The origin of human language from the imitation of environmental sounds is discussed against the worldwide accepted theory of 'arbitrarity of language signs' : instead, the evolution of human oral language from natural sounds and noises is shown to be the most viable and simplest solution

1. THE VOICE OF THINGS: THE REVOLUTION OF HUMAN
LANGUAGE AND ITS ORIGIN FROM SOUND IMITATION.
GIUSEPPE MAIORANO
Euromedia Italia srl, via Lupatelli 56, 00149, Rome, Italia
The true primeval origin of human language is regarded as a key-issue both in
historical linguistics and in overall scientific research. An increasing interest is
registered in recent times about this topic, and different, even conflicting proposals
are presently on the ground. Which are the main difficulties about achieving a
convincing ultimate solution? Aren’t we late about the understanding of how, why
and when human speech emerged, especially if we consider that more than 150 years
have passed since the ‘Darwinian Revolution’ took place? But probably the solution
is very near and, actually, it has been already proposed with parallel, although
different, formulas which can be today fruitfully revised and emended. Among the
classic ‘glottogenetic’ theories, the less welcomed ‘onomatopoeic’ and ‘sound-
symbolic’ proposals are mainly considered here. Nevertheless, these theories, for
which sounds for themselves give rise by imitation to analogous meaningful oral
sounds, are taken here as the only acceptable proposals for the origin of human oral
language - although first anticipated and then paralleled by gestural communicative
behaviour and acts. Examples of such proposals are the works by F.W. Farrar, Field-
Marshal Montgomery’s grandfather: ‘Origins of Language’ and ‘Chapters on
Language’, which go back to 1860 and 1865 respectively.
However, it seems necessary to simplify the whole question and reconsider it from
the beginning. In fact, major misunderstandings and biases still exist which need to
be cleared, namely:
- misuse of terms related to communication, language, speech, natural languages, and
similarly to iconicity, onomatopoeia, sound-symbolism, whose employment indeed
seems sometimes abused;
- shift of meaning and overlapping between the notions of ‘origin’ and ‘evolution’ of
human language, possibly with misleading consequences for the whole
argumentation process and its results;
- lack of proper ‘time and space’ location when dealing with the origin of human
language in prehistoric ages and consequent loss of references to the coeval climatic
conditions, basic human needs, health risks, group dimensions, hunting rules,
technology level;
- asymmetrical evaluation of experimental results from apes, birds and other animals
tests in relationship with their reduced communication faculties and speech
capabilities, compared with the current human highly developed linguistic
infrastructures, which are often overestimated when dealing with language origin;
- highly reduced and misunderstood role of the imitative/iconic sources in the
foundation of the primitive human language and formation of the first words in
prehistoric ages, when the situation was very far from the advanced mature state of
natural languages, when sound imitation and human auditory/vocal channel began to
replace gradually the pre-existing visual/gestural channel as the main human
communication tool;
- agreed unavailability of the primitive phonemes and morphemes, due to the absence
of material evidences and a huge time gap; truly, first human speech and later natural
languages lost large part of their original features and underwent progressive sound,
meaning and structure changes, meanwhile the natural sounds/noises have remained
almost unchanged in time.
In the second part, the main research purposes are discussed:
- origin of human language from natural and man-made sound imitation, based on
sound-meaning correlations, paralleled by a ‘mapping’ of the sensorial inputs from

2. the environment and by the existence of a large archive of sounds, built-up in the
human brain;
- comparison between language and writing, as to their origin and evolution, from the
imitative beginnings to later less iconic forms (ideograms, cuneiform writing etc.) up
to abstract alphabetic symbols, which still retain residual iconic traces;
- analysis of natural sounds, man-made noises, animal cries, and processing of
linguistic data from different subjects; examples of archaic sound-meaning pairings
like Lt. aqua, water, whose ‘water-sound’ root /kw/ acts as the first ‘equality’ or
‘equivalence’ mark.
As to the misuse of terms, this attitude can be referred, for instance, to ‘language’ in
its wide sense of ‘communication’, and viceversa, but mainly to ‘language’, meaning
both ‘broad communication’ and just only ‘vocal communication’ at the same time;
that is, often in the beginning of a text dealing with the emergence of human
language, this very term ‘language’ may indicate essentially human capacity of
verbal communication, but in the following parts, the same term tends to stand for
primates or animals intentional communicating acts among conspecifics.
