On Origin of Human Language : Supernatural, Not Evolutionary

On Origin of Human Language : Supernatural, Not Evolutionary · Origin of Language Continued

Quora Space and Question:

The Nephilim and Bible : Would God have taught Adam and Eve and their children the initial language and writing system for humanity or would he have let them learn to create it themselves?
https://www.quora.com/q/thenephilimandthebibl/Would-God-have-taught-Adam-and-Eve-and-their-children-the-initial-language-and-writing-system-for-humanity-or-would-he-h-1

Submission accepted by

Stef Lynn

Hans-Georg Lundahl

February 25

Linguistics · amateur linguist

Would God have taught Adam and Eve and their children the initial language and writing system for humanity or would he have let them learn to create it themselves?

He gave them innate knowledge of the initial spoken language, and he allowed Adam to make choices about vocaulary, namely name the beast kinds.

Whether writing was given at the same time is not told, I would say not, I think rather that Adam may have invented it to keep records after the Fall. But that is perhaps not true.

Comments

in more than one thread.

I

Daniel Snyder

March 5

Did they speak French?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

No, that language descended from Latin.

An ancient form of Hebrew, perhaps more archaic than Biblical Hebrew is more like it.

II

Hagop Bahlaw

Thu

The Bible is a book of lies. There are no answers to those stupid questions Wake up.

Another one

in same vein by him omitted, since highly offensive. Then this one, which posed an intelligent question:

Hagop Bahlaw

Thu

How do you know Hans you were there.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

No, but Adam was, Eve was from latter part of the day, they transmitted to their descendants.

III

Costas Tsintavis

Wed

Please be so kind to elaborate “He” … “gave” “innate knowledge of the initial spoken language” & “allowed” Adam “to make choices”.

Uninitiated people, like myself get confused.

Sincerely,

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

He = God. See words of the question.
Gave innate knowledge = didn’t teach but gave Adam the knowledge without a learning process at the moment of creating him.
Allowed Adam to make choices = about a limited part of the vocabulary, not included in the knowledge Adam already had.

Does this clear it up?

IV

Richard Peninger

February 26

Don’t know. The ancient first language is lost. The ancient Holy language is lost too, but will some day be restored.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

March 7

Possible, but hardly the question that was asked.

V

Matthew Cawsey

February 26

Which God? Zeus or one of the other made up ones?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

March 7

When we speak of Adam and Eve in the question, I think we can narrow the alternatives down to either Allah or Jewish or Christian versions of Adonai. I don’t think Zeus was made up, he was a king on Crete wrongly deified, as also happened to Julius Caesar …

VI

Jo Ann Ryan

February 28

Humans always make up a language. They have that innate ability. Twin studies show that they make up a language if left alone enough. This happened to my own twin children and I , of course, ended it quickly so that they would learn English easily and well. Jo Ann Ryan, Clinical Psychologist.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

March 7

Their made up language was only possible because you were teaching them English. It could obviously have been any other human language. It would not have been possible if they had grown up among wolves.

Your ending it quickly has no bearing on their learning English, but some bearing on how they will feel about restrictions. Bilingualism is no impediment to correct learning of a language given in surroundings.

But your being able to stop it illustrates a point. If two twins born in a tribe inheriting ape like communications from ancestors prior to Australopithecus had tried to invent language, their tribe of parents and others would have been very well able to stop it. Meaning, we would still have no language today.

VII

Jo Ann Ryan

February 28

I think that Eve, being highly intelligent and the intellectual equal of Adam (and possibly more verbal) probably created much of the structure of the language and created the conjugations and grammatical structure . Then she would have taught her children and grandchildren. Adam probably was busy killing animals to feed his family. Jo Ann Ryan, English major, Clinical Psychologist, Chicago, IL USA

Hans-Georg Lundahl

March 1

No, Eve was created when Adam already had the structure of the language. Adam never killed animals for food. Just people killing animals for food came after the Flood, Genesis 9:2.

