LINGUISTICS PROJECT IHONA WINIGER

Teacher: Lembi Roxana

Instituto Daguerre | Profesorado de Ingles

 Ihona Winiger

TABLE OF CONTENTS

HYPOTHESIS..2

INTRODUCTION...3

DEVELOPMENT4

CONCLUSION.13

ANNEX14

GLOSSARY.18

REFERENCES.21

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
 Ihona Winiger

Hypothesis

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The origin of language in the human species is one of the mysteries that have puzzled linguists,
biologists, anthropologists and neurologists, among other scientists. Many argue that the origins
of language probably relate closely to the origins of modern human behaviour, but there is little
agreement about the implications and directionality of this connection. This shortage
of empirical evidence has led many scholars to regard the entire topic as unsuitable for serious
study.
In 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris1 banned any existing or future debates on the subject, a
prohibition which remained influential across much of the western world until late in the
twentieth century. Since the early 1990s, however, a number
of linguists, archaeologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and others have attempted to
address with new methods what some consider one of the hardest problems in science.
In this paper I borrowed works belonging to these scientific disciplines in order to approach to
the main theories which currently account for when and how it appeared language in humans.
To do this, I carried out an interview to Dr. Castieira Latorre Carola, who is an anthropologist
from CONICET.
Dr Castieira started the interview pointing out that among the inhabitants of some African
forests about eight million years ago were ape-like creatures including the common ancestors of
chimpanzees and humans. Visualizing what these creatures were probably like is easy enough,
she said; one conjures up an image of something resembling a modern gorilla, living
substantially in trees and walking on all four limbs when on the ground and with a vocal
communication system limited to perhaps twenty or thirty calls, like a chimpanzee. However,
what about our ancestors appearance and behaviour two million years ago? By that stage they
were separate specie from the ancestors of chimpanzees, but were not yet Homo sapiens. How
did these creatures live, and in particular what sort of language did they have? Visualizing these
more recent creatures is harder. One feels that they must have been more like us, and in
particular that their vocal communication system must have been more sophisticated than that
of their ancestors six million years earlier.
By age four, most humans have developed an ability to communicate through oral language. By
age six or seven, most humans can comprehend, as well as express, written thoughts. These
unique abilities of communicating through a native language clearly separate humans from all
animals. The obvious question then arises, where did we obtain this distinctive trait? Knowing
how beneficial this ability is to humans, one would wonder why this skill has not evolved in
other species.
The evolution of language and its role in defining human uniqueness has always been a central
question of paleoanthropological research. If living humans can indeed be distinguished from

1
See References: The linguistic society
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other organisms by language, then the origin of the human language system is of critical
importance. But when did this system of language evolve, and what was the impact of language
on human evolution? Did language emerge early in hominid evolution, or was it a later
development? Much recent discussion is on the role of language in the origin of modern Homo
sapiens and the development of modern human biological and behavioural diversity. The
following paper examines the questions and inquiries mentioned above, the true origin of
speech and language, and the anatomical and physiological requirements. .

Jehovah scattered them from there over all the surface of the earth, and they gradually
left off building the city. That is why its name was called Babel, because there Jehovah had
confused the language of all the earth.Genesis 11:8, 9.

2Did that event recorded in the Bible really happen? Did people start speaking different
languages all at once, as described? Some scoff at the Bibles account of how human languages
began and spread. I can be claimed that The Tower of Babel myth is definitely one of the most
absurd stories ever told. Even a Jewish rabbi called it a naive attempt to explain the origin of
nations.
The Bible states that the confusion of language and dispersion of the people took place in the
land of Shinar, later called Babylonia 4,200 years ago. (Genesis 11:2) The Bible account says
that at Babel, God acted to confuse their language that they may not listen to one anothers
language. (Genesis 11:7) As a result, the workers left off building the city of Babel and were
scattered over all the surface of the earth. (Genesis 11:8, 9) Thus, the Bible does not say that
all modern languages can be traced to a single mother tongue. Rather, it describes the sudden
appearance of several apparently fully developed new languages, each capable of expressing the
range of human feeling and thought and each different and distinct from the others.
The Bible reports that the first man, Adam, was able to coin new words when he named all the
animals and flying creatures. (Genesis 2:20) Adam also composed poetry to express his feelings
for his wife, and she clearly described what God had commanded and the consequences of
disobeying Him. (Genesis 2:23; 3:1-3) The first language, then, enabled humans to communicate
fully and to express themselves creatively.
The confusion of languages at Babel hindered mankinds ability to combine their intellectual
and physical powers. Yet, their new languages, like the first language, were complex. Within a
few centuries, men built bustling cities, assembled powerful armies, and engaged in
international trade. (Genesis 13:12; 14:1-11; 37:25) Could they have made such progress
without the use of an extensive vocabulary and grammar? According to the Bible, the original

