LING 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Vocal Tract, Natural Selection, Bipedalism

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING 100
• Professor: Yourie Pankrats

Document Summary

Language evolved from an existing animal communication system by accreting complications. Language arose anew; it is an entirely different type of system from animal communication. 1. 2 academic and non-academic approach to the origin of human language. Many religions provide an account of the origin of human language. Rousseau, condillac, and herder (18th century anthropologists) tried to give some non-religious explanation or the origin of human language, but these explanations were regarded as speculations. Linguistic society of paris made the decision to ban all presentations or any papers concerning the origin of human language in 1866. Noam chomsky (1960) regarded the origin of human language as a matter of evolutionary biology. 1. 3 academic and non-academic approach to the origin of human language. 1. 4 hypotheses of the origin of human language (19th century) 1. 4. 1 the bow-wow" theory: language is basically onomatopoetic; humans simply imitated the sounds from their surroundings: cuckoo, kiwi, etc.