Babies' Babble Theory:
Proof of Monogenesis?
By: Alicyn Siano
American Word Guest Writer
Table of Contents:
Supporting
Research for Theory
Baby
Talk Not Just Noise
Implications
for Civilizations like the Samoans
Conclusion
Chart
If then, we find a mass of resemblances between different languages, resemblances that are not onomatopoetic in nature and do not appear to be borrowings, we must conclude that the similarities are the result of a common origin, followed by a descent with modification in the daughter languages.1
Where did language come from? Is language an innate or environmental phenomenon? How did we learn to speak? How were our ancestors able to develop and use language? Was there ever a universal language spoken by everyone?
For many years, anthropologists all over the world have been asking themselves these questions, intrigued by the possibility of a universal, "Mother Tongue." They have searched endlessly for a connection between various foreign languages to either prove or disprove this theory. Finally, there is evidence of a new theory, one that connects infant speech with a primitive language. A theory that claims babies' babble to be a remnant of an ancestral, universal language, challenges the beliefs of civilizations like the Samoan who think children are incompetent until they are able to speak their native language. With this new evidence, the Babies' Babble Theory could provide a new perspective on language acquisition.
Supporting Research for Theory
Anthropologists, Merritt Ruhlen and J.D. Bengtson, have provided a research study to help prove this theory. By studying a group of global etymologies (which is defined as a set of all related cognates for an individual word in different languages) for a set of twenty-seven different cognates (which is defined as similar words in different languages that are presumed to derive from a common source) they have uncovered evidence that suggests infant speech relates to a common Mother Tongue.2
Through their research they were able to reveal many striking similarities between the cognates studied. They denote a particular basic concept and pattern across different language families, such as Asian, Germanic and Romantic.3
As shown in the click here to view Chart4, there is little difference between members of a recently used word set and the proto-word form, or original cognate, from which the present members have descended. For example, the cognate, AQ'WA , represents the exact, phonetic pronunciation for the Italian word for water, AQUA. The word, AGUA, another variation of that cognate, is also used in Spanish to represent water. Also, the cognate, KU(N), sounds like the English word, 'Who', the Russian word KTO, which in turn resembles the French word QUI, and the Spanish word QUIEN, all translating to 'who' in the English language. 5
The results of their research can be used to prove the case for monogenesis, which is the theory of the existence of a single origin for the many different languages of the world.6 Individual words not only resemble meanings across language families, but they also have the same basic speech patterns, further supporting the theory of one original language, or Mother Tongue.7
Child's language, for example, parallels the process of the formation of a primitive language.8 Anthropologist, Otto Jespersen states:
If we are seeking some parallel to the primitive acquisition of language, we must look elsewhere and turn to baby language as it is spoken in the first year of life, before the child has begun to notice and to make out what use is made of language by grown-up people. Here in the child's first purposeless murmuring, crowing and babbling, we have real nature sounds; here we may expect to find some clue to the infancy of the language of the race.9
According to Jespersen, baby sounds may not be simply incomprehensible nonsense as some people and cultures suggest, but rather an artifact of the first proto-language.10
To prove this theory, Peter MacNeilage and Barbara Davis performed a study pertaining to the babbling sounds of preverbal infants who knew very few words and were unable to recognize simple cognates. After extensively analyzing babble sounds and first words of infants they found a universal pattern among them.11 The results of the study provided overwhelming evidence for the Babies' Babble Theory, a possible solution to the question of the origin of language.
To further test this theory, they strayed from using only English-speaking children and continued their research by studying infants born to many different cultural and linguistic backgrounds.12 They found that this sound pattern of babbling was universal across most cultures and languages.13 MacNeilage and Davis state in their research that:
Three additional studies revealed the same effects in groups of five French, Swedish, and Japanese infants, seven infants in an Ecuadorian-Quichua environment, and one of two infants in a Brazilian-Portuguese environment. If there is indeed a tendency for babbling - and, to a lesser extent, first words - to be similar across cultures, these patterns may be virtually universal in infants.14
They also concluded from their research that infants moved quite fluidly from babble to speech.15 They proved language acquisition for infants to be quite natural, or 'innate,' concluding that language acquisition is hardly ever hindered by defects such as premature births, focal lesions on the brain, or mental impairments.16
Babies start to babble almost immediately after birth and continue to do so until they reach eight months to one year of age. Only after this pre-linguistic state of babble do they actually start to mimic adult language usage. During speech acquisition, they create new words to which they have never been previously exposed, providing more evidence that language is innate rather than just learned.17
Many infants, for example, are capable of uttering a clicking sound native only to Southern African languages, never found in English or any other language in the world. Furthermore, they studied a particular sound found only in the Japanese Language that requires using the technique of blowing through the lips to create a cross between a /P/ and a /C/. Infants of most languages and cultures, however, such as Arabic, English and French, are able to both pronounce and recognize it.19
At the end of the babbling period, language begins to influence speech. Children start to comprehend their parents' words and attempt to speak like them. At this stage only, different sounds in language can be distinguished.20 Until that point, however, children can utter an extremely wide range of sounds that are not produced in the language they hear on a daily basis. Only after they begin to acquire adult speech do they lose their ability to distinguish these sounds.21
Implications for Civilizations like the Samoans
The Babies' Babble Theory rivals most other 'origin of language' theories, proposing a radical view into a child's mental capacity for language. It introduces the nature versus nurture debate, where either language can be innate or simply a result of the environment. This new theory disproves the Samoan culture's strong belief that language acquisition is a direct influence of the environment in which a child lives.
