Imagine that you are locked up in a room with no windows, save for two slits cut out in one of the walls. One slit is marked “INPUT”, and another is marked “OUTPUT”. There are countless books all around you and an instruction sheet on the wall. It tells you that you are about to receive some notes through the INPUT slit, and that once you do, you are to flip through the books deposited all around you to locate a correct response to what is written on the note. As an analogy, imagine that written on an INPUT note is the string of symbols “^%$@&&”. Your job is to flip through the books to locate this specific string of symbols and its indicated response, which, for example, might be “&#$!++”, and then proceed to write them on a separate slip of paper which you will pass through the OUTPUT slit.

Such was The Chinese Room Argument, a thought experiment* posited by John Searle in 1980, except that what the participant would be dealing with are Chinese characters instead of keyboard symbols.¹ Searle’s person-in-the-room would be answering questions written in Chinese posed by real Chinese people outside the room. Even though this person-in-the-room doesn’t understand a word of Chinese, he would be able to deceive the people outside the room into thinking that he does by delivering accurate responses derived from the books and manuals around him.

In the above picture, the note going into the INPUT slit has the Chinese characters meaning “Where are you from?” written on it. The response, which comes out through the OUTPUT slit, has the Chinese characters “I am from China.” written on it. 

Searle’s thought experiment serves as a springboard to answering the questions: Can machines think? Can they understand the meaning of words? Evidently, he thought not, for like the person-in-the-room, computers operate the same way. They are programmed to recognize a sequence of commands, and to respond accordingly with what their encoded programmes and algorithms instruct. Surely they don’t use words in the same way that a normal human would!

But tackling those questions means that we would need to delve into what language is all about. What makes a language, a language? What do we mean when we make certain utterances? Or what is meaning in the first place? Gottlob Frege thought that meaning was a dual composition of sense and reference.² Hilary Putnam advocated against a psychological theory of meaning, that “meanings just ain’t in the head” and are mostly determined by one’s external environment.³

(from left to right: Gottlob Frege, Hilary Putnam, Ludwig Wittgenstein)

And then there’s Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose theory of language is encapsulated in three words: Meaning is Use. That is, we know the meanings of words insofar as we know how to use them.

“For a large class of cases – though not for all – in which we employ the word “meaning”, it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.” ⁴

Much of his theory is concerned with how we come to know the meanings of words. We know them through being taught how to use them, through playing what he calls language games, and not by being recited dictionary definitions of a particular word. Take the word “five”, for example. How does one teach a child the meaning of “five”? Surely it is not to tell her that it is an abstract numerical term. Rather, we engage in language games, using things like wooden blocks and fingers, to illustrate what the word “five” represents – five fingers, five blocks, five apples. We teach it to her through demonstrating its use.

Is Wittgenstein correct? If it is true that Meaning is Use, then it seems that it is not the case that computers do not understand the meaning of words. They are engaging in the use of language by recognising how certain letters, symbols, or characters are used in response to others. We acknowledge that even though these machines demonstrate an understanding based on mere programming and computation, it is an understanding of meaning nonetheless. Such rule-governed activity is not very much different from how humans have come to know language and meaning too.

If it is true that computers can successfully master the human language, then what exactly do computers need in order to learn and understand the meaning in language?

*A thought experiment is carried out using the faculty of imagination – to imagine how things would be if they occurred in a certain way or manner. Although it is not a proper means of formal scientific investigation, engaging in thought experiments enables one to consider and deliberate about the repercussions that might result from certain hypothetical situations. As you have seen, the Chinese Room Argument is one such example. If you are interested, you may visit this page for other interesting examples of thought experiments.

How does a computer learn the human language? Could a computer really understand the meaning of words? What does this mean for us humans and our future? In this WikiChapter, we explore the idea of whether computers are capable of learning and understanding the human language.

To start, let’s take a look at the history of the development of artificial language processing capabilities. The timeline below tracks the history of artificial language processing, from the invention of the very first computer in 1822 to the present moment where computers are able to successfully use language. 

To explore the timeline, click on the right arrow to move forward. You may click the left arrow to return to any previous phase of computer development.

Computers are getting more sophisticated in learning the human language. But does this mean that computers are getting better at understanding the meaning of human language? The rest of the Wikichapter explores the answers to this question in the following sections:

1. Introduction

The emergence of writing systems is regarded as one of the most significant milestones towards human civilisation (Han, 2012). From primitive tool-making to modern-day technology, homo sapiens have come a long way to replace their stones and bricks with pen and paper, or even smartphones and tablets in recent decades. With at least 3,866 developed writing systems worldwide (Ethnologue, n.d.), it is believed that the invention of writing was the result of an improvement to an ancient system of tallies and labels, where things were depicted pictographically to reduce ambiguity and ease the process of recall (Fischer, 2007). While studies on language evolution have primarily focused their research on the various aspects of spoken language, this WikiChapter aims to uncover the humble beginnings of writing systems and how some of these systems have managed to flourish over the years, eventually developing functional and communicative purposes, whereas others have diminished and gradually became obsolete. The chapter is divided in three sections, detailing respectively the biological preconditions required for writing (covered in part 1), how early forms of writing systems evolved historically into characters that we use today (covered in part 2), and finally several challenges and limitations faced when documenting writing systems (covered in part 3).

History is impossible without the written word as one would lack context in which to interpret physical evidence from the ancient past. Writing records the lives of a people and so is the first necessary step in the written history of a culture or civilization.

1.1 What is a writing system?

A writing system is a conventionalised method of representing verbal communication visually, which is regarded as a reliable form of information storage and transfer (“Writing System”, n.d.). Although writing systems generally use both phonetic and semantic symbols in their characters, there are three main ways of classifying writing systems around the world (Elbow, 2012):

1. Alphabetic: composed of symbols called letters, which represent individual sounds (also known as phonemes) and have no meaning unless they are combined with other letters, e.g. English.

Korean consonants

2. Syllabic: comprised of symbols or letters that relate to the sounds or syllables of words, which carries more meaning than alphabetic letters, e.g.  Korean – “밥” means rice (pronounced as “bap”).

Chinese characters for “Shanghai”

3. Logographic: consist of symbols or characters that carry the most meaning among the three writing systems, i.e. they represent entire concepts, but they do not map to single sounds (phonology), e.g. Mandarin Chinese.

1.2 Biological preconditions for writing

Even though speech relates directly to one’s biological predisposition whereas writing is an invented product of different cultures without any biological roots (Elbow, 2012), there are still certain prerequisites involved that are essential in making the skill of writing possible.

 BRAIN: Firstly, writing and speaking employ different parts of the brain to function. Although writing evolved from speaking, the two brain systems are so independent that one who lacks speaking a grammatically correct sentence aloud may be able to write it flawlessly. Very little is known about language and the brain, although we do know that most of the language processing functions are carried out in the cerebral cortex. Most comprehension of language and ability to communicate (spoken, written and signed) are processed in Wernicke’s area. However, what differentiates writing systems from other forms of communication in terms of brain function? Specific areas are unknown but abnormalities in visual-motor, linguistic, attentional and memory cognitive processes are shown to play a role in learning disorder cases of written expression.

 THUMB: Secondly, the human anatomy, in particular our hands and thumbs, had to evolve in order to write i.e. allowing us to have a strong grip and control over writing tools. As modern day humans evolved from primates that did not practise bipedalism initially, our early ancestors did not have any free hands to utilise as their four limbs were consistently planted to the ground for traveling, and hence writing was a skill that they could not learn to possess. After bipedalism gradually developed, the function of our hands began to diversify, and this allowed our ancestors to engage in tool-making. This activity required the use of a specialised thumb that is flexible, strong and precise enough to grip things between the palm and the other fingers. From then on, these evolutionary changes continue to provide modern day humans with an anatomical structure that is well-equipped with the necessary conditions (e.g. gripping a pen, controlling the length and shape of strokes) for writing to occur.

2. Origins and Evolution of Writing Systems

Have you ever wondered where writing comes from? Why did people in the past start writing? What exactly are the different ways to write?

Before writing systems were documented, it is possible that humans had a certain way of recording important information, as objects found from ancient times had marks that may have been used as a system of counting or a method of storing information. Researchers are still debating what the marks represent, but it is fairly certain that all writing systems had to go through a period of evolution before achieving the systematic and conventionalised forms that we know of today. Therefore, this section aims to explore the earliest traces of writing systems around the world, and how these systems undergo historic changes that allow them to remain relevant in the present era, or rendered them archaic in today’s linguistic landscape.

2.1 Cuneiforms 

What are cuneiforms?

Cuneiform is a system of writing first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia c. 3500-3000 BCE. Mesopotamia is modern day Iraq and Kuwait and the first documented place in history where writing achieved widespread use. All of the great Mesopotamian civilizations such as the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Elamites, Hatti, Hittites, Assyrians, Hurrians and others made use of cuneiform (Mark, 2011). The word ‘cuneiform’ comes from the Latin word cuneus for ‘wedge’ owing to the wedge-shaped style of writing.

It first began as a system of pictograms in the fourth millennium BC. A writing implement known as a stylus is pressed into soft clay to produce wedge-like impressions that represent pictographs (disconnected and fragmented drawings of fundamental objects and ideas) and phonograms (syllabic signs and symbols representing primary oral sounds). To understand how cuneiform works – one would pat the wet clay tablet, then press the stylus to it and start writing. After which, the clay tablet is put under the sun to dry and let it last. The pictograms and other symbols were usually used to represent trade goods and livestock. Overtime, people began to develop a numeral system to represent multiple instances of the same symbol rather than inscribing them all. Hence, these symbols became stylised and eventually evolved into a complete writing system (“Sumerian”, 1998)

Stylus

       Example of cuneiform illustrating the distribution of barley

Scribes learning cuneiform:

Sumerians attended ‘Eduba’ which is the name of a scribal school, to train to be a Scribe. They learnt cuneiform by writing down proverbs and riddles that teachers gave them. Indeed, the Scribes played a vital role in society. Without them, letters would not have been written or read, royal monuments would not have been carved with cuneiform, and stories would have been told and then forgotten (Mesopotamia, 2015).

Evolution:

In the third millennium, the pictorial cuneiform became simplified and more abstract as the number of characters in use grew smaller. It is known as Hittite cuneiform and consists of a combination of logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic and syllabic signs (“Cuneiform script”, n.d). (Logophonetic refers to two major types of signs that denote morphemes and sounds. Consonantal alphabetic has no vowels written and syllabic signs are basic signs that contain a consonant and a vowel). The original Sumerian script was later adapted for the writing of a few languages such as the Akkadian (Old Assyrian language), Hittite and Urartian languages. Over time, this adaptation led to the development of Ugaritic alphabet and the Old Persian cuneiform, a semi-alphabetic cuneiform script.

Hittite cuneiform

Ugaritic alphabet

Old Persian cuneiform

Extinction:

Cuneiform was gradually replaced by the Phoenician alphabet when the Assyrian and Babylonian empires fell in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. By this time Aramaic was becoming the common language of the area, and the Phoenician script became widely used (Hollar, 2011). Also, by the second century CE, the cuneiform script had become extinct, and all knowledge of how to read it was lost until it began to be deciphered in the 19th century again  (“Cuneiform script”, n.d). In other words, the reason for the disappearance of cuneiform was largely because it was a non-alphabetic way of writing. It could not compete successfully with the alphabetic systems being developed by the Phoenicians, Israelites, Greeks, and other peoples of the Mediterranean (Hollar, 2011). Cuneiform required a plethora of symbols to identify each and every word, hence, the writing was complex and limited to highly-trained scribes. The alphabetic systems were simple enough for people to learn and draw, making its use much more accessible and widespread (Schumm, 2014).

Phonetician alphabet

2.2 Hieroglyphs

What are hieroglyphs?

