About Language

In evolution-science all life on Earth is part of a single phylogenetic tree, indicating common ancestry. The ‘tree’ of evolution thus drawn is based on similarities and differences in the physical or genetic characteristics of species.

Language, that seemingly belongs to an altogether different realm, related to the ‘mind’ and its processes, may not have genetic underpinnings of the nature that physical processes of life-possessing bodies do. Yet, interestingly, the taxonomy of languages has indicated a language-tree that starts with a small set of proto-languages that has branched out into daughter languages with the passage of time and the separation of speaking communities by distance.

It is understandable in the general sense too, that as human communities grew, they spread all around looking for new habitable lands; and with this separation, the languages that they had migrated with started accruing separate dialects, new words and phrases were added with new experiences, and the same process was repeated as the migrants branched out again. So, in this evolutionary pathway, each language kept some characteristics of the proto-language that would enable it to be identified as a daughter-language of the same family that goes back to the same proto. And as the speakers have spread out geographically, the geographical area of that proto-language, its sprachbund, can also be marked. The sprachbund with the biggest number of speakers being the Indo-European one. This does indicate an evolution of language but only within the history of humankind itself, largely disconnected from the languages possessed by other species.

Assuming that the taxonomy is based on phylogenetics and not on the abstractive nature of the mind brings us back to the mind-body problem. Is the mind a thing in itself, living inside its biological container, dependent on it for its functioning, relying on the biological lifespan for its own evolutionary experiences; yet, even being a parasite consuming the body in time, still it is a significant ‘other’? The truth is that huge phylogenetic jumps between species make the possibility of common ancestry go against logic even at the biological level, let alone the jump to the unbound faculty of thought in humans. Our ability to think is exponentially different from all other species, and we know that through our faculty of language.

The strange, diverse and complex characteristics of the human mind and its representation in the equally unique, rich and multifaceted human language defy the logic of an evolution, based merely on the need for survival!

And the study of language gives us ample ground to think so. Renowned linguist Noam Chomsky says, “the human faculty of language seems to be a true ‘species property’, varying little among humans and without significant analogue elsewhere.” This faculty which is a representative of the mind is just as strange, diverse and complex as the doings of the mind. And the two faculties of mind and language are such that the mind would suffocate without language and language would starve without the mind.

The human mind has numerous unique ways it goes about; as in it is aware; it has cognition; it has memory; it analyses, calculates, categorises, evaluates, introspects, predicts; and also, others like ideation, conceptualising, believing, loving and the list goes on. All these acts are abstract, they exist purely in the mind, but there is this other faculty of language that enables these mind-processes to be communicated with others, to be written down on paper, to draw up ideas and build more ideas upon ideas. So, what is language? Is it biological or genetic or something sublime like the mind itself?

A child becomes aware of things in its environment, it learns to use a few dozen alphabet sounds from its soundbox by joining the sounds into syllables and then words, and then learns shared word-symbols that denote each element of the environment with a word. Then it learns to represent these word-symbols with written symbols like the alphabets, the numbers, and formations. And with these seemingly simple tools it gradually becomes the bearer of civilisation, culture, history, economy, sciences, relationships and so on.

Considering the unboundedness of ideas that keep occurring and developing in the mind, one thinks, are human thoughts infinite? In fact, the unique capability of the mind to be able to deal with the idea of ‘infinity’ and think in terms of it, even when the material environment that surrounds it seemingly has only finite, discrete elements, depicts the other-worldliness of the mind and the fact that it is the beholder of innate knowledge not simply derived from the environment. And language is also a bearer of the same characteristic; discrete infinity allows the possibility of forming infinite number of sentences with a small set of alphabets. Not only is language unbounded, the structures of language are also highly specific and articulated i.e. laid upon a sublime, complex framework of grammar that has yet to be fully understood — it seems that language has been set in exact compatibility with the unboundedness of the mind.

In fact, Chomsky has identified human language to be innate, universal, abstract and creative. Innate, as in the mind innately possesses a framework of grammar and a language acquisition device (LAD) that has the capacity to absorb vocabulary from its surroundings. Universal, as in all humans have an identical language design, so the underlying grammar is the same. Abstract, as in language is an entailing of the abstractions of the mind, therefore it shares the characteristics of the mind of being abstract. And creative, as in language users can produce and understand completely novel utterances or sentence, never spoken before.

So, we humans possess a mental capacity of generating sentences with the use of an unconscious knowledge of language; a faculty just as magical as ‘life’, the ‘mind’ and so many other unresolved mysteries around us. The spoken word being entailed by the written word is also a mystery. The written word enables man to build ideas upon ideas, history upon history, science upon science. Perhaps Chomsky should reckon the written word to be a unique characteristic, entailing the spoken word, but exponentially different from it in many ways.

The Quran says: “He created man. Made known to him speech.” (55:3,4), and “He who taught by the pen. Made known to man what he knew not. Indeed, man transgresses the bounds.” (96: 4,5,6)

Attainable knowledge may be ingrained in its totality in the human mind but experiencing it in the present conscience is an evolving journey. This journey is enabled by the written word, which opens new faculties of knowledge upon man, such that would not have been possible with the spoken word alone.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 4^th, 2023.

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