I recently came across a TED talk (see here) by David Peterson, whose greatest claim to fame may be that he created an artificial language for the TV series Game of Thrones (which I have never watched and have no intention of every watching!). The talk is entitled "Why Language Is Humanity's Greatest Invention." In it, Peterson makes some interesting comments on the nature of language. In particular, he stresses the idea that language is not just a tool. I would tend to agree with him on this point.
Nevertheless, I would have to take issue with the idea underlying his talk (which is expressed in its title)--that language is a "human invention." Although this is certainly a belief that many people hold to, I would argue that it doesn't hold up under careful scrutiny.
To be fair, the idea that language is a human invention seems plausible, due to the fact that some elements of language have been invented by human beings. For example, written language is clearly something that human beings invented. Moreover, in any language, new words are created seemingly all the time, and this new vocabulary is also the result of human invention. However, language at its most fundamental level is not like this. In fact, as I believe the following argument (which I have made before) will show, it is not possible that human language is an invention of human beings.
To begin, let us consider the fundamental nature of language. The basic units of language are words. Actually, if we were to be more precise, we should say that the basic building blocks of language are morphemes, which are the smallest "bits" of language that carry meaning. Words are morphemes, but not all morphemes are words. For example, the "s" that appears at the end of most plural words in English is a morpheme, but is not a word. However, for the sake of simplicity, let us say that words are the fundamental units of language.
Now, what are words? Words in their original form are certain sounds or combinations of sounds that are associated with a particular meaning. In most cases, the relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning is completely arbitrary. For example, the sound of the word dog has no particular connection with the meaning of the word dog. The connection is entirely arbitrary. Yes, it is true that the sound of some words does gives us a clue to their meaning. For example, meow sounds rather like the sound a cat makes. However, words like meow, which are examples of what is called onomatopoeia, make up a rather small part of any language. In most cases, the sound of a word in any language has no obvious connection to its meaning.
If, in general, there is no obvious connection between the meaning of a word and its sound, how can someone know what meaning a particular word has? It would seem logically that the meaning of a specific word (that is, word-sound) could only be established by an agreement among those using that word as to what its meaning is. However, such an agreement could only be achieved through using language, that is, words! In short, there is a sort of "chicken-or-the-egg" problem involved in explaining the origin of human language.
In short, in light of the argument I have just outlined, it should be obvious that language, in its most fundamental form, cannot be a human invention. If that is the case, where did it come from? Another possible explanation, of course, would be that human language somehow evolved over a very long time from some simpler form of communication, like those forms of communication used by other, nonhuman species (e.g., apes or chimpanzees). However, as I have tried to show in previous posts, this is also a debatable proposition. Instead, I would contend that language originated as an endowment of the human mind provided by our Creator. I realize this is a controversial claim, but one that is not unreasonable in light of my argument above.
Image: Emotion words, from Wikimedia Commons