This would require changes in the way the brain controls the vocal tract and possibly in the way the brain interprets auditory signals although the latter is again subject to considerable dispute. These two changes alone would yield a communication system of single signals - better than the chimpanzee system but far from modern language. A next plausible step would be the ability to string together several such 'words' to create a message built out of the meanings of its parts.
This is still not as complex as modern language. It could have a rudimentary 'me Tarzan, you Jane' character and still be a lot better than single-word utterances. In fact, we do find such 'protolanguage' in two-year-old children, in the beginning efforts of adults learning a foreign language, and in so-called 'pidgins', the systems cobbled together by adult speakers of disparate languages when they need to communicate with each other for trade or other sorts of cooperation.
This has led some researchers to propose that the system of 'protolanguage' is still present in modern human brains, hidden under the modern system except when the latter is impaired or not yet developed. A final change or series of changes would add to 'protolanguage' a richer structure, encompassing such grammatical devices as plural markers, tense markers, relative clauses, and complement clauses "Joe thinks that the earth is flat".
Again, some hypothesize that this could have been a purely cultural development, and some think it required genetic changes in the brains of speakers. The jury is still out. When did this all happen? Again, it's very hard to tell.
We do know that something important happened in the human line between , and 50, years ago: This is when we start to find cultural artifacts such as art and ritual objects, evidence of what we would call civilization. What changed in the species at that point? Did they just get smarter even if their brains didn't suddenly get larger? Did they develop language all of a sudden? Did they become smarter because of the intellectual advantages that language affords such as the ability to maintain an oral history over generations?
If this is when they developed language, were they changing from no language to modern language, or perhaps from 'protolanguage' to modern language? And if the latter, when did 'protolanguage' emerge? Did our cousins the Neanderthals speak a protolanguage? At the moment, we don't know. One tantalizing source of evidence has emerged recently.
A mutation in a gene called FOXP2 has been shown to lead to deficits in language as well as in control of the face and mouth. This gene is a slightly altered version of a gene found in apes, and it seems to have achieved its present form between , and , years ago.
It is very tempting therefore to call FOXP2 a 'language gene', but nearly everyone regards this as oversimplified. Are individuals afflicted with this mutation really language impaired or do they just have trouble speaking? On top of that, despite great advances in neuroscience, we currently know very little about how genes determine the growth and structure of brains or how the structure of the brain determines the ability to use language. Nevertheless, if we are ever going to learn more about how the human language ability evolved, the most promising evidence will probably come from the human genome, which preserves so much of our species' history.
The challenge for the future will be to decode it. Christiansen, Morton H. Language Evolution. New York: Oxford University Press. Hauser, Marc; Noam Chomsky; and W. Tecumseh Fitch. The faculty of language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Feedback We've Added New Words! Word of the Day. Meanings Meanings.
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Richard Nordquist is professor emeritus of rhetoric and English at Georgia Southern University and the author of several university-level grammar and composition textbooks. Featured Video. Cite this Article Format.
Nordquist, Richard. Five Theories on the Origins of Language.
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