The origin of language is as old as the origin of human beings. However, the language materials recorded by human beings in written form are only a few thousand years, and before that, we knew almost nothing about tens of thousands of years. So so far, all the explanations about the origin of language are just a hypothesis. Some people put forward "exclamation theory", thinking that language originated from exclamations expressing emotions; Some people put forward the theory of "labor shouts", thinking that language originated from shouts in heavy labor; Some people put forward the theory of "imitation of sound", thinking that language originated from the imitation of the original sound in nature; Some people also put forward the theory of "Dada", arguing that language originated from the tongue movements and gestures of "Dada"; Others put forward "singing theory", arguing that language originated from unclear hymns in primitive ceremonies, and so on. All these assumptions can't be verified by facts, so no one among scientists can agree. In order to avoid this fruitless argument from happening again, a foreign language society expressly stipulates in its articles of association that all participants are not allowed to talk about the origin of language.
Most domestic experts accept the Marxist theory of the origin of language and think that "labor creates language". When our ancestors fought against natural disasters in productive labor, they needed Qi Xin's cooperation and mutual cooperation. Naturally, they need to use some kind of signal to unify everyone's actions. If all kinds of signals are marked with certain sounds, it becomes the original language. We can imagine a group of people carrying wood together. Isn't it always necessary to shout "hey, hey" in order to unify the timing and direction of exertion? This song "Hi Yo, Hi Yo" may not have any specific meaning at first, but after a long time, people will naturally think of the meaning of "lifting things" as soon as they hear this song, so "Hi Yo, Hi Yo" has become the original language. Of course, there are two important conditions for the emergence of language, the complexity of the pronunciation organs and the complexity of brain thinking. Labor makes apes walk upright, making their vocal organs conducive to making various sounds; At the same time, the hand contacts with various things more frequently, which stimulates the function of the brain and promotes the development of thinking.
What is the original language just created? Now I can only be sure that it is sound and meaningful, and I can't know the rest.
Since ancient times, human beings have been interested in the origin of language and put forward various explanations.
It turns out that people choose religion to explain the origin of language when human social sciences are underdeveloped. Socrates, an ancient Greek philosopher, once asserted that God gave names to all living things on the earth, so words are sacred, can communicate with God and are full of magic. According to the ancient western view, language was created by God. In Genesis of the Old Testament and Revelation of John of the New Testament, the birth of language is mentioned, and it is mentioned that God gave Adam the supreme power to name everything.
Even some ancient emperors were very interested in the production of human language. A king in ancient Egypt once took an unexpected approach to explore what the original language of human beings was. Once, when a child was born, he ordered a shepherd to release the child into the wild, ordered him not to say anything to the child, took good care of the child when herding sheep, and reported the first word the child said. More than a year later, the child said the first word bekos. The king immediately called scholars to study the origin of this word, and later found that this word means bread in Giria. The king thinks that the first word spoken by human beings is bread.
However, due to the lack of credible evidence to study the language before the appearance of words, the question about the origin of language actually stays in conjecture. In 1930s, 19, the World Language Congress was held in France. At the meeting, a resolution was made that the speculation about the origin of language was empty talk from Socrates and Plato to the present, and it was demanded that the question about the origin of language be banned in the future. This decision has been affecting the present, and many modern linguists pay little attention to the origin of language and seldom study it.
However, a paper resolution can't extinguish human curiosity, and it is always an unsolved case for human linguists. 1934, Turkey held a national linguistic conference to study what was the first word in the world. The experts at the meeting guessed half, compared half, and proposed that the sun was the earliest word that human beings could speak. Moreover, the specific process of drawing conclusions is not clear because there is no record.
There have been different opinions about the causes of language, and the debate about what the earliest words spoken by human beings are has never subsided.
What caused the language to come into being? This is a different proposition. At present, there are mainly four theoretical interpretation languages. The first view holds that human language comes from imitation. For example, ancient humans saw dogs barking in the wilderness, and anthropological dogs were called "Wang Wang". Later, they gradually used the sound of "Wang Wang" to refer to dogs. The second view is1the "jingle theory" that appeared at the beginning of the 9th century, that is, naturalism theory. This theory holds that everything in the world has an essence, and when the essence makes a sound, there will be an echo. This echo has created many words, for example, in English, ball, B stands for elasticity, and all stands for a round object. The third view is the familiar Marxist theory of the origin of language, which holds that labor creates language, and the original language is developed through singing in labor. The fourth view holds that language comes from feelings. Under the impact of expressing anger, happiness and other feelings, powerful airflow produces language through the vocal cords, and the basic feelings of human beings and the sounds made by emotions constitute the most basic vocabulary.
