LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
Author : Aden Irmat
UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta
Bahasa dan Sastra Inggris
Preface
Language plays an
important role in our lives. Perhaps
because of a rule, we rarely notice, and
more consider as common as
breathing or walking. Language has influences
outstanding, and included of what distinguishes humans from animals.
(Leonard,
1995)
However, there are certain
circumstances in which people are educated traditionally
discuss issues of language. Sometimes they are debating
trivial matters such as saying "it is
I" or "it's
me". Their conversation follow
a rigid pattern of
things like that.
Recently at about the 18th-century
language studied scientifically,
with closely monitored and thorough. Own linguistic
study of the language only at the beginning stage.
Knowledge they have gained not part of traditional education.
Herodotus,
writing in the fifth century BC (BC), tells us that King Psammetichus in Egypt alienating
two new babies born in a garden, to find out which are the oldest nation in the
world (whatever that means), when they start talking they say to His bekos Phrygian
language means "bread". (Leonard, 1995)
In his dialogue
Cratylus, Plato (472-347
BC) to talk about the origins of words, and
especially about whether
the relationship between objects
and words that are
natural and should be renamed or just the
result of a deal man. The dialogue gives us the
first glimpse into a dispute
that has lasted a
century between the Analogical,
who believed that language is natural and therefore essentially
orderly and logical, and the anomalous,
who deny these
things and showed no structural eraturan language.
(Leonard,
1995)
Ø The
foundation of the
theory
Language is a group of sounds
that can be distinguished from
one another and arranged
in a system defined by the thoughts and feelings (neurological events) can
be communicated from one person
to another. note that this
definition does not include writing. (Hogins &
Robert, 1969 p.70)
Concerning the origin of the first language, there are two main hypotheses, or
beliefs. Neither can be proven or disproved given present knowledge.
1) Belief in divine creation. Many societies throughout history believed that language is the gift of the gods to humans. The most familiar is found in Genesis 2:20, which tells us that Adam gave names to all living creatures. This belief predicates that humans were created from the start with an innate capacity to use language. (by Edward Vajda)
2) Natural evolution hypothesis. At some point in their evolutionary development humans acquired a
more sophisticated brain which made language invention and learning
possible. In other words, at some point in time humans evolved a language
acquisition device, whatever this may be in real physical terms. The
simple vocalizations and gestures inherited from our primate ancestors then
quickly gave way to a creative system of language--perhaps within a single
generation or two. /Mention the hypothesis about rewiring the visual cortex of
the brain into a language area./ According to the natural evolution
hypothesis, as soon as humans developed the biological, or neurological,
capacity for creative language, the cultural development of some specific
system of forms with meanings would have been an inevitable next step. (by
Edward Vajda)
Furthermore Stuart Chase describes how language
can affect human thinking in the book LANGUAGE An
Introductory Reader, by J. Burl Hogins and Robert E. Yarber the following
quotation.
In the current mass of talk about talk, communication about
communication, the emphasis is generally on the talker’s power over his
language, and thus over people who hear his words. Students are coached to
increase their vocabulary, improve their delivery, and so control their
audience. Commentators view with alarm the propaganda victories of Hitler,
McCarthy, the Moscow radio.
The reserve of the process is
seldom mentioned, the power which language exerts over the talker. The talker
(or writer) never feels this power. He is as unconscious of it as of the
circulation of his blood. He assumes that he is in command of his thoughts and of
the words in which there are clothed.
The idea that the structure of
the language we use affects our thought, may even be prior to thought, is
beyond the purview of most of us. The first serious modern student to realize
the power of language over its speakers was probably Benjamin Lee Whorf. He was
a linguist with imagination.
Ø Content
According to the first theory which
states that language is a gift of
the gods to men.It can't
be proven that language is as old as humans, but it is definitely true that
language and human society are inseparable. Wherever humans exist
language exists. Every stone age tribe ever encountered has a language
equal to English, Latin, or Greek in terms of its expressive potential and
grammatical complexity. Technologies may be complex or simple, but
language is always complex. Charles Darwin noted this fact when he stated that
as far as concerns language, "Shakespeare walks with the Macedonian
swineherd, and Plato with the wild savage of Assam." In fact, it sometimes
seems that languages spoken by preindustrial societies are much more complex
grammatically than languages such as English (example: English has about seven
tense forms and three noun genders; Kivunjo, a Bantu language spoken on the
slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, has 14 tenses and about 20 noun classes.) There
are no primitive languages, nor are any known to have existed in the
past—even among the most remote tribes of stone age hunter-gatherers.
