http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=origin+and+evolution+of+the+human+language+creation+&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language

The origin of language, also known as glottogony, is a topic that has attracted considerable attention throughout human history. The use of language is one of the most conspicuous traits that distinguishes Homo sapiens from other species. Unlike writing, spoken language leaves no explicit concrete evidence of its nature or even its existence. Therefore scientists must resort to indirect methods in trying to determine the origins of language.
Linguists agree that there are no existing primitive languages and that all modern human populations speak languages of comparable complexity. While existing languages differ in terms of the size of and subjects covered by their lexicons, all possess the grammar and syntax necessary for communication and can invent, translate, or borrow the vocabulary necessary to express the full range of their speakers' concepts. All children possess the capacity to learn language and no child is born with a biological predisposition favoring any one language or type of language over another.
The evolution of modern human language required both the development of the anatomical apparatus for speech and also neurological changes in the brain to support language itself, but other species have some of these capabilities without full language ability. The emergence of language use is tied to the full acquisition of these capabilities, but archaeological evidence does not provide an entirely clear picture of these events.
A major debate surrounding the emergence of language is whether language evolved slowly as these capabilities were acquired, resulting in a period of semi-language, or whether it emerged suddenly once all these capabilities were available.


The evolution of human language By Wolfgang Wildgen

The origins of complex language By Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy


Language - Linguistic Problems for Evolution





http://www.icr.org/article/74/

Language, Creation and the Inner Man
by Henry Morris, Ph.D

Probably the most important physical ability distinguishing man from apes and other animals is his remarkable capacity of language. The ability to communicate with others of his own kind in abstract, symbolic speech is unique to man, and the evolutionist has never been able to bridge the tremendous gulf between this ability and the grunts and barks and chatterings of animals.

Some researchers have, of course, made extravagant claims as to the potentiality of teaching chimpanzees to speak, for example, or have developed highly imaginative speculations as to how animal noises may have evolved into human languages. Such notions are, however, not based on real scientific observation or evidence.

Man's brain is quite different from that of chimpanzees, especially in that portion which controls speech, Isaac Asimov notes this:

"Once speech is possible, human beings can communicate thoughts and receive them; they can consult, teach, pool information … Once speech was developed then, the evolution of intelligence proceeded rapidly. The chimpanzee lacks Broca's convolution, but it may have the germs of communication, which could develop rapidly if it ever evolved that part of the brain."1
Unfortunately, one does not acquire a brain capable of abstract thought and intelligent speech (even if "Broca’s convolution" is really all the brain needs to do this) merely by allowing "evolution" to create one because it might be helpful. Two top authorities on supposed human evolution, David Pilbeam and Stephen Gould, anthropologist at Yale and geologist at Harvard, respectively, have pointed out that man's brain shape is not a mere scaled-up replica of the ape’s, but is qualitatively distinct in critical ways.

"Homo sapiens provides the outstanding exception to this trend among primates, for we have evolved a relatively large brain and small face, in opposition to functional expectations at our size … Australopithecus africanus has a rounded braincase because it is a relatively small animal; Homo sapiens displays this feature because we have evolved a large brain and circumvented the expectations of negative allometry. The resemblance is fortuitous; it offers no evidence of genetic similarity."2
Though creationists do not share the credulous faith of the evolutionists that man's unique brain has simply "evolved," they do concur with the inference that this uniqueness has placed an unbridgeable gap between man and any of the higher animals.

Evolutionist George Gaylord Simpson has admitted that there is little possibility of tracing an evolutionary connection between animals and men as far as language is concerned.

"Human language is absolutely distinct from any system of communication in other animals ... It is still possible, but it is unlikely, that we will ever know just when and how our ancestors began to speak."
Since Simpson is a biologist and paleontologist, rather than a linguistics scientist, certain of the younger speculative linguists may feel that he was speaking out of his field and that it may yet be possible to trace such an evolutionary origin of human language. However, most modern linguistic specialists today acknowledge Dr. Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to be the "world’s foremost linguist" (a term recently applied to him by Dr. John Oller, Chairman of the University of New Mexico Department of Linguistics, while discussing this subject with the writer), and Dr. Chomsky says:

"Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world."
As to whether the gap between animal noises and human language was ever bridged by evolution, Dr. Chomsky states:

"There is no reason to suppose that the ‘gaps’ are bridgeable. There is no more of a basis for assuming an evolutionary development of ‘higher’ from ‘lower’ stages, in this case, than there is for assuming an evolutionary development from breathing to walking."
In other words there is no comparison at all!

The Underlying Unity of Human Language

Chomsky and many other modern linguists have found, not only that there is no connection between animal sounds and human speech, but also that there is a deep commonality between the basic thought patterns of all men, regardless of how diverse their individual languages may be. That is, there is a fundamental connection between all human languages, but no connection at all between human language and animal "language."

In an important recent study, Dr. Gunther S. Stent (Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of California in Berkeley), has drawn the further inference from Chomsky's studies that man has a certain fundamental being which is incapable of being reached by scientific analysis.

