How did we go from grunts and “ooh”s and “ah”s to complex modern languages? And why haven’t other animals done the same?
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Having vocal cords is already an obstacle for almost every animal out there.
Those that have vocal cords, most of them have a very small brain, and then we have those that both have the intelligence needed and vocal cords, which given enough time, they probably could develop a spoken language.
We don’t actually know. It is thought that spoken (and/or possibly signed) languages came about long before written language did, and so the origin of language itself is lost to history. If any records exist anymore, we don’t know how to read or even recognize them.
This brings us to the story of the Nicaraguan schools for the deaf, which were founded in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They had a problem: there was no Nicaraguan sign language at the time. Most of the students just had some ad hoc systems developed at home and not much else, and these varied widely between the different students. They were trying to teach the students using spoken Spanish and a kind of improvised fingerspelling, but then something unexpected happened: the children started forming a language among themselves. The teachers couldn’t understand what the children were saying, and brought in linguists from MIT to help. What they found was complex and distinct from anything the teachers were using, but very definitely a language in its own right, with its own grammatical and syntactic structures.
The linguistics community went absolutely *bonkers* over this, because it was a rare opportunity to study how a language could appear almost completely without influence from other existing languages. It doesn’t necessarily parallel exactly how language evolved among prehistoric peoples, but it does represent one way that it could have happened. It is now the official sign language of Nicaragua, and it has kept on evolving at a frantic pace, with the younger generations developing whole linguistic structures that the older generations didn’t use. This is probably something to do more research on if you’re interested in this sort of thing.
Other animals are able to communicate but not to the same level of detail as humans.
It takes a combination of a large and complex brain as well as the ability to make complex sounds.
Whale songs for example are incredibly complex and it is still unclear if they are communicating on any sort of significant level. While ants communicate with chemical signals, bees with dancing, and Crows seem to be able to communicate as well.
Parrots can make all the sounds that we can and more but don’t have the brain power to have complex conversations.
Dogs and Cats can understand individual words and commands, but are far more limited compared to us in what they can process. But they lack the human like vocal cords to speak.
There is currently a working theory that Neanderthal wasn’t able to speak the way that we do as their skull shape wouldn’t have allowed it. They may have instead had a complex sign language.
Humans speak with our hands instinctively and use hand signs to coordinate hunting. This practice extends to the military that still uses hand signals to communicate in battle.
It’s possible that sign language predates complex human speech. Part of the evidence for this is that Neanderthal signed their artwork with a hand print, showing that their hands had more significance to them in terms of personality than we do today.
Also while sign language is not universal (there are many different sign languages) using hand signals to communicate among the deaf *is* a universal concept. It seems that when humans can’t speak we default back to using sign language.
Sounds like “ooh” and “eeh” are really just expulsions of air and probably originated from being startled or excited, without much meaning. Going from a simple “ooh” to a more deliberate “ah ah!” required a leap into cognition and pre-conceptualization that likely required many generations of evolution and development.
But all of these sounds still derive from natural breathy sounds, or aspirates. It took far longer for more complex alveolar sounds to emerge such as “ting” or “tang” to develop, and these likely were first used imitatively from sounds heard in the environment.
The last great leap occurred when wholly original noises emerged that were neither imitations of environmental noises co-opted for use nor adaptations and elaborations of normal respiratory noises. At this point complex innovative sounds like “walla walla” and “bing bang” began the long process of true linguistic development that continues in modern language today.
As the top comment more or less says. humans evolved hard-wiring for language, even if not spoken, in the same way cheetahs evolved for speed. Most primate brains are designed much more for communication and social interaction than most other animals, and humans are a LONG step above that.
It took millions of years for language to evolve, and that was AFTER human brains expanded proportionally in size.
Our early ancestors got some of their food by throwing things. Accurate throwing involves a series of movements that must be performed in correct sequence, too rapid for corrections once it’s started. It has been conjectured that this sequencing talent was adapted for the intricate sequence of mouth movements that is meaningful speech.
This doesn’t quite tell you how humans did it, but it may tell you why most animals don’t.
Once people were able to speak and understand very simple language, suddenly there was a selective advantage to the ability to speak and understand *more complex* language, which is how we got from “gimme banana” to, well, the rest of it.
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