2 See annex : VIDEO: The Evolution of Language & The Tower of Babel - Professor Steve Jones

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human tongue and the tongues introduced at Babel were, not primitive grunts and growls, but
complex languages. Modern research supports this conclusion. The Cambridge Encyclopedia3 of
Language states: Every culture which has been investigated, no matter how primitive it may
be in cultural terms, turns out to have a fully developed language, with a complexity comparable
to those of the so-called civilized nations. Similarly, in his book The Language Instinct, Harvard
College Professor Steven Pinker states: There is no such thing as a Stone Age language.

In 1861, historical linguist Max Mller published a list of speculative theories concerning the
origins of spoken language.
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. However what is wrong with this
theory is that relatively few words are onomatopoeic, and these words vary from one language
to another. For instance, a dog's bark is heard as au au in Brazil, ham ham in Albania, and wang,
wang in China. In addition, many onomatopoeic words are of recent origin, and not all are
derived from natural sounds.
THE DING-DONG THEORY: This theory, favoured by Plato and Pythagoras, maintains that
speech arose in response to the essential qualities of objects in the environment. The original
sounds people made were supposedly in harmony with the world around them. The Problem
with this theory is that apart from some rare instances of sound symbolism, there's no
persuasive evidence, in any language, of an innate connection between sound and meaning.
THE LA-LA THEORY: The Danish linguist Otto Jespersen suggested that language may have
developed from sounds associated with love, play, and especially song. Many Researchers
sustain that the problem with this theory still fails to account for "the gap between the
emotional and the rational aspects of speech expression."

THE POOH-POOH THEORY; This theory holds that speech began with interjections--
spontaneous cries of pain ("Ouch!"), surprise ("Oh!"), and other emotions ("Yabba dabba do!").
However, no language contains very many interjections, and, Crystal points out, "the clicks,
intakes of breath, and other noises which are used in this way bear little relationship to
the vowels and consonants found in phonology."

THE YO-HE-HO THEORY: According to this theory, language evolved from the grunts, groans,
and snorts evoked by heavy physical labour. Though this notion may account for some of

3 See references The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language - David Crystal

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the rhythmic features of the language, it doesn't go very far in explaining where words come
from.
All these speculations have serious flaws, and none can withstand the close scrutiny of present
knowledge about the structure of language and about the evolution of our species. But does this
mean that all questions about the origin of language are unanswerable? Not necessarily. Over
the past 20 years, scholars from such diverse fields as genetics, anthropology, and cognitive
science have been engaged in a cross-discipline to find out how language began.

The suspicion does not appear improbable that the progenitors of man, either the males or females,
or both sexes, before they had acquired the power of expressing their mutual love in articulate
language, endeavoured to charm each other with musical notes and rhythm.

Darwin (1871)

In Charles Darwins vision of the origins of language, early humans had already developed
musical ability prior to language and were using it to charm each other. This may not match
the typical image that most of us have of our early ancestors as rather rough characters wearing
animal skins and not very charming, but it is an interesting speculation about how language may
have originated. It remains, however, a speculation. We simply do not know how language
originated. We do know that the ability to produce sound and simple vocal patterning (a hum
versus a grunt, for example) appears to be in an ancient part of the brain that we share with all
vertebrates, including fish, frogs, birds and other mammals. But that is not human language. It
is suspected that some type of spoken language must have developed between 100,000 and
50,000 years ago, well before written language (about 5,000 years ago). Yet, among the traces of
earlier periods of life on earth, we never find any direct evidence or artifacts relating to the
speech of our distant ancestors that might tell us how language was back in the early stages.
Perhaps because of this absence of direct physical evidence, there has been no shortage of
speculation about the origins of human speech.
Anthropology is concerned not only with human culture but also with humans as organisms in a
biological sense, including their evolutionary development. Language is both a cultural
phenomenon and also the most salient distinguishing characteristic of modern homo sapiens as
a species. The question of how and why humans acquired language therefore interests both
cultural and biological anthropologists. So what light can anthropology shed on these questions?
Dr. Castieira sustains that the earliest direct evidence of language in the form of writing is no
more than about 5,000 years old. It is therefore much too recent to shed any light on the origin
of spoken language, and we must resort to indirect evidence. Unfortunately the available