"Chomsky holds that the grammar of a language is a system of transformational rules that determines a certain pairing of sound and meaning. It consists of a syntactic component. a semantic component, and a phonological component. The surface structure contains the information relevant to the phonological component, whereas the deep structure contains the information relevant to the semantic component, and the syntactic competent pairs surface and deep structures."
Chomsky and his associates have developed what they call structural linguistics, with its concepts of the "deep" structure and the "surface" structure. The latter involves the ordinary phenomena of different languages and their translation one into the other. The mere fact that people are able to learn other languages is itself evidence of the uniqueness and fundamental unity of the human race. No such possibility exists as between man and animals.

The "deep structure" is the basic self-conscious thought structure of the man himself, and his intuitive formulation of discrete thoughts and chains of reasoning. The vocal sounds which he uses to transmit his thoughts to others may vary widely from tribe to tribe, but the fundamental thought-system is there and is universal among mankind.

"The semantic component has remained invariant and is, therefore, the ‘universal’ aspect of the universal grammar, which all natural languages embody. And this presumed constancy through time of the universal grammar cannot be attributable to any cause other than an innate, hereditary aspect of the mind. Hence, the general aim of structural linguistics is to discover this universal grammar."
Presumably, if this "universal grammar" could ever be ascertained, it would supply the key to man’s original language -- perhaps even its phonology and syntactical structure, as well as its semantic content.

The Unique Origin of Man

Evolutionists, as well as creationists, have in recent years come to believe in the monophyletic origin of all the tribes and races of mankind. Most of the earlier evolutionists, however, believed in man’s polyphyletic origin, thinking that each of the major "races" had evolved independently from a different hominid line. This idea, of course, easily leads to racism, the belief that one race is innately superior to another race. That is, if each race has a long, independent evolutionary history, slowly developing its distinctive character by the lengthy process of random mutation and natural selection, then it is all but certain that there has been a differential rate of evolution as between the different races, with some evolving to higher levels than others. That such racist beliefs were held by all nineteenth-century evolutionist scientists (Darwin and Huxley included) has been thoroughly documented.8

Modern evolutionists, however, repudiate racism, which has become sociologically unpopular in the twentieth century. They now agree (with the Bible) that "God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth" (Acts 17:26). Although they are now in practically complete agreement that all present groups of men came originally from one single population of ancestral men, they are currently in complete disarray as to exactly what that lineage may have been. The Australopithecines and the Homo erectus group of supposed hominids are no longer considered man's progenitors, since fossils of true man have been found which are dated earlier than any of these.

"Theorists of human evolution, who may not yet have fully assessed the impact of Leakey’s 1972 discovery, now face an even knottier problem. If members of the human genus flourished as long as four million years ago, then the time when the genus first branched from its ancestral primate stem would necessarily be even earlier. As Taieb and Johanson assert, ‘All previous theories of the origin of the lineage which leads to modern man must now be totally revised.’"9
Maurice Tieg, of the French National Center for Scientific Research, and D. Carl Johanson, of Case Western Reserve University, have thus with their discoveries of three fossil human jaws in Ethiopia) demonstrated that man is "older" than his supposed "ancestors." Creationists do not accept the date of four million years as the age of these jaws, of course, but merely note that the "relative" stratigraphic date has to be "older" than the stratigraphic date of Pithecanthropus, Zinjanthropus, Australopithecus, etc., as accepted by evolutionists.

Not only do these discoveries indicate that man's unique bodily structure has (so far as actual fossil evidence goes) always been distinct from that of apes, but also that he has always had his unique capacity of communication.

"There is even the possibility, Johanson says, that he had ‘some kind of social cooperation and some sort of communication system.’"10
Back to the very beginning of human existence, therefore, in so far as it can be elucidated by archaeological excavation and anthropological analysis, man has always been man, culturally and linguistically as well as physically and mentally.

The Origin of the Different Languages

Consider this ancestral human population, whenever and however it first appeared -- whether several million years ago, newly arrived by an unknown evolutionary process from unknown evolutionary ancestors, or else several thousand years ago, representing the descendants of the handful of survivors of the great Flood. In either case, they must have constituted an originally coherent body of true men, all with the same language and culture.

The question is, how did the different languages ever develop? If the "semantic component" of language, as Chomsky puts it, is still the same for all men,

how did the "phonologic component" ever become so diverse and variegated?

Gradual changes are understandable (as in the gradual accretion of Latin words, Greek words, Germanic words, etc. to produce the modern English language), but

how could such vastly different linguistic systems as the Indo-European languages, the agglutinative languages of the Africans, and the tonal languages of the Mongols ever develop from a single ancestral language?

Furthermore, the more ancient languages seem to be the more complex languages, as do the languages of the more apparently "primitive" tribes living today.

"Even the peoples with least complex cultures have highly sophisticated languages, with complex grammar and large vocabularies, capable of naming and discussing anything that occurs in the sphere occupied by their speakers. The oldest language that can reasonably be reconstructed is already modern, sophisticated, complete from an evolutionary point of view."
Not only so, but the history of any given language, rather than representing an increasingly complex structure as the structure of its users supposedly evolved into higher levels of complexity, seems instead to record an inevitable decline in complexity.

