Language development
The development of language can be divided into the development of language in the tribal history of living beings ( phylogenesis ) up to the emergence of humans and into the development of language during the evolution of humans ( homogenesis ).
No reliable research results are available for the infrahuman (pre-symbolic) or the beginning of the human realm. This restriction relates on the one hand to the current state of research, but on the other hand it is of a fundamental nature, since no linguistic documents are available. The early development of colloquial language eludes knowledge as it left no immediate traces.
Understanding in the infrahuman area
Reconstructing the biological evolution of human language is, according to its self-understanding, the task of biolinguistics . In the course of phylogeny , the area of what could be learned gradually broadened compared to what was genetically transmitted. Only the modifiability per se and not the results of individual modifications finds its way into the inheritance . However, it cannot be a question of simply contrasting the changes based on learning processes with the modifications based on natural selection . “The question is not whether a certain behavior is the result of natural selection or a cultural learning process, but the question is ultimately, what are the reasons for which learning processes arose from natural selection”.
In the higher primates , social communication is already pronounced due to the freedom gained . In contrast, the communication of information is hardly available. The higher primates can already communicate "about something" with their gestures at first, provided that the missing natural prerequisites for this are artificially fulfilled, but their auditory communication still serves exclusively for immediate emotional expression. Great apes have great difficulty making sounds appropriate to an emotional state when they are not in it. The sounds of primates are graded. Listening primates try to perceive and assess subtle gradations in the emotional and physical state of the communication transmitter. In several cases, great apes born in captivity have been taught to use sign languages and the Yerkish sign language . Chimpanzees can already handle so-called tools, but the actual production of tools and, in particular, their passing on and improvement over generations does not seem to be possible yet.
Hypotheses on human language development
Since the discovery of the FOXP2 gene, which is relevant for language acquisition and utterances, there has been the theory that a mutation of this gene, which can also be found in birds, primates and Neanderthals, led to the development of human language some 100,000 years ago. The gene supports both the growth in length and the branching of neurites in the developing brain. When the gene is damaged, as in the affected members of the KE Family, the creation of new neural connections seems to be impaired.
This genetic approach contrasts with the anatomical approach of the cognitive scientist Philip Liebermann . According to him, the human ability to speak is based on anatomical and fine motor skills that other primates do not have. Thus the unique control that man has over his tongue and its movements has repeatedly been the subject of investigation. One theory linked the size of the hypoglossal nerve , which is responsible for controlling tongue movements, to the development of language. A team led by paleanthrologist David DeGusta rejected this theory after showing that the hypoglossal nerve canals of both non-human primates and australopithecina were within the limits of modern humans. Control of the tongue, therefore, cannot be related to the size of the nerve.
An anatomical aspect that is considered by many scientists as an indicator of the use of complex language is the lowered larynx . While u. a. Goats, dogs and big cats can temporarily lower their larynx in order to make loud noises, a permanent lowering of the larynx is only found in some deer species except in humans. According to Liebermann, humans are unique in that the epiglottis and soft palate do not touch; this favored the articulation. This thesis is strongly doubted by other scientists, since the transformation of the human language tract must have taken a long time and therefore very early ancestors of modern humans would have had the ability to speak.
Apparently, the ability of the parent animals to learn sound communication is not tied to anatomical features of humans or primates, as the example of whales or birds shows.
Time of language origin
One hopes that statistical methods will be used to determine the time of origin of human language. Such an approach attempts to calculate the time that was required to reach today's complexity and diversity of languages. A calculation from 1998 shows that the languages first diverged at least 100,000 years ago.
A calculation from 2012 uses the number of clearly different sounds in modern languages as a basis. The comparison of the number of phonemes in worldwide languages in relation to African languages is intended to make tangible how long African languages had to have existed in order to have the available number of phonemes. Using this calculation method, the research team calculated an age of 350,000 to 100,000 years for the African languages. Atkinson used the same method in 2011 to calculate a language origin 80,000–160,000 years ago in South Africa. These studies have been criticized by linguists because the current distribution of phonemes is not without a doubt an indicator of a long history of the respective language.
Neanderthals
From DNA analyzes it has been proven that there is no difference in the corresponding sequence of the Neanderthals and that of modern humans. From this, followers of the genetic approach deduce that the Neanderthals were capable of language. The anatomical "school" according to Lieberman takes the position that the Neanderthals did not have the anatomical prerequisites for non-nasalized speech and the vowels [i], [u] and [a] (as in English me , moo and ma ) could not pronounce. This is contradicted by a study from 2002, which ascribes a vowel space similar to that of modern humans to Neanderthals despite the fact that their larynx is not lowered.
Human and language development
In the transition from animals to humans, issues that go beyond genetic programming, such as the passing on and continuation of stone tools across generations, and competencies such as the accumulative ability to choose, which is generative with regard to linguistic behavior, are relevant in the phylogenetically opened space. The production of stone tools and other specifically human cultural products requires not only simultaneous synchronous communication but also diachronic communication. Work requires cognitive dispositions and communicative forms of exchange that are inconceivable without language. The work is not only the impetus, but a constant factor in the development of language. The transmission and acquisition of tools as well as the passing on of corresponding skills require the medium of language. Language development is inconceivable without social formation in work and action systems . A special feature of human language in contrast to animal languages is that it is used to combine terms in a variety of ways and creatively. The more complex and differentiated the language becomes, the more finely the environment can be perceived and processed.
