An introduction to Language and History of Languages

An introduction to Language and History of Languages

Evolutionary Theories on the Origin of Speech:

Adam was the First Human to Talk and Communicate

Language is a human Knowledge for dealing something. Because Adam was the First Human to Talk and communicate with his Creator for his want and need .whatever we don’t know what was that language. That sound or language was diverse.

In a chapter he titled ‘What, When, and Where did Eve Speak to Adam and He to Her?,’ Philip Lieberman commented:

‘In the five-million-year-long lineage that connects us to the common ancestors of apes and human beings, there have been many Adams and many Eves.  In the beginning was the word, but the vocal communications of our most distant hominid ancestors five million years or so ago probably didn’t really differ from those of the ape-hominid ancestor.

Using biblical terminology, Lieberman had written a year earlier: ‘For with speech came a capacity for thought that had never existed before, and that has transformed the world.  In the beginning was the word’.

When God created the first human beings—Adam and Eve—He created them in His own image (Genesis ).  This likeness unquestionably included the ability to engage in intelligible speech via human language.  In fact, God spoke to them from the very beginning of their existence as humans (Genesis ).  Hence, they possessed the ability to understand verbal communication—and to speak  themselves!

God gave very specific instructions to the man before the woman was even created (Genesis).  Adam gave names to the animals before the creation of Eve (Genesis).  Since both the man and the woman were created on the sixth day, the creation of the man preceded the creation of the woman by only hours.  So, Adam had the ability to speak on the very day that he was brought into existence!

That same day, God put Adam to sleep and performed history’s first human surgery.  He fashioned the female of the species from a portion of the male’s body.  God then presented the woman to the man (no doubt in what we would refer to as the first marriage ceremony).  Observe Adam’s response: ‘And Adam said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man”’ (Genesis ).  Here is Adam—less than twenty-four hours old—articulating intelligible speech with a well-developed vocabulary and advanced powers of expression.  Note also that Eve engaged in intelligent conversation with Satan (Genesis ).  An unbiased observer is forced to conclude that Adam and Eve were created with oral communication capability.  Little wonder, then, that God said to Moses: ‘Who had made man’s mouth? ...  Have not I, the Lord?  Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say’ (Exodus ).

The Tower of Babel—and Universal Language

Nobody knows exactly how many languages there are in the world, partly because of the difficulty of distinguishing between a language and a sub-language (or dialects within it).  One authoritative source that has collected data from all over the world, The Ethnologue, listed the total number of languages as 6809.

The Bible’s explanation of the origin of multiple human languages is provided in the Tower of Babel incident recorded in Genesis  (see Figure 1).  Scripture simply and confidently asserts: ‘Now the whole earth had one language and one speech’.  When Noah and his family stepped off the ark, they spoke a single language that was passed on to their offspring.  As the population increased, it apparently remained localized in a single geographical region.  Consequently, little or no linguistic variation ensued.  But when a generation defiantly rejected God’s instructions to scatter over the planet, God miraculously intervened and initiated the major language groupings of the human race.  This action forced the population to proceed with God’s original intention to inhabit the Earth (cf. Isaiah ) by clustering according to shared languages.  Duursma correctly noted: ‘The Babel account suggests that several languages came into existence on that day.  It is presented as a miraculous intervention by God.

Figure 1.  Peter Breugel (1525-1569); oil painting (1563) of the Tower of Babel—the historical event during which God confused the human language

This depiction of the origin of languages coincides with the present status of these languages.  The available linguistic evidence does not support the model postulated by evolutionary sources for the origin of languages.  Many evolutionary linguists believe that all human languages have descended from a single, primitive language, which itself evolved from the grunts and noises of the lower animals.  The single most influential ‘hopeful monster’ theory of the evolution of human language was proposed by the famous linguist from MIT, Noam Chomsky, and has since been echoed by numerous linguists, philosophers, anthropologists, and psychologists.  Chomsky argued that the innate ability of children to acquire the grammar necessary for a language can be explained only if one assumes that all grammars are variations of a single, generic ‘universal grammar’, and that all human brains come ‘with a built-in language organ that contains this language blueprint’.

