The first real elements of speech were the final sounds of intentional calls differentiating on the basis of intensity. For example, a danger call for immediately presenting danger would be exclaimed with more intensity, changing the ending phoneme. An imminent tiger might result in ‘wahee!’ while a distant tiger might result in a cry of less intensity and so develop a different ending such as ‘wahoo’. It is these endings, then, that become the first modifiers meaning ‘near’ and ‘far’. And the next step was when these endings, ‘hee’ and ‘hoo’, could be separated from the particular call that generated them and attached to some other call with the same indication.

The crucial thing here is that the differentiation of vocal qualifiers had to precede the invention of the nouns which they modified, rather than the reverse. And what is more, this stage of speech had to remain for a long period until such modifiers became stable. This slow development was also necessary so that the basic repertoire of the call system was kept intact to perform its intentional functions. This age of modifiers perhaps lasted up to 40,000 B.C., where we find archeologically retouched hand axes and points.

The next stage might have been an age of commands, when modifiers, separated from the calls they modify, now can modify men’s actions themselves. Particularly as men relied more and more on hunting in the chilled climate, the selective pressure for such a group of hunters controlled by vocal commands must have been immense. And we may imagine that the invention of a modifier meaning ‘sharper’ as an instructed command could markedly advance the making of tools from flint and bone, resulting in an explosion of new types of tools from 40,000 B.C. up to 25,000 B.C.

Once a tribe has a repertoire of modifiers and commands, the necessity of keeping the integrity of the old primitive call system can be relaxed for the first time, so as to indicate the referents of the modifiers or commands. If ‘wahee!’ once meant an imminent danger, with more intensity differentiation, we might have ‘wakee!’ for an approaching tiger, or ‘wab ee!’ for an approaching bear. These would be the first sentences with a noun subject and a predicative modifier, and they may have occurred somewhere between 25,000 B.C. and 15,000 B.C.

These are not arbitrary speculations. The succession from modifiers to commands and, only when these become stable, to nouns is no arbitrary succession. Nor is the dating entirely arbitrary. Just as the age of modifiers coincides with the making of much superior tools, so the age of nouns for animals coincides with the beginning of drawing animals on the walls of caves or on horn implements.

— Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, p. 132

1. vandiverok3 liked this
2. wellmankil liked this
3. somebeautifulplace posted this