Origins of language by Gerge Yule

Written by: M. Wakhid Qomarti

Language, as Prof. Dr. Abbas Achmad Badib Said, is an instrument to express our feeling, Ideas, or emotion. It is only an instrument that we use to convey what we feel and think to others. Because we use it to convey what we feel and think to others, it unconsciously can create interaction between us. When we feel happy, for example, we might say “I am happy” to our mother or someone close to use, and when we feel sad, we might say “I am sad” to them. These two examples are clearly the forms of language for, from the two expressions, there is some thing named interaction between us, as the speaker, and our mother or friends, as the listener. Therefore, language, which we use everyday, actually is not just an instrument we use to express our feeling and thought but more than it, language ought to bring interaction and communication between the speaker and the listener, the writer and the reader, or the painter/drawer and the watcher.
Language is constantly important for us to communicate with each other. We will have some big problems, hardly improving our knowledge and getting information, without language. When our father has an accident out of the town, for example, we will hardly know the information without language. And we also will have difficulty to know the new born science without it. It is why language is widely known as our primary needs as running life.
Because of the importance, language becomes very interesting to study. A lot of scientists have been attracted to learn it so far, one of whom is George Yule, with his book “The Study of Language”. This American has tried to inform us about language as unity of union. He has made a lot of efforts to realize what he intends on language, such deciding the origins of language, the sound patterns of language, and so on.
However, he, as well as all the scientists who studied language, was not able to decide when language was originated. It means that all he did, on his study about the origins of language, is only his speculations. He was only able to speculate the origins of language for, as he said in this book, “There are not dusty cassettes-tape fragments among the ancient bones that can tell use how language was back in the early stages.
Although he, in fact, bewared about the impossibility, George Yule kept running on his way to trace back when and how language was born. Firstly, he tried to dig up it through the divine source. In this effort, he come to this statement that the basic hypothesis, of this way, seems to have been that, if infants were allowed to grow up without hearing any language, then they would spontaneously begin using the original God given language. However, when he related the statement to two experiments which were done by an Egyptian pharaoh named Psammetichus, which placed two newborn infants in the company of goats and a mute shepherd, and a coachman named James IV, which discovered children living in isolation, without coming into contact with human speech, it (divine source) seemed to be irrelevant to decide when language was originated.
Secondly, he endeavored through “The Natural- Sound Source”. In this source, he just speculated that primitive words could have been imitations of the natural sounds which early men and women heard around them. To strengthen this idea, he supported it whit two theories “bow-wow and you-heave-ho” theory, and a speculating suggestion that the original sounds of language came from natural cries of emotion. However, these all are just speculating effort, efforts that are done to make any speculation.
Thirdly, he tried through “The Oral- Gesture Source”. On this theory, he told use that originally a set of physical gestures was developed as a mean of communication. Then a set of oral gestures, specifically involving the mouth, developed, in which the movement of the tongue, lips, and so on were recognized according to patterns of movement similar to physical gestures. However, finally he came to his problem on deciding when language was originated. He said that we actually could use oral- gestures for a variety of communicative purposes, but it is hard to visualize the actual “oral” aspect which would mirror many such gestures.
Then next, he made an effort through “Glossogenetics”. This source focuses mainly on the biological basis of the formation and development of human language. Because it concentrated on some of the physical aspect of humans, he then compared between the skull of a gorilla and that of Neanderthal man from 60.000 BC. On this way, he tried to study how language genetically developed. Although he then succeeded finding some physical features which were best thought of as partial adaptation that appear to be relevant for speech, but he, finally, come to his contradictive statement that those features actually could not lead to speech production.
Further more, he tried to print back through “physiological adaptation”. On this way, he tried to study why human teeth are up right, human lips have much intricate muscle, and human mouth is relatively small and can be opened and closed rapidly. He also tried to compare the different position between human larynx and that monkey’s. And why human brain is lateralized, having specialized function in each of the two hemispheres. However, he finally just can speculate that the human may have first developed the naming ability, producing specific noise for a specific object then brought it up to build a complex message. It is indeed just a speculation, too.
Finally, he came to what is known as “Interaction and Transaction”. In this terms, he just can mark that any noise-making (Such those have been mentioned in bow-wow and you-heave-ho theory), cries of emotion (such as, wow, ugh, and oops), and some gestures are only described as interactional function, function of language which is used to interact with each other. And then he also said that language not only has to have international function but also transactional function, function of language to communicate knowledge, skills, and information. From these two, however, he still can’t decide the beginning of the existence of language. He just can state his final statement that speech is “transient” by its nature, the desire for a more permanent record of what was known must have been the primary motivation for the development of markings and inscriptions and, eventually, of written language.
As the conclusion, it is the fact that language was born and brought up in process. Process it self could have been considered through humans genetically condition, physiological development, divine source, and relationship between humans with the nature. However, it is the fact, too, that no body can decide when and how language exactly was originated. What have been done by the scientists to trace back on deciding the beginning of language’s existence is just speculation. And George Yule is one of the scientists who have tried to prove it.