No matter how intelligent you are, you won’t create a language without having one. You won’t create vocabulary if you have grunts and if you have vocabulary but no conjugation, you may create conjugation as a by-product, if at all. Chinese are not very good at creating conjugations, for instance. And no one pretends they aren’t highly intelligent.

James Wester

to me

Sun

Somebody please connect adam n eve with what race. The first homo sapiens are to have be from africa was adam n eve black or werw they neanderthals from asia or europe

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

Noah was tenth from Adam, mainly Cro-Magnon, and on the Ark we got some Neanderthal and Denisovan heritage as well, but less.

Tito Baca

to Jo Ann Ryan

Mon

Just because someone “may” have more verbal skills, this doesn’t necessarily mean they have higher intellect. It just means they may be able to easily demonstrate and express that intellect. It’s just like saying Adam was smarter because he came first and had “more experience.” Possibly but after the fall, they both were likely equally lost.

VIII

Heidi Hart

February 25

The genetic code was perfect then. Sometimes I try to imagine what that would be like.

Neil Horsley

February 26

I think that found mentioned in psalm 139:13–16 that sounds like it talking of dna

Heidi Hart

February 27

I think so too.

IX

John Bowen

February 27

WHAT WAS BEFORE THE TREE OF KNOWLEGE?

THE ABSOLUTE GENIUS STATUS, with no lies!

Man ate from the tree that gave them a case of the “dumb suckers"! It was not the inverse of going from idiots to smart; it actually was going from genius to COMPLETELY CONFUSED WITH NOW LIES!

THEREFORE, the curse brought forth work! Work included the tasks of “learning how to peel the lies off the genius banana!

Look at those who are LAZY at reading the Bible! They ask the simplest questions about God! They ask as if they don't even know him. Then the super educated ones ask difficult questions that have nothing more than “fancy carnal words or phrases with twisting to sound difficult"! It reminds me of the movie “My Cusion Vinny"!!

What does she say to that “COMPLICATED QUESTION"? SHE SAYS, “it is a trick question"! “Nobody can answer that! It is xxxxxxxxxx”. That “awyer sounded really, really “smart”! But, what is “LEARNING AFTER THE CURSE"? GOD SAYS that man must “work"-out what Ms. Vito recognized! Hebrews 5 explains this same principle! A Christian must pick up some wrenches to work out the “STUPID" in front of him. Ms. Vito did NOT have to “learn" the good stuff to be really, really smart. Ms. Vito has to go beyond and be able to recognize the xx (LIES) being told by the “supposedly smarter folks"!

X

Jim Miller

February 25

I dont know. I believe that before the fall Adam had a higher form. He may not have needed to write anything down with perfect recall. Who know how his mind and body functioned before he realized that he was naked?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

February 25

Exactly, not needing to write … but also no big disputes were looming before the fall …

XI

Neil Horsley

February 25

That may have been a bit of both so it came naturally as they he and the wife kept there innocence, they did learn to write as shown in Genesis 5 the book of Adam but some say that only happens with Enoch who may have taught older Adam to be able to write that chapter. We very likely may have learnt what we do know but minus any evil influence if they hadn't fallen so proving to be as intelligent as our present best scientists with innocence like a child's as example

i

Hans-Georg Lundahl

February 26

“Genesis 5 the book of Adam”

This is after the fall, since the fall happens in Genesis 3.

Btw, it is not quite sure that sepher does mean it was written down with letters.

5612. סֵ֫פֶר (sepher) -- a missive, document, writing, book
https://biblehub.com/hebrew/5612.htm

The accounts are short enough to be oral documents, transmitted from father to son by learning by heart.

