Modem Human Language

ToolmaMng at least leaves behind some tangible evidence, but it is much more difficult to trace the origins of spoken language in the Homicide. Inferences about the anatomy and position of the larynx can be made from cranial form, but otherwise fossil bones tell us nothing about speech capabilities.
Archaeological finds of standardized tools and evidence of the cooperative hunting of large animals may well indicate some kind of communication among early hominids, but not necessarily in the form of modem human language. All primates, including man, use visual communications such as facial expressions, body language, and nonlinguistic vocalizations such as screams and cries to transmit information to other members of their group. These communications are largely instinctive, and the signs are very limited in meaning. Spoken language, however, allows human beings to name things with “open” symbols — i.e., symbols that, in countless combinations, can be made to relay different messages. Not only can human communication cover immediate situations and feelings but also discussions at abstract or hypothetical levels. Humans thus can store and transmit knowledge gained by past experiences as well as discuss plans for the future.

The principal difference in the vocal apparatus of hominids and pongees is the position of the larynx relative to the rest of the respiratory tract. Man’s larynx is lower in the throat and farther from the soft plate than in other primates, directly reflecting development of erect posture and expansion of the braincase. The position of the larynx changed as the foramen magnum (the skull’s aperture for the spinal cord), in turn, moved in response to the way the head is balanced on the neck and to the expansion of the posterior portion of the base of the skull. The consequent descent of the larynx created a long, tubular resonating cavity that permits the low-pitched speech of man.

While no evidence exists to show how hominid language first developed, it has been suggested that the vowel sounds had their origins in nonlinguistic vocalizations and that consonants were added as the hominids developed more control over their airways by manipulating tongues, lips, and teeth. Coupled with the ability to make the sounds necessary for speech would be changes in the brain that allow vocabulary to be stored and retrieved and changes in the auditory apparatus that allow language to be understood when spoken by others with slightly different intonation or pitch. The ability to learn language is inherited, as all children learn very quickly, but the actual language, be it English or Chinese or any other must be learned. Written language is clearly a much more recent human acquisition, with no good evidence for it before 5,500 years ago.

Because the fossils reveal so little, studies of the development of hominid speech have centered on experiments with one of man’s closest living relatives, the chimpanzee. The structure of the chimpanzee larynx does not allow it to make many of the sounds needed for human speech, and so experimenters have concentrated on teaching chimpanzees sign languages designed for deaf people. One female chimpanzee, Washoe, was taught to make signs for more than 100 words and showed that she could understand more than 300 signs. She was eventually able to put two or three signs together to make rudimentary sentences, usually demands for food, but did not make signs spontaneously in order to communicate ideas.

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