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evidence is doubly indirect. The vocal apparatus (tongue, lips, and larynx) of early humans
would tell us much if we could examine it directly; but, being soft tissue, it does not survive, and
for information about it we have to rely on what we can glean from bones, particularly skulls.
Alongside such evidence we have tools and other artefacts, as well as traces of human habitation
such as discarded animal bones; but, again, what is available to us is skewed by the fact that
stone survives better than bone and much better than materials such as wood or hide. In view of
this, the only relatively firm dates which anthropology can provide are two terminuses, one
after which we can be sure that language in its fully modern form did exist and one before which
we can be sure that it did not. For the long period in between, the anthropological evidence is
tantalizing but frustratingly equivocal; there are no uncontroversial counterparts in the fossil
record for specific stages in linguistic evolution.
Dr. Castieira claims that the basic difficulty with studying the evolution of language is that the
evidence is so sparse. Spoken languages do not leave fossils, and fossil skulls only tell us the
overall shape and size of hominid brains, not what the brains could do. The only definitive
evidence that can be found is the shape of the vocal tract (the mouth, tongue, and throat): Until
anatomically modern humans, about 100,000 years ago, the shape of hominid vocal tracts did
not permit the modern range of speech sounds. But that does not mean that language
necessarily began then. Earlier hominids could have had a sort of language that used a more
restricted range of consonants and vowels, and the changes in the vocal tract may only have had
the effect of making speech faster and more expressive. Some researchers even propose that
language began as sign language, then (gradually or suddenly) switched to the vocal modality,
leaving modern gesture as a residue. One important question is the degree to which precursors
of human language ability are found in animals. For instance, how similar are apes' systems of
thought to ours? Do they include things that hominids would find it useful to express to each
other? There is indeed some consensus that apes' spatial abilities and their ability to negotiate
their social world provide foundations on which the human system of concepts could be built. A
related question is what aspects of language are unique to language and what aspects just draw
on other human abilities not shared with other primates. This issue is particularly controversial.
Some researchers claim that everything in language is built out of other human abilities: the
ability for vocal imitation, the ability to memorize vast amounts of information (both needed for
learning words), the desire to communicate, the understanding of others' intentions and beliefs,
and the ability to cooperate. Current research seems to show that these human abilities are
absent or less highly developed in apes. Other researchers acknowledge the importance of these
factors but argue that hominid brains required additional changes that adapted them
specifically for language.

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Language surrounds us in our everyday life even before we are born we can hear sounds and
intonation of our mother tongue. Accordingly, a child who is removed from her parents speech
community at a young age can acquire natively any language whatever, irrespective of what her
parents speak; no child is born with a biological bias in favour of one language or type of
language. This means that language of a fully modern kind must have evolved before any
contemporary human group became geographically separated from the rest of the human race
(separated, that is, until the invention of modern means of transport). The first such clear cut
separation seems to have occurred with the earliest settlement of Australia by Homo sapiens.
Archaeological evidence suggests that that event took place at least 40,000 years and perhaps as
long as 60,000 or more years ago. We can therefore take this as a firm terminus ante quem 4for
the evolution of a form of language which is fully modern in a biological sense. As for a terminus
post quem, 5it is clear that spoken language with more or less modern articulatory and acoustic
characteristics presupposes something like a modern vocal tract. But how are we to interpret
more or less and something like? One thing is clear: the acoustic properties of many human
speech sounds, particularly vowels, depend on the characteristically human L-shaped vocal
tract6, with an oral cavity at right angles to the pharynx and with the larynx relatively low in the
neck. This shape is characteristically human because in nearly all other mammals, and even in
human babies during the first few months of life, the larynx is high enough for the epiglottis to
engage with the soft palate so as to form a self-contained airway from the nose to the lungs,
smoothly curved rather than L-shaped, and quite separate from the tube which leads from the
mouth to the stomach. Having these two distinct tubes enables nearly all other mammals, as
well as new born human babies, to breathe while swallowing. The adult human characteristic of
a pharynx through which both air and food must pass, on the other hand, is a vital contributor to
the acoustic characteristics structure of speech sounds. All in all, human beings from all works
of life use language when we sleep, we dream in language, even when we think our thoughts are
made up of language. Language sets us apart from any other living organisms because spoken
language is only confined and restricted to humans and is also distinct from any other system of
communication.
There are many theories about when and how humans started to develop language. Some
scientists think that all human languages arose from a common language spoken by our
ancestors in Africa. There are over 5000 different languages in the world today, although some
of these are nearly extinct. David Derbyshire in his article for Mail Online Magazine agrees with

