Linguistic monogenesis and polygenesis

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In historical or evolutionary linguistics, monogenesis and polygenesis are two different hypotheses about the phylogenetic origin of human languages. According to monogenesis, human language arose only once in a single community, and all current languages come from the first original tongue. On the other hand, according to the polygenesis, human languages came into being in several communities independently, and current tongues derived from different sources. [1]

Contents

Monogenesis

The monogenetic theory points to a single origin of all of the world's languages and it is the most accepted theory. [1] [2] It states that all current languages have formed through language change from a single tongue that gradually differentiated into unintelligible languages. The first scholar to publish this theory was Alfredo Trombetti, in the book L'Unità d'origine del linguaggio, published in 1905. More recently, Joseph Greenberg and Merritt Ruhlen, proponents of monogenesis, argue that in modern languages there is sufficient evidence to reconstruct part of the original language (called Proto-World or Proto-Sapiens). [3] However, this claim has been highly controversial and the reconstructions made by Ruhlen are often discredited by mainstream linguists. [4]

Some studies seemed to correlate genetic and phonemic diversity, [5] [6] but this approach has been criticized thoroughly. [7]

Some proponents of monogenesis are Alfredo Trombetti, Joseph Greenberg, Harold C. Fleming, [8] Merritt Ruhlen and John Bengtson.

The world's largest uncontroversial language families as of 2024 Human Language Families (wikicolors).png
The world's largest uncontroversial language families as of 2024

History

The first serious scientific attempt to establish the reality of monogenesis was that of Alfredo Trombetti, in his book L'unità d'origine del linguaggio, published in 1905. [9] [10] : 263  Trombetti estimated that the common ancestor of existing languages had been spoken between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. [11]

In the 1950s, Morris Swadesh was one of the most important supporters of monogenesis. [10] : 215  He created two controversial methods based on previous ideas, namely lexicostatistics and glottochronology. [12] [13]

In the second half of the 20th century, Joseph Greenberg produced a series of controversial large-scale classifications of the world's languages. [14] Although Greenberg did not produce an explicit argument for monogenesis, all of his classification work was geared toward this end. As he stated, "The ultimate goal is a comprehensive classification of what is very likely a single language family." [15] : 337 

Polygenesis

Polygenesis points to a multiple origin of human languages. According to this hypothesis, languages evolved as several lineages independent of one another. [16] Modern investigation about creole languages demonstrated that with an appropriate linguistic input or pidgin, children develop a language with stable and defined grammar in one generation. [17] Creole languages descend from pidgins. [18] [19] Another example is Nicaraguan Sign Language, created from isolated signs that did not form a set of stable rules, and thus does not constitute an authentic language. [20]

Polygenesis is not to be confused with the wave theory, originally propounded by Johannes Schmidt. [21]

Some proponents of polygenesis are David A. Freedman, William Shi-Yuan Wang, Cristophe Coupé, and Jean-Marie Hombert. [2]

History

Two of the earliest supporters of polygenesis were August Schleicher and Ernst Haeckel. Their ideas of linguistic polygenesis were linked with polygenism: it stated that several language families arose independently from speechless Urmenschen (German: proto-humans). [22] According to Haeckel, [23]

We must mention here one of the most important results of the comparative study of languages, which for the Stammbaum of the species of men is of the highest significance, namely that human languages probably had a multiple or polyphyletic origin. Human language as such probably developed only after the species of speechless Urmenschen or Affenmenschen (German: ape-men) had split into several species or kinds. With each of these human species, language developed on its own and independently of the others. At least this is the view of Schleicher, one of the foremost authorities on this subject. ... If one views the origin of the branches of language as the special and principal act of becoming human, and the species of humankind as distinguished according to their language stem, then one can say that the different species of men arose independently of one another.

Polygenesis was accepted by many linguists in the late 19th and early 20th century, when polygenism was popularized. [24]

In the 1990s and 2000s, interest in polygenesis reappeared, with papers written by David A. Freedman, William S-Y. Wang, Cristophe Coupé, and Jean-Marie Hombert. [1] [2]

Bibliography

See also

Related Research Articles

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Joseph Harold Greenberg was an American linguist, known mainly for his work concerning linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Language family</span> Group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor

A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. The term family is a metaphor borrowed from biology—with the tree model used in historical linguistics analogous to a family tree, or to phylogenetic trees of species used in evolutionary taxonomy. Linguists thus describe the daughter languages within a language family as being genetically related. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, with different regional dialects of the proto-language spoken by different speech communities undergoing different language changes and thus becoming distinct languages from each other.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nostratic languages</span> Proposed superfamily of Eurasian and African languages

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">August Schleicher</span> German philologist (1821–1868)

August Schleicher was a German linguist. Schleicher studied the Proto-Indo-European language and devised theories concerning historical linguistics. His great work was A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages in which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language. To show how Indo-European might have looked, he created a short tale, Schleicher's fable, to exemplify the reconstructed vocabulary and aspects of Indo-European society inferred from it.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Merritt Ruhlen</span> American linguist (1944–2021)