Similarly, some confusion can be observed between ‘onomatopoeia’ and ‘sound-
synbolism’, or other similar but not synonymous terms. In this instance,
onomatopoeia is, ethimologically, the ‘word-making’ or creation of words from the
imitation of environmental, animal and man-made sounds and noises, obviously
referred to their respective sources, in a way that sounds and noises are transformed –
I’d say ‘translated’ - into verbal linguistic items. Definitely, onomatopoeia cannot
replace or be replaced by the concept of sound-symbolism, meaning the latter a
linguistic phenomenon or tendency by which single sounds – both vowels,
consonants and their combinations - convey meanings or suggest sensorial
experiences to the listeners or readers, such as smoothness, brightness, smallness.
Onomatopoeia can be taken as an extreme instance of sound-symbolism, but in order
to admit sound-symbolism as a linguistic phenomenon, it is necessary that a human
oral language be highly developed and be able to carry sensorial ‘synaesthetic’
charges.
Misleading effects are also provoked by similar slips from the search of the true
language origins to that of the progressive evolution of an existing proto-language, to
the analysis of the basic features, main advantages, language acquisition, speech
disorders. This attitude can be motivated by the fact that, after some general
statements, the ‘glottogenetic’ topic shows so complex to cope with, that the main
intention is almost abandoned.
The questions of human language origin and its further evolution cannot be absorbed
or compressed into each other. One of the main biases is the fact that most features of
the imagined proto-language are searched within our historical spoken languages,
and viceversa: an ingenuous belief we ought to avoid.
Another rather urgent question is the widespread tendency to space and time
indefiniteness as to geography, environment, climate, life conditions before 50.000
BC, before the crucial maturity phase, when oral language began to show its efficacy
by displaying such a power as to alter the biological and ecological balance on earth
within few thousand years. Beyond the clear traces of abstract thinking and applied
arts, the strongest evidence is the end of a rival species, Homo Neandertalensis,
which, although well adapted to climatic conditions of the last ice age, could not
withstand the expansion of modern Homo Sapiens, equipped with the most powerful
endowment: oral language. Any possible evidence of Neandertals linguistic abilities
or abstract thinking didn’t have enough time to reach useful results.
Stone technology, food and water supply, hunting techniques, environmental risks,

3. personal security, are among the main factors which have constrained the existence
of modern Homo Sapiens before 50.000 BC, but especially hunting practices, group
organization and camp location have been always critical elements in everyday life.
Possibly, animal cries imitation has been a constant training which may have
contributed both to improve sound imitation capabilities and to refine body parts in
the speech anatomy of modern Homo Sapiens.
Inappropriate time and space location of linguistic phenomena can be highly
misleading. Such coordinates could also be similarly lost when comparing
communication abilities in animals, like apes and birds, with the highly developed
human vocal and mental capabilities, which have evolved during thousands of years,
matched the ‘writing’ revolutionary phase and reached the new complex and fast ICT
current standards. Results from tests, obtained with animal species more readily apt
to human language learning, are sometimes evaluated with too hard criticism in
relationship with the less developed communication infrastractures – both physical
and mental – of all tested animals, which are thus subject to huge evolutionary steps
within relatively short times. Actually, these linguistically trained beings show
unexpected linguistic capacity and potential, even if they could not develop physical,
mental and cultural features, like modern humans.
But a widespread mistake is assigning a minimal or even null ‘glottogenetic’ role to
‘imitative’, ‘expressive’, ‘nursery’ and other similar forms – almost unanimously
traced in most existing languages and largely accepted as a structural feature of
human language. Also here, the usual comparison between the law percentage of
such forms in modern languages and the unknown situation in the primitive
vocabulary of human proto-language, is arbitrary and misleading. On the contrary, if
we consider carefully some old or new linguistic ‘roots’ and ‘global etymologies’,
they show a prevailing structural principle of the most ancient linguistic formations,
based upon the imitative reproduction of human, animal and natural noises. One of
these ancestral forms is related to the ‘water-sound’ and will be better discussed
ahead. Clearly, the original function of the imitative principle, as one can see in the
primitive ‘embryonic phase’, is very powerful and rather crucial when compared
with later or currently weak – although still productive – linguistic role.
Paradoxically, in the ongoing debate about the ‘global etymologies’ and their
hypothetical worldwide validity in establishing the existence of a unique human
proto-language, such forms are considered ‘by definition’ useless as indicators of
linguistic genetic kinship. Why do we need to leave them out? Aren’t actually these
largely spread expressive and imitative formations what we are just looking for?
