LANGUAGE, the faculty and ability, possessed by normal human beings and by no other species, of mental phenomena or events. Most fundamentally it is the association of speech sounds, with thoughts, concepts, or images in the mind, and the ability both to produce and to interpret such sounds in recurrent patterns. The primary purpose of language is communication among persons. Natural human language by which one person speaks his mind to another is the defining case of language. Of course, the word also applies to the product of this faculty, both spoken and written.

语言，正常人类拥有而其它物种没有的心理现象或事件的天赋和能力。最根本的，它是语音与头脑中的思想、概念或想象的关联，以及以循环模式产生和解释这类声音的能力。语言的主要目的是在人群中进行交流。一个人向另一个人讲述其想法的自然人类语言就是语言最典型的实例。当然，这个词也适用于这种天赋的产物，无论是口语和书面语。

THE ORIGIN AND ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE

The question of the origin of human language preoccupied the 18th and early 19th century philosophers of the subject but then was dismissed as unanswerable by the comparative philologists as linguistics began to become a positive science. It reemerged as more was learned about brain development and as linguistics proper became concerned with mental phenomena.

语言的起源与习得

18世纪和19世纪初，人类语言的起源问题一直困扰着该主题的哲学家们，但后来随着语言学开始作为一门实证科学，比较语言学家认为该问题是无法回答的。随着对大脑发育更多的了解，以及随着语言学实际上开始关注心理现象，这个问题又再度出现。

The early speculations were based on imagining how speech sounds would first have become nonrandomly associated with things and ideas. One theory supposed an inherent name for the thing, which our ancestors learned much as they learned any other fact of nature. This was ridiculed as the “ding-dong” or “bucket” theory and can hardly account for the arbitrariness or the abstractness of human language. Another theory supposed that language began as imitations of natural sounds, and was called the “bow-wow” theory because something like that would mean “dog.” Another supposed the beginnings to be in the interjections we still utter as emotional reactions, often to unpleasantness. This was called by detractors the “pooh-pooh” theory. A fourth theory supposed that language began with gestures that were accompanied by speech sounds. For example, when a tasty morsel of food was seen, the gesture would be stomach-rubbing and lip-smacking, and the sound “yum-yum” would spontaneously emerge. Obviously, this is the “yum-yum” theory. A last theory supposed that the association of a speech sound randomly would be taken up and repeated for whatever reason and thus become nonrandomly significant. It is called the “babble-lucky” theory. All except the first of these make sense, in that they coincide with actual and imagined behavior of human beings, with or without language, and were likely all operative when language was being acquired by clever ape-men.

早期的推测是基于想象语音如何以非随机的方式首先与事物和想法联系在一起的。一种理论为这个东西假设了一个固有的名称，我们的祖先学到了它，就像他们学到了其它的自然事实一样。这被嘲笑为“叮咚”或“桶”理论，几乎无法解释人类语言的任意性和抽象性。另一种理论认为，语言开始是对自然声音的模仿，被称“哱呜”理论，因为类似这样的声音意味着“狗”。另一种理论认为，这些在感叹词中的开端，仍然是我们作为情绪反应发出的，通常是不愉快的感叹词。这被批评者称为“藐视”理论。第四种理论认为，语言开始于伴随着语音的手势。例如，当看见一口美味的食物，手势就会是揉肚子，咂咂嘴，并且会不由自主地发出“唔唔”的声音。最后一种理论认为，无论何种原因，随机的语音关联都会被接受和重复，因此变成意义重大的非随机。它被称为“咿呀学语”理论。除了第一个理论之外，其它所有理论都是合理的，因为它们与人类的实际和想象行为相一致，无论有无语言，而且很可能在聪明的猿人习得语言时都是有效的。

If in language as well as other aspects of human development it is true that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”—that is, the development of the individual tells the story of the evolution of the species—then perhaps more accurate guesses may be made as to the origin of language when more is known about the acquisition of language by the individual child. This is being studied by linguists, psychologists, and students of the brain.

如果在语言和人类发展的其它方面“个体发育概括了系统发育”是真的—换言之，个体的发展讲述了物种进化的故事，那么，当对个别孩子的语言习得有了更多了解时，我们也许可以对语言的起源做出更精确的猜测。语言学家、心理学家，以及大脑的研究者正在对此进行着研究。

Linguists and psychologists have found a fairly constant sequence of stages in normal language acquisition. About THREE months after birth the child begins to babble spontaneously. Near the end of the first year, the child begins to utter single words that are in fact “holophrastic” phrases or clauses. For example, the child may say “car!” and mean “I see a car,” “I rode in a car,’ “Let’s get in the car,” and so forth. During the second year the child will begin to utter two-and THREE-word groups in the “telegraphic” style, using a relatively simple but precise syntax. During all these stages the child is increasing his mastery of pronunciation and intonation. The stages can be correlated with the development of the capacity to for abstract concepts.

语言学家和心理学家发现，在正常的语言习得中有一个相当恒定的阶段顺序，在孩子出生大约三个月后会开始发出不由自主地咿呀学语声。接近一年时，孩子开始说出单一的单词，实际上这些单词是“以一个词显示整句意思的”短语或从句。例如，孩子会说“小汽车！“，而意思是”我看见一辆小汽车“，”我坐了一辆小汽车“，”我们上车吧“，诸如此类。在第二年，孩子会开始以“电文体”说出两个和三个单词组，使用相对简单，但准确的句法。在所有这些阶段，孩子正在提高他对发音和语调的掌握。这些阶段可能与抽象概念能力的发展有关。

Finally, studies of the lateralization of brain function appear to link with language acquisition and perhaps with the origin of language. The human brain differs from that of the apes by its greater size and its greater development of the left hemisphere. Although the semantic, grammatical, and intonational functions are distributed over both hemispheres, the right hemisphere interprets references to concrete objects, while the left interprets abstractions and hence bears the symbolic function so central to human language. when individual cerebral dominance is established, at about the age of puberty, the ability to learn languages rapidly with childlike ease is lost.

最后，对大脑功能偏侧化的研究似乎与语言的习得有关，也许与语言的起源有关。人脑与类猿人脑的不同在于其尺寸更大，以及其左半脑发育更大。虽然语义、语法和语调的功能分布在两个半球，但右半球解释具体事物，而左半球解释抽象事物，并承担着人类语言最重要的符号功能。当个体建立起大脑优势时，大约在青春期伴随孩子般的轻松快速学习语言的能力便会丧失。

Completion and correlation of these studies may be expected to shed light not only on the genesis of language but also on the hypothesis of the 20^th century American linguist Noam Chomsky that language is in some sense a species-specific innate endowment of humankind.

这些研究的完成和相互关系可能不仅揭示语言的成因，并且可能提示20世纪美国语言学家诺姆·乔姆斯基的假设，即语言在某种意义上是人类特定物种的内在天赋。