Have you ever wondered if the typical Egyptian symbols that you see in the movies or used on book covers and designs have any meaning to it? Or is it just for show? How long have they been around and what are they called? Is it an actual language? Well this section would answer your curious mind and hopefully shed some light on this topic. The symbols that are commonly seen on palace walls and ancient Egyptian monuments are called hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs are characters used in a system of pictorial writing. The word hieroglyph came from the Greek hiero ‘holy’ glypho ‘writing’. In the ancient Egyptian language, hieroglyphs were called medu netjer, ‘the gods’ words’ as it was believed that writing was an invention of the gods. (Scoville 2015). It was believed that the hieroglyphs were given by an Egyptian god. Similar to most ancient scripts, there is poor understanding of the origin of the Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Although there are several claims about the origins, one of the more convincing view claims it derived from rock pictures produced by prehistoric hunting communities living in the desert west of the Nile especially during c. 3200 – 3000 BCE. (Mertz, 2009)

Cracking hieroglyphs:

For many years, hieroglyphs were not understood as no one could decipher the meaning behind the hieroglyphic symbols. It was believed that the symbols were just pictures representing objects and held no special phonetic meaning. It was until the Rosetta Stone, a decree of Ptolemy V (the fifth ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty) of the same text written in ancient greek, demotic and hieroglyphic writing, was found (“Rosetta Stone”, n.d). There were a number of attempts made in deciphering the text on the Rosetta stone by scholars. Thomas Young was one of them close to deciphering it but he gave up midway because he had a sickness called biasedness! He couldn’t believe that hieroglyphs could be a syllabic language.

In the 1820s, his glory went to someone else called Jean-Francois Champollion, who continued Young’s work and unravelled the mystery when he identified the name of Ptolemy V written on the Rosetta Stone by comparing the hieroglyphs with the Greek translation. This revealed that the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing was a syllabic language. Champollion’s accomplishment in deciphering the Rosetta Stone opened up the once kept secret of ancient Egyptian writing system and allowed the world to read into their rich history.

Evolution:

Egyptian writing evolved during its long history. Different versions of the hieroglyphic script were developed: hieratic and demotic. Hieratic allowed scribes to write quicker and less time-consuming compared to hieroglyphs. It was much more standardised and was used only for religious texts. (Scoville, 2015) Demotic script replaced hieratic while hieratic was used by priests up till the 3rd century AD. Coptic is the latest stage of the Egyptian language (Bard, 2015). During the Ptolemaic and Roman period in Egypt, the Greek and Roman culture became more influential and Christianity started to displace some of the traditional Egyptian cults, introducing coptic. Egyptians began writing in coptic alphabet to adapt the Greek alphabet, with several signs from demotic which represents Egyptian sounds that the Greek language did not have. Coptic was the first alphabetic script used for the Egyptian language and it is still used today.

Extinction?

Today, hieroglyphs, hieratic and demotic scripts are no longer in use. Coptic is not generally used in the contemporary world except by members of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria to write religious texts (Takla, n.d). So how do the Egyptians write today and what language do they use? Like most countries in the world today, there are a number of languages used in Egypt but the national language of modern Egypt is Egyptian Arabic which slowly replaced Coptic as the everyday language after the conquest of Muslim Arabs. 

2.3 Chinese characters

What are Chinese characters?

Chinese characters are also called ‘square forms’ or fangkuaizi (方块字) as their meaning is expressed using a combination of various strokes going in different directions within the two-dimensional space given in a square frame (Han, 2012). Interestingly, there are two writing systems present in modern day written Chinese. Firstly, the characters of traditional Chinese are standardised forms that trace back to the ancient Han dynasty, and are prevalent among countries such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau today. Secondly, the characters of simplified Chinese were developed only in 1954 as an official script used in the People’s Republic of China, which has now been extended to other Chinese-speaking countries such as Malaysia and Singapore (Shei, 2014).

The birth of Chinese characters:

Examples of pictograms or xiangxingzi (象形字) in Chinese characters

Chinese is said to be the oldest writing system among the East Asian scripts, and is the only one to have arisen ex nihilo (out of nothing), as there is no evidence of any other fully developed writing systems in East Asia that could have influenced the formation of Chinese characters before it was discovered (Daniels & Bright, 1996). Furthermore, Chinese characters likely developed from pictograms or xiangxingzi (象形字), which are stylized illustrations depicting objects or actions, and eventually became ideograms that represent abstract ideas, often as a result of combining different characters to form new compound words (Dale, 2004).

Evolution:

In general, Chinese characters are believed to have gone through five major stages of changes in their physical shapes:

1. Oracle Bone Inscription, or jiaguwen (甲骨文): First appearing in north-central China (modern Anyang, Henan province) around 1200 BCE during the Shang dynasty, the earliest Chinese writing was found to be records of royal divinations that were in the forms of inscribed ox scapulas and turtle plastrons, which featured thin, rugged lines and long shapes with sharp edges (Daniels & Bright, 1996; Zhao & Baldauf, 2008).

2. Bronze Inscription, or jinwen (金文): By the Zhou dynasty (1066 BCE – 256 BCE), Chinese characters were inscribed on bronze vessels instead of bones for ceremonial and ancestral worship purposes, as writing on bronze allows for consistency in size, positioning and format of texts, resulting in a more rounded shape with thicker lines, simpler and smooth strokes, as well as achieving more symmetry overall (Chan, 2016; Zhao & Baldauf, 2008).

3. Seal Script, or zhuanshu (篆书): Towards the end of the Zhou dynasty and during the Qin dynasty (221 BCE – 206 BCE), the Qin empire managed to unify all of the states in China after a period of feudal wars, and the seal script was conferred as the official script in China to standardise orthographic instability and variation (Zhao & Baldauf, 2008). These Chinese characters were complicated, lengthened and curved, and were mainly used to inscribe names on seals, even though they were also written on bamboo strips, silk pieces, rocks and even precious stones (Chan, 2016).

4. Clerical Script, or lishu (隶书): Since the seal script proved to be very tedious to write, the clerical script was developed by local officials during the Han dynasty (206 BCE – CE 220), which had straighter and less number of strokes, combined with several modifications (e.g. different components were merged into one) to create a more simplified version of the seal script, in order to save time while copying large amounts of administrative documents. This gradually became accepted as the official way of formal writing, and is known to be the turning point between ancient Chinese script and modern day written Chinese, as the characters move away from the pictographic style to one that resembles the appearance of modern day Chinese characters (Chan, 2016).

5. Square Script, or kaishu (楷书): To further simplify the clerical script, the square script was eventually formalised during the Sui dynasty (581 – 618) and the Tang dynasty (618 – 960), which became easy for the layperson to master as it consists of few simple and abstract lines that conformed themselves within a square frame. This created utmost stability across users and learners of written Chinese, so much so that it has remained largely unchanged for a thousand years, until the reform of simplified Chinese in the 1950s (Zhao & Baldauf, 2008).

Rise of Chinese as a global language:

With a sizable land mass and home to the world’s largest population, China has faced many trials and tribulations in the past with its writing system, but has now achieved a stablised writing system that is widely used even among other Chinese speaking populations around the world. Spoken by approximately 1.35 billion people in mainland China alone, literacy rates are said to be at 84%, according to the 1990 census of China (Taylor & Taylor, 2014). From the information presented in the previous section, it can be postulated that modern Chinese characters are direct descendents of the Chinese script that was used back in the Shang dynasty, as their basic structural principles are fundamentally logographic even up till today, where one character represents a single syllabic morpheme (Daniels & Bright, 1996).

The success of written Chinese today could only be made possible by a scholar named Xu Shen, who compiled a lexicon of about 9500 characters (amongst them were 540 semantic classifiers) in “Explaining the unit characters and analysing the compound characters” or shuowenjiezi《说文解字》around 100 BCE, which was the first tangible step towards orthographic standardisation. Coupled with the combined efforts of scholars in the Qing dynasty, the Kangxi dictionary or kangxizidian《康熙字典》was commissioned in 1710 by the emperor, Kangxi, as the amount of Chinese characters present in that era grew so rapidly and had to be condensed into a definitive lexicon. As a result, this dictionary was completed in 1716, and contains over 47,000 characters, of which 214 of them were semantic classifiers, which is commonly known as radicals or bushou（部首）that are still in use today.

3. Challenges and Limitations

Compared to spoken languages, we can find physical evidence of ancient writing systems as they preserve (on materials such as stone tablets) and provide clues as to when our ancestors began writing. However, there are still a few challenges and limitations faced in the compilation of the origins and evolution of writing systems:

3.1 Difficulties in preserving physical evidence

There are many artifacts of ancient scripts that are traceable to the period of time where it was inscribed, providing evidence of the use of writing systems from centuries ago. Specifically, the earliest ancient script that was found traced back to approximately 5000 years ago, but the question of whether writing systems developed before that remains unanswered. This is because despite the amount of evidence available, it is a challenge to trace back to the first writing system, simply because it may not have been recorded, or that those records may be lost due to a lack of preservation techniques and technology in the past (e.g. stone/clay tablets may be corroded due to harsh environmental conditions). Therefore, writing systems do leave behind some traces of evidence that shed light on the topic of language evolution, but it may be incomplete as it does not reveal the specifics of how and why writing systems were created.

3.2 Inconsistency in research viewpoints

  Secondly, a bulk of research has been done on the evolution of spoken language. In comparison, there is significantly less research focused on the area of written expression, and hence it is challenging to deduce the origins and evolution of writing systems based on the limited pool of information. While gathering information from past studies related to this area of research, various sources provided different claims and views on the origins of the particular writing system. In addition, due to the nature of this research, it is difficult to have concrete stories and evidence of how people started writing ancient scripts or how it evolved from patterns of drawings into a written form, as all we have for reference are hypotheses and interpretations from different researchers.

4. Conclusion

In a nutshell, writing systems can be seen as part of the historic process of language evolution, as it provides humans with a mode of communication that can be documented and read to aid future referencing and visual recall, which is otherwise unachievable by speech. This specialised skill is only made possible given the necessary biological preconditions that are present in humans after millions of years of evolutionary changes. Since writing systems can be observed and is used frequently in our daily lives, it is a highly relevant research area that is worth studying as it provides us with valuable information that could possibly be applied to new writing systems among the generations to come.

Emoticons – 2000 ACD* (After Cognitive Disintegration) 

From Mesopotamian cuneiforms to Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters, this WikiChapter has explored the origins of some of the world’s oldest writing systems, with the purpose of illustrating the evolutionary processes that are involved and how these systems extend to modern day writing systems around the world. Future research could look into the motivations behind the increased usage of emojis among the younger generations, as technology has proven to be more and more prevalent in our daily communication, and we rely heavily on the use of electronic devices such as smartphones and tablets. Interestingly, emojis are ideograms that relay emotions using facial expressions in the form of graphic symbols, and even have the function of communicating concepts and ideas such as the weather (Novak, Smailović, Sluban, & Mozetič, 2015), which parallels the origins of writing systems in a reverse fashion, since writing is said to derive from pictograms in the beginning.

5. Further Readings

For the most curious minds, here are some food for thought:

With the advancement of technology leading to innovative ways of communication i.e. emojis, many people are using these iconic signs to replace words on digital platforms such as social media and instant messaging applications. Words are, at times, not needed to communicate at all. On this note, are we actually progressing forward in the digital age, or have we gone back to the start by using pictograms again? Have emojis become the new writing system of the 21st century? While there are no definitive answers to these thought-provoking questions (yet!), we hope that the following links will continue to spark your curiosity on this topic:

• Alshenqeeti, H. (2016). Are emojis creating a new or old visual language for new generations? A socio-semiotic study. Advances in Language and Literary Studies, 7(6).

  http://www.journals.aiac.org.au/index.php/alls/article/view/2823/2398

• Danesi, M. (2016). The semiotics of emoji: The rise of visual language in the age of the Internet. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

  http://bit.ly/2q5BxuD

• Predictive system have been invented: Emojis replacing key words with relevant characters

  https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/ios-10-messages-emoji/

• Will emoji become a new language?

  http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151012-will-emoji-become-a-new-language

• Will emojis bring about the death of written language?

  http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/24/emojis-the-death-of-the-written-language.html

6. References

Ancient Egypt, Hieroglyphics. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2017, from http://history-world.org/hieroglyphics.htm

Bard, K. A. (2015). An introduction to the archaeology of Ancient Egypt. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley Blackwell.

Chan, S. (2016). The Routledge encyclopedia of the Chinese language. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Coptic Cairo (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2017, from http://www.coptic-cairo.com/

Cuneiform. (n.d.). Retrieved March 18, 2017, from http://history-world.org/cuneiform_writing.htm

Cuneiform script. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved March 18, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform_script

Dale, C. H. (2004). Chinese aesthetics and literature: A reader. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Daniels, P. T., & Bright, William. (1996). The world’s writing systems. New York: Oxford University Press.

