· One of the first things learned in academic study is that any and all research is meant to be a stepping stone to built on for future and new information. A recent study completed by scholars out of the University of Birmingham and the Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS) in Berlin demonstrates just that. This is because their research challenges a prevailing idea in historical linguistic study concerning the origins of language and communication, specifically in that it was nonverbal communication, e.g. hand gestures, facial expressions, and more, provided the foundations for modern languages. Their research suggests that it was actually simple sounds that jump started language creation.
These scholars reached this conclusion by surveying various individuals who spoke different languages. A total of 28 different languages were represented among the speakers, and a total of 30 different universal sounds were used. They asked the participants to identify the meaning of specific sounds associated with universal meanings to see if they recognized the meaning, and they did! All together the results of this study demonstrate language universals do exist, which is a well established area of study already, but it also shows the evolution of language over time. While their work demonstrates that languages may very well have developed first with sounds this work does not refute the hypothesis that nonverbal communication started modern language and communication. It also opens up new avenues of research to further study this new information in order to clarify if nonverbal communication or simple verbal communication initiated the various languages spoken today.
Reference:
Aleksandra Ćwiek, Susanne Fuchs, Christoph Draxler, Eva Liina Asu, Dan Dediu, Katri Hiovain, Shigeto Kawahara, Sofia Koutalidis, Manfred Krifka, Pärtel Lippus, Gary Lupyan, Grace E. Oh, Jing Paul, Caterina Petrone, Rachid Ridouane, Sabine Reiter, Nathalie Schümchen, Ádám Szalontai, Özlem Ünal-Logacev, Jochen Zeller, Bodo Winter, Marcus Perlman. Novel vocalizations are understood across cultures. Scientific Reports, 2021; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-89445-4
