Reading Psychology, 27:263–311, 2006
Copyright © 2006 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0270-2711 print / 1521-0685 online
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DOI: 10.1080/02702710600846803
WRITTEN LANGUAGE IS AS NATURAL AS SPOKEN
LANGUAGE: A BIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE
P. G. AARON
Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana, USA
R. MALATESHAJOSHI
Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA
A commonly held belief is that language is an aspect of the biological system since
the capacity to acquire language is innate and evolved along Darwinian lines.
Written language, on the other hand, is thought to be an artifact and a surrogate of speech; it is, therefore, neither natural nor biological. This disparaging
view of written language, even though propounded by some renowned linguists
and biologists, has not gained universal acceptance. Dissenters such as linguists
from the Prague circle who claim that written language is an independent system
that deserves a status equivalent to that of spoken language have developed their
argument along linguistic parameters. The present article also endeavors to show
that written language is as natural as spoken language but does so from a biolinguistic perspective. Biolinguistics defines language as a product of biological
adaptation in the Darwinian sense (Givon, 2002) and considers language to
be innate and species specific (Jenkins, 2000). The present article presents evidence to show that, similar to spoken language, written language has adaptive
value, evolved over time, and is relatively independent of spoken language. The
Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, which has a history of about 4,000 years, is used
for examining the proposition that written language evolved along Darwinian
lines as much as spoken language did. It is concluded that written language
is yet another manifestation of the natural endowment of the human mind and
may not be treated as a proxy for speech. The educational implication is that,
in literacy instruction, written language should be given as much importance in
today’s schools as elements of spoken language, such as phoneme awareness and
phonological awareness.
The present article proposes the thesis that language is a human
endowment that can express itself in more than one form and that
spoken language and written language are two manifestations of the
human mind. This view is somewhat unorthodox and is not
Address correspondence to P. G. Aaron, Department of Educational and School
Psychology, College of Education, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN 47809. E-mail:
paaron@isugw.indstate.edu
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endorsed by many linguists who consider that writing is not a natural
endowment but is a human invention and a cultural artifact. Such a
view has historical roots. Darwin, for instance, wrote in his The
Descent of Man (1871) that man has an instinctive tendency to speak,
as we see in the babble of young children, while no child has
instinctive tendency to write. Expressing his opinion about written
language, the linguist Saussure (1916) declared that the sole reason
for the existence of writing is to represent speech. Drawing a
distinction between spoken and written languages, Bloomfield (1933)
asserted “writingisnot language, but merelyawayofrecord-ing speech
by visible marks” (p. 21). More recently, Pinker and Bloom (1990),
after remarking that the use of natural language belongs more to the
study of human biology than human culture, stressed the contrast
between the two modes of communication by stating that “language is
not like writing or the wheel” (p. 707). The belief that written
language is an artifact and invention is so old and buttressed by the
weight of authority and tradition that it has come to be accepted as
dogma without critical examination.
In spite of the impressive array of authorities who have relegated
written language to a lower station, the view that written language is
there to merely garnish spoken language is not agreed upon by all
contemporary scholars. An occasional dissenting voice could be heard
even from the distant past. Samuel Johnson (1755), for instance,
collected samples for his dictionary from writers but not from
everyday English speakersbecause the speechofthe working and
merchant classes, as he put it, is casual and mutable, is a fugitive cant
which is always in a state of increase or decay and therefore must be
suffered to perish with other things unworthy of preservation (Stubbs,
1980). During recent times, the view that spoken and written
languages are distinct representations of inner language has been
advocated by linguists such as Pulgram (1965) and Vachek (1973,
1989) of the Prague Linguistic Circle. Vachek (1973, 1989) has
argued in favor of the independent status of written language on the
grounds that changes in the writing system do not always parallel
those in the spoken language and that the influence of the two systems
on each other is mutual. The kinship between spoken and written
languages is depicted by Goody (1977) in the form of a triangular
connection between the three elements, namely language, speech, and
writing. He further notes that recognition of this relationship has been
impeded by a neglect
Written Language Is Natural
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of the study of developmental and evolutionary factors that are associated with written language, an oversight that the present article
attempts to amend. The long-held belief that written language is
subservient to oral language and that written language is parasitic
upon oral language is finally being questioned, and the “great divide”
between literacy and oracy is becoming increasingly less convincing
once context and environmental factors are taken into account
(Pontecorvo & Orsolini, 1996; Roberts & Street, 1997)
The field of linguistics is divided over the issue of how exactly to
characterize the nature of language and in what terms it should be
defined (Christiansen & Kirby, 2003). Many linguists have adopted
Saussure’s (1916) langue and parole distinction and view the abstract
inner language faculty to be distinct from behav-iorally observable
spoken language.
Notwithstanding this theoretical distinction, linguists have utilized observations made on spoken language to draw inferences
regarding the nature of the inner language. Examples of linguists who
have relied on spoken language to examine inner language are
Humboldt (1931), Givon (1979), Bickerton (1995), Hurford and Kirby
(1995), Miller and Weinert (1998), Aiello (1998), Pinker (1998), and
Kalmar (1985). These citations make it apparent that spoken language
is the window through which observations about inner language are
made. In contrast, written language has been seldom exploited as a
tool for exploring the nature of inner language because of the belief
that it is an invention and an artifact.
Based on studies of spoken language, linguists have relied on
two sets of observations to support their assertion that language as
manifest in its spoken form is a natural endowment of human beings.
First, language is claimed to be a biological system since it meets
certain criteria such as heritability, innateness, and modularity. In
addition, the observation that almost every member of the society can
acquire adequate linguistic capability without strenuous effort and that
there appears to be a critical period for acquiring language has also
been used to support the notion that language is a biological
phenomenon.
The second set of observations that supports the proposition that
languageisnaturalisthat the evolutionaryhistoryoflanguages is believed
to reveal certain features propounded by Darwinian theory such as
variation, adaptation, and natural selection. After examining language
on the basis of these criteria, several linguists
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P. G. Aaron and R. M. Joshi
(e.g., Lieberman, 1984; Muller, 1996; Pinker & Bloom, 1990) have
concluded that language satisfies these evolutionary requirements and,
therefore, should be considered to have followed the course of organic
evolution.
The purpose of the present article is to present a case for treating
written language as a biolinguistic system that is as natural as spoken
language and to submit evidence to show that written language has a
status of its own. An answer to the question “To what extent is written
form of language as natural as language in its spoken form?” depends
on the degree to which features of written language match the
reported biological and evolutionary features of spoken language. For
this reason, a description of the theoretical framework that has been
used to study the hypothetical nature of linguistic evolution is
presented first; subsequently, this framework is used for evaluating
the status of written language as a natural system.
Theories of Language Evolution
Evolutionary psychologists and linguists may be united in their claim
that language is a natural system, but they are not all agreed as to
which theoretical framework should be utilized for explaining the
origin and evolution of language. The leading theoretical candidates
are (a) a theory of grand change which resulted in neural structures
capable of language production, which, in turn, created a disjunction
between human language and animal communication (e.g., Language
Acquisition Device, Chomsky, 1975);
(b) a theory of gradual emergence of phenotypic changes over a
period of thousands of years caused by small but numerous mutations
leading to adaptation through natural selection (e.g., neo-Darwinism,
Lieberman, 1984; Muller, 1996; Pinker & Bloom, 1990);
(c) a theory that considers language as the product of interaction
between genes and systems outside the genome including sociocultural environment (e.g., Neophenogenesis, Johnston & Gottlieb,
1990; Gottlieb, 1991; Velichkovsky, 1996); and (d) a theory of “neoneo-Darwinism,” which proposes that of the countless potential genetic features available in the genome, the ones that have adaptive
environmental advantages are selectively expressed (e.g., Exapta-tion,
Piattelli-Palmarini, 1989; Jenkins, 2000).
