Origin Of language

INTRODUCTION.
Man is inquisitive and socio by nature. Inquisitive because he has always wanted to discover and invent. His restless nature has always inspired him to learn more and more about things around him, and find out for himself the ultimate truth. He asks himself the questions such as: who is he? What is the purpose of his creation? What is this? Why is it like this? In searching for an answer he learns more and more, gains knowledge and discovers the truth. And socio because he is always afraid of loneliness. He always wants to have the company of a man. While living in a society, he needs some source i-e language for communication and sharing his ideas & feelings with other fellow beings.
WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
Humans are the only species that has evolved an advanced system of communication between individuals. Whereas other species communicate through ritualized and repetitious songs, calls, or gestures, humans have developed linguistic systems that can express a literally infinite variety of separate and distinct thoughts. This incredible evolutionary leap is what distinguished humans from all other organisms on earth.
According to Sapir (1921:8): “language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of voluntarily produced symbol”. In their Outline of Linguistics Analysis Bloch and Trager wrote (1942: 5): “A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group co-operates”. In his Essay on Language, Hall (1968: 158) tells that language is “the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols”. In Syntactic Structures (1957:13) Chomsky is of the opinion that “Language is a set of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements”
ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.
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? Did language come all of a sudden (rabbit-out-of-the-hat idea) or was it built-up one word at a time (the amoeba idea)? We are profoundly ignorant about its origin and have to content ourselves with more or less plausible speculations. There are some myths and theories about its origin.
THEORIES ABOUT ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.
Language first appeared between 30,000 and 100,000 years ago in the species Homo sapiens. But how did language evolve? Currently, there are two rival answers to this question: the first and more common explanation is that language was an adaptation of some sort; the second (chiefly espoused by Stephen Jay Gould) is that language is a spandrel, a nonadaptive element arising as a byproduct of other processes. Besides there are different theories such as:
Ø The Bow-wow Theory.
According to this theory, language came into being as imitation of natural sounds such as the cries of animals. For example the words like cuckoo, pewit, grumble, grunt, bump, sneeze etc show a kind of ‘sound symbolism’. This theory, however, does not explain how language obtained its articulated structure.
Ø The Pooh-pooh Theory.
This theory argues that language arose from instinctive emotional cries of pain, joy, fear, etc. It does nothing to explain the articulated nature of language, it does little to bridge the gap between expressive cry and symbol.
Ø The Ding-dong Theory.
The "ding-dong" theory argues that primitive man had a peculiar instinctive faculty, by which every external impression that he received was given vocal expression. It maintains that there is somehow an innate connection between sound and meaning. It is a pseudo-theory because it merely describes the facts in a different terminology.
Ø The Yo-he-ho Theory.
A scholar of nineteenth-century named Noire put forward the theory that language began as involuntary grunts such as when lifting something heavy or hauling. Vocal noises of this kind might then develop into words, meaning such things as ‘heave!’, ‘rest!’, ‘lift!’.
Ø The Pop Theory.
Stephen Jay Gould presented this theory. According to him “language just popped into existence all at once”.
Ø The Ta-Ta Theory.
The ta-ta theory posits the imitation of bodily movements as the genesis of language.

Ø Evolutionary Theory.
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’

RELIGIOUS NOTIONS.
One view is that God created Adam and “whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name there of (Genesis 2:19). In a chapter he titled ‘What, When, and Where did Eve Speak to Adam and He to Her?’ Philip Lieberman commented:
‘In the five-million-year-long lineage that connects us to the common ancestors of apes and human beings, there have been many Adams and many Eves. In the beginning was the word, but the vocal communications of our most distant hominid ancestors five million years or so ago probably didn’t really differ from those of the ape-hominid ancestor.’
Using biblical terminology, Lieberman had written a year earlier: ‘For with speech came a capacity for thought that had never existed before, and that has transformed the world. In the beginning was the word’.
When God created the first human beings—Adam and Eve—He created them in His own image (Genesis 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).
Alternatively, following Hindu tradition “Language came from goddess Sarasvati, wife of Brahma, creator of the universe.

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. 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.’