MODULE 1

THE DEVELOPMENT and EVOLUTION of LANGUAGE

MILESTONES IN HUMAN EVOLUTION

Milestones in Human Evolution

One of the subdivisions of primates is the superfamily of hominoids

(Hominoidea), which in turn comprises three families: the lesser apes (siamangs
and gibbons), the great apes (gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees), and the
homonids (Hominidae). The Hominids are believed to be the ancestors of
humans.

Current evidence suggests that the earliest hominids came from East African
sites in Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia and go back about 3-4 million years. The
best known specimen among them, referred to as Lucy, and fossil bones of a
similar type have been assigned to the genus Australopithecus (Southern African
ape) and the species afarensis, named for the Afar badlans in Ethiopia, wher
ethe discovery was made in 1974.

The homonids were described as small brained, with cranial capacity

estimated at about one pint (473 cubic centimeters). These early hominids were
bipedal - they used only their lower limbs for locomotion. Anthroplogists are not
in complete agreement on the intermediate link between Australopithecus
afarensis and the first representatives of the human genus (although most
experts would probably choose another australopithecine species,
Australopithecus africanus). This man ape, whise fossil remains in South Africa
date to about 3 million years ago, was quite likely an ancestral form of Homo
habilis, with whom it may have shared parts of Africa for several hundred
thousand years.

As the term suggests. Homo habilis is considered to be the first human,

though still far removed from the modern species. The remains of Homo habilis,
found in Tanzania and Kenya came from individuals with a braincase capacity
equal to about one half of modern humans. These early humans were
correspondingly shorter in stature but more capable of making and using simple
tools than the australopithecines may have been before them. Members of this
species undoubtedly began to depend to an ever-increasing degree on group
activity and a culturally patterned means of subsistence rather than on behavior
governed solely by instinct. (This implies that the Homo habilis started to
commune or interact with one another and not just act on behavioral instinct;
rather, we see the beginnings of communication as they work together.)

With the appearance of Homo habilis, the pace of human evolution

accelerated producing a new species, Homo erectus, close to 2 million years
ago. Members of this species spread from Africa to Asia and Europe. The tool
kit of Homo erectus, best known for the multipurpose hand ax, included a variety
of other implements used for cutting, piercing, chopping, and scraping. Evidence
indicates that these ancestors of modern humans possessed the skills needed to
become proficient large game hunters. (so, they no longer relied on foraging,
but they learned to hunt). They also learned to use fire to keep warm, to prepare
food, and to drive animals away or to lead them to locations where they would
want them to be. The greter complexity of their culture was associated with an
increased size of the brain, the average volume of which in Homo erectus was
about one quart (1,000 cubic cm.).

The last major stage in human evolution took place about 300,000 years ago
with the transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens, the species to which all
contemporary humans belong. The course of transition from one species to the
next is still debtable among anthropologists. One hypothesis is that Homo
erectus in Africa evolved first into an archaic form of Homo sapiens and
subsequently into the fully modern subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens. In
Europe, these modern humans replaced the Neanderthals (Homo sapiens
neanderthalensis), who according to some anthropologists, did not complete the
full transition. On the basis of some recent tests of mitochondrial DNA from
Neanderthal fossil specimens, some anthropologists have suggested that
Neanderthals should be assigned to a separate species, Homo
neanderthalensis.

The evolution from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens was marked by a

significant increase in cultural complexity. The Neanderthals, who persisted in
europe until the appearance of the Cro-Magnons of the Homo sapiens sapiens
variety, appear to have been the first to bury at least some of their dead with
deliberate care, furnishing them with tools and food, decorating them with red
ocher, and even surrounsing them with wildflowers. Several finds, taken to
represent some sort of bear cult, consist of a number of bear skulls, some neatly
arranged in a rock chest, other carefully placed in wall niches. These and other
activities of the Neanderthals are considered some evidence of ritual behavior
and possibly even belief in an afterlife. (such shared belief and the performance
of rituals would logically imply impossibility to occur if an elaborate means of
communication, language, did not exist). The material culture of the
Neanderthals also became more complex. Their characteristic method of
producing a variety of specialized implements made use of flakes struck off stone
cores that had been carefully shaped in advance.

The Old Stone Age, referred to technically as the Paleolithic, lasted for more
than 2 million years, terminating only about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. The
most recent subdivision of the Paleolithic, extending from about 37,000 to 11,000
years before the present, is referred to as Upper Paleolithic. From the Oldowan
tradition through the Mousterian culture, a span of about 2 million years,
progress in toolmakig was very slow. But an explosion of creative activity
occurred during the Upper Paleolithic, when the Cro-Magnons began to fashion
elaborate objects – burins, barbed harpoons, spear-throwers, bone needles, and,
above all, exquisite art. Working with paints as well as in stone, clay, bone,
ivory, and antler, they created art both delicate and monumental. The rather
sudden and rapid advances in the manufacture of a large variety of material
items no doubt parallel similar advances in cognitive processes and indicate that
full-fledged language would have been in place.

Today, no one would question the assumption that language was well
established at the time of the relatively bried Mesolithic period that followed the
Upper Paleolithic and ushered in the Neolithic. Most certainly, the revolutionary
changes that human culture underwent during the Neolithic as a consequence of
the domestication of plants and animals are unthinkable without full-fledged
language.