Nevertheless, it is impossible to
prove that the first anatomically modern humans possessed creative language. It
is also impossible to disprove the hypothesis that primitive languages might
have existed at some point in the distant past of Homo sapiens development
Furthermore, the second theory
which states that the origin of language is a natural evolution
hypothesis, This hypothesis cannot
be proven either. Archeological evidence unearthed thus far, seems to
indicate that modern humans, Homo sapiens, emerged within the last
150,000 years. By 30,000, BC all other species of humanoids seem to have
been supplanted by Homo sapiens. Could the success of our species
vis-a-vis other hominids be explained by its possession of superior communicative
skills? Speaking people could teach, plan, organize, and convey more
sophisticated information. This would have given them unparalleled
advantage over hominid groups without creative language. Of course, no
one knows whether other species of humanoids--Homo erectus and Homo
neanderthalis -- used creative language. Perhaps they also did. In
any case, Homo sapiens, "the wise human," should perhaps
really be called Homo loquens, "the speaking human" because
language and humans are everywhere found together, whereas wisdom among humans
is much more selectively distributed.
Invention hypotheses. Moving on to our second question, if humans acquired the capacity for
language either by divine gift or by evolution, then exactly how might humans
have devised the first language? There are several hypotheses as to how
language might have been consciously invented by humans based on a more
primitive system of hominid communication. Each hypothesis is predicated
on the idea that the invention of language and its gradual refinement served as
a continuous impetus to additional human mental development. None of the
invention hypotheses I will mention is convincing and most sane linguists agree
that the origin of language is still a mystery. But the inventive, sarcastic
names given these hypotheses by their critics prove that even linguists can at
times be creative.
First, there are four imitation hypotheses that hold that language began
through some sort of human mimicry of naturally occurring sounds or movements:
1) The "ding-dong"
hypothesis. Language began when humans started naming objects,
actions and phenomena after a recognizable sound associated with it in real
life. This hypothesis holds that the first human words were a type of
verbal icon, a sign whose form is an exact image of its meaning: crash
became the word for thunder, boom for explosion. Some words in
language obviously did derive from imitation of natural sounds associated with
some object: Chinook Indian word for heart--tun-tun, Basque word for
knife: ai-ai (literally ouch-ouch). Each of these iconic
words would derive from an index, a sign whose form is naturally
associatied with its meaning in real space and time.
The
problem with this hypothesis is that onomatopoeia (imitation of sound,
auditory iconicity) is a very limited part of the vocabulary of any language;
imitative sounds differ from language to language: Russian: ba-bakh=bang,
bukh= thud. Even if onomotopoeia provided the first dozen or so
words, then where did names for the thousands of naturally noiseless concepts
such as rock, sun, sky or love come from?
2) The "pooh-pooh"
hypothesis holds that the first words came from involuntary exclamations of
dislike, hunger, pain, or pleasure, eventually leading to the expression of
more developed ideas and emotions. In this case the first word would have
been an involuntary ha-ha-ha, wa-wa-wa These began to be used to
name the actions which caused these sounds.
The
problem with this hypothesis is that, once again, emotional exclamations are a
very small part of any language. They are also highly language specific.
For instance, to express sudden pain or discomfort: Eng. ouch; Russ. oi.;
Cherokee eee. Thus, exclamations are more like other words in that
they reflect the phonology of each separate language. Unlike sneezes,
tears, hiccoughs or laughter, which are innate human responses to stimuli, the
form of exclamations depends on language rather than precedes language.
Also, exclamations, like most other words are symbols, showing at least a
partially arbitrary relationship between sound and meaning.
3) The "bow-wow"
hypothesis (the most famous and therefore the most ridiculed hypothesis)
holds that vocabulary developed from imitations of animal noises, such as: Moo,
bark, hiss, meow, quack-quack. In other words, the first human words
were a type of index, a sign whose form is naturally connected with its meaning
in time and space.
But,
once again, onomotopoeia is a limited part of the vocabulary of any
language. The linguistic renditions of animal sounds differ considerably from
language to language, although each species of animal everywhere makes
essentially the same sound:
4) A
somewhat different hypothesis is the "ta-ta" hypothesis.
Charles Darwin hypothesized (though he himself was sceptical about his own
hypothesis) that speech may have developed as a sort of mouth pantomime: the
organs of speech were used to imitate the gestures of the hand. In other
words, language developed from gestures that began to be imitated by the organs
of speech--the first words were lip icons of hand gestures.
It
is very possible that human language, which today is mostly verbal, had its
origin in some system of gestures; other primates rely on gesture as an
integral part of communication, so it is plausible that human communication
began in the same way. Human gestures, however, just like onomotopoeic
words, differ from culture to culture. Cf. English crossing the finger
for good luck vs. Russian "fig" gesture; nodding for yes vs. for no
in Turkish and Bulgarian; knocking on wood vs. spitting over the left shoulder
three times
.
A
second set of hypotheses on language origin holds that language began as a
response to some acute necessity in the community. Here are several necessity
hypotheses of the invention of language:
1) Warning hypothesis. Language may have evolved from warning signals such as those
used by animals. Perhaps language started with a warning to others, such
as Look out, Run, or Help to alert members of the tribe
when some lumbering beast was approaching. Other first words could have
been hunting instructions or instructions connected with other work. In other
words, the first words were indexes used during everyday activities and
situations.
2) The "yo-he-ho"
hypothesis. Language developed on the basis of human cooperative
efforts.
3) A
more colorful idea is the lying hypothesis. E. H. Sturtevant
argued that, since all real intentions or emotions get involuntarily expressed
by gesture, look or sound, voluntary communication must have been invented for
the purpose of lying or deceiving. He proposed that the need to deceive
and lie--to use language in contrast to reality for selfish ends-- was the
social prompting that got language started.
There are no scientific tests to evaluate between these competing
hypotheses. All of them seem equally far-fetched. This is why in
the late 19th century the Royal Linguistic Society in London actually
banned discussion and debate on the origin of language out of fear that none of
the arguments had any scientific basis at all and that time would be needlessly
wasted on this fruitless enquiry. Attempts to explain the origin of
language are usually taken no more seriously today either. Recently,
commedian Lily Tomlin came up with her own language invention hypothesis: she
claimed that men invented language so that they could complain.
Each of the imitation hypotheses might explain how certain isolated words of
language developed. Very few words in human language are verbal icons.
Most are symbols, And each of the necessity hypotheses might explain how
involuntary sounds made out of need in certain contexts might have come to be
manipulated as words for an object even out of context. However, the
extended use of natural indexes still leaves unexplained the development
of grammar--the patterns in language which have definite structural functions
but no specific meaning. The creative, generative aspect of human language that
we call grammar is language's most unique feature. Where did grammar come
from? There is nothing like grammar (patterns with definite functions yet no
set meaning) in animal systems of communication.
But these are isolated
instances. How language developed a complex grammar remains a complete
mystery. This means that how language developed is equally a
mystery. We simply don't know how language may have actually evolved from
simple animal systems of sounds and gestures.
Ø
Conclusion
Languages do
not differ in terms of their creative potential but rather in terms of the
level upon which particular distinctions are realized in each particular
language. What is expressed concisely in one language requires a phrase in
another language. (Examples of aspect and evidentiality; also words like
Swahili “mumagamagama” "a person who habitually loses things" and
Russian “zajchik” "the rainbow reflection from glass." Linguists
study how each particular language structures the expression of concepts. Such
cross-language comparisons fall under a branch of linguistics called language
typology.
If the structural diversity of human languages is superficial, then why
in language typology important? Why do so many linguists spend so much time
studying language diversity?
1)
First, to try to trace the original mother tongue (or mother tongues).
Linguists who compare modern languages try to reconstruct ancient languages are
called comparative linguists.
2)
Second, because languages change more slowly than the environment in which
they are spoken, languages contain all sorts of indications of bygone culture.
For historians and anthropologists, language provides a special window into the
past: ursus/bear/ medved; time/tide/vremya. Study a
language--any language--and you will learn much about the history of the people
who speak that language. You will also be taking a crucial step toward
understanding the contemporary culture of the speakers. Linguists who
study language from this cultural standpoint are called anthropological
linguists.
Remember that--contrary to the hypothesis of linguistic determinism--studying a
language will not help you predict the future for the people who speak that
language. The future will happen with little regard for language structure, and
language will be shaped by that future, not the other way around.
Ø References
Hogins, J. & Robert E. (1969).
Language. An Introductory Reader.
Leonard, Bloomfield. (1955). Language
Bahasa. Jakarta, Gramedia Pustaka Utama.
Ø
Appendices
1. Spoken Discourse
2. Written Discourse
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