The debate about the earliest words spoken by human beings has never subsided. An American linguist believes that the earliest language is a noun, which should be the most common thing in life, such as all kinds of food; Secondly, it should be adjectives, such as things that describe the characteristics of flowers and trees; The third is address terms, which refer to words used to address and express instructions. These words related to communication are closely related to human survival. From the cognitive point of view, this statement holds that the birth of language should be related to human survival and social development, and it does have certain scientific basis.
There are also some experts who study it physiologically. They found that M, B and P were easier to pronounce. Words that begin with these letters are the easiest words for human beings to pronounce. Even if the baby has no teeth, the sounds of m, b and p are easy to pronounce. If this sound is associated with the first thing that comes into contact, the earliest words are born. At present, there is no textual research on which word b, p and m comes first, but it is a fact that the word starting with m plays an important role in western languages. Take English as an example, there are many words related to M, and a large number of words expressing the source of life, nurturing, caring, essence, behavior, memory, food, personality and so on all start with M.
Although there are many languages in the world, their original origins are surprisingly consistent.
Why do many languages in the world show internal consistency? "Human language ability is innate, not acquired. What is acquired is the ability to organize complex languages. For example, when a child wants to eat milk, the first voices are mom and dad. In Indo-European languages, the word mama first refers to the breast. In addition, the sound made by human beings when they taste food is also related to the M sound. Many words are derived from M, which really shows that the origin of human words is closely related to M. "
Some people think that children's language learning process is a living specimen for studying ancient anthropological language learning. How much can we refer to? Professor Zhu believes that when modern babies learn a language, the language of human beings has already been produced, and parents who have frequent contact have mastered it. This is completely different from the language production of primitive humans in the wilderness. Sociolinguistics proves that the law of language creation is two or three words at first, and then it increases continuously. However, the laws of modern language can't prove how language came into being. So far, all the data of children's language learning can't explain the origin of human language.
And parents' jokes and expressions will affect the baby, even if they can say that mom is the result of education. Even if the mother deliberately does not talk to the baby, it is difficult to authenticate the origin of human language until the child says the first word himself. Because the children in the house will hear the language exchanged between their parents, and human beings are born to imitate it, the baby may only hear a few words, so it cannot be proved that the first word he said is the first word spoken by ancient humans.
Some experts also said that comparing the sounds made by orangutans with human language, hoping to restore the situation of anthropological language learning, but these efforts have failed. Professor Zhu pointed out that primates can make nine kinds of sounds, all related to survival, but not to language. Humans say there is danger ahead, and there may be dozens of explanations, while orangutans can only make an "ah" sound and can only repeat it. In order to observe whether there are congenital factors in mastering language, human beings have tried to teach orangutans to speak. As a result, they found that orangutans do not have the ability to learn languages, which proves that language ability is unique to human beings, and it is naturally unsuccessful to find clues about the origin of human language from orangutans.
The earliest human characters were most likely produced in temperate regions, and the meanings of the characters spoken by ancient humans in different regions should be the same.
How did human language come into being? When was it born? What was the first word spoken by our ancestors? After a long period of exploration, everything is still just a mystery?
Fortunately, in the study of Lithuanian, which is considered as the ancestor of Indo-European family, experts found that the earliest words were "wolf", "tree" and words representing production tools. These characters have been proved in other languages, but there are no characters expressing the tropical climate, which shows that the Indo-European language family originated in the temperate zone, indicating that the earliest human characters also originated in the temperate zone.
The emergence of vocabulary is closely related to society, and the most inseparable vocabulary in human life is probably the first vocabulary. Although different countries and regions in the world may have different pronunciations in different geographical environments, the meanings of the words pronounced first should be similar, which should be related to food and shelter, which is determined by the sociality of language. In order to get rid of speculation completely and find out the mystery of the origin of human language, we need updated evidence and the joint efforts of experts in linguistics, archaeology and anthropology.