Language as an Evolutionary Product

Like all aspects of human condition, language also must have been a product
of evolution. However, unlike items of material culture, language leaves no
physical traces of its evolutionary past. Though no definitive answers can be
given at present, recent studies in human genetics, behavioural biology,
anatomy, and artificial intelligence give us reasons to be optimistic about solving
some of the mysteries of the origin and development of language. Two sets of
related issues must be addressed. The first question is, did language suddenly
develop all at once, or was it a gradual process? The second is , did language
develop under selective forces directly acting upon it, or was it a secondary by-
product of evolutionary processes?\

Continuity vs discontinuity. Eric Lenneberg (1921-1975) pointed out that

language development may be viewed from two sharply different positions. One,
is the continuity theory, which holds that speech must have ultimately
developed form primitive forms of communication used by lower animals and that
its study is likely to reveal that language evolved in a straight line over time.
They believe that all communicative behaviour in the animal kingdom has come
about without interruption, with simpler forms from the past contributing to the
development of later, more complex ones.

The second theory, referred to as the discontinuity theory of language

evolution and favoured by Lenneberg, holds that human language must be
recognized as unique, without evolutionary antecedents. It s development
cannot be illuminated by studying various communicative systems of animal
species at random and then comparing them with human language. One
statement concerning antiquity of language, however, can be made with some
assurance: Because all humans possess the same biological potential for the
acquisition of any language, the capacity for speech must have characterized the
common ancestors of all humans before populations adapted to different
environments and diversified physically.

Lenneberg rejected the continuity theory of language development for

several reasons. Even though the great apes are the animals closely related to
humans, they appear to have few, if any, of the skills of biological prerequisites
for speech. Frequently cited examples of animal communication have been
drawn from insects, birds, and aquatic mammals, but the evolutionary
relationships of these animals to human vary greatly. That only a few species
within large genera or families possess particular innate communicative traits
indicates that such species-specific behavioural traits have not become
generalized and therefore are likely to be of relatively recent date. Apparently,
there has been no evidence to suggest that human speech is an accumulation of
separate skills throughout the long course of evolution. If it were so, gibbons,
chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas would not be as speechless as they are
(meaning they should be talking like humans by now).

Language as emergent vs. language as innate: spandrels or language as

evolutionary by-product. The palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould argued that
evolutionary biology needed a term for features that arose as by-products of,
rather than actual, adaptations. He calls such features spandrels, by analogy
with the curved areas of supporting arches found in Renaissance architecture.
Though pleasing to the eye, and usually covered with beautiful decorative art,
spandrels were necessary to provide needed support to a square frame of the
archway. Likewise, for example, the feathers of birds may have originally
evolved as mechanism for regulating heat and body temperature (as seen in
penguins). Over time however, feathers seem to have taken on another use –
flight. If true, this co-opting of feathers for use in flight would be an example of a
spandrel.

The question is, did language evolve directly or was it a spandrel? Noam
Chomsky and some others who believe in the existence of a universal language
faculty believe that language itself evolved as a by-product. Stephen Pinker
argues that the natural selection played a more direct role in language evolution.
The process of natural selection designed a language acquisition device module
in the protohuman mind,, and evolutionary forces increasingly made it more
sophisticated over time. Givon (2002) however, believes that modern neurology
supports the claim that human language processing is an evolutionary outgrowth
of the primate visual information processing system. The key question, he
argues, is, does the neurology that supports language processing involve any
language-specific mechanisms or is it just a collection of pre-existing modules
that have been recruited to do so? We could put these two positions as:

Language as something that emerges: all language-processing modules

continue to perform their oldest prelinguistic task and reveal no special
language - dedicated adaptations.
Or
Language as something that is innate. “All language processing modules
are either entirely novel, or at the very least have been heavily modified to
perform their novel linguistic tasks. (Givon 2002)

Monogenesis versus Polygenesis

Another question that arises when it comes to language origins: Did the
potentialities and traits required for the development of language originate in
separate places at different or approximately the same time (polygenesis) , or did
they come into being just once (monogenesis)? Although one can never expect
a conclusive answer to this question, a reasoned discussion of the alternatives is
worth discussing.

The theory of polygenesis, with its implication that languages spoken today
ultimately derive from several unrelated sources in the remote past, is not easy
to defend. For one thing, the process leading to prelanguage and language must
have consisted of a long chain of transformations, structural and functional. That
two or more parallel developments of such complexity took place independently
of each other cannot be taken for granted. Derek Bickerton (1990) posited that
the transition from “protolanguage” (referred to here as prelanguage) to true
language was abrupt and the result of a single crucial mutation. However, it is
difficult to accept that a system of communication as unique and complex as
human language could have been the consequence of a single mutation. Then,
too, the capacity of all normal children, regardless of ethnic background, to
acquire any one of the several thousand natural languages with the same degree
of mastery and according to approximately the same timetable is a strong
indication that speech is innate throughout the human species and that all
languages are simply variations on a common basic structural theme.

The theory of monogenesis may take two forms: radical (or straight line)
and, to use Hockett’s term, fuzzy. Of the two, the fuzzy version of monogenesis
appears more realistic. Although it presupposes a single origin of traits essential
for language, it allows for the further development of the incipient capacity for
speech to take place in separate groups of hominids within an area. The
resulting differentiation could have been bridged by gene flow among the groups
or brought to an end by the eventual dominance and survival of that early human
population whose communicative system was most efficient. If, instead, several
varieties of prelanguage managed to persist, then there would be more than one
“dialect” ancestral to those languages that developed subsequently.

LEARNING ACTIVITY

Accomplish the following tasks:

1. Create an outline of the major developments in the evolution of man.

2. Trace the events that led to the development of language?
3. Explain the concepts of monogenesis and polygenesis.

ESTIMATING THE AGE OF LANGUAGE

The following discussions are about determining how old language is or for
how long have we had language. This is approached in different perspectives
depending what considerations they take into account.

