ABSTRACT
Although it is not clear when it began, the study of human language origins has a history that dates back at least to the ancient Greeks, and likely much further. To say that language origin has been studied for a long time is an understatement comparable to the suggestion that life has been studied for a long time. Aarsleff (1976) offered a cogent representation of the depth and timelessness of the interest:
This, at least, is certain: since the possession of language and speech has always been considered the chief characteristic of the human species, the question of origin has also been considered fundamental in any attempt to understand the nature of man and what distinguishes him from other animals. Most major philosophers and most philosophical systems have dealt with the problem in one way or another; in fact, so universal has this interest been that its absence, as in Kant, has been cause for wonder. Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, the Church Fathers, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, the German mystics, Jacob Boehme and Robert Fludd, Marin Mersenne, John Locke, and following him, most eighteenth-century philosophers would readily have understood the question [of the relevance of studying language origins] in its present formulation, (p. 4)
