How doth human language evolve?

Question

Wired Magazine recently asked some "Big Questions" in the cover story. This is one of them.

Details:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/bigquestions.html?pg=3#doth

Answer 1

Language change and evolution

Dr. C. George Boeree

Languages change, usually very slowly, sometimes very rapidly.  There are many reasons a language might change.  One obvious reason is interaction with other languages.  If one tribe of people trades with another, they will pick up specific words and phrases for trade objects, for example.  If a small but powerful tribe subdues a larger one, we find that the language of the elite often shows the influence of constant interaction with the majority, while the majority language imports vocabulary and speaking styles from the elite language.  Often one or the other simply disappears, leaving behind a profoundly altered "victor."  English is, in fact, an example of this:  The Norman French of the conquerers has long disappeared, but not before changing Anglo-Saxon into, well, a highly Frenchified English.

If a people are isolated on islands or mountain valleys, language can change very slowly indeed.  But it still changes.  For example, in the highlands of Papua New Guinea are many dozens of languages, each quite different from its neighbors.  But they are apparently the results of long-term isolation rather than mutual influence.  The same has happened in the Caucasus Mountains between Russia and Turkey and Iran.

The slower mechanisms of change seem to include the "battle" between simpicity and expressiveness.  We want our languages to communicate as much information as possible, and yet do so economically.  We want our languages rich yet concise.  How many prepositions or cases do we need?  How many are too much?  How many verb forms do we need, and how many strain the brain?  How many suffixes, prefixes, and irregularities can children take before they begin to simplify?  What combinations of sounds are easily pronounced and easily understood?  And so on.

One surprising aspect of language change is the influence of fashion and even of individual idiosyncracies.  Although the story is apocryphal, some say that the th pronunciation of Castillian Spanish was due to courtiers imitating the lisp of a young king!  In my own family, we refer to Christmas as Wikis because of one of children's inability to say Christmas.  Imagine if we were a part of a tightly knit tribal village:  If others thought it was as cute as we did, the word Christmas could morph into Wikis in one generation!  That has probably happened millions of times in human history.

Let's look at a real example of a very influential people:

Around 5000 bc, between the Danube river valley and the steppes of what is now the Ukraine, there lived small tribes of primitive farmers who all spoke the same language.  They cultivated rye and oats, and kept pigs, geese, and cows.  They would soon become the first people on earth to tame the local wild horses -- an accomplishment that would make them a significant part of history for thousands of years to come.  And their proximity to the culturally more advance people of Asia Minor -- what is now Turkey -- would allow them to learn the metal working invented there, beginning with copper.

Beginning around 3000 bc, these people would spread into Europe and the Russian steppes.  Around 1500 bc, they would continue into Persia and India, even as far as western China.  Later still (in the last 500 years), they would spread to the Americas, Australia, the Pacific islands, and parts of Africa.  They would take their language with them, although it would gradually change into hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages, including English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Persian, Hindi and many more.

By examining the oldest examples of modern and classical languages such as Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, linguists have been able to reconstruct an educated guess as to what the language of these ancient people was like.  They call the language Proto-Indo-European.  The work that went into reconstructing Proto-Indo-European has led to efforts to reconstruct other prehistorical language ancestors as well.

Answer 2

IT DOTH'NT EVOLVE MUCH ON HERE.

That thurprithed you didn't it!

Answer 3

I think there is strong evidence that language is hard-wired into our brains. I agree with Pinker that language ability was one of the major leaps forward in our evolution, and I imagine a lack of it is what held Neanderthals back, for instance. (There is some evidence to suggest that Neanderthals, although they had some sophistication, could not physically speak.) Every human is born with the capacity for language - any language. (Even Basque!) But eventually our native language is the one that gets set in stone.

I think some of the other evidence is that apes show a capacity to learn some words and to communicate, but cannot pass on what they've learned to new generations. And also, children tend to make the same grammatical errors in their development, meaning it's the process of learning the language and not random cutesy baby talk.

Answer 4

Actually, a very well developed hyoid bone was found from a Neanderthal.  This indicates it probably spoke pretty well in my opinion.  There are some who feel that we didn't start speaking until 50 thousand years ago.  To me this is nonsense.  We started developing language a million years ago in my opinion.  The common ancestor for humans and Neanderthals goes back maybe 400,000 years so it was at least that long IMO.