There has been some big news in paleolinguistics (a great work to impress your buddies with…). This is the study of the beginnings of languages, where they came from, and when. Among the many aspects of why this news is interesting is the method…as well as what the results may imply.
As with last week’s post about some of the new information about how we use language, and how our minds fundamentally process our thoughts in a language has come some pretty compelling reasons to consider that the Chomskian ideas that there are innate hardwired ‘language mechanisms’ in the brain (i.e. nature over nurture) may be far off course.
By using mathematical and statistical analysis of language structures, grammar, morphemes, and phonemes, it is becoming apparent that many of the ways in which we create language are unique, and far less connected to other languages than we may have thought.
With today’s news, there are some similarly interesting results from examining how phonemes have permutated across the globe. It seems that some of the oldest languages have many, and from a geographical standpoint (and a timeline) one can construct how languages relate, by a continually diminishing amount of the sounds (phonemes) used in a language.
One of the most surprising possibilities in this study is that it implies that languages had to be in some practical form before man started migrating. The amazing thing about this was the surprising assertion that many linguistics scientists had supposed that language is a relatively new product of culture (i.e. 10,000BCE!!). This new information forces this (amazing to…at least me) timeline to adjust to at least 24,000BCE (if not more).
Africa the Birthplace of Human Language, Analysis Suggests
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110415165500.htm
An analysis of languages from around the world suggests that, like our genes, human speech originated — just once — in sub-Saharan Africa. Atkinson studied the phonemes, or the perceptually distinct units of sound that differentiate words, used in 504 human languages today and found that the number of phonemes is highest in Africa and decreases with increasing distance from Africa.
The fewest phonemes are found in South America and on tropical islands in the Pacific Ocean. This pattern fits a "serial founder effect" model in which small populations on the edge of an expansion progressively lose diversity. Dr. Atkinson notes that this pattern of phoneme usage around the world mirrors the pattern of human genetic diversity, which also declined as humans expanded their range from Africa to colonize other regions.
Where and when did language begin? A remarkable new study may have the answer
http://hotword.dictionary.com/origin/?t=
While most studies focus on words in order to trace the birth of modern language, Atkinson zeroed in on phonemes (the basic distinctive units of sound by which words are represented) of over 500 languages around the world. By applying mathematical methods to linguistics, Atkinson discovered that the further humans traveled from Africa, the fewer number of phonemes survived.
To put this into perspective: Many African click languages or “click consonants,” found in all three Khoisan language families, have more than 100 phonemes while the languages of Oceania, the spoken language of the Pacific Islands, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand – the latter being the furthest migration route out of Africa, have only 13. The Modern English language has approximately 45 phonemes.
Atkinson’s findings challenge a long-held belief by linguistics that the origin of spoken language only dates back some 10,000 years. Atkinson hints that if African populations began their dispersal from Africa to Asia and Europe 60,000 years ago, perhaps the spoken language had to exist around that time and, as Atkinson hints at, may have been the catalyst for their dispersion and subsequent migration.