Linguistic Considerations
Although scholars active in comparative and historical linguistics have
developed a reliable method of reconstructing unwritten languages that were
spoken in the distant past, evidence from linguistic prehistory can make only a
limited contribution. To be sure, reconstructions have revealed, in considerable
detail, many structural features of languages ancestral to present-day language
families. The best example is Proto-Indo-European, the parent of a large
number of languages that forst spread throughout Europe and many parts of
Southern Asia and later, during modern times, to every other part of the world as
well. The consensus among linguists is that the speakers of Proto-Indo-
European were most likely to be found somewhere in eastern Europe, possibly in
the steppes of southern Russia, during the fourth millennium B.C. Despite its
early date, Proto-Indo-European matched in grammatical patterns the complexity
of its various descendants: it distinguished among three genders (masculine,
feminine, and neuter), three numbers (singular, dual, plural), and perhaps as
many as eight cases, and also possessed a comparably rich inflectional verb
system. One can take Proto-Indo-European and other such reconstructed parent
languages (protolanguages) - for example those of the Uralic and Afro-Asiatic
language families – and attempt further reconstructing, as some linguists have
done.

Morris Swadesh posited that protolanguages of language families were more

similar in structure than their descendant languages because “human languages
were then appreciably closer to their common origin than they are today”
(Swadesh, 1971). But despite the pioneering efforts of Swadesh and others, the
majority of those who work in comparative and historical linguistics today have
doubts about the effectiveness and reliability of the comparative method beyond
a certain time depth. In the words of Paul Kiparsky (1976) “the time span over
which we can hope to reconstruct anything at all about protolanguages, however
we generously set it at, say , 10,000 or even 20,000 years, is still a very small
fraction of the period during which language has presumably been spoken by
man. Therefore, protolanguages as reconstructed cannot possibly be identified
with any original stage of language.” That the assumed Prot-Indo-European
language was grammatically more complex than many of its modern
descendants cannot be taken to mean that the older a language is, the more
complex the structure it must possess. If this were so, one would have to
conclude that the earliest language was the most highly complex, a presumption
that runs counter to what we know about long-term evolutionary process. In
short, fully developed language must have preceded by many thousands of
years any of the protolanguages linguists have been able to reconstruct to date,
though contrary to Kiparsky’s estimate, 10,000 to 20,000 years may not have
been a ‘very small fraction’ of the period during which true language has been in
existence, but a sizeable one.

The View from Prehistory

 Approaching the question of language origins from a different vantage point,
some anthropologists look for clues in cultural prehistory. It is generally agreed
that the development of the various aspects of culture, both material and non-
material , must have been paralleled by developments in communicative
behavior, and that a positive feedback must have existed between the two. In
other words, the more complex the culture of the early hominids grew, the more
elaborate the system of communication had to become to accommodate it; and
the more the communication system was able to handle, the more elaborate
culture could become. During the initial stages of hominid evolution,
advancement was slow. The cultural takeoff dates back to the period of
transition form the Neanderthals to the Cro-Magnons. Hockett acknowledged
this relatively recent acceleration (1973) : “True langauge is such a powerful
instrument for technological and social change that if our ancestors had it
500,000 or 1 million years ago, why did it take us so long to get where we are?”

Although no one would argue in principle against the linkage between the
degree of cultural elaboration and the complexity of a communication system,
interpretations of evidence from prehistory vary a great deal. Ashley Montagu
(1976) argued that some of the stone-tool assemblages found in Tanzania and
dated to be nearlly 2 million years old required so much skill and forethought that
in all likelihood “ speech was already well established among the makers of
those tools, so that for the origins of language and speech we shall have to look
to earlier horizons, and perhaps to even earlier forms of man [earlier than Homo
habilis].” Many anthropologists find the reference to “well established speech” in
Homo habilis overdrawn but would really agree to the presence of some of the
traits that were to contribuute to prelanguage.

The possession of prelanguage would, however, probably be granted to the

more recent representatives of Home erectus. The first hominid able to adapt
successfully to regions of the world having cold winters, Homo erectus must
have been an efficient hunter of large game. This claim has been particularly
well substantiated by excavations at Torralba and Ambrona in northeastern
Spain. These two sites revealed large quantities of bones from a variety of
animals as well as large assortment of tools, widely distributed bits of charcoal,
and such an intriguing find as the end-to-end arrangement of an elephant tusk
and leg bones, probably laid out by those who had butchered the animals. It
appears that at one time the site locations lay along a trail between the seasonal
grazing areas of animal herds. According to a widely accepted scenario, a band
or bands of Homo erectus hunters of 200,000 to 400,000 years ago managed by
either brandishing torches or setting grass afire to stampede elephants into a
swampy area and render them defenseless for the kill. The emphasis here is not
their strength or prowess in hunting but what is important to note here is the
planning and coordination that would have been required to bring a potentially
dangerous hunt to a successful conclusion – a feat that could not have been
accomplished without some sort of prelanguage.
The Neandertha;s, far from being the fierce-looking or dim-witted creatures
portrayed in earlier reconstructions, adapted the stoneworking techniques of
theor predecessors to produce far more varied and carefully finished tools and
became even more proficient hunters. Of greater importance, however, are the
archaeological finds that are strongly suggestive of ritual activities. If indeed
these early humans believed in life after death, and if theor treatment of the
remains of cave bears can be associtaed with mythmaking or taken as an act of
worship or the practice of hunting magic, the Neanderthals would have had to
make references to other times and places, thus moving a signficant distance
from prelanguage to language.

