TEETH: they are upright and roughly even in height.
THE PHYSICAL ADAPTATION SOURCE In the study of evolutionary development, there are certain physical features which appear to be relevant for speech.
However, apes and othe primates live in social groups but they do not seem to have developed the capacity for speech. The appeal of this proposal is that it places the development of human language in a social context: groups required some form of communication to mantain their organizations. SOCIAL INTERACTION SOURCE “YO-HE-HO” THEORY According to this theory the sounds of a person involved in physical effort could be the source of our language, especially when that physical effort involved several people. But interjections are usually produced with sudden intakes of breath, which is the opposite of ordinary talk: we speak while we exhale, not inhale. “POOH-POOH” THEORY According to this theory, speech developed from the instinctive sounds people make in emotional circumstances. However, it is hard to see how most of the soundless things as well as abstract concepts could have been referred to in a language that simply echoed natural sounds. The fact that all modern languages have some words with pronunciations that seem to echo naturally sounds ( onomatopeia ) could be used to support this theory. NATURAL SOUND SOURCE “BOW-WOW” THEORY According to this theory, the early human tried to imitate the natural sounds around them and then used them to refer to those objects even when they weren’t present. However, all other cases of children discovered living in isolation tend to not confirm the results of these types of divine-source experiments they grow up with no language at all. 2) A similar experiment was carried out by King James the Fourth of Scotland during which the children were reported to have started speaking Hebrew. After two year of isolation, in fact, they uttered something that was identified as the Phrygian word BEKOS (“bread”).
In attempt to rediscover this original divine language, a few experiments have been carried out, with rather conflicting results: 1) The Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus though that Phrygian must be the original language after having tried the experiment with two newborn babies. THE DIVINE SOURCE In most religious traditions (such as Catholic and Hindu’ s ones) there appears to be a divine source who provides humans with language. We do know that the ability to produce sound and simplevocal patterning appears to be in an ancient part of the brain that we share with all vertebrates, but that isn’t human language. Scarica Riassunti "The study of language" George Yule e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Linguistica Inglese solo su Docsity! CHAPTER 1 We don’t know how language originated.
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