Written Language Is Natural
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Theory of Grand Change
Chomsky (1975, 1988), after defining universal grammar as the
system of principles and rules that are properties of all human
languages, proposes that language is innate, a biological necessity,
and species specific, with implications for genetic determination.
According to Gould and Marler (1987), such a view implies that
language is an evolutionary accident, and if it happened, it might have
been a mutation resulting in a major neurologic upheaval, an event
comparable to the “Big Bang” theory of the origins of the cosmos.
Such an orientation explains evolution in terms of a putative major
mutation or mutations that might have occurred in spurts after long
periods of quiescence (punctuated equilibria, Eldredge, 1989; Gould,
1984). In the present article, we discuss this “macro-mutation” view
of the origin of language within the framework of macro-evolution.
Theory of Gradual Change
Approaching phylogeny of language from a neo-Darwinian perspective, Pinker and Bloom (1990) propose that language has been
shaped by innumerable but gradual gene-based pheno-typic changes
acted on by natural selection. Such a process would involve random
mutations, adaptation, selection, and genetic transmission of these
changes. Authors such as Maryanski (1996) and Rumbaugh and
Savage-Rumbaugh (1996), who are sympathetic to this view, argue
that language is the product of evolutionary trends because discernible
traces of language acquisition capacities could be seen in nonhuman
primates, notably, the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). There are,
however, critics of this adaptationist view too (e.g., Gould and
Lewontin, 1979).
The theory that explains evolution in terms of phenotypic
variation, minute mutations, gradual changes, and the associated
adaptive advantages that lead to the survival of such changes, and
their genetic transmission to the next generation is described within
the microevolutionary perspective in the present article.
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P. G. Aaron and R. M. Joshi
Theory of Interaction between Genes and the Environment
The gene-environment interaction view posits that social demands and
cultural factors might have played a crucial role in providing an
environment for the innate language capacity to express itself and
subsequently propelled language evolution to an unparalleled level of
sophistication (Velichkovsky, 1996; Deacon, 1996). This perspective
is described as “neophenogenesis,” a term borrowed from biology.
“Neophenogenesis” refers to the genesis or emergence of new
phenotypes that persist over time and are brought about by genetic
variation and extra-genetic factors present in the environment
(Johnston & Gottlieb, 1990). This is in stark contrast to neoDarwinian theory, which views phenotypic change to be strictly due
to changes in genes, which, being insulated, are impervious to
environmental agents.
Whenappliedtolanguage,neophenogeneticprinciplemeans
that
evolution of language has been made possible by a combination of
genetic potential and environmental demands. According to Foley and
Van Valin (1984), whose theory is functionalist in nature, language is
a product of socio-linguistic competence because pragmatic
principles, discourse competence, and social interactions all shape
language. Evidence for the importance of social experience in
language development comes from the observation that some
Australian languages such as Warlbiri and Papago have no formal
rules for phrase-structure and no identifiable transformational rules
(Hale, 1992). The syntactical structure of these so-called free word
order languages is characterized not by word order,orany formal
grammar, butbycontext and the pragmatic nature of discourse.
Therefore, Papago- and Warlbiri-speaking children may not be born
with an innate syntax acquisition device but infer syntax of the local
language from contextual and pragmatic factors. The theory that
language acquisition and use are the result of interaction between
innate capacity and socio-cultural factors is presented as the
neophenogenetic perspective in this article.
Theory of Selective Expression of Latent Language
Finally, applying the “exaptation” hypothesis to language, PiattelliPalmarini (1989) has argued that all possible elements of language
competence are available in the genome but the traits that survive
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and evolve are determined by a fit between these innate elements and
environmental demands. Furthermore, traits that were originally
mediating one function may come to be utilized for another function
(Jenkins, 2000). For instance, the neural potential for executing motor
gestures eventually might have come to be used for language
production.
This brief discussion of the theories of linguistic evolution shows
that there is not much consensus about the nature of evolution of
language. Of the four theoretical possibilities, studies that have
investigated language from macroevolutionary, microevolu-tionary,
and neophenogenetic perspectives have received the most attention
and have generated a substantial corpus of empirical knowledge. For
this reason, in the present article, evolution of language in its spoken
and written forms will be examined from these three evolutionary
perspectives; namely, macroevolution, mi-croevolution, and
neophenogenesis. In the following section, a brief description of the
history of written language systems is presented in the hope that it
will facilitate the evaluation of the status of written language as
compared to spoken language.
History of Written Language Systems
Archaeologicalfindingsindicate thatthefirst known writing system was
in use at about 3500 B.C. in Sumer in Mesopotamia, a region in
present-day southern Iraq. Recent excavations in widespread areas
such as Uruk and Nineveh in Iraq, Susa in Iran, and Tell Brak and
Habuba Kabira in Syria have also unearthed tablets with early
inscriptions, which indicate that writing might not be the invention of
a single Sumerian genius living in Mesopotamia, but was
accomplished over widely separated areas (Walker, 1987). There is
also a belief among scholars that writing systems emerged in China
and among the Mayans very close in time (Coe, 1999; Gelb, 1974;
Sampson, 1985).
Evidence shows that the early Mesopotamian script is derived
from an archaic counting device developed during the fourth
millennium B.C. (Jean, 1992; Robinson, 1995; Schmandt-Basserat,
1992), which suggests that writing had an origin independent of
spoken language. Records of commercial transactions in
Mesopotamia were maintained in the form of solid clay tokens
molded in the form of cones, spheres, and disks, each token
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P. G. Aaron and R. M. Joshi
representing a certain type of commodity. Soon, these forms of
representations gave way to pictorial representations that were
scratched on the surface of wet clay tablets. Subsequently, these
drawings were stylized and became iconic figures, which bore only
vague resemblance to the objects they represented. These early iconic
writings were usedasmeaning symbols and, therefore, could not
represent grammatical elements. This limitation was eventually
overcome by making these icons stand for the syllables in spoken
language. For instance, the Sumerian word for barley is se; hence, the
drawing of a stalk of barley came to represent the syllabic sound se.
Icons such as barley were eventually reduced to mere strokes, which
became the cuneiform signs. Since the Sumerian language was
predominantly monosyllabic (Michalowski, 1996), each cuneiform
sign came to represent a single morpheme.
While it is possible that the inspiration for Egyptian writing
might have come from the Sumerians, the Egyptian writing system
shares few characteristics with Mesopotamian cuneiform writings.
