Physical Anthropology of Mankind
Thoughts on "The First Word"
The Search for the Origins of Language
by Christine Kenneally, 2007.
Partial draft
The books seems to be to identify the issues associated with the conflicting views of language as
an evolutionary event and the idea that language is innate in humans, something magical, much like "thought"
or "life" itself. Each contains aspects of genetic development, so there may be some common ground in the FOXP2
thread. Animals have life and varying degrees of thinking, yet only humans have language.
Or are they. Many animals have danger alert calls, most of these have deferent calls for land based or
airborne danger -- which might be translated as snake vs. hawk. Or in humans as "run" or "duck". A pheasant roster makes a call to gather the hens in the evening. Sounds must be placed in context. I am unable to differentiate a meow for I am hungry from I am in heat. Tracing possible language development we can see how language might have developed where land base alarm
sound might take on different meanings from tone or level of excitement -- the sound for "leopard" and "run" might be said with urgency, while a danger further afield, such as when noting that something just caused those birds to take off, might be a less intense alarm such as "pay attention" or "something is out there". An evolutionist can easily see the gradual development variations in the
sound for "run" to differentiate between leopard (run), wild pig (climb), and a human intruder (hide). And in what we now think of as verbs of action such as run, walk, freeze, climb, hide, etc. Once the idea of naming things with distinct sounds is established then the whole physical word becomes available as speech. Point to an give a special grunt and we have a name of something. We know that children will learn by imitation with each generation starting from the vocabulary of the parents and expanding list of names being passed on the the next generations. The world of actions required to live in the jungles and
plains is also subjected to being put into separate sounds. The work of C.K. Ogden has proven that only sixteen verbs are required for a compete lifetime. come-go , put-take , give-get ,
keep-let , do , make, have, be, say , see , send , seem. While observing this list, we can see that for early man, many of these could have derived from even more basic concepts of early man, while at the same time, many specific actions would have their own sounds. Putting the name of a thing and the sound for an action by early man is totally natural. Mankind has reached the two-word sentence.
Deer come. Get spear. We go. Make food. This explains the seemingly contradictory observation that Neanderthal probably could speak but equally probably did not have language.
With genetic evolution selecting of the the traits of modern man with brain power and the modern body
160,000 years ago, there were 100,000 years during which language developed with further physical selection for ability to move mouth and tongue in a fluid manner to manipulate words.
Early man did not need a grammar text book to expand to subject verb object sentences, the foundation of
all languages. Qualifiers such as concept color and size to differentiate between varieties of the named things
are useful and hence developed such as to note a big lion as different from a small lion or cub.
Size or importance of a named thing will come about over time, measured in generations or centuries, such distinctions of "big" or "important" such as heavy, bulky, tall, old, many, sturdy, major, chief, dangerous.
Note that utility to survival is the criteria for language development. Directions -- "up, down, over, under, before, behind, between" developed over time. We call these prepositions and combined with a few action words can express all verb actions -- "go up" = climb, "get behind" = hide, etc. Not that early men were interested in efficiency of language. The words of arithmetic waited for advanced civilization.
Many tribes survived to modern times with numbers only for "one", "two" ,and "many", with perhaps "many, many" for a whole herd of things. Likewise, time is a later need only in later civilization. To go follow the herd sometime in the future is sufficient, there is no need to specific that class starts at 09:30 on Friday.
How long does it take to develop language? . An oft quoted study is that of Nicaraguan deaf girls brought to a new school. They spontaneously developed a sign language among themselves. The first generation of a class students developed the
point and sign conventions of the two word sentence. The second generation class expanded to the name, verb, object level. By the third class, there was a complete language with sentence structure. However, there is another key ingredient here. The concept of communication by language was already known to them. They just filled in the symbols in place of sounds. The ability to learn established words from prior generations and to expand is what is well shown by this example.
Children go through this same or similar sequence: from babbling, to a word, to word and gesture, two words together, then many words, then structured language and learning the conventions of grammar.
A second example is that of writing. Stone aged man's survival did not need to communication over distance or through time. Writing is thought to have developed from inventory keeping once civilization had developed.
A clay token with a picture represented the object such as a basket of wheat. (Although baked clay goes back 20,000 years, the invention of the wheel and pottery was the high technology of that period -- like railroads of the 1800s or electricity of the 1900s.) Soon individual tokens were replaced with depiction of a number of baskets on one clay tablet. This soon became a picture of a basket
with tick-marks for a count of the number of such baskets. Next came stylized drawing that were quick to make replaced the pictures for baskets of wheat and corn and jugs of oil, etc. New symbols were created from old symbols that sounded the same. The next step of words made up from depictions of their sounds completed the idea of phonetic writing with applications beyond inventory, for recording events and keeping calendars..
The oldest inventory clay tablets found is from about 5000 years ago. (Although baked clay goes back 20,000 years, the invention pottery about 7,000 years ago was still high technology in the period -- like electricity of the 1900s generates spin-offs of i-Phones in the 2000s.)
Cuneiform grew through 1000 years into the written Sumerian language. The archaic cuneiform script was adopted by the Akkadians from 2500 BC, and by 2000 BC had evolved into Old Assyrian cuneiform.
By 3,000 years ago, Assyrian was being replaced with Aramaic alphabet. So, writing developed within the space of 2,000 years.
The concept of written language was developed independently by each settled civilization when it reached a point of need. Migrant tribes did not have this need.
We have now described the basic arguments for the idea of language. It could develop quickly either by
evolution or by mutation or by a combination of both. The trick was for mankind to recognize the need when it became within his power of mind and body to speak. We think that full language was a critical feature that allowed the small tribe that came out of Africa 50,000 years ago to take on the world. How and when it developed in the period after 160,000 years ago is unknowable because the peoples that remained in African had language.
was it the FOXP2 mutation? Genetic research starts with finding the mutations that cause speech defects. From these they seek clues to speech requirements.
We have no reason to think that the tribe that moved from Africa to fill the world was any different than many other tribes in Africa of the time. This one tribe did not have any specific destiny, it just migrated across the narrow end of a shrunken Red Sea, perhaps pressed into taking that risk by stronger, encroaching tribes. The need for seeking survival lands was because the same ice age climate that shrank the Red Sea by tieing up water in glaciers was also creating desert across traditional lands.
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