How did language come into being?

[Gesundheit]

Serious question and I'm honestly lost with no idea whatsoever.

Where did language come from? I'm specifically talking about our human language as our main form of communication. How did it emerge?

Edited August 21, 2020 by Gesundheit

[Recursoinominado]

I am no expert but i would guess it evolved from basic sounds like the ones babies do trying to symbolize something, then it escalated as it is a highly effective form of communication, something that sets us apart from all animals and benefits our survival. Then came writing which allowed us to store knowledge and build from there, instead of relying on someone's good memory to pass down on younger folks. When books and paper became popular to the average human, that's when things took of. At last, we have the internet that unified all of it globally and here we are. 

[Gesundheit]

@Recursoinominado that is interesting although why did it evolve this much only in humans?

[Recursoinominado]

1 minute ago, Gesundheit said:

@Recursoinominado that is interesting although why did it evolve this much only in humans?

Well, we are the dominant species on this planet because we are social, we depend on one another and that's our strength. Groups that communicate better have a better chance to survive over some other group that doesn't do so well. People that have high social intelligence, charisma, influence skills are able to survive better than some autistic guy that no one likes. It is not a coincidence that women love guys that are socially savvy. 

Orcas, dolphins, apes are known as highly intelligent and they are also social animals that hunt in a pack. 

[SpaceLaika01]

Think of sounds as vibrations and waves that travel through the air. Every sound you hear is some kind of vibration and wave frequency (Hz). It is simply one of the ways that our brains perceives the reality around us. If you were a different creature or animal, you would perceive the world differently (think of how some animals are able to see ultraviolet light while we cannot). So why have we evolved to use language?  It was just what happened to be available to us. Our ancestors found that they were able to use their throats and larynx to make sounds by pushing air through it (think of the throat as a wind instrument like a flute). Language evolved because of our ability as rational beings to recognize patterns in reality. When boiled to its essence, language is simply recognizing certain patterns of sounds and associating it with something (an object, a subject, and idea). Then once you combine that with our ability to remember,  it adds to our repository of "knowledge". Think of a recipe for a certain meal as a transfer of knowledge through words. If you were a small child, having never seen a yam in your entire life, words (and images in the modern day) is a way of which the knowledge of the existence of yams is given to you. The more sophisticated the language became, the more sophisticated civilizations became because each individual had access to more knowledge.

Edited August 21, 2020 by SpaceLaika01

[Gesundheit]

6 minutes ago, SpaceLaika01 said:

Think of sounds as vibrations and waves that travel through the air. Every sound you hear is some kind of vibration and wave frequency (Hz). It is simply one of the ways that our brains perceives the reality around us. If you were a different creature or animal, you would perceive the world differently (think of how some animals are able to see ultraviolet light while we cannot). So why have we evolved to use language?  It was just what happened to be available to us. Our ancestors were also able to use their throats and larynx to make sounds. Language developed because of our ability as rational beings to recognize patterns in reality. When boiled to its essence, language is simply recognizing certain patterns of sounds and associating it with something (an object, a subject, and idea). Then once you combine that with our ability to remember,  it adds to our repository of "knowledge". Think of a recipe for a certain meal as a transfer of knowledge through words. If you were a small child, having never seen a yam in your entire life, words (and images in the modern day) is a way of which the knowledge of the existence of yams is given to you. The more sophisticated the language became, the more sophisticated civilizations became because each individual had access to more knowledge.

Thanks that makes perfect sense.

[seeking_brilliance]

words are symbols, we just don't think of them that way because we think of symbols as visual objects. Words are symbols and the symbols "mean something" which gets translated by mind into something meaningful. It developed as a means to distinguish meanings and ideas. Animals communicate more with their body movements, eyes, and sometimes vocally, but don't have the right brain development for reasoning. 

[LastThursday]

The clue must be in the fact that human language uses sound.  I mean we could have communicated in any number of ways: sign language, making marks in the dirt, bioluminescense, animal bones etc. What makes sound so good?

1. You don't need direct line of sight. You can communicate even if you can't see your audience.

2. You can keep your hands and body free for other things.

3. You can communicate at distance. We are used to living in noisy city environments, but in quieter times sounds would have carried a good distance.

4. You can produce sounds spontaneously anywhere you like. You don't need to manipulate physical objects to communicate.

5. It's energetically cheap to produce. Producing sound takes very little energy. Even a few watts of sound is very loud.