Explaining this ‘innate ability’, a ‘universal grammar’, and the ‘built-in language organ’ of humans has proven to be, well, impossible!  Steven Pinker, the eminent psychologist also of MIT, candidly lamented this very fact in his best-selling book, How the Mind Works.  In addressing the failure of ‘our species’ ’ scientists to solve these types of plaguing, perennial problems, he wrote:

‘The species’ best minds have flung themselves at the puzzles for millennia but have made no progress in solving them.  Another is that they have a different character from even the most challenging problems of science.  Problems such as how a child learns language or how a fertilized egg becomes an organism are horrendous in practice and may never be solved completely.’ [emphasis added].

However, the existing state of human language nevertheless suggests that the variety of dialects and sub-languages has developed from a relatively few (perhaps even less than twenty) languages.  These original ‘proto-languages’—from which all others allegedly have developed—were distinct within themselves, with no previous ancestral language.  Creationist Carl Wieland rightly remarked: ‘The evidence is wonderfully consistent with the notion that a small number of languages, separately created at Babel, has diversified into the huge variety of languages we have today’.

The Brain’s Language Centers—Created by God

In contemplating how language arose, evolutionists frequently link the development of the brain to the appearance of languages.  But when one considers that more than 6,000 languages exist, it is incomprehensible to suggest that the invention of language could be viewed as some sort of simple, clear-cut addition to human physiology made possible by an enlarged brain unique to Homo sapiens.  Terrance Deacon commented on the intricacy of evolving a language when he wrote:

For a language feature to have such an impact on brain evolution that all members of the species come to share it, it must remain invariable across even the most drastic language change possible’ [emphasis in original) .   

The complexity underlying speech first revealed itself in patients who were suffering various communication problems.  Researchers began noticing analogous responses among patients with similar injuries. 

Figure 2.  Left hemisphere of human brain with language centers—Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area—highlighted.

The ancient Greeks noticed that brain damage could cause the loss of the ability to speak (a condition known as aphasia).  Centuries later, in 1836, Marc Dax described a group of patients that could not speak normally.  Dax reported that all of these patients experienced damage to the left hemisphere of their brain.  In 1861, Paul Broca described a patient who could utter only a single word—‘tan’.  When this patient died, Broca examined his brain and observed significant damage to the left frontal cortex, which has since become known anatomically as ‘Broca’s area’ (see Figure 2).  While patients with damage to Broca’s area can understand language, they generally are unable to produce speech because words are not formed properly, thus slurring their speech.

In 1876, Carl Wernicke discovered that language problems also could result from damage to another section of the brain.  This area, later termed ‘Wernicke’s area’, is located in the posterior part of the temporal lobe (see Figure 2).  Damage to Wernicke’s area results in a loss of the ability to understand language.  Thus, patients can continue to speak, but the words are put together in such a way that they make no sense.  Interestingly, in most people (approximately 97%) both Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area are found only in the left hemisphere, which explains the language deficits observed in patients with brain damage to the left side of the brain.  Evolutionists freely acknowledge that:

The relationship between brain size and language is unclear.  Possibly, increased social interaction combined with tactical deception gave the brain an initial impetus.  Better nourishment due to meat-eating may also have played a part.  Then brain size and language possibly increased together.

But, the human brain is not simply larger.  The connections are vastly different as well.  As Deacon admitted: ‘Looking more closely, we will discover that a radical re-engineering of the whole brain has taken place, and on a scale that is unprecedented’.  In order to speak a word that has been read, information is obtained from the eyes and travels to the visual cortex.  From the primary visual cortex, information is transmitted to the posterior speech area (which includes Wernicke’s area).  From there, information travels to Broca’s area, and then to the primary motor cortex to provide the necessary muscle contractions to produce the sound.  To speak a word that has been heard, we must invoke the primary auditory cortex, not the visual cortex.  Deacon commented on this complex neuronal network—which does not occur in animals—when he wrote:

‘Many a treatise on grammatical theory has failed to provide an adequate accounting of the implicit knowledge that even a four-year-old appears to possess about her newly acquired language.