Elbow, P. (2012). Vernacular eloquence: What speech can bring to writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ethnologue (n.d). How many languages in the world are unwritten? Retrieved March 16, 2017, from 

https://www.ethnologue.com/enterprise-faq/how-many-languages-world-are-unwritten-0

Fischer, S. R. (2007). A history of language. London: Reaktion Books.

Han, J. (2012). Chinese characters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hollar, S. (2011). Mesopotamia. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group.

Mark , J. J. (2011, April 28). Cuneiform. Retrieved March 18, 2017, from http://www.ancient.eu/cuneiform/

Mark, J. J. (2011, April 28). Writing. Retrieved April 23, 2017, from http://www.ancient.eu/writing/

Mertz, B. (2009). Temples, tombs and hieroglyphs: a popular history of Ancient Egypt. London: Brockhampton.

Novak, P. K., Smailović, J., Sluban, B., & Mozetič, I. (2015). Sentiment of Emojis. Plos One, 10(12).

Rosetta Stone. (n.d). In Wikipedia. Retrieved April 23, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone

Schumm, L. (2014, August 6). Who created the first alphabet? Retrieved April 23, 2017, from http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/who-created-the-first-alphabet

Scoville, P. (2015, July 2). Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Retrieved April 23, 2017, from http://www.ancient.eu/Egyptian_Hieroglyphs/

Shei, C. (2014). Understanding the Chinese language: A comprehensive linguistic introduction. London: Routledge.

Sumerian. (2017). Retrieved March 18, 2017, from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/sumerian.htm

Taylor, I., & Taylor, M. M. (2014). Writing and literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Takla, H. N. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2017, from http://www.coptic.org/language/stshenouda1.htm

The Lives of Scribes in Ancient Mesopotamia. (2015, June 26). Retrieved March 18, 2017, from https://allmesopotamia.wordpress.com/2015/06/26/the-lives-of-scribes-in-ancient-mesopotamia/

Writing system. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved March 18, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_system

Zhao, S., & Baldauf, R. B. (2008). Planning Chinese characters: Reaction, evolution or revolution? Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

1. Introduction

The human race was challenged but flourished over centuries on Earth. Be it environmental, social, economical and psychological obstacles,  our ancestors cemented themselves as advanced creatures – existing through survival of the fittest; cultural establishment, industrial revolution and globalization of today. These accomplishments are not merely due to our intelligence or adaptivity but also our inherent skill for effective interpersonal and social communication. However, back 2 million years ago,, our species as many other creatures now do, interacted primarily through bodily expressions. Our ancestors developed, adopted and utilized non-verbal communication as their “shared” language system for the very need of survival and socialization before the maturity of their complex vocal apparatus. This is exactly why this paper is on the nonverbal domain – its roots run deeper beyond spoken and written language. The social and emotional reciprocation via nonverbal communication (which is what AIs cannot imitate and explicit speech and words are limited to) is what establishes us as a superior race on Earth, therefore it is significant to understand the evolution of this pioneering system in support of our future as better communicators.

2. Biological Evolution

Biological evolution refers to anatomical and physical changes to the body that give rise to various cognitive functions. First of all, we will be sharing with you these changes as Homo Habilis gradually evolve to Sapiens. Then, in the later part of the WikiChapter, we will be addressing how these biological aspects contribute to non-verbal communications displayed in the hominids.

2.1 Brain Size

When biological evolution is involved, the most prominent change would be the brain size. Within the Hominids family, gradual increase in brain size had been observed since the days of Great Apes to that of Homo Genus. This change had been an ongoing and consistent process in through the stages of the Homo series, particularly from Homo Habilis to Erectus to Sapiens. Three factors have been found to be correlated with the increase in brain size, so read on and find out more!

Brain Lobes

Expansion of brain lobes and change in brain organization are evident with the emergence of Homo habilis, including modest expansion of the frontal and parietal lobes along the stages of the Homo Genus evolution. The frontal lobe is the part of the brain that manages important cognitive skills in humans such as emotional expression, problem solving, memory, language, judgment, and sexual behavior. It is often referred to as the ‘control panel’ of humans’ personality and our ability to communicate. As the homos progressively possess a larger frontal lobe, executive human functions get increasingly prominent; emergence of speech production and ideologies to solve problems such as creating hunting tools are examples of how the homos are potentially becoming more human-like. On the other hand, the parietal lobe is vital for sensory perception and integration, primarily with the visual system. With an increasing parietal lobe, the homos’ ability of visual perception gets better over the various stages from Habilis to Sapiens. They learn to make use of their eyesights for survival purposes, such as interpreting their surrounding environment using light in the visible spectrum reflected by the objects to catch sight of possible predators.

Brain Volume & Gyri

As mentioned above, the brain changes not just from apes to homos, but also within the homo series. Here, we look at the evolution of brain volume and gyri in hominids over the years. The Great Apes whom humans share a common ancestor with, consist of Chimpanzees, Orangutans and Gorillas that have an average brain volume which ranges from 400 to 500 cm3 . On the other hand, the average brain volume of the Homo Genus is approximately 1,000 cm3 . If we look at it independently, brain volumes of Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus and Homo Sapiens are 640 cm3 , 900 cm3 and 1,300cm3 respectively. It can be seen that as hominids progress and evolve into humans (sapiens), their brains get increasingly bigger. Apart from the change in volume, increase in brain gyri contributes to the overall growth in size as well. A gyrus refers to the raised surface of the brain as a result of brain folding activities. Due to the expansion of the frontal and parietal lobes, brain foldings increase and result in more brain gyri which eventually lead to a wider neocortex surface. The neocortex is known as the ‘thinking brain’; executive functions include rationality, sensory perception, generation of motor commands and in humans, language. Hence, the potential for speech production may have arose as early as the Homos days.  

Brain-Body Ratio

Brain-body ratio looks at how the brain size usually increases when the body size does. It has been hypothesized to be a rough estimate of the intelligence of an animal. Although it is fairly inaccurate in many cases to date, the relationship remains fuzzy and unanswered for. No doubt that as the homos evolve and become more human-like over the stages from Habilis to Sapiens, both body and brain sizes have had gradual increases. However, this phenomenon cannot assumably account for the higher mental capability of the homos over the years of evolution. The relationship of the brain to body ratio is not linear, which means that having a big body may not necessarily correlate to having a big brain, and vice-versa. Moreover, having a bigger brain has not been scientifically proven to be smarter. Hence, although Homo Sapiens have a greater brain-body ratio as compared to Homo Habilis and Erectus, it may be possible that the latter have had a higher Intellectual Quotient (IQ) back in the days. This is something left unfigured and unknown as it is almost impossible now to trace back.

Although the myth of how having a bigger brain means having better mental ability remains to date, but what else could have possibly been contributing to humans’ increasing IQ over the years if not for a bigger brain? Perhaps increased brain connectivity between the synapses? If so, do you think having a bigger brain allows for better creativity and innovation? Food for thought!

2.2 Body Structure

Other than the crucial biological evolution in the brain, physical body changes are undeniably obvious as well from the stages of Habilis to Erectus to that of us, Sapiens today. Body structure consists of many anatomies but in this section, emphasis will be placed only on three main areas. This is because the biological and physical evolution of these parts eventually give rise to evident features that are significant to non-verbal communications.

Spine

The lumbar curve forms part of the spine and is an uniquely human feature. Non-human primates such as Gorillas, Orangutans and Chimpanzees do not have this spinal part. Its development started in the homo days and became a significant feature later that contributes greatly to the phenomenon of bipedalism (how living organisms are able to walk and operate on two legs). After the growth of the lumbar curve in homos, bipedalism did not take place immediately as it was in the form of a C-shaped spine. It was only over time that this C-shaped curve progressively undergo a decrease in degree of forward bending which eventually establishes a permanent S-shaped curvature, something that all of us have today. Homo Habilis, also known as the ‘Handy-man’, was discovered to have operated on two limbs but not in a total upright manner. It was until the stage of Homo Erectus where the lumbar curve turned upright, giving him the name of ‘Upright-man’. This S-shaped curvature helps to bring the center of gravity closer to the body’s midline and above the feet, allowing better balance for bipedalism. It provides maximum mobility and at the same time, enable hands to be free of restriction and be used for other survival purposes such as picking fruits and attacking foes.

Feet

Archaeologists have found that the feet of Homo Habilis are similar to that of ours. Over time as Habilis evolved into Erectus and finally to Sapiens, their feet went through changes in length, size and serving purposes. The feet length gets increasingly longer while the heels become larger in size as the homos turn more human-like. This change allowed for better support and balance as the weights of these homos get increasingly heavier along the timeline of evolution. This probably explains why the homos were able to run and chase after preys later in the days after bipedalism was established. Also, toe adduction allowed the big toe to move progressively nearer to the other toes and eventually be in line with one another. The feet of non-human primates often have their big toe far apart from the others to allow activities such as clinging on to tree trunks. However, this function became redundant over time as bipedalism came into play. The key purpose of feet had changed from grasping to supporting bipedalism while toe adduction helped with the handling and managing of weight for better stability.

Hands

Similar to how the feet encountered a change in key serving purpose, the hands of homos evolved physically as well to allow for more general uses. Back when homos were more distant from human-like, hands were primarily used for specific reasons such as fruits and tools grabbing. Fingers were stiff and fixated as the bones were bent in a slightly forward curve. Evolution decreased this degree of curve gradually. By the stage of sapiens, fingers could be fully stretched out in a straight manner and bent to any degree as and when is needed. Flexibility of the hands increased and the possible uses of them varied greatly over time, from specific functions mentioned earlier to general ones (i.e. whatever humans can do with their hands now). Actions such as thumbs up, counting with fingers and pointing are made possible given the evolution of the hands. Also, both the palm size and length of fingers increased as the homos become more human-like. Enlarged hands are more muscular and provide higher energy level to serve survival purposes such as creating stone tools to prepare food or defend against enemies. Emergence of all these changes complemented the phenomenon of bipedalism; maximizing the effective usage of the hands for other purposes while operating on two limbs.

2.3 Facial Changes

Comparing within the Hominids family, the face is probably the most distinctive difference. Even within the Homo Genus family, facial changes have been prominent across the various stages of evolution particularly changes in the Jaw, Facial Hair and Nose. The changes in these areas are more evident and explained for by archaeologists as compared to areas like the ear, depth of eyes and etc.

Jaw

From Habilis to Erectus and eventually Sapiens, the size of the jaw and teeth had decreased greatly. Although facially habilis did not show high resemblance to humans, he definitely looked pretty different to non-human primates. Known as the handy-man, habilis is popular for his tools-making expertise. He may have made good use of tools to prepare softer food, resulting in a reduction of jaw bone size over the long term due to the decrease in usage of oral muscles. The progressively smaller jaw caused the oral cavity to decrease in size, potentially allowing speech production in humans later on as a smaller cavity allows for better muscular control. With more control, air flow that arises from the lungs can be constricted in the oral space to produce sounds. Hence, speech being a uniquely human feature, is likely to have developed as a result of the biological changes in the jaws of homos. Not only that, mouths got increasingly less rounded, growing away from the uniquely primate feature. Faces turned increasingly gracile over the years with elongated foreheads and chins becoming more prominent on the face.

Facial Hair

It is a known fact that the loss of body hair resulted in the human form today, greatly diversified from our non-human primate cousins who are covered in thick layers of hair. The appearance of Habilis resembled that of a caveman; unkempt looking with both the face and body covered in hair. Evolution to Erectus took a turn when fossils reflected that he had been running after animals and hunting down preys. This stage marked the beginning of running in the homo family, and also the start of the loss of facial and body hair as an entirely new system of keeping cool had to be established to prevent fatal overheating from strenuous activities. The need for the skin to be directly exposed to air arose so that evaporation of sweat could happen. This process was crucial to keeping bodies cool. Hence, facial and body hair started to drop for skin-air exposure. By keeping cool, the body could be spared from unnecessary energy burning efforts to lower its temperature. This in turn facilitated energy conservation, vital for the homos to travel for a longer time and distance. Should hair loss not have taken place, the homos would have struggled with keeping their body temperatures low; travelling far would have been an issue then.

