The question of the origin of language still remains in linguistics an area of ​​general assumptions and hypotheses (since it is impossible to observe and model the formation of language). Any living or dead language can be understood in the real facts of its existence, but the proto-language (“primitive language”) cannot be directly studied, because there are no real remains of it. These languages ​​(language) are not recorded in writing. This refers to logos theory.

Logosic theory The origin of the language arose in the early stages of the development of civilization and exists in several varieties: biblical, Vedic, Confucian.

In the representation of the peoples of Dr. India and Western Asia (previously 10th century BC), the language was created by the divine, spiritual principle, according to the beliefs of the ancients, which are “god”, “word”, “logos”, “tao”, etc.

The most ancient literary monuments are the Indian Vedas, according to which the establisher of names is God, who did not create all names, but only the gods subordinate to him.

Even in biblical legends we find two contradictory solutions to the question of the origin of language, reflecting different historical eras views on this problem. In Chapter I of the book of Genesis it is said that God created with a verbal spell and man himself was created by the power of the word, and in Chapter II of the same book it is said that God created “silently”, and then led him to Adam (i.e. to the first man) all creatures, so that man gives them names, and whatever he calls them, so that it will be the same in the future. In these naive legends, two points of view on the origin of the language have already emerged:

1) the tongue is not from man and 2) the tongue is from man.

Also, the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, which opens the Bible, tells about the creation of the world in seven days. Every day creation was accomplished not by the hands of God, but by his word. The word (tool and energy) created the world from primary chaos. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and without Him nothing came into being that was made.”

So, primitive language cannot be studied and experimentally verified. However, this question has interested humanity since ancient times. Thus, logos theory- a theory according to which the origin of language is due to its divine essence.

Since antiquity, many theories of the origin of language have developed:

1) The theory of onomatopoeia comes from the Stoics and received support in the 19th and even 20th centuries. The essence of this theory is that a “languageless person,” hearing the sounds of nature (the murmur of a stream, the singing of birds, etc.), tried to imitate these sounds with his speech apparatus. This theory was developed by a German. philosopher G. Leibniz.

However, this theory is untenable, since there are very few words of this kind and “onomatopoeia” can only be “sounding”, but in the surrounding world there are also many “voiceless” objects and phenomena (for example, a house, stones, a square, the sky, colors, etc. ).

2) The theory of interjections comes from the Epicureans, opponents of the Stoics, and lies in the fact that primitive people turned instinctive animal cries into “natural sounds” - interjections accompanying emotions, from which all other words supposedly originated. This point of view was supported in the 18th century. J.-J. Rousseau. This theory, like the previous one, is untenable since there are even fewer such words in the language than onomatopoeic words and in this theory the leading place was given to the expressive function of language, but there is a lot in language that is not related to expression.

3) The theory of “labor cries” at first glance seems to be a real materialist theory of the origin of language. This theory originated in the 19th century. in the works of vulgar materialists (L. Noiret, K. Bucher) and boiled down to the fact that language arose from cries that accompanied collective work. But these “labor cries” are only a means of rhythmizing labor, they do not express anything, not even emotions, but are only external, technical means at work. Not a single function characterizing language can be found in these “labor cries”, since they are not communicative, and not nominative, and not expressive.

The misconception that this theory is close labor theory F. Engels, is simply refuted by the fact that Engels says nothing about “labor cries”, and the emergence of language is associated with completely different needs and conditions.

4) In the last third of the 19th century, another philosophical theory of the origin of language was developed. She is sometimes called labor theory, but it is more correct to call social theory of the origin of language. The foundations of this theory were outlined by F. Engels in “Dialectics of Nature” (1873-1886). Engels was a supporter of the comparative-historical method of linguistics. However, he did not consider it possible to build a concept of society as a whole on the basis of conclusions about the structure of language obtained by this method. Engels saw the general scientific application of the comparative historical method primarily in revealing certain aspects of the history of ethnic groups. At the same time, Engels, having studied the character internal organization pre-class society, reveals the relationship between such categories of society as clan and family.

