Editing Origin of language (section)

=== Early speculations ===
{{quotation|I cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification, aided by signs and gestures, of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries.|Charles Darwin, 1871. ''The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex''<ref>Darwin, C. (1871). "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2 vols. London: Murray, p. 56.</ref>}} In 1861, historical linguist [[Max Müller]] published a list of speculative theories concerning the origins of spoken language:<ref>Müller, F. M. 1996 [1861]. The theoretical stage, and the origin of language. Lecture 9 from Lectures on the Science of Language. Reprinted in R. Harris (ed.), ''The Origin of Language''. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, pp. 7–41.</ref>
* ''Bow-wow''. The ''bow-wow'', or ''cuckoo'', theory, which Müller attributed to the German philosopher [[Johann Gottfried Herder]], saw early words as imitations of the cries of beasts and birds.
* ''Pooh-pooh''. The ''pooh-pooh'' theory saw the [[Interjectional theory|first words as emotional interjections and exclamations]] triggered by pain, pleasure, surprise, etc.
* ''Ding-dong''. Müller suggested what he called the ''ding-dong'' theory, which states that all things have a vibrating natural resonance, echoed somehow by humans in their earliest words.
* ''Yo-he-ho''. The ''yo-he-ho'' theory claims that language emerged from collective rhythmic labor; that is, the attempt to synchronize muscular efforts resulting in sounds such as ''heave'' alternating with sounds such as ''ho''.
* ''Ta-ta''. The ''ta-ta'' theory did not feature in Max Müller's list, having been proposed in 1930 by Sir Richard Paget.<ref>Paget, R. 1930. ''Human speech: some observations, experiments, and conclusions as to the nature, origin, purpose and possible improvement of human speech''. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.</ref> According to the ''ta-ta'' theory, humans made the earliest words by tongue movements that mimicked manual gestures, rendering them audible.

Most scholars today consider all such theories not so much wrong—they occasionally offer peripheral insights—as naïve and irrelevant.<ref>Firth, J. R. 1964. ''The Tongues of Men and Speech''. London: Oxford University Press, pp. 25–26.</ref><ref>Stam, J. H. 1976. ''Inquiries into the origins of language''. New York: Harper and Row, pp. 243–244.</ref> The problem with these theories is that they rest on the assumption that once early humans had discovered a workable ''mechanism'' for linking sounds with meanings, language would automatically have evolved.{{cn|date=December 2023}}

Much earlier, [[Islamic Golden Age|medieval Muslim scholars]] developed theories on the origin of language.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Shah |first=Mustafa |date=January 2011 |title=Classical Islamic Discourse on the Origins of Language: Cultural Memory and the Defense of Orthodoxy |url=https://core.ac.uk/download/2793514.pdf |journal=[[Numen (journal)|Numen]] |volume=58 |issue=2–3 |pages=314–343 |doi=10.1163/156852711X562335 |s2cid=55165312 |via=CORE}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Weiss |first=B. |author-link=Bernard G. Weiss |year=1987 |title='Ilm al-wad': An Introductory Account of a Later Muslim Philological Science |journal=Arabica |volume=34 |issue=1 |pages=339–356 |doi=10.1163/157005887X00054 |s2cid=161187751}}</ref> Their theories were of five general types:<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Weiss |first=B. |author-link=Bernard G. Weiss |year=1974 |title=Medieval Muslim discussions of the origin of language |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/43370636.pdf |journal=Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft |volume=124 |issue=1 |pages=33–41 |doi=10.1163/156852711X562335 |jstor=43370636 |s2cid=55165312 }}</ref>
# ''Naturalist'': There is a natural relationship between expressions and the things they signify. Language thus emerged from a natural human inclination to imitate the sounds of nature.
# ''Conventionalist'': Language is a social convention. The names of things are [[Arbitrariness#Linguistics|arbitrary]] inventions of humans.
# ''Revelationist'': Language was gifted to humans by [[Allah|God]], and it was thus God—and not humans—who named everything.
# ''Revelationist-Conventionalist'': God revealed to humans a core base of language—enabling humans to communicate with each other—and then humans invented the rest of language.
#  ''Non-Committal'': The view that conventionalist and revelationist theories are equally plausible.