Evolution of Language?

For most people, this never crosses their mind when we talk to people using whatever language we use. It's just something that happened many years ago for whatever reason.

But for most linguists, I include myself in this, it is one of the most interesting subjects given the fact we don't, and probably won't ever, know the answer to this question.

I am currently doing an assignment on this very topic and it baffles me how I didn't think about this extensively before. Nothing in this world happens without something that triggers it- take the Big Bang for example. We, therefore, shouldn't think any different to the way language came about. When we think about it, language is hugely complex and isn't just something someone thought up on a drunken night. Especially given the fact millions of years ago they would have never thought about having phonemes/words like we do today.

So, how the hell have we come to have developed this thing we call "language"?

The answer is unknown, even to the most influential linguists- there is no answer to this.

The most likely way, in my eyes from what I have read, is that there is a system in our brain that allows for imitation and gesture. Yes, I believe language started from gestural action, i.e. simulating the action/meaning that is wanting to be to communicated through the use of our hands. If you think about it, it makes sense in the fact that monkeys and even babies are able to use the same gestures as we do, for example pointing to something that means "tell me what that is" or "I want that."

The really interesting part of this theory is that somewhere along the line our gestures lost the meanings to become more arbitrary/random with little understanding of why it represents the said meaning. Without the explicit visual meaning attached to the gestures, they became redundant and less importance was placed on the visual elements of communication with a gap that vocalisations inevitably filled. This, therefore, has been assumed to have made way for a protolanguage- a simplistic language that consists of single words to mean a whole phrase (in terms of our language now). It is considered that this protolanguage is where all languages stemmed from. The development of this protolanguage would've taken many of years to develop into what we call our language now.

Granted, there are serious flaws to this theory and we definitely do not have all the answers to why this happened and when exactly it did but it's interesting to know that we were able to construct our language from mere hand movements. 

I think that qualifies to say we are all in fact geniuses. Revel in that fact today.

Lots of love,

Nicole

xxx