Nose

The last biological change would be the evolution of the nose area. Our non-human primate cousins have small and flat noses. Divergence from them gave homos progressively prominent and protruding noses with less flaring nostrils. The receding jaw structure mentioned earlier also caused an impact on the nasal area. The presence of a flatter nose back then was to serve the purpose of more effective inhaling, but this purpose became unnecessary over time as the homos found survival and hunting methods that did not require so much of this function (eg. Creating lure traps to capture preys instead of chasing after them). Instead, the nose exapted to act as a radiator. It increased in size and protruded over time with the nose passageways turning narrower to help the body lose heat. Such nostrils had the function of moistening and warming air that passes through the nose before entering the lungs, effectively reducing water and heat loss during exhalation. The evolution in the nasal area is particularly important as breathing is involved. With biological features that aided regulated breathing and heat loss, the homos stood a higher chance in survival.

So, you must be curious how these biological evolutions in hominids relate to non-verbal communications right? Let us bring you through the next section to share with you how the features discussed earlier contribute to NVC!

3. Non-verbal Communications

With the emergence of bipedalism, the early hominins developed more sophisticated ways to gesture to one another than their immediate primate ancestors. As brain size increased and migration out of Africa begin, it led to the creation of more complex and combined use of gestures to form and make sense of meanings.

3.1 Kinesics

Kinesics is the interpretation of body motion communication such as facial expressions and gestures, nonverbal behavior related to movement of any part of the body or the body as a whole.

Gestures

Pongo: Orangutans

A study done across 3 European zoos found that shows the apes have at least 25 signals or gestures for ‘I want to play’, for example – ranging from a back roll and somersault, to a yank of their hair or a bite of the air, or clowning gestures like playing with their faces and placing objects on their heads. Brushing with a hand means they want something to stop, while embracing and pulling another ape at the same time means they want it to walk with them. These are very similar habitual or gestural acts that are done by the modern human as well.

Gorillas

The gorilla’s most famous gesture is the chest beat, standing on two legs and hitting the chest alternately with their open hands, rather than their clenched fists – as portrayed in films. It is to show off his size and demonstrate dominance and strength. Gorillas are often quiet and any sounds they do make are very soft, body language is often just as important. If a gorilla hears something that it suspects to be dangerous, it will not immediately give alarm calls, and instead it will sit quietly and observe, with a body position that is hunched and lowered back to avoid detection.

Pan: Chimpanzees

Scientists have found out that wild chimps communicate 19 specific messages to one another with a “lexicon” of 66 gestures. Although gestures are identified, they often deliver ambiguous messages and meaning, where a grab or touch may mean “Stop that” or “Climb up”. Only leaf clipping has been confirmed – where a chimp takes obvious small bites of the leaf to elicit sexual attraction.

Homo Genus

It seems not too far-fetched to suppose that the cerebral asymmetry of function developed in conjunction with the asymmetric activity of the two limbs during tool use, with the left hemisphere becoming the hemisphere specialized for sequential limb positioning/ movement (precise motor control). Thus when a gestural system was employed, it would presumably also be controlled primarily from the left hemisphere. It is clear that the employment of most tools requires the asymmetrical use of both arms, in modern man context, it is systematic where  one hand (usually the left) acts as the stable balancing hand, and the other (right) acts as the moving hand for actions like chopping or hitting.
Researchers have also found out that neurons in the premotor cortex of the primate respond when it makes grasping movements or gestures with their arms or hands. Also dubbed as “mirror neurons”, they also respond when the animal observes another animal making movements, thus mapping the perceived gestures into produced gestures. This also brings us to understand the manipulative nature of primates.

Modern-day Humans

At first, facial and manual gestures would have been accompanied by grunts (no speech), but in modern humans vocal language is accompanied by manual gestures to add meaning/ support the message they want to convey. We often include manual gestures to substitute spoken particles/ words (i.e. He’s completely (gone crazy) – using a spiral twisting manual gesture near the head to indicate crazy).

Facial Expressions

It is likely that the face increasingly became more involved in gesturing, along with the higher sophistication of tools usage, creation and manipulation, which heavily occupied the hands. The development of facial muscles and thinner jaw structures also enabled for more flexibility in creating such expressions. Facial gestures can also be associated with vocalization acts and sounds like lips-smacking, teeth chattering and whistling (to display hunger, looking for fun).

Body Language

Discovered by archaeologists, there is evidence that there is a right-hand preference in wielding tools such as clubs, stone and bone tools. The manual gesturing communicative system could possibly be built on manual skills associated with tool use, where they had the precision of upper limb movement control, which made gesturing possible. The development of the spines and bone structures also allowed for more sophisticated movements and postures as the homo developed.

3.2 Oculesics

Oculesics, a subcategory of body language, is the study of eye movement, eye behavior, gaze, and eye-related nonverbal communication. As a social or behavioral science, oculesics is a form of nonverbal communication focusing on deriving meaning from eye behavior. It must be noted that culture plays a role in oculesics for modern humans, where the necessity of eye contact and the civility it provides differs greatly across cultures (i.e.  In an Asian culture, direct eye contact may be considered rude, but in a Westernized or American culture, lack of eye contact shows disinterest or disrespect).

Eye Contact

There are two levels of eye contact – direct & indirect. The use of it can indicate interest, openness, and if with intensity, it can be perceived as a form of hostility. The lack of eye contact at the same time may deliver a sense of disinterest or lack of attention (be it the listener or speaker).

Eye Movement

The movement occurs voluntarily/ involuntarily. It can include the change of eye direction and focus, or following objects with the eyes. The two typical directions would be the eyes up and eyes down movements, where the former indicates the act of thinking, recalling and perhaps even irritation in the modern context (eye roll). The latter demonstrates a sense of fear, submission or guilt.

Pupil Dilation

This is the pupillary response to the change of size in pupil. This change happens at the appearance of real or perceived new objects of focus, and even at the real or perceived indication of such appearances. It can often be regarded as an indication of attraction/ sexual desire as well.

Gaze Direction

The last dimension deals with voluntary and involuntary communication through the eye. It typically indicates interest in whatever object that is being gazed at, delivering a “I want that” message.

3.3 Joint Attention

Joint attention (JA) or shared attention is the shared focus of two individuals on an object. It is achieved when one individual alerts another to an object by means of eye-gazing, pointing or other non-verbal methods and verbal indications. An individual gazes at another individual, points to an object and then returns their gaze to the individual.

Triadic JA

This is the highest level of joint attention and involves two individuals looking at an object. For an instance to count as triadic JA, each individual must understand that the other is looking at the same object and be aware that there is an element of shared attention between himself and the other. The process is marked by the individual looking back to the other individual after looking at the object. Individuals who engage in triadic JA must understand both gaze and intention to establish common reference.

Gaze refers to one’s understanding of the link between mental activity and the physical act of seeing. Intention refers to one’s ability to understand the goal of another person’s mental processes. When individuals understand that others have goals, intentions, and attentional states, they are able to enter into and direct another’s attention.

Dyadic JA

Next up, this is a conversation-like behavior that individuals engage in. This is especially true for human adults and infants, who engage in this behavior starting at two months of age. Adults and infants take turns exchanging facial expressions, noises, and in the case of the adult, motherese and singing. Definitely, our non-human primate cousins engage in dyadic joint attention with their children as well.

Shared JA

Shared gaze occurs when two individuals are simply looking at an object, and it is the lowest level of joint attention. As gaze increases in complexity, individuals are better able to discriminate what others are referring to. Gaze-following reflects an expectation-based type of orienting in which an individual’s attention is cued by another’s head turn or eye turn. Individuals are motivated to follow another’s gaze and engage in joint attention because gaze is a cue for which rewarding events occur.

4. Conclusion

This is a bizarre, challenging yet daunting entry for sure. How was it possible for us (unless we time-travel) to base and investigate on our topic of non-verbal communication if there isn’t any visual traces or even written records 2 million years ago? From a pragmatic perspective, we are fully aware of the lack of consensus regarding nonverbal communication of our homo ancestors, mainly due to restrictive guesses and tentative conclusions in relevant researches. Consequently, this study has endeavored to account for this unfortunate discontinuity by investigating biological evolution – be it visible changes of spine, hands, feet and face, or those occurring in our ancestor’s brain (lobes, volume, gyri, body ratio), against three major components of NVC such as kinesics, oculesics and joint attention.
However, as mentioned above, many established literatures were based on speculative premises and this entry is not an exception. We drew parallel with other hominids such as gorilla, pan and pongo genuses – to enrich our analysis and perhaps discover an analogous element in NVC development among these cousins. Regardless, the purpose of this entry takes root from the undeniable fact that there is a concealed linkage between hominids (especially homo genus) and nonverbal communication – with this chapter ultimately serving as a pioneering bridge for future researches.

5. References

Anderson, M. (1987). Nonverbal communication.

Corballis, M. C. (2003). From hand to mouth: The gestural origins of language. Studies In The Evolution Of Language, 3, 201-218.

Derbyshire, D. (2010). The ape dictionary: How our cousins use 40 gestures to communicate. Mail Online. Retrieved 20 April 2017, from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1287374/Orangutans-speak-using-language-gestures.html

Gill, V. (2014). Chimpanzee language: Communication gestures translated – BBC News. BBC News. Retrieved 20 April 2017, from http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28023630

Gough, Z. (2015). How we’re learning to ‘speak gorilla’. Bbc.com. Retrieved 24 April 2017, from http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150529-what-do-gorillas-talk-about

Harcourt-Smith, W. E., & Aiello, L. C. (2004). Fossils, feet and the evolution of human bipedal locomotion. Journal of Anatomy,204(5), 403-416. doi:10.1111/j.0021-8782.2004.00296.x

Joint attention. (2017, April 3). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 24 April 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joint_attention&oldid=773626927

Key, A. J. (2016). Manual Loading Distribution During Carrying Behaviors: Implications for the Evolution of the Hominin Hand. Plos One,11(10), 1-27. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0163801

Nishimura, T., Mori, F., Hanida, S., Kumahata, K., Ishikawa, S., Samarat, K., . . . Matsuzawa, T. (2016). Impaired Air Conditioning within the Nasal Cavity in Flat-Faced Homo. PLOS Computational Biology,12(3), 1-18. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004807

Oculesics. (2017, February 19). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 24 April 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oculesics&oldid=766281828

Spoor, F., Gunz, P., Neubauer, S., Stelzer, S., Scott, N., Kwekason, A., & Dean, M. C. (2015). Reconstructed Homo habilis type OH 7 suggests deep-rooted species diversity in early Homo. Nature,519(7541), 83-86. doi:10.1038/nature14224

Whitcome, K. K., Shapiro, L. J., & Lieberman, D. E. (2007). Fetal load and the evolution of lumbar lordosis in bipedal hominins. Nature,450(7172), 1075-1078. doi:10.1038/nature06342

Williams, R. (2011, December 12). Why People Lost Their Fur | The Scientist Magazine®. Retrieved March 16, 2017, from http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/31478/title/Why-People-Lost-Their-Fur/

1. Introduction

The Internet is one form of technology that has marked a cultural evolution of communication between humans. Invented early in the 1960s, it was established for the purpose of military-related data transmission from one to another network. Advancing later in the 1990s, it enabled forms of electronic mail, discussions pages and more written shared platforms that promote communication between individuals on an informal level, at a much faster rate (Crystal, 2006). Since then, this medium provided a diverse array of services and convenience given its ability to connect more than millions of people around the globe. This 21st century phenomenon has introduced new cultural notions like ‘cyberspace’ and members of the community as ‘netizens’. More significantly, the ways of communication on the internet emerge as a new language system- digitally-mediated communication which shares unique features.

These modes of communication spread at an alarming rate with the creation of different internet domains. One of it will be discussed in this chapter is the social media platform, Twitter. Such influences have brought changes to daily human communication on a global or regional basis. This is especially so for the English language, the main medium across the internet community across the world. This includes inventions in the language such as new words and slangs  that become popularised among the users on and out of the internet platform. However, it would be discussed in the subsequent section that deviations from the norm do not necessarily lead to a pejoration of the language system. Whether or not these changes continue to thrive in the language system, such as in English, would depend on persistent use and standardisation (e.g. in dictionaries) across time.