If Adam and Eve had stayed long enough in Eden before the fall, they could obviously have invented writing for pure fun, and also, I am not sure that writing is a post-fall invention.

ij

James Wester

Sun

They are a fable. Question was adam neanderthal.from europe and asia. A homo sapien from africa or a denisovian from east europe.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Just now

You have no reason to call tradition a fable in favour of reconstruction.

XII

Howard Brant

March 7

I don’t think it was any problem for God to give a language to Adam. Remember he confused the languages at Babel. He even made a donkey talk. And at Pentecost, the Apostles and others talked in languages they did not understand.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

March 7

My conjecture is, writing was invented at the latest after Abel died.

Once it was clear people who died could not speak up about what they had seen or heard, the problem on how not to lose their knowledge arose, and I think the solution was double.

Writing so they could transmit at indeterminate span of inattention whatever they liked to so transmit; Learning short texts by heart. Genesis 2 - 11 is in fact not much longer than one song of the Iliad, like first one, I compared LXX since we have same language and therefore same length of words. A pre-Flood patriarch could easily have learned all of Iliad A by heart if even post-Flood pagans with lots shorter lifespans could, and even more could they learn by heart texts that were a lot shorter than all of 2 - 11 taken together.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

March 7

I agree, obviously.

My point is, I am positive about language, but less positive about writing system.

Did Adam know 22 Hebrew letters on day 6 - or did he invent 32 symbols found in the palaeolithic after the Fall, and Moses later reinvent this in 22 symbols?

Howard Brant

March 7

The closest I can come up with is conjecture that Enoch, seventh from Adam may have been able to write. Lots of controversy here as the Book of Enoch itself (preserved in the Ethiopic Bible) seems a bit spurious. For the sake of argument, let’s say it was written by Enoch… who walked with God. His life was cut short by his “translation.” But, if you follow the Biblical chronology, Adam would have been alive most of Enoch’s life.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

March 7

Any version of Biblical chronology, Adam died Anno Mundi 930.

However, the lifespan of Henoch is …

Enoch 1122 - 1487
Longevity Charts as per LXX
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2015/11/longevity-charts-as-per-lxx.html

Howard Brant

Sun

I see why we come up with different dates. I had no idea why the LXX and the Hebrew texts are different. My observation came from the Hebrew. You can see a a chart below based on the Hebrew text. Here is what I am following:

[Chart based on Masoretic, Vulgate, King James chronology.]

Your chart says he was born when Adam was 230 years old but Genesis 5:3 in Hebrew says clearly that he was born when Adam was 130 years old. Something funny going on here.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Mon

Yes, and even funnier is, while Josephus for Genesis 11 gives a total for the new, he gives age at son’s birth for each adding up to old one, or close enough, presuming LXX is older.

XIII

Mark Mathews

Tue

I believe he did, Evidence is naming the Animals and so on. Adam was given that job by GOD. GOD created them he also could have given them Language to speak to each other and talk with GOD. Their names prove it is Hebrew the Language given them by GOD. Clearly i do believe yes GOD did give them it to speak.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Tue

Agreed, only problem - when do you place mankind’s knowledge of writing?

XIV

Domenico Altavilla

March 6

Why tell lies? No god has ever taught a language to any Adam or Eve. Can you prove otherwise?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

March 7

It so happens, I kind of can.

If evolution happened, it means human language was invented. Now, this is basically impossible.

Man is genetically predisposed to learn language if he has the oppurtunity, both social and involving the anatomic equipment.

However, the time at which man can learn a language is very narrow. Feral children who have been kept by for instance wolves past that moment never manage to learn language.

This means, for a man to learn a language, he needs to learn it (barring the miraculous infusion of language into Adam) before that age. Not an age in which you can invent things. Especially not an age in which you can invent things and then impose it on the tribe that’s raising you.

If men, inheriting the language of apes, namely gestures and shrieks and content moans and so on, had had a two year old child who had stumbled on nearly inventing language, it would have been stifled through socialisation in that group.

Now, you may plead graduality of change between ape language and human language. Also very impossible.

