Editing Origin of language (section)

=== Humanistic theory ===
The [[Humanism|humanistic]] tradition considers language as a human invention. [[Renaissance philosophy|Renaissance philosopher]] [[Antoine Arnauld]] gave a detailed description of his idea of the origin of language in [[Port-Royal Grammar]]. According to Arnauld, people are social and rational by nature, and this urged them to create language as a means to communicate their ideas to others. Language construction would have occurred through a slow and gradual process.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Arnauld |first1=Antoine |author-link1=Antoine Arnauld |url=https://archive.org/details/portroyalgrammar0000lanc |title=General and Rational Grammar: The Port-Royal Grammar |last2=Lancelot |first2=Claude |publisher=Mouton |year=1975 |isbn=902793004X |location=The Hague |url-access=registration |orig-year=1660}}</ref> In later theory, especially in [[functional linguistics]], the primacy of communication
is emphasised over psychological needs.<ref name="Daneš1987">{{Cite book |last=Daneš |first=František |author-link=František Daneš |title=Functionalism in Linguistics |publisher=John Benjamins |year=1987 |isbn=9789027215246 |editor-last=Dirven |editor-first=R. |pages=3–38 |chapter=On Prague school functionalism in linguistics |editor-last2=Fried |editor-first2=V.}}</ref>

The exact way language evolved is however not considered as vital to the study of languages. [[Structural linguistics|Structural linguist]] [[Ferdinand de Saussure]] abandoned [[evolutionary linguistics]] after having come to the firm conclusion that it would not be able to provide any further revolutionary insight after the completion of the major works in [[historical linguistics]] by the end of the 19th century. Saussure was particularly sceptical of the attempts of [[August Schleicher]] and other Darwinian linguists to access prehistorical languages through series of reconstructions of [[proto-language]]s.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Aronoff |first=Mark |url=https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/151 |title=On Looking into Words (and Beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses |publisher=SUNY Press |year=2017 |isbn=978-3-946234-92-0 |editor-last=Bowern |pages=443–456 |chapter=Darwinism tested by the science of language |access-date=3 March 2020 |editor-last2=Horn |editor-last3=Zanuttini}}</ref>

Saussure's solution to the problem of language evolution involves dividing [[theoretical linguistics]] in two. Evolutionary and historical linguistics are renamed as [[diachronic linguistics]]. It is the study of [[language change]], but it has only limited explanatory power due to the inadequacy of all of the reliable research material that could ever be made available. [[Synchronic linguistics]], in contrast, aims to widen scientists' understanding of language through a study of a given contemporary or historical language stage as a system in its own right.<ref>{{Cite book |last=de Saussure |first=Ferdinand |author-link=Ferdinand de Saussure |url=https://monoskop.org/images/0/0b/Saussure_Ferdinand_de_Course_in_General_Linguistics_1959.pdf |title=Course in general linguistics |publisher=Philosophy Library |year=1959 |isbn=978-0-231-15727-8 |location=New York |access-date=6 May 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190808231716/https://monoskop.org/images/0/0b/Saussure_Ferdinand_de_Course_in_General_Linguistics_1959.pdf |archive-date=8 August 2019 |url-status=dead |orig-year=1916}}</ref>

Although Saussure put much focus on diachronic linguistics, later structuralists who equated structuralism with the synchronic analysis were sometimes criticised of ahistoricism. According to [[Structural anthropology|structural anthropologist]] [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]], language and meaning—in opposition to "knowledge, which develops slowly and progressively"—must have appeared in an instant.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lévi-Strauss |first=Claude |title=Introduction to the work of Marcel Mauss |publisher=Routledge |year=1987 |isbn=0-7100-9066-8 |pages=59–60}}</ref>

Structuralism, as first introduced to [[sociology]] by [[Émile Durkheim]], is nonetheless a type of humanistic evolutionary theory which explains diversification as necessitated by growing complexity.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hejl |first=P. M. |title=Biology as Society, Society as Biology: Metaphors |publisher=Springer |year=2013 |isbn=9789401106733 |editor-last=Maasen |editor-first=Sabine |pages=155–191 |chapter=The importance of the concepts of 'organism' and 'evolution' in Emile Durkheim's division of social labor and the influence of Herbert Spencer |editor-last2=Mendelsohn |editor-first2=E. |editor-last3=Weingart |editor-first3=P.}}</ref> There was a shift of focus to functional explanation after Saussure's death. Functional structuralists including the [[Prague Linguistic Circle|Prague Circle]] linguists and [[André Martinet]] explained the growth and maintenance of structures as being necessitated by their functions.<ref name="Daneš1987" /> For example, novel technologies make it necessary for people to invent new words, but these may lose their function and be forgotten as the technologies are eventually replaced by more modern ones.