Early Mesopotamian scripts were primarily logo-syllabic, whereas the
Egyptian hieroglyphs were logo-consonantal. In his monograph about
the origins of Egyptian writing, Arnett (1982) has presented evidence
to show that the Egyptian hieroglyphs antedate dynastic Egyptians
and the Sumerians. In its initial stages, the Egyptian writing system
was primarily in the form of icons (Arnett, 1982). Subsequent
evolution of Egyptian writing was marked by the use of symbols to
represent consonants and further aided by the implementation of the
rebus principle, which utilizes the drawing of an object to represent
the name of the object rather than the object itself. A great
breakthrough, as it was, the rebus principle nevertheless is useful in
representing only a handful of words and becomes overburdened
when all the words in a language are to be represented that way. A
solution to this problem is to represent, in picture form, the first one or
two consonants of words. Other rebuses could be used for the residual
consonants in words. Thus, representational figures of objects came to
represent consonants. This led to the development of mono, bi, and
triconso-nantal hieroglyphs, depending upon the number of
consonants each symbol represented. However, when icons of objects
were used in hieroglyphic writing, they were not always used for
representing the consonantal sounds; often, the icons represented the
objects themselves (ideograms); at other times, they were used as
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FIGURE 1 Examples of phonetic and ideographic signs used in Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. Note: The signs M, and <S> do not represent a bird and an eye
but the sounds /m/ and /ir/. In contrast, the ideographic signs *\ and C^HBrf
represent objects or an idea, not the sounds.
case- markers for gender and number (determinatives) (Figure 1).
Thus, Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is a mixture of consonantal signs,
ideograms, as well as logograms. As Gardiner (1969) observes,
Egyptian hieroglyphic writing is “a picture writing eked out by
phonetic elements” (p. 5).
An almost full-fledged alphabetic writing system emerged in
Greece about five centuries before Christ. It is generally thought that
the ancestry of the Greek alphabetic system could be traced to the
Phoenician script, which, in turn, might have been influenced by
Egyptian, Aramaic, or Cananite-Semitic consonantal writing. The
Greeks took the consonantal script and supplied a set of vowels,
turning it into a full-fledged alphabetic system.
The origins of the Chinese writing system is lost in antiquity, but
we know that Chinese orthography has continued almost unaltered for
nearly 2000 years. Chinese orthography, very much like the Egyptian
system, is a mixture of iconic, determinative, and phonetic elements.
It is therefore described as a logographic system frozen in its
transition to a phonetic system.
As this brief discussion indicates, socio-cultural factors such as
economic necessities of the society and environmental factors such as
the availability of materials such as clay and papyrus played an
important role in the evolution of writing systems. In addition, similar
to spoken language, writing systems have also evolved, not
necessarily in a linear fashion from icons to alphabet, but have
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P G. Aaron and R. M.Joshi
progressed in different directions such as syllabic writing, morphemic
writing, and morphophonemic writing.
In order to address the issue of whether written language is as
natural as spoken language or not, the evidence available from the
studies of biology and evolution of language both in its spoken form
and written form will be examined from the “macroevolutioninnateness,” “microevolution-neo-Darwinian,” and “neopheno-genetic
interactive” perspectives. In this article, all three aspects of language,
viz., phonology, morphology, and syntax, are examined for
naturalness. In written language, orthography takes the place of
phonology. Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, which has an almost 4000
years of uninterrupted history, provides a unique opportunity for
examining the evolution of the writing system.
Is Written Language as Natural as Spoken Language? A
Macro-Evolutionary Question
In the following section, the so-called evolution of spoken language is
examined with reference to the principles of macroevolution,
microevolution, and neo-phenogenesis. Subsequently, written language is compared with spoken language within the framework of
these three perspectives. The article concludes with a discussion of the
status of written language in relationship to spoken language along
with the potential contribution of the history of development of
written language to literacy instruction and evolutionary psychology.
Biological Nature of Language: Macro-Evolutionary,
Innateness Perspective
A list of principles that support the belief that language faculty is
biological and natural includes the following.
• Language is species specific and there is a clear disjunction between
human language and animal communication.
• The similarity seen among languages at the “deep level” suggests
that all human beings are endowed with an innate linguistic ability
(universal grammar).
• Language is universal in the sense all societies have language.
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• Children acquire language spontaneously without the help of formal
instruction.
• The language model provided by adults is far from being ideal.
Nevertheless, children acquire proper linguistic skills.
• Language is a modular skill because brain impairment can affect
language skill, leaving other cognitive abilities intact.
• Since some language disorders appear to be genetically determined,
the heritability of language is high.
Biological Nature of Language: Micro-Evolutionary,
Neo-Darwinian Perspective
A list of principles used for supporting the view that language faculty
has evolved along neo-Darwinian lines includes the following:
• Small variations in language occurred over a long period of time.
When these variations reached a “critical mass” they resulted in
significant changes that had adaptative advantages to the language
user.
• There are parallels between the early stages of language development in children and the evolution of language.
• The anatomy of vocal tract and speech perception capabilities are
synchronous with language skill.
• The ontogeny and phylogeny of language present evidence of neoDarwinian features of evolution.
• Language is as old as humankind.
Interactive Nature of Language: Functionalism,
Neophenogenetic Perspective
A list of principles for thinking that language faculty is a product of an
interaction between innate potential and socio-cultural factors is as
follows:
• Genes do not operate in a vacuum. The development of an or
ganism and the faculty such as language is determined by inter
actions among genes, hormones, physical factors, sensory expe
rience, and social interactions.
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• Communication through language is a social act that involves more
than one person. Consequently, the speaker and listener influence
each other.
Biological Nature of Language: Evidence from a
Macro-Evolutionary, Innateness Perspective
Language Is Species Specific and There Is a Clear Disjunction between
Human Language and Animal Communication
SPOKEN LANGUAGE
There is a good deal of debate as to whether nonhuman primates
have the potential to acquire the rudiments of language. The question
of whether chimpanzees could be taught elements of human language
is an important one for psycholinguists because it can tell whether
human language could be acquired without the species-specific innate
linguistic ability. Those who have tried this experiment on
chimpanzees and apes have reported positive but limited success (e.g.,
Gardner & Gardner, 1969; Premack, 1976; Rumbaugh & SanageRumbaugh, 1996). Critics, however, have noted that it may be
possible to train an ape to use language much the way a dog can be
trained to walk on its hind legs, but neither achievement will have any
bearing on the question of whether these performances are equivalent
to the human propensity (Fodor, Bever, & Garrett, 1974).
WRITTEN LANGUAGE
There is little or no evidence that nonhuman primates show any
inclination or capability of communicating their needs and intentions
in any form other than through vocalization and gestures. Thus,
writing will qualify as a species-specific skill.
The Similarity Seen among Languages at the “Deep” Level Suggests that
Human Beings Are Endowed with an Innate Linguistic Ability
(Universal Grammar)
SPOKEN LANGUAGE
The argument that human language is innate is based on the
belief that a similar grammatical machinery is used in all the world’s
languages and, therefore, a “universal grammar” underlies
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275
the human language instinct (Pinker, 1994). The essential feature of
universal grammar is syntax (Bickerton, 2003). The rapidity and the
universality with which children begin to use language has led
linguists to propose that children have an adult-like syntactic competence. This syntactic capability, therefore, is believed to be innate
and uniquely human. Critics, however, point out that whereas word
order is a crucial property of syntax in some languages, such as
English, it is not so in some Austronesian languages such as
Acehnese, Walbiri, and Papago, in which context facilitates comprehension (Van Valin & LaPolla, 1997). These “variations” seen in
the nature of syntax among languages has led some linguists to point
out the laxity surrounding the concept of universal grammar (e.g.,
Bichakjian, 1989; Deacon, 1997; Givon, 1979; Ruhlen, 1994).
Furthermore, Tomasello (2000) cites evidence to show that children
learn imitatively pieces of language patterns that do not necessarily
represent the elemental units of universal grammar. Acquisition of
syntax, therefore, proceeds in a piecemeal fashion as children
continue to express their communicative intentions (Tomasello,
2003).
