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How are natural languages formed?

L.Y.S.

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I was watching an old movie from my childhood the other day, Nell. On the description I read from netflix it said "Nell an inhabitant from the backwoods of North Carolina appears to have created her own language." It's not the exact description, but that was the most important part.

Of course for all of those who saw the movie, you know Jodie- Foster was Nell. Her mother recently died and Liam Neeson (the doctor) found her in a ranch where she began to speak a weird and peculiar language. Neeson thought that it was a new language so he took it to a clinic where (Natasha Richardson) began to investigate.

Long story short it was actually English. Foster's mother in the movie had suffered a series of strokes. She was reduced to aphasic speech. Foster picked this up and I guess made a dialect of English.

Because of seeing this movie I began to wonder how natural languages are formed. I'm guessing that it starts out with basic words. Progresses to sentences, and then evolves into whole ideas as societies become more complex. I would like to know the general idea behind how linguist believe languages are formed and how long do some of these transformations take place?
 
Languages evolve from each other. I guess you need to go very very very very very very very very very far back in time to find a language that developed from wordless grunts and gestures, rather than from some other spoken language. So far back in time that there is no way of proving how they spoke, we can only try to prove what sounds a fossilized creature was theoretically capable of producing, but capability of producing sounds does not actually prove that the sounds were used, and how they were used and by whom.
 
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I've heard somewhere that the oldest human language may be less than 20'000 years old. It's just something I heard though. Does anyone know the process and length of how languages form? I've like to see a detailed diagram or see a nice lengthy journal on it.
 
You probably want to check out the Indo European language tree for that. It doesn't give you the process but it does show you how languages evolved. :) i hope that helps.
 
Noam Chomsky is more than a left-wing bat. His theories on language are fairly astute.
 
I remember reading something about children whose parents speak pidgin languages end up creating much more complex languages of out of them... let me see what I can dig up:

Ah, from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable, natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins (which are believed by scholars to be necessary precedents of creoles) in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from pidgins.
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So are pidgin and Creole languages the precursor to new complex language families? For example can it be assumed that at one point all languages came from a common ancestor? A group splinters off and begins to speak pidgin. This pidgin forms the basis of a new Creole language. Then major cultural reforms transform the language. After several Creole languages and several reforms later new unique languages arise? I like the link roboramma, I just have so many questions. That' why I'm asking you guys :D.
 
Mods can you put the blue question mark thingy on the beginning of my thread so people know that this is a question based thread. Thank you.
 
L.Y.S. said:
So are pidgin and Creole languages the precursor to new complex language families? For example can it be assumed that at one point all languages came from a common ancestor? A group splinters off and begins to speak pidgin. This pidgin forms the basis of a new Creole language.
Click to expand...
I don't think it necessarily works that way: pidgins are languages that are a meld between two different languages, mainly they are developed in trading posts where people with two different languages have to communicate and so they end up with a simple language that takes words from both, and which is thus easy for speakers of either language to learn.

But languages evolve on their own all the time, for a variety of reasons that can be completely unrelated to that dynamic.

I just thought this was an interesting reference to how people without access to a language with a complex grammar (children whose parents speak a pidgin) can create a complex grammar out of whole cloth.

In other words, I don't think that this is how most language family's originally formed, but it may give us some insights into the origins of language.

I'm no expert though, and may be misinterpreting what actually goes on...
 
L.Y.S. said:
I've heard somewhere that the oldest human language may be less than 20'000 years old. It's just something I heard though. Does anyone know the process and length of how languages form? I've like to see a detailed diagram or see a nice lengthy journal on it.
Click to expand...

Twenty thousand years old?

I'd like to know more about that, as I find that contrary to what I've learned, especially given the age of modern humans being perhaps one hundred to two hundred thousand years old.

I recall an episode of NOVA which had several guests speaking of language centers in the brain being present in human ancestors as old as Australopithecus, and that the development of language seems to have coincided with the development of our digestive tracts' and teeth' adaptation to cooked meat, that is, the stomach and teeth shrank due to our adaptation to cooked meat. The idea is, while our ancestors were forced to huddle around a fire at night in close proximity, they were forced to socialize and communicate much more than usual. Primitive languages with clicking consonants like the San Bush People's have been posited to be among the most primitive of human languages known, lending themselves well to hunter gatherers needing to communicate while stalking and tracking prey while remaining stealthy, and the clicking travels well and is easily understood in hushed tones.
 
Halfcentaur said:
Twenty thousand years old?

I'd like to know more about that, as I find that contrary to what I've learned, especially given the age of modern humans being perhaps one hundred to two hundred thousand years old.

I recall an episode of NOVA which had several guests speaking of language centers in the brain being present in human ancestors as old as Australopithecus, and that the development of language seems to have coincided with the development of our digestive tracts' and teeth' adaptation to cooked meat, that is, the stomach and teeth shrank due to our adaptation to cooked meat. The idea is, while our ancestors were forced to huddle around a fire at night in close proximity, they were forced to socialize and communicate much more than usual. Primitive languages with clicking consonants like the San Bush People's have been posited to be among the most primitive of human languages known, lending themselves well to hunter gatherers needing to communicate while stalking and tracking prey while remaining stealthy, and the clicking travels well and is easily understood in hushed tones.
Click to expand...

Interesting I had no idea. I think I saw something similar to this on a Nova special. From Ape to Man? or was it Becoming Human? I have no clue. Great answer, it still doesn't answer my question though. How do natural languages form? And how long does it take to form them?

Say I wanted to create a natural language that had almost nothing in common with English and was completely unique, would I be able to do this? Or would it just be another auxiliary language that doesn't adhere to commonly set natural standards?
 
Look into the study of bird song. There's lots available, and it might give relevant insight.
 
quarky said:
Look into the study of bird song. There's lots available, and it might give relevant insight.
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Yeah and I guess I'll have to actually read too. I guess I'll have to stomach some Chomsky :(.

Does anyone know where I should start?
 
Giraffe107 said:
these deaf children invented their own sign language-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...Deaf-children-invent-a-new-sign-language.html

The children were left essentially to their own devices, and developed the signing to communicate with each other.
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This is perhaps the most interesting information I've received in this thread. So can people who already know a language like... let's say... anyone of us, could we still create our own devices or would we be too influenced by our own indigenous languages to break the mental barrier required to make our own unique language?
 
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