英语语言学Chapter1TheOriginsoflanguage.pptVIP

Chapter 1 The Origins of Language We do not know how language originated Spoken language developed well before written language The Divine Source In most religions, there appears to be a divine source who provides humans with language God/ Hindu tradition Experiments: An Egyptian pharaoh tried two new born infants around 600 B.C James IV of Scotland, around AD 1500, the children spoke Hebrew Children living without access to human speech in their early years grow up with no language at all. The Natural-sound Source Primitive words could have been imitations of the natural sounds which early men and women heard around them Modern Ls have some words with pronunciations which seem to ‘echo’ naturally occurring sounds could be used to support this theory (p2) Onomatopoeic How about soundless, abstract entities in a L? L is only a set of words which are used as “names” for entities? The Natural-sound Source Also suggested L came from natural cries of emotion, such as pain, anger, joy “you-heave-ho” theory: the sounds of a person involved in physical effort could be the source of L, esp when several people involved The appeal of this theory is that it places the development of L in some social context Human sounds may have some principled use within the social life or early human groups. Does not answer the origins of sounds since Apes and other primates have grunts and social calls. The Oral-gesture Source A set of physical gestures was developed as a means of communication A set of gestures, specifically involving the mouth, developed, in which the movements of the tongue, lips and so on were recognized according to patterns of movement similar to physical gestures We can use mime or specific gestures for a variety of communicative purposes, hard to visualize the actual “oral” aspect which would mirror many such gestures. Extremely large number of linguistic messages which would appear to defy transmission via this type of gesturing Glossogenetics Focuses mainly