In the Beginning was not the Word.

I’ve been thinking.  I realize that for someone as reckless as me it is a dangerous pastime but nevertheless I’ve taken the risk.  Sometime between 200,000 and 50,000 years ago Homo sapiens began to speak.  While paleoanthropologists can demonstrate that it did happen and evolutionary psychologists tell us why they think it had to happen and evolutionary biologists tell us why, given the makeup of the brain, it could not have been otherwise and evolutionary linguists tell us what was needed for it to happen there is not anyone to tell us what the first word was.  Part of the reason for this is that it is not at all clear why language was needed.  Animals survive very nicely without language so why not prehistoric and modern humans?  What possessed them to open their mouths and utter what we would now consider to be inanities?

I’m reminded of the story about the young lad who at seven years of age had not spoken a word.  Then one day out of the blue he proclaimed at breakfast “This porridge is too hot!”  His parents were gob smacked.  For seven years they had believed their son was a mute but now he had spoken his first words.  How could this be?  “Son,” his father said, “why now, why do you wait seven years to speak to us?”  The son looked up from his breakfast bowl and said, nonchalantly, “Up to now everything has been OK.”

Maybe the first humans spoke because everything was not ok. Many would insist that language is instinctive to the human species.  Unlike our primate cousins we acquired language because our brains are hard wired for the exercise.  While such a view held sway for a long time, lately it is being questioned.  (M. C. Corballis, The Recursive Mind ,Princeton University Press.)  While researchers are in agreement as to what constitutes speech, the way language should be characterized and the terms by which it should be defined tend to be divisive. For my part language is a system of symbols used in regular modes of combination in accordance with established rules (conventions) but what started it all?

An issue that is much debated is whether language began with manual gestures or evolved from the oral signaling of earlier primates.  A third possibility is that speech came about as a result of a ‘species unique biological adaptation’ for symbol making afforded early Homo sapiens. 

The manual gestures argument is the weakest of the three possibilities.  In the first instance the notion of manual gestures is somewhat vague and it is doubtful they could produce symbols either iconic or abstract.  As the philosopher Wittgenstein points out we cannot explain one gesture with another.  If gestures evolved at all they must have evolved with a spoken language.  Another argument against gestures being some form of a proto-language is why it didn’t evolve into a complete sign language?  ASL is an independent sign language that is able to express all a spoken or written language can express.  If manual gestures were a significant form of communication the evolution of spoken language would not be necessary.

The thesis that oral signaling of early primates may have evolved into a spoken language is also a shaky hypothesis.  Vervet monkeys have different signals to warn of an approaching Leopard or snake or eagle in the sky but they can’t help themselves.  Their signals are involuntary and the response of their kind that hears such calls and rush to escape are also involuntary.   Nevertheless researchers are single minded in their desire to show that one or all of the proposed possibilities for the evolution of language will yield a solution to the enigma.  All that is needed is to tweak or re-jig the favored thesis and the first word will come tumbling out.

It could be that we are looking in the wrong place to discover what prompted language to evolve.  Perhaps what is needed is to concentrate not on the speaker but on the listener.  Such is the approach of Robbins Burling.  His work is so enlightening it deserves repeating in his own words.

A puzzle has always hovered over the first appearance of language: If no one else was around with the skills to understand, what could the first speaker have hoped to accomplish with her first words?  The puzzle dissolves as soon as we recognize that communication does not begin when someone makes a meaningful vocalization or gesture but when someone interprets another’s behavior as meaningful.  (The Talking Ape, Oxford University Press, 2007)

Burling’s point is that comprehension comes before production.  The interpretation of our prehistoric inquisitor may be mistaken but that is not important.  It is the attempt to discover meaning that counts.  An infant or toddler has no way of knowing that its mother is making communicating sounds or gestures but it tries to comprehend in any case.  Our mind obliges us to try to make sense of our world.  Without this urge to understand, human communication would be at a standstill.  Language was not a spontaneous event; rather it was a hard won event through a constant desire to make contact with the mind of a fellow human being; a creative event that culminated in the shock of recognition.  All that was needed for the first word to come forth was a continuous plea that was something like “Huh?”

Launt Thompson
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