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Freedman, David A.; Wang, William S-Y. (July 28, 1996). "Language Polygenesis: A Probabilistic Model". Anthropology Science. 104 (2): 131–138. doi:10.1537/ase.104.131 . Retrieved May 5, 2024.
  2. 1 2 3 Coupé, Cristophe; Hombert, Jean-Marie (2005). "3. Polygenesis of Linguistic Strategies: A Scenario for the Emergence of Languages". In Minett, James W.; Wang, William S-Y. (eds.). Language Acquisition, Change and Emergence: essays in evolutionary linguistics (PDF). Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press. p. 162.
  3. ↑ Meritt Ruhlen; John Bengtson (1994). "Global etymologies". On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy (PDF). pp. 277–336. Retrieved 27 June 2020.
  4. ↑ Picard, Marc (April 1998). "The Case against Global Etymologies: Evidence from Algonquian". International Journal of American Linguistics. 64 (2): 141–147. doi:10.1086/466353 . Retrieved May 5, 2024.
  5. ↑ Michael Balter (14 April 2011). "Language May Have Helped Early Humans Spread Out of Africa". Science. Retrieved May 4, 2024.
  6. ↑ Perreault, C.; Mathew, S. (2012). "Dating the origin of language using phonemic diversity". PLOS ONE. 7 (4): e35289. Bibcode:2012PLoSO...735289P. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0035289 . PMC   3338724 . PMID   22558135.
  7. ↑ Hunley, Keith; Bowern, Claire; Healy, Meghan (2 January 2012). "Rejection of a serial founder effects model of genetic and linguistic coevolution". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 279 (1736): 2281–2288. doi:10.1098/rspb.2011.2296. PMC   3321699 . PMID   22298843.
    Bowern, Claire (November 2011). "Out of Africa? The logic of phoneme inventories and founder effects". Linguistic Typology. 15 (2): 207–216. doi:10.1515/lity.2011.015. hdl: 1885/28291 . ISSN   1613-415X. S2CID   120276963.
  8. ↑ Bengtson, John D., ed. In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the four fields of anthropology. In honor of Harold Crane Fleming. John Benjamins Publishing, 2008.
  9. ↑ Trombetti, Alfredo (1905). L'unità d'origine del linguaggio (in Italian). Bologna: Luigi Beltrami.
  10. 1 2 Ruhlen, Meritt (1994). The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  11. ↑ Trombetti, Alfredo (1922–1923). Elementi di glottologia (in Italian). Bologna: Zanichelli.
  12. ↑ Dobson, Annette J.; Kruskal, Joseph B.; Sankoff, David; Savage, Leonard J. (September 1972). "The Mathematics of Glottochronology Revisited". Anthropological Linguistics. 14 (6). Trustees of Indiana University. JSTOR   30029322.
  13. ↑ Swadesh, Morris (Oct 1950). "Salish Internal Relations". International Journal of American Linguistics. 16: 157–167. doi:10.1086/464084. JSTOR   1262898. S2CID   145122561 – via JSTOR.
  14. ↑ Newman, Paul (1993). "Greenberg's American Indian classification: a report on the controversy". In van Marle, Jaap (ed.). Historical Linguistics 1991: Papers from the 10th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. 10th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, John. pp. 229–242.
  15. ↑ Greenberg, Joseph H. (1987). Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  16. ↑ Globe language. "Polygenesis Language Theories". globelanguage.org. Retrieved May 4, 2024.
  17. ↑ Campbell, John Howland; Schopf, J. William, eds. (1994). Creative Evolution. Life Science Series. Contributor: University of California, Los Angeles. IGPP Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life. Jones & Bartlett Learning. p. 81. ISBN   9780867209617 . Retrieved 2014-04-20. [...] the children of pidgin-speaking parents face a big problem, because pidgins are so rudimentary and inexpressive, poorly capable of expressing the nuances of a full range of human emotions and life situations. The first generation of such children spontaneously develops a pidgin into a more complex language termed a creole. [...] [T]he evolution of a pidgin into a creole is unconscious and spontaneous.
  18. ↑ Roberge, Paul T. (September 18, 2012). "Pidgins, creoles, and the creation of language". The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution. Oxford Academic. ISBN   9780191743818 . Retrieved May 5, 2024.
  19. ↑ Sean Spicer (December 7, 2023). "Understanding Creole Languages". hannais.com. Hanna. Retrieved May 5, 2024.
  20. ↑ Zall, Carol (September 29, 2020). "The origin of Nicaraguan Sign Language tells us a lot about language creation". The World. Retrieved May 4, 2024.
  21. ↑ "Schmidt, Johannes"  . New International Encyclopedia . Vol. XVII. 1905.
  22. ↑ Richards, Robert J. (2008). The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought. University of Chicago Press. pp. 259–260. ISBN   978-0-226-71219-2.
  23. ↑ Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (1868), p. 511; quoted after Robert J. Richards, "The linguistic creation of man: Charles Darwin, August Schleicher, Ernst Haeckel, and the Missing Link in Nineteenth-Century Evolutionary Theory". Archived 3 February 2004 at the Wayback Machine
  24. ↑ de Saussure, Ferdinand (1986) [1916]. Cours de linguistique générale[Course in General Linguistics] (in French). Translated by Harris, Roy. Chicago: Open Court.
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