The nature of Neanderthal communication continues to be subject to debate,

but the presence of language among the Cro-Magnons cannot be disputed. With
brains as large as the average for modern humans, they were able to adapt to
the climatic and ecological extremes of the Americas, Australia, and even the
Arctic regions. The concrete evidence of their imagination and dexterity is no
less astounding: Many of the elaborately embellished items of tehir material
culture that they bequeathed to posterity compare favorably with some of the
best art that has been created since. Their cultural achievements are
unthinkable without the aid of language as fully developed, or very nearly so, as
that of recent and contemporary times.

Evidence from Anatomy

That all normal humans acquire command of at least one particular language
is the result of learning; that all humans possess and make use of the capacity
for speech is part and parcel of a biological endowment unique to our species.
Any inquiry into language origins should therefore give consideration to the
biological foundations of language – in particular those parts of the human
anatomy that facilitate it, the brain and the vocal apparatus, and the receiving
organ, the ear.

Among the primates, humans have brains that are already relatively large in
comparison to total body mass. In the course of human physical evolution, the
size of the braincase apparently expanded quite rapidly twice: first during the
transition between Homo habilis and Homo erectus, the second time
coincidentally with the rise of Homo sapiens. These expansions made it possible
for the braincase to hold a substantially large number of brain cells and to
achieve a greater density of pathways among them, but it is not certain that, of
itself, expansion was the direct result of a selection for greater mental capacity.

Despite much recent research, we still lack adequate knowledge of the

structures in the part of the human brain to which the control of speech
production is attributed. One variable feature of the neural basis for speech is
the lateralization of language functions in the left cerebral hemisphere in nearly
99 percent of right-handed adults. Right- handedness appears to have been
prevalent since the times of Homo erectus and, according to some scholars, may
have been in evidence as far back as the australopithecines. Handedness and
the associated lateralization even appear to be established in the great apes, if
not also among the other primates, despite their total incapacity for speech.

The general configuration of the brain is similar in hominids, apes, and

monkeys except for the more extensive and deeper folding of the outer layer of
gray matter, the cortex, and the relatively small size of the limbic region in
humans. The limbic system, which in mammals act as the “emotional brain”, is
responsible for vocalizations associated with emotional and motivational factors
and transmits signals of low informational content, such as cries. The several
regions of the brain that appear to be closely associated with speech production
(especially Broca’s area, Wernicke’s area, and the angular gyrus) are located in
the more recent outer part of the human brain, which is developed more fully and
complexly than the corresponding structure of our closest primate relatives. It is
unfortunate that casts made of fossil cranial cavities showing the approximate
shape of the brain do not reveal its internal structure.

In short, the differences in the brain structures between humans and the
other primates are sufficiently apparent to indicate why the otherwise highly
teachable apes cannot be taught to speak, but prehistoric evidence concerning
the internal evolution of the human brain is either spotty or controversial.

The evolution of the vocal apparatus has been studied by Philip Lieberman
together with several co-workers. Comparing the skulls of modern human adults
with those of newborn infants, the Neanderthals, and contemporary apes,
Lieberman and his associates found that the modern adult skull varies from the
others in certain important respects. The significant difference seems to be in
the position of the larynx and the size of the pharynx that lies directly above it. In
modern human adults the larynx is located farther down in the throat, and as a
consequence the supralaryngeal area is much larger than in infants,
Neanderthals, and apes. Consequently, the sounds emitted from such an area
can be modified to a greater degree and encompass the three extreme vowels –
[i], [u], and [a] as in be, boo, and bah. The reconstruction of the supralaryngeal
vocal tract of the Neanderthals indicates that these hominids were not capable of
producing the three critical vowels and certain consonants, at least not very
effectively and consistently, and that they therefore lacked the special
characteristics of modern human speech, though not much. As Lieberman
(1984) concluded:

The evidence of Neanderthal culture indicates a highly developed

tool-making and using culture, the use of fire, burial rituals, and a
social order that cared for the elderly and infirm… I therefore find it
hard to believe that Neanderthal hominids did not have a well—
developed language… Though it is …impossible to state with
certainty all the factors that might have differentiated the linguistic
and cognitive ability of classic Neanderthal hominids from their
anatomically modern human contemporaries, their speech ability
was inferior.

Also during the 1980s, Jeffrey T. Laitman and his colleagues noticed that
the shape of the base of the skull is related to the position of the larynx. A
detailed analysis of the skull base for many species of mammals revealed that
either the skull base is fairly flat and the position of the larynx high or the skull is
arched and the position of the larynx low. The first configuration is characteristic
of all mammals except humans older than two years. The second configuration
is found only in humans past infancy. Laitman’s next step was to evaluate the
skull bases of various fossil hominid remains and then judge from their shape
what the position of the larynx would have been. Laitman reported that “the
australopithecines probably had vocal tracts much like those of living monkeys or
apes”. Furthermore, according to preliminary data on the skulls of Homo
erectus, Laitman’s group discovered “the first examples of incipient basicranial
flexion away from the nonflexed apelike condition of the australopithecines and
toward that shown by modern humans. This indicates to us that the larynx in
Homo erectus may have begun to descend into the neck, increasing the area
available to modify laryngeal sounds.” Fossil data Laitman and his colleagues
obtained further suggest that a full arching to the skull base comparable to that in
contemporary humans coincides with “the arrival of Homo sapiens some 300,000
to 400,000 years ago. It may have been then that a modern vocal tract appeared
and our ancestors began to produce fully articulate speech” (Laitman, 1984).

LEARNING ACTIVITY

Create a diagram of the evolution of language based on the discussion

above to arrive to the estimate of how old language is.

