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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 ...
Humans' first recourse is to encode their thoughts in sound – a method which depends on sophisticated capacities for controlling the lips, tongue and other components of the vocal apparatus. The speech organs evolved in the first instance not for speech but for more basic bodily functions such as feeding and breathing.
The first serious scientific attempt to establish the reality of monogenesis was that of Alfredo Trombetti, in his book L'unità d'origine del linguaggio, published in 1905. [4]: 263 [5] Trombetti estimated that the common ancestor of existing languages had been spoken between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. [6]: 315
Although the first known text by native speakers dates to 1885, the first record of the language is a list of words recorded in 1793 by Alexander MacKenzie. 1885: Motu: grammar by W.G. Lawes: 1886: Guugu Yimidhirr: notes by Johann Flierl, Wilhelm Poland and Georg Schwarz, culminating in Walter Roth's The Structure of the Koko Yimidir Language ...
Human communication was initiated with the origin of speech approximately 100,000 BCE. [1] Symbols were developed about 30,000 years ago. The imperfection of speech allowed easier dissemination of ideas and eventually resulted in the creation of new forms of communication, improving both the range at which people could communicate and the longevity of the information.
The highly diverse Nilo-Saharan languages, first proposed as a family by Joseph Greenberg in 1963 might have originated in the Upper Paleolithic. [1] Given the presence of a tripartite number system in modern Nilo-Saharan languages, linguist N.A. Blench inferred a noun classifier in the proto-language, distributed based on water courses in the Sahara during the "wet period" of the Neolithic ...
An early record of a study of this kind can be found in Herodotus's Histories.According to Herodotus (c. 485–425 BC), the Egyptian pharaoh Psamtik I (664–610 BC) carried out such a study, and concluded the Phrygians must antedate the Egyptians since the child had first spoken something similar to the Phrygian word bekos, meaning "bread". [2]
The Adamic language, according to Jewish tradition (as recorded in the midrashim) and some Christians, is the language spoken by Adam (and possibly Eve) in the Garden of Eden. It is variously interpreted as either the language used by God to address Adam (the divine language ), or the language invented by Adam with which he named all things ...