Week 2. Chapter 1: The Origin of Language

What is language?
Language is an arbitrary system of a set of signs used for communication. It is arbitrary because there is no natural connection between the sign and what it refers to. The signs used in the language are only means which help in referring to something other than them.

How did language originate?
We do not have enough data to prove the origin of language. Because of this, we can only make some hypotheses about the origin of language.

What are the different hypotheses about the origin of language?
The different hypotheses about the origin of language can be grouped as divine source hypotheses, human source hypotheses and evolutionary hypotheses.

Explain the Divine Source Hypothesis about the origin of language.
It is a view held by the religions. It says that human beings did not invent language, but some divine source gifted it to mankind.

Explain the Human source Hypothesis about the origin of language
The human Source hypothesis about the origin of language claims that man produced language with his own effort. There are many popular versions of this hypothesis. They are:
a) "Bow-wow" hypothesis
b) “Pooh pooh” hypothesis
c) The "Yo-heave-ho" hypothesis and
d) The 'Ta-ta' hypothesis

Explain the Bow-wow Hypothesis about the origin of language
It claims that the first human words were those sounds whose form communicated its meaning. When one imitates the sound of dog and says ‘bow-wow’, the picture of a dog comes to mind. The few surviving onomatopoeic words are examples. However, onomatopoeia is a very limited part of the vocabulary of any language. Even if one agrees that onomatopoeia provided the first words, where did the rest come from?
Some English onomatopoeic words are bang (door), click (computer mouse), moo (cow), oink (pig), quack (duck), meow (cat) honk (horn), vroom (engine) pew pew (laser) quack (duck), hiss (snake) roar (lion), splash (water), beep (electronic devices), ping pong (table tennis) etc.

Explain the “Pooh pooh” Hypothesis about the origin of language.
The “Pooh pooh” Hypothesis about the origin of language claims that the first words came from involuntary cries. Cries expressing dislike (pooh pooh!), hunger, pain (ouch!), or pleasure, gradually led to the expression of more developed ideas and emotions. However, emotional exclamations are a very small part of any language. Moreover, most human responses to stimuli like sneeze, cry, hiccough etc. are ingressive sounds while human languages use egressive sounds.

Explain the "Yo-heave-ho" Hypothesis about the origin of language.
The Yo-heave-ho" Hypothesis about the origin of language claims that language developed out of necessity when human beings began working together in groups. When they engaged in hard labour (lifting heavy animals, pulling fallen trees, pushing huge rocks etc.), they needed grunts, chants etc. to synchronize their activity. This theory stresses the social origin of language.

Explain the ‘Ta-ta’ Hypothesis about the origin of language.
The ‘Ta-ta’ Hypothesis argues that that language came from oral pantomime of gestures. People used organs of speech to imitate body gestures with a sort of mouth pantomime. However, although primates use same gesture to communicate, human gestures differ from culture to culture.

Explain Glossogenetics:
Glossogenetics is a hypothesis about the evolution of language. It argues that that human language developed as a result of this evolutionary change because of some physical language acquisition device they got during evolution. It points out that a) at some stage in the evolution humans acquired a sophisticated brain which helped them acquire language, and b) the ability to move upright transformed human larynx to an organ capable of producing of vowel and consonant sounds.

Some linguistic termminology

What is linguistics?
Linguistics is the scientific study of language.


Who is a linguist?
Linguist is someone who engages in the scientific study of language.


What are the branches of linguistics?
The main braches of linguistics are Phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and discourse analysis.


What is Phonetics?
Phonetics is the study of the physical aspects of sounds of human language.


What is Phonology?
Phonology is the study of sounds and sound patterns of a language.


What is Morphology?
Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words.


What is Syntax?
Syntax is the study of how words combine to form grammatical sentences.


What is Semantics?
Semantics is the study of the lexical meaning of word, phrases or sentences.


What is Pragmatics?
Pragmatics is the study of how utterances are used in communicative acts.


What is Discourse analysis?

Discourse analysis is the analysis of language use in texts.

Some Internet Resources

www.geocities.com/CollegePark/3920/
www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/clmt/w3c/corpus_ling/content/introduction.html
www.ling.udel.edu/idsardi/101/
www.ling.udel.edu.colin/courses/ling101/ling101.html
www.faculty.uca.edu/~lburley/intro_to_linguitics.htm

Textbooks

Required Textbook:
Yule, George. (1996) The Study of Language. Cambridge: CUP.

You find these books from your college library:
Robins, RH. (1980). General Linguistics. London: Longman;
Atkinson, M, Kilby, D & Roca, I. (1988). Foundations of General Linguistics. London;
Fromkin, V. & Rodman, R. (1998). An Introduction to Language. New York;
Poole, C. (1999). An Introduction to Linguistics. London;
Widdowson, HG (1996). Linguistics. London: OUP.

Week 1: Introduction to the course

Dear Students,

Welcome to the course ENG 252 (Introduction to Linguistics). This week, you will:

a. Acquaint yourself with the basic issues of the course, and
b. Acquaint yourself with the terminology of the course.