With these caveats in mind, the issue of the presence of underlying uniform principles in written languages will be examined.
WRITTEN LANGUAGE
The syntactical properties of written sentences are far more
formal than those of spoken language. However, we will gain little by
comparing sentences of these two genres since an argument can be
raised that the syntactical properties of written language can be
attributed to the possibility that written language imitates spoken
language. In contrast to the sentence, spelling is a distinct feature of
written language and lends itself to an examination of rules that
govern the structural aspect of written language.
If syntax is defined as the structure of sentences, written spelling
can be viewed as the syntax of the written word, which is governed by
three canonic principles that exert a constraining influence on the
structure of the written word. The three canonic principles that impose
constraints on orthographic structure of alphabetic writing systems are
(a) grapheme-phoneme correspondence, (b) grapheme-morpheme
correspondence, and (c) positional frequency and neighborhood letter
effect.
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1. The orthography or the spelling of alphabetic languages is not the
result of a mere stringing of letters in a fixed sequence but is
influenced by a system of phoneme-grapheme mapping as well as
morpheme-grapheme mapping. In transparent orthographies such
as Italian, the phoneme-grapheme mapping is straightforward, but
in opaque orthographies such as English, the spelling of many of
the words is governed by a more complex set of rules. Many such
“rules” can be identified in the English orthography (Henry, 1990).
2. Inlogographic orthographies suchasChinese, the semantic lexicon
rather than the phonologic lexicon plays a major role. This
indicates the influence of morphology on written language. In
English, too, the morphemic structure overrides pronunciation in
the spellings of words such as “rehearsal” and “healthy.”
3. Positional frequency and neighborhood letter effect is the third
principle that determines spelling structure. Positional frequency
means that certain letter combinations tend to occur more often in
certain positions within words than in other positions. For instance,
two consonants generally do not occur in initial positions in
English words. Kessler and Treiman (2003) computed the
consistency of English spelling in terms of positional effect and
concluded that when vowels, onsets, and codas are combined, the
obtained figure was .761, which is equivalent to the complexity of
a system wherein every sound has two spellings, with one of these
spellings being used 86% of the time. In addition to positional
effects, the spelling of words can also be influenced or constrained
by other letters in the word. For instance, the letter q is always
followed by the letter u; the letter t is more often followed by h
than y and almost never by b. These canonic principles can,
therefore, be collectively thought of as the syntax of orthography.
A case can, therefore, be made that orthography of the written
language follows its own rules of syntax in a less obvious but
consistent manner (Miller & Weinert, 1998).
Language Is Universal in the Sense All Societies Have Language
SPOKEN LANGUAGE
There are more than 6000 languages spoken in the contemporary
world, and no human society without spoken language has
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been reported.Itisconcluded, therefore, that being human means
having an innate propensity for language.
WRITTEN LANGUAGE
Why is it that unlike spoken language, not all societies have
written language? Philologists have noted that writing emerged in
geographically diverse areas such as the Middle East, China, and
MesoAmerica within a short span of time, about 3000 to 5000 years
ago. A combination of a biological predisposition and functional
needs in the form of commerce and religion could provide a reasonable explanation regarding the diverse but almost simultaneous
origin of written language. Had commerce been widespread
throughout the world and a global economy was in place 5000 years
ago, writing also might have become a global phenomenon. As
Vachek (1989) puts it, “some language communities have not yet
developed their written norms means that so far no need has been felt
in them to establish a specialized norm” (p. 95). Another reason for
writing not being universal could be that historically there had been
deliberate efforts to keep reading and writing a monopoly; attempts by
ordinary people to acquire these skills were thwarted frequently by the
privileged. This was the case with the Egyptian scribes, the Vedic
Brahmins, and slave owners in some plantation states in the United
States.
Taylor and Taylor (1995) report that at the beginning of the
feudal Edo period (1600–1868), literacy in Japan could be found only
among a small group of privileged people such as priests and
members of noble families. A survey conducted in 1947, two years
after the Second World War, indicated that more than 95% of the
Japanese population could be considered literate. Thus, even though a
potential for written language existed, the environmental conditions in
Japan were not suitable for writing to emerge until a later period.
Mellars (1998), writing in the context of the origins of spoken
language, notes that:
There is a need to make a clear and fundamental distinction between the
notions of cognitive potential and behavioral performance. The absence of
particular patterns of behavior or cultural expression in particular societies
could be due to a whole range of factors: the lack of specific needs or stimulus
for that behavior in particular economic, social, or environmental contexts; the
lack of adequate raw materials to support particular technological processes . . .
.(p. 107)
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Children Acquire Language Spontaneously without Formal Instruction
SPOKEN LANGUAGE
Children’s spoken language indicates that they make rapid
progress in the acquisition of all aspects of language within the first
few years of their lives. It is often claimed that this is accomplished
without formal tutelage. It has, however, been reported that mothers
use limited vocabulary and simple sentences while talking to very
young children and use repetitions and questions to promote language
comprehension and use (Trainor, Austin, & Desjardins, 2000). In
literacy studies, this form of language is referred to as “motherese.”
Thus, the acquisition of spoken language skills by children may not be
entirely devoid of parental efforts.
WRITTEN LANGUAGE
Several studies that examined the writings of preschoolers as
young as 3 years old indicate that children develop an awareness
about writing without having received deliberate instructions. The
concept of “emergent literacy” is based on the observation that early
signs of literacy skills emerge rather than are learned. For instance, in
a study of 3-year-old American and Chinese children, DeFord (1980)
found that the child’s writing efforts were spontaneous and, therefore,
not much different from that of the infant’s babbling. On the basis of
her study of children aged 2 through 7 years, DeFord (1980)
concluded that “learning to write is initiated tacitly, as in oral
language” (p. 162). It also appears that children naturally pick up the
writing system prevalent in their environment just as they acquire
language spoken in their environment (Harste & Burke, 1982).
Chinese-speaking children of preschool age from Hong Kong tend to
use the horizontal and vertical lines and dots that characterize Chinese
characters; they also arrange their marks in a square pattern just as
conventional Chinese characters are produced (Chan & Louie, 1992).
Another instance of emergent literacy is that very young Israeli
children “write” from right to left just as Hebrew is written (Levin,
Share, & Shatil, 1996). These studies indicate that a tendency to write
emerges even before formal instruction begins.
The strongest evidence for the acquisition of writing skills
without formal schooling comes from studies of Cree nation of Indians who livein the northern tipofLake WinnipeginCanada and
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use Cree syllabary for writing (McCarthy, 1995). The Cree syllabary
was introduced in 1840 by the Methodist minister James Evans and
the Cree nation became fully literate in a brief 10 years, from 1841 to
1851 (Berry & Bennett, 1989). According to McCarthy (1995),
“monolingual men, women, and children were able to become literate
in their own language without formal education” (p. 59). Bennett &
Berry (1991) comment that literacy spread almost uncontrollably
through the Cree population like an epidemic, and the Cree appear to
have achieved something close to universal literacy. In the previous
report, Berry and Bennett (1989) noted that the use of the script
penetrated the entire Cree-speaking population without the customary
pedagogical aids such as schools, teachers, and standard writing
materials. Transmission of the script took place under informal
conditions on a one-to-one basis, much like the conditions in which
spoken language is acquired. The puzzle is how a predominantly oral
culture could become a culture of mass literacy in one generation.