"The evolution of language, at least within the historical period, is a story of progressive simplification."
It seems necessary to assume either of two alternatives in order to explain these strange linguistic phenomena:

(1) An original population of men, at least 100,000 years ago and possibly up to four million years ago, with a highly complex language and culture. This original population (its origin completely unknown and apparently inexplicable on evolutionary grounds) somehow broke up into a number of separate populations, each then developing independently of the others for such a very long time that its extreme peculiarities of linguistic phonology and syntax could emerge as a deteriorative remnant of the ancestral language.
(2) An original population of men several thousand years ago (as dated not only by the Bible but also from the known beginnings of civilization in Sumeria, Egypt and other ancient nations). This population once used the postulated complex common ancestral language, but somehow broke up into the assumed smaller populations. However, this break-up was not a slow evolutionary process over hundreds of thousands of years, but rather was accomplished in some kind of traumatic separation, accomplished essentially instantaneously by a sudden transmutation of the one phonology into a number of distinctively and uniquely different phonologies.
The Dilemma of the Evolutionary Linguist

Note that neither of these alternatives is amenable to an evolutionary interpretation, since neither accounts for the original ancestral complex language and since both involve a subsequent deterioration (rather than evolution) of language complexity. The former, however, is favored by evolutionists because the great time spans involved seem more suitable to a uniformitarian philosophy, and because the latter clearly involves catastrophic, even supernaturalistic, intervention in human history.

The long-time span interpretation, however, necessarily involves the evolution model once again in its racist connotations. For how are populations going to be separated long enough to develop such drastically different languages without also developing drastically different physical features and mental abilities? As long as they were together, or even close enough associated to be in communication with each other (and such association would surely be to their mutual advantage), they would retain an essentially common language, would intermarry, and thus retain common physical and mental characteristics as well.

Yet the languages and cultures and physical features are, indeed, quite different, and have been since the dawn of recorded history! A genetics professor at Stanford says:

"When we look at the main divisions of mankind, we find many differences that are visible to the unaided eye ... It is highly likely that all these differences are determined genetically, but they are not determined in any simple way. For example, where skin color is concerned there are at least four gene differences that contribute to variations in pigmentation."13
If such an apparently simple and obvious difference as skin color is determined in such a complex fashion, and if all such gene factors have developed originally by mutation (as evolutionists believe), then a very long period of racial segregation must have been necessary.

"The simplest interpretation of these conclusions today would envision a relatively small group starting to spread not long after modern man appeared. With the spreading, groups became separated and isolated. Racial differentiation followed. Fifty thousand years or so is a short time in evolutionary terms, and this may help to explain why genetically speaking, human races show relatively small differences."14
Furthermore, if obvious differences such as skin color and facial morphology can arise by mutation and selection in 50,000 years, then surely subtle differences in mental abilities could also arise in such a time, and these would have considerably more selection value for survival than would skin pigmentation. The inferences for racism are again very obvious.

As a matter of fact, as creationists have repeatedly pointed out, there is no empirical evidence of mutations at confer any kind of "beneficial" effect in the natural environment upon either the individuals or populations that experience them. The various physical changes (skin color, etc.) can be much more easily explained as created genetic factors that were latent in the human genetic system ever since the creation but which could become openly expressed only in a small population being forced to reproduce by inbreeding after segregation from its ancestral population.

If the initial population were somehow forced to break up into small reproductively isolated populations, only a relatively small number of generations would be required to allow distinctive physical characteristics (all representing created genetic factors already present, though latent, in the larger population) to become manifest and fixed in different combinations in the different tribal clans. The enforced segregation would most expeditiously be arranged by the postulated sudden transmutation of the ancestral phonology (spoken language) into a number of uniquely different phonologies. No other traumatic changes would be necessary, as the physical changes would easily and quickly develop genetically from the linguistic segregation.

Furthermore, no basic change in human nature would be involved. All would still "think" in the same way and would still be, distinctively, men. The "deep structure" of human consciousness and communicative ability would be unaffected even by a traumatic change in the "surface structure." Dr. Stent makes a fascinating comment in this connection.

"Hence it is merely the phonological component that has become greatly differentiated during the course of human history, or at least since the construction of the Tower of Babel." (emphasis ours)

The Creationist Answer

Whether or not Dr. Stent believes in the confusion of tongues at Babel as a real event of history, it is at least symbolic to him of the fact that there must have at one time been some such division, and that no normal evolutionary development could accomplish it. To the creationist, of course, Babel is not only symbolic but actual. The supernatural confusion of phonologies, with its resultant tribal dispersions throughout the world and its logical genetic consequences in the rapid emergence of distinctive tribal (not "racial" -- the Bible knows nothing of the racial categories of evolutionary biology) characteristics, fits all the known facts of philology, ethnology and archaeology beautifully.

Furthermore, man's universal semantic consciousness is at once an attestation of his uniqueness in the living world and of the inability of naturalistic science to comprehend this deep inner nature of man. Dr. Stent himself has recognized this:

"No matter how deeply we probe into the visual pathway, in the end we need to posit an ‘inner man’ who transforms the visual image into a precept. And as far as linguistic is concerned, the analysis of language appears to be heading for the same conceptual impasse as does the analysis of vision."

Chomsky and the other structural linguists have found it necessary to postulate a "deep structure" of self-consciousness, but they do not know where this comes from nor how it functions. Materialistic science can explain much with its chemical and physical equations, but it founders when it reaches the domain of "soul" and "spirit." Stent continues in this vein:

"That is to say, for man the concept of ‘meaning’ can be fathomed only in relation to the self, which is both ultimate source and ultimate destination of semantic signals. But the concept of the self ... cannot be given an explicit definition. Instead, the meaning of ‘self’ is intuitively obvious. It is another Kantian transcendental concept, one which we bring a prior to man just as we bring the concepts of space, time and causality to nature."

