Basically the title. Languages often have complex rules and a lot of words. How everyone agreed on them? And together created the languages? What process did they go through?
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I take it you don’t have children. Watching them learn a language is remarkably organic. Meaning is defined by usage. I give my child a spoonful of rice and say “eat your rice”, and there are three sounds to decode, “eat”, “your”, and “rice”.
If, after that, I drop the rice and say “oops, I spilled the rice”, that same sound is accompanied by the same white stuff, the child makes a connection between that sound “rice” and that object.
If I am in a prehistoric society, language develops in the same organic way. Certain sounds become associated with certain things/actions/people etc., and regular usage begets communal agreement and meaning.
If I go to another country and everyone drinks a tasty drink they call “juice”, and I want some, I can ask for “juice”, mimicking their sound. If that produces the desired result, I can assume that the name of the drink is “juice”.
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