Human speech is one of the most fascinating realms of study on earth, and the diversity of languages is overwhelming. In Human Language Evolution, author Dr. Owi Nandi explores the results of his long-term study delving into the origin of spoken language and his search for common patterns among all language families.

In an effort to compare and connect recent developments in linguistics and in the study of human evolution via genomic sequencing, Nandi's study shows how various languages use similar sounds for words with similar meanings. It also demonstrates that these similarities may have evolved from human facial expressions caused by emotions like fear, alertness, joy, pleasure, or pain. Covering thirty-four world languages, Nandi discusses the psychological background of an array of words-such as counting, evil, hurting, scratching, coughing, thinking, father-and compares those among other languages.

Seasoned with notes on psychological backgrounds, Human Language Evolution provides rich insight into the whys of universally conserved linguistic patterns in light of the 170,000-year history of modern mankind, transcending the reaches of traditional etymology.

HUMAN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

As Coframed by Behavioural and Psychological UniversalismBy Owi Nandi

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 Owi Nandi
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-5782-5

Contents

Preface..................................................................................................................ixAcknowledgments..........................................................................................................xi1. An Introduction to the Evolution of Prehuman and Human Communication and Linguistics..................................12. Material and Methods..................................................................................................92.1. A short methodological history of the project.......................................................................92.2. Phonetic premises...................................................................................................102.3. Methods applied for the semantic fields in this work................................................................112.4. Linguistic scope....................................................................................................132.5. Arrangement of results and premises used............................................................................143. Language Phyla of the World...........................................................................................194. Overview of Language Phyla............................................................................................214.1. The African languages...............................................................................................214.2. Boreo-Indo-Pacific macrophylum (could also be termed Non-African macrophylum).......................................274.3. Eurasiatic-Amerindian superphylum...................................................................................274.4. Austro-Dené superphylum........................................................................................304.5. Palaeo-Sundic.......................................................................................................394.6. Sahaulic languages..................................................................................................425. Results of the Present Study for Different Semantic Fields and Potential Psychological Background.....................455.1. Semantic fields for the consonant pair b and p......................................................................455.2. Semantic fields for the consonant pair d and t......................................................................525.3. Semantic fields for the velar stop k and the uvular stop q..........................................................605.4. Semantic fields for the lateral approximant l.......................................................................1045.5. Semantic fields for the alveolar nasal n............................................................................1245.6. Semantic fields for the bilabial nasal m............................................................................1295.7. Semantic fields for the rhotic, often alveolar thrill r.............................................................1445.8. Semantic fields for the sibilant s..................................................................................1485.9. Semantic fields starting with u, v, or w............................................................................1585.10. Semantic fields with diphthongs as potential main information bearing phonetic structure...........................1676. Conclusions...........................................................................................................171Glossary.................................................................................................................173Appendix.................................................................................................................175Epilogue: Autobiographical Background of This Work.......................................................................195Bibliography.............................................................................................................203Index....................................................................................................................215

Chapter One

An Introduction to the Evolution of Prehuman and Human Communication and Linguistics

The evolution of communication occurs on a continuum beyond the origin of humans into apes, primates, mammals, and vertebrates. During most of the twentieth century, animals have been viewed as machinelike by mainstream biologists, but in more recent times, biologists have been amazed by preintelligent and intelligent behaviour across a wide evolutionary field of animals, including some octopuses (Hamilton, 1997), cichlid fishes (Bshary et al., 2002), birds like parrots and crows (for both, see Emery, 2006), rodents like degus (Tokimoto and Okanoya, 2004), lemurs (Santos et al., 2005), monkeys and especially apes (Tomasello and Call, 1997), dogs, elephants, dolphins, and whales, to list only some of them. The behavioural relatedness of body reactions in mammals was already outlined by Charles Darwin (1872) in one of his most important, though less known, books, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. A certain level of cognitive ability in a species is a prerequisite for the origin of a language.

Thus, together with behavioural reactions of an individual animal there have to be partner individuals who are able to read and interpret such a reaction. Such an interpretation of a behavioural reaction can be instinctive or further evolve into an intelligent interpretation. Some animals go beyond these abilities with their cognitive capabilities by managing to learn more abstract audiovisual signs. Thus dogs have been shown to be able to learn more than two hundred human words (Kaminski et al., 2004). Training methods for Grey parrots have been devised that enable the bird to use its capability to reproduce the sounds of human speech in order to acquire a cognitive vocabulary consisting of vocal labels for several exemplars, actions, numerical quantities, and characteristics like colour and shape, and the functional use of the word no (Pepperberg, 1983). Dolphins, chimpanzees, and bonobos have been compellingly shown to master even more difficult tasks in trials testing for understanding of human verbal or nonverbal communication. All these examples clearly show that selected animals have highly evolved cognitive skills that could have further evolved towards a traditionalized language during the evolution of hominids.

Our understanding of the evolution of modern Homo sapiens has received a boost from the sequencing and comparing of human genetic information (see, e.g., Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994, Cavalli-Sforza and Seielstad, 1997, and Underhill and Kivisild, 2007). Information on maternal and paternal descendance can be obtained by sequencing mitochondrial or Y-chromosome genes, respectively.

