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What's Wrong With This Theory?: The Yo-He-Ho Theory

The document discusses two early theories about the origins of human language: 1) The Yo-He-Ho Theory proposes that language evolved from grunts and sounds made during physical labor, but this does not fully explain the development of words. 2) The Bow-Wow Theory suggests that language began from the imitation of natural sounds in the environment. However, relatively few words are actually onomatopoeic, and the sounds used to represent animals vary significantly across languages. Neither of these early theories have withstood modern scientific scrutiny of language evolution and structure.

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rosmery15
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1K views1 page

What's Wrong With This Theory?: The Yo-He-Ho Theory

The document discusses two early theories about the origins of human language: 1) The Yo-He-Ho Theory proposes that language evolved from grunts and sounds made during physical labor, but this does not fully explain the development of words. 2) The Bow-Wow Theory suggests that language began from the imitation of natural sounds in the environment. However, relatively few words are actually onomatopoeic, and the sounds used to represent animals vary significantly across languages. Neither of these early theories have withstood modern scientific scrutiny of language evolution and structure.

Uploaded by

rosmery15
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Yo-He-Ho Theory

According to this theory, language evolved from the grunts, groans, and snorts
evoked by heavy physical labor.
What's wrong with this theory?
Though this notion may account for some of the rhythmic features of language, it
doesn't go very far in explaining where words come from.

As Peter Farb says in Word Play: What Happens When People Talk (Vintage, 1993), "All
these speculations have serious flaws, and none can withstand the close scrutiny of present
knowledge about the structure of language and about the evolution of our species."
But does this mean that all questions about the origin of language are unanswerable? Not
necessarily. Over the past 20 years, scholars from such diverse fields as genetics,
anthropology, and cognitive science have been engaged, as Kenneally says, in "a crossdiscipline, multidimensional treasure hunt" to find out how language began. It is, she says,
"the hardest problem in science today."
In a future article, we'll consider more recent theories about the origins and development of
language--what William James called "the most imperfect and expensive means yet
discovered for communicating thought."

The Bow-Wow Theory


According to this theory, language began when our ancestors started imitating the natural sounds
around them. The first speech was onomatopoeic--marked by echoic words such as moo, meow,
splash, cuckoo, and bang.
What's wrong with this theory?
Relatively few words are onomatopoeic, and these words vary from one language to another. For
instance, a dog's bark is heard as au au in Brazil, ham ham in Albania, and wang, wang in China. In
addition, many onomatopoeic words are of recent origin, and not all are derived from natural
sounds.

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