2. Emergence of digitally-mediated language

2.1 Neither speech nor writing

Internet language and digitally-mediated communication are often used interchangeably. The emergence of ‘digitally-mediated communication’ mainly differentiates itself from that of conventional speech and writing systems (Crystal, 2011). Speech is marked as one of the most efficient communication from human language evolution. The characteristics of speech often include face-to-face interaction, where extralinguistic cues such as facial expressions and prosodies are made available to aid conveyance and receive meaning. Communication is usually based on references to the objects in the environment, enabling expressions to be more ambiguous. For instance, an object or person does not need to be named and can be understood with the deictic use of ‘that’ to denote a commonly understood topic or object. While speech usually happens in real time with constant feedback, words that are spoken fades away immediately before utterance is made. Furthermore, the intended meaning of messages may not be conveyed accurately to the other speaker.

In contrast, written forms appear in the concrete form, appearing since the early pictographic carvings on clay tablets to the latest use of ink on animal skins and paper (Early Writing, n.d.). Communicators can reanalyse and reread using these mediums to aid comprehension. Written words require precision and the writing medium enables messages to be copied or preserved for future references. Hence it allows ideas to be passed down to different generations. On the other hand, communication and sharing of ideas takes time to deliver from person to person; inputs and outputs does not allow immediate feedback and inaccurate communication cannot be rectified on-the-spot. One example can be letter writing (Carysforth, 1998).

While digitally-mediated language does encompass selective characteristics from both language systems, it has emerged with unique characteristics in communication (Crystal, 2011). Unlike the characteristics of speech mentioned above, the nature of internet language lacks a reliance on visual feedback between communicators. Instead it uses emoticons or graphics to supporting texts, and can allow users to simultaneously be available to multiple separate conversations with different individuals at a time. On the other hand, writing in the digital environment may be subjected to time and space limitations where pages may expire or be replaced (such as wikipedia), or be confined; in fact they lack a universalised, coherent standard of writing due to inputs and outputs from diverse backgrounds. Internet language features should not be perceived as fixed. Rather they are adapted based on the different dynamics of the digital environment (Crystal, 2011). It is first important to consider the variety of domains available in the digital environment to understand and garner the features of internet language.

2.2 Domains and features of internet language

Since the 1990s, the internet has opened many modes of communication. Crystal (2001) stratified the internet platform into different domains. These include email, chat groups, virtual world and the World, Wide Web. Within the next few years, the use of language broadened within the internet medium, with the addition of postponed time mediums (e.g. forums), blogging and instant messaging. In each domain, different language features can be classified and are commonly observed to fall within the continuum of writing and speaking. 

Herring (2008) proposed to identify internet language through its features. They are classified under two main aspects; the former describes the dimensions of language influenced by the technological platform. Some of it includes whether or not communication takes place in the real time (synchronicity), if language requires a reciprocal response (one or two-way participation), whether the speaker’s identity can be anonymous (speaker identification), if a conversation is public or private, which affects the stylistic use (the type of audience), and lastly, if there is a required presentation or structure for communication to take place.

The latter aspects describes the social conventions or rules that influence language use. Some of these features include the active or passive nature of participation, the demographics of the internet users, the social functions where communication occurs (e.g. playing a game, advertising, commenting), appropriateness of topics, atmosphere of the digital environment (e.g. indifference, aggressive), and finally the existence of rules that regulates online or language behavior (e.g. use of abbreviations, jokes, types of fonts etc); all of these contribute to a picture of how language is being constructed (Crystal, 2011). Applying these aspects onto the different domains helps to establish language features and variations on the internet platform.

Video: Example of features in instant message: synchronicity of communication and multiple conversation at a time (Synaptus, 2012)

Figure 1. Example of features in email: structure or presentation necessary in email communication (BBC, 2012)

2.3 Oral language in the written form

Due to the predominance of writing, many have thus labelled the digital culture as ‘oral culture appearing in the written form’ (Crystal, 2011). In terms of language composition, this means that one does not approach the writing process with ‘silent language in our heads to writing’ expressing thoughts through the act of writing. Instead it is proposed that digitally-mediated language is composed in a different process. Communication is initiated by thoughts, then translated into how one would deliver it in speech before the message is expressed into writing. Hence, the act of speech does not necessarily need to be spoken aloud and can occur in the literary form (prints) now. As what Gee and Hayes (2011) added, the extent of composing text can mirror speech where one may ‘speak’ impulsively or types off “without much forethought”.

The result of these literary forms can vary greatly in its content and formality as compared to the traditional ways of writing (Gee, 2011). The communication tends to emphasise less on content or facts and more for the purpose of socialisation. Scholars have since provided three terms that closely described the relationship of written forms with the spoken language; first is ‘conceptual orality’. Texts may often be written like direct transcripts of how one would speak. Next is the use of ‘semiotic compensation’. This means that the written forms may contain the use of symbols to create expressions and playing of words. They replicate sounds one would respond with during communication with oral language such as the smiley face, or laughing sounds “ha ha”. Lastly is ‘linguistic economy’, where internet users tend to write in shorter and less-elaborated forms. This is especially so when digital communication takes place at real-time, which allows immediate responses like that in speech. Generally, language on the internet is also informal (Androutsopoulos, 2011). One example from the internet domain is instant messaging. Digitally-mediated language can thus be characterised as speech-like, written forms of communication.

3. Spread of Internet Language: Cultural Transmission

Nordquist (2016) defines cultural transmission in linguistics as “the process whereby a language is passed on from one generation to the next in a community”. A linguist listed three primary forms of cultural transmission, horizontal, vertical, and oblique transmission. Horizontal transmission refers to communications among individuals of the same generation. Vertical transmission refers to in which a member of one generation talks to a biologically-related member of a later generation. Lastly, oblique transmission refers to in which any member of one generation talks to any non-biologically-related member of a later generation. In internet language specifically, it can be seen as a form of horizontal transmission because the internet only existed recently (from the 1960s till now) and most of its users are of the same generation. Popular online platforms for user interactions such as the social media and forums hence facilitates information transmission and language change.

3.1 Transmission of Internet Language

The Senior Editor of Oxford English Dictionary explained that for a new word to enter the dictionary lexicon, it must be frequently used in the last five years (The Evolution of Language: How Internet Slang Changes the Way We Speak, 2014). Although words spread quickly on platforms like Twitter, it is safe to say that it has not entirely infiltrated daily speech as of now, as the internet has only been around for about two decades (Kthxbai! How Internet-speak Is Changing The Way We Talk IRL, 2013).

3.1.1 Transmission of Internet Language: Memes

Increasingly, memes (pronounced as ‘meems’) have been seen on the internet, that has been brought over to day to day speech. As defined by Knobel and Lankshear (2006), memes are “contagious patterns of “cultural information” that get passed from mind to mind and directly generate and shape the mindsets and significant forms of behavior and actions of a social group”. They can stem from popular media, personalities, or events that has happened in the world. For instance, ‘salt bae’ was a nickname given to a Turkish chef that has garnered over 2 million responses after posting a video of himself sprinkling salt on a piece of meat in an unusual way (Know Your Meme, 2017). Interestingly, this is a blending of the original meme ‘bae’ which means a term for girlfriend or boyfriend, or an acronym for ‘before anyone else’ (Urban Dictionary, 2014) and ‘salt’ as seen in the video of the chef. Memes such as these are used widely on the internet, and can spread to real life conversations.

Memes tend to have a shorter lifespan than most internet slangs as they are event specific and iconic on its own, with other examples such as ‘eyebrows on fleek’ (Eyebrows on Fleek, 2015) and ‘cash me ousside how bow dah’ (Cash Me Ousside / Howbow Dah, 2017). Such usage do not go into the dictionary due to the infrequency of use over a prolonged period, however exceptions such as ‘rick roll’ that is still in use even after a decade proved that memes can be continually used for a long period of time (Bryan, 2017). Further will be discussed in the internet slangs section.

3.2 Case study: Twitter

One of the ways the internet language has spread is through a popular social media platform called Twitter. The reason why Twitter is used as a case study is because of its unique 140 words only posts (Crystal, 2011). This pushes the limits for users as they must concise a message or a thought into 140 words, resulting in new acronyms, expressions or even slangs. As a result, words spread faster than ever due to the nature of the platform – being available to anyone in the world with access to internet. Eisenstein, O’Connor, Smith & Xing (2014) did a study on a corpus of Twitter messages in the United States to analyse the patterns of words on the platform. An interesting finding was that African American populations were the trend leaders in most of the patterns found. Another significant finding was that a city which is more affluent and lower in mean age is more likely to lead the linguistic change than the opposite. The paper noted that an affluent city does not equates to an affluent individual, as it posited earlier that language change usually originates from the working class (Eisenstein et al., 2014).

Figure 2. Change in frequency for six words: ion, -__-, ctfu, af, ikr, ard. Blue circles indicate cities where on average, at least 0.1% of users use the word during a week. A circle’s area is proportional to the word’s probability. (Eisenstein et al., 2014)

Figure 2 shows the change in frequency of words that was in Eisenstein et al. paper. It shows how a word spreads within the stated time frames. This illustrates the speed at which a word spreads throughout the neighbouring regions over time. This is how horizontal transmission works as individuals communicate online.

In an online article by Sonnad (2015), ‘bruh’, ‘rekt’, ‘tfw’ and others were identified in an interactive study analysed by Grieve and Guo. Likewise in Figure 2, the website shows a progressive spread of the identified word on Twitter. They examined the Twitter corpus and some words that were emerging in the internet. Indeed, Twitter is one of the databases where linguists can track language change on the internet, however there are also disadvantages such as repetitive tweets due to retweets (quoting of another user’s tweet), private accounts and so on, resulting in repetitive and missed data.

4. Effect of internet on English language

There has been a lot of debate over whether the internet is ruining the English language or just merely changing it. There were predictions from the past that in the near future, everyone was going to communicate with just acronyms or ‘emojis’. The internet has indeed resulted in a significant change on our use of the English language, and these changes are not random and without rules.

4.1 New vocabulary

Looking at the internet vocabulary in the past decade shows how quickly new words have appeared, spreaded and then abandoned. Many words or acronyms that were once popular have become totally obsolete. In the past, people were limited by the word count in a text message because the next extra word will cost the use of another text message. In order to avoid the extra cost due to exceeding the word count by just one or two letters, acronyms like TYL, 4COL, GHM were used. However, with free messaging applications like Whatsapp and Telegram, one would not need to be restricted by such acronyms. Looking at the incomprehensible list above, it is understandable why people fear that human language was doomed and literacy level would be fall However, as technology continues to improve, these abbreviations started to impede our communication instead of facilitating it, and hence these acronyms were abandoned.

As old internet slang dies, new internet slang has appeared. The current internet slang includes YOLO, basic, bae, on fleek, selfie. It is hard to say how long will these slangs will remain, as they generally have short lifespan as mentioned above. Below is a timeline of internet slangs and the year they got popular.

Figure 3: Timeline of different acronyms in history of Internet Language

4.1.1 Examples of the emergence of new words online

In 2011, the acronym ‘YOLO’ which stands for ‘You Only Live Once’ was widely spread. YOLO became popular because of the song “The Motto” by Drake (YOLO (aphorism), 2017). This is one of the common ways in which new words are added to the internet vocabulary, especially because of the large influencing power that artistes have on people in this modern age. In 2015, the phrase ‘on fleek’ was popularised by the vine user, Peaches Monroee. This phrase is used to refer to something that was “on point” or “nice” (or perfect).

The latest trending word ‘woke’ only started getting popular on the internet in 2016 last year. All along the years, the phrase being ‘woke’ was predominantly used by the blacks on social media. However, it has recently been picked up by the white community of speakers as well. (Pulliam-Moore, 2016) ‘Woke’ was initially used to refer to being aware; knowing what is going on in the community. It was originally meant to advocate critical thinking about societal issues but have now become a phrase that comes across as condemning and making fun of that very idea. This evolution of the word ‘woke’ is very much cultural dependent. Many other words and phrases that were added into the internet vocabulary have undergone similar processes. The original meaning of these words are being twisted and shaped into creating a new meaning on the internet.

