Genetic and Social Theories of Language - Essay Example

The Nature and Origin of Human Language: an Evaluation of Genetic and Social theories. The origin of human language lies so far back in time that there are only myths, legends and religious texts to explain it (Denning, Kessler and Leben, 2007, p. 136). There seems to be no obvious way for scholars to work out the details of exactly what the circumstances were which caused the homo sapiens species to develop language skills. Two main approaches have been suggested to explain the origins of language, and both of them appear on the surface at least to provide plausible explanations. One theory, which we could call the “genetic” theory, observes that the human body and brain are built in such a way as to make language an inborn quality, and something which just comes naturally because of the physical way humans are made. A second theory, which we could call the “social” theory, looks at the interactions between human beings, and incidentally also animals, and suggests that language is an advanced form of a cognitive/behavioural process. In order to determine how appropriate these two theories are in explaining the origins of language, it is important to look for evidence which supports either of these views, or evidence which suggests some other explanation. When one considers the physical equipment that was needed for humans to begin speaking to each other, it is clear that there is a complicated mouth structure which can make sounds using air coming up from the lungs and friction or stops using lips, teeth, and tongue. Very similar physical attributes are present in quite a number of animals, including parrots and other birds which can mimic the human voice very closely. This is not true language use, however, because birds cannot hold a real conversation, beyond just repeating phrases they have learned to imitate. The sounds that speaking birds make are empty of meaning, and so they are just empty signs. This means that they can produce The great apes have more idea of what language is, and a few have even been taught to communicate true lexical units and sentences through sign language even though they lack the physical equipment to make sounds that approximate human speech. The utterances that apes make among themselves may be a very rudimentary form of language but there is not the range of sound possibility that humans have. Apes have not developed sign language on their own, even though they have demonstrated the capability to learn it. These two examples of talking birds and signing apes show that partial language abilities are present in animals but that only a specific combination of inborn physical and mental equipment could lead to the formation of human language in the first instance. It is interesting also, that in both of these cases it takes the involvement of a human being before the evidence of rudimentary language begins to be seen. Birds do not talk and apes do not use sign language in the wild. The social theory for language origin appears to be a more valid explanation for human language origins. The equipment in the body and in the brain helps in the development of language, but some further interaction with a stimulus is needed to kick start the potential into an actual ability. Human babies are not born with language speaking ability, and need a long process of learning from others. They have the capacity to learn language, just like the apes have the capacity of learning sign language but the actual language only emerges when someone actually teaches them. A speaker and a hearer and a context are all necessary for human language, and it is difficult to imagine this without a whole social dimension going on around them. The more complex the linguistic utterances, the more obvious it becomes that a shared context and a network of relationships must exist. Linguists have traced vocabulary items back through modern, medieval and ancient language texts and have noted that they stand in a relationship to each other which suggests a family tree structure. Some key words form a core which remains fixed over hundreds and even thousands of years, while variation also occurs to differentiate the language “families” which we nowadays call Germanic, Romance, etc. When compared with archaeological findings, the changes in the key vocabulary items for religion, family, agriculture etc. can be mapped on to different social groups which split off and move away, leading eventually to separate nations and languages. Modern English contains relics of these changes when it retains more than one word from different branches of the Indo-European tree, for example “fatherly” is more personal and close to the Germanic roots of English society, while “paternal” has connotations of a formal, less homely context, and this reflects the alien Latin and French societies which influenced English in later periods of its history. (Denning, Kessler and Leben, 2007, p. 4). The formation of groups and subgroups is a feature of human existence, and the tracing of language variation between groups shows a strong link between language form and society. There are also language variations which arise when particular new needs are experienced in a particular group. The emergence of whole sets of jargon for computer language, for example, shows that human language evolves and adapts in a shared way. If each person were to develop his or her own personal language, then the world would soon fall into chaos. This shows that language binds groups together so long as they have shared needs, and then when they drift apart, the language reflects this social difference and begins to change in divergent ways. This explains why teenagers seem to speak a different language than that of their grandparents, for example. Language is so closely tied to family, peer groups, regional, national and cultural groups that a social origin for language seems the most likely theory. People communicate for a purpose that they share, whether it be hunting mammoth in the stone age or chatting in a text box on the internet. The relationship between the speakers and the social context in which they operate provides the impetus to turn their inborn “genetic” potential into an actual and useful skill. There are interesting questions to be answered still such as the possibility that social animals like whales and dolphins, or bees communicate using different forms of language. We cannot decipher their utterances but more research into this area may yet provide further evidence in support of the social origins of human language. Works Cited Denning, Keith; Kessler, Brett and Leben, William. English Vocabulary Elements 2nd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Read More