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Origin Of SpeechSpeech Is A Learned Ability - Not A GiftThis is my theory of how speech began; notice I did not say language. The story of the Tower of Babel tries to explain the beginning of languages but the story doesn’t stand up to scrutiny or archeological evidence. The story does not attempt to describe when and where speech began only that there was once a worldwide common language, which also doesn’t prove out. I believe what appears to be a "hard-wired" ability is really an ability developed and evolved over eons. If we use the example of a newborn infant learning to speak, I believe we are close to the natural progression of humans learning to speak. The only difference is the time frame. By studying an infant’s effort and time to learn to form sounds that have a recognizable meaning to others, we are probably close to how speech came in to being. If we multiply the number of days an infant takes before learning to speak recognizable words by 1,000 to 10,000 years, we are probably close to the correct time frame. Humans probably learned to make sounds by imitating the animals. This sound making ability was then passed on from parent to child by mothers making soothing sounds to their babies. The babies learned to repeat those sounds, which we now call noise. This is the first stage of baby talk that most parents know so well. As each new generation of babies learned to babble better, certain sounds developed into specific meanings to those around them. At first the only person that made sense of these noises were the baby’s mother. Just as mothers’ today can distinguish between a sound of happiness or sadness, hunger or irritation, and play or nonsense. Over hundreds and perhaps thousands of years those infants that could best communicate their needs survived. The ability to communicate through recognizable noise became a wired function in the brain. So what today appears to be a "hard-wired’ ability or a language organ is really only the survival of the noisiest. Children began communicating with each other through these noises while the adults probably wondered why the kids were so odd - again just like today. We generally try to see things developing in gradual steps and from what I can remember what usually happens is that one person or one group makes a real evolutionary breakthrough and suddenly that same breakthrough begins showing up worldwide without any known contact between the groups. What this means is that what appears to be a huge step for one group may have been small incremental steps for the originating group - at least in the speech development area. Language did not require a being from outer space or a mythical being to re-engineer the brain for speech - only time and natural selection is needed. Language TheoriesHere are the latest theories when I checked some years ago:
Also, as I understand it animals haven't learned to speak human languages because their jaw, tongue and throat are not capable of the movements necessary to form recognizable words. However, animals do communicate with each other of the same species. Some even have lookouts to warn of predators and so forth. Humans had to learn to speak and how to make the complex sounds that represent speech. Humans had to evolve not only mentally but also physically before they could speak well. Maybe they just muttered before that? Author: Don Miller
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