LANGUAGE EVOLUTION
Abstract
Language is a convention of instructions that enables humans to communicate using structured social semiotic and cognitively deliverables (Gee and Hayes 2011). Language and languages are constantly evolving and changing. The evolution of language is available to the dynamic discoveries, problems, linguistic activities, and the needs of its users, influenced differently from one generation to another. According to Halliday, Languages’ history can be categorized into phylogenetic, where language is a system, the history of each occurrence of the word, and finally, the history of the individual speaker. In the evolution sphere, the individual speaker, after maturity, dies with their history. The occurrence is phased out by time. Still, the language system dynamically evolves as it interacts with its environment. The changing of the human communication language, especially English, helps with the semantic growth of the language and enriches it with vocabulary and word bank. In this paper, we shall explore the history of languages, we shall also explore how the standard English language is changing, and finally we shall also strive to discover the impact of technology on modern literature.
The exploration of the history of languages discloses that every style encompasses a history, and history keeps records, and evolution keeps a chronological account of events. According to Halliday (Halliday, 2010), language can be categorized into three diverse histories, ontogenesis which is the history of the individual speaker, and the history of an individual instance of a language also known as logogenesis or text, philogenesis which is the history of language as a system, . It is considered that the language follows the course of an individual speaker from a very early age, up until it dies at its maturity. The only history that is anticipated to evolve is the language considered to be a system. The language as a system interacts with its environment and therefore, dynamically changes with it. What is the context of language? Assenting with Sydney Lamb theory (Lamb, 2004), the brain is considered to be the connector of both body and the social and physical environment. The development of language from childhood to adulthood develops from non-referential to referential. The next development stage is from individual to class reference and sensible to imaginable and finally, from actual to virtual. The environment supporting the system language starts from home than the neighboring surroundings, primary school, and, eventually, secondary school (Aikens & Barbarin, 2008).
The universally accepted English language as the standard mode of communication is continuously changing, accommodating, and changing generational users and their innovational needs. The English language provides the flexibility to manipulate the language and come up with names for innovations, therefore, without language evolution generations would be stuck with repetitive and confusing same synonyms language change has brought by techniques to simplify the language. As the needs of the speakers evolve, the language evolves with them. Human existence has evolved from forest to farm and factories and, finally, civilization (Halliday, 2010). Language evolves with each new product and technology. The other aspect that influences change in language evolution is experience; it is noted that every human’s experiences are unique, whether religion, education, profession, country, and region, the movement of humans from one place to another pickup and transport linguistic terminologies. People in the cities travel to rural areas and influence their speech. They influence his and others to travel from one country to another, picking words and transporting them, and some end up evolving into new words. The last aspect that changes a language is time. Words were pronounced differently 500 years back. The vowels and the sounds change over time; for example, Scandinavian countries never experienced a massive vowel change because the spelling of words is different from English.
Technology is having a massive impact on the evolution of many languages in the 21st century. The world has been linked by the World Wide Web or the Internet. Technology through the Internet has increased the velocity at which the evolution of languages is taking place. Technology now offers language users the freedom of both natural expression and content with little concern as to whether they are grammatically wrong or correct. David Crystal, in his book “The Internet Linguistic,” asserts that technology does change the language and gives a scenario where we can read text written in fifty years earlier (Crystal, 2011). Hallidays’ argument invalidates David Crystal, that technology sets a limitation on the what individual speaker can mean by dictating the syntax of content, its grammatical correctness and range of vocabulary used and what to write to achieve rich content; as earlier proclaimed that language is a system and that it evolves with its environment, in the digital age language has changed even from dead text to live visual text via video technologies like Tik Tok allows sharing information via video and this form of language evolution also invalidates David and partly Halliday’s argument because now grammar is free from alteration, the text is heard live as the individual speaker unleashed raw and if necessary with errors or without, this new form of digital evolution that language is taking is phasing out syntactic correctness of the language. Dan glance, a director at the western university of Australia (David,2015), argues that digital evolution has teamed up with language evolution, and now the technology dictates what we do and how we do it. Dan gives a scenario of the word ‘Hoover, ‘which came by as a result of the discovery of vacuum cleaners. A new verb ‘googling ’ has been born out of technology as acknowledged by the dialect society back in 2009. Dan argument concludes that the evolution of today’s’ language through written text form could not easily be understood by the people of the golden age. The moral of the essay is that language evolution is a system that interacts with its environment and changes dynamically according to the environment and the users’ needs.
Conclusion
The histories of language, from Hallidays’ view can be a system, an individual speaker, and an individual substance. History of language as a system is the only one that evolves. Because of its close integration with its environment, it can change as human life evolves regardless of environmental features or generation. The brain’s neural network system is the primary interface connecting the body with the rest of the environment allowing communication to occur. Technology is the driving force of the evolution of language and dictates its futuristic new form.
Language evolution will continue to change for the better as environments changes, and as the users’ needs continue to evolve with every discovery.
Reference
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