In “ape” you have sounds that mean complete, usually emotional, messages. You have single sounds that mean things like “wait a minute” or “come here” or “hello, are you content with me today?” or “hello, yes I am”.

In “human” you have sounds with no emotional meaning, so called phonemes, combining into morphemes with meanings more often notional than emotional, more often curious than practical, and yet not giving a complete message, because then you have these morphemes combining into sentences (which in some languages occasionally can be single words!) with complete conveyance of the message only at that level.

And before you say there has been observation of gradual change in human language and that that supports your case, between Latin and Spanish you ONLY have phonemes exchanged for phonemes (like final nasal u in ursum for final o in oso, like short u in ursum for initial o in oso, and sometimes two phonemes reduced to one, like in rs of ursum reduced to s in oso, or expanding to three, like ml in tremlare becoming mbl in temblar), morphemes exchanged for morphemes (alquil-ar for loc-are) sentence structures exchanged for sentence structure (like word order replacing certain phonemes - ursus Paddington vult locare domum becomes el oso Paddington quiere alquilar una casa with a single case for subject and for object, but these nevertheless distinguished by word order. In other words, you don’t see more basic levels, nor less basic levels, you only get shuffling within each basic level. No basic level, phoneme, morpheme, sentence can be reduced to another one.

Other point, Australopithecus and Paranthropus both have ape anatomy unfit for human language (in incus and stapes, verified for both, in hyoid bone verified for Australopithecus, plus no trace of Broca’s area found in neither), while Homo erectus, Homo rudolfensis, Homo antecessor, Homo neanderthalensis all have Broca’s area, when verified, as for Neanderthal, human hyoid, and all have human incus and stapes as well as external auditory tract and malleus. In genome, Homo denisovae and Homo neanderthalensis have the human version of the FOXP2 gene which has one necessary function in acquisition of language (a case of aphasia in a family was due to FOXP2 gene mutation).

There simply is no such thing as a gradual transition from “ape” to “human” and this leaves only two options, either mankind has been around since eternity past or got language from a creator having that.

Domenico Altavilla

March 7

Then, it is “basically impossible” that animals and even plants have an own “language” and that their “languages” haven’t been “invented” (so, if a dog wags its tail, god taught it). Very, very interesting! However, you haven’t proven that a “god” has taught a language to “someone”. Were you present when that happened? If yes, you can “prove” what you say, otherwise no.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

March 7

You forget that we are speaking with someone that unlike a wagging dog tail is not common to “ape” and “dog” but is common to English and Chinese.

That’s how radically different human language is from the rest.

That’s why we can’t pretend it was invented by a human inheriting sth like that.

Domenico Altavilla

Mon

Therefore, god must have taught English to the British and Chinese to the Chinese. Were Adam and Eve English or Chinese?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Mon

You seem bent on misunderstanding on purpose.

A British child learns English by parents speaking English, a Chinese by parents speaking Chinese. Considering Biblical chronology, there is no way English and Chinese could have diverged from a common language by normal language change, so, yes, at Babel God changed language settings.

But that was not the point.

The point is, no brute animal has double articulation (phonemes + phonemes = morphemes, morphemes + morphemes = sentences), notional symbols, even if some seem to have names, ways to talk of strictly absent things (negatives, pasts, futures, far off things), and infinite recursivity.

Human language is not inventable by adult humans who don’t already have at least one such, and it is not inventable in the time span when children learn language either, because parents not having it would correct and shut down the first traces of human language before it even appeared.

And these traits are strictly common to all languages known, past present, civilised or jungle. They are lacking from all animal communication systems. That was the point. If cats and dogs had a common ancestor, the meeows and the woofs could be diverged dialects of a same ancestral system having none of these human traits, and neither has chimp language, and that’s where you’d put the ancestors of men.

