Editing Origin of language (section)

== History ==

=== In religion and mythology ===
{{Main|Mythical origins of language}}
{{See also|Divine language|Adamic language}}
[[File:Pieter Bruegel the Elder - The Tower of Babel (Vienna) - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|''[[The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)|The Tower of Babel]]'' by [[Pieter Bruegel the Elder]] (1563)]]
The search for the origin of language has a long history in [[mythology]]. Most mythologies do not credit humans with the invention of language but speak of a [[divine language]] predating human language. Mystical languages used to communicate with animals or spirits, such as the [[language of the birds]], are also common, and were of particular interest during the [[Renaissance]].

[[Vāc]] is the [[Hinduism|Hindu]] goddess of speech, or "speech personified". As [[Brahman]]'s "sacred utterance", she has a cosmological role as the "Mother of the [[Veda]]s". The [[Aztecs]]' story maintains that only a man, [[Coxcox]], and a woman, [[Xochiquetzal]], survived a flood, having floated on a piece of bark. They found themselves on land and had many children who were at first born unable to speak, but subsequently, upon the arrival of a [[dove]], were endowed with language, although each one was given a different speech such that they could not understand one another.<ref>Turner, P. and Russell-Coulter, C. (2001) ''Dictionary of Ancient Deities'' (Oxford: OUP)</ref>

In the [[Old Testament]], the [[Book of Genesis]] (chapter 11) says that God prevented the [[Tower of Babel]] from being completed through a [[miracle]] that made its construction workers start speaking different languages. After this, they migrated to other regions, grouped together according to which of the newly created languages they spoke, explaining the origins of languages and nations outside of the [[Fertile Crescent]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Pennock |first=Robert T. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aC1OccYnX0sC&q=Tower+of+Babel:+The+Evidence+Against+the+New+Creationism |title=Tower of Babel: The Evidence against the New Creationism |publisher=Bradford |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-262-66165-2}}</ref>

=== Historical experiments ===
{{Main|Language deprivation experiments}}
History contains a number of anecdotes about people who attempted to discover the origin of language by experiment. The first such tale was told by [[Herodotus]] (''[[Histories (Herodotus)|Histories]]'' 2.2). He relates that Pharaoh Psammetichus (probably [[Psammetichus I]], 7th century BC) had two children raised by a shepherd, with the instructions that no one should speak to them, but that the shepherd should feed and care for them while listening to determine their first words. When one of the children cried "bekos" with outstretched arms the shepherd concluded that the word was [[Phrygian language|Phrygian]], because that was the sound of the Phrygian word for 'bread'. From this, Psammetichus concluded that the first language was Phrygian. King [[James IV of Scotland]] is said to have tried a similar experiment; his children were supposed to have spoken [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Lindsay |first=Robert |url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_AKUvAAAAMAAJ |title=The history of Scotland: from 21 February 1436. to March, 1565. In which are contained accounts of many remarkable passages altogether differing from our other historians; and many facts are related, either concealed by some, or omitted by others |publisher=Baskett & Co. |year=1728 |page=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_AKUvAAAAMAAJ/page/n125 104]}}</ref>

Both the medieval monarch [[Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor|Frederick II]] and [[Akbar]] are said to have tried similar experiments; the children involved in these experiments did not speak. The current situation of [[deaf]] people also points into this direction.{{Clarify|date=May 2021}}

=== History of research ===
{{Main|Evolutionary linguistics}}
Modern linguistics did not begin until the late 18th century, and the [[Romanticism|Romantic]] or [[Animism|animist]] theses of [[Johann Gottfried Herder]] and [[Johann Christoph Adelung]] remained influential well into the 19th century. The question of language origin seemed inaccessible to methodical approaches, and in 1866 the [[Linguistic Society of Paris]] famously banned all discussion of the origin of language, deeming it to be an unanswerable problem. An increasingly systematic approach to [[historical linguistics]] developed in the course of the 19th century, reaching its culmination in the [[Neogrammarian]] school of [[Karl Brugmann]] and others.{{Citation needed|date=January 2014}}

However, scholarly interest in the question of the origin of language has only gradually been revived from the 1950s on (and then controversially) with ideas such as [[universal grammar]], [[mass comparison]] and [[glottochronology]].{{Citation needed|date=January 2014}}

The "origin of language" as a subject in its own right emerged from studies in [[neurolinguistics]], [[psycholinguistics]] and [[human evolution]]. The ''[[Linguistic Bibliography]]'' introduced "Origin of language" as a separate heading in 1988, as a sub-topic of psycholinguistics. Dedicated research institutes of [[evolutionary linguistics]] are a recent phenomenon, emerging only in the 1990s.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Meena |first=Ram Lakhan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=y1Y7EAAAQBAJ&q=Dedicated+research+institutes+of+evolutionary+linguistics+are+a+recent+phenomenon,+emerging+only+in+the+1990s |title=Current Trends of Applied Linguistics |date=3 August 2021 |publisher=K.K. Publications |access-date=9 January 2022}}</ref>