According to these molecular studies, the cradle land of the modern Homo sapiens is in Africa. A mitochondrial Eve of all humans (Templeton and Sing, 1993, and Horai et al., 1995) should have lived approximately 170,000 years before present in the region of Kenia, Tanzania, or Ethiopia. In 2003, the bones of the earliest modern human, Homo sapiens, were unearthed in Ethiopia, about 225 kilometres northeast of the capital, Addis Ababa (Clarke et al., 2003, and Blench and Dendo, 2004). They were dated with radioisotopes at an age of 154,000–160,000 years. The "out of Africa" hypothesis, based on molecular phylogenetic, osteometric, and archaeological material, is now generally accepted by the majority of anthropologists (see, e.g., Ke et al., 2001).

The deepest split in the radiation history of all extant human populations is between Khoisan peoples from southwest Africa plus some other old sub-Saharan African lineages and remaining mankind (Behar et al., 2008). Thus, the common root node of Khoisanid and non-Khoisanid African language speakers could show us many traits of the original human language, assuming that the human capacity for speech is at least as old as the origin of modern Homo sapiens.

Reaching even further back, simple linguistic sounds may have evolved from human facial expressions. Facial expressions as reactions to emotions are found in apes (Pongidae) and humans (Hominidae), especially in the region of the mouth. They seem to be a first step towards very few linguistic sounds. Thus, these mimic expressions, including those of the lips, the mouth, and the tongue, could have been standardized into simple sounds. If this evolution from facial expressions to linguistic sounds covers the whole process of language origin, a similar process could also have arisen several times independently in mankind. For example, the expression for fear as a tense opening of the rounded lips that then widen and expose the frontal teeth, transitioning to the well-known "Furchtgrinsen" (an established reaction to fear in mammalian ethology that in humans is accompanied by the uaa sound) may give rise to a primitive word like wuah as a flexible particle signifying fear. In fact, as I show in the current work, languages of a diverse array of large language phyla possess words that seem to be derived from this uaa sound. In a similar way, a couple of very primitive linguistic expressions could have arisen for the most important words in primitive communication.

A still more highly evolved communication strategy, derived after the first words representing traditionalized facial reactions to emotions had already formed a protolanguage, might have been the inclusion of onomatopoeic words (i.e., words that imitate the sound of an action) or also words formed when the speech tract imitates an action. These latter words might constitute the bulk of the linguistic concept I tried to infer from my language comparisons. For instance, a significant portion of all languages studied (spread over many language phyla again) use the posterior stop-consonants k or q for words linked to hurting or hardness. These consonants seem to imitate best the hurting and hardness of some structures or actions, because k and q themselves are the consonants that are the hardest and most hurting (more detailed information on the psychology and semantistics for many consonants will be given in further chapters of this book).

Supporting the views of some earlier linguists and archaeologists, I hypothesize here that the origin of spoken human language reaches back at least to the origin of modern Homo sapiens sapiens. This hypothesis is underlined by the fact that all modern human populations show this key innovation, contrary to our nearest surviving relatives (the Pongidae).

There is a direct descendance line from the early populations of modern man to modern Khoisanids (Behar et al., 2008). Moreover, although the Macrokhoisan language phylum, maybe along with the Amerindian phylum, shows the least number of common characters with other language families and languages of my study array, a sufficiently high number of congruencies remain to allow the hypothesis that all human languages evolved from one common protolanguage. This protolanguage might have been very simple and have contained at least the words in the semantic fields specified in this study, which all might point to the universal first pulmonary consonants of a word. These protowords might have been very short (monosyllabic), as is still the majority of words in the Makrokhoisan language family (see, e.g., the dictionary compiled by Traill [1994], probably the most extensive study done for any Khoisan language to date). First human protolanguages may well have involved one-word sentences of these mentioned short words (as also hypothesized by Haarman, 2006). Such one-word sentences are still close to a communication mediated by facial reactions, as seen in some mammalian ancestors of man. This stage of language would still have been asyntactic (Carstairs-McCarthy, 1999).

Further evidence that the origin of languages reaches back to at least the emergence of Homo sapiens is delivered by my study of semantic fields. The largest number of coherent semantic fields is contained in words starting with a k-like first consonant and, here in the superfield, linked to hurting, sharpness, and hardness. These words are closely allied with the first tools found in the archaeological record of humans, which are sharpened stone tools. Likewise I found that these semantic fields for hurting, sharpness, and hardness are the ones with the most universal representation among the thirty-four language families and languages studied. Thus only four languages had no matches with a k-like starting consonant in the semantic field of "hurting"; seven languages had no matches in the semantic field of "scratching"; all thirty-four language families and languages had matches in the important semantic field of "cutting"; all thirty-four had matches for the field of pointed structures; and again all thirty-four had matches for the field of "hardness."