LANGUAGE in VARIATION

LANGUAGE VARIETIES

Language Variety is a cover term used by linguists to refer to the different

types of language variation. The term may be used in reference to a distinct
language such as French or Italian, or in reference to a particular form of
language spoken by a specific group of people like British English, or even in
reference to the speech of a single person. There are however, more specific
terms that are used to talk about different types of language varieties.

Dialect is any variety of a language spoken by a group of people that is

characterized by systematic differences from other varieties of the same
language in terms of structural or lexical features. In this sense, every person
speaks a dialect of his or her native language.

In English, the term dialect carries a negative connotations associated

with nonstandard varieties. The term is also misused by laypeople to refer
strictly to differences in pronunciation or sometimes to refer to slang usage.
Such mistakes are easy to understand since differences in pronunciation are
usually accompanied by variation in other areas of the grammar as well and thus
correspond to the dialectal differences. However, the appropriate term for
systematic phonological variation is accent. In layperson’s terminology, accent
is often used in reference to “foreign accents” or regionally defined accents such
as southern or northern accents. However, here again it must be noted that
every person speaks with an accent. Slang, on the other hand, has to do more
with stylistic choices in vocabulary rather than systematic lexical differences
between dialects. Also, as mentioned there is variation form speaker to speaker
within any given language. The form of a language spoken by one person is
known as idiolect.
 The question now is, how do we know if two or more language varieties are
different dialects of the same language or if in fact they are separate, distinct
languages? One criterion used to distinguish dialects from languages is mutual
intelligibility. If speakers of one language variety can understand speakers of
another language variety and vice versa, we say that these varieties are mutually
intelligible. Take for example a native of Isabela and a native of La Union would
speak to each other and although there may be phonological differences in some
words spoken and some terms they use differ but they can still understand one
another then, the language spoken by the one from Isabela and the language
spoken by the one fron La Union are dialects of a language in this case: Iloco- so
we can say we have the Iloco La Union, Iloco Baguio, Iloco Isabela,etc.

Mutual intelligibility is not the only criterion though, to distinguish two

languages if these are dialects of a language or if these are two distinct
languages. Cultural or historical considerations may also come into play. For
instance, In China, Mandarin spoken in the northern provinces and Cantonese in
the southern province of Guangdong are considered to be dialects of a language
even if in the spoken form they are not mutually intelligible. This is because
these two languages have the same writing system and therefore, are mutually
intelligible in the written form.

Political consideration also meddles with whether a language is a dialect or

not. For instance in the American Southwest between Papago and Pima, two
Native American Languages are mutually intelligible, having less linguistic
difference between them much like the difference between American English and
British English. However, because these two tribes regard themselves as
politically and culturally distinct, they consider their respective languages to be
distinct as well. The same case with Serbocroatian has now split because of
politics into at least three distinct, yet mutually intelligible , languages in the
Balkans: Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian.

Another complication for the criterion of mutual intelligibility is found in a

phenomenon known as a dialect continuum. This is a situation where, in a
large number of adjacent or neighboring dialects, each dialect is closely related
to the next, but the dialects at either end of eth continuum (scale) are mutually
unintelligible. Thus, dialect A is intelligible to dialect B, which is intelligible to
dialect C, which is intelligible to dialect D; but, dialect D and A are not mutually
intelligible. This is illustrated in the case of the borders between Holland and
Germany, where the dialects on either side of the national border are mutually
unintelligible and thus are regarded as separate languages.

Speech Community is a group of people speaking the same dialect.

Speech communities may be defined in terms of a number of extralinguistic
factors including region, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity. However, it a rare
case that there exists a speech community in which a “pure dialect’ is spoken
because to identify a speech variety as a pure dialect requires the assumption of
communicative isolation where they do not have any interaction with those
outside of their community. These days, hardly a community is isolated because
of media, social and geographic mobility. In one way or another , a speech
community is influenced by regional, social, and cultural factors.

Supplemental Discussion

IDIOLECTS. This is why it is possible to identify over the telephone people we

know well without their having to say who they are. The recognition of
individuals by voice alone is possible because of their idiosyncratic combination
of voice quality, pronunciation, grammatical usage, and choice of words. Voice
quality, or timbre, is determined by the anatomy of the vocal tract (the tongue,
the nasal and oral cavities, the vocal cords, the larynx, and other parts), over
which the speaker has little or no control. Other voice features- for example,
tempo, loudness, and to some extent even pitch range – can be controlled fairly
simply. But none of these features of an individual’s speech pattern is constant.
Voice quality changes with age as muscles and tissues deteriorate and the
dentition undergoes modification. Over a lifetime , changes tend to occur in the
choice of words, grammar, and pronunciation as well.
Almost all speakers make use of several idiolects, depending on the
circumstances of communication. For example, when family members talk to
each other, their speech habits typically differ from those any one of them would
use in, say, an interview with a prospective employer. The concept of idiolect
therefore refers to a very specific phenomenon – the speech variety used by a
particular individual.

STYLES. Stylistic variations are not only lexical, but also phonological (for
instance, the casual pronunciation of butter with the flap [ ɾ ] rather than the
dental [ t ], morphological as (as in the casually styled “Who are you taking to
lunch?” as against the formal “Whom are you taking to lunch?), and syntactic (as
in “Wanna eat now?” as against ‘Do you want to eat now?). a stylistic or
dialectical variety of speech that does not call forth negative reaction, is used on
formal occasions, and carries social prestige is considered standard; varieties
that do not measure up to these norms are referred to as nonstandard or
substandard. Standard British English, often referred to as Received Standard
(and its pronunciation as Received Pronunciaiton), is used at English public
schools (private secondary boarding schools), heard during radio and television
newscasts, and is used when circumstances call for a serious, formal attitude
(sermons, lectures, and the like). In less formal situations, there has been an
increasing tendency to use a style that deviates from or falls short of the
standard. Informality in dress, behavior, and speech is a sign of the times both
in the United States and elsewhere.