4.2 Internet slang

Another cause of worry of the negative impacts that the internet has on the English language is due to the rise of new internet slangs. For English speakers, there are even websites that are devoted to online dialects (Kleinman, 2010). Two such examples are the slang of “LOLcat” and “doge”. “LOLcat” is a phonetic and deliberately grammatically incorrect ‘language’ that appears with a picture of a cat. “Doge” similarly involves grammatically incorrect phrases that appear with a certain picture of this dog. These two slangs are using the English language in a way that is obviously “wrong”.

In order to be able to write in either one of these two slangs so that they sound “correct” within the rules of the meme is that it takes a reasonably advanced knowledge of the English spelling and grammar. Both of the examples above are deliberately incorrect along different lines and it is impossible to construct the phrase unless the speaker already understands what the correct formulation of the language is. The creation as well as the use of these new slangs will therefore not lead to a degeneration of the English language, despite the ungrammatical sentences. Instead, it proves the ability of the human cognitive abilities to be able to come up with such slangs.

4.3 Survival

As mentioned before, some words have continued to survive in the internet vocabulary since its appearance while some have already become totally obsolete.

One way that might signal the survival of a certain word is its entrance into dictionaries. The internet vocabulary has entered the dictionary lexicon over the years since the internet first emerged. Each year, the Oxford English Dictionary is updated 4 times, March, June, September and December (Recent updates to the OED, n.d.). During the most recent updates of September and December 2016, there were about 500 new updates which included words like “YouTuber” and “YOLO”. This shows that the internet vocabulary is constantly being updated and being normalised in the formal dictionaries, proving its longevity.  That being said, this does not prove the survival of the words in the long run. Evidence has shown that contrary to population, many of these internet vocabulary are not used in daily communication as frequently as expected. If there is no persistence in usage even after it has entered the dictionary lexicon, then words like “YouTuber” and “YOLO” may still become extinct (Androutsopoulos, 2011).

5. Conclusion

It has been discussed that internet language, or digitally-mediated language has emerged as a unique language system. The expansion of different internet domains enable communication to take place in increasingly innovative ways. It is observed that this language system is governed by a set of features described and influenced by the aspects of digital technology and the social conventions of human interaction. Digital language is transmitted dominantly through a characterised form of writing that reflects speech. Next, digital language is another form of cultural transmission where horizontal transmission of language takes place. In addition, internet language is spread through various social media platforms such as Twitter, and enters the dictionary lexicon through prolonged usage. Memes are also another way of viral language spread, as can be seen and used widely on the internet. Lastly, the internet has also changed the English language as well as the survival of the internet language. In conclusion, the internet language is an ongoing process that changes daily. The language that is used now on the internet may be non-existent in a decade to come. With the fast moving pace of language change, the challenge for linguists is to adapt to the ever changing landscape of the linguistic environment on the internet as well as the daily language people use.

6. References

4 Ways the Internet Has Changed the English Language. (2016, October 14). Retrieved  from https://www.oxford-royale.co.uk/articles/4-ways-internet-english-language.html

4col. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=4col

Androutsopoulos, J. (2011). Language change and digital media: a review of
conceptions and evidence. Retrieved
from
https://jannisandroutsopoulos.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/language-change-and-digital-media-preprint.pdf

BBC. (2012). Writing an email: An introduction to writing an
email [Online Image]. Retrieved
from http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/factsheet/en11lett-e2-f-writing-an-email

Bryan, C. (2017, April 01). Never gonna give
you up: The surprising resilience of the Rickroll, 10 years later. Retrieved from
http://mashable.com/2017/04/01/history-of-rickroll-meme/#bsurcSx4caqC

Carysforth, C. (1998). Communication for Work. Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers.

Cash Me Ousside / Howbow Dah. (2017, March 28). Retrieved from
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cash-me-ousside-howbow-dah

Crystal, D. (2001). Language and the internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.    

Crystal, D. (2006). Language and the internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Crystal, D. (2011). Internet linguistics: a student guide. Abingdon: Routledge.

Early Writing. (n.d.). In Harry Ransom Centre: The University of Texas in Austin. Retrieved from http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/educator/modules/gutenberg/books/early/

Eisenstein, J., O’connor, B., Smith, N. A., & Xing, E. P. (2014). Diffusion of Lexical
Change in Social Media. PLoS ONE, 9(11). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0113114

Eyebrows on Fleek. (2015, March 06). Retrieved from
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/eyebrows-on-fleek

Gee, J.P. & Hayes, E.R. (2011). Language
and Learning in the Digital Age. Abingdon: Routledge

Help. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/help/faq-words-into-dictionary

Herring, S. C. (2008). Language and the Internet. In: W. Donsbach (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Communication. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers.

Kleinman, Z. (2010, August 16). How the internet is changing language. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-10971949

Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2007). A new literacies sampler. New York: P. Lang.

Muenter, O. (2016, August 30). What Does “On Fleek” Mean? A Brief Timeline of the Phrase that No One Really Understands, But Everyone Keeps Saying Anyway. Retrieved from https://www.bustle.com/articles/55940-what-does-on-fleek-mean-a-brief-timeline-of-the-phrase-that-no-one-really-understands

Nordquist, R. (2016, November 21). The Cultural Transmission of Language. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-cultural-transmission-1689814

O’Brien, J. (2012, December 14). Learn English online: How the internet is changing language. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20332763

Pulliam-Moore, C. (2016, January 08). How ‘woke’ went from black activist watchword to teen internet slang. Retrieved from
http://fusion.net/how-woke-went-from-black-activist-watchword-to-teen-int-1793853989

Recent updates to the OED. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://public.oed.com/the-oed-today/recent-updates-to-the-oed/

Sonnad, N. (2015, July 29). How brand-new words are spreading across America.
Retrieved from
https://qz.com/465820/how-brand-new-words-are-spreading-across-america/

Suico, A. (n.d.). How the Internet Has Changed the English Language. Retrieved from
http://www.inboundmarketingagents.com/inbound-marketing-agents-blog/bid/291110/How-the-Internet-Has-Changed-the-English-Language

Synaptus. (2012, March 15). How to ‘start multiple instant message conversations’ in Microsoft Lync 2010 [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yj03QVqcio

YOLO (aphorism). (2017, March 26). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YOLO_(aphorism)

1. Defining Language Standardisation

The confluence of diverse cultures and perspectives within a territory serves as one explanation for the evolution of language. This cultural evolution gives rise to an interesting phenomenon known as ‘language standardisation’. What is language standardisation? It is an ongoing historical process that develops a standard written and oral language to be practiced by everyone in a society. Primarily concerned with the evolution of specific human languages, standardisation can only occur when a society has an existing cultivation of their own language and communicative methods. Following, the society must then express a desire for uniformity by filtering out any irregularities and establishing a consistent communication system between individuals.

The process of standardisation involves both ‘ruler-makers’ and ‘rule-breakers’; the former makes the rules for spelling and pronunciation, in addition to selecting/eliminating the meaning of commonly used words. The latter, in contrast, are then stigmatized for using non-standard dialects. For instance, the use of double negatives – ‘that won’t do you no good’ – is deemed confusing, redundant and incorrect by the masses. Thus, keep in mind that language standardisation is a conscious course of development that produces both good and bad effects. Although standardising language may improve efficiency for the general population, there will be some who fall short of this new-found utility.

James and Lesley Milroy expressed that language standardisation does not symbolise an actual end-product, but rather, a significant process with no completion. They further noted:

“…it seems appropriate to speak more abstractly of standardisation as an ideology, and a standard language as an idea in the mind rather than a reality—a set of abstract norms to which actual usage may conform to a greater or lesser extent.” (p. 19)

Thus, we should remember that language standardisation is a process aimed at creating one standard, cohesive language in a society, although (due to the dynamic nature of society) it generally does not achieve this goal.

2. Stages of Language Standardisation

Language standardisation begins by selecting one of the many forms of language that exist in a society to be the standard. The chosen one is then accepted by the dominant clans in society, who have the power to control how and where this language is standardized and diffused. They enforce authority towards this language by codifying it—directly and indirectly—through authorised documents, media publications, and discrimination against other forms of language. Once it has gained general approval, the standard language is rigorously maintained through several means. The first is an elaboration of function, where people of higher social standing perceive this language form to be more valuable and important than other variations. Secondly, the language then gains prestige within the society for being associated with those of high social status. Lastly, a writing system is established to prescribe this language (along with official dictionaries and guidebooks). Such system is then regarded as the absolute legitimate and “correct” standard of language, and hence, is esteemed above everyday speakers of the language.

Those whom have accepted and are familiarised with the standard language can engage in discourse (Deumert 2), so to generate knowledge about communicative methods and processes. Establishing a standard language ultimately shapes the standard ‘reality’ of the people (Fairclough 203-4). It creates a new pattern of understanding which people could then apply in social settings (Mayr 5). Thus, those who refuse or cannot acquire the standard language properly are marginalised in the society, further widening the language gap. Overall, the whole process aims to create a ‘melting pot’ environment, homogenising a certain culture that comes with the language. It is important to note that these stages are hypothetical, and can sometimes overlap with one another. For instance, the maintenance stage can start quite early in the process, and continues throughout (Milroy 23).

3. Motivations for Standardisation

What motivations were there for language standardisation? For one, it was the Industrial Revolution – a period of great social, political, and economical change in Great Britain.

The growth in industrial technologies signified a great deal of cooperation between individuals of different skillsets, and effective collaboration could only occur when both parties speak and write the same standard language. With increasing literacy rates to match this language demand, citizens could advance from primary to secondary level, manufacturing-related occupations.

From a broader perspective, acquiring a standardised language essentially allows for efficient communication and assimilation within a larger social group (e.g. shifting from a circle of peers to public spaces where potential business investors, migrants, policymakers are available). Such networks proved particularly important for innovations requiring collaboration. Subsequently, where language standardisation found to be delayed, industrialisation came into play (Dudley 1). Unsurprisingly, literacy is still highly regarded today as the leading institutional marker for a nation’s development. With that perspective, we shall move to a unique, nation-wide territory where smaller-scale language standardisation took place: Basque Country.

4. The Language of Basque

The language of Basque is a language form derived from Basque Country. Located in northern Spain, the community saw themselves as autonomous given their diverse historical roots and cultural groups within the country. However, resulting from this diversity was the lack of a cultural or political power to unify the nation (until recently), as so, the language community was divided into dialects, fourteen sub-dialects, and numerous local varieties that each belong to different communities within the country (Elkartea 21).

The concern surrounding language variation dates back to the 16^th century, where the first attempt for language standardisation was made. Instead of appointing one language form as the standard, Joanes Leizarrage developed a new language – one that was a combination of the various dialects he observed – that he believed would be understood by the general population (Elkartea 25). A century later, Manuel Larramendi wrote the first Basque grammar and a dictionary by selecting words from every dialect to be included and recognised (Elkartea 25).

Fast-forwarding to the nineteenth century, the people pf Basque expressed an increasing desire to preserve the nation’s language culture with all its diversities. Hence in 1919, a Basque Language Academy, Euskaltzaindia, was established with the primary aim of formulating a standardwritten language. The basic objectives of the academy were:

1. To regulate the use of Basque spelling and lexicon
2. To contribute to the creation of a language that will be valid for all parts of Basque

(Elkartea 28)

In a further effort to standardise the language of the country, Koldo Mitxelena proposed a set of guidelines for the new language standard in 1968. He had stressed on the fact that “Basque should move towards unification, and unification should commence chiefly with matters of form” (Elkartea 36). First, he nominated the central dialect as the standard language of the country as he believed it to be “where the heart of [the] country is, and because it has played a dynamic role in the history of [their] literature” (Elkartea 32). Second, he then proposed the following series of changes:

Unfortunately, Mitxelena’s proposals were not met with instant consent. Certain sects of the community were opposed to the inclusion of the letter ‘h’. Particularly the older, conservative delegates believed it to be a pointless addition of an alphabet that could not be pronounced (Elkartea 34). However, as the use of ‘h’ were valued by the northern Basque writers and speakers, Mitxelena saw the importance of its inclusion in the standard language. The intentionality of reforming the spelling was not to simply standardise the language but to also unify all Basque under a common understanding.

