their energy to reproducing a computer to run Picospan on.)
        It would tell us a lot about language development to know where
intelligence came from.  It would be applicable in other areas of
knowledge as well, of course.
        Until we know, though, speculation about language development is
unpredictable in it's accuracy.  Any argument can be plausibly made, for
or against, equally well.

Re #13:
You have a lot of interesting ideas, Marcus, but I have a minor quibble with
one point you made -- English can under no circumstances be said to have
descended from Latin.  English is very definitely a Germanic language, along
with Dutch, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and a myriad of others.
English has its Latin roots only through borrowing, not through having
descended from it.  This is a common mistake because English has SO MANY 
words borrowed from Latin or languages descended from Latin that sometimes
it seems like a member of the Romance branch of the family tree.  However,
in employing the comparative method, phonology becomes much more a telling
factor than simple vocabulary items, and it becomes clear that these Latin
words were borrowed directly from Latin, much as the way "kindergarten"
was borrowed from German and "sauna" was borrowed from Finnish.  Often these
words have gone through many changes since they were borrowed, so this is
even more difficult to see.

Griz

I think that quibble might be as much a matter of semantics as anything
else.  It's true that English grammar is more descended from its
Germanic roots, while its vocabulary, via the normans, church latin,
and other borrowings is more heavily romanized.  Nevertheless, that
grammar had some powerful simplifications injected into it along
with the norman vocabulary.  We've lost most notions of gender, of case,
even the strong verbs represent a quickly dwindling vestige of germanic
heritage.  Indeed, despite the "common ancestry", modern german grammar
is considerably more complex and different from English than is modern
french with its supposedly "alien" roots.

You are right, however, in that very little of English is descended
"directly" from Latin.  The roots are much more complex than that.
(I'm sure Jennifer's familiar with this, but for the benefit of others)
Something like,
        small scraps left over from the original celtic "natives" (who
                were of course also invaders sometime in prehistory)
        small vestiges (place names is all I can think of) from
                the roman occupation.
        the anglo-saxon tongues of the invading angles & saxons (germanic)
        some words "borrowed" from the danes, who occupied what, half
                of england at one point?                (germanic)
        (this is branch one)

        the romans occupy france speaking degenerate latin
        this language (perhaps influenced by its largely ex-celtic
                population) evolves considerably, with the middles
                of many words being dropped out (a habit that, curiously,
                is also found in certain english placenames...?!)
        (branch 2)

        1066 and all that.  the normans invade.  for 200 years after
                that, lords spoke "french", underlings spoke "x",
                which started out as what we today call "old english".
                after 200 years, the "french" started dying out, but
                "x" was altered greatly, having evolved most of the way
                towards "middle english"
        the resulting language is by no means monolithic.  at least
                3 or 4 major branches evolve in different parts of the
                country and the language is still quite fluid.
        we now have several more influences on the language.  They include,
                the rise of printing, and of education.  The rise of printing
                meant that, eventually, the dialect that happened to be
                spoken in London because the "standard" everywhere else.
                Regional variation persisted, however, at least until the
                rise of 20th century media.  Education meant latin.
                Via the church, and with the rennaisance, classical
                authors.  It didn't just mean Latin -- for instance,
                the language of international trade, for a while, was
                French, and various words of more modern vintage made
                their way into the language that way.

This means, when we get through, there is not 1, but at least 4 ways for
"latin" to get into "english" Via the ancient roman occupation force
(mostly place names), via the normans (and their "french"), via
education and "borrowing" direct from classical latin, and via
"borrowing" from modern french.  There is, in fact, an interesting class
of latin words that have been borrowed more than once by English,
although unfortunately I don't have any good examples.  A bad example is
"grex", which can also be found as a person-name, "Gregory".

I didn't want to bring this up publicly, because it's such a minor
point...
...but when you refer to a group of people (or early humans, as the
case may be), you might want to consider how really offensive it
is to say "their women".

Where did I say that?

Now how did that happen?  My apologies; I was trying to send an email
to jep.  I have no idea how it got onto response :17.

Heh.

Griz

        Heh, indeed.  No offense was intended, mythago, and I apologize to
you for the mistake.

Really--it was meant to be private.  My apologies.

Late again. sigh.
- Assuming (!) that there was fundamentally one original, prototypical
  language, I'm still pretty sceptical about claims to deduce anything very
  specific about it - or even more recent things.  I question attempts to
  in essence document a grammar & vocabulary of Indo-European, much less the
  presumed common ancestor of it and whatever the parent to the Chinese group
  is.  (Have seen articles about this in the last year or two.)  My objections
  are due to the paucity of *direct* evidence, combined with quick thoughts
  on the probabilities of combinations of merely probable events.  That is,
  if each of two speculations has an 85% chance of being right, the
  probability of *both* being right is only around 72%, & it goes downhill
  pretty fast.
  (I question paleontology, too, I should add now while I'm already being
  obnoxious.)