Engels views language as the immediate reality of thought. Both the forms of creating speech and its content are put in connection with the material ways of creating speech: “...is Achilles possible in the era of gunpowder and lead? Or in general, the Iliad, along with the printing press, and even more so with the printing press? And don’t they inevitably disappear tales, songs and muses, and thereby the necessary prerequisites for epic poetry, with the advent printing press?". This means that technical progress in the design and dissemination of speech predetermines its content. In this sense, “from the very beginning there is a curse on the “spirit” - to be “burdened down” by matter.” That is why Engels associates the formation of writing with the formation of civilization, and considers pre-literate oral speech to belong to savagery and barbarism as the initial stage of the development of culture.But the sounds of language, in accordance with the views of Engels, served as the basis for the creation of forms of human thinking and the formation of social consciousness.

According to Engels' views, the initiating source of the development of society is expedient and divided social labor. Such social labor consists of the invention of new instruments of production and organization of labor based on a certain shape property. Hence, invention is the source of the formation of society.

Instruments of production are the first to be invented. The invention of tools of production leads to the need to establish joint activities, containing the beginnings of the division of labor, i.e. agree on a work plan, joint actions, and evaluation of what has been done. Hence the need for a means of communication arises. Becoming social labor coincides with the emergence of the need for language and social thought, since the material of thought is determined by socially useful labor and the structure of social relations in the interests of the production of material goods and the reproduction of social relations.

Language in this context must give the material of thought a certain linguistic form and consolidate thought as a category of social consciousness, so that on the basis of language the management of labor and social organization and the storage of culture can be carried out. This purpose of language, determined by the needs of society, is realized in the formation of forms of speech, where sounds become meaningful and therefore articulate.

The theory of the origin of language proposed by Engels is, in essence, a theory of the formation of a social structure as a whole and language as a part of this structure. The general meaning of the theory is to build a theoretical model of the relationship between language and society. Society itself, according to this theory, is formed as a whole structure simultaneously with all its essential aspects, which then differentiate and become more complex in coordination with each other. Such essential aspects are: 1) structure social production, based on the division of labor; 2) the structure of reproduction of the ethnic group as the basis of production; 3) the linguistic structure in which the formation of articulate speech from inarticulate signals occurs; 4) the structure of social consciousness, arising on the basis of individual thinking; 5) culture as the selection and transmission from generation to generation of skills, abilities, material objects and semiotic objects that are important for the life of society, containing rules and precedents for activity.

Ethnography has shown that primitive society is a special structure, supra-individual and obligatory for members of society. This structure represents a unity in which there are forms of division of labor that are not intended by the biological status of individuals, but exist on the basis of the choice of forms of labor and the dependence of the forms of one labor on the forms of another. This means that labor in primitive societies is organized and the forms of its organization depend on the spiritual development of society and its culture.

So, the basis of the organization of society is the division of labor. Forms of family and clan are associated with it. They are based on the prohibition of consanguineous marriages, which takes a person beyond the boundaries of biological evolution. This is manifested in the fact that racial formation ends and the formation of racial groups begins. With the prohibition of consanguineous marriages, a social diversity of family and clan forms, or marriage-class organization, is born, which is not predicted by the biological qualities of a person. And consequently, society becomes subject to the laws of social history.

Initial social language people was oral. No material samples of this language have survived, but many material remains of human spiritual activity have been discovered, such as drawing, ornamentation, sculpture, remains musical instruments, costume, religious items, etc. These objects in human society are correlated with language in its oral form.

IN in brief Engels explains the conditions for the emergence of language as follows:

“When, after a thousand-year struggle, the hand finally differentiated from the legs and an upright gait was established, man separated from the monkey, and the foundation was laid for the development of articulate speech...” In human development, upright gait was a prerequisite for the emergence of speech, and a prerequisite for the expansion and development of consciousness .
The revolution that man brings into nature consists, first of all, in the fact that human labor is different from that of animals - it is labor using tools, and, moreover, manufactured by those who must own them, and thereby progressive and social labor . No matter how skilled architects we may consider ants and bees, they do not know what they are saying: their work is instinctive, their art is not conscious, and they work with the whole organism, purely biologically, without using tools, and therefore there is no progress in their work .
The first tool of man was the freed hand; other tools developed as additions to the hand (stick, hoe, rake); still later, man shifts the burden of labor to the elephant. A camel, a horse, and finally he controls them. Appears technical engine and replaces animals.