McCarthy’s answer to this question is that environmental need was
the driving force behind this phenomenon. The Cree settlements were
widely scattered and, before the days of telephone, writing was the
only means of breaking down this isolation. This is evident from the
fact that after the 1960s, when oral communication facilities were
established through telephone connections, reading and writing in
Cree syllabary started losing ground (Bennett & Berry, 1991).
Another instance of informal acquisition of literacy, even though
less dramatic, is seen among the Vai people. According to Scribner
and Cole (1981), who have conducted field studies among the Vai
people, the Vai script is not taught in school, but is acquired under
informal circumstances,athome and from friends. In spite of acquiring
literacy incidentally under informal conditions, nearly 33% of the Vai
people are literate in Vai script. The reasons given by Scribner and
Cole for this remarkable achievement is that gift giving and gift
receiving during Vai ceremonies requires long-term record keeping.
The question may be asked why do all children not automatically
learn to write and spell without formal instruction. A tentative answer
to this question is that as long as a single means of expression and
communication—speech, in most instances—is available, cognitive
economy prevails and there is no need for learning to communicate
through yet anothermedium. For instance,children
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P. G. Aaron and R. M. Joshi
raised in bilingual families generally do not learn the language of their
mothers unless they are formally instructed orforced to speak the
language under conditions such as having grandparents who do not
know the local language (Taylor, 1976). Other evidence for this
“driven” nature of acquiring a communicative system is the
occurrence of a high frequency of manual babbling seen in deaf
infants who, having been deprived of the ability to communicate
orally, resort to other means of communication (Petitto & Marentette,
1991). Following the manual babbling, manual gestures emerge as a
means of communication even though the parents, having normal
hearing, may not use such “sign language” (Marschark, West, Nall, &
Everhart, 1986). A study of deaf children by Goldin-Meadows and
Feldman (1977) also indicates that language will force itself through
whichever channel is available for use. Preliminary analysis of data
from a study shows that letting elementary school children use only
written language to communicate to each other and refraining them
from using oral language for about 30 minutes during every school
day improves their reading and writing skills considerably (Joshi &
Aaron,
unpublished).
Anotherexampleofcompetition
amongmodesofcommunication is the decline of the use of Cree
syllabary among the Cree-speaking people during the past 50 years
because of the introduction of an alternate means of communication,
the telephone.
The Language Model Provided for Children by Adults Is Far from Being
Ideal. Nevertheless, Children Acquire Proper Linguistic Skills
SPOKEN LANGUAGE
The assumption behind this statement is that a strong innate
component is required for language learning because the model
provided by adults is not particularly helpful in discovering the latent
structure. Similarly, even though exposed to Pidgin with its loosely
organized syntax, children exposed to Pidgin are able to develop their
own grammatically more formal Creole (Bickerton, 1994). However,
it has to be noted that direct studies of parent– child communication
indicate that adult speech canbemore grammatical than was thought to
be even though sentences tend to be short and grammatically simple,
with few modifiers and pronouns but more content words (Brown &
Bellugi, 1964; Newport, 1975).
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281
WRITTEN LANGUAGE
English spelling is far from being ideal. However, sentiments
about the advantages of the existing spelling have been expressed
throughout the past three or four centuries, the most recent being that
of Chomsky and Halle (1968), who claimed that English orthography
comes remarkably close to being an optimal orthographic system for
English. Some scholars have, however, remarked that Chomsky’s
claim is overstated (Rogers, 1994) and that it is extravagant and
unsupported (Sampson, 1985). Spelling errors committed by children
are evidences of children’s efforts to align spelling with pronunciation
(e.g., thay for “they”) so that in these instances of “misspellings,” the
phonological features of the words being spelled are represented
(Ehri, 1986, 1992; Gentry, 1982; Treiman, 1993). Studies of
children’s invented spellings indicate that the “mistakes” committed
by many beginning spellers reflect their efforts to regularize the
“irregular” English spelling (Read, 1971).
Language Is a Modular Skill
SPOKEN LANGUAGE
The modularity argument for language is based on data collected
from neuropsychological patients with aphasic syndromes that show
that language functions could be selectively impaired leaving other
cognitive functions intact (Caplan, 1987; Coughton & Warrington,
1978; Goldstein, 1948; Kinsbourne & Warrington, 1964; Kleist, 1934;
Luria, 1976). A study of developmental dyslexia also shows that
spoken language can develop normally even though reading skill is
not well developed, indicating the modular nature of spoken language
(Aaron, Baxter, & Lucenti, 1980).
WRITTEN LANGUAGE
Many instances of reading deficits in the presence of intact
spoken language have been reported by investigators as part of
neurological symptoms complex. These are referred to as “alexia
without aphasia” and “alexia without agraphia” (Dejerine, 1892;
Hecaen & Albert, 1978). There is clinical evidence that the angular
gyrus of the dominant hemisphere is specialized for deciphering
linguistic stimuli involved in reading. Hecaen, Angeler-gues, and
Houilier (1961) conducted a retrospective survey of a
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P. G. Aaron and R. M. Joshi
large series of patients with lesions in the angular gyrus region and
noted that left parietal damage was associated with reading, writing,
and calculation difficulties. Roeltgen and Heilman (1984) report that
four patients who had lesions in a small area at the junction of the
posterior angular gyrus and parieto-occipital lobule experienced
difficulty in spelling. Kinsbourne and Warrington (1964) noted that
the nature of spelling errors made by patients with and without
aphasia are qualitatively different, which led them to conclude that
spelling is a modular skill. According to McCarthy and Warrington
(1990), the selective impairment of spelling skills is now a wellrecognized, albeit rare, phenomenon.
Since Some Language Disorders Appear to be Genetically Determined,
the Heritability of Language Is High
SPOKEN LANGUAGE
A familial tendency to inherit language disorders of the use of
syntax and morphology has been reported by Gopnik (1990) and by
Gopnik and Grago (1991). Cases of developmental language disorders
of genetic origin are reported also by Alvares and Downing (1998);
Tallal, Ross, and Curtis (1989); Tomblin (1989); Tomblin and
Buckwalter (1998); and Weistuch and Schiff (1996).
WRITTEN LANGUAGE
The genetic nature of specific reading disability was reported
over hundred years ago by Hinshelwood (1900) and has been confirmed by many investigators over the years. More precise measures
of heritability of reading disability have become available in the past
few years (DeFries & Alrcon, 1996; Olson, Rack, Con-ners, DeFries,
& Fulker, 1991), ascribing a role for genetic factors in one aspect of
literacy. Gayan and Olson (2001), by assessing reading skills with the
aid of tests of word recognition, obtained an h2 of .54 for gene effect,
.40 for shared environment, and .06 for nonshared environment.
Similarly, Harlaar, Spinath, Dale, and Plomin (2005), who studied the
word reading efficiency of British 7-year-old twins who were poor
readers, obtained a heritability of .60. They also obtained a measure of
.28 for shared environmental and .12 for non-shared environmental
influence. After reviewing
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283
related studies, Olson (2004) concludes that group deficits in word
reading are significantly heritable.