4
See Glossary
5
See glossary
6
See Annex 2
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Dr. Quentin Atkistons theory that every language in the world - from English to Mandarin -
evolved from a prehistoric 'mother tongue' first spoken in Africa tens of thousands of years ago.
After analysing more than 500 languages, Dr Quentin Atkinson found compelling evidence that
they can be traced back to a long-forgotten dialect spoken by our Stone Age ancestors. The
findings do not just pinpoint the origin of language to Africa - they also show that speech
evolved at least 100,000 years ago, far earlier than previously thought. There is now compelling
evidence that the first modern humans evolved in Africa around 200,000 to 150,000 years
ago. Around 70,000 years ago, these early humans began to migrate from the continent,
eventually spreading around the rest of the world. Although most scientists agree with this 'Out
of Africa' theory, they are less sure when our ancestors began to talk. Some have argued that
language evolved independently in different parts of the world, while others say it evolved just
once, and that all languages are descended from a single ancestral mother tongue. Dr Atkinson,
of Auckland University, has now come up with evidence for a single African origin of language.
In a paper published in Science Daily, he counted the number of distinct sounds, or phonemes,
used in 504 languages from around the world and charted them on a map7. The number of
sounds varies hugely from language to language. English, for instance has around 46 sounds,
some languages in South America have fewer than 15, while the San Bushmen of South Africa
use a staggering 200. Dr Atkinson found that the number of distinct sounds in a language tends
to increase the closer it is to sub-Saharan Africa. He argues that these differences reflect the
patterns of migration of our ancestors when they left Africa 70,000 years ago. Languages change
as they are handed down from generation to generation. In a large population, languages are
likely to be relatively stable - simply because there are more people to remember what previous
generations did, he says. But in a smaller population - such as a splinter group that sets off to
find a new home elsewhere - there are more chances that languages will change quickly and that
sounds will be lost from generation to generation.
Accordingly, Professor Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at Reading University, said the
same effect could be seen in DNA. Modern-day Africans have a much greater genetic diversity
than white Europeans who are descended from a relatively small splinter group that left 70,000
years ago. 'The further you get away from Africa, the fewer sounds you get,' he said. 'People
have suspected for a long time that language arose with the origin of our species in Africa and
this is consistent with that view.' Moreover, Professor Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist at
Oxford University, said the origin of language could now be pushed back to between 100,000
and 200,000 years ago. 'The study shows that ancestral language came from somewhere in
Africa,' he said.

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See annex 3
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The medium of Language is speech. Humans use sounds waves and vibrations in our voice
manipulated by our voice box (larynx) to communicate with one another. But one may also
argue that statement and ask how do individuals who cannot speak communicate? The desire
for humans to communicate and get in touch with one another led to the greatest invention of
mankind to date and that was writing8. Writing is the worlds oldest form of information storage
and it enabled people to record information they wished to save and also keep descriptions of
events of our lives. The era before writing was invented is known as Prehistory because the
invention of writing marked the beginning of the worlds history. Even though the medium of
language is speech, the hearing impaired use signs to communicate with each other. This means
that language can be expressed through signs as well. Writing in Namibia, Africa can be traced
back to the San (Bushmen) who painted and engra9ved images of animals and humans on caves,
rocks and mountains. One of Namibias famous rock art painting and engraving sites is at
Twyfelfontein, and it is titled the Doubtful fountain it was discovered in 1921 by Mr R. Mack.
Another interesting piece of rock art painting in Namibia is the White lady painting discovered
in 1918 at the Brandberg Mountain. The paintings are believed to have been painted around
2000 and 6000 years ago while others are dated back to 25 000 years.

