I can see how different grunts could come to mean 鈥渂ear鈥�, 鈥渄eer鈥� or 鈥渞un鈥�. But how do grammatically complex languages get their cases and declensions? (continued)
Guy Cox
Sydney, Australia
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I am a biologist, not a linguist, but I have to think that the first step was to develop singular and plural. Knowing whether there is one wolf or a pack attacking is obviously useful, as is knowing whether there is one apple or many on a tree. The next step is the genitive possessive: that is Alice鈥檚 melon, that is Bob鈥檚 mango. To go further requires verbs, and therefore some way to differentiate subject and object. It isn鈥檛 much use if we can鈥檛 distinguish between 鈥淎lice hit Bob鈥� and 鈥淏ob hit Alice鈥�. So, to me, these seem like the basics from which everything evolved.
Susan Valdar
Westerham, Kent, UK
Language is so integral to the human experience that people often believe it is simple. Languages live in their speakers鈥� minds and are transmitted orally from parent to infant.
The building blocks of languages are phonemes, discrete sounds that speakers agree on. Despite humans all possessing the same vocal apparatus, phonemes can vary wildly between languages, even fairly closely related ones.
We organise phonemes into words and words into sentences, producing a whole new level of sophistication and a new problem: how to structure a sentence.
Modern humans have existed for 250,000 to 350,000 years 鈥� plenty of time for languages to evolve and change dramatically
English uses a subject-verb-object structure: 鈥渢he dog bites the man鈥� is fundamentally different from 鈥渢he man bites the dog鈥�, because modern English has lost most of its declension and case word endings (inflections) and uses word order instead.
Latin uses inflections to indicate words鈥� grammatical functions, e.g. canis hominem mordet (dog bites man) versus homo canem mordet (man bites dog).
This gives Latin a relaxed word order 鈥� hominem canis mordet and mordet hominem canis both mean 鈥渢he dog bites the man鈥�. Modern Russian does the same thing. So, word order and inflections are two sides of the same coin.
No one knows where inflections came from in the first place, but languages change subtly over time as each new baby recreates its native language in its own mind, more or less faithfully. One idea holds that inflections started as concatenations of words that slowly merged together, e.g. ama ego becomes amo.
Modern humans evolved between 250,000 and 350,000 years ago, or 10,000 to 14,000 generations of infants. This gives plenty of time for languages to evolve and change dramatically. After all, a mere 40 generations ago, people who lived in England spoke Old English, which is a highly inflected language.
But all this is just scratching the surface of language, that wonder of the human mind. It would take far more space than this to touch on the many weird and wonderful linguistic elements we humans have dreamed up and considered vitally important for effective verbal communication since it all began. A discussion of agency in ergative-absolutive alignments, anyone?
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