My idea goes as humans started to realize they could make fairly specific sounds with their mouths they started to name objects
objects were at first grouped by color/shape, but evolved more specific names as time advanced, actions upon objects were added from there, and stand alone actions from there
am I onto something? Or am I way off? haven't tried googling anything just yet, but I do have enough weed left to last me the weekend, so I should be able to expand on this further
Sorry, but no, you're not. No one knows how languages began. All proposals are pure speculation. Even so, there are two major approaches, as usual, gradualist vs saltationist. Which approach people take is mostly based on their approach to the language faculty. If you believe the faculty of language is fundamentally simple, e.g. just the simplest possible structure-building operation Merge, then you're more likely to be sympathetic towards the saltationist approach. If you believe the language faculty is more complicated, for instance in lexicalist grammars like construction grammar, then you're more likely to lean towards the gradualist approach.
Josiah Martinez
I just want to know when the names for genitals were invented. Dicks, cocks, willies, helmuts, penises, benises and shit.
David Campbell
In written language at least, historical evidence, as well as some anthropology with primitives, suggest colors came last.
Oddly, in ancient writings, the primary colors almost always begin red (I suppose, blood being an alerting color). Green usually shows up some centuries to millennia later, with blue being last (excluding black and white - the sky, incidentally, often being described as white, before blue is 'invented').
Further, language affects perception fundamentally. Often, if you take someone from a primitive tribe who knows only his own language, and show him a bunch of red squares, with one being blue, he won't be able to identify which is different from the others. Yet, if they have a word for green, he'll find a single green square among a bunch of red squares just fine.
The origins of language are mysterious, for obvious reasons, but we do know language isn't instinctual, at least if you don't have hearing. Communication of some sort always is, but among those that grow up deaf with no exposure to sign language, all communication, and indeed, thought, is through a series of mimes and only pertains to reenactment of common experiences. In those instances where such a person learns signing later in life, they often describe their thought process before then as being a collection of images, rather than words.
So yeah, it's all weird.
Lucas Parker
this post makes me so mad.
Gabriel Stewart
Why?
Logan White
because it's misinformation
Brayden Ramirez
How so?
Blake Phillips
People on the same place live similar life and has similar experience. For this exp. they made unique words. Another ones plays relation roles which goes to become wide-use by everyday usage. Life on a different places may has many differences and this influences on lang. in time differences become very big.
e.g. There is no place for 'sea' word if there is not any sea around.
Your error is that you assume that humans suddenly just came into existence and didn't know what to do with themselves. Humans slowly evolved. If you look at chimpanzees today, you can record something like language, specific, locally varying preferred expressions. So it's fairly obvious that as our abilities to make those sounds evolved, we simultaneously learned how to use them. There wasn't a singular moment in time when we figured out how to speak. It went very gradually, probably first by mimicking sounds in nature (animals, our own instinctive sounds (shout, cry etc), thunder, rain etc), but it wasn't like some bloke invented language and started making up shit.
Jacob Perez
Both of those things are true though.
Granted, it's unfair to ask for citations, when I didn't provide them myself, but people who are languageless - even those that can hear, when it comes to the feral - do not develop language on their own, even when it groups, rather suggesting it's taught and not instinctual.
And there's plenty of evidence to prove that, not only does language fundamentally change both perception and thought, but also that even particular languages can have radically different effects on world outlook and perception of interaction as opposed to others, which so often leads to cross communication faux pas.
Jason Ross
All social mammals communicate on one level or another, but there is a distinction between mere communication and language when abstract concepts begin to have names and rules of interaction.
It probably was a gradual evolution, as you suggest, but much like technological breakthroughs that caused giant leaps and spread virally, language, similarly, likely had conceptual leaps that spread through generations and regions, and, were one so omniscient, each of said could likely be traced back to a single source.
Samuel Martin
Right, but who came up with calling a benis cock and such? Who even decided that specific words like cunt are terrible swears?
Eli Ward
>If you look at chimpanzees today, you can record something like language, specific, locally varying preferred expressions I wouldn't say so. Chimpanzees do actively communicate, but the minuscule set of vocalizations they use are almost identical from population to population. Their gestural repertoire is substantially larger, but it too is mostly invariant from population to population. In fact, something like a third of all gestures used by chimpanzees are also used by gorillas and orangutans.
Charles Sanders
Alas, I'm afraid conundrums of such import are forever lost to the mists of time.