How many different styles do speakers of English use? According to Martin

Joos (1907-1978), there are five clearly distinguishable styles that are
characteristic of his dialect of American English (spoken in the east-central
United States); he termed them frozen, formal, consultative, casual, and intimate
(Joos , 1962). Today, very few speakers of American English ever use the
frozen style except perhaps occasionally in formal writing. The assumption that
the exact number of speech styles can be determined for a language serving
millions of speakers does not seem to be warranted. No two native speakers of
English talk alike, and just exactly what use each person makes of various
stylistic features, ranging all the way from a pompous formality to an intimate or
even vulgar informality, is up to the individual speaker.

LEARNING ACTIVITY
Instruction: Accomplish the following tasks:

1. Compare and contrast two dialects. Give examples of their mutual

intelligibility and points of variations.
2. Search for other examples of a dialect continuum and give a one
paragraph report.
3. Give 3 examples of speech communities that you can identify in your
locality/region/ or country.

LANGUAGE CONTACT

Borrowing
 Languages must have been in contact as long as there have been human
beings. From what can be established from the current and historical
ethnographic record, people have also often been in close proximity with those
who spoke languages that were mutually unintelligible. Trade, travel, migration,
war, intermarriage, and other nonlinguistic causes have forced different
languages to come into contact countless times throughout history. When this
occurs, several things can happen over time: languages can die, new languages
can develop, or languages in contact can become mixed in various ways. We
will now explore some of the consequences of mixing and see how it can
sometimes lead to the development of drastically different linguistic structures.

When a new physical item or concept is borrowed from another culture, the
name for that new item in the donor language is often just directly taken over.
For example, Hawaiian gave English ukulele; Bantu , gumbo; Czech, polka;
Cantonese wok; Arabic, algebra and so on. Of course, English has contributed
hundreds of words to other languages as well, as weekend to French, boyfriend
to Russian, aerobic classes to German, and beefsteak to many languages (not to
mention change to Filipino as in Kuya yong change ko sa 100?).

This exchange can go both ways. As most native English speakers know,
many words of French origin have been borrowed into the language. In return
for le weekend, English received rendezvous and lingerie. One of the reasons
for this was the introduction of Old French during the Norman conquest of
England in 1066, which replaced Old English as the language of the ruling
classes in England (and which held prominence until well into the 14 th and 15th
centuries). During these centuries of French linguistic dominance, a large
portion of English vocabulary drastically changed. Some words disappeared,
others acquired different meanings. For example, consider the words:

Modern English : cow

Old English: cu
Modern German: Kuh

Modern English : swine

Old English: swin
Modern German: schwein

Modern English : chicken

Old English: cicen
Modern German: küken
Modern English: beef
Old French: boef
Modern French: bouef
Modern English: pork
Old French: porc
Modern French: porc

Modern English: poultry

Old French: pouletrie
Modern French: volaille

Notice that in the examples, the Anglo Saxon terms (English) were restricted
for the names of the animals and the more prestigious French terms were
applied to the cooked ad prepared animal brought inside the house (Jackson and
Amvela, 2007).

Pidgin
A common way in which individuals and groups interact across language
boundaries is by means of a pidgin. Typically, a pidgin originates when
speakers of two or more mutually unintelligible langauges develop a need to
communicate with each other for certain limited or specialized purposes,
especially trade. Because pidgins have a much narrower range of functions than
the languages for which they substitute, they possess a limited vocabulary, and
because they need to be learned rapidly for the sake of efficiency, they have a
substantially reduced grammatical structure. From a sociocultural perspective,
an impirtant characteristic of a pidgin is that t does not serve as the native, or
first, language of any particular group.

A pidgin is not the result of the same kind of development true languages are
subject to: it tends to come about suddenly, as the need arises, and ceases to
exist when no longer called upon to perform its original function. It may last a
little as a dozen or so years; only infrequently does it outlast a century. In its
phonology and morphology, a pidgin is invariably simpler than the first languages
of those who use it,a nd the bulk of its lexicon is based on, or derived from, one
of the languages in contact.

Although customarily associated with European colonialism, pidgins have

developed whenever speakers of different languages have been in regular but
limited contact. Among the examples that abound are the English-based China
Coast Pidgin that may have originated as early as the 17 th century but became
especially widespread during the course of the 19 th century: the English-based
Maori Pidgin current during the early years of British colonization of New
Zealand; Trader Navajo, the Navajo-based Pidgin used by traders in the
Southwest; and the various Vongo pidgins that facilitate contacts among the
speakers of a variety of African languages in the Congo River basin. Reflecting
the impact of European colonialism during the 18 th and 19th centuries, amny
former pidgins as well as those still in existence are English-, French-, Spanish-,
Portugese-, and Dutch-based.

A good illustration of the origin, succession, and demise of pidgins can be

drawn from recent Vietnamese history. When Vietnam was ruled by the French
as part of Indochina, a French-based pidgin was used by those French and
Vietnamese who lacked command of the others’ language. After the defeat of
the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954,a nd the evacuation of French forces from
Vietnam two years later, the pidgin was no longer needed and became almost
extinct. With the introduction of U.S. combat forces into the Republic of Vietnam
in the early 1960s, and English-based pidgin rapidly developed to assume the
role of its French-based predecessor. After the U.S soldiers were withdrawn in
1973, and political events in 1975 brought the influence of the United States in
Vietnam to an abrupt end, the new pidgin, too, all but disappeared.

