Language, Pints, and the Eternal "Why?"
This time, there were no cheeky pints involved - though in the past, when discussing the grandest questions of human existence, a well-poured ale has often provided clarity (or, at the very least, the illusion of it). Today, however, we’re tackling the origins of language with nothing but ink, thought, and the kind of curiosity that has plagued philosophers and five-year-olds alike.
Now, given that yours truly has started spending a considerable amount of time writing - or at least contemplating ideas, spinning narratives, crafting dialogue, and occasionally questioning their own life choices - it was only fitting that the question of how language itself formed would pique my interest. It’s not a new obsession, mind you. Ever since childhood, I’ve found myself drawn to the idea that words don’t just describe the world - they shape it, build it, define it.
Sverker Johansson understands this well. He opens The Dawn of Language with a scene that is both painfully familiar and strangely profound: a conversation with his five-year-old son. It follows a pattern any parent, teacher, or unsuspecting adult in the vicinity of a curious child will recognise:
"Why?"
"Because X."
"But why?"
"Because Y."
"But why?"
…long pause, shoulders raised in existential surrender.
At this point, most parents wave a vague hand at “science” or “because that’s how it is,” but Johansson, being made of sterner stuff (and by ‘stern’ we mean former particle physicist at CERN turned linguist, because apparently some people need two intimidatingly complex careers), took a different route. He wrote a book. And what a book it is.
Chomsky, Johansson, and the Battle for the Origin of Words
For those unacquainted with linguistic theory (or who wisely steered clear of debates that can last until last orders), the evolution of language is often discussed as if it had a singular moment. A definitive poof! in history where one day, early humans were grunting at each other, and the next, they were composing Shakespearean sonnets.
Noam Chomsky - linguistics' resident grandmaster - has long championed the idea that language is an innate feature of the human brain, like a universal Swiss Army knife of syntax just waiting to be unfolded. According to him, some prehistoric ancestor of ours experienced a rather significant cognitive mutation - like unlocking the recursion achievement in the great evolutionary game (that’s quite the verbose right there, isn’t it?, but in simpler terms, recursion is what lets us nest thoughts within thoughts, like "He said that she thought that they knew...," which, let’s be honest, is the foundation of both human language and office gossip) - and voilà, language as we know it was born.
Johansson, however, takes a different approach. He argues that language didn’t just happen; it grew. Slowly. Painfully. Like a story draft that refuses to come together. Instead of a singular stroke of genetic brilliance, he sees language as an evolutionary patchwork - gestures, grunts, symbols, and sounds coalescing over time into something increasingly structured. It’s the difference between Chomsky’s “light-switch” model (where language suddenly switched on like a free trial version of a software upgrade - no bugs, no beta testing, just plug-and-play recursion) - and Johansson’s “dimly lit pub” model, where words flickered into existence gradually, fuelled by need, repetition, and the occasional misunderstanding.
The Long and Winding Road to Syntax
Johansson’s book doesn’t just throw out theories - it brings receipts. He leans into anthropology, archaeology, and cognitive science to argue that language likely emerged from a mess of social interactions, hunting strategies, and cultural practices. ~ and this is where we could bring in the great Michel Serres, our blog patron, so to speak. ~
Serres, ever the poetic thinker, once argued that all communication begins in noise - chaos, static, the background hum of existence before meaning is imposed. If Johansson is correct, then early language was precisely that: a tangled mess of signals and misinterpretations, where every grunt, gesture, and attempted word was a shot in the dark, gradually shaping into something recognisable (which, incidentally, is also how my brain sounds after a few pints). It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t clean. It was survival, stitched together by trial and error.
Chomsky would have us believe that once this linguistic spark was lit, it spread instantly, like a perfectly executed revolution. Johansson, in contrast, tells a more patient story - one in which early humans weren’t linguistic geniuses overnight, but bumbling apprentices in the long and arduous craft of communication.
Culture, the Great Sculptor of Speech
And here lies another key difference between the two men. For Chomsky, culture is largely an afterthought - language is biological, encoded in the very fabric of our species. We speak not because we learn to, but because we are wired to. (much like how certain individuals are wired to correct grammar in casual conversation, unprompted and with the righteousness of a medieval scribe)
Johansson, on the other hand, sees culture as language’s true sculptor. He argues that the structure of language - syntax, grammar, meaning - was driven as much by social necessity as by biological capacity. Language didn’t just exist in our minds; it evolved in the spaces between us, shaped by storytelling, ritual, and the ever-present need to explain why Tim the Hunter ate all the communal berries again. Culture didn’t decorate language - it built it.
Final Thoughts: The Wannabe Writer’s Dilemma
And this, dear reader, is why Johansson’s book left such an impression on me. As someone who spends a fair amount of time trying to write - choosing words, rearranging them, second-guessing them - I couldn’t help but feel a quiet kinship with the early humans Johansson describes. If he’s right, then this process of fumbling for meaning, of piecing together language bit by bit, isn’t just a personal struggle, it’s a very old one. Long before ink, before parchment, before words were written down and studied, someone was standing by a fire, gesturing wildly, trying to explain something to someone else. Language, in that sense, isn’t a neatly prepackaged tool we inherited - it’s something we keep making. Every time we put words together, we’re shaping the same living, evolving thread that has wound its way through generations.
So the next time you find yourself staring at a blank page (or desperately trying to find the right words in conversation), take heart. If our ancestors survived the long, winding road to language, surely we can survive one more sentence.
And as for the why? of it all? Well… perhaps the answer, like Johansson’s book, is simply another invitation to keep asking.
RO: Sverker Johansson - Zorii Limbajului
EN (Amazon): Sverker Johansson - The Dawn of Language