The Origin and Functions of Language
Exploring the origin of language, this content delves into the historical perspective of when and how human language evolved. It discusses the role of language in human society, its functions in socialization, information exchange, commanding, persuading, and influencing. Additionally, it touches upon the expressive function of language, highlighting how humans use language to convey emotions, aesthetics, and literary expressions.
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LANGUAGE ORIGIN AND FUNCTIONS
OVERVIEW 1. Origin of Language 2. Role of Language
ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE When discussing human language from a historical perspective, two important questions often arise: 1. When did human start to talk? 2. How did human language evolve?
ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE Until recently, most linguists regarded the fascinating question about the origin of language as a topic that falls outside the purview of linguistics. Suddenly, language origin has become a trendy topic. It is believed that Language probably developed in east Africa, around 100,000 years ago.
ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE To understand how human language evolve, one needs to know the three preconditions for the human language evolution: 1. Humans had to view the world in certain common ways. 2. They were able to produce a range of sounds. 3. They must have attained the naming insight .
ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE These preconditions enabled early humans to build up a store of words that refers to things and entities. What about linguistic rules , conventional word arrangements? It is believed that the evolution of syntactic rules had come about in much the same way as new rules emerge in any language today, where preferences tend to become habits, and habits become rules . Original language preferences possibly reflected ways in which humans view the world. Thus, most languages put words for actions near the objects which are acted upon.
ROLE OF LANGUAGE It is often believed the evolution of human language is mainly motivated by its functions. One of the key functions of language is that it enables socialization, e.g. as in social chit-chat. Yet, language can be used for different communicative purposes. One of the main language functions is to exchange information. Language can also be used to perform many acts like commanding, persuading and influencing others, etc.
ROLE OF LANGUAGE Language also has an expressive function, as humans use language to express their feelings and emotions. Despite its importance, the expressive function of language is not well developed, because humans, like other primates, can convey emotions via screams, grunts, gestures and so on. Humans may use language for purely aesthetic reasons to produce literary text. Any other function you can think of???
