The Origins of Language

The Origins of Language

1. The Mama Theory

   • Language began with the easiest syllables attached to the most significant objects.

2. The Ta-Ta Theory

   • The body movement preceded language
   • Evolved into the popular idea that language may have derived from gestures

3. The Ding- Dong Theory

   • Relationship between sounds and meaning
   • Favored by Plato and Pythagoras, maintains that speech arose in response to the essential qualities of objects in the environment

4. The Bow-Wow Theory

   • Language began as imitations of natural sounds
   • This is more technically referred to as onomatopoeia or echoism

5. The Pooh-Pooh Theory

   • This theory holds that speech began with interjections
     • spontaneous cries of pain, surprise, and other emotions

6. The Yo-He-Ho Theory

   • Language evolved from the grunts, groans, and snorts evoked by heavy physical labor
     • A. S. Diamond suggests that these were perhaps calls for assistance or cooperation accompanied by appropriate gestures

7. The Sing-Song Theory

   • Danish linguist Jesperson suggested that language comes out of play, laughter, cooing, courtship, emotional mutterings and the like
     • He suggests that some of our first words were actually long and musical, rather than the short grunts many assume we started with.

8. The Hey You! Theory.

   • The linguist Revesz suggested that we have always needed interpersonal contact, and that language began as sounds to signal both identity and belonging.
   • This is commonly called the contact theory

9. The Hocus Pocus Theory

   • Language may have had some roots in a sort of magical or religious aspect of our ancestors' lives

10. The Eureka! Theory

    • Language was consciously invented
    • Perhaps some ancestor had the idea of assigning arbitrary sounds to mean certain things

11. Water Babies

    • It May help us understand the origins of languages, if we take a look at what is sometimes called the Hardy-Morgan hypothesis

12. Musical Babies

    • Darwin said «Humans don't speak unless they are taught to do so», ie language is learned, and not innate in the way that the famous linguist Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker, the author of «The Language Instinct» said.
    • Babies like music and mothers like to use a sort of sing-song speech, which babies like even more. Babies begin to vocalize in very «musical» ways, and often hum or sing in short or long «phrases», with modulations

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