Evolution of language is the gradual change in human language over time. It involves the origin
and divergence of languages and language families, and can be considered analogous to
biological evolution, although it does not necessarily occur through the same mechanisms. As
things became more complicated around Human beings daily life , they needed a more complex
system to convey information to one another. For example, lets consider this situation: early
man sees a group of deer he wants to hunt. He grunts a sound to his hunting partner that means
"deer are nearby." One day, a storm comes in and the hunter notices that thunder scares the
deer away. As a result, the hunter goes hungry until the storm passes. Over time, the same
hunter also learns to recognize the warning signs for bad weather -- dark skies and increased
wind. Early man realizes that when the sky darkens and the wind picks up, he needs to tell his
hunting partner to speed up the pursuit of the deer. Therefore, he comes up with a series of
grunts that reference both the deer and the bad weather. That series of grunts was the
beginning of an evolutionary adaptation that eventually became language. As humans learned
more about how to best survive, they developed a need to communicate these survival methods
to their population. An obvious question may arise after considering the origin of language and
the reason of it development. How many languages are there in the world? I have already

8 See annex Thoth's Pill - an Animated History of Writing

9
See annex, San rock paintings in the Western Capes
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mention that the object of inquiry in linguistics is human language, in particular the extent and
limits of diversity in the worlds languages. One might suppose, therefore, that linguists would
have a clear and reasonably precise notion of how many languages there are in the world. It
turns out, however, that there is no such definite countor at least, no such count that has any
status as a scientific finding of modern linguistics. The reason for this lack is not just that parts
of the world such as highland New Guinea or the forests of the Amazon have not been explored
in enough detail to ascertain the range of people who live there. Rather, the problem is that the
very notion of enumerating languages is a lot more complicated than it might seem. There are a
number of coherent but quite different answers that linguists might give to this apparently
simple question. When people are asked how many languages they think there are in the world,
the answers vary quite a bit. One random sampling of New Yorkers, for instance, resulted in
answers like probably several hundred. However we choose to count them, though, this is not
close.
When we look at reference works, we find estimates that have escalated over time. The 1911
(11th) edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica10, for example, implies a figure somewhere around
1,000, a number that climbs steadily over the course of the twentieth century. That is not due to
any increase in the number of languages, but rather to our increased understanding of how
many languages are actually spoken in areas that had previously been underdescribed.
Much pioneering work in documenting the languages of the world has been done by missionary
organizations with an interest in translating the Christian Bible. As of 2009, at least a portion of
the bible had been translated into 2,508 different languages, still a long way short of full
coverage. The most extensive catalogue of the worlds languages, generally taken to be as
authoritative as any, is that of Ethnologue (published by SIL International), whose detailed
classified list as of 2009 included 6,909 distinct languages.
A family is a group of languages that can be shown to be gene11tically related to one another.
The best known languages are those of the Indo-European family, to which English belongs.
Considering how widely the Indo-European languages are distributed geographically, and their
influence in world affairs, one might assume that a good proportion of the worlds languages
belong to this family. That is not the case, however: there are about 200 Indo-European
languages, but even ignoring the many cases in which a languages genetic affiliation cannot be
clearly determined, there are undoubtedly more families of languages (about 250) than there
are members of the Indo-European family.
Languages are not at all uniformly distributed around the world. Just as some places are
more diverse than others in terms of plant and animal species, the same goes for the

10
See references Encyclopedia Britannica
11
See annex; the tree of Language
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distribution of languages. Out of Ethnologues 6,909, for instance, only 230 are spoken in
Europe, while 2,197 are spoken in Asia.
One area of particularly high linguistic diversity is Papua-New Guinea, where there are an
estimated 832 languages spoken by a population of around 3.9 million. That makes the
average number of speakers around 4,500, possibly the lowest of any area of the world. These
languages belong to between 40 and 50 distinct families. Of course, the number of families may
change as scholarship improves, but there is little reason to believe that these figures are
radically off the mark.
We do not find linguistic diversity only in out of the way places. Centuries of French
governments have striven to make that country linguistically uniform, but (even disregarding
Breton, a Celtic language; Allemannisch, the Germanic language spoken in Alsace; and Basque),
Ethnologue12 shows at least ten distinct Romance languages spoken in France, including Picard,
Gascon, Provenal, and several others in addition to French.
Multilingualism in North America is usually discussed (apart from the status of French in
Canada) in terms of English vs. Spanish, or the languages of immigrant populations such as
Cantonese or Khmer, but we should remember that the Americas were a region with many
languages well before modern Europeans or Asians arrived. In pre-contact times, over 300
languages were spoken in North America. Of these, about half have died out completely. All we
know of them comes from early word lists or limited grammatical and textual records. But that
still leaves about 165 of North Americas indigenous languages spoken at least to some extent
today.
Once we go beyond the major languages of economic and political power, such as English,
Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and a few more with millions of speakers each, everywhere we look
in the world we find a vast number of others, belonging to many genetically distinct families.
But whatever the degree of that diversity (and we discuss below the problem of how to quantify
it), one thing that is fairly certain is that a surprising proportion of the worlds languages are in
fact disappearing, even as we speak.
To sum up, the origin of human language- that is the ability of men and women to communicate
with one another in intelligent, symbolic, often abstract speech and writing- is almost a
complete mystery to evolutionists. Scientists, like Dr. Castaieda, claim that they have certain
tenuous evidences of human physical evolution in the various fragments of hominid skeletal
parts that have been excavated in Africa and elsewhere. However, they have no evidence of the
origin of language. They agree that language is the main entity that separates man from the apes
and other animals. Many other theories discussed through this paper also cannot shed evidence
on the real origin of language and speech. On the other hand what scientists were able to trace

