FINAL PORTFOLIO. FINAL PORTFOLIO | Page 4

The origins of language. THE DIVINE SOURCE. In most religions, a divine sources gives language to the humans. Nearly all divine theories believe that languages originated from a single source and are thus monogenetic theories of language origin. Over the ages, people carried out experiments to rediscover this original, God-given language. THE NATURAL SOUND SOURCE. Primitive words started as imitations of the natural sounds early humans heard around them (bow-wow-theory). The imitations of sounds were then used to refer to the things associated with the relevant sound (onomatopoeia still exist in our language today: splash, rattle, boom!...) For example, when a bird flew by making the sound ‘coo-coo’, it would be called ‘cuckoo’.