In short, the emerging people came to the point where they needed to say something to each other. The need created its own organ: the undeveloped larynx of the monkey was slowly but steadily transformed through modulations for an increasingly developed modulation, and the organs of the mouth gradually learned to pronounce one articulate sound after another." Thus, language could only arise as a collective property necessary for mutual understanding. But not as an individual property of this or that incarnated individual.

Engels writes: “First, work, and then, along with it, articulate speech were the two most important stimuli, under the influence of which the human brain gradually turned into a human brain.” “Thanks to the joint activity of the hand, speech organs and brain, not only in each individual, but also in society, people have acquired the ability to perform more and more complex operations, to set themselves more and more high goals and achieve them."

The main provisions arising from Engels’ teaching on the origin of language are as follows:

1) The question of the origin of language cannot be considered outside the origin of man.

2) The origin of language cannot be scientifically proven, but only more or less probable hypotheses can be constructed.

3) Linguists alone cannot solve this issue; thus, this question is subject to resolution by many sciences (linguistics, ethnography, anthropology, archeology, paleontology and general history).

The concept of the social theory of the origin of language was outlined by F. Engels in his work “Dialectics of Nature” in the chapter “The Role of Labor in the Process of Transformation of Ape into Man.” Engels associated the emergence of language with the development of society. Language is part of the social experience of humanity. It arises and develops only in human society and is acquired by each individual person through his communication with other people. main idea his theories are an inextricable internal connection between development labor activity the primitive human collective, the development of the consciousness of the emerging person and the development of forms and methods of communication. He developed the following theoretical model of the relationship between language and society: 1) social production based on the division of labor; 2) reproduction of the ethnic group as the basis of social production; 3) the formation of articulate speech from inarticulate signals; 4) the emergence of social consciousness on the basis of individual thinking; 5) the formation of culture as the selection and transmission from generation to generation of skills, abilities, and material objects that are important for the life of society. Speaking about the origin of language, Engels writes: “... like consciousness, language arises only from a need, from the urgent need to communicate with other people. The emerging people came to the point where they had a need to say something to each other... The need created its own organ: the undeveloped larynx of the monkey was slowly but steadily transformed through modulations, and the organs of the mouth gradually learned to pronounce one articulate sound after another.” 1 The appearance of language, therefore, was preceded by a stage of long evolution, first biological, and then biological-social. The main biological prerequisites were the following: freeing the forelimbs for labor, straightening the gait, the appearance of the first sound signals. Biological evolution affected primarily the lungs and larynx. It required straightening the body, walking on two limbs, and freeing the hands to perform labor functions. In the process of labor activity, further development of the human brain and organs of articulation took place: the direct image of an object was replaced by its sound symbol (word). “First work,” writes Engels, “and then, along with it, articulate speech were the two most important stimuli, under the influence of which the monkey’s brain gradually turned into the human brain. The development of the brain and the feelings subordinate to it, an increasingly clear consciousness, the ability to abstraction and inference had the opposite effect on work and on language, giving both more and more new impetuses to further development.” 2 The emergence of language, according to Engels, was thus associated with the process of cognition outside world, and with the process of development of consciousness under the influence of human labor activity. The need for intelligent communication (in which the communicative and cognitive functions of language were carried out, without which language cannot be a language) caused its appearance.

This first human language was not yet a language in the full sense of the word: communication, apparently, took place more at the level of gestures and inarticulate cries in order to regulate joint labor activity (basically it was a call to action and an indication of a tool or product of labor). And only over time, work, communication and consciousness, the formation of new, more complex social relations contributed to the formation of language. In its development, it underwent numerous restructuring, the most important among which were the following: 1) a person learned the linear principle of speech: he learned to arrange words one after another and understand them in interconnection; 2) having mastered the principle of the sequential arrangement of words, man extended it to the organization of sounds in a word: the word began to be “assembled” from individual sounds and syllables, speech became articulate; 3) phonetics has become more complex; 4) vocabulary expanded; 5) from the sequence of words, first the simplest and then more complex syntactic constructions arose.