Genetic studies of spelling difficulties, even though not numerous, do exist. Szeszulski (1989) administered tests of reading,
spelling, and language to 40 dyslexic children and their parents. She
found four distinct subgroups, of which one group had deficits in
orthographic processing only and another had deficits in both
phonological and orthographic processing. Stevenson, Graham,
Feldman, and McLoughlin (1987) studied the reading skills of 285
MZ and DZ pairs of 13-year-old twins and obtained a heritability of
.75 for spelling when intelligence was controlled, leading to the
conclusion that there are strong genetic influences on spelling. By
fitting a multiple regression model to spelling data obtained from 100
pairs of MZ twins and 71 pairs of same-sex DZ twins, DeFries,
Stevenson, Gillis, and Wadsworth (1991) obtained a heritability of
about 60% for spelling. Similar to Gopnik’s genetic study of
dysphasia, Schulte-Koerne, Wolfgang, Karatina, and Gutenbrun-ner
(1996) report familial aggregation of spelling disability in a sample of
32 German school-aged children and their first-degree relatives. If
writing is merely an invention, why does spelling skill have a
consistently high degree of heritability?
Biological Nature of Language: Evidence from MicroEvolutionary, Neo-Darwinian, Innateness Perspective
The neo-Darwinian theory of language evolution proposes that
changes occurred in small increments over a vast expanse of time.
Changes that proved to be advantageous to the survival of the
hominids endured and were transmitted to the next generations. Over
a long period of time, language evolved and emerged, as we know it
today. Before taking upthe question of what evidence there is to show
that written language also evolved, as much as spoken language did,
we have to examine the sources of evidence for the theory of the
evolution of spoken language utilized by the proponents of the view
that language evolved along Darwinian lines. In the absence of solid
evidence for the evolution of language, linguists have relied on
models of language evolution. After looking at such models of
evolution, we will examine written language for such evidence.
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P. G. Aaron and R. M. Joshi
Models Used for the Construction of the Theory of
Micro-Evolution of Language along Darwinian Lines
SPOKEN LANGUAGE
Linguists have resorted to several strategies for reconstructing
the putative evolutionary course of language (Campbell, 1999).
Comparative study of contemporary languages (synchronic study of
cohort languages) belonging to the same family is one such means of
constructing the evolutionary history of languages. Another strategy is
to study the course of language development in children since it is
thought to parallel the course of language evolution (Bichakjian,
1988). Evolution of a language could also be constructed if a
precursor of that language or a “protolanguage” could be identified.
The changes that take place in the development of syntactically
formal Creole from a synthetic Pidgin, which is a hodge-podge
mixture of native languages and an European language, is also
considered to be a model for language evolution (Bickerton, 1995).
Language evolution has also been approached as a diachronic
(historic) issue by studying the hypothetical “ancestral languages.”
For example, Egyptian language, which fell into disuse by about the
700 A.D., can be reconstructed by studying contemporary languages
belonging to the Semitic, Cushitic, and Berber families to which
Egyptian was related. Yet another diachronic means of studying
“ancestral language” is through its reconstruction from ancient written
documents. The reconstruction of spoken Egyptian from Coptic and
hieroglyphic writings is an example of such an approach.
Lest this discussion give an impression that evolution of
language is an accepted fact, it has to be pointed out that some
linguists themselves are skeptical about the possibility of unequivocally reconstructing the evolutionary course of language. If language
evolved, they argue, we should find languages in various states of
evolution because, of the nearly 6000 languages, some are
boundtobemoreadvanced than others.Inotherwords, languages should
vary from each other in terms of their adaptability. However, many
linguists subscribe to the view of “uniformitarianism,” which holds
that all languages are equal. Aitchinson (1981) has expressed her
cynicism about language evolution by stating more plainly that “the
evolution of language, as such, has never been
Written Language Is Natural
285
demonstrated, and the inherent equality of all languages must be
maintained on present evidence” (p. 229).
The issue on hand is not whether language evolved or not but
whether evolutionary trends similar to the ones claimed for spoken
language can also be identified in written language.
WRITTEN LANGUAGE
In this article, the evolution of written language is traced by
examining the Egyptian writing system for which the most comprehensive history of about 4000 years is available. To obtain this
information, we have relied primarily on Middle Egyptian (2000)
byJames Allen, Fundamentals of Egyptian Grammar by Leo Depuydt
(1999), Egyptian Grammar (1969) by Alan Gardiner (1969), and Ancient Egyptian: A Linguistic Introduction by Antonio Loprieno (1995).
Other sources of information are indicated in the appropriate context
(e.g., Callender, 1975; Polotsky, 1971). It has to be kept in mind that
reconstruction of Egyptian language, having gone through more than
one form of interpretation, namely, a general theory (Gardiner, 1969),
a special theory (Polotsky, 1971), and a contemporary theory
(Loprieno, 1995; Depuydt, 1999), itself is evolving.
Egyptian, a language belonging to the Afro-Asiatic language
family but closely related to Semitic group, was in use as a spoken
language for more than 4000 years but totally disappeared by about
700 A.D. when it was replaced by Arabic. The development of the
writing system can be traced in four major phases: (a) Old Egyptian
(3000—2000 B.C.), (b) Middle Egyptian (2000—1300 B.C.), Late
Egyptian (1300—700 B.C.), and (d) the Demotic period (700 B.C.—
500 C.E.). OldEgyptian is the oldest known phase of the language.
Early inscriptions of this phase of the language consisted mainly of
names and labels. Middle Egyptian appeared in writing around 2100
B.C. and survived as a spoken language for nearly 500 years (Allen,
2000). Late written Egyptian replaced Middle Egyptian by about 1600
B.C. and remained in use until about 600 B.C. Late written Egyptian,
according to Allen (2000), differed substantially from the earlier
phases, particularly in grammar.
The Egyptian writing system, now well known as hieroglyphic
writing, is a combination of phonologic and semantic elements with
icons representing one, two, or three consonantal phonemes.
Examples are monoconsonantal (X /m/; Jow./n/);
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P. G. Aaron and R. M. Joshi
(biconsonantal (tt/pr/); and triconsonantal (I /n-f-r/nefer; T /anh/,
ahnkh) signs. In addition to representing sounds, the consonants also
could represent morphemes. For example, the icon “ ,” in addition to
representing the consonant /pr/, also represented the morpheme
“house”; the icon “ ” also meant “beautiful” or “god.” When the icon
represented a semantic unit, a stroke was added to it that, as a
determinant, indicated that it was a morpheme and not a consonant.
Lexical items were represented by icons as in i = (hemet,woman),
Hitm. (nn/,water), and ^^», EE (/ir/,eye). These iconic signs could
also be combined syntactically to form phrases, clauses, and sentences
as in in (nefer’s house or the king’s palace). Another example wherein
phonetic and lexical signs are combined to construct a phrase is
C^ ra, ill = ms =, M king, &• = upper Egypt, *P lower Egypt; = \ls m M -Jp. 4* = Rameses,
king of upper and lower Egypt.
It may be argued that the evolutionary changes seen in Egyptian
hieroglyphic writing may not be inherent to the written language but
reflect corresponding changes that occurred in spoken Egyptian. This
is not likely to be the case because the conventions and format of
written Egyptian were relatively independent of the spoken language.