12
See Glossary Ethnologue
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was the origin of written Language-that is the physical manifestation of a spoken language-
which changed human beings lifestyle on earth forever.
I believe that language is perhaps the most important single characteristic that distinguishes
human beings from other animal species. After writing this essay I find it hard to imagine a
cultural phenomenon that is more important than the origin and development of language. And
yet no human attribute offers less conclusive evidence regarding its origins. Science is
insufficient at explaining not only how speech came about, but also why we have so many
different languages. The evidence conclusively implies that humans were created with the
unique ability to employ speech for communication. Due to language we can share ideas,
educate ourselves and improve our lives. Language helps society to keep evolving. Language has
allowed societies to be built not upon strength and physical domination, but on co-operation
and the exchange of ideas. Language is omnipresent throughout human society today. Without
language human beings would have been like apes pointing fingers at what they see.

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ANNEX
1- With the purpose of obtaining reliable information about the subject of my academic project,
I decided to interview Dr. Castieira Latorre Carola, who is an anthropologist from CONICET.

Although, the interview was conducted in Spanish, Dr. Castieira suggested some reliable
academic papers and books in English to give my project a scientific framework.

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2. The Human Vocal Tract

One reason that primates don't speak is that they have the wrong shaped vocal
tract.
Human Chimpanzee

head 90o to body head less than 90o to body

curved tongue flat tongue

low epiglottis high epiglottis - in contact with soft palate

low larynx high larynx

pharynx: pharynx:

crossover of trachea & aesophagus meshing of epiglottis & soft palate

choking possible simultaneous drinking and breathing
posible

precise muscular control of active little such control

articulators and breathing

Given the danger of choking, some other selection pressure must have allowed the
lowering of the larynx. Was it language?
The L-shape of the vocal tract means that it is divided into two bodies of air. Variation
in the size and shape of two air streams dramatically increases the variety of speech
sounds available for language.
Vowels are differentiated by the interaction of different resonant frequencies of
these two bodies of air.

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3- NUMBER OF PHONEMES IN LANGUAGES AROUND THE WORLD

Phonemes are the distinct sounds used in 504 languages from around the world. The number
of sounds varies hugely from language to language.
The number of distinct sounds in a language tends to increase the closer it is to sub-Saharan
Africa, according to the study.

Scientists have found that every language can be traced back to a long-forgotten dialect spoken by our
Stone Age ancestors in Africa. The further away from Africa a language is spoken, the fewer distinct
sounds - or phonemes - it has

Piraha: 11 (Brazil) Tagalog: 23 (Philippines) English: 46

Hawaiian: 13 Farsi: 30 (Iran) Kurdish: 47 (Iraq)
Roro: 14 (Papua new Guinea) Korean: 32 Igbo: 59 (Nigeria)
Bandjalang: 16 (Australia) Mandarin: 32 (China) Dahalo: 59 (Kenya)
Japanese: 20 French: 37 Hadza: 62 (Tanzania)
Bodo: 21 (Tibet) Russian: 38 Irish: 69
Warao: 21 (Venezuela) German: 41 Archi: 91 (Dagestan, Russia)
Inuit: 22 (Greenland) Bengali: 43 Xu: 141 (South Africa)

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4- Language is different from speech.