The concept of "self" may be intuitively obvious, but its cause is not so obvious, at least to an evolutionist. Its reality is found to be necessary, even by naturalistic science, but as an "effect," it requires an adequate "cause," and no naturalistic cause is available to explain it. A supernatural Creator is required!

All of which leads to the conclusion that the ultimate purpose of language is not merely for communication between man and man, but even more for communication between man and his Maker. God speaks to man through His Word and man responds in praise and prayer to God.

The Tower of Babel




On the one side, we find the real world of objects, events, and tensional space-time relations. On the other side, we find fully abstract representations that contain information about the material world. That articulate information is abstracted first by our senses, secondarily by our bodily actions, and tertiarily by our ability to use one or more particular languages (e.g., English, French, Navajo, etc.). Between the two realms shown in figure 1, we find what appears to be an uncrossable gulf. Moreover, atheism and the theory of evolution cannot explain humans consciousness, ability to think, and to speech.

Chomsky and the other structural linguists have found it necessary to postulate a "deep structure" of self-consciousness, but they do not know where this comes from nor how it functions. Materialistic science can explain much with its chemical and physical equations, but it founders when it reaches the domain of "soul" and "spirit."

adding to these arguments the argument of morality, miracles experienced all over the world , and the bible, and you have a strong case for theism.

ANTHROPOLOGY: ON THE ORIGINS OF HUMAN LANGUAGE

http://scienceweek.com/2004/sa041203-3.htm

The following points are made by Gary F. Marcus (Nature 2004 431:745):

1) If, as Francois Jacob argued, evolution is like a tinkerer who builds something new by using whatever is close at hand, then from what is the human capacity for language made? Most accounts of the evolution of language have focused on characterizing changes that are internal to the language system. Were the earliest forms of language spoken or (like sign language) gestured? Did language arise suddenly? Or did it emerge gradually, progressing step by step from a simple one-word "protolanguage" (limited to brief comments about the "here and now") into a more complex system that combined individual words into structured meaningful sentences encompassing the future, the past and the possible -- as well as the concrete present? Regardless of how these questions are resolved, if we seek the ultimate origins of language, we also need to look further back, beyond the first protolinguistic systems, to whatever prelinguistic systems may have preceded any form of language.

2) Possible prelinguistic precursors might include systems for planning or sequencing complex events, categorization, automating repetitive actions, and representing space and time. In each case, there are parallels between candidate prelinguistic cognitive (or motor) precursors and systems found in language. For example, many animals are able to construct mental maps for navigation, and all known languages draw heavily on spatial metaphors. Thus, it is tempting to conclude that machinery for the mental representation of space plays some role in -- or is at the very least available to -- the machinery for language.

3) But parallels alone are not enough to establish shared lineage between two systems -- they could instead represent convergent (independent) evolution. For example, a language system could have evolved its own machinery for automating repeated tasks, independent of pre-existing machinery for automatizing other cognitive functions. A more telling way of establishing prelinguistic ancestry could come from evolutionary contrivances, properties of language that existed not because of some selective advantage, but simply because they have descended from ancestral systems evolved for other purposes. Just as the panda's thumb is not a true digit, but a modified sesamoid bone pressed into service for gripping bamboo, some properties of our capacity for language may be better understood not as optimal solutions to a system for communication, but as cobbled-together remnants of ancestral cognitive systems.

4) In language, one good candidate comes from the study of memory. According to an optimal design, if the capacity for understanding language were evolved from scratch, it would be possible to reliably retrieve individual bits of syntactic structure on the basis of their location in a hierarchical structure, independently of their content -- as in most digital computers. Instead, human language systems seem to rely on "content-addressable" memory, a form of memory -- widespread in the vertebrate world and with an apparently ancient evolutionary source -- that retrieves information directly on the basis of its content, rather than through location. Unlike a computer's binary-tree structure, content-dependent memory in mammalian brains is subject to degradation over time and to interference between similar or intervening items.

5) Human speakers are thus less likely to resolve the relation between "admired" and "the newspaper" in a sentence such as: "It was the newspaper that was published by the undergraduates that the editor admired," than in the briefer sentence "It was the newspaper that the editor admired." In languages such as English that lack rich case-marking, in most cases listeners can correctly interpret only two levels of embedding, not because of a strict limit on the size of representable binary trees, but because similar items become confused in memory.(1-5)

http://www.trueorigin.org/language01.asp

By age four, most humans have developed an ability to communicate through oral language. By age six or seven, most humans can comprehend, as well as express, written thoughts. These unique abilities of communicating through a native language clearly separate humans from all animals. The obvious question then arises, where did we obtain this distinctive trait? Organic evolution has proven unable to elucidate the origin of language and communication. Knowing how beneficial this ability is to humans, one would wonder why this skill has not evolved in other species. Materialistic science is insufficient at explaining not only how speech came about, but also why we have so many different languages. Linguistic research, combined with neurological studies, has determined that human speech is highly dependent on a neuronal network located in specific sites within the brain. This intricate arrangement of neurons, and the anatomical components necessary for speech, cannot be reduced in such a way that one could produce a “transitional” form of communication. The following paper examines the true origin of speech and language, and the anatomical and physiological requirements. The evidence conclusively implies that humans were created with the unique ability to employ speech for communication.

