Orings of Language
Orings of Language
Orings of Language
We simply dont know how language originated. All we have are interesting
speculations about the origins of spoken language.
Some experiments have been carried out to rediscover this original divine
language allow babies to grow without any language around them so that
they would spontaneously begin using the original God-given language:
o Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus tried this with two babies, they
uttered the Phrygian word bekos (!!).
o King James IV also carried out another experiment, and the children
were reported to have started speaking Hebrew.
o Modern evidence, mainly from feral children, contradicts the results of
these types of divine-source experiments.
Primitive words could have been imitations of the natural sounds which early
men and women heard around them.
That is the bow-wow theory of language origin, and in fact, there are some
onomatopoeic words in every language (words that echo natural sounds).
However, there are far too many soundless and abstract things in our world
and we use language to refer to them.
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Ciencias Lingsticas: Introduccin Especfica para Anglistas Grupo A
Slides Unit 1: The origins of language.
Original sounds could also come from natural cries of emotion (Ouch!,
Yuck!). However, these interjections are usually produced with sudden intakes
of breath whereas we normally produce spoken language on exhaled breath.
Human teeth upright and roughly even in height (good for grind and
chewing, and also for making sounds such as f or v)
3
Ciencias Lingsticas: Introduccin Especfica para Anglistas Grupo A
Slides Unit 1: The origins of language.