Domenico Altavilla

Mon

In cave paintings and graphites the expression is exclusively graphic, non-verbal. Verbal expression arose long after man had learned to communicate by drawing. There is therefore certain proof of the evolution of human language from non-verbal to verbal forms: no “imprinting”exists, but “evolution”.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Mon

It so happens, this is not true.

Genevieve von Petzinger (who is an evolutionist) has found 32 symbols all over Upper Palaeolithic.

https://youtu.be/hJnEQCMA5Sg

This accounts for the period of cave paintings, which I place at post-Flood life of Noah. They had symbolic communication as well as paintings.

For earlier (what I consider pre-Flood), we have tool making of a type that has been tested, instructions cannot be successfully made by just manual showing without any verbal actual instruction at least for some moments.

https://youtu.be/1hVijQZLEeM

The one error he makes is pretending to imagine evolution into that story, he shows language already in existence.

Domenico Altavilla

Mon

Well, throughout the Upper Paleolithic (between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago, for about 30,000 years), 32 "symbols" were found. So you agree that originally there was no "structured written” language and that modern ones are the result of transformations (man-made, not pre-impressed), extended over 40,000 years, of some primitive forms. These “forms”, in your opinion, were born after the “Great Flood”, that is, Adam and Eve didn’t have a “structured written” language. If this isn’t “evolution”, what evolution is?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Tue

“So you agree that originally there was no "structured written” language”

Language does not have to be written to be structured.

Any language newly discovered in Amazonas or New Guinea is structured in the sense I mentioned :
phonemes + phoneme (+ phoneme …) = morpheme;
morpheme + morpheme (+ morpheme …) = sentence.

I do not agree writing was lacking in the pre-Flood times, for those times we have only found lifestyles outside the main civilisation, at the margins. For Henoch in Nod east of Eden, the 32 symbols may very well have existed before the Flood, for one of them, the hashtag, we do have Neanderthal evidence, so pre-Flood.

Adding writing to denote phonemes is very much not comparable to the structure of language as outlined as basic superiority of human over bestial. It is an invention at the service of spoken language, it is not an evolution of language.

In “ape” // phoneme (* rep ad lib) = sentence //, no double articulation there. This is very much NOT what we find in Amazonas or New Guinea when anthropologists find a new human language. It is also not compatible with transmitting notions, as opposed to immediate social practicality. When I say “immediate” I am obviously excluding tool making as the tool making is not an immediate utility and when it is a finished tool and becomes an utility, it is usually an individual such.

Domenico Altavilla

15h ago

1) “… Language does not have to be written to be structured … “

Nobody has saied that “oral languages” aren’t “structurated”. In any case, this don’t prove that a god has impressed an “oral structured language” into someone called “Adam” and “Eve”.

2) “… the 32 symbols may very well have existed before the Flood, for one of them, the hashtag, we do have Neanderthal evidence, so pre-Flood ...”

Then you agree that “Neanderthal man” had a “written language”, but he has been now replaced by “Homo Sapiens sapiens”, that is an “evolution” (so say scientists) of the previous one. Thus, has “the writer” evolved, not his ”language”?

3) “… basic superiority of human over bestial ...” … ”… It is an invention at the service of spoken language, it is not an evolution of language ...” . These are “dogmatic sentences”. May you prove that “humans” are “superior” to “beasts”? May you prove that “written language” is an “invention at the service of spoken langage”? Dogmatism works well with “believers”, not with “facts”. A virus can kill a man; is virus “superior” to man? An anchovy swims better than a man; is anchovy “superior” to man? A man can articulate the language better than a mosquito; is man “superior” to mosquito? Only human “presumption” (see “original sin”) supports his “superiority”. And symbols are “symbols”, not “written linguage at the service of spoken one”. This is a “symbol”: 

[image not copied]

It expresses an “idea”, but it isn’t “at service of speak”. This isn’t a “phrase”, althougth it may have a “sense”:

[image not copied]

Its “written” traduction is “The angry man desires to kill the screaming one”, but only because the author is saying so.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

4h ago

When I argue that man needed God to provide him with language, not everything I say is directly meant to prove that, some are in fact meant to answer your objections.