Introduction

n 1994, an article appeared in Time magazine titled ‘How man began’. Within that article was the following bold assertion: ‘No single, essential difference separates human beings from other animals’.[1] Yet, in what is obviously a contradiction to such a statement, all evolutionists admit that communication via speech is uniquely human—so much so that it often is used as the singular, and most important, dividing line between humans and animals. In his book, Eve Spoke, evolutionist Philip Lieberman admitted:

‘Speech is so essential to our concept of intelligence that its possession is virtually equated with being human. Animals who talk are human, because what sets us apart from other animals is the “gift” of speech’ [emphasis in original].[2]
In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, editors Jones, Martin, and Pilbeam conceded that ‘there are no non-human languages,’ and then went on to observe that ‘language is an adaptation unique to humans, and yet the nature of its uniqueness and its biological basis are notoriously difficult to define’ [emphasis added].[3] In his book, The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain, Terrance Deacon noted:

‘In this context, then, consider the case of human language. It is one of the most distinctive behavioral adaptations on the planet. Languages evolved in only one species, in only one way, without precedent, except in the most general sense. And the differences between languages and all other natural modes of communicating are vast.’[4]
What events transpired that have allowed humans to speak, while animals remain silent? If we are to believe the evolutionary teaching currently taking place in colleges and universities around the world, speech evolved as a natural process over time. Yet no one is quite sure how, and there are no known animals that are in a transition phase from non-speaking to speaking. In fact, in the Atlas of Languages, this remarkable admission can be found: ‘No languageless community has ever been found’.[5] This represents no small problem for evolution.

In fact, the origin of speech and language (along with the development of sex and reproduction) remains one of the most significant hurdles in evolutionary theory, even in the twenty-first century. In an effort “make the problem go away,” some evolutionists have chosen not to even address the problem. Jean Aitchison noted:

‘In 1866, a ban on the topic was incorporated into the founding statutes of the Linguistic Society of Paris, perhaps the foremost academic linguistic institution of the time: ‘The Society does not accept papers on either the origin of language or the invention of a universal language.’[6]
That is an amazing (albeit inadvertent) admission of defeat, especially coming from a group of such eminent scientists, researchers, and scholars. While remaining quiet worked well for a while, evolutionists now realize that they need a materialistic answer for this problem.

The truth of the matter is, however, that the origin of human languages can be discerned—but not via the theory of evolution. We invite your attention to the discussion that follows, which demonstrates conclusively that humans were created with the unique ability to employ speech for communication.

Evolutionary Theories on the Origin of Speech

Many animals are capable of using sounds to communicate. However, there is a colossal difference between the hoot of an owl or the grunt of a pig, and a human standing before an audience reciting Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken.’ This enormous chasm between humans and animals has led to a multiplicity of theories on exactly how man came upon this unequaled capability. Many researchers have focused on the capabilities of animals—sounds and gestures—in an effort to understand the physiological mechanism underlying communication. But there is a single, common theme that stands out amidst all the theories: ‘The world’s languages evolved spontaneously. They were not designed’ [emphasis added].[7]

Design implies a Designer; thus, evolutionists have conjured up theories that consider language nothing more than a fortuitous chain of events. Most of these theories involve humans growing bigger brains, which then made it physiologically possible for people to develop speech and language. For instance, in the foreword of her book, The Seeds of Speech, Jean Aitchison hypothesized:

‘Physically, a deprived physical environment led to more meat-eating and, as a result, a bigger brain. The enlarged brain led to the premature birth of humans, and in consequence a protracted childhood, during which mothers cooed and crooned to their offspring. An upright stance altered the shape of the mouth and vocal tract, allowing a range of coherent sounds to be uttered.’[8]
Thus, according to Aitchison, we can thank ‘a deprived physical environment’ for our ability to talk and communicate. Another evolutionist, John McCrone, put it this way:

‘It all started with an ape that learned to speak. Man’s hominid ancestors were doing well enough, even though the world had slipped into the cold grip of the ice ages. They had solved a few key problems that had held back the other branches of the ape family, such as how to find enough food to feed their rather oversized brains. Then man’s ancestors happened on the trick of language. Suddenly, a whole new mental landscape opened up. Man became self-aware and self-possessed.’[9]
Question: How (and why) did that first ape learn to speak? It is easy to assert that ‘it all started with an ape that learned to speak’. But it is much more difficult to describe how this took place, especially in light of our failure to teach apes to speak today. In his book, From Hand to Mouth: The Origins of Language, Michael Corballis stated:

‘My own view is that language developed much more gradually, starting with the gestures of apes, then gathering momentum as the bipedal hominids evolved. The appearance of the larger-brained genus Homo some 2 million years ago may have signaled the emergence and later development of syntax, with vocalizations providing a mounting refrain. What may have distinguished Homo sapiens was the final switch from a mixture of gestural and vocal communication to an autonomous vocal language, embellished by gesture but not dependent on it.’[10]
The truth however, is that evolutionists can only speculate as to the origin of language. Evolutionist Carl Zimmer summed it up well when he wrote:

‘No one knows the exact chronology of this evolution, because language leaves precious few traces on the human skeleton. The voice box is a flimsy piece of cartilage that rots away. It is suspended from a slender C-shaped bone called a hyoid, but the ravages of time usually destroy the hyoid too.’[11]
Thus, theories are plentiful—while the evidence to support those theories remains mysteriously unavailable. Add to this the fact that humans acquire the ability to communicate (and even learn some of the basic rules of syntax) by the age of two, and you begin to see why Aitchison admitted:

‘Of course, holes still remain in our knowledge: in particular, at what stage did language leap from being something new which humans discovered to being something which every newborn human is scheduled to acquire? This is still a puzzle.’[12]
A ‘puzzle’ indeed!