Labor theory of the origin of language

In those same years, i.e. in the last third of the 19th century, another philosophical theory of the origin of language was developed. It is sometimes called labor theory, but it is more correctly called social theory of the origin of language. The foundations of this theory were outlined by F. Engels in “Dialectics of Nature” (1873-1886). Engels was a supporter of the comparative-historical method of linguistics. However, he did not consider it possible to build a concept of society as a whole on the basis of conclusions about the structure of language obtained by this method. Engels saw the general scientific application of the comparative historical method primarily in revealing certain aspects of the history of ethnic groups. At the same time, Engels, having studied the nature of the internal organization of pre-class society, reveals the relationship between such categories of society as clan and family.

F. Engels and K. Marx affirm a materialist view of history. The structure of society consists of an economic base, which contains productive forces and production relations, and a superstructure, which embodies ideology, law and morality. In these categories, the reproduction and development of forms occurs public life. A change or change of basis determines a change in the superstructure of society (i.e., a change of ideologies) while maintaining continuity historical development. That is why, speaking about the origin of language, Engels considers language to be one of the aspects, or structural systems, of society, and not a factor determining the entire development of society.

Engels views language as the immediate reality of thought. Both the forms of creating speech and its content are put in connection with the material ways of creating speech: “...is Achilles possible in the era of gunpowder and lead? Or in general, the Iliad, along with the printing press, and even more so with the printing press? And don’t they inevitably disappear tales, songs and muses, and thus the necessary prerequisites for epic poetry, with the advent of the printing press? This means that technological progress in the design and distribution of speech predetermines its content. In this sense, “from the very beginning there is a curse on the “spirit” - to be “burdened” with matter”**. That is why Engels associates the formation of writing with the formation of civilization, and considers pre-literate oral speech to belong to savagery and barbarism as the initial stage in the development of culture. But the sounds of language, in accordance with the views of Engels, served as the basis for the creation of forms of human thinking and the formation of social consciousness.

*(Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 12. P. 737.)

**(Right there. T. 3. P. 29.)

The development of articulate speech is the result of the formation of society. According to Engels, the emergence of articulate speech and language is included in the context of biological anthropogenesis, the genesis public organization labor and socialization of thinking, leading to the formation of consciousness. The essence of the labor theory of the origin of language is to clarify how these heterogeneous qualities can be formed together, i.e. how they are related genetically. Engels understands society as a unity of joint productive labor based on conscious planning of work activity and social consciousness, constituting a special integral structure in which one of the elements is language.

The principle of combining labor, thinking, social organization and speech is the law of growth ratio, which was discovered in biology by Charles Darwin. In accordance with this law of the form individual parts An organic being is always connected with a certain structure of other parts, which outwardly are not in any connection with the first. This means that there is some internal proportionality of the whole. The formation and development of the whole must be accomplished according to the unity of the internal measure of all its parts. According to Engels, the biological development of man in accordance with this law leads to the possibility of upright walking, and upright walking opens up the possibility of using the respiratory and digestive organs to create a variety of speech sounds, which, with their special understanding, can become articulate.

According to the same law of the growth ratio, the formation of articulate and meaningful speech turns out to be real during the formation of society, for language, social consciousness, social production with the division of labor and the reproduction of people constitute a whole that simultaneously and consistently develops in its forms.

According to Engels' views, the initiating source of the development of society is expedient and divided social labor. Such social labor consists of the invention of new instruments of production and organization of labor on the basis of a certain form of ownership. Hence, invention is the source of the formation of society(according to the law of growth ratio).

Instruments of production are the first to be invented. The invention of tools of production leads to the need to establish joint activities containing the rudiments of division of labor, i.e. agree on a work plan, joint actions, and evaluation of what has been done. Hence the need for a means of communication arises. The formation of social labor coincides with the emergence of the need for language and social thought, since the material of thought is determined by socially useful labor and the structure of social relations in the interests of the production of material goods and the reproduction of social relations.

Language in this context must give the material of thought a certain linguistic form and consolidate thought as a category of social consciousness, so that on the basis of language the management of labor and social organization and the storage of culture can be carried out. This purpose of language, determined by the needs of society, is realized in the formation of forms of speech, where sounds become meaningful and therefore articulate.