What is particularly interesting in the said imitative glottogenetic theory, is the fact
that most archetypal oral units should derive from coeval environmental, animal and
man-made sounds, which basically do not differ from current natural sounds and
from noises produced by traditional human working activities. As a consequence,
such noises could be possibly reproduced, recorded and analyzed thanks to modern
appropriate instruments and to suitable ‘experimental archaeology’ research projects.
Therefore, the commonly accepted idea of the unavailability of evidences from the
original speech and its archaic phonemes and morphemes, could be partially
overcome and, despite the huge time gap, a series of features of the human proto-
language be reconstructed.
The sound-based language origin theories – either imitative, iconic, onomatopoeic,
sund-symbolic – are ancient and well known and do not need further explanation
here, the aim of the present work being basically an attempt to free the theory from
common biases.
Sound imitation – probably enhanced by paleolithic hunting practices – is based on

4. easily available sound-meaning correspondences, chosen from a large archive of
sounds and noises built up in the human brain with synaesthetic links to other
specialized areas and communication channels. It is a simple straight idea which
doesn’t require too many explanatory steps and adaptations from one communication
channel to the other, and the shift is minimal: the shortest in terms of ‘transition’
model. Obviously, the ‘visual’ and ‘gestural’ channel and practices have preceded
and then paralleled the oral channel, and then became secondary and supplementary
but still helpful for communication purposes, especially for deaf and dumb people.
The emergence of verbal human language from sound imitation can thus be
explained with a long progressive biological pre-adaptation and further evolution
within a hypothetical series of phases, the last one being the mature oral
communication strategy whichc employed clearly perceivable linguistic units,
supported by the first basic syntactic rules and devices.
Such a long process, implying a slow biological evolution and refinement in Homo
Sapiens speech organs – which, anyway, all had originally different functions – is not
far from the so called ‘exaptation’, and somehow it resembles later human technical
achievements, like the ‘wheel’ used for transportation purposes: one of the most
important mechanical inventions of all times, dating back to the half of the 4th
millennium BC. But, indeed, its earliest known use, depicted on clay tablets, has
been as a potter’s wheel, employed in horizontal position, some hundreds years
earlier. Later on, it acquired the upright position and changed its funtion, although
the potter’s wheel rimained still in use.
The glottogenetic topic has been dealt with by a number of authors since ancient
times, but here we like to quote a particular 19th century scholar, contemporary with
Charles Darwin: Rev. Frederic William Farrar, Field-Marshal Montgomery’s
grandfather. In his work ‘Chapters on Language’ (Farrar 1865) he states:
“…no connection is so easy and obvious, so self-suggesting and so absolutely
satisfactory, as the acceptation of a sound to represent a sound“ (p.23), “…if we
examine the vocabulary of almost any savage nation for this purpose, what are. we
certain to discover? That almost every name for an animal is a striking and obvious
onomatopoeia” (p.24).
The analogy between language and writing has been already proposed by several
authors, but it is worth to underline here that the relatively recent achievement of
writing can be traced back to the Upper-Paleolithic visual representations, obtained
with different types of techniques on various kinds of surfaces, where such drawings
and paintings shaw already communicative and maybe true linguistic intentions.
They could be assumed as the first evidences of local ‘epic cycles’ or even small
‘encyclopaedias’ produced in distant world areas after the emergence of oral
language. The ‘abstraction’ process, spanning from iconic pictorial beginnings to
later more conventional codified signs (ideograms, logograms, hieroglyphs,
cuneiform writing) and ahead, to syllabic and alphabetic systems, is very similar and
show a trajectory from natural to abstract and, only apparently,
artificial/conventional items, both in language and writing. But just like many current
words, apparently non-iconic, some alphabetic signs still keep a part of their
imitative iconic beginnings, like the very first letter of the alphabet ‘A’, the Greek
‘Alpha’ and Phoenician ‘Aleph’: both the visual – a reversed codified image of an
ox-head - and even the acoustic features - imitative ‘lap-sound’ - are still perceptible.
The primitive visual channel of the old gestural communication system and the later
auditory-vocal channel of the human language matched into a new refined tool,
‘writing’, once again related to the traditional powerful ‘optical’ endowment.
The main research program is based on recording, analyzing and comparing basic

5. natural sounds from environment and atmospheric phenomena, animal cries, man-
made noises – including rough materials transformation activities, body reactions to
extreme temperatures, strong emotions, interjections. It entails collecting and
processing linguistic data from subjects, differing in sex, age, mother-tongue, as in
the research work on linguistic categorization of sounds by C. Lehmann (Lehmann
2003) and M. Magnus’s unpublished ‘Dictionary of English Sound’.