“Nobody has saied that “oral languages” aren’t “structurated”.”

If you didn’t, you lost your point, since you pretended language as we know it emerged with writing, which can only be upheld on that ground.

“In any case, this don’t prove that a god has impressed an “oral structured language” into someone called “Adam” and “Eve”.”

As said, I was not proving, I was answering your objection that you pretended to have proven evolution of language (of human language as such, not of a specific language).

The point is, no you haven’t proven any pre-language humanity existed, so you haven’t proven language could have been slowly developed by humans starting out with something more like monkey communications.

“Then you agree that “Neanderthal man” had a “written language”,”

Yes, I do.

“but he has been now replaced by “Homo Sapiens sapiens”, that is an “evolution” (so say scientists) of the previous one.”

No, they do not say that. Neanderthals are lost cousins, not lost grandparents.

Prior to the Flood (and if we replace this wording which flaunts YEC with “carbon dated 45 000 BC” scientists will agree) Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis lived side by side. Same as with Denisovans.

One did not replace the other by evolving from them, but pureblooded Neanderthals and Denisovans have disappeared. As Neanderthal genome survives in many alleles, but conspicuously not in Y-chromosomes and mitochondriae, I have theorised a woman on the Ark with a Neanderthal father gave us what we have of it. As a woman, she was not transmitting any Y-chromosomes, and as her mother was sapiens sapiens, she was transmitting mitochondriae of those.

“These are “dogmatic sentences”.”

Not the least. They are descriptive sentences of the communication system.

Bestial (monkey, dog, cat, owl):
phoneme = message
Human (all languages ever observed by us):
phoneme+phoneme (+….) = morpheme
morpheme+morpheme (+…) = message.

There is a purely quantitative superiority here, as the human version allows an infinity of different messages and the bestial one doesn’t.

“A virus can kill a man; is virus “superior” to man? An anchovy swims better than a man; is anchovy “superior” to man?”

Viruses are perhaps superior killers, anchovies are clearly superior water dwellers and man is a superior language user.

And this starts at this very basic level. Double articulation.

“It expresses an “idea”, but it isn’t “at service of speak”. This isn’t a “phrase”, althougth it may have a “sense””

Well, those examples aren’t writing.

Writing still remains, whether alphabetic or Chinese or syllabaries of the Japanese kana, at the service of the spoken language.

My point about the 32 symbols being like that is, they are exactly 32. Symbols with entire messages would very likely be far more diverse.

“Did you know there are over 500 Federally approved traffic signs in use today?”
[from: ] USA Traffic Signs.
https://www.usa-traffic-signs.com/Test_s/50.htm#%3A~%3Atext%3DDid%20you%20know%20there%20are%2Cmake%20you%20a%20safer%20driver

But 32 is like 22 Hebrew consonants + 10 vowels, or like the number of letters in the Russian alphabet.

I tried to contact Genevieve von Petzinger on either trying combinations to see if any Hebrew words emerge or trying to see if there are any Hebrew genealogies by initials, like N, J, J, D for Noah, Japheth, Javan, Dodanim, but I haven’t managed to get any contact with her. The name of her university appears in more than one country, since in English speaking world universities are not always named for cities.

So, I think the 32 symbols are at the service of speech, and not directly non-verbal symbols.

“Thus, has “the writer” evolved, not his ”language”?”

Evolved or not evolved, Homo erectus soloensis, Homo rudolphensis, Homo Antecessor (from Atapuerca), Denisovans, Neanderthals, and our own lineage on the main Cro-Magnon side all shared a fully human language which cannot be shown to have evolved from bestial communications. Australopithecus and Paranthropus lacked human language and cannot be shown to have been evolving in that direction.