Origin of

Language
Charles Hocket: Design Features

1. Vocal-auditory channel
2. Broadcast transmission and directional reception
3. Rapid fading (transitoriness)
4. Interchangeability
5. Total feedback specialization
6. Specialization
7. Semanticity
8. Arbitrariness
9. Discreteness
10. Displacement
11. Productivity
12. Traditional transmission
13. Duality of patterning
Productivity

 Ability to formulate new messages.

 In nonhumans, their call systems (alarm,
danger, discovery of food) appear to be non-
productive; that is, new calls are not
invented, and existing calls cannot be
combined (closed system).
 Human languages are open system, leading
that can take or coin new words and
sentences.
 “Blending” constituted the first step toward
open system, leading to an increase of
vocabulary.
Displacement

 Ability to refer to some thing or event that is

not present.
 Nonhumans vocalizations generally occur in
the presence of the stimulus.
 “Like talking today about what to do
tomorrow.” Indication of foresight and
planning.
A Productive System

 One that can grow.

 Increase in the use of verbal signs since they can
be used in more and different situations.

Traditional Transmission
 Although the potential for using languages, is
biologically transmitted, specific languages are
taught and learned.
 Languages are passed on traditionally, generation
after generation, from older speakers to younger
ones.
Duality of Patterning

 Phonemes – small number of meaningless

sounds (most languages use between 20 and
40)
 Morphemes – large number of words and
sentences.
 All modern languages are built on these;
have a virtually limitless capacity for
expression.
Criticisms

 Hockett appears to think of language almost

entirely in terms of vocal communication.
 It is not enough to seek a direct continuity
between the multimodal communication of
other species, in which vocalization may play
minor role, and human language, in which
vocalization is primary.
 There must ne continuity of a broader sort in
order to account for the transformation of the
older type of system.
Gordon Hewes: Gesture Theory

 Vocalization of nonhumans differ fundamentally

from those that make up human speech in that
they are not under voluntary control but triggered
by various emotional and environmental stimuli.
 Manual manipulative behaviors of nonhumans are
voluntarily based on cognitive analyses of the
situations primarily apprehended.
 Cultural traditions such as tool making were
learned and passed from generation by visual
observation and imitation.
 The assumption is that hominization involved the
growth of a vocabulary of manual signs, body,
and facial gestures.
Signs

1. Natural signs (symptoms, indices) – not

intentionally produced for the purpose of
communication but can be used by an
observer as a source of information.
2. Intuitive signs (iconic, deictic, demonstrative)
 Iconic signs: based on imitation or depiction
of some recognizable feature or attribute of
the referent of the sign (i.e. vocal imitation,
graphic depiction, or physical mimicry.
 Deictic and communicative: serve to call
attention and to indicate location or
direction (i.e. here, there, come, stop; 1st
person-speaker, 2nd person-hearer, 3rd person-
other).
3. Arbitrary signs – The association between
symbol and referent is a cultural convention.
-Both icons and symbol are human creations,
and an iconic sign may be simplified and
conventionalized; however, the iconic sign
retains a recognizable connection with its
referent.
-The connection between sign and referent
appears wholly and partly arbitrary to the
degree that it must be learned outright.
. . . Hewes envisions a larger context, longer
and more complex process of the transition of
spoken language.

. . .Argues that cognitive and neural

developments that are basic to language,
whether spoken or signed, began well before
the modifications of the vocal tract that
support speech.

. . .Focuses on the shift from gesture to speech

as the dominant modality.
Morris Swadesh: Intuitive Language

 Works on broad evolutionary typology of

languages, from archaic to modern.
 Connection between movement of the
hands and those of the lips and tongue.
 The shape of objects was imitated in human
gestures and from there passed into
vocalization.
Principles:
1. Stops (plosive of occlusion) represent hard
impact, nasals soft impact or resonant vibration,
and continuants free vibration (i.e. tongue: [t],
[d]; body: [k], [g]; lips: [b], [p]).
2. Vowels indicate shape, in accordance with the
kind of vibration that goes with each form of
resonating space.
3. Labials ([p], [m])give the effect of flat surface
slapping together; Dentals ([t], [n]) the contact
of a point; Velars ([k], [ng]) that of blunt objects.
4. The 2 consonants of a vocable permit the
definition of a complex sound, from 1st contact
to final, the shape of each 2 colliding objects, or
a three-dimensional shape defined by its form
and each end.
Primitive Word Roots
 Pek – flat base to blunt point, impact of flat on blunt (or
the opposite); principally associated with objects and
qualities: bones, hard, white.
English pack, peck, pick
French bec, beak
Mayan p’ek
Latin pectus, chest

 Mek –Soft and broad set on something hard, associated

with buttocks, belly, cheek, big (i.e.;; .
English mackle, main, mega, might, mass
Tsimshian (B.Columbia/Alaska) mik, mature
Nisenan (Central Valley Cal.) muk, big
Yucatec Mayan (Mexico) muk, big
Nez Perce (Native American) mexshem, mountain
Quechuan (C.Andes,S. America) maqma, broad
Old Irish Mochtae, large
Hittite (Anatolia) Makkes, large
 Men, mel, mer – vibratory sound, broad soft base to
soft point.

English Fen, penis, pin, fly, flit

Samoan Malu, soft
Basque (Spain/France) Malsho, soft
Arabic Mals,smooth, soft
Latin Mollis, soft

. . .vocabulary as a by-product of oral gesturing

rather than simple sound imitation.

. . .Swadesh was intrigued by the question of remote

relationship among language and with evidence which
might confirm the common ancestry of all languages.