Re: Tonal Songs and glossalalia

Terrence Donnelly scripsit:

> The following is just idle speculation on my part, but what the hey:
> I've been wondering if this sort of 'scat' singing may not point
> the way to the mechanism by which language developed in the first place.
This is traditionally called the "sing-song" theory of
language origin.  All the standard theories have baby-talk names:

the bow-wow theory says that humans started by imitating the
instinctive noises of other animals;

the yo-he-ho theory says that language arose from grunts
that people automatically made while doing hard work;

the pooh-pooh theory says that the basis of language is emotional
expressions of fear, pleasure, etc.

> I've been reading recently that some scientists think that gestural
> language may have preceded oral language in human development.
This is the ta-ta theory: that words were the unconscious
accompaniment to gestures.

Finally, there is my favorite (for absurdity, not truth):

the ding-dong theory, which holds that human beings mystically
intuited a connection between certain natural objects and certain sounds,
and applied those sounds to those objects.

Despite the silly names, these theories have all been very seriously
defended by very serious people, to the point where linguists in the
19th century already banned their discussion at learned conferences
as too productive of flamewars.

--
John Cowan                                      cowan@ccil.org
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban.