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The origin of language, its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries.Scholars wishing to study the origins of language draw inferences from evidence such as the fossil record, archaeological evidence, contemporary language diversity, studies of language acquisition, and comparisons between human language and systems of animal ...
Philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. [1] Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning , intentionality , reference , the constitution of sentences, concepts, learning , and thought .
In historical or evolutionary linguistics, monogenesis and polygenesis are two different hypotheses about the phylogenetic origin of human languages. According to monogenesis, human language arose only once in a single community, and all current languages come from the first original tongue. On the other hand, according to polygenesis, human ...
Novalis wrote about the importance of poetic language and the need for language to capture the depths of the soul. However, the most influential figure in linguistic romanticism was Wilhelm von Humboldt, who argued that all languages have their own logic, or 'inner form,' rather than all languages being based on universal logic. [16]
Logic was Leibniz's earliest philosophic interest, going back to his teens. René Descartes had suggested that the lexicon of a universal language should consist of primitive elements. [ 4 ] The systematic combination of these elements, according to syntactical rules, would generate the infinite combinations of computational structures required ...
Approaches to language as part of cultural evolution can be roughly divided into two main groups: genetic determinism which argues that languages stem from the human genome; and social Darwinism, as envisioned by August Schleicher and Max Müller, which applies principles and methods of evolutionary biology to linguistics.
Formal semantics is the study of grammatical meaning in natural languages using formal concepts from logic, mathematics and theoretical computer science. It is an interdisciplinary field, sometimes regarded as a subfield of both linguistics and philosophy of language .
Human languages possess the properties of productivity and displacement, which enable the creation of an infinite number of sentences, and the ability to refer to objects, events, and ideas that are not immediately present in the discourse. The use of human language relies on social convention and is acquired through learning.