Adam—the First Human to Talk and Communicate

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.’[13]
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’.[14]

When God created the first human beings—Adam and Eve—He created them in His own image (Genesis 1:26-27). 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 1:28-30). 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 2:15-17). Adam gave names to the animals before the creation of Eve (Genesis 2:19-20). 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 2:23). 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 3:1-5). 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 4:11-12).

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[15].

The Bible’s explanation of the origin of multiple human languages is provided in the Tower of Babel incident recorded in Genesis 11:1-9 (see Figure 1). Scripture simply and confidently asserts: ‘Now the whole earth had one language and one speech’ (11:1). 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 45:18) 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’.[16]


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’.[17]

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].[18]
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’.[19]

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).[20]

Figure 2. Left hemisphere of human brain with language centers—Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area—highlighted.
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. 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.’[21]
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’.[22] 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.’[23]
Anatomy of Speech


Figure 3. Posterior view of the larynx opening into the pharynx (‘tube within a tube’).
The specific mechanics involved in speaking have anatomical requirements that are found primarily in humans (the exception being angels—1 Cor. 13:1; Rev. 5:2; and also birds—although they produce sound differently). There is no animal living presently, nor has one been observed in the fossil record, that possesses anything close to the ‘voice box’ (as we commonly call it) present in humans. As information scientist Werner Gitt observed in his fascinating book, The Wonder of Man:

‘Only man has the gift of speech, a characteristic otherwise only possessed by God. This separates us clearly from the animal kingdom ... In addition to the necessary “software” for speech, we have also been provided with the required “hardware”.’[24]
Furthermore, the complete lack of any ‘transitional’ animal form (with the requisite speech hardware) in the fossil record poses a significant continuity problem for evolutionists. As Deacon noted:

‘This lack of precedent makes language a problem for biologists. Evolutionary explanations are about biological continuity, so a lack of continuity limits the use of the comparative method in several important ways. We can’t ask, “What ecological variable correlates with increasing language use in a sample species?” Nor can we investigate the ‘neurological correlates of increased language complexity.’ There is no range of species to include in our analysis.’>[25]

Figure 4. The complex design and multiple components necessary for speech argue strongly against an evolutionary origin.
To simplify the anatomy required for human speech by using an analogy, think of a small tube resting inside a larger tube (see Figure 3). The inner tube consists of the trachea going down to the lungs, and the larynx (which houses the voice box). At the larynx, the inner tube opens out to the larger tube, which is known as the pharynx. It not only carries sound up to the mouth, but it also carries food and water from the mouth down to the stomach. A rather simplistic description of how humans utter sounds in speech can be characterized by the control of air generated by the lungs, flowing through the vocal tract, vibrating over the vocal cord, filtered by facial muscle activity, and released out of the mouth and nose. Just as sound is generated from blowing air across the narrow mouth of a bottle, air is passed over the vocal cords, which can be tightened or relaxed to produce various resonances.

The physiological components necessary can be divided into: (1) supralaryngeal vocal tract; (2) larynx; and (3) subglottal system (see Figure 4). In 1848, Johannes Muller demonstrated that human speech involved the modulation of acoustic energy by the airway above the larynx (referred to as the supralaryngeal tract). Sound energy for speech is generated in the larynx at the vocal folds. The subglottal system—which consists of the lungs, trachea, and their associated muscles—provides the necessary power for speech production. The lungs produce the initial air pressure that is essential for the speech signal; the pharyngeal cavity, oral cavity, and nasal cavity shape the final output sound that is perceived as speech. This is the primary anatomy used in common speech, aside from those sounds produced by varying the air pressure in the pharynx or constricting parts of the oral cavity.

Birds of a Feather—or Naked Ape?

Imagine the conundrum in which evolutionists find themselves when it comes to speech and language. The animal that comes closest to producing anything that even vaguely resembles human speech is not another primate, but rather a bird. Deacon observed:

‘In fact, most birds easily outshine any mammal in vocal skills, and though dogs, cats, horses, and monkeys are remarkably capable learners in many domains, vocalization is not one of them. Our remarkable vocal abilities are not part of a trend, but an exception.’[26]
For instance, a famous African gray parrot in England named Toto can pronounce words so clearly that he sounds rather human. Like humans, birds can produce fluent, complex sounds. We both share a double-barreled, double-layered system involving tunes and dialects—a system controlled by the left side of our brains. And just like young children, juvenile birds experience a period termed ‘sub-song’ where they twitter in what resembles the babbling of a young child learning to speak. Yet Toto does not have a ‘language’ as humans understand it. Humans use language for many more purposes than birds use song. Consider, too, that it is mostly male birds that sing. Females remain songless unless they are injected with the male hormone testosterone.[27] Also consider that humans frequently communicate intimately between two or three people, while bird communication is a fairly long-distance affair.

