Lecture_1_introduction - Lecture 1 Introduction What is...

Lecture 1- Introduction
What is language?
The origins of language &
Major areas of language study

When we study human language, we are approaching what some might call the "human essence" , the
distinctive qualities of the mind that are, so far as we know, unique to man.
Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind (1972)
• the possession and the use of language distinguish humans from other
animals.
•
understanding the nature of language is one of the best means of
understanding our humanity.
•
nevertheless, an investigation into natural language is one of the most
intricate and difficult research enterprises. Studying the essence of human
language is by definition a cross/inter-disciplinary analysis. Nowadays
linguists, neuroscientists, biologists, sociologists, psychologists,
anthropologists, speech-language pathologists collaborate in order to find
out more about the nature of human language
•
there are several possibilities to go into studying language; two of them will
be discussed in this course:
•
A). analyzing theories on the origins of language
• B). analyzing the structure of language

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speculative approaches; no one knows when human language actually
arose and who was the first to speak
language
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immense difficulties: although anthropologists believe that the
human species has existed for as long as five or six million years,
the earliest records date from around 4000 B.C.E. (the writings of
the Sumerians).
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we suspect that some type of spoken language developed between
100,000 and 50,000 years ago, but we do not have direct evidence
relating to this.
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several hypotheses have been proposed ( The Divine Source , The
Natural Sound Source Theory, The Physical Adaptation Source,
The Genetic Source ); also all mythologies and religions contain
theories, stories, explanations about (human) language origin.
THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE

I. The Divine Source
• in all the major religions a god is responsible for giving language to humans
•
in the biblical tradition, God created Adam and “whatsoever Adam called
every living creature, that was the name thereof”.
•
Egyptians name the creator of language Thoth; for Babylonians it is Nabu
and for the Hindus, Brahma's wife, Sarasvati
•
language is ascribed a special importance
•
religions of the world also maintain that the same language was originally
spoken around the world (the Monogenetic Theory ) : the Tower of Babel
story in the book of Genesis (the Bible), the legends of the Toltecs (in
Mexico)
•
what was the first language spoken?
•
several experiments have reportedly been performed in order to answer this
question.

The “original” language
•
the basic idea underlying these experiments is to examine human
infants growing without hearing any language around them
•
the hypothesis was that these infants would spontaneously begin
using the original God-given language
•
one famous experiment trying to test this hypothesis:
- the Greek historian Herodotus (5
th
century B.C.E.) mentions that the
Egyptian Pharaoh Psammetichus (664-610 B. C. E.) has conceived
such an experiment
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