The theory of the origin of language proposed by Engels is, in essence, a theory of the formation of a social structure as a whole and language as a part of this structure. The general meaning of the theory is to build a theoretical model of the relationship between language and society. Society itself, according to this theory, is formed as a whole structure simultaneously with all its essential aspects, which then differentiate and become more complex in coordination with each other. Such essential aspects are: 1) the structure of social production, based on the division of labor; 2) the structure of reproduction of the ethnic group as the basis of production; 3) the linguistic structure in which the formation of articulate speech from inarticulate signals occurs; 4) the structure of social consciousness, arising on the basis of individual thinking; 5) culture as the selection and transmission from generation to generation of skills, abilities, material objects and semiotic objects that are important for the life of society, containing rules and precedents for activity.

The labor theory of the origin of language, having been formulated in its basic terms at the end of the 19th century. as a philosophical theory, it has great predictive power. It has received many confirmations during the progressive development of science over the past hundred years.

So, in the 20th century. In biology, areas that study animal behavior began to be developed. Animal behavior has been studied from three perspectives. First, it was found that all animals have signaling systems. With the help of these systems, signaling activities are implemented that mark the boundaries of the territory of an animal (or family of animals); activities that control procreation; activities related to the establishment of joint actions. All three types of signaling activity can undoubtedly be prerequisites for language, since this type of activity is also represented in human language.

Secondly, animal communities were studied as elementary cells responsible for the reproduction of the genus and the mechanism of evolution. It was found that each type of community is characteristic of a specific animal species, i.e. Every species of animal has a family of a certain type. Family organization in animals ensures definitely directed transmission hereditary traits, and, if necessary, transforming them in the interests of preserving and distributing the species. At the same time, the animal community is organized, and this organization facilitates the transmission through imitation of acquired forms of activity. The accumulation of experience is a prerequisite for the emergence of society.

Thirdly, numerous studies on animal psychology have established that all animals have a certain organized psyche. In its organization, such forms are distinguished as tropism, taxis, reflex, instinct, emotion and elements of rational thinking. Each animal species has its own set of forms of mental activity. Animals that are higher on the ladder of evolution have a greater variety of mental forms. These animals are characterized by elements of creative behavior. All types of mental activity are characteristic of humans as a biological species.

At the same time, it was noted that closely related species, having in principle the same forms of psyche, may have different psychic abilities. It has also been proven that animals of the same species also have different psychic abilities. For example, all animal species have memory and the ability to learn. But memory and the ability to learn are associated with the advancement of a species along the path of evolution. This means that the prerequisites for the human psyche and consciousness can be created under the conditions of biological evolution.

Fourthly, animals have the ability to share responsibilities within the family related to obtaining food, reproduction and protection of the family and territory. The high degree of division of responsibilities is explained by the complexity of instincts and the morphology of individuals. A low degree of division of duties implies less morphological variation among animals within a family. This means that the first type of division of labor should be based on age and gender.

Fifthly, a number of animals know how to use natural objects as tools to solve their life problems.

Thus, biology of the 20th century. actually indicated the main phenomena from which society can emerge through qualitative transformation. Engels's prediction in this regard was justified.

Anthropology late XIX V. and XX century made a number of discoveries concerning the morphological structure of man and the establishment of the ancestors of homo sapiens, direct and distant. The remains of Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus and other species of hominids were discovered, including the remains of human ancestors. Closest ancestors have been discovered modern man- Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. These confirmations of Engels's thoughts about the biological prerequisites for the development of anthropoids, as well as the fact that the development of anthropoids was slow and there was a large period of their pre-social life.

Archaeology, anthropology and ethnography have established that the development of homo sapiens is associated with the formation of spiritual culture, archaeologically manifesting itself in traces of rituals. Burials are considered in archeology a sign of the presence of culture and, therefore, the formation of homo sapiens in society, which homo habilis does not have. If primitive tools are found in the places where the remains of Homo habilis are located, then in these places there are no traces of the ritual (i.e., semiotic activity is not represented). In the burial places of homo sapiens, on the contrary, along with tools, there are also products of labor and traces of ritual.

Ethnography has shown that primitive society is a special structure, supra-individual and obligatory for members of society. This structure represents a unity in which there are forms of division of labor that are not intended by the biological status of individuals, but exist on the basis of the choice of forms of labor and the dependence of the forms of one labor on the forms of another. This means that labor in primitive societies is organized and the forms of its organization depend on the spiritual development of society and its culture.