Cooper Nelson
That's a shame really. Even though the etymologic origins of these words are of interest to me, the most interesting thing to me is why some synonyms of a word are considered swears and why some not. Who and why would make such an assumptions? Why fucking is impolite but having an intercourse is alright, why wanking a willie is alright but jerking your cock off not necessarily. Why vagina is so clever way to name a pussy but cunt can put you in cancer. This is fucking interesting, is it not?
Mason Davis
I suspect the explanations are rather inane. Likely some "proper lady" of some prominence or other proclaimer of proper etiquette didn't like the sound of the word. Generally swear words refer to something that's a potentially unpleasant or uncomfortable subject, and tend to have rather short and harsh sounds. Expletives are thus expedient at punctuating displeasure or high emotion.
Might be more interesting to find if that's consistent among more ancient languages - I know it's fairly consistent among all the modern ones that I'm aware of - with few exceptions, short, harsh sounding words, usually referring to something "unclean".
Time to phone Chomsky I guess.
Matthew Reyes
They are not true, they are misconceptions which are unfortunately propagated by the media. Language is decidedly instinctual in precisely the sense that it is NOT taught. The acquisition of language happens reflexively. It requires a threshold of linguistic input in the child's environment, but given that, children acquire language at an unappreciably fast rate. Not only that, but there are certain mistakes that children NEVER make in language acquisition, which you would expect them to make if they really were learning by a trial-and-error method. This is an accessible article saying that language acquisition is reflexive. linguisticsociety.org/content/language-acquisition This is a straightforward paper describing the rationale behind the idea that language is fundamentally innate. ling.upenn.edu/~ycharles/papers/tlr-final.pdf
The idea that language influences thought is called "linguistic relativity" or "the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis" and is largely discredited. Just because English speakers don't have a word for "light blue," that doesn't mean we can't perceive it or identify it on a continuum. This is an accessible article saying the same. linguisticsociety.org/content/does-language-i-speak-influence-way-i-think
Blake Edwards
you do realize that the purpose of language is to communicate. if someone has lived their whole life without human contact, why would they have any language at all?
also have you heard of cases where identitcal twins being really close to each other develop their own words that only they understand. infact that happens in all subcultures in a society. case in point, ebonics of the black of the america type.
Josiah Nguyen
There is also a well-known case of spontaneous language creation by language-less deaf children, Nicaraguan Sign Language.
Nathan Bailey
you are talking about english here. short answer, cock and cunt are proper english, while vagine and penis are latin. when the latin speakers dominated in the uppe classes of the anglo-saxon aristocracy their words became the polite way and the local words of the dirty peasents became rude. a similar thing also happens in lands of south asia where slavish native speak in english when they have to say naughty words and speaking their synonyms in their own language is considered rude behavior. i suspect it has also to do with the fact that ones own language is closer to ones emotional reactions in the mind.
Isaiah Gutierrez
>you do realize that the purpose of language is to communicate. if someone has lived their whole life without human contact, why would they have any language at all? Yes, but even among those that do have constant human contact, but are in some way cut off from language, do not develop language, as we see repeatedly in the numerous cases of deaf individuals growing up in developing nations, without access to sign language.
Twins may develop their own words, but they don't develop the concept of language independant from exposure to it. Similarly, while the cases are too far and between to really use as a defining premise, small groups of children raised without exposure to language, fail to develop it.
The brain certainly has a propensity towards adopting language, but, again, as social mammals, we already have a propensity towards communication in general. Even among those groups that do not develop proper language, still have rudimentary communication. There's no biological distinction we can make between the two tendencies.
>Just because English speakers don't have a word for "light blue," that doesn't mean we can't perceive it or identify it on a continuum. That's literally what happens: sciencealert.com/humans-couldn-t-even-see-the-colour-blue-until-modern-times-research-suggests If you have no concept for it, you tend to ignore it, and that doesn't pertain to just colors. Even time, as we conceive of it, seems to be a modern invention, that more primitive cultures tend to entirely lack.
Hudson Rogers
I'm starting to think this is bait. I don't have time to reply to this now but I might later.
Easton Cruz
Reasonably likely... 1) There was one language that came first. 2) Language was first oral. 3) We used what distinct sounds we could make and words were simple and plain.
4) Inadequate (science smart wanna-be) guys started adding prefixes, infixes and suffixes to make themselves sound smart. Computer retards use "re-solve" because they're too stupid to see it means they didn't do anything that they weren't taught they ought to do.