In Samoa, an island located off the coast of Fiji in the Pacific Ocean, children, especially newborn infants, are not considered to be members of the tribe.22 Socialization as the Samoans understand it, is a process by which one becomes a competent member of society.23 To become a competent member of the society, the child must acquire knowledge of Samoan morals and principles as well as possess cultural requirements imposed by the adult members of the tribe.24 Therefore, socialization excludes babies and small children who have not had the opportunity to thoroughly learn the Samoan culture.
Samoan adults do not recognize infants as member of the community as conversational partners. They believe that babies' babble should not be encouraged since it is not comprehensible to them.25 Therefore, Samoan mothers do not fuss over their child like American mothers. They do not try to relate to what their child is trying to say nor do they nurture their desire to speak.26 They do not believe they need to directly teach their children or model speech for them to talk.27
Children are not expected to be verbal participants in conversation.28 They are not expected to practice language with adults, but rather with other children of their stature and knowledge.29 Only allowed to enter into the Samoan community when they are culturally verbally competent, the process of their language acquisition relies solely on practicing with other children and listening to other 'competent' members of society such as their parents.30
Samoan mothers do not believe they hold primary responsibility for nurturing and educating the young in the skills and knowledge of the elders. Older siblings, who become primary caregivers, teach the infants through demonstration and apprenticeship.31 If a baby says something comprehensible in the Samoan native tongue, it is encouraged, but until this occurs, the infant is just ignored.32 Therefore it can be concluded that during the ages of two weeks to eight or twelve months, the language acquisition phase, these children are either left to themselves without much attention or nurtured by their older siblings.
By applying the Babies' Babble theory to the Samoan Tribe, one can see that their approach may not be the ideal way to teach a child to speak. If infants are babbling and murmuring remnants of a proto-language, it can be said that these children are actually speaking when they are babbling and not just uttering sheer nonsense as thought by members of the Samoan community. Therefore, if they are speaking, they should be automatically allowed into the society instead of ignored until they acquire a specific type of language that is only comprehensible to the members of that community.
This new knowledge provided by the results of the Babies' Babble research could change the approach of the members of the Samoan civilization to infants and small children. If educated on child language acquisition and the knowledge that babies are speaking a language of their own, they might nurture their children's linguistic tendencies by encouraging their children to continue to babble.
Furthermore, it could also remove older siblings from the parental role of raising the child. Samoan adults might begin to embrace their role as primary caregivers and demonstrate their culture to their own children through the use of language instead of exhibiting this information through actions.
The Babies' Babble Theory proves the existence of an ancestral, universal language. From infant babble speech being universal through all languages and cultures to striking similarities between words in different families of languages, it provides a solid base to the exploration of monogenesis. Disproving approaches to language acquisition in infants and children in different cultures such as the Samoan community, it could change the way babies and small children are viewed in society and open the door to new studies regarding the mysteries of language during infancy.
|
Cognate
|
English Meaning
|
|
BUR
|
Ashes
|
|
K'OLO
|
Hole
|
|
KUAN
|
Dog
|
|
KU(N)
|
Who?
|
|
KUNA
|
Woman
|
|
MANO
|
Man
|
|
MENA
|
To think (about)
|
|
PAL
|
The number 2
|
|
PUTI
|
Vulva
|
|
TIK
|
The number 1
|
|
TIKA
|
Earth
|
|
TSUMA
|
Hair
|
|
AQ'WA
|
Water
|
1 J.D. Bengtson and M. Ruhlen, On the Origin of Languages:
Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1994, p. 43.
2 Davis and MacNeilage, On the Origin of Internal Structure of Word Forms.
Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science,
2000, p. 528.
3 Davis and MacNeilage, p. 530.
4 Davis and MacNeilage, p. 530.
5 Davis and MacNeilage, p. 530.
6 Davis and MacNeilage, p. 529.
7 John Locke, Movement Patterns in Spoken Language. Washington, D.C.:
American Association for the
Advancement of Science, 2000, p. 100.
8 Otto Jespersen, Language, its nature, development, and origin. London:
G. Allen & Unwin ltd., 1922,
p. 417.
9 Jespersen, p. 417.
10 Jespersen, p. 417.
11 Davis and MacNeilage, p. 530.
12 Davis and MacNeilage, p. 528.
13 Davis and MacNeilage, p. 529.
14 Davis and MacNeilage, p. 528.
15 Locke, p. 100.
16 Locke, p. 100.
17 Jespersen, p. 417.
19 Jill and Peter Villiers, Early Language. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1979, p. 21.
20 Villiers, p. 21.
21 Villiers, p. 23.
22 Elinor Ochs, Culture and Language Development: Language Acquisition
and Language Socialization in
the Samoan Village. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988 p. viii.
23 Ochs, p. 5.
24 Ochs, p. 5.
25 Ochs, p. vii.
26 Ochs, p, viii.
27 Ochs, p. x.
28 Ochs, p. x.
29 Ochs, p. viii.
30 Ochs, p. viii.
31 Ochs, p. viii.
32 Ochs, p. vii.
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