The Origin of Languages, and the Antiquity of Speaking Man

Hale, Horatio

doi:10.1126/science.ns-8.186s.191

Cited by 27 publications

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“…An attempt was made to locate ali linguistic data described in the literature on autonomous languages [5,6,[8][9][10]13,14,17]. It was surprising to discover how few recent descriptions have been published, despite the interest the phenomenon arouses in psychological literature and the popular press.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autonomous Languages of Twins

Bakker

1987

Acta genet. med. gemellol.: twin res.

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Twins are regularly reported to invent languages of their own, unintelligible to others. These languages are known as autonomous languages, cryptophasia or idioglossia. Despite current belief, this is not a rare phenomenon. Autonomous languages exist in about 40% of all twins, but often disappear soon. In this study, nine autonomous languages are compared: the circumstances in which they emerge, how these languages relate to the parents' language (the model language) and how they are structured. The prototypical situation is one in which two or more close siblings (not necessarily twins) grow up closely together during the language acquisition period. If an adult model language is frequently absent, the children use each other as a model and acquire the language imperfectly. The language may stabilise at that level. If a model is completely absent, the children probably do not create a language. In all cases known, the language consists of onomatopoeic expressions, some invented words, but for the greatest part of words from the adult language adopted to the constrained phonological possibilities of young children. These words being hardly recognizable, the language may turn out to be completely unintelligible to speakers of the model languages, but they resemble each other in that they lack morphology and that word order is based on pragmatic principles such as saliency and the semantic scope of words. Neither the structure of the languages nor its emergence can be explained by other than situational factors.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autonomous Languages of Twins

Bakker

1987

Acta genet. med. gemellol.: twin res.

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2015

Kisisi (Our Language)

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Language as a Specimen

Solleveld

2023

Ber Wissenschaftsgesch

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Language was never studied by linguists (or philologists) alone. The greater part of the languages of the world was first known in the West through the reports of missionaries, explorers, and colonial administrators, and what they documented reflected their specific interests. Missionaries wrote catechisms, primers, dictionaries, and Bible translations (especially Lord's Prayers); for explorers and administrators, language was one aspect among many to cover in their accounts of faraway regions. Peoples were identified by their language; toponyms served for geographic description; names of plants and animals were gathered together with specimens and images of plants and animals. In this context, linguistic materials were equally described as “specimens.” This article investigates the various ways in which language material was used and conceived of as a specimen, and the global trajectories of these “specimens.” Especially the role of naturalist explorers deserves closer attention in this regard. What they did, throughout the late 18th and 19th century, was gathering language material as one kind of specimen among others, Forster in the Pacific, Humboldt, Martius, and d'Orbigny in South America, and Peters in Mozambique. Two large‐scale expeditions from the mid‐19th century stand out as examples: the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1838–1842), whose collections later filled the Smithsonian Institution, and the Austrian‐Hungarian Novara expedition (1857–1859).

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The Origin of Languages, and the Antiquity of Speaking Man

Cited by 27 publications

References 0 publications

Autonomous Languages of Twins

Autonomous Languages of Twins

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Language as a Specimen

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