So, the basis of the organization of society is the division of labor. Forms of family and clan are associated with it. They are based on the prohibition of consanguineous marriages, which takes humans beyond the limits of biological evolution. This is manifested in the fact that racial formation ends and the formation of racial groups begins. With the prohibition of consanguineous marriages, a social diversity of family and clan forms, or marriage-class organization, is born, which is not predicted by the biological qualities of a person. And consequently, society becomes subject to the laws of social history.

The original social language of people was oral. No material samples of this language have been preserved, but many material remains of human spiritual activity have been discovered, such as drawings, ornaments, sculpture, remains of musical instruments, costume, religious objects, etc. These objects in human society are correlated with language in its oral form.

Ethnography also revealed semiotic systems that are not represented in animals, but are obligatory in humans: these are fortune-telling, signs, omens, language, musical and practical arts, measures, landmarks, signals-commands, rituals and games.

Comparative mythology established the unity of the structural forms of myths and their genetic continuity. The historical stratification of the forms of myths was also determined, dividing them into totemic, cosmogonic and cultural-heroic. This made it possible to show the unity of the forms of social consciousness and ideology of primitive society that emerged due to the formation of language.

This is how a circle of knowledge was formed about the biological prerequisites for the formation of society and about the main forms of social life, and those moments were established when the transition from biological life to social life took place. The development of specific research fully confirmed Engels' philosophical hypothesis about the origin of language.

1. Engels F. Dialectics of nature // Marx K., Engels F. Works. 2nd ed. v. 20. Sec. "The role of labor in the process of transformation of ape into man."

2. Engels F. The origin of the family, private property and the state // Marx K., Engels F. Soch. 2nd ed. T. 21.

3. Engels F. The Frankish period // Marx K., Engels F. Works. 2nd ed. T. 19. Section. "Frankish dialect".

4. Bacon F. New Organon // Op. M., 1978. T. 2.

5. Bacon F. On the dignity and increase of sciences // Op. M., 1977. T. 1.

6. Vinogradov V.V. Modern Russian language. M., 1938. Issue. 1.

7. Hobbes T. Selected works: In 2 vols. M., 1964.

8. Humboldt V. von. On the differences in the structure of human languages ​​and its influence on the spiritual development of mankind // Izbr. works on linguistics. M., 1984.

10. Leibniz G.V. New experiments on human understanding of the author of the system of pre-established harmony // Op. M., 1983. T. 2.

11. Myths of the peoples of the world: Encyclopedia: In 2 vols. M., 1980 -1982.

12. Plato. Cratylus // Op. M., 1968. T.1.

13. Potebnya A.A. From notes on the theory of literature. Poetry and prose, paths and figures. Thinking is poetic and lyrical. Kharkov, 1905.

14. Potebnya A.A. From lectures on the theory of literature. Fable. Proverb. Proverb. Kharkov, 1894.

15. Potebnya A.A. Thought and language. Kharkov, 1913.

16. Philosophical encyclopedic Dictionary. M., 1983. P. 451 “Social contract”.

17. Schleicher A. The importance of language for the natural history of man // Philosophical Notes. 1868. T. 5. Issue. 3.

18. Schleicher A. Darwin's theory as applied to the science of language. St. Petersburg, 1864.

The question of the origin of language still remains in linguistics an area of ​​general assumptions and hypotheses. If any living or dead language, but attested in written monuments, can be understood in the real facts of its existence, then the proto-language, or “primitive” language, cannot be directly studied, since there are no real remains of it, they are not recorded in writing. In fact, the origin of language turns out to be closely connected with the problem of the origin of man and life. It was in this vein that this problem was solved in ancient times.

LOGOSIC THEORY
ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE

In the early stages of the development of civilization there arose logos theory(from the Greek logos - concept; mind, thought) the origin of language, which exists in several varieties: Vedic, Biblical, Confucian.

In the minds of the peoples of India and Western Asia who lived before the 10th century. BC, language was created by a divine, spiritual principle.
Designating spirituality, ancient people used the terms god, word, logos, Tao.

The most ancient literary monuments are the Indian Vedas. According to the Vedas, the establisher of names is God, who did not create all names, but only the Gods subordinate to him. People have already established names for things, but with the help of one of the Gods - the inspirer of eloquence and poetry.

