01. The origins of language and The Animals and Human Language (Summary and Reflection)

Lecturer begins the class by giving task to students (Discussion leading/ Presentation of assigned reading). Each student is assigned to read a lesson from the book and lead the discussion or present to the class. The score is given based on slide, content, presentation, and handouts. After that, he lectures two lesson which are The Origins of Language and The Animals and Human Language.

The first lesson of this book discuss about the origin of the language. Charles Darwin believes that “ the origin of language, early humans had already developed musical ability prior to language and were using it “ to charm each other.” However, we still could not find any evidence or artifacts relating to his claim. Thus, the following claims state different reasons of the origin of language.

In Christianity tradition claims that god created Adam and Eve to be the first human on earth. In Hindu tradition, the language came from Sarasvati, wife of Bramhma, creator of universe. However, the result of hypothesis seems to be conflicting based on Greek writer Herodotus reported the story of an Egyptian pharaoh named Psammetichus who tried the experiment with two newborn babies. The babies could not sound any word in Egyptian except bekos. Other similar experiment was done by King James indicated that the isolated newborn babies grew up with no language at all.

Other view of the origin of the language is based on the concept of natural sound. The “bow-wow theory” stated that human tried to imitate the sound form surrounded environment.  It has also been suggested that the origin sound of language may have come from natural of emotion such as pain, anger, and joy.    

The social interaction source also involves in several people and interaction had to be coordinated. So, the group of early humans might develop a set of hums, grunts, groans and cruse that were used when they were lifting and carrying large bits of trees or lifeless hairy mammoths.

The physical adaptation source distinct physical features human with other creatures. Another similar development is believed that human must had developed about two million years ago. The early humans had become capable of making stone tools.

In the second lesson, animals and human language is distinguished in communicative signals and informative signals.  People can use language to think and to talk that is the properties of human language. Humans can refer to past and future time that is called displacement, while animals are lack of this property. Also, The aspect of the relationship between linguistic signs and objects in the weld is described as arbitrariness. The animals use a fixed and limited signal to communicate.

Humans are continually creating new expressions and novel utterances, while the feature of animal communication is described in terms of fixed reference. Humans’ language is passed on from one generation to the next that is called cultural transmission. Another difference is duality. Human language can be distinct sounds and meanings. Other creatures cannot differentiate between the sounds and meanings.

Animals produces a particular behavior in response to a particular sound-stimulus or noise, does not actually understand that the words in the noise mean. In the 1930s, two scientists (Luella and Winthrop Kellogg) did the experiment on an infant chimpanzee together with their baby son. The chimpanzee was reported to be able to understand about a hundred words, but did not say any of them.

Among several experiments on animals, Herbert concluded that chimpanzee are clever creatures who learn to produce a certain type of behavior.

I learnt a lot from both lessons, which are “The Origin of Language” and “Animals and Humans Language”. I learnt about the origin of language that there are different claims about the origin of language. In this first lesson, I learnt that the origin of language comes from many different sources such as the divine source, the natural sound source, the social interaction source, the physical adaptation source, the tool-making source, and the genetic source.

Reference: Yule, G. (2009). The study of language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.