Although it is true that pidgins can be simplified versions of any language, the
most common are those based on English. The reason for this is the widespread
contact that English-speaking people have had with non-Western nations. The
British Empire not only spread the Union Jack, but also its language over much
of the world. Thus, English-based pidgins were found from the coasts of Africa
to the New World to the South Pacific. For example, here is an example of the
first lines of Shakespeare’’s Julius Caesar (Act 3, Scene 2) in Melanesian Tok
Pisin comapred ot the original English (Murphy 1980)

Pren, man bolong Rom, Wantok, harim nau.

Mi kam tasol long plantim Kaesar. Mi noken beiten longen.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

We can see hear many of the typical devices pidgins (and later creoles) use
that allow them to communicate effectively with a limited set of grammatical and
lexical resources. Words such as pren, mi and kam are simply nativized forms of
English “friend”, “me”, and “come”. “Romans” comes out as man bolong Rom (lit,
“men/man belong(ing) to Rome). Countrymen is wantok – those of us who all
speak “one talk”. Though “lend me your ears” loses some of its power when
rendered as harim nau (“hear ‘em now”), it still makes its point; but plantim
(“plant ‘em” ) meaning “bury” is almost poetic metaphor. The pidgin tasol (“that’s
all”) act as a conjunction (such as “but”) or adverb (such as “only”). The word
noken (“co can”) is a verbal negative auxiliary. There are no inflections, case
markers, or tenses in pidgin, therefore certain words must do a multiplicity of
tasks. One such word is long. This word serves many uses, as a prepositon
(“to”, “at”, “with”, “under”), a comparative marker (“than...”), indirect object sign, or
an indication of duration. For example lukluk long (lit. “look look long”) can
mean to seek, to watch, to look for, to take care of, or to protect. Beten or beiten
is “prayer”,a nd beiten longen (“prayer belong ‘em) is a way of saying “praise.”

Although they characteristically lack inflection and possess a limited

vocabulary, pidgins have a structure of their own and readily adapt to changing
circumstances. The structural simplicity of pidgins is to their advantage, allowing
cross-cultural communication with a minimum of effort. The reduction or total
elimination of inflectional affixes, the use of morphemic repetition for
intensification, and simplified syntactic constructions make geographically
separated pidgins look remarkably similar – so much so that some scholars
have argued that in tehir basic structure all modern and recent pidgins may well
go back to some such protopidgin as Sabir, the original lingua franca, a medieval
pidgin based on Romance languages and used in Mediterranean ports until the
beginning of the last century. As similar as pidgins may be structurally, thoough,
they differ according to the languages that have lexified them (that is, supplied
tehm with the bulk of tehir word-stock).
Finally, it is important to remember that pidgins are not “broken” languages, a
kind of “primitive” speech or manifestations or “corrupt” thought processes of
simple peoples. They are quite the opposite: “pidgins are demonstrably creative
adaptations of natural languages, with a structure and rules of their own. Along
with creoles, they are evidence of a fundamental process of linguistic change.
They provide the clearest evidence of language being created ansd shaped by
society for its own ends, as people adapt to new social circumstances” (Crystal
2010)

Creole
 The process of grammatical and lexical reduction of a language such as
English or French to a pidgin is referred to as pidginization, reflects a limitation
on functions the pidgin is expected to serve. But it would be wrong to assume
that the role pidgins are destined to play is invariably humble. In many
instances, a pidgin has come to be used by a growing number of people over an
increasingly large area, especially when none of the native languages can claim
priority by virtue of population size or the prestige of a written tradition. in short,
a pidgin may become widely recognized and depended upon as an
indispensable means of interethnic communication. Under such circumstances,
the growing demands placed on the pidgin cause an expansion of its vocabulary
and elaboration of its syntax – a process opposite to pidginization. It may be
furnished with a writing system and used in the mass media, iit may acquire a
semiofficial status,a nd it may even become the mother tongue of those children
in whose families pidgin is habitually used. This process of expansion of a pidgin
to other language functions is referred to as creolization, and the end result is
termed as creole. A creole, then, is a pidgin that has become the first language
of a speech community.

Among the many places in the world where this process has taken place is
Papua New Guinea. (In the Philippines, Chabacano is classified as a creole
language). What opnce was an English-based pidgin of limited utility has been
elevated over the past several decades to one of the official languages of the
now independent country. Known as Neo-Melanesian, or Tok Pisin (from talk
pidgin), it has become the lingua franca of abou 1 million peole who speak some
700 languages native to Papua New Guinea and the first language of some
20,000 households. Tok Pisin has acquired such prestige that more
parliamentary debates are now conducted in it than in English, and most recently
it has been heard even in the country’s university lecture halls.

At least three fourths of the Tok Pisin vocabulary derives from English, some
15 percent fro indigenous New Guinea languages, especially Tolai (Kuanua),
and the remainder from various other languages, including German. For
example, in singular, Tok Pisin personal pronouns mi (I,me), yu (you), and em
(he, him; she, her; it) remain the same whether they serve as subject or object.
In the first –person plural, the distinction is made between the inclusive form
yumi (we, us –including the hearer) and in all three persons of the plural the
exact number (up to three) is usually indicated, as in yutupela (you two) or
yutripela (you three); the form ol for the third person plural occurs in addition to
the expected form. Possession is indicated by bilong, the predicate is commonly
marked by the particle i, and transitive verbs have the suffix – im, which also
converts adjectives into causative verb forms. Accordingly, Mi kukim kaikai
bilong mi translates as “I cook my food,’, Wanpela lek bilong mi i bruk as ‘One of
my legs is broken’, Em i krosim mi as ‘He scolded me’ and Ol i kapsaitim bensin
as ‘They spilled the gasoline’.

