We will never know who spoke the first sentence or what they said, but we can have some fun speculating. Perhaps it came out of the mouth of a Stone Age man who hoped to defeat a rival and win the affections of a young woman. He might have sidled up to his love interest and, while furtively pointing at his competitor, whispered gently in her ear something that translates into English as 鈥渟hit-head鈥�.
Ridiculous? Not if you are guided by the research of linguist Ljiljana Progovac. She points out that although Charles Darwin described language as 鈥渉alf art, half instinct鈥�, most people who study its evolution have neglected the creative element. Her research starts to redress that by homing in on the wordplay involved in compound phrases such as shit-head, skin-flint and lily-livered, many of which are written as single words today. These, she believes, are linguistic fossils that hint at a crucial stage in language evolution: the moment when humans realised that they could string two words together to create very short sentences.
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What鈥檚 more, after gathering examples of such phrases, Progovac noticed they have something surprising in common. 鈥淭hey are usually derogatory,鈥� she says. And there could be a good evolutionary reason for that too.
Language is central to the human experience, but studying its ancient roots is difficult because it leaves no archaeological traces 鈥� at least until the invention of writing. Nevertheless, judging by communication systems in other animals, we can assume that our ancestors started by making simple noises or gestures and, later, began to combine these in ever more complex structures.
The way words are combined to form phrases and sentences is called syntax. And many linguists classify the components of a sentence hierarchically from simple sounds and words to more complex phrases and clauses. But , who is at Wayne State University in Michigan, goes one step further: she believes the components at the bottom of the syntactical hierarchy preserve evidence of an earlier stage in the development of language. They are linguistic fossils.
The hierarchy of syntax
Take the sentence 鈥淓lena will grow wheat鈥�. It contains a short clause 鈥� grow wheat 鈥� that makes sense on its own. The remaining words expand this clause by telling us who is growing the wheat and anchoring the activity in time. For Progovac, this means our ancestors came up with phrases like 鈥済row wheat鈥� first and the expansions came later as language became more sophisticated. Analyse this syntactical hierarchy across modern languages, says Progovac, and you will find a curious class of two-word clauses right at its bottom. 鈥淭hey have very little structure,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hey are proxies of the earliest grammars.鈥�
Intriguingly, many of these phrases are combinations that have their origins in a noun and a verb, juxtaposed to produce a creative put-down: think kill-joy, busy-body, scatter-brain and arse-licker. And this is also the case in non-English languages. For example, Serbian versions include poj-kuri膰 (sing-dick, meaning womaniser) and jebi-vetar (fuck-wind, meaning charlatan). Because of this, Progovac suspects that prehistoric humans first began combining words into short sentences at least partly to insult one another.
Many of these 'linguistic fossils' are noun-verb phrases: kill-joy, busy-body, scatter-brain
To appreciate why our ancestors might have felt this urge, it is necessary to consider the broader evolutionary context. Most anthropologists now agree that humans went through a process of self-domestication starting around 80,000 years ago 鈥� meaning there was selection for individuals who were less physically aggressive. This would have brought benefits. In particular, people who befriended rather than fought the strangers they encountered would then have had allies they could turn to for help during tough times. Hence, the idea is sometimes referred to as survival of the friendliest.
However, even as our ancestors became less aggressive, they continued to compete for social rank. Progovac suggests that creative and witty insults helped replace physical fighting as a weapon in this competition. 鈥淚 think she has a point,鈥� says at Duke University in North Carolina, who recently co-authored a . 鈥淟anguage is used to form coalitions and gain status.鈥� Moreover, if the capacity for clever wordplay was controlled to some degree by an individual鈥檚 genes, this desirable trait would have been subject to natural selection 鈥� meaning verbally creative individuals would have had more children and, overall, humanity鈥檚 skill for language would increase. Progovac believes this was the case 鈥� and she calls it .
鈥淚t鈥檚 a fun idea,鈥� says at the University of Sussex, UK. 鈥淏ut ideas like this are often very difficult to test because we don鈥檛 have our ancient ancestors around to study.鈥�
Progovac accepts this. Nevertheless, she points to various lines of research that lend support to her thesis. For a start, non-human primates that have been taught to communicate using either symbols or sign language sometimes produce two-word phrases. Koko the gorilla, for instance, described a stale bun as a . The phrase has a certain wit about it, but it obviously wasn鈥檛 invented to put down or impress other gorillas. Still, the fact that non-human primates can spontaneously invent such word combinations indicates that this ability wouldn鈥檛 have been beyond hominins with far smaller brains than modern humans.
Gendered use of language
Another strand of evidence comes from psychology. One study suggests in the presence of attractive women or male competitors. Another finds that , but that men aren鈥檛 as receptive to humour initiated by women. Such sex differences are compatible with the possibility that there has been during our species鈥� evolution. It doesn鈥檛 explain why wit is found in both men and women, but other studies might. For example, research shows that more and hence a higher chance of passing on their genes.
Progovac has even found support for her idea in the brain. Working with a team of neuroscientists, she used functional MRI to explore how people responded to the two-word clauses and to grammatically more complex clauses expressing the same idea. The former prompted far less activation in brain regions 鈥� including Broca鈥檚 area 鈥� that are associated with sophisticated syntactic processing. Progovac says this fits with the notion that two-word clauses serve as before the brain became specialised for decoding language. Others disagree.
But even if the original sentence consisted of a two-word phrase like or cack-handed, it needn鈥檛 have been spoken as a weapon of competition. at the University of York, UK, points out that witty insults are often used to reinforce social bonds rather than to attack rivals. 鈥淎 close friend can make a joke about your vulnerabilities,鈥� she says. In this context, Spikins thinks insults are a little like play-fighting: two friends can trust each other to 鈥済et the banter right鈥� without causing offence. Demonstrating trust like this is important, she adds, given evidence that we are
So, Progovac has a way to go to convince sceptics. But it is early days. 鈥淎ll hypotheses need to start somewhere,鈥� says Woods. 鈥淭he most important thing you want as a researcher is for people to engage with your idea.鈥� Just hope they don鈥檛 describe it as hare-brained or bone-headed.
