ELT 211 - Theories of The Origin of Language

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Theories of the Origin of Language This theory seeks the origin of language in such involuntary

exclamations or interjections of pain, surprise, wonder, disapproval,


Introduction pleasure as oh! bah! pshaw! fie, and the like. As a theory of the
There have been many attempts to unearth the origin of language, origin of language it stands upon a very slippery ground.
but “most of these are”, says E. Sapir, “hardly more than exercises of 4. The Gesture Theory
the speculative imagination.” Of the various theories advanced to
explain the origin of language, four are well-known. This holds that language originates in gesture. This theory was
formulated and advanced by Wilhelm Wundt and Sir Richard Paget.
1.The Bow-wow Theory The gesture-theorists opine that the primitive people communicated
This theory by Max Muller supposes that human speech originated in with one another by means of gestures made by hand, and ultimately
man’s attempt to imitate the sounds of nature. Thus a dog might be the language-equivalents were substituted for these gestures. Sir
called “bow-wow”, or a cow “moo”. There is no denying the fact that Percy Nunn in his book Education, its Data and first
such imitation accounts for a certain number of words in the English Principles develops his theory in full, and Macdonald Critchley deals
vocabulary e.g. cuckoo, hiss, gurgle, whistle, whine, babbie, with it elaborately in his work, The Language of Gesture.
prattle, hoopoe, peewit etc. Words that have this origin are They seem to point out that in saying ‘I’ and ‘me’ the lips are drawn
sometimes said to be onomatopoeic. This theory forms a part of the inwards as if hinting at the speaker, and in saying ‘you’ and ‘thou’ the
larger subject of ‘sound symbolism‘. lips are moved outwards as if hinting at the person addressed.
2. The Ding-dong Theory Similarly, in saying ‘here’ and ‘there’ the lips are drawn inwards and
thrown outwards respectively.
Another familiar theory of the origin of language is the ‘dingdong
theory’. At one stage it was upheld by Max Muller but later it was 5. The yo-he-ho Theory
abandoned. It sought to explain the correspondence between sound Noire enunciated the ‘yo-he-ho theory’. He saw the source of speech
and sense, by a law of nature, a mysterious law of harmony, that in acts of joint or common work, in which, during intense physical
everything that is struck rings and rings in a peculiar way. The words effort, cries or sounds partly consonantal might be emitted. Such
‘zigzag’ and ‘dazzle’ may be cited as examples. In the opinion of sounds might come to be associated with the work performed and so
Prof. Taraporewala, the Hindi word “Jana Gana” “Jog Mog” and a become a symbol for it; the first words would accordingly mean
larger number of the Bengali words (Dhonatyak Shobdo) may come something like ‘heave’ or ‘haul’.
under this head. Reduplications for the sake of emphasis, as in “a
big big man’, may come under this head. 6. The ta-ta Theory

3. The Pooh pooh Theory The idea of the origin of language is the use of tongue and mouth
gestures to mimic manual gestures. For example, saying ta-ta is like
waving goodbye with your tongue. But most of the things we talk 10. The last theory of the origin of language was proposed some
about do not have characteristic gestures associated with them, years ago by the Danish linguist, Otto Jespersen. This language
much less gestures you can imitate with the tongue and mouth. expert says, ‘we must imagine primitive language as consisting
(chiefly, at least) of very long words, full of difficult sounds, and sung
7. The la-la Theory rather than spoken’. It is the strangest of all theories, but deserves
The idea that speech emerged from the sounds of inspired serious thought because of the learning of the author.
playfulness, love, poetic sensibility, and song. This one is lovely, and
no more or less likely than any of the others.

8. Biblical Theory

Let us peep into the Biblical account of the origin of language which
is contained in the second chapter in the book of Genesis. According
to this account, “the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a
living being.” Afterwards he created trees and rivers. And then “out of
the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every
bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would
call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that
was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of
the air, and to every beast of the field….” It is an account of the birth
of language in man, who is placed at the centre of the world.

9. Another theory to be mentioned was adduced over a century ago


in the early days of modern linguistics. In 1823 was published in
Edinburgh The History of the European Languages by Alexander
Murray, D.D. In this work he states 9 words which he calls “the
foundations of language.” They were uttered at first, and probably for
several generations, in an insulated manner. The circumstances of
the actions were communicated by gestures and variable tunes of
the voice, but actions themselves were expressed through suitable
monosyllables.
The Nativist Theory language. Interactionists stress the value of joint attention, in which
children and their parents are focused on the same thing while also
The nativist theory suggests that we are born with a specific interacting with each other.
language-learning area in our brains. This area’s only responsibility,
nativists say, is learning language. Nativists point to this “biological ;
programming” to account for the fact that children around the world
reach similar language milestones at similar ages.

Supporters of the nativist theory also believe that children are wired
to understand basic rules of grammar, like combining nouns and
verbs to form phrases.

Nativists believe that children will learn language no matter what,


regardless of the environment they grow up in.

The Behaviorist Theory

The behaviorist theory, on the other hand, suggests that language


develops as a result of certain behaviors, such as imitating what they
hear and responding to the feedback they get. When a baby says
“up” and a parent lifts him up, for example, the meaning of the word
“up” is reinforced. Or, a toddler calls a zebra a horse, and a caregiver
corrects him: “No, that’s a zebra.”

For behaviorists language learning is all about a child’s direct


experiences with his environment.

The Interactionist Theory

The interactionist theory says neither biology nor behavior alone


shape language learning, but a combination of the two. Rather than
one area of the brain being dedicated to language, interactionists
believe that children use the same parts of their brain to learn
language as they do to learn any other skill. Language learning, they
say, is also heavily dependent on meaningful interactions with
parents and caregivers that motivate children to understand and use

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