Linguistic monogenesis and polygenesis

Last updated

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 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 did not then 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

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Greenberg</span> American linguist (1915–2001)

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 ancestor, 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 taxa 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 undergoing different language changes and thus becoming distinct languages over time.

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

Nostratic is a hypothetical language macrofamily including many of the language families of northern Eurasia first proposed in 1903. Though a historically important proposal, it is now generally considered a fringe theory. Its exact composition varies based on proponent; it typically includes the Kartvelian, Indo-European and Uralic languages; some languages from the similarly controversial Altaic family; the Afroasiatic languages; as well as the Dravidian languages.

The Proto-Human language, also known as Proto-Sapiens or Proto-World, is the hypothetical direct genetic predecessor of all human languages.

<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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Na-Dene languages</span> Indigenous North American language family

Na-Dene is a family of Native American languages that includes at least the Athabaskan languages, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. Haida was formerly included but is now considered doubtful. By far the most widely spoken Na-Dene language today is Navajo, also the most spoken indigenous language north of Mexico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yeniseian languages</span> Language family of central Siberia

The Yeniseian languages are a family of languages that are spoken by the Yeniseian people in the Yenisei River region of central Siberia. As part of the proposed Dené–Yeniseian language family, the Yeniseian languages have been argued to be part of "the first demonstration of a genealogical link between Old World and New World language families that meets the standards of traditional comparative-historical linguistics". The only surviving language of the group today is Ket.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amerind languages</span> Hypothetical language macrofamily of the Americas

Amerind is a hypothetical higher-level language family proposed by Joseph Greenberg in 1960 and elaborated by his student Merritt Ruhlen. Greenberg proposed that all of the indigenous languages of the Americas belong to one of three language families, the previously established Eskimo–Aleut and Na–Dene, and with everything else—otherwise classified by specialists as belonging to dozens of independent families—as Amerind. Because of a large number of methodological disagreements with the 1987 book Language in the Americas, the relationships he proposed between these languages have been rejected by the majority of historical linguists as spurious.

Mass comparison is a method developed by Joseph Greenberg to determine the level of genetic relatedness between languages. It is now usually called multilateral comparison. Mass comparison has been referred to as a "methodological deception" and is rejected by most linguists, and its continued use is primarily restricted to fringe linguistics.

Polygenesis can refer to:

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

Merritt Ruhlen was an American linguist who worked on the classification of languages and what this reveals about the origin and evolution of modern humans. Amongst other linguists, Ruhlen's work was recognized as standing outside the mainstream of comparative-historical linguistics. He was the principal advocate and defender of Joseph Greenberg's approach to language classification.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dené–Caucasian languages</span> Proposed language family

Dené–Caucasian is a discredited language family proposal that includes widely-separated language groups spoken in the Northern Hemisphere: Sino-Tibetan languages, Yeniseian languages and Burushaski in Asia; Na-Dené languages in North America; as well as Vasconic languages and North Caucasian languages from Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eurasiatic languages</span> Proposed language macrofamily

Eurasiatic is a hypothetical and controversial language macrofamily proposal that would include many language families historically spoken in northern, western, and southern Eurasia.

Polygenism is a theory of human origins which posits the view that the human races are of different origins (polygenesis). This view is opposite to the idea of monogenism, which posits a single origin of humanity. Modern scientific views find little merit in any polygenic model due to an increased understanding of speciation in a human context, with the monogenic "Out of Africa" hypothesis and its variants being the most widely accepted models for human origins. Polygenism has historically been heavily used in service of white supremacist ideas and practices, denying a common origin between European and non-European peoples. It can be distinguished between Biblical polygenism, describing a Pre-Adamite or Co-Adamite origin of certain races in the context of the Genesis narrative of Adam and Eve, and scientific polygenism, attempting to find a taxonomic basis for ideas of racial science.

John D. Bengtson (1948-2024) was an American historical and anthropological linguist. He had been president and vice-president of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory, and had served as editor of the journal Mother Tongue. Since 2001 he had been a member/researcher of Evolution of Human Languages, an international project on the linguistic prehistory of humanity coordinated by the Santa Fe Institute. His areas of specialization included Scandinavian languages and linguistics, Indo-European linguistics, Dené–Caucasian (Sino-Caucasian) languages, and paleolinguistics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Borean languages</span> Proposed language family

Borean is a hypothetical linguistic macrofamily that encompasses almost all language families worldwide except those native to the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and the Andaman Islands. Its supporters propose that the various languages spoken in Eurasia and adjacent regions have a genealogical relationship, and ultimately descend from languages spoken during the Upper Paleolithic in the millennia following the Last Glacial Maximum. The name Borean is based on the Greek βορέας, and means "northern". This reflects the fact that the group is held to include most language families that are native to the northern hemisphere. Two distinct models of Borean exist: that of Harold C. Fleming and that of Sergei Starostin.

Paleolinguistics is a term used by some linguists for the study of the distant human past by linguistic means. For most historical linguists there is no separate field of paleolinguistics. Those who use the term are generally advocates of hypotheses not generally accepted by mainstream historical linguists, a group colloquially referred to as "long-rangers".

Monogenism or sometimes monogenesis is the theory of human origins which posits a common descent for all human races. The negation of monogenism is polygenism. This issue was hotly debated in the Western world in the nineteenth century, as the assumptions of scientific racism came under scrutiny both from religious groups and in the light of developments in the life sciences and human science. It was integral to the early conceptions of ethnology.

According to the theory of monogenesis in its most radical form, all pidgins and creole languages of the world can be ultimately traced back to one linguistic variety. This idea was first formulated by Hugo Schuchardt in the late 19th century and popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Taylor (1961) and Thompson (1961). It assumes that some type of pidgin language, dubbed West African Pidgin Portuguese, based on Portuguese was spoken from the 15th to 18th centuries in the forts established by the Portuguese on the West African coast. This variety was the starting point of all the pidgin and creole languages. This would explain to some extent why Portuguese lexical items can be found in many creoles, but more importantly, it would account for the numerous grammatical similarities shared by such languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfredo Trombetti</span> Italian linguist

Alfredo Trombetti was an Italian linguist active in the early 20th century.

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: 205–212. 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.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.