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’.