One of the big ‘success’ stories in looking at the human-like qualities of non-human primates is a male bonobo chimpanzee known as Kanzi.[28] [29] Kanzi was born 28 October 1990, and began his long journey to learn to ‘speak’ as a result of the training provided for his mother, Matata, via a ‘talking’ keyboard. Matata never did master the keyboard, but Kanzi did. Through many years of intense training and close social contact with humans, this remarkable animal attained the language abilities of an average two-year-old human. By age ten, he had a vocabulary (via the keyboard) of some two hundred words. In fact, Kanzi was able to go beyond the mere parroting or ‘aping’ of humans; he actually could communicate his wants and needs, express feelings, and use tools. Inasmuch as Kanzi could accomplish such things, does this prove that chimps are merely hairy, child-like versions of humans?

Hardly. To use the words of the famous American news commentator, Paul Harvey, someone needs to tell ‘the rest of the story’. For example, in their 2002 volume, Up from Dragons, John Skoyles and Dorion Sagan discussed Kanzi at great length. Among other things, they wrote:

‘Kanzi shows that while chimps may have the potential to learn language, they require a “gifted” environment to do so. Kanzi was surrounded by intelligent apes with Ph.D.s [i.e., humans-BH/BT/DM] who spoke to him and gave him a stream of rich interactions. They gave Kanzi’s brain a world in which it could play at developing its ability to communicate ... Therefore, as much as in his brain, Kanzi’s skill lies in the environment that helped shape it’ [emphasis added].[30]
Kanzi does not possess the anatomical equipment required for speech. In fact, aside from parrots mimicking ability, no other animals are anatomically equipped for speech. As Skoyles and Sagan went on to note: ‘Chimps lack the vocal abilities needed for making speech sounds—speech requires a skilled coordination between breathing and making movements with the larynx that chimps lack’.[31] Humans, however, do possess the anatomical equipment required for speech.

As Skoyles and Sagan candidly admitted, Kanzi’s skill was ‘in the environment that helped shape it’. That is precisely what Herb Terrace discovered with his own chimp, Nim Chimsky (sarcastically named after MIT scientist Noam Chomsky). Such an assessment always will be true of ‘talking animals’. But it is not always true of humans! Consider the following case in point.

As we mentioned earlier, the eminent linguist Noam Chomsky has championed the idea that humans are born with a built-in ‘universal grammar’—a series of biological switches for complex language that is set in place in the early years of childhood. This, he believes, is why children can grasp elaborate language rules, even at an early age—without adults to teach them. Chomsky noted:

‘The rate of vocabulary acquisition is so high at certain stages in life, and the precision and delicacy of the concepts acquired so remarkable, that it seems necessary to conclude that in some manner the conceptual system with which lexical items are connected is already in place.’[32]
John W. Oller and John L. Omdahl went on to comment:

‘In other words, the conceptual system is not really constructed in the child’s mind as if out of nothing, but must be, in an important sense, known before the fact. The whole system must be in place before it can be employed to interpret experience’ [emp. in orig.].[33]
Powerful support for Chomsky’s theory emerged from a decade-long study of 500 deaf children in Managua, Nicaragua, which was reported in the December 1995 issue of Scientific American.[34] These children started attending special schools in 1979, but none used or was taught a formal sign language. Within a few years the children began to develop their own basic ‘pidgin’ sign language. This quickly was modified by younger children entering school, with the current version taking on a complex and consistent grammar. If Chomsky is correct, where, then, did humans get their innate ability for language? Chomsky himself will not even hazard a guess. In his opinion, ‘very few people are concerned with the origin of language because most consider it a hopeless question’.[35] The development of language, he admits, is a ‘mystery’. The fundamental failing of naturalistic theories is that they are inadequate to explain the origins of something so complex and information-rich as human language, which itself is a gift of God and part of man’s having been created ‘in His image’.[36]

The fact is, no animal is capable of speaking in the manner in which people can speak. Speech is a peculiarly human trait. Steven Pinker, director of MIT’s Center of Cognitive Neuroscience, stated in The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind:

‘As you are reading these words, you are taking part in one of the wonders of the natural world. For you and I belong to a species with a remarkable ability: we can shape events in each other’s brains with remarkable precision. I am not referring to telepathy or mind control or the other obsessions of fringe science; even in the depictions of believers, these are blunt instruments compared to an ability that is uncontroversially present in every one of us. That ability is language. Simply by making noises with our mouths, we can reliably cause precise new combinations of ideas to arise in each other’s minds. The ability comes so naturally that we are apt to forget what a miracle it is ... [H]uman language is based on a very different design ... Even the seat of human language in the brain is special ... ’ [emphasis added].[37]
Without detracting anything from primates like Kanzi and Washoe, fundamental differences between animals and humans nevertheless remain. Unlike human children, animals: (1) do not have a special region in the brain devoted to language; (2) possess a much smaller brain overall; and (3) lack the anatomy to speak the words they may think. In summary, humans have an innate, built-in, hard-wired ability to acquire and communicate complex language from the moment of their birth. Animals do not. Admittedly, animals do possess a measure of understanding. They can learn to respond to commands and signs, and in some instances even can be trained to use minimal portions of human sign language. As Oller and Omdahl pointed out: ‘One of the most remarkable missing elements in the pseudolinguistic behavior of the trained apes is that they don’t ask questions. They simply don’t seem to be able to understand what a question is.’[38] Thus, even though apes, dogs, and birds can be trained to do certain things and can convey ideas of danger, food, etc., they still cannot reason with others so as to have true mental communion. Why? The intelligence of animals is, quite bluntly, unlike that of humankind.

