Where does language come from?

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Making meaning is one of the most important things we do. For starters, it’s something we’re doing almost constantly. We swim in a sea of words. Every day, we hear and read tens of thousands of them. And somehow, for the most part, we understand them. Constantly, tirelessly, automatically, we make meaning. What’s perhaps most remarkable about it is that we hardly notice we’re doing anything at all. There are deep, rapid, complex operations afoot under the surface of the skull, and yet all we experience is seamless understanding.

Meaning is not only constant; it’s also critical. With language, we can communicate what we think and who we are. Without language, we would be isolated. We would have no fiction, no history, and no science. To understand how meaning works, then, is to understand part of what it is to be human.

And not just human, but uniquely human. No other animal can do what we can with language. Of course, parts of human language have homologues in other animals. People talk fast, and sentences can be extremely complicated, but zebra finches sing tunes that rival our speed and complexity. Humans can drone on and on, but even a filibustering senator doesn’t outlast humpback whales, whose songs can continue for hours. And although the human ability to combine words in new ways seems pretty unique, it’s seen on a more limited scale in bees, who dance messages to each other that combine information about the orientation, quality, and distance of food sources.

Salon.com > Benjamin K. Bergen

Where does language come from?