Tests with young kids gave interesting results, when dealing with rough materials,
such as wood and stone. They show sensibility to the sounding of different
types/sizes of timber, to tones, timbres and notes which can be compared with sound-
meaning pairings in the range of /t/ and /d/ dental plosives with following vowels. As
to English language /ta/, /te/, /ti/, /to/, /ty/ are easily related to a long series of iconic -
or semi-iconic, i.e. compound - terms indicating basically wood hand tools or contact
actions: tact, take, tack, technique, test, tick, tip, timber, timbre, touch, token, top,
tool, type, and similar terms with prefixed ‘IE mobile /s/’. The evolutionary trend is
towards meanings of wooden fences, boundaries, limits: Etr. tular, Lt. Tiberis or
Thybris, O.E. Thule, etc. and from these terms also: Lt. Hiberia, Lt. Hibernia, Gk.
Hybris, or ‘arrogance’ - meaning accordingly Lt. superbia, that is ‘overstepping’ or
‘passing the limits’ – and finally the adverb/ preposition ‘over’, Gk. hyper, Lt. super,
probably from PIE *uper.
An important ancestral sound-meaning pairing has been detected in terms related to
Lt. aqua, water, one of Ruhlen’s most widespread global etymologies (cf. Ruhlen’s
Global Etymologies, Bengtson & Ruhlen 1994) tied to the concepts of
‘aquatic’,‘liquid’, ‘fluid’, ‘cooking’, whose ‘water-sound’ root /kw/ has been
proposed as the first worldwide ‘equality’ or ‘equivalence’ mark, acquiring later a
variety of grammatical functions, such as WH- interrogative and relative pronouns,
conjuntions, etc. due to the apparent physical property of water: a constantly flat
even horizontal surface.
References
Bengtson, J. D. & Ruhlen, M. (1994). Global Etymologies. In M. Ruhlen, On the Origin of Languages:
Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy (pp. 277-366). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Farrar, F.W. (1865). Chapters on Language, London: Longmans, Green & Co.
Lehmann, C. (2003). On the linguistic categorization of sounds. Erfurt: University of Erfurt

6. natural sounds from environment and atmospheric phenomena, animal cries, man-
made noises – including rough materials transformation activities, body reactions to
extreme temperatures, strong emotions, interjections. It entails collecting and
processing linguistic data from subjects, differing in sex, age, mother-tongue, as in
the research work on linguistic categorization of sounds by C. Lehmann (Lehmann
2003) and M. Magnus’s unpublished ‘Dictionary of English Sound’.
Tests with young kids gave interesting results, when dealing with rough materials,
such as wood and stone. They show sensibility to the sounding of different
types/sizes of timber, to tones, timbres and notes which can be compared with sound-
meaning pairings in the range of /t/ and /d/ dental plosives with following vowels. As
to English language /ta/, /te/, /ti/, /to/, /ty/ are easily related to a long series of iconic -
or semi-iconic, i.e. compound - terms indicating basically wood hand tools or contact
actions: tact, take, tack, technique, test, tick, tip, timber, timbre, touch, token, top,
tool, type, and similar terms with prefixed ‘IE mobile /s/’. The evolutionary trend is
towards meanings of wooden fences, boundaries, limits: Etr. tular, Lt. Tiberis or
Thybris, O.E. Thule, etc. and from these terms also: Lt. Hiberia, Lt. Hibernia, Gk.
Hybris, or ‘arrogance’ - meaning accordingly Lt. superbia, that is ‘overstepping’ or
‘passing the limits’ – and finally the adverb/ preposition ‘over’, Gk. hyper, Lt. super,
probably from PIE *uper.
An important ancestral sound-meaning pairing has been detected in terms related to
Lt. aqua, water, one of Ruhlen’s most widespread global etymologies (cf. Ruhlen’s
Global Etymologies, Bengtson & Ruhlen 1994) tied to the concepts of
‘aquatic’,‘liquid’, ‘fluid’, ‘cooking’, whose ‘water-sound’ root /kw/ has been
proposed as the first worldwide ‘equality’ or ‘equivalence’ mark, acquiring later a
variety of grammatical functions, such as WH- interrogative and relative pronouns,
conjuntions, etc. due to the apparent physical property of water: a constantly flat
even horizontal surface.
References
Bengtson, J. D. & Ruhlen, M. (1994). Global Etymologies. In M. Ruhlen, On the Origin of Languages:
Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy (pp. 277-366). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Farrar, F.W. (1865). Chapters on Language, London: Longmans, Green & Co.
Lehmann, C. (2003). On the linguistic categorization of sounds. Erfurt: University of Erfurt