Language is made up of socially shared rules that include the following:

What words mean (e.g., "star" can refer to a bright object in the night sky or a celebrity)
How to make new words (e.g., friend, friendly, unfriendly)
How to put words together (e.g., "Peg walked to the new store" rather than "Peg walk store
new")
What word combinations are best in what situations ("Would you mind moving your foot?"
could quickly change to "Get off my foot, please!" if the first request did not produce results)

Speech is the verbal means of communicating. Speech consists of the following:

Articulation
How speech sounds are made (e.g., children must learn how to produce the "r" sound in
order to say "rabbit" instead of "wabbit").
Voice
Use of the vocal folds and breathing to produce sound (e.g., the voice can be abused from
overuse or misuse and can lead to hoarseness or loss of voice).
Fluency
The rhythm of speech (e.g., hesitations or stuttering can affect fluency).
When a person has trouble understanding others (receptive language), or sharing thoughts, ideas,
and feelings completely (expressive language), then he or she has a language disorder.
When a person is unable to produce speech sounds correctly or fluently, or has problems with his or
her voice, then he or she has a speech disorder.

5- VIDEO: The Evolution of Language & The Tower of Babel - Professor Steve Jones
Professor Jones explains in his presentation how, like creatures, languages have also evolved through
time and was the first scientific statement of the process of the existence of evolution. Professor Steve
Jones is Emeritus Professor of Genetics at University College London and an author of several popular
science books. He is one of the world's top six experts on the genetics of snails (and the other five agree)
and has also studied the genetics and evolution of fruit flies and humans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW7fJAFC8Mo

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6- Thoth's Pill - an Animated History of Writing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdO3IP0Pro8

7- How languages evolve - Alex Gendler

https://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-languages-evolve-alex-gendler

8-San rock paintings in the Western Cape

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9- The tree of Language

Photo credit: Minna Sundberg

Glossary
Ante quem: The latest possible date for something.
1467 represents a terminus ante quem for the death of Fahreddin Acemi

Post quem: The earliest possible date for something.

she provides a terminus post quem of AD 367 for the mosaics
Protolanguage: language without complex syntax, recursion, past/future tense (grammar)

Ethnologue: Languages of the World is an annual reference publication in print and online
that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It was first
issued in 1951, and is now published annually by SIL International, a U.S.-based, worldwide,
Christian non-profit organization. SIL's main purpose is to study, develop and document
languages in order to promote literacy and for religious purposes. As of
2017, Ethnologue contains web-based information on about 7,099 languages in its 20th
edition, including the number of speakers, location, dialects, linguistic affiliations, autonym,
availability of the Bible in each language and dialect described, a cursory description of
revitalization efforts where reported, and an estimate of language viability using the Expanded
Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS).

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REFERENCES
BENTEZ BURRACO, Antonio (2003): Evidencias fsiles del origen del lenguaje?.
Interlingstica, 14, 129-140.

CHOMSKY, Noam (1972): Language and mind. Nueva York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

ANCIENT ORIGIN http://www.ancient-origins.net/human-origins-science/origins-human-

language-one-hardest-problems-science-003610

Hurford JR, Studdert-Kennedy M, Knight C. Approaches to the evolution of language:

Social and cognitive bases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1998. 452 pp

Is this how Eve spoke? Every human language evolved from 'single prehistoric African
mother tongue' By David Derbyshire for MailOnline
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1377150/Every-language-evolved-single-
prehistoric-mother-tongue-spoken-Africa.html

The oxford handbook of THE HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS Edited by KEITH

ALLAN

http://mufwene.uchicago.edu/publications/ORIGINS%20AND%20EVOLUTION%20OF%20LAN
GUAGE%20-%20OHHL%20-%20PROOFS.pdf

Associate Professor Quentin Atkinson, Ot of Africa Theory

https://www.psych.auckland.ac.nz/people/q-atkinson

The Linguistic Society of Paris http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/15/science/early-voices-

the-leap-to-language.html?mcubz=1

Do All Languages Derive from a Single Common Ancestor?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/08/21/origin_of_languages_tower_of_babel_
proto_languages_and_the_brothers_grimm.html

The 1911 (11th) edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica : http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language - David Crystal

https://www.scribd.com/document/214571660/The-Cambridge-Encyclopedia-of-Language-
David-Crystal

Linguistics Project | Is this how Eve spoke? Every human language evolved from 'single 4
prehistoric African mother tongue' By David Derbyshire for MailOnline