Objects with characteristics or (mark) signs are involved in interpersonal behavior in such a way that the integrated sign can also appear instead of the object. The sign as an associative reference differs from the sign as an object-related denotation , as a connotation that opens up references to sensations and emotions.
In the course of the development of mankind and its documented history, the character structure of interpersonal-objective behavior increases and also shapes the cognitive processing of reality. Various intercultural studies indicate that everyday perception and ordinary recognition of reality are structured by language.
Stage models of language development
Christian Lehmann assumes that about two million years ago the phonetic utterances of today's ancestors were used purely indexically, i.e. H. at first they accompanied gestures and were holophrastic without any structure as in primates. In the following years, the gestures became increasingly superfluous, while the phonetic elements were increasingly structured and used more and more often regardless of the situation. The archaic Homo sapiens was the first to use simple syntactic constructions; the use of language thus became increasingly symbolic, conventional and arbitrary, and it lost its indexal and onomatopoeic function. The morphologization of phonological alternations and grammatical constructions began about 150,000 years ago ; 50,000 years ago the language was also fully developed in terms of syntax. The availability of writing has increased the situation-relieving nature of the language in the last more than 5000 years.
In the 1820s, Wilhelm von Humboldt , the founder of comparative linguistics, first developed a three-stage model of the language development of historically comprehensible languages from the isolating languages with words that designate things and that are only linked by a fixed sentence (e.g. Malay ) the agglutinating languages with their meaning- changing affixes (e.g. Turkish ) up to the inflected languages, in which the grammatical form completely overprints the word that denotes a substance and gives it a stronger individuality, high aesthetic appeal and greater expressiveness ( especially through the tone of the meaningful and meaningful vowels of the root-inflecting languages such as Sanskrit or ancient Greek ). Problems arose, however, with the classification of Chinese as an ancient cultural language and the modern Indo-European languages, which use their inflected elements e.g. Some of them have stripped off, but cannot be regarded as simple or even mindless. Therefore, Humboldt postulated a curve of ascendence up to the zenith of inflection, through which all necessary grammatical elements are incorporated into the word and thus a unity of thinking and speaking is achieved, and a subsequent phase of descent with loss of inflection (as in English), which again leaves the achievement of understanding the grammatical structure to the listener, which is only possible at a high level of flexible language use, but is associated with an aesthetic loss. This thesis is still compatible with modern research.
Humboldt also refuted the assumption that language change takes place very slowly in societies with a low level of material development. Humboldt reported on a common use in Oceania and America of exchanging words in a language when something unique happens to the bearer of a name made up of these words.
Other stage models distinguish five development phases, which relate the level of the individual to the physical, psychological and linguistic level. The first two phases are to be seen as a necessary condition for the emergence of the linguistic level, while the following three phases further illuminate the emergence of language.
- Phase 1
The individual interacts directly with his environment in the sense of stimulus-reaction mechanisms. His activities are therefore not planned cognitively , but arise spontaneously based on environmental stimuli.
- Phase 2
By making and using tools, humans place objects between themselves and nature. The activity leads to the appropriation of the environment by humans. As a result, the activity no longer runs automatically in the sense of a stimulus-reaction pattern, but rather the human being selects stimuli from his environment and thus reacts consciously and specifically to them.
- Phase 3
The selection of stimuli from the environment gives rise to characteristics that subsequently become signs (e.g. the bleating of a sheep as a sign for the sheep itself), which then form the basis for a language. In our language today, such remnants are still present in the form of reflex sounds . In this phase, the goal of the activity is still the “ amalgam ” of the object and its permanently assigned symbol.
- Phase 4
In this phase the sign is detached from the object in the sense of a still closely related denotation . The activity now only relates to the sign. In this way, the person opens up a new operational level, since activities can now be carried out linguistically without having to perform them on the actually objective object. If one compares this with the situation described above in the end of the Paleolithic, it is noticeable that this very ability to play through activities on a cognitive level is a necessary prerequisite for the development and application of the Levallois technique . Furthermore, the detachment of the sign from the object also represents a further step towards the inclusion of the psychic level in the next phase, as the sign creates another human-human relationship (in addition to the one in stage 2), which, however, does not is bound to the objects in the people's environment and thus has the potential to convey psychological conditions.
- Phase 5
Based on the operational level of abstractly usable signs newly created in phase 4, in phase 5, in addition to the denotation of the sign, which is still attached to the human environment, a connotation that is potentially detached from the environment develops, which is an expression of the psychological level in Reference to this sign is. These connotations can only have meanings accessible to the sender and / or recipient, but they can also symbolize common meanings with other people in the sense of culturally shaped meanings.