The hypothesis that the origin of human language reaches back to the emergence of Homo sapiens is further corroborated by the fact that both Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo sapiens neanderthalensis share the possession of a hyoid bone, the so-called language bone. This small, u-shaped bone is located between the root of the tongue and the larynx and is connected with the muscles of the jaws, the larynx, and the tongue. A hyoid bone belonging to a skeleton of a Neanderthal was found in Kebara (Israel) in 1989 and is practically identical in size and form to the language bone of modern humans (Lewin and Foley, 2004). The forerunner of Homo sapiens, Homo erectus, was not yet endowed with a hyoid bone.

Recently also, Boë et al. (2009) reconstructed the articulation possibilities of Neanderthals.

Interestingly, the presence of a special genotype of FOXP2, the genomic key prerequisite for human language, has been found only in Homo sapiens sapiens and in the reconstructed partial genome of a Neanderthal (Trinkaus, 2007). This adds evidence that the common ancestor of Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo sapiens neandethalensis was able to use language.

In summary, plenty of indications can be found that human language could reach much further back than was previously assumed and should be located at least at the origin of ancestral Homo sapiens 400,000 years ago or at the origin of modern Homo sapiens sapiens 200,000 to 170,000 years ago.

In this book, I show that across diverse languages, consonants at the beginning of words are overproportionally constant features for certain semantic fields, especially old and important ones in human evolution (many of them also found to be archetypal). The fact that not all modern languages show these patterns of word meanings derived from the same first consonant of a word could be explained to a large degree by the fact that words themselves evolve over the course of the history of a language.

It is a generally known tendency of languages that vowels can change between dialects (consider, for instance, Swiss German). To a lesser degree, the consonants can also change; such transformations are particularly abundant in the Indoeuropean language family, where equus in Latin is homologous to hippos in Greek and ashva in Sanskrit (all for "horse"). Such transformations of consonants according to rigid rules, however, are also known in all other hitherto reconstructed language families and are usually typified by comparative linguist as "sound correspondences." These transformations of vowels and, more so, of consonants, seem more likely in denser populations with advanced cultural characteristics, such as writing and reading. Under these circumstances, the words gain an individualized life through tradition and are less strictly linked to emotional expressions of the face.

Another important factor determining why certain defined semantic fields could not be covered in certain languages or language families is inferred by the variable inventories of vowels and consonants in different languages (see, e.g., Haspelmath et al., 2005). Thus, one or even more than one consonant I view as being important for language universalisms may be absent in one of the languages I included in this analysis (e.g., I is absent from written Japanese or from Maori). In general, however, I found meaningfully few absences of the consonants or consonant groups chosen (including the vowel u and diphthongs) in the selected languages. In this way, the overall picture of semantics covered by the different letters and letter groups was not distorted by the absence (i.e., the loss) of consonants or vowels in certain languages.

We would summarize the hypothetical steps of language evolution in the following way:

1. Motoric reactions in the body to emotions (as seen in many mammals and birds, but even in lower vertebrates or more highly evolved invertebrates, like cuttlefishes and octopuses) along with growing intelligence as prerequisites of transindividual communication. 2. Communication mostly through facial reactions (in selected Pongidae [apes], especially in chimpanzees and bonobos). 3. Formation of primitive linguistic expressions through standardization of movements in the oral tract, such as voice, tongue, and lip reactions. 4. Imitation of movements or features by the parts of the oral tract and standardization of the short words gained. 5. Formation of a primitive syntax. 6. Traditionalization of words and with it possibility of transforming vowels and consonants independently from the emotional background.

Chapter Two

Material and Methods

2.1. A short methodological history of the project

The first step of this huge project was ascertained by studying many Indoeuropean languages, such as Latin, Greek, German, Swedish, Sanskrit, Bengali, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, and Lithuanian, and consulting etymological dictionaries of the Indoeuropean language family. Also, a few non-Indoeuropean languages, such as Hungarian, Bask, Turkish, Swahili, and Chinese, were chosen to extend the horizon of research. This woke my interest in understanding probable conserved similarities across more distantly related languages. The chosen approach differs from a traditional, strict, etymological one, in which languages are shown to be related based on cognates derivable through phonetic changes. This method, in a strict sense, is hardly effective beyond a certain taxonomic level, which is one of the main reasons why a significant number of linguists still reject the correctness of long-range etymologies. In my approach, rather than inductively constructing etymological roots, I proceeded in a mixed inductive and deductive way, searching for logical, ethological, or psychological reasons framing conserved linguistic structures.

Slowly, a matrix of elements common to a significant portion of the studied languages was built up starting from the deictic roots (roots linked to pointing and showing) linked to dental consonants (t and d). After consulting dictionaries of many languages in the Institute of General Linguistics of the University of Zürich, as well as on www.yourdictionary.com, for several years, I decided to use an Excel matrix (a massive compilation I plan to publish separately) with the following first consonants in the word: b or p (two semantic fields); d and t; k and q; l; m; and n; r; s (three semantic fields); u; v; and w. I added a last sheet with diphthongs in any position of a word for words expressing the number two or dualisms. Semantic fields chosen because of their shared consonant structures (inductively) turned out to list many concepts that must have been important since the beginning of modern human prehistory.

(Continues...)

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