A heritage blog by: Ravindra Mundkur & Hosabettu Vishwanatha
A heritage blog by: Ravindra Mundkur & Hosabettu Vishwanatha
Thursday, October 4, 2007
40.Early evolution of words and languages
The concept of the African origin and migration of mankind worldwide suggests that languages also might have originated and migrated in the similar way. Prehistoric According to the mother tongue theory of origin of languages, the human migrations appear to have led to the present diverse distribution of worlds languages.
The languages appear to have originated as primitive sounds in the beginning that eventually evolved into morphemes and words. Words were combined to form sentences to supplement the gestures and to facilitate accuracy of expression. Migration of people to different locations around the globe introduced umpteen variations in the words, adoption of the new words, pattern and style of combing words into sentences, usages and grammars depending on the environment of the settlement and the association of pre-existing, resident people. Thus evolution and migrations and diverse environments have produced different and complex languages.
The primitive oral /spoken languages evolved some 130,000 years ago with development of the gene FOXP2 associated with speech. Most of the communications, including the literature and education in the early days were in oral format. Subsequently the necessity of keeping business accounts and preservation and documentation of literature led to the evolution of writing about 5000 years ago.
Linguists like Meritt Ruhlen (1994) consider that all extant languages share a common origin and similar words in different languages are usually the result of divergent evolution from a single earlier language.
Most of the basic morphemes (parts of the word) and words originated among the early civilizations and spread around the globe along with trends and patterns of human migration and habitation.
Sumerian civilization in the Mediterranean valleys of Euphrates and Tigris (now parts of Iraq and Iran) is considered to be one of the early civilizations that developed and flourished during the period 6000 to 2000 BC. There could have been contemporaneous or older civilizations in other parts of the world like India, but these have not been sufficiently documented.
In the light of basic theory of evolution of words and the languages outlined above, we can expect to find some of the basic Tulu morphemes and words in the earliest civilizations, like those developed in the vicinity of the place of origin of the mankind, the northern Africa.
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