- Regarding "specific kinds of language variation":  also of interest are the
  patterns of linguistic change which happen in parallel in different
  languages.  For example, in two languages that I know of (Latin & Hebrew)
  there is thought to have been a shift from the sound "w" to the sound "v".
  There's a possibility of connection in this case, though I suspect not too
  great, but my impression is that quite a lot of such patterns have been
  identified, some in cases where influence as an explanation is pretty
  unreasonable.  (Somebody slap me down if I'm off base there, please.)  The
  question of why these particular changes tend to occur is interesting, & I
  freely admit that I have no idea that I find reasonable.

- Relating to Marcus's thoughts about evolution of language:  while the
  disjunction between human & animal conceptual/linguistic ability isn't
  quite as drastic as people used to think, it's still pretty spectacular.
  People *everywhere* have complex, rich languages relating to complex
  cultures.  I find the idea of small-step evolution of linguistic capacity
  implausible as an explanation of these phenomena (though not prima facie
  impossible).
  (For an interesting & thought-provoking speculative discussion relating to
  this, I recommend (without agreeing with) an old SF story - Richard McKenna's
  "Mine Own Ways" - originally published in F&SF in Feb., 1960 & maybe in
  one of their anthologies; I have it in his collection _Casey Agonistes &
  Other Stories_.)

I have two comments.  One, an example of a truly distinct language:  If any of
you saw the movie, "The Gods Must Be Crazy," you may remember that the language
of the featured tribe of Kalahari bushmen included a range of sounds which
do not seem to be included in any other language group known.  I am not
familiar with the grammatical structure of this language, but it's very basic
differences from other languages supports, in my mind, the theory that at
least *some* languages developed independently.

        My other comment is more general.  This is not based on any reading,
        but
rather it is an intuitive idea.  It seems likely that language would develop
from music.  The original music of the voice, singing without words, may have
been a way in which emotional communication was maintained.  I suspect there
would be little argument to the titling of music as the language of emotion.
It is only a short stretch to think that words may have started as bits of
song, whose meanings were tied to their sounds alone, and through extended
use, these words may have come to take on more specific meaning, and perhaps
also during the same process, they may have lost some of the musical quality
from which their meaning might have been originally derived.
        It's just a thought, but I'd like to see the discussion it provokes.
Keep in mind that this is my own idea entirely, with no collected evidence to
support it, at least that I am aware of on a conscious level...

Why isn't it equally probable that music developed from language? I
suspect that neither is the case. Homo Sapiens came equipped, somehow
or other, with a vocal mechanism and a brain, and did everything
imaginable with it (it wasn't an afternoon's exercise), and out of
this came language and music and yodeling (which is neither.....). I
think the African language you refer to is Xhosa, which is of the Bantu
group (if I recall correctly), which is *many* sublanguages. Xhosa is
an intonation of these, not a separate language group. Boy, am I out
on a limb....

It seems logical that early humans would have discovered and used the
capability to make random noises, noises imitating those heard in nature, and
noises which punctuate gestures and show some emotional content, long before
the structure and uniformity required of a language would have developed...

rcurl, I believe your memory is better than mine, and that you are quite
correct about the Bantu languages.

hey, gringo- got a gender identity problem, or is "otra" the victim of a typo?
The way you stated your opinion in #26 makes more sense to me somehow than the
way you said it in #24.

Thank.  I had more time by then in which to develop the idea.
As far as the name goes, I flunked Spanish, so I don't *know* the proper form
for otra.  If anyone can help, I'll be happy to correct it.  (:

Well, I've never studied Spanish, but I'm pretty sure that final "a" says
you're female.  I'd expect it to be "otro" if in fact that is the right
word.

right in one.

re #28, it should be El Gringo Otro, I had four years of espanol.

 But isn't the word "gringo" a derogatory description of someone?

I think, (and this is a personal observation) that "El Hombre otro" would
be a better and more fitting phrase. (it means "The Other Man" which
I think is the point in the first place.

 I have never liked the word "gringo"; and I guess I never will.

I don't think gringo was originally supposed to be derogatory, I think
it just means white man/woman.  But I do agree that El Hombre Otro would
probably be better.

If I recall, the origin is obscure - the folk etymology being that it was
from that song supposedly sung by settlers from the US, but that it's
attested much too early & widely to be that.  Or something.

I chose gringo in lieu of hombre because I like the way the phrase flowed
better in that form.  It's purely an aesthetic choice.
There is no intended slur or any political meaning to my choice of words
in this instance.

el chico otro? you're not all that old, after all.

At times I am older than my years, and at times I am as the newborn, screaming
at the light from which I cannot escape.

sounds familiar.

Since he's is just " other" in English, he should be just "otro" or 
"el otro" in Spanish.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss