How was Language Originated?

The theory of the origin of language involves the question of when and where the language originated, and especially how it originated. It is a major issue that has not yet been fully resolved in academic circles, and it is also the focus of people's attention and controversy. There have been many speculations and hypotheses on this issue in history, and there have been many controversies. With the deepening of knowledge and the discovery of various kinds of evidence, people have made a deeper study on the origin of language.

Language origin theory

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The theory of the origin of language involves the question of when and where the language originated, and especially how it originated. It is a major issue that has not yet been fully resolved in academic circles, and it is also the focus of people's attention and controversy. There have been many speculations and hypotheses on this issue in history, and there have been many controversies. With the deepening of knowledge and the discovery of various kinds of evidence, people have made a deeper study on the origin of language.

Chinese name

Language origin theory

Two hypotheses

Continuity and discontinuity hypothesis

Unsolved mysteries

When and where it originated

Features

One source theory is opposite to multiple source theory

The theory of language origin can be divided into two kinds of hypotheses: continuity and discontinuity. The basic idea of the so-called continuity hypothesis is that language cannot be formed suddenly, but there is a process that must have evolved from the early pre-linguistic system of human primates. The discontinuity hypothesis holds that language has some unique characteristics that suddenly appeared during a certain period of human evolution, and is also related to human genetic evolution and mutation. In the past, there have been many studies on continuous evolution and many assumptions. Among those who are still researching, some people think that human ancestors generated language-related symbol systems from gestures, and voiced languages have gradually evolved along with human evolution. Others believe that language is an imitation of natural sounds, or a sigh. When I was a child decades ago, I was educated that man was created by labor-this is what Engels said. Man is an animal capable of making tools, and language is created by labor. For example, our ancestors needed to communicate when working together, and speech produced speech. But because there is little direct evidence, it is difficult to do empirical research on the origin of language. In the past ten years, with the advancement of science, new methods can be used for research. For example, you can look at human anatomy from fossils, observe how it evolved, or use computers to simulate this process. Some scholars have emphasized the influence of the social nature of language and people's social and cultural cognition on the origin of language. ^[1]

Archeological research is the construction of humans and their culture

In April 2011, Atkinson, a scholar at the University of Auckland, New Zealand published a series entitled "Voice Diversity Supports Language Expansion from Africa" in Science

On the origin of language, the one-source theory and the multiple-source theory are opposite. The former was first proposed by Italian linguist Alfredo Trumbetti in 1905, but at the time did not receive much support due to the latter's "dominance"; however, Tronbetti's doctrine was in the mid-20th century Gradually accepted by mainstream academics. For the moment, neither has sufficient and conclusive evidence to support his hypothesis. It can be expected that the debate about the origin of language will become more intense in the future; the short-term situation will be "public justice and fairness," and it is difficult to reach a consensus. ^[3]

In fact, the debate over the origin and origin of language has always been a "confusion". Although the origin of modern humans in Africa has been recognized by the international academic community, the origin of human languages is a highly controversial topic. It was originally a major research topic of philosophers from the middle of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century, but linguistics later evolved into an empirical science, which comparative linguists consider to be an unsolvable question and shelved it. In 1866, the Paris Linguistic Society even banned the discussion of the origin of language. This ban had an impact on western academic circles until the end of the 20th century. Nowadays, there are many hypotheses about when, where and how language originated. The number of hypotheses is almost as many as the number of scholars in this field. In addition, other hypotheses of the origin of language, including oracles, gestures, exclamation, snoring, labor, contract, abrupt change, gradual change, and instinct, are still "sky towers". .

The various hypotheses about the origin of language have stated some truths from different levels, made positive explorations, and found close-to-fact answers to this ancient problem.

But to observers, there seems to be no more consensus in this field today than in the era of a rough explanation of this problem with Darwinian chemistry more than a hundred years ago.

Since the 1990s, more and more linguists, archeologists, psychologists, biologists, anthropologists, etc. have begun to apply various new methods to explore the evolution of language, the world s most difficult Academic issues. " Unfortunately, due to the long history of human language, the complexity of language itself, and the lack of strong scientific evidence to support it, there has been little progress in the study of language evolution in the past 20 years, and there has been no convincing explanation so far.

The well-known Chinese scholar Zhou Haizhong once pointed out that the difficulty of solving the problem of language evolution is no less difficult than solving the mystery of species evolution; language evolution is both a social phenomenon and a natural phenomenon, or the result of human mental development and historical and cultural evolution ; Because the origin and change of language have internal reasons and external influences, the complexity of language evolution is increased.