A New Guinea road safety handbook (Rot Sefti Long Niugini), which instructs
readers in three languages, contains the following English paragraph in Tok Pisin
equivalent (Crystal 2010)

If you have an accident, get the other driver’s number, if possible, get his
name and address too,and report it to the police. Don’t fight or abuse
him.

Sapos yu kisim bagarap, kisim namba bilong narapela draiva, sapos yu

ken, kisim naim bilong em na adres tu, na tokim polis long em. Noken
paitim em o tok nogut long em.

Even though creoles are languages in their own right and have in some
instances found their way into the mass media as well as into the primary school
instruction, they nevertheless tend to carry less prestige than the standard
European languages beside which they are used and from which they derive the
bulk of their vocabulary. Consequently, some speakers of creoles, especially
those who live in cities and hold semiprofessional jobs, try to “improve” their
speech by using the standard language as a model. When this happens creoles
undergo a change, moving in the direction of the standard language in a process
known as decreolization. Such a change is currently taking place, for example ,
in English-based Jamaican Creole, giving rise to a continuum ranging from
basilect, the variety most differentiated from the standard and used by members
of the rural working class, to the acrolect, an urban variety approaching the
standard and therefore seen as more prestigious.

The great majority of pidgins and creoles are found in coastal areas of the
equatorial belt where contacts between speakers of different languages,
including those of former European colonialist nations, have been a common
occurrence because of trade. Some recent pidgins, however, have been
developing under different circumstances – for example, the Gastarbeiter
Deutsch spoken in the Federal Republic of Germany by several million guest
workers from southern and southeastern Europe.
 Pidgins and creoles have received the serious attention they deserve only
during the fourth quarter of the last century. Some of the most stimulating (but
also controversial) contributions to their study were made by Derek Bickerton.
One important concept based on the study of creoles is Bickerton’s bioprogram
hypothesis (1981), that is, the assumption that the human species must have a
biologically innate capacity for language. in support of this hypothesis, Bickerton
linked pidgins and creoles with children’s language acquisition and language
origins. Because of the syntax of Hawaiian Creole English, which Bickerton
knew well, shares many features in common with other creole languages, the
cognitive strategies for deriving creoles from pidgins are so much alike as to be
part of the human species-specific endowment. Furthermore, the innate
capacities that enable children to learn a native language are also helpful to
children as they expand a pidgin into a creole. According to Bickerton, some
basic cognitive distinctions (such as specific versus general and state versus
process) must have been established prior to the homonization process
(development of human characteristics), and these distinctions are evident in the
structure of creoles as well as in the earliest stages of language acquisition.

Some of the recent research concerning pidgins and creoles has resulted in
the “blurring” of these two types of speech. It is now accepted that pidgin and
creole varieties of a particular language can exist side by side and that a creole
can become the main language of a speech community without becoming its
native language. in other respects, however, our understanding of pidgins and
creoles has improved because scholars and relevant people have paid greater
attention to the historical and socioeconomic contexts in which these languages
– pidgin and creole- came into being.

Learning Activity

Answer the following:

1. What are the characteristics of:
a. Pidgin
b. Creole

2. Give other examples of pidgin phrases and their translations in

English. Mention 10 phrases or sentences.

REFERENCES
 1. Ahearn, L. M. 2017. Living Language. An Introduction to Linguistic
Anthropology. UK: Wiley Blackwell
2. Bolinger, D. 2014. Language: The Loaded Weapon. USA: Routledge
3. Holmes, J. 2013. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. London: Routledge
4. https://www.daytranslations.com/blog/language-and-culture/
5. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322293684_GENDER_AND_LA
NGUAGE
6. Irvine, J.T. 2016. Language Ideology. DOI:
10.1093/OBO/9780199766567- 0012
7. Kachru, Y. & Smith, L.E. 2008. Cultures, Contexts, and World Englishes.
UK: Routledge
8. Margolis, E., Samuels, R. and Stich, S. 2012. Culture and Cognition.
10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195309799.013.00
9. Salzmann, Z., Stanlaw, J.M. & Adachi, N. 2012. Language, Culture &
Society:
An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Colorado: Westview Press
10. Schiffman. Problems with Language and Ideology https://www.sas.
upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/handouts/ideology/ideology.htm
11. Ahearn, L. M. 2017. Living Language. An Introduction to Linguistic
Anthropology. UK: Wiley Blackwell
12. Bolinger, D. 2014. Language: The Loaded Weapon. USA: Routledge
13. Holmes, J. 2013. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. London: Routledge
14. https://www.daytranslations.com/blog/language-and-culture/
15. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322293684_GENDER_AND_LA
NGUAGE
16. Irvine, J.T. 2016. Language Ideology. DOI:
10.1093/OBO/9780199766567- 0012
17. Kachru, Y. & Smith, L.E. 2008. Cultures, Contexts, and World Englishes.
UK: Routledge
18. Margolis, E., Samuels, R. and Stich, S. 2012. Culture and Cognition.
10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195309799.013.002
19. Salzmann, Z., Stanlaw, J.M. & Adachi, N. 2012. Language, Culture &
Society: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Colorado: Westview
Press
20. Schiffman. Problems with Language and Ideology https://www.sas.
upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/handouts/ideology/ideology.htm