Wikipedia

Draft:Linguistic monogenesis and polygenesis


The linguistic monogenesis and polygenesis are two different hypotheses about the phylogenetic origin of human languages. According to monogenesis, human language arose only once in a single community, and all current languages come from the first original tongue. According to the second hypothesis, human languages came into being in several communities independently, and current tongues derived from different fonts. [1]

Monogenesis edit

The monogenetic theory points to a single origin of all of the world's languages. It states that all current languages have formed through language change from a single tongue that gradually differentiated into unintelligible languages. The first serious scientist that published this theory was Alfredo Trombetti, in the book L'Unità d'origine del linguaggio, published in 1905. More recently, Joseph Greenberg and Merritt Ruhlen, proponents of monogenesis, argue that in modern languages there is sufficient evidence to reconstruct part of the original language (called proto-world or proto-sapiens). [2] However, this claim has been highly controversial and the reconstructions made by Ruhlen are often discredited. [3]

Some studies seemed to correlate genetic and phonemic diversity, [4] [5] but this approach has been criticized thoroughly. [6]

Polygenesis edit

Polygenesis points to a multiple origin of human languages. According to this hypothesis, languages evolved as several lineages independent of one another. [7] Modern investigation about creole languages demonstrated that with an appropriate linguistic input or pidgin, children develop a language with stable and defined grammar in one generation. [8] Creole languages descend from pidgins. [9] [10] Other example is the Nicaraguan Sign Language created unconsciusly from isolated signs that didn't form a set of stable rules and thus they didn't constitute an authentic language. [11]

References edit

  1. ^ Freedman, David A.; Wang, William S-Y. (July 28, 1996). "Language Polygenesis: A Probabilistic Model". Anthropology Science. 104 (2): 131–138. doi:10.1537/ase.104.131. Retrieved May 5, 2024.
  2. ^ Meritt Ruhlen; John Bengtson (1994). "Global etymologies". On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy (PDF). pp. 277–336. Retrieved 27 June 2020.
  3. ^ Picard, Marc (April 1998). "The Case against Global Etymologies: Evidence from Algonquian". International Journal of American Linguistics. 64 (2): 141–147. doi:10.1086/466353. Retrieved May 5, 2024.
  4. ^ Michael Balter (14 April 2011). "Language May Have Helped Early Humans Spread Out of Africa". Science. Retrieved May 4, 2024.
  5. ^ Perreault, C.; Mathew, S. (2012). "Dating the origin of language using phonemic diversity". PLOS ONE. 7 (4): e35289. Bibcode:2012PLoSO...735289P. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0035289. PMC 3338724. PMID 22558135.
  6. ^ Hunley, Keith; Bowern, Claire; Healy, Meghan (2 January 2012). "Rejection of a serial founder effects model of genetic and linguistic coevolution". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 279 (1736): 2281–2288. doi:10.1098/rspb.2011.2296. PMC 3321699. PMID 22298843.
    Bowern, Claire (November 2011). "Out of Africa? The logic of phoneme inventories and founder effects". Linguistic Typology. 15 (2): 207–216. doi:10.1515/lity.2011.015. hdl:1885/28291. ISSN 1613-415X. S2CID 120276963.
  7. ^ Globe language. "Polygenesis Language Theories". globelanguage.org. Retrieved May 4, 2024.
  8. ^ Campbell, John Howland; Schopf, J. William, eds. (1994). Creative Evolution. Life Science Series. Contributor: University of California, Los Angeles. IGPP Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life. Jones & Bartlett Learning. p. 81. ISBN 9780867209617. Retrieved 2014-04-20. [...] the children of pidgin-speaking parents face a big problem, because pidgins are so rudimentary and inexpressive, poorly capable of expressing the nuances of a full range of human emotions and life situations. The first generation of such children spontaneously develops a pidgin into a more complex language termed a creole. [...] [T]he evolution of a pidgin into a creole is unconscious and spontaneous.
  9. ^ Roberge, Paul T. (September 18, 2012). "Pidgins, creoles, and the creation of language". The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution. Oxford Academic. ISBN 9780191743818. Retrieved May 5, 2024.
  10. ^ Sean Spicer (December 7, 2023). "Understanding Creole Languages". hannais.com. Hanna. Retrieved May 5, 2024.
  11. ^ Zall, Carol (September 29, 2020). "The origin of Nicaraguan Sign Language tells us a lot about language creation". The World. Retrieved May 4, 2024.

Bibliography edit

  • Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. The Languages of Africa, revised edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (Published simultaneously at The Hague by Mouton & Co.)
  • Greenberg, Joseph H. 1971. "The Indo-Pacific hypothesis." Reprinted in Joseph H. Greenberg, Genetic Linguistics: Essays on Theory and Method, edited by William Croft, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
  • Greenberg, Joseph H. 2000–2002. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family. Volume 1: Grammar. Volume 2: Lexicon. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • Ruhlen, Merritt. 1994. On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • Trombetti, Alfredo. 1905. L'unità d'origine del linguaggio. Bologna: Luigi Beltrami.
  • Trombetti, Alfredo. 1922–1923. Elementi di glottologia, 2 volumes. Bologna: Zanichelli.
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