In the end, Mitxelena reasoned that “the young are always right” (Elkartea 36), and since the young writers were in favour of the letter ‘h’, the spelling reformation was ruled. It was no doubt a sensible decision as the younger generation of writers, speakers, language educators etc. would be the ones to spread the use of this standard language.

Ten years after the proposal was passed, efforts to implement the standard language was assessed and the results were as follow:

• Among, 431 publications made between 1967 and 1977, only 3.3% of books published in 1967 had incorporated the new rules of spelling, declined and conjugated forms. However, in 1977, almost 65.4% of publications complied with the standard guidelines.
• 90% of 570 language educators used the standard language daily (viz. in aspects of writing, reading, and speaking), while 80% agreed that learning and using the standard Basque was necessary for work and for everyday life.
• Language educators were also deeply motivated to teach the standard Basque. They believed that the promotion of the standard was “essential to turn Basque into a modern instrument”
• 61% of the 196 Basque writers that were interviewed used the standard language in their writings for they believed in the “need to convert the language into an instrument of culture”

(Elkartea 44-45)

In overall, it is evident that the majority believed in the good of a standardised language in Basque. The Basque case study is significant not only for the fact that it is relatively recent but that it also reflects Milroy & Milroy’s conception that a language standard is not an end-product to be achieved, but rather, it is a process of development that the society embarks on. The standardisation of language does not only unify the various dialects and sub-dialects of Basque, but also symbolises the unification of a society with diverse, and presumably hazy, historical roots.

5. Implications and Clarifications

One point to note is that human language does not necessarily need to divide into different forms. Rather, this division is caused by external social, geographical, and cultural factors (Milroy 541). Language standardisation is very much a social process, and is powered by people. Societies themselves pick their own standard forms of language, and hence, different societies in different places, and of different cultures, can all pick vastly different (or even somewhat similar) language forms to adhere to. Hence, we can see that this division is somewhat “man-made”. It is the choices societies make that result in differing languages. Hence, the dispersal of a language must be credited to its respective speakers—people, and their practices and customs—and not the core of language itself.

Additionally, we must recognise that language standardisation also ensues in response to increasing trade and capitalism. Development in these areas create pressure to establish regularity in other areas, such as currency and language, to facilitate and increase efficiency in communication between countries. Thus, we can see that language standardisation is not only concerned with linguistic and literary goals, but also largely fuelled by economics, trade, and enterprise (Milroy 534-535).

Another interesting point relates to the superiority of specific language forms. Some might feel that the standard form of a society was chosen because it is superior to all other options. However, this ‘superiority’ may be a social construct, attributed to certain language forms because of the social standing of their speakers (Milroy 532). Language varieties gain prestige when its speakers possess high social standing. If a language form is used by the upper class, society automatically esteems it over other forms and views it as the supreme option, even though it does not necessarily allow us to communicate or express ourselves better than other forms. Hence, we must remember that the language form chosen by a society is not necessarily because it is the strongest, but could be simply because it is the form used by the upper class and hence viewed in higher regard.

Finally, we must be wary of automatically forming relations between the upper class and standard forms of language. Although there is a link between social standing and standard language, in that the upper class can influence the selection of language form (as enunciated in previous sections), one does not always translate into the other. One example of this is British Received Pronunciation, which some scholars deem the ‘standard’ form of English in the United Kingdom (Milroy 532-533). Despite being associated with the upper class and being well-educated, most recent reports suggest that this form is practiced by a mere 2% of the population (British Library Board). Therefore, it is evident that it does not represent the consensus of the United Kingdom. Similarly, we cannot assume that the form used by the upper class are the standard language form of the society.

6. Concluding Notes

Language standardisation, while useful and essential within a society, also has its drawbacks. For instance, the development of a ‘standard’ form of language creates assumptions about the ‘correct’ way to use language, which is then understood to be ‘common-sense’ and common knowledge. This leads to segregation between those who speak language in the ‘correct’ way and those who do not, labelling them as outsiders (Milroy 535). Furthermore, it creates a sort of ignorance towards other dialects and ways of speaking. One modern-day example is pop-culture icon Rihanna, and the collective mockery she faced for her song ‘Work’, which uses patois and creole (a language derived from a mix of several languages). Unaware of the existence of such slang, fans and music critics alike were quick to deem the song complete ‘gibberish’, despite its lyrics possessing proper meaning and semantics (Thomas). Thus, it is crucial to understand that the standard language forms are not universal, and they can still have varieties across different regions. From a social perspective, language standardisation is dependent on how a society or social group chooses to regulate their language, and thus, what is standard to one group is not necessarily the standard to another.

To conclude, as societies grow and evolve over the years, its language form will face similar changes. As such, standard forms of language can differ at different points in time, even within the same society. This essentially re-emphasises that language standardisation is a process, not an end-result. With every generation, new words are constantly invented and introduced into the language lexicon, which may then be taught to the next generation (Crystal 132). Therefore, language standardisation is never stagnant or complete, but will continue revising itself as long as the language is still in use.

Bibliography

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http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/find-out-more/received-pronunciation/. Accessed 1 April 2017.

Crystal, David.  A Little Book of Language. Yale University Press, 2010.

Deumert, Ana. Language standardisation and language change: The dynamics of Cape Dutch.

Vol. 19. John Benjamins Publishing, 2004.

Dudley, Leon. Getting It: Language standardisation and the Industrial Revolution. WordPress, 9

March 2015, Dudleylm.files.wordpress.com. Accessed 6 March 2017.

Elkartea, Garabide. Language Standardisation:Basque Recovery II. 2010.

Fairclough, Norman. “Political correctness’: The politics of culture and language.” Discourse &

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Leith, Dick. A social history of English. Psychology Press, 1997.

Mayr, Andrea. Language and power: An introduction to institutional discourse. A&C Black,

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Milroy, James. “Language Ideologies and the Consequences of Standardisation”. Journal of

Sociolinguistics 5/4 (530-555), 2001

Thomas, Tiffany. Rihanna’s ‘Work’ Lyrics Use Creole & Patois, Totally Confusing Music

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2019: Koh Cai Ni, Lam Ka Yan Emma, and Shaun Lim Tyan Gin

1. Introduction

Symbols are all around us. Hungry in school at night, you decide to walk to North Spine and the familiar “Golden Arches” greets you. In fact, the McDonald’s logo is one of the best-known company symbols worldwide! The life-breathing sun and mysterious moon we see every day and night are also highly symbolic! Have you ever wondered how symbols came about and what their functions are, especially in the language we speak today?

Symbols are key to language. Harley (2001) defines language as “a system of symbols and rules that enable us to communicate”, while psychologist David Premack, in his 2004 article, Is Language the Key to Human Intelligence, asks if language, the symbol system that “evolved only in humans”, makes us the most special (Premack, 2004).

Figure 1. Packets of tissue paper being used to chope a table at a hawker centre. From The Straits Times. Retrieved from https://www.straitstimes.com/forum/letters-in-print/give-hawker-centre-chope-culture-the-chop. Copyright 2017 by The Straits Times.

Language and symbols are the most crucial aspects of human communication (Epure and Mihăeş, 2019). Symbols convey linguistic and social meanings. Linguistic meaning is expressed through linguistic units like words; Aristotle once said that “spoken words are the symbols of experiences in the psyche while written words are symbols of the spoken” (Sowa, 2007). The social meanings of symbols can be best illustrated by the ubiquitous tissue paper and its relations to choping in Singapore. Just like how a packet of tissue paper left on a table in hawker centers or food courts informs Singaporeans that the table is already choped “taken” (see Figure 1), symbols denote specific ideas or notions which have been agreed upon by members of the community (Balla, 2012). These meanings are learnt and reinforced by interactions among community members. Therefore, symbols share a convention-based relationship with their objects.

In short, symbols are vital due to the communicative and cultural role they play in human social life. In this chapter, we will go back in time to look at the beginning of symbols. We will define what symbols are and trace their evolution over time, before determining how symbols contributed to the birth of languages for communication.

2. What are symbols?

In this section, we will understand the world of symbols through two prominent theories.

2.1 Icons, indexes, and symbols

The American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce, known as the “father of pragmatics”, developed comprehensive theories on signs, or a stimulus pattern that has meaning. Central to these theories was that signs could be classified into icons, indexes, and symbols (Atkin, 2010).

An icon is a sign which has a physical resemblance to the object it signifies. An example of an icon is a photograph. If you take a picture of a tree, as seen in Figure 2, the image you see is a tree. The photograph an icon because the picture is that of the tree.

Figure 2. A photograph of a rain tree in Singapore. From National Parks Board (NParks). Retrieved from https://www.nparks.gov.sg/activities/family-time-with-nature/recommended-activities/know-10-trees/1-rain-tree. Copyright by NParks.

Icons are also found in computers. Whenever we want to print a particular document, we are greeted with a little square with a picture of the printer. This is an icon of the print function (Larson, 2012)!

An index is a sign which has a causal relationship with its object. For instance, smoke shares an indexical relationship with fire; smoke is directly produced when there is fire. As another example, the level of mercury in the thermometer is an index of the temperature; the higher the mercury level, the greater the temperature (Garrod et al., 2007).

Lastly, a symbol is a sign linked to its object by virtue of conventions, agreements, or rules. Symbols are arbitrary and the meaning of symbols needs to be acquired. Take a look at the logo of Google Chrome shown in Figure 3. Is there anything that resembles the intended meaning of a search engine? No! The logo gets its meaning by convention – web users have accepted that the logo symbolises a search engine to surf the web and they must know that it is a Chrome logo to know its meaning (Winter, n.d.)!

Figure 3. The Google Chrome logo. From Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome.

The orthography of languages, or the writing system of languages are also symbols. Individually, symbols like alphabets and letters carry minimal or no meaning. For example, the letter “d” on its own has no significant meaning. However, when strung together with other letters, it forms a word like “dog”.

2.2 The Referential approach to meaning

The Referential approach to meaning, illustrated in Figure 4, consists of three parts: (1) sound-form (a symbol or linguistic unit), (2) referent (the entity or concrete object which the symbol refers to), and (3) concept (the corresponding relationship connecting the symbol and the referent) (Abbassi and Sirmon-Taylor, 2019). Going back to the example in Section 2.1, the concept, or link between the word “dog” and the animal is arbitrary; the word “dog” has no features of “canineness” or “dogginess” and is related to the animal only because human society says so!

Figure 4. The referential approach to meaning. The dotted line indicates that there is no direct relationship between the sound-form and referent; it has to be learnt by convention.

3. How have symbols changed across time?

In this section, we study the evolution of symbols. In particular, we will look at one of the earliest forms of writing, the Sumerian cuneiform script, before introducing emojis, a modern-day symbol system. In doing so, we hope to compare and contrast the characteristics of symbol systems over time.

3.1 Sumerian cuneiform

The Sumerian cuneiform is one of the earliest systems of writing. It was invented by the Sumerians who lived in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) around 3200 BC. The word cuneiform comes from the Latin word cuneus “wedge” and thus means “wedge shaped” (Krill, 1990).

Figure 5. An early cuneiform writing tablet recording the allocation of beer believed to be from Southern Iraq, 3100 to 3000 BC. From Brewminate. Retrieved from https://brewminate.com/the-materiality-of-writing-in-the-world-of-cuneiform-culture/ . Copyright by Trustees of the British Museum.

The first cuneiforms were based on pictographs, or picture signs representing an animal or object. These pictograms were used for trading goods and livestock. What do they look like? As seen in Figure 6, the pictograph of a fish was produced by the wedge-shaped marks of a stylus before being dried under the sun (Avrin, 1991). Over time, the wedge-shaped marks became more abstract as they were rotated 90 degrees. In Figure 7, the later cuneiform no longer resembles the fish (Nardo, 2007). We can see changes in the cuneiform script; it begins as an icon with a physical similarity to the animal and gradually becomes symbolic. There is thus an arbitrary relationship to the animal it is supposed to represent.

Figure 6. Earliest pictograph of a fish. From Science Photo Library. Retrieved from https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/185354/view/cuneiform-script. Copyright by Science Photo Library.

Figure 7. Evolution of the fish pictograph over time. From Science Photo Library. Retrieved from https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/185354/view/cuneiform-script. Copyright by Science Photo Library.

