The Unfolding of Language

The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind’s Greatest Invention by Guy Deutscher, Metropolitan Books, 2006. 

Language appears to have been consciously invented by some prehistoric linguistic genius. But it was not. It evolved. This book describes how gradual changes made by individuals over the course of time can lead to complex language. There are several causes of changes: (a) economy: principle of least effort, (b) expressiveness: increase the range of ideas that the language can communicate, (ccc) analogy: create order by smoothing out irregularities; for example, the recent creation of the word “dove” for the past tense of “dive”, in analogy with “drove” and “drive”.  A particular language varies from place to place. Over time, one dialect may become so popular, that it spreads to everywhere, and then the language has changed.

Some languages, such as English, have a subject-verb-object word order (SVO), while other languages, such as Turkish, have a subject-object-verb order (SOV). Pointing words such as “this” and “that”, “here” and “there”, originated from hand gestures.

The author discusses the origin of auxiliary verbs as tense markers. The English ordinary verb “go” has developed a secondary use an auxiliary verb that marks future tense. For example, “I’m going to decide tomorrow” no longer means that you are walking somewhere to make a decision. The verb “will” originally meant only wish or desire, but it became an auxiliary verb that marks future tense. The author discusses the origin of verb aspect markers. The ancient Chinese verb liao originally meant “to finish”. It evolved into the grammatical particle “le” whose meaning is completed action (perfective aspect marker). 

The author discusses the origin of inflections. Prepositions are words that come before objects. Postpositions are words that come after objects. Postpositions fused to nouns to produce noun case endings. Pronouns occurring after verbs fused to produce verb person endings. Verb tense endings: Auxiliary verbs that follow ordinary verbs lead to tense endings

Words for abstractions originated from words for concrete things. For example, the location word “back” came from its meaning as a part of the body. In general, words for location relations came from parts of the body. Words for time relations came from words for spatial relations. Spatial ideas can also generalize in even more abstract directions. For example, the word “except” came from a word originally meaning outside. Sometimes the original, concrete meaning of the word has been forgotten. The author calls these “dead metaphors”. For example, the word “thrill” originally meant pierce, “employ” originally meant fold, and “rival” originally meant sharing the same river. Now “rival” means sharing the same object of desire. More abstract meanings, such as possession, originally came from less abstract meanings, such as seize. For example, the English word “have” came from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) word “kap”, which means seize.

The author discusses how some linguists were able to make predictions about Proto-Indo-European, which were later proven to be correct when the ancient Hittite language was discovered. The author discusses how the three-consonant roots in Semitic languages may have arisen. Semitic languages are unusual, because their inflections change sounds in the middle of the word, rather than at the beginning or end.

The so-called primitive languages (for example, in the New Guinea highlands) are actually much more complicated than modern languages. Languages have become simpler in recent years. For example, English has lost the complicated system of inflections of German. In recent centuries, with improvements in transportation, many languages have become much more widespread. The author argues that the more widespread a language becomes, the simpler it becomes.