A Year in Language, Day 283: The Origin of Language
Physicists have some shockingly good models for how all of existence may have come to be, or at least our particular universe. Biologists have an increasingly good grasp on the mechanisms by which inorganic materials may spontaneously begin to form organic constructs that lead to life. Anthropologists continue to draw increasingly fine lines of distinction between homo sapiens and other species, or even between "behaviorally modern" homo sapiens an non-modern homo sapiens. Compared to them linguists may as well be shooting in the dark to produce firm answers to any aspect of "what is the origin of language"
The oldest attested languages, Ancient Egyptian and Sumerian, go back only as much as 5-6,000 years. Reconstructed languages like Proto-Indo-European, which are not directly attested but who's structure can be conjectured with reasonably accuracy, push that boundary back at most an extra 1-2,000 years. Behaviorally modern homo sapiens, meaning humans who's bodies and minds had evolved to match the modern species, originate around 200,000 years ago. That's a 190,000 year window we may never be able to look into, and its not even a sure thing that language doesn't predate our species (though it's a safe bet). Obviously I wont be answering that here. Instead I want to give an overview into the intense thought, clever theories, and even more clever barriers, that surround this concept.
Today the question of language origin is closely tied to a much more prominent debate, that of whether language is innate, hard wired in our brains, or learned socially, much the way writing, social skills, and all technology is. If it is a social skill, the answer lies in the evolution of human societies. If it is innate, it lies in our genes. There is also the question of continuity. Most, myself included, consider language to have evolved gradually. Some, most notably Noam Chomsky, believe that it was a sudden change, and proverbial switch being flipped in the brain of early man, that transformed him from a mute ape into a speaking human. To find evidence one way or the other we often look to our close relatives, chimps and bonobos. Both of these animals fall well short of language, but can memorize an incredible number of signs, and, more impressively, the ability to be innovative and use metaphor with those signs. They can do this despite the fact that these skills are rarely, if ever, exhibited without intense human coaching. Based on this some theorize that the cognitive building blocks of language all developed as side effects of other behaviors relevant to survival, that once in place required a final push to develop into the linguistic faculty.
Another way to look at the origin of language is trying to theorize why it developed at all. It's easy to see the benefit of language now in 2018, but it would hardly be so obvious to an early hominid. Consider that humans, almost uniquely, can make calls to purposely deceive. When a dog barks or a raven caws they have intent in mind, but they lack much capacity for deception, at least through auditory channels. Language, from a standpoint of veracity, is a liability. Linguists of the late 19th century like to speculate on what type of sounds coalesced into the first words. These theories had ridiculous sounding names, including the "bow wow" theory, the "ding dong" theory, the "yo he ho" theory, and even the "pooh pooh" theory (these claimed words originated from mimicked animal sounds, natural resonance, rhythmic working sounds, and emotional exclamations respectively). More modern theories often try to combat the potential for language as a tool of deception, a threat to the social structure primitive humans relied on, and place it in a social context. Many theories postulate it came from the cooing of mother to child and vice versa.Edit
