主题：【原创】文 字 与 道 -- 谭伯牛

有点‘我说故我在’的意思；如果从文以载道的角度说，又有些皮之不存，毛之焉附的意思。另一方面说到某个程度, 语言为语义就开始制造麻烦。据说有记载而来人类的第一句话是ENKIDU在和他的女人欢好之后说的, 飘飘以前转过一篇有意思的文章【语言――起源于叫床？】 http://www.cchere.com/article/110;ID=121955

这有一个洋人的说法。

Language is an inherent, even a defining, property of being human.

Ian Tattersal ("Becoming Human", 1998) adopts the position that symbolic language (I don't recall if he makes a distinction between symbolical and grammatical) defines humanity. He tries to explain the biological evidence of moderns humans appearing around 130-100 ky ago and evidence of "human" activity appearing only 40-30 ky ago. [that may have been pushed back by recent finding in South Africa if I recall correctly].

He suggests that the development of the vocal apparatus was an adaption for unknown evolutionary reasons (and even points out that it's a disadvantage in losing the ability to breath and swallow at the same time). That adaptation was used later for speech, making language an evolutionary exaptation.

I think the argumentation in the book is flawed (pre-postulating a conclusion), but it's interesting as a speculative explanation that language could be a defining factor in spite of the time difference between biological and cultural evidence.

Addressing "defining" issues is always a problem in a continuous process without discrete states. Even the biological definition of species is problematic in border-line cases. Hybrids are not that uncommon, with different degrees of fertility.

And there's the current debate concerning the child skeleton from Portugal who is said by some to be a Neanderthal-modern hybrid (though since the identification is morphological, not genetic, I doubt if it'll be settled without further evidence).

The cold reality is that the earliest evidence of language we have is from the 3rd mbc (Mesopotamia or Egypt, choose your favorite). It's not at all clear that proto-cuneiform represents language, natural language. See Damerow, "The origins of writing as a problem of historical epistemology":

http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/P114.PDF

What we do know (to the degree we trust the translations of these texts) is that the early language-representing texts (to the degree we trust our ability to identify language representation in texts) testify that speech exists, so it's probably safe to assume that speech appeared sometimes before - any time between the late 4th mbc and 130 ky ago.

All the rest is speculation.

We do try to narrow it down by assuming that humanity and language are strongly connected, but it's not proven to any acceptable degree of likelihood, and the terms themselves are debated. The early myths do not make that assumption, though it's not clear if they address "being human" or "being a civilized human". Speech is used by both humans and animals before the forbidden fruit is eaten in Genesis, but, OTH, speech is the tool of creation. Enkidu stops being feral by having sex with a woman (he is first mentioned as speaking after the sex, but it's not clear if it's a result of the sex or not). Etc.

Personally I'd use the scope that can be communicated as a factor in defining humanity, rather than the method in which it is communicated. Animals can communicate both concrete information and some abstract concepts ("danger" etc). In fact I don't know if some complex animal languages can't be said to have generative grammars (bees? is there a concept in linguistics to address what can be generated by a grammar, similar to the aleph cardinality of infinities in mathematics?). And I also notice that we don't have separate words for animal language and human language which seems to indicate that in the context of natural language we don't use the concept of "language" as something specifically human. But that's just a personal opinion, and not a firm one.

[There's more to reply to, specifically on the innateness issue, but it's past 4am, so I'm dividing in hope to conquer the backlog ...]

Ariel L. Szczupak