Synthetic considerations on the origin and emergence of human language
Synthetic considerations on the origin and emergence of human language

Summary/Abstract: Human (vocal-articulated) language may be regarded both as a structure and organ, and as an instrument and biosocial behaviour. Its foundation is material and motor, and its development procedural-historical. Examining the relationship between the initial moment (gesture) and the actual result (vocal-articulated language)—at the motor and neural levels—reveals that mental activities occur and develop as a result of the biological organism’s interactions with its natural and social environment. Therefore, language appears not as a consequence of a revolution or of an evolutionary jump, but as a result of organic and gradual developments occurring in a biosocial environment and having the same kind of premises. The many structures contributing to its appearance (osseous, muscular, nervous, genetic) were directed by social and biological events generating behaviours whose exercise led to certain developments. Having achieved structural and behavioral diversification, and in so far as it could benefit evolution, such a development was exploited by the biological and social organism, such that—irrespective of space, time, or the aspects of a particular context—above a certain level of evolution, the various human communities spread throughout the globe exhibited the intrinsic tendency of developing this ability.

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