I'm always impressed by people who invent things. I find it so amazing that someone can figure how to put a bunch of different things together and make something totally new. Language in Thought and Action brings up the fact that words change and evolve. If you look into the history of a word, you can see where it came from. For the most part, new words come from other related words. But what about the first forms of communication? Was it totally arbitrary what sounds came to stand for what things? Did someone just point to that thing over there and decide to call it, say, a tree? If thats the case, just a slight change in history and our whole language could be different.
-elizabeth campbell
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Sometimes when I tell people I take Latin as a language in school, they reciprocate with "That's a dead language." But I defended myself, saying that technically it may be a dead language, but it's everywhere. There are real Latin words used verbatim in the English language all the time (animal, ego). We use Latin abbreviations ("i.e.", "e.g.", "etc.") and its roots are the foundation of many English words.
ReplyDeleteFrom my conversations (debates) with people who attack Latin, I know that the English language really does have its roots in Romance languages (including Latin) and other languages as well. English is a follower; it's not a pioneer at all. English words usually have etymologies in the dictionary that point their roots to some other language. To use your example, Merriam-Webster's entry says that tree is from Old English treow, akin to Old Norse tre (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tree). So I think that in the beginning of the English language people tried to name objects in a somewhat easy-to-remember way, trying to use words from languages they were familiar with such as Spanish to build the English language. However, what the people using Romance languages did, I'm not sure, because they had no archetype off of which to copy like English did. Perhaps Roman/Italian/Spanish/French people did point to the tree and call it a random, made-up noise.
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/incbios/rayjackendoff/howdidlanguagebegin.pdf
ReplyDeleteI found this paper online and parts of it are pretty interesting. I agree with the writer of it that the origins of language predate the human species altogether. Along with this, I agree with him that language probably began as simple grunts and gradually evolved into a more complex system over millions of years. I don't think its arbitrary what sounds mean what things, but to trace a word back millions of years before the time of written language is impossible so I suppose it's impossible to prove. Thoughts? Opinions?
-Bryce Cody
I read the article and I totally agree with you. I did find it really interesting how it seems as if evolution hardwired certain species to be able to have a better chance at creating a language and evolving their methods of communication. My opinion is that language developed slowly and progressively along with its creators, and that certain sound patterns evolved to form the words that serve as the base of language.
ReplyDeleteTara Burns
I can't read that file, it's pdf, so I'll talk about something else! I think that it'd be nearly impossible to actually trace the origins of language because like you said, Tara, language probably evolved slowly. It might have been so slow that generations probably passed before it was fully functional. The real story of how language began might have been forgotten and since the language wasn't established well enough, people would not have been able to record what the origin of language was.
ReplyDeletePeople have gotten so tired of talking about it that they put a ban on the topic:
In fact, the origin of speech and language (along with the development of sex and reproduction) remains one of the most significant hurdles in evolutionary theory, even in the twenty-first century. In an effort “make the problem go away,” some evolutionists have chosen not to even address the problem. Jean Aitchison noted: ‘In 1866, a ban on the topic was incorporated into the founding statutes of the Linguistic Society of Paris, perhaps the foremost academic linguistic institution of the time: ‘The Society does not accept papers on either the origin of language or the invention of a universal language.’[6]
http://www.trueorigin.org/language01.asp
So unfortunately I'm just meaninglessly speculating.
I got the file and it basically said what I had said. Sorry!
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