The cuneiform script also had phonetic signs, or phonograms (see Figure 8), which were created around 3000 BC. Consequently, there was a shift from the visual to the aural world as phonograms represented syllables. This development mirrors the modern alphabet system. Putting together alphabets, just as in the case of phonograms, produces a word – a symbol having a sound and denoting a physical object – similar to how the sound-form maps onto the referent.

Figure 8. An example of a phonogram in the cuneiform script. From Ancient Scripts. Retrieved from http://www.ancientscripts.com/akkadian.html. Copyright by Lawrence Lo.

The cuneiform script inspired other alphabet systems such as the Ugaritic and Old Persian alphabets (Valdez, 2014). Many great Mesopotamian civilizations like the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Elamites, Hatti, Hittites, Assyrians, and Hurrians made use of cuneiform (Mark, 2011). Therefore, studying how the cuneiform script changed over time, particularly its shift from iconicity to symbolism, and the formation of phonetic signs, are helpful in determining in the role of symbols in language creation and evolution.

For more information on the cuneiform script, please refer to https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/hss-language-evolution/wiki/chapter-17/.

3.2 Emojis

Your phone beeps. You receive an SMS from your friend asking “what’s happening tonight?” You have no time to curate a lengthy text message so you pluck a string of emojis that best expresses yourself (see Figure 9).

Figure 9. An example of an SMS.

Emojis are small digital images or icons used to express an idea or emotion (Oxford Living Dictionaries, n.d.). Emojis were created in 1999 by Japanese designer Shigetaka Kurita and featured in telecommunication giant NTT DoCoMo’s mobile internet system, known as i-mode. Figure 10 shows the first set of emojis created by NTT DoCoMo. The i-mode hit 20 million subscribers after debuting in Japan, making emojis a huge success (Evans, 2017a).

Figure 10. The first emoji set created by NTT DoCoMo. From CNN. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/emoji-shigetaka-kurita-standards-manual/index.html. Copyright 2018 by CNN.

The digitalised world we live in has led to the prevalence of emojis as a modern-day symbol system. 6 billion emojis are sent worldwide every day (E-Marketer, 2015), of which 60% are face emojis (DeFabio, 2015). In fact, emojis are so commonly used that the emoji (or the “Face with Tears of Joy” emoji) was the Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year in 2015 (Wang, 2015)!

So, are emojis iconic, indexical, or symbolic? Emojis are highly iconic with the range of happy, sad, and winking emojis being the most iconic. This iconicity also extends to flag emojis that represent different countries as the emoji of the particular country is represented by its national flag (Evans, 2017b). Notwithstanding, there are indexical emojis, like pointing arrows, and some symbolic ones (Danesi, 2018).

Similar to how cuneiform scripts facilitated communication among the Sumerian people, emojis serve a modern communicative function. Virtual communication lacks cues like eye contact, facial expression, gestures, posture, and tone. These communicative tools indicate how the speaker and listener feel. In its absence, emojis express emotions and also create solidarity in human relationships online; emoji users are seen as more friendly, outgoing, and sincere (Tang and Hew, 2018). As such, emojis form a pictographic language that is used to complement written language.

Similar to cuneiform script, emojis, too, have evolved over time. Developers push out regular updates that changes how some of the emojis look like, as seen with the “dancing lady” emoji in Figure 11. However, the meaning behind the emoji remains relatively unchanged.

Figure 11. Evolution of the “dancing lady” emoji over time. From Emojipedia. Retrieved from https://blog.emojipedia.org/2018-the-year-of-emoji-convergence/. Copyright 2018 by Emojipedia.

4. How do symbols aid language? A Case Study of Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL)

4.1 How do symbols aid language? In…

To reiterate, symbols represent objects through convention which must be learnt. As seen in Section 1, symbols are necessary in human language and communication. Specifically, symbols are important in language evolution and language acquisition.

4.1.1 Language evolution

Symbols are a precursor to language. Some scholars argue that the ability to use symbols – defined as the capability of connecting sounds or gestures to a particular concept, especially to communicate with others – was a necessary first step towards language. Additionally, the capacity to relate these symbols to each other is postulated to be a further pre-adaptation for language (Christiansen and Kirkby, 2009). This ability to use symbols may be uniquely human; non-human primates like chimpanzees and bonobos, as well as animals with seemingly complex communication forms like dolphins and grey parrots, have limited capacity in doing so. These animals can use symbols, but only to refer to the objects they want to. Ultimately, their repertoire of and ability to use symbols fall short of human standards (Köck, 2010).

4.1.2 Language acquisition

In this section, we note how gestures, a form of symbols, aid language acquisition. What are some common gestures that we see and use? Watch this video to find out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCo3wSGYRbQ

Gestures are defined as spontaneous or rehearsed body and facial movements used during speech (Cartmill, Demir, and Goldin-Meadow, 2012). Speakers in all cultures utilise gestures for conversations as simple as board games or deeper topics like kinship ties. Why do we use gestures? Gestures are utilised for three main reasons: (1) to communicate with someone a distance away, (2) to emphasise what we say, and (3) reflect our feelings (Carysforth, 1998).

Gestures are integral in acquiring language, especially among children. In fact, children develop their gestural abilities before they can use language (Iverson and Goldin-Meadow, 2005)! Children normally produce their first gestures to indicate objects in their environment when they are between 9 and 12 months old, before they can speak (Bates, 1976). After children begin to talk at around 12 months, they combine gestures with words. Children may point at a cup while saying the word “cup” (Greenfield and Smith, 1976). Again, this gesture-plus-word combination precedes the two-word stage in children – where the child produces sentences of mainly two words (Goldin-Meadow and Morford, 1998).

Gestures are a good predictor of children’s future language abilities. The age where children start to produce this gesture-plus-word combination can accurately predict the age when they first produce two-word utterances (Goldin-Meadow and Butcher, 2003; Iverson and Goldin-Meadow, 2005; Iverson, Capirci, Volterra and Goldin-Meadow, 2008)! Moreover, early gestures also indicate a child’s “global communication skill”. A child who conveys numerous meanings through gestures is expected to be articulate in his/her speech, have a bigger vocabulary as he/ she grows up, and produce relatively more complex sentences (Chandler and Birch, 2010)!

Evidently, gesture enables children to communicate meanings for things they cannot say and provide a glimpse of their language abilities later in life. This allows us to conclude that gesture facilitates language learning and forecasts language ability.

4.2 A brief history of the NSL

Prior to the 1980s, Nicaragua had no sign language of its own. However, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, deaf Nicaraguan children in the capital, Managua, generated a new sign language. For the first time in history, scholars witnessed and documented the birth of a new language, shedding light on how languages emerge and evolve over time.

How did NSL come about? Look at the following interactive infographic to find out!

https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=1Z1mA7vH6ZXBCOTUZ4F1nGW1dAeEQEelz1Kgf5elUQTo&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650

4.3 What does NSL teach us about…

4.3.1 Language evolution

NSL was formed by deaf people who came together for the first time in the late 1970s after they started attending a new vocational school catered for deaf individuals. These people, termed as the first-generation cohort, passed the language to the next generation of deaf individuals, known as the second-generation cohort. Analysing the differences in linguistic structures among these cohorts can provide us with useful insights into how language evolves over time and how new learners shape language (Goldin-Meadow, 2010).

Deaf individuals in the first-generation cohort were neither exposed to nor schooled in a spoken, written, or signed language. As a result, they invented gestures to communicate with their hearing family members. These gestures are known as homesigns. When they were first brought together in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they developed a pidgin (a grammatically simplified form of a language used to communicate among two groups of people lacking a common language) called Lenguaje de Signos Nicaragüense (LSN). Young deaf children (some as young as four years old) of the second-generation cohort were exposed to the pidgin LSN used by the older children during their interactions. From this, they produced the NSL – a full-fledged language. Hence, it can be said that language has its origins in gestures, a symbolic communication.

With sequential cohorts of learners, NSL speakers systemised its grammar. This systematicity is witnessed in one of NSL’s key grammatical features, spatial modulation (Senghas, Senghas, and Pyers, 2005). Spatial modulations are the building blocks in the grammars of sign language (Supalla, 1995), fulfilling grammatical functions like indicating person and number, providing deictic (context), locative (location), or temporal (time) information, and expressing grammatical relationships like a verb’s subject and object (Senghas and Coppola, 2001). Like all other developed sign languages, spatial modulations feature in the NSL. However, early-exposed signers of the second cohort sign spatial modulations more frequently than those of the first cohort (Senghas and Coppola, 2001). This proves that the second-generation cohort of NSL signers modified the NSL across time. Linking back to language evolution, we can see that successive generations of language learners reshape language instead of reproducing it entirely.

It is also worth noting that iconic signs usually emerge at an earlier stage in newer sign languages like the NSL before decreasing over time (Delkamiller, 2013). This has some similarities to the shift from iconicity to symbolism in languages and writing systems as seen in Section 3. Iconic signs display different facets of the object it refers to, such as how it is handled or its shape (Taub, 2001). However, studies have shown that signers of different cohorts used roughly the same amount of iconic signs, even across time (Senghas, Pyers, and Zola, 2018). Therefore, the NSL, unlike most other languages and writing systems, retains a high degree of iconicity across time.

For more information on the NSL, please refer to: https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/hg3040-2014-7/?page_id=217.

4.3.2 Language acquisition

Children are the most creative and fluent users of the NSL; they developed particular grammatical structures like an inflectional verb morphology system and a noun classifier system that make the NSL a full and natural language (Senghas, 1995). These findings support the hypothesis that children have the natural ability to learn languages.

The NSL also illustrates how both young and old signers shape language. Young children lend order and structure to the grammar because of their sensitivity to language. However, as they grow older, they stabilise these grammatical features whilst creating social mechanisms for them to pass the language to a newer cohort of children. Here, we see language as a product of innate abilities and environmental conditions – an intersection between bio-psychological and socio-cultural factors. Children’s brains are wired to acquire, improve, and in the case of NSL, invent languages. Yet, the socio-cultural environment, which only adults have the power to influence and shape, must be conducive to acquire and use these languages, or risk language death.

5. Conclusion and Future Application(s)

In sum, this chapter introduces readers to the world of symbols which have vital communicative and cultural purposes.

The authors used theories in Peircean semantics and the Referential approach to meaning to understand symbols.

Next, we looked at how symbols have evolved over time – from the ancient cuneiform script to the modern-day emojis we dole out in our text messages. In the cuneiform script, symbols shifted from iconic representations to their arbitrary forms. There were also phonograms – symbols representing oral sounds, just like our words today. In the emoji symbol system, most emojis are iconic, although there are some indexes and symbols. Unlike the cuneiform script, it is too early to tell if these emojis will evolve from iconic to symbolic signs. However, the common denominator tying these two symbol systems together is their communicative functions – the cuneiform script was used for trade and commerce while emojis enhance written textual language, ultimately proving that symbols are critical to communication and language.

In the second part of this chapter, we look at the case study of NSL, one of the few modern languages to be recorded since birth. We traced some of the key milestones of NSL’s history and noted that NSL originated from homesigns, a form of (symbolic) gestural communication – supporting the argument that symbols predate language. Moreover, unlike many other sign languages, NSL retains a high degree of iconicity in its signs – an anomaly since many languages (and even writing systems like the cuneiform script) gradually shift from iconicity to arbitrariness. Interestingly, NSL also highlights that children are adept at learning and creating languages as they acquired the NSL with ease and lent NSL its grammatical structures. In NSL, the role of successive generations in shaping language is noteworthy. NSL is never “fully complete” but always evolves as the next generation of signers systemise its grammar, while older signers provide the socio-cultural environments to use and learn NSL, thus ensuring its continued usage.

Going forward, we can apply the same methodology to explore how symbols originate. Through implementing a similar methodology and identifying patterns, we will also extend this knowledge to the field of historical linguistics in terms of understanding ancient writing systems and evolution over time. At the same time, further research can be done on new sign languages like the Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ASBL), a local language found in an isolated corner of Israel’s Negev desert. In studying the factors accounting for ASBL’s rise, the role of (iconic) gestures in the ASBL, its changes over time, observing patterns in child language acquisition, and the functions that young and old signers play in shaping the language, we can ascertain if there are any common trends in new languages.

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Timeline

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