"Echogenesis"
An "analogical" research approach originates from Walter A. Koch , according to which we can expect a return of features of the phylogenesis of language in other language geneses. Based on Ernst Haeckel's "Biogenetic Basic Law" of 1866, according to which ontogeny is a recapitulation of phylogeny, he and other representatives of this approach try to infer the processes of language development that can be observed today to the language evolution. This can be about the child's language acquisition or the development of pidgin and creole languages , new language acquisition after language loss, language training attempts with primates or historical processes of language change. He calls this holistic approach echogenesis , since phylogenesis has, so to speak, left its echo in today's processes of language genesis . On the one hand, he weakens Haeckel's approach, since he only speaks of one tendency; on the other hand, he extends it, since he does not only transfer it to ontogenesis.
See also
literature
- Mark Galliker: Speech Psychology . Basel, Tübingen: Francke 2013.
- Guy Deutscher: In the mirror of language. Why the world looks different in other languages . Munich: Beck 2011.
- Jörg Hegermann: Step model of the phylogenesis of human language . Brig: Distance learning Switzerland 2014.
- Uwe Jürgens: Phylogenesis of linguistic communication . In: G. Rickheit, Th. Herrmann u. W. Deutsch (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Psycholinguistik - Handbook of Psycholinguistics. Pp. 33-57. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter 2003.
- Holger Kuße: Linguistics in cultural studies . An introduction. Göttingen: UTB 2012.
- Roger Liebi: Origin and Development of Languages , Holzgerlingen 2nd edition 2004, 304 pp.
- Horst M. Müller: Language as a research field in linguistics, psychology and neuroscience . In: Ders., Psycholinguistik - Neurolinguistik 2013. pp. 11–20. Paderborn: UTB.
- Friedemann Schrenk: The early days of man . The way to Homo sapiens. Munich: Beck 2008.
- Eckart Voland : Sociobiology. Spectrum Academic Publishing House, Heidelberg 2009.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Voland, 2009, p. 18.
- ↑ Jane Goodall: The chimpanzees of Gombe: patterns of behavior . Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1986, ISBN 978-0-674-11649-8 .
- ^ E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Stuart Shanker, Talbot J. Taylor: Apes, language, and the human min . Oxford University Press, New York 1998, ISBN 978-0-19-510986-3 .
- ↑ W. Enard include: Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene Involved in speech and language. In: Nature . No. 418/2002 , p. 869-872 , PMID 12192408 .
- ^ SC Vernes, PL Oliver, E. Spiteri and others. a .: Foxp2 regulates gene networks implicated in neurite outgrowth in the developing brain . In: PLoS Genetics 7 . 2011.
- ^ P. Liebermann: The Biology and Evolution of Language . Harvard University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-674-07413-0 .
- ↑ David DeGusta, W. Henry Gilbert & Scott P. Turner: Hypoglossal canal size and hominid speech. Retrieved January 12, 2018 .
- ^ Philip Lieberman: Toward an Evolutionary Biology of Language . Harvard University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-674-02184-3 .
- ↑ Johanna Nichols: The origin and dispersal of languages: Linguistic evidence . In: Nina Jablonski and Leslie C. Aiello, eds. (Ed.): The Origin and Diversification of Language (= Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences . No. 24. ). California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco 1998, p. 127-70 .
- ^ C. Perreault & S. Mathew: Dating the origin of language using phonemic diversity . In: PLoS ONE . tape 4 , no. 7 , 2012, doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0035289 , PMC 3338724 (free full text).
- ^ Atkinson, Quentin: Phonemic Diversity Supports a Serial Founder Effect Model of Language Expansion from Africa . In: Science Magazine . No. 332 , 2011, pp. 346-349 .
- ↑ Keith Hunley, Claire Bowern, and Meghan Healy: Rejection of a serial founder effects model of genetic and linguistic coevolution. Proceedings of the Royal Society B . January 2, 2012.
- ↑ J. Krause et al .: The derived FOXP2 variant of modern humans was shared with Neandertals . In: Current Biology . No. 17/2007 , p. 1908-1912 , PMID 17949978 .
- ^ Philip Lieberman, Edmund S. Crelin: On the Speech of Neanderthal man . In: Linguistic Inquiry . No. 2 , p. 203-222 .
- ↑ Louis-Jean Boë, Jean-Louis Heim, Kiyoshi Honda, Shinji Maeda: The potential Neandertal vowel space was as large as that of modern humans . doi : 10.1006 / jpho.2002.0170 .
- ↑ Christian Lehmann: Language Theory: Evolution of Language (lecture notes)
- ↑ Christian Lehmann: On the methodological bases of genetic language comparison. In: Language Research 41 (2005), pp. 379-404.
- ^ Wilhelm von Humboldt: Writings on language. Edited by Michael Böhler. Supplemented edition, Stuttgart 1995, especially the afterword of the publisher, p. 246 ff.
- ↑ Walter A. Koch: Ecogenesis and Echogenesis: Some Problems for Biosemiotics , in: Thomas A. Sebeok, Jean Umiker-Sebeok (ed.): Biosemiotics - The Semiotic Web 1991. Berlin 1992 pp. 171-211.
- ↑ Anke Möller: The phylogeny of language and its echoes. Diss. Ruhr University Bochum 2001 Online (PDF)