The disjunction between spoken and written Egyptian has been
commented upon by several Egyptologists. For instance, Allen (2000)
notes that “The hieroglyphic writing system does not represent very
well what Middle Egyptian was like as a spoken language” (p. xii) and
that although Middle Egyptian ceased to be a spoken language by
about 1600 B.C., hieroglyphic texts represented Middle Egyptian for
many centuries more. A similar remark is made by Depuydt (1999),
who notes that hieroglyphic writing does not represent Middle
Egyptian fully, so much so that some statements about spoken
Egyptian has to be inferred from the hieroglyphic writing. This
indicates the independent status of written Egyptian as distinct from
spoken language. According to Callender (1975) “Middle Egyptian
must be defined as a written language, rather than a spoken
language...” (p. 7). The format of Egyptian writing was often dictated
not by spoken language but by social and religious conventions, which
made written syntax depart noticeably from spoken Egyptian. For
example, the phrase “servant
Written Language Is Natural
287
of god,” which ought to be written as JE A hm-ntr, (hm = servant; ra
= god) was actually written as (ra.hm) if? “god servant” where the
logogram ra (god) preceded the phonogram hm (servant). This change
in syntax was due to the tradition of giving precedence to the gods
over men. In the monumental texts, from about 1310 to 1195 B.C., the
hieroglyphic units are formally arranged in “ideal squares,” which are
aesthetically pleasing but bear no relationship to the word order in
spoken language.
It could be seen that the combination of semantic and phonetic
elements alienates written Egyptian greatly from spoken language.
Egyptian writing, particularly the hieroglyphic script, therefore, was
not a rendition of speech, but “although it possessed from the
beginning a set of monoconsonantal signs,... it never departed from its
complex fusion of semagrams and phonograms ... and in its final
stages expanded the number and the functional role of its iconic
elements” (Loprieno, 1995, p. 237). For these reasons, hieroglyphic
writing deserves to be treated as a linguistic system in its own right.
Evolutionary Nature of Language: Evidence from the
Micro-Evolutionary, Neo-Darwinian Perspective
Small Variations in Language Occurred over a Long Period of Time.
When These Variations Reached a “Critical Mass,” They Resulted
in Significant Changes That Had Selective Advantages
to the Language User
SPOKEN LANGUAGE
Children acquire a corpus of vocabulary before developing
grammatical skills. Similarly, Pidgin is spoken first, and Creole
emerges later. Using these developmental changes as analogies,
linguists have concluded that during language evolution, vocabulary
occurred first and grammar later (Givon, 2002; Li & Hombert, 2001).
Thus, during the course of evolution, lexical codes must have
occurred first and grammatical structures last. Furthermore, according
to the classical Darwinian theory of evolution, phyloge-netic changes
should have some adaptive advantage in order to survive the process
of natural selection. After studying the evolution of language,
evolutionary linguists have identified three linguistic
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P. G. Aaron and R. M. Joshi
evolutionary features that might have bestowed an adaptive advantage
and thus ensured natural selection.
First, languages have all evolved to become learnable at the
earliest age possible (Deacon, 1997; Bichakjian, 1999).
Second, more evolved linguistic features are adaptive in the
sense that they increase perceptual distinction, easeofcomprehen-sion,
and rate of transmission than less evolved features (Givon, 1979;
Pinker, 1994). Thus, head-first (key word in a grammatical unit)
syntactical format is considered more evolved than head-last structure.
Head-first sentences place less load on memory than head-last
utterances (Bichakjian, 1999).
Third, more evolved languages display a rich variety of subordinate clauses embedded in their sentences (Bickerton (2003).
In this article, some of the evolutionary changes in phonology,
morphology, and syntax of spoken language are examined first within
this framework of Darwinian evolution. Subsequently, the evolution
of written language is examined by applying the same criteria.
Phonology
During the course of evolution of Indo-European languages, complex
sounds declined in number and were replaced by simple sounds
(Bauer, 1992). For instance, in Indo-European languages, laryngeals
have been considerably reduced.Acomparisonofances-tral IndoEuropean with modern French shows that the ancestral system was
made up of 12 complex stops and one plain fricative /z/, but over the
years, more plain consonants and more fricatives (e.g., /f/, /v/, /s/ )
emerged (Bichakjian, 1992).
Morphology
The following morphological changes appear to have enhanced
perceptual distinctions and thereby made acquisition of language
easier. Evolutionary changes in spoken languages, particularly IndoEuropean languages, indicate a general shift from synthetic to analytic
morphology with auxiliaries, particles, and personal pronouns, having
replaced personal endings and declensions (Givon, 1979). In general,
affixes were replaced by independent
Written Language Is Natural
289
particles such as articles, auxiliaries, and pronouns and a
corresponding shift from bound morphemes to free morphemes
occurred (Bichakjian, 1999). Developmentally, vocabulary is acquired
before grammar (Givon, 2002).
Another change that is observed in the evolution of IndoEuropean languages is that personal, temporal, and modal markers
have shifted from post position to preposition. Also, reduction of
adverbial and adjectival gender markers from three to two and in
some cases a total elimination of these markers happened and were
replaced by gender- number-person marked pronouns. Development
of passive voice constructions is yet another evolutionary change
(Bichakjian, 1992).
Syntax
The change from synthetic to analytic morphology, that is, a reduction
in suffixes and affixes, was accompanied by a shift from left
branching SOV (subject, object, verb) to right branching SVO word
order (Bichakjian, 1999). When affixes tended to disappear,
wordorderbecameimportant.Inmany Indo-Europeanlanguages, an
associated change from head-last word order to head-first word order
is also seen.
Another evolutionary trend was to move away from one verb and
one clause sentences to complex sentences. A related change is a
move away from a form in which phrases are serially linked with
pronouns as it is in Latin to the use of subordinate clauses as it is in
English. As a consequence of these evolutionary developments,
sentences changed from linear order to hierarchical structure (Givon,
1979).
WRITTEN LANGUAGE
The long recorded history of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing,
along with its relative independence from spoken language, provides a
unique opportunity to make a comparison of the evolution of written
language with that of spoken language from the perspective of the
Darwinian theory. An important point is that, similar to spoken
language, early Egyptian writing consisted primarily of semantic
representations, almost totally devoid of grammatical structures.
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P G. Aaron and R. M.Joshi
Orthography
Egyptian writing, in the form of figures on pottery shards, appears to
have had its origins in Upper Egypt in Pre- dynastic times, before
3100 B.C. (Arnett, 1982). In general, evolution of the Egyptian
writing has followed a trend starting with proto-writing consisting of
figures through rebus writing through morpheme writing, terminating
in a combination of phonetic and semantic elements (Coulmas, 1997).
As seen in the evolution of spoken language, a trend toward
simplicity can be detected in the writing system also. The graphemic
representations of the phonemes /z/ and /s/ merged and these
hieroglyphs were used interchangeably; similarly, the sign for /n/ was
assimilated into /m/; also /3/ changed to /y/ (Callender, 1975). In the
writing of the Old Kingdom, plural was indicated by repeating the
icon (e.g.,^ 4 4 srw officials); by the beginning of Middle Kingdom,
three strokes were used as determinatives to indicate plurality (e.g., $"
or $! srw officials). Other examples of simplification are avoidance of
the repetition of same consonantal signs in contiguity within a word
and between words (e.g., mwt~ti came to be written as mwti and ir —
n . — i ist as ir-n.lst). In addition, final syllables disappeared or were
eliminated along with a progressive loss of final vocalic and
semivocalic endings. For example, nat arala (goddess) became ntart
in the Middle Kingdom (Gardiner, 1969).
