Wordplay: language, reality and being human

‘Without words, events would cease to exist, and the medium of language would dissolve, leaving the message of our being untold.’ Serghei Sadohin

No one knows how language came about; it’s a mystery.

Perhaps the most persuasive theory is that language originated in early humans in the imitation of animal cries, including especially birdsong, and of other sounds of nature, wind and water, for example.

Language could have evolved from such a pre-linguistic state into the ‘naming of things’, connecting sounds with meanings (although it’s objected that language wouldn’t necessarily have developed automatically from there), leading to the vast play of words down through human history.

How far back in time could language have developed, bearing in mind the anatomical requirements in hominims — the shape of the vocal tract and position of the larynx — for it to be articulated? Perhaps primitively more than two million years ago with homo habilis, according to one theory, but with no arrival of language proper until homo sapiens came on the scene somewhat less than 200,000 years ago.

Was language ability innate, being genetically encoded, or was it acquired through social interrelations. These are questions which are still debated.