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J4mes_bond25 Posted 20 years ago
Linguistics Studies

Connection between Sound & Meaning ???

Linguistically speaking, what, if any, connection might there be between the sounds of certain words and their meanings?

How has language evolved?

How does certain sounds turn into certain meanings?

PLEASE provide the answer in "layman's term", since this question was asked to me by a friend of mine & he'd expect me to be able to articulate my answer thoroughly WITHOUT any confusion.
  

Top answer

"We are profoundly ignorant about the origins of language, and have to content ourselves with more or less plausible speculations. L. Barber, The Story of Language There are lots of theories about the evolution of language, but there isn't enough space here to present them.

  • "We are profoundly ignorant about the origins of language, and have to content ourselves with more or less plausible speculations.
  • L.
  • Barber, The Story of Language There are lots of theories about the evolution of language, but there isn't enough space here to present them.
  • (And I don't have the time, either.
  • ) And it really seems pointless anyway as no one knows the truth.
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2 Answers
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"We are profoundly ignorant about the origins of language, and have to content ourselves with more or less plausible speculations. Because of this ignorance, twentieth-century linguists have generally refused to discuss the matter, on the grounds that it is a waste of time to speculate on a subject where we lack evidence."

"We do not even know for ceratin when language arose, but it seem
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There is no known answer to that question which can be stated simply and thoroughly and without confusion.
If you are interested in researching it for yourself, you might start with something by Pinker. I don't recall where I saw it, but he reports somewhere on the hypothesis that a mapping of whole body motions onto analogous tongue motions somewhere in the brain may have been the ori

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