In the mythology of the ancient Greeks there was a story about how the creator of language was the god Hermes, the patron of trade and means of communication, identified with Egyptian God wisdom and writing by Thoth.
In ancient Greek philosophy this idea was not very popular, since it was believed that the question of the origin of language could be answered using natural arguments and without resorting to supernatural help.

According to the Bible by the carrier The Word is God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It was in the beginning with God. Everything came into being through him, and without him nothing came into being that was made” (Gospel of John).
In creating the world, God resorts to the act of saying: “And God said: Let there be light. And there was light... And God said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate water from water... And it was so” (Genesis).
He then establishes the names of created entities: “And God called the light day, and the darkness night...And God called the expanse heaven...And God called the dry land earth, and the gathered together of the waters he called seas” (Genesis). God establishes few such names: day, night, sky, earth, sea, entrusting the naming of everything else to Adam.
Thus, according to the Bible, God has endowed people language ability, which they used to name things.

The idea of ​​the divine origin of language runs through the entire history of linguistics.
Such great thinkers as Plato(IV century BC), Byzantine theologian, one of the fathers of the Christian Church G. Nissky(335-394), bishop Anselm of Canterbury(1033-1109), German educator and scientist I. Herder(1744-1803), classic of German philosophy of the Enlightenment G.E. Lessing(1729-1781), German philosopher and educator D. Tiedemann(1748-1803), who thought a lot about the origin of language, came to the conclusion about its divine origin.

Major linguist of the 19th century, founder of general linguistics and philosophy of language Wilhelm von Humboldt(1767-1835) viewed language as an activity of the spirit. His ideas about language energy and spontaneous activity of the human spirit is a further development of the logos theory of the origin of language.

Taken together, the concepts of the emergence of language as the development of the spirit are so deep and serious that the 21st century, with its new data, returns to them, filling them with modern content.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau considered the problem of the origin of language within the framework common problem origin of society and state– the so-called “social contract theory”. Full title of the treatise: “Discourse on the origin and grounds of inequality between people” (1755)

In J.-J. Rousseau's theory of social contract is associated with dividing the life of mankind into two periods - natural and civilized. In the first period, man was part of nature and language came from feelings, emotions, passions. The origins of language lie primarily in emotional and aesthetic experiences and their expression by voice. Moral passions—love, hatred, compassion, anger—caused the first involuntary sounds, “natural cries.” As people became closer to each other, they began to look for other signs for communication, more convenient and numerous than “screams.” Gestures and onomatopoeia became such signs. Gestures indicated objects visible to the eye and simple to depict, with imitative sounds - objects that “amaze” the ear.

Emotional cries, Rousseau believes, come from the nature of man, onomatopoeia - from the nature of things. But vocal articulations are pure convention; they cannot arise without general consent. Replacing gestures with articulated sounds required not only collective agreement primitive people, but also words in order to introduce new words and agree on their meaning. It is very difficult to understand the mechanism of such a replacement, Rousseau admits.

As is easy to notice, social contract concept brings together different etymological theories of the origin of language – onomatopoeic and interjectional. The possibility of combining them in one theory lies in the fact that the theory of social contract establishes the unity of the human psyche, mind and thinking as a source of linguistic unity of people. Therefore, it is not so important what the first words of the language of any nation were, but what is important is that any nation, thanks to the unity of the human psyche and thinking, can achieve a common understanding of situations and signs that convey people’s thoughts about these situations.

ROUSSEAU'S THEORY

Rousseau, along with other thinkers of the 18th century, asked a new question - about the emergence of language, about language as an emerging whole. According to him, the initial state of language was indivisible, formless, substantial:

The first language of man, the most universal, the most expressive language, which he needed before he had to convince people who had already united of something, is the cry of nature itself.

Now it is a little more clear how speech came into use or how it was imperceptibly improved in the circle of each family, and it is already possible to make some assumptions about how various particular reasons could contribute to the spread of speech and accelerate its development, making it more necessary. Large floods or earthquakes surrounded populated areas with water or chasms; taking place on globe coups tore separate parts from the mainland and broke them into islands. It is clear that people who were thus brought together and forced to live together should sooner have formed mutual language than those of those people who still wandered freely in the forests on the mainland. It is quite possible that after the first attempts at navigation, the islanders brought us the ability to use speech; at the very least, it is very likely that society and languages ​​arose in the islands and reached perfection there before they became known on the mainland.

Some are needed external reasons of a catastrophic nature (the parallel here is the theory of geological catastrophes, which served Buffon and Lamarck as an explanation for the evolution of the living world), so that one or another group of people would be cut off from the rest of the community, so that in this clot of human sociality a new, linguistic substance would be formed. The latter should, it would seem, have a relative character, because on another “island” it can be formed differently.

But Rousseau’s thought develops precisely in the field of substances, not forms, and therefore the question of variants of linguistic form - the seemingly obvious question of the multiplicity of real languages ​​- is not even touched upon; For him, language is not so much a form as a substantial monad.
Rousseau recognizes the form and articulation of language only reluctantly and only as a factor of its corruption, a substantial defect.

In his “Essay on the Origin of Languages,” published posthumously, but apparently dating back to the same 1750s, he again tries to derive language from an indivisible substance - this time not from a “scream”, but from music, assessing the structural dismemberment of speech (in particular, the system of consonants and stops that break up the pure substance of the voice) as a dangerous “replenishment” that distorts its original musicality.

Social contract theory. In the 18th century a theory of social contract appeared, which was based on antiquity (for example, the opinions of Diodorus Siculus (90-21 BC)), and in many ways corresponded to the rationalism of the 18th century. Especially great attention The French enlighteners P. Maupertuis (1698-1759), E. Condillac (1715-1780), J.-J. Rouseau (1712-1778), Scottish philosopher A. Smith (1723-1790), etc.
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Some fundamental ideas of the theory of social contract were formulated in the 17th century. one of the predecessors of the Enlightenment, English philosopher T. Hobbes (1588-1679). He believed that speech was invented by people just as people invented printing. It occurred to primitive people to give names to things. With the help of names, people were able to retain their thoughts in memory and communicate them to each other for mutual benefit and pleasant communication. The 18th century was the era of the first industrial revolution, when a lot of inventions and discoveries were made, and in philosophy, the belief in the omnipotence of the human mind was dominant. Enlighteners of the 18th century. put forward the principle of conscious organization ordinary people, which, in their opinion, explains the origin of society and a reasonable social structure. This principle took shape in the form of the social contract theory, in which language arises as a result collective agreement . The French mathematician, physicist and philosopher P. Maupertuis developed the concept of the invention of language by people, noting in it three stages in the development of speech. In the first stage, a person expressed his simple and necessary needs with the help of a few gestures and cries, which were enough for communication. As needs increased, conventional cries and gestures began to join natural gestures and cries, forming the language itself. The second stage took quite a long period of time. At the third stage of language formation, methods of expression became independent of gestures and the tone of shouts. People have noticed that when communicating, you can do without body movements, replacing them with “stresses of the tongue and lips.” Having felt the advantages of the new method, people kept it, and thus the word arose. In J.-J. Rousseau's theory of the social contract is associated with the division of human life into two periods - natural and civilized. In the first period, man was part of nature and language came from feelings, emotions, passions. The origins of language lie primarily in emotional and aesthetic experiences and their expression by voice. Moral passions - love, hatred, compassion, anger - caused the first involuntary sounds, “natural screams”. As people became closer to each other, they began to look for other signs for communication, more convenient and numerous than “screams”. Gestures and onomatopoeia became such signs . Gestures denoted objects visible to the eye and easy to depict, imitative sounds - objects that “strike” the ear. Emotional cries, Rousseau believes, come from the nature of man, onomatopoeia - from the nature of things. But vocal articulations are pure convention, they cannot arise without general consent. The replacement of gestures with articulated sounds required not only the collective consent of primitive people, but also words in order to introduce new words into use and agree on their meaning. It is very difficult to understand the mechanism of such a replacement, Rousseau admits. As is easy to see, the concept of a social contract unites different etymological theories of the origin of language - onomatopoeic and interjectional. The possibility of unification in one theory lies in the fact that the theory of social contract establishes the unity of the human psyche, mind and thinking as a source of linguistic unity of people. Therefore, it is not so important what the first words of the language of any nation were, but what is important is that any nation, thanks to the unity of the human psyche and thinking, can achieve a common understanding of situations and signs that convey people’s thoughts about these situations.