Spirals to unravel a mystery (part two).(origin of language)

LANGUAGE AND THE WHEEL

ON THE ORIGIN of language there will always remain a range of unanswerable questions. Was language invented extempore, or gradually developed from grunts and screeches, was it born out of pure sound and gradually meaning attached to it--we will never be able to know with certainty.

In his De Vulgari Eloquentia--eloquence in the vernacular or common tongue--Dante speculates on the origins of speech. Among the inane theologically-derived ramblings, he does make some poignant remarks on speech. At base he argues that it is our individuality that requires language:

 
   Since man is not driven by natural instinct, but 
   is moved by reason, and reason, in terms of 
   discernment, of judgement, of predilection, differs 
   in every individual to such an extent that every 
   individual seems almost a species to themselves, 
   so that through his own actions and passions, as 
   brute animals do, a man cannot know another. 

The idea that the animal kingdom does not require language as we know it, indeed that it would be detrimental to it, is based on the old dichotomy between the instinct-driven life forms and the rational human. By and large, whatever our disposition, we can temper such a differentiation by reminding ourselves that at times animals have given evidence of individuality and qualities that we normally attribute to humans, and that at times humans show signs, for better or worse, of their animal instincts, but no matter how we shift or blur the boundary line, it is difficult to disregard the notion that there is something unique about the way human beings make conscious use of language.

Dante's identification of individuality (versus what we might call the collective nature of animal life) as the precondition for the emergence of language is an interesting concept. It has to some extent found an echo in postmodernism, that predominantly French philosophical trend that seeks to remind us that if there is a nature to being human, it is that persistent drive to constantly mantle and dismantle ourselves. But leaving aside the temptation to make of Dante the precursor to postmodernism (and of his Commedia an early deconstructionist analysis of Italian society), the tale of the origin of human language can never be fully told. All we can hope for are faint traces and allusions to possible scenarios.

Over that past few years Darwinian interpretations of the evolution and emergence of language have become topical. Theories range from Machiavellian models with language posited as an evolutionary power-tool to speculations on the evolution of language emerging from grooming practices of present-day primates: speech freeing the hands whilst maintaining the social and political status quo. At our present evolutionary stage, listening to a speaker would be equivalent to grooming the dominant baboon.