The issue is not ‘can animals think?’ but rather ‘can they think the way humans do?’ The answer, obviously, is a resounding ‘No!’ Although animal trainers and investigators since the seventeenth century have tried to teach chimpanzees to talk, no chimpanzee has ever managed it. A chimpanzee’s sound-producing anatomy is simply too different from that of humans. Chimpanzees might be able to produce a muffled approximation of human speech—if their brains could plan and execute the necessary articulate maneuvers. But to do this, they would have to have our brains, which they obviously do not.[39]

Complexity of Language—Uniquely Human

No known language in the whole of human history can be considered ‘primitive’ in any sense of the word. In her book, What is Linguistics? Suzette Elgin wrote:

‘the most ancient languages for which we have written texts—Sanskrit for example—are often far more intricate and complicated in their grammatical forms than many other contemporary languages.’[40]

Figure 5. The most ancient languages for which we have written texts are often far more intricate and complicated in their grammatical forms than many contemporary languages.
The late Lewis Thomas, a distinguished physician, scientist, and longtime director and chancellor of the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, acknowledged: ‘ ...Language is so incomprehensible a problem that the language we use for discussing the matter is itself becoming incomprehensible’.[41] It appears that, from the beginning, human communication was designed with a tremendous amount of complexity and forethought, and has allowed us to communicate not only with one another, but also with the Designer of language.

In a paper titled ‘Evolution of Universal Grammar’ that appeared in the January 2001 issue of Science, M.A. Nowak and his colleagues attempted to discount the gulf that separates human and animals.[42] This paper, which was a continuation of a 1999 paper titled ‘The Evolution of Language’,[43] used mathematical calculations in an effort to predict the evolution of grammar and the rules surrounding it. While Nowak and his team inferred that the evolution of universal grammar can occur via natural selection, they freely admitted that ‘the question concerning why only humans evolved language is hard to answer’ [emphasis added].[44] Hard to answer indeed! The mathematical models presented in these papers do not tell us anything about the origination of the multitude of languages used in the world today. If man truly did evolve from an ape-like ancestor, how did the phonologic [the branch of linguistics that deals with the sounds of speech and their production] component of our languages become so diverse and variegated? Nowak’s paper also did not clarify the origination of written languages, or describe how the language process was initiated in the first humans, considering we know today that parents teach languages to their offspring.

Also, consider that when language first appears on the scene, it already is fully developed and very complex. The late Harvard paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson described it this way:

‘Even the peoples with least complex cultures have highly sophisticated languages, with complex grammar and large vocabularies, capable of naming and discussing anything that occurs in the sphere occupied by their speakers. The oldest language that can be reconstructed is already modern, sophisticated, complete from an evolutionary point of view.’[45]
Chomsky summed it up well when he stated:

‘Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world ... There is no reason to suppose that the ‘gaps’ are bridgeable. There is no more of a basis for assuming an evolutionary development from breathing to walking.’[46]
Conclusion

The fact of the matter is that language is quintessentially a human trait. All attempts to shed light on the evolution of human language have failed—due to the lack of knowledge regarding the origin of any language, and due to the lack of an animal that possesses any ‘transitional’ form of communication. This leaves evolutionists with a huge gulf to bridge between humans with their innate communication abilities, and the grunts, barks, or chatterings of animals. As noted:

‘By the age of six, the average child has learned to use and understand about 13,000 words; by eighteen it will have a working vocabulary of 60,000 words. That means it has been learning an average of ten new words a day since its first birthday, the equivalent of a new word every 90 minutes of its waking life’ [emp. in orig.].[47]
Deacon lamented:

‘So this is the real mystery. Even under these loosened criteria, there are no simple languages used among other species, though there are many other equally or more complicated modes of communication. Why not? And the problem is even more counterintuitive when we consider the almost insurmountable difficulties of teaching language to other species. This is surprising, because there are many clever species. Though researchers report that language-like communication has been taught to nonhuman species, even the best results are not above legitimate challenges, and the fact that it is difficult to prove whether or not some of these efforts have succeeded attests to the rather limited scope of the resulting behaviors, as well as to deep disagreements about what exactly constitutes language-like behavior.’[48]
Another scholar who recognized this chasm between humans and animals commented:

‘The very fact ... that human animals are ready to engage in a great ‘garrulity’ over the merits and demerits of essentially unprovable hypotheses, is an exciting testimony to the gap between humans and other animals.’[49]
Gap indeed! Humans are capable of communicating in human language because God created them with the ability to do so! The Bible still offers the only plausible explanation for the origin of human language when it records: ‘Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;” ... So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them’ (Genesis 1:26-27).

No Easy Answers In Evolution Of Human Language

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080217102131.htm

Evolution and the Development of Human Speech

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2054

by Brad Harrub, Ph.D.

Creation and Human Language*

http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v06n1p25.htm

http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1087

The Origin of Human Speech: an "all or nothing" jump!

http://www.icr.org/article/770/