6. It's very easy to modulate sound with vocal chords and mouth so that communication can be broken down into distinct units. These units can then be strung together combinatorially to produce an infinite number of messages.

7. It's very likely that we already produced basic sounds for other reasons (scare off animals or alarm calls or frighten the competition). So evolution co-opted it for communication.

8. We're very weedy apes physically, so we go around in packs for protection. But that requires us to maintain interpersonal relationships, and for that we need to communicate well. We are also very intelligent animals which also more than makes up for our physical shortcomings. So the language we produce has to be very complex to keep up with our intelligence.

 

Edited August 21, 2020 by LastThursday

[Raze]

 

[Gesundheit]

3 hours ago, Raze said:

 

Yeah totally I'm wondering about the thing(s) that happened within that window. It must be something really strange.

[Gesundheit]

7 hours ago, LastThursday said:

The clue must be in the fact that human language uses sound.  I mean we could have communicated in any number of ways: sign language, making marks in the dirt, bioluminescense, animal bones etc. What makes sound so good?

1. You don't need direct line of sight. You can communicate even if you can't see your audience.

2. You can keep your hands and body free for other things.

3. You can communicate at distance. We are used to living in noisy city environments, but in quieter times sounds would have carried a good distance.

4. You can produce sounds spontaneously anywhere you like. You don't need to manipulate physical objects to communicate.

5. It's energetically cheap to produce. Producing sound takes very little energy. Even a few watts of sound is very loud.

6. It's very easy to modulate sound with vocal chords and mouth so that communication can be broken down into distinct units. These units can then be strung together combinatorially to produce an infinite number of messages.

7. It's very likely that we already produced basic sounds for other reasons (scare off animals or alarm calls or frighten the competition). So evolution co-opted it for communication.

8. We're very weedy apes physically, so we go around in packs for protection. But that requires us to maintain interpersonal relationships, and for that we need to communicate well. We are also very intelligent animals which also more than makes up for our physical shortcomings. So the language we produce has to be very complex to keep up with our intelligence.

Very well thought and put, thanks. And it all makes sense but it still doesn't explain why we're distinct from other animals. Could it be a leap in consciousness?

[LastThursday]

3 hours ago, Gesundheit said:

Very well thought and put, thanks. And it all makes sense but it still doesn't explain why we're distinct from other animals. Could it be a leap in consciousness?

Who's to say? Dolphins and birds seem to produce very complex sounds too. A lot of animals communicate chemically. Single celled organisms especially use chemical signalling (communication). Maybe all those "languages" are just as complex as human language if not more so? If you wanted to objectively answer it, you would have to remove the human centric bias first. Don't forget every type of animal is unique and no animal is biologically simple.

Then there is the elephant in the room of consciousness. Does material reality exist or is it all just consciousness? Or is there some sort of interface between consciousness and biology? Maybe consciousness is infinitely intelligent, but the biological interface to it has to be complex enough to "tune into it". I don't know that's just wild speculation on my part. I don't buy that physics and chemistry alone can produce consciousness.

The most likelihood is that there was a runaway evolutionary process between intelligence, tool use, and social organisation; all of which would have been strongly selected to increase survival. Complex language would have tied all those things together.

[Gesundheit]

11 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

Dolphins and birds seem to produce very complex sounds too.

If that was the case I think at this point we would have been able to at least figure out some words of their languages. The sounds they produce seem arbitrary. Also, the way they organize themselves and socialize are very far from humanity's. Nothing really suggests that they use language like us, or at least not in the way you suggested.

16 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

A lot of animals communicate chemically. Single celled organisms especially use chemical signalling (communication). Maybe all those "languages" are just as complex as human language if not more so? If you wanted to objectively answer it, you would have to remove the human centric bias first. Don't forget every type of animal is unique and no animal is biologically simple.

That is a good point. However, the chemical type of communication is very distinct from the linguistic type, as there isn't much room for interpretation in the former. This makes it very simple, clear, and mechanical, therefore easier to study and understand even if you are completely foreign to it. On the other hand, it's very difficult for an American to learn Japanese for example simply by watching anime movies. I think this is mainly what makes the linguistic language creative and capable of evolution to a greater extent than the chemical one.

21 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

The most likelihood is that there was a runaway evolutionary process between intelligence, tool use, and social organisation; all of which would have been strongly selected to increase survival. Complex language would have tied all those things together.

That's also a good point. I have no comment on it though.