Morphology
The relationship between Late Egyptian and Middle Egyptian writing
systems roughly parallels the evolution of spoken French from Latin
(Gardiner, 1969). Many inflexions and linear forms seen in Old
Egyptian had been gradually replaced by analytic forms (e.g., the Old
Egyptian iw.f hr sdm, “he is upon hearing,” changes to sdm.f, “he
hears,” in Middle Egyptian). Another change is a progressive move
from the VSO to SVO word order (Gardiner, 1969). Earlier Egyptian
has no signs for definite article. But, eventually, suffixes in Old
Egyptian were replaced in Middle Egyptian by definite and indefinite
articles. A disappearance of suffix conjugation, which improved the
precision of expression, began with Old
Written Language Is Natural
291
Egyptian and is complete in Middle Egyptian. Modals are virtually
non-existent in Old Egyptian but make their appearance during the
Middle Kingdom. In Old Egyptian, verbal forms such as perfect and
imperfective depend primarily on semantic context, whereas in
Middle Egyptian it is largely dictated by the syntactic environment.
In early Egyptian writing, many feminine words were marked by
plural ending, which may be different from the corresponding
pronoun marker. In later Egyptian, gender is indicated by the feminine
article, which agrees with feminine pronouns. Earlier Egyptian
distinguishes no special reflexive pronouns, but in later times, words
like “myself” and “thyself” are indicated.
Middle Egyptian had not yet developed a precise set of tenses
relating to action even though such elements emerged later and are
evidentinLate Egyptian and fully expressed inCoptic. All these
changes, therefore, can be taken to have increased the perceptibility
and clarity of the written language.
Syntax
During the course of history, Egyptian has registered a change from
synthetic to analytic patterns in the nominal syntax and the verbal
system. When compared to Old Egyptian, Late Egyptian is
characterized by a simplification syntactic patterns.
Use of passive voice constructions is not widely prevalent in Old
Egyptian but cametobeusedinthe Middle Egyptian. Similarly, weak
negation represented by particles is superseded by stronger contrary
negatives in Middle Egyptian. An additional feature seen in Middle
Egyptian is the abundant use of nominal and adverbial sentences.
The emergence of subordinate clauses in later Egyptian is an
evolutionary trend that is well documented. According to Lo-prieno
(1995), “.. . the most substantial evolution from earlier to later
Egyptian is the one that concerns embedding, i.e., clausal
subordination not signaled by an explicit marker of syntactic dependency” (p. 231). This change represents a major typological
evolution in the history of Egyptian and is unparalleled in other
families of the Afro-Asiatic phylum (Loprieno, 1995).
In summary, it appears that many if not all of the evolutionary
trends reported by evolutionary linguists for spoken language can
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also be demonstrated in a writing system such as the Egyptian
hieroglyphics.
There Are Parallels between the Early Stages of Ontogeny of Language in
Children and Its Phylogenetic Evolution
There are several instances in which individuals belonging to different
genus and species resemble each other in their respective early stages
of development. Focusing his attention on such parallelisms seen
among organisms in their early stages of development, Ernst Haeckel,
in 1866, proposed that individual development repeats the
evolutionary history of the species and went on to formulate the
“biogenetic law.” However, even some contemporaries of Haeckel
disputed the validity of his theory and advanced alternate explanations
for the similarities seen between ontogenetic and phylogenetic
features without resorting to a causal explanation. The question of
interest in the present context is “Do features noted in the early stages
of the acquisition of writing and spelling skills by children resemble
the features seen in the evolution of spoken and written languages?”
SPOKEN LANGUAGE
Since an unequivocal knowledge about early hominid language
is not available, any conclusions drawn regarding the phy-logeny of
language has to remain speculative. Notwithstanding this limitation,
parallels between ontogeny and phylogeny have been proposed (c.f.,
Lock, 1983). Many of these conjectures, interestingly, are drawn from
observations of ontogeny of child language (e.g., Hurford & Kirby,
1995) because it is believed that language most likely evolved along
lines similar to the way it is learned (Harnad, 1996). In their early
stages of language acquisition, children tend to use predominantly
holophrases, which are primarily lexical in nature. Later on, when
event-specific manipulative activity emerges, grammatical
morphemes are added to this corpus of expressions (Slobin, 1985).
These observations have led to the hypothesis that human languages
might have followed a similar path during their evolution (Comrie,
Matthews, & Polinsky, 1996).
As noted earlier, another analogue for language evolution comes
from the study of emergence of Creole language from Pidgin
(Bickerton, 1994). In his “bioprogram” for language, Bickerton
provides a skeletal model on which a syntactically stable
Written Language Is Natural
293
Creoleisbuilt gradually from Pidgin, which,as used by adults, lacks
many grammatical elements, is unstable, and has only loosely coordinated clauses and few function words.
WRITTEN LANGUAGE
It was noted earlier that a hypothesized evolutionary trend of
writing systems conforms to the following general pattern: pictograms -> ideograms -> rebus writing -> syllabic writing -> consonantal writing -> alphabetic writing, even though this change is
neither linear nor does it follow that alphabetic orthography is the
ultimate destination of evolution. The ontogeny of children’s writing
approximates this trend. Pioneering studiesofFrench children by
Wallon and Lucrat (1957) showed that children’s drawings are only
part of a more general graphic activity foreshadowing scribbling and
eventually writing. Aaron and Joshi (unpublished) studied the
development of writing in 120 children ranging in age from 3 through
8 years. These children came from two distinct linguistic
backgrounds, half the world apart. One group of children spoke
English at home and school and came from the Midwest in the United
States. The second group of children came from a city in India and
spokeathome andatschoolaDravidian language whose orthography is
derived from the Ashokan Brahmi script. Children in the study were
asked to write their names and then write a story about a cat and a
dog. The study showed that development of spelling skill followed
almost an identical path in both groups of children. Children from
both groups who were 3 years old could not write their names, but
drew lines and scribbles. A semblance of drawings of cats and dogs
appeared at about age four. A majority of 5-year-old children were
able write a few letters approaching “words.” These writings were
always accompanied by drawings of “cat” and “dog.” Complete but
simple sentences emerged at the age of about 7 years, following
which drawings disappeared altogether. These observations are in
agreement with studies of children’s writings conducted by Sulzby
(1996) and Sulzby, Barnhart, and Hieshima (1989).
Instances of parallelism seen between ontogeny and phy-logeny
of writing are progression from drawings to represent words to the
phonetic spelling, the gradual elimination of pictures from writing,
absence of consistent directionality in early stages of writing (similar
to Egyptian hieroglyphic writing), omission of vowel markers in the
writings of preschool children (similar
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P. G. Aaron and R. M. Joshi
to Semitic writing), name writing without letter knowledge (similar to
rebus writing), preponderant use of syllabic writing to represent
words, and consonant cluster reduction (similar to cuneiform writing).
The Anatomy of Vocal Tract and Speech Perception Capabilities Are
Synchronous with Language Skill
SPOKEN LANGUAGE
The human supralaryngeal vocal tract and the emergence of
speech are thought to be functionally connected (Deacon, 1992;
Laitman, 1983; Lieberman, 1992). It is well recognized that one
feature that separates human language from animal communication is
the phonological property of the language, which is an inevitable
correlate of the human vocal apparatus. Fossil evidence is, therefore,
used by some linguists to track the origin and evolution of spoken
language.
WRITTEN LANGUAGE
The thumb may be considered an analog of the vocal tract when
written and spoken languages are compared. It is believed that object
manipulation and sound production capabilities are ontogenetically
linked (Greenfield, 1991). Opposed thumb, which enables precision
grip, is a hallmark of mankind, and no nonhum-nan primate can
duