In historical or evolutionary linguistics, monogenesis and polygenesis are two different hypotheses about the phylogenetic origin of human languages. According to monogenesis, human language arose only once in a single community, and all current languages come from the first original tongue. On the other hand, according to polygenesis, human languages came into being in several communities independently, and current tongues derived from different sources.[1]
Monogenesis
The monogenetic theory points to a single origin of all of the world's languages and it is the most accepted theory.[1][2] It states that all current languages have formed through language change from a single tongue that gradually differentiated into unintelligible languages. The first scholar to publish this theory was Alfredo Trombetti, in the book L'Unità d'origine del linguaggio, published in 1905. More recently, Joseph Greenberg and Merritt Ruhlen, proponents of monogenesis, argue that in modern languages there is sufficient evidence to reconstruct part of the original language (called Proto-World or Proto-Sapiens).[3] However, this claim has been highly controversial and the reconstructions made by Ruhlen are often discredited by mainstream linguists.[4]
Some studies seemed to correlate genetic and phonemic diversity,[5][6] but this approach has been criticized thoroughly.[7]
The world's largest uncontroversial language families as of 2024
History
The first serious scientific attempt to establish the reality of monogenesis was that of Alfredo Trombetti, in his book L'unità d'origine del linguaggio, published in 1905.[9][10]: 263 Trombetti estimated that the common ancestor of existing languages had been spoken between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago.[11]
In the second half of the 20th century, Joseph Greenberg produced a series of controversial large-scale classifications of the world's languages.[14] Although Greenberg did not produce an explicit argument for monogenesis, all of his classification work was geared toward this end. As he stated, "The ultimate goal is a comprehensive classification of what is very likely a single language family."[15]: 337
Polygenesis
Polygenesis points to a multiple origin of human languages. According to this hypothesis, languages evolved as several lineages independent of one another.[16]
Modern investigation about creole languages demonstrated that with an appropriate linguistic input or pidgin, children develop a language with stable and defined grammar in one generation.[17] Creole languages descend from pidgins.[18][19] Another example is Nicaraguan Sign Language, created from isolated signs that did not form a set of stable rules, and thus did not then constitute an authentic language.[20]
Two of the earliest supporters of polygenesis were August Schleicher and Ernst Haeckel. Their ideas of linguistic polygenesis were linked with polygenism: it stated that several language families arose independently from speechless Urmenschen (German: proto-humans).[22] According to Haeckel,[23]
We must mention here one of the most important results of the comparative study of languages, which for the Stammbaum of the species of men is of the highest significance, namely that human languages probably had a multiple or polyphyletic origin. Human language as such probably developed only after the species of speechless Urmenschen or Affenmenschen (German: ape-men) had split into several species or kinds. With each of these human species, language developed on its own and independently of the others. At least this is the view of Schleicher, one of the foremost authorities on this subject. ... If one views the origin of the branches of language as the special and principal act of becoming human, and the species of humankind as distinguished according to their language stem, then one can say that the different species of men arose independently of one another.
Polygenesis was accepted by many linguists in the late 19th and early 20th century, when polygenism was popularized.[24]
In the 1990s and 2000s, interest in polygenesis reappeared, with papers written by David A. Freedman, William S-Y. Wang, Cristophe Coupé, and Jean-Marie Hombert.[1][2]
Bibliography
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. The Languages of Africa, revised edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (Published simultaneously at The Hague by Mouton & Co.)
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1971. "The Indo-Pacific hypothesis." Reprinted in Joseph H. Greenberg, Genetic Linguistics: Essays on Theory and Method, edited by William Croft, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Greenberg, Joseph H. 2000–2002. Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives: The Eurasiatic Language Family. Volume 1: Grammar. Volume 2: Lexicon. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Ruhlen, Merritt. 1994. On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Trombetti, Alfredo. 1905. L'unità d'origine del linguaggio. Bologna: Luigi Beltrami.
Trombetti, Alfredo. 1922–1923. Elementi di glottologia, 2 volumes. Bologna: Zanichelli.
^ abcCoupé, Cristophe; Hombert, Jean-Marie (2005). "3. Polygenesis of Linguistic Strategies: A Scenario for the Emergence of Languages". In Minett, James W.; Wang, William S-Y. (eds.). Language Acquisition, Change and Emergence: essays in evolutionary linguistics(PDF). Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press. p. 162.
^Bengtson, John D., ed. In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the four fields of anthropology. In honor of Harold Crane Fleming. John Benjamins Publishing, 2008.
^Trombetti, Alfredo (1905). L'unità d'origine del linguaggio (in Italian). Bologna: Luigi Beltrami.
^ abRuhlen, Meritt (1994). The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
^Trombetti, Alfredo (1922–1923). Elementi di glottologia (in Italian). Bologna: Zanichelli.
^Newman, Paul (1993). "Greenberg's American Indian classification: a report on the controversy". In van Marle, Jaap (ed.). Historical Linguistics 1991: Papers from the 10th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. 10th International Conference on Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, John. pp. 229–242.
^Greenberg, Joseph H. (1987). Language in the Americas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
^Campbell, John Howland; Schopf, J. William, eds. (1994). Creative Evolution. Life Science Series. Contributor: University of California, Los Angeles. IGPP Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life. Jones & Bartlett Learning. p. 81. ISBN9780867209617. Retrieved 2014-04-20. [...] the children of pidgin-speaking parents face a big problem, because pidgins are so rudimentary and inexpressive, poorly capable of expressing the nuances of a full range of human emotions and life situations. The first generation of such children spontaneously develops a pidgin into a more complex language termed a creole. [...] [T]he evolution of a pidgin into a creole is unconscious and spontaneous.
^Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (1868), p. 511; quoted after Robert J. Richards, "The linguistic creation of man: Charles Darwin, August Schleicher, Ernst Haeckel, and the Missing Link in Nineteenth-Century Evolutionary Theory".[1]Archived 3 February 2004 at the Wayback Machine
^de Saussure, Ferdinand (1986) [1916]. Cours de linguistique générale [Course in General Linguistics] (in French). Translated by Harris, Roy. Chicago: Open Court.
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