1. WATER, AIR, EARTH, FIRE: HUMAN PROTO-LANGUAGE,
FROM ENVIRONMENTAL SOUNDS TO EARLY PHONEMES
GIUSEPPE MAIORANO
Euromedia Italia srl, via Lupatelli 56, 00149 Rome, Italy
One hundred years since F. de Saussure died have been a chance for his
celebrations in 2013 and for verifying the topicality of his lesson. However, a
strong bias still affects his heritage and the basic concept of the origins of human
language: the principle of arbitrarity of the linguistic sign. The true rise of
human speech implies an earlier embryo stage, which existed long before any
proto-language could have come into full existence, and demands tracing back
meaningful sounds and noises in the settled environment of Homo Sapiens’
daily life (Maiorano, 2012).
Similar to the evolution of writing from its primitive pictograms to the latest
alphabetic forms, the history of human language and extant languages can be
simply rewound and brought back to its basic imitative-iconic start. For both
communication systems, it seems as if the original key for their full
understanding has been lost, but, while the history of writing can be more easily
reconstructed from its objective signs, printed onto suitable surfaces of different
types and materials, oral language lacks ancient fossils and documents useful to
recall the early events and go beyond the skilled reconstructions, achieved by
historical linguistics. An analogous process is observed in the history of money,
which evolves from barter to the current e-money: a shift towards higher
abstraction, as to forms, features, materials and values of the different means of
payment. Another example is found in the gradual loss of memory, which affects
onomastic and toponomastic systems in all languages: names, surnames,

2. similarly mountain, river and town names, often lose their true etymologies, so
that people may think they have no real meaning and no causal link exists
between names and related items. Eng. Taylor, Ger. Wagner (carter), Ita. Ferrari
(smiths) are some examples.
Glottochronology, lexicostatistics, genetics, new probabilistic models of sound
change for automated reconstruction of ancient proto-languages, are capable to
reach deep time limits (up to 10,000 years) but cannot extend further beyond.
The multilateral comparison system (Ruhlen, 1994), though hardly criticized,
has proven to be able to identify units of the vocabulary from a first human
proto-language, except for minor advisable revisions to the global etymologies
to be carried out. The next, and last, step along the process of deep historical
reconstruction seems the most difficult one, indeed it is the simplest. It implies
analysing natural sounds available in the prehistoric environment, caused by
atmospheric phenomena, animal calls, human activities, accidental noises.
The major basic sounds, here reviewed, refer to the most frequent and vital
human activities and needs: hunting, water and food gathering, protection
against environmental risks and predators. Also tool manufacturing, skin
working, cooking activities are taken into account. Interactions among different
human groups, war and peace agreement, musical instruments, all show parallel
close deep relationships between real tools/actions and resulting sound/noises.
References
Maiorano, G. (2012). The voice of things: The revolution of human language
and its origin from sound imitation. In T.C.Scott-Phillips, M.Tamariz,
E.A.Cartmill, J.R.Hurford (Eds). The Evolution of Language. Proceedings
of the 9th
International Conference (EVOLANG9) (pp.212-218). Singapore:
World Scientific Publishing.
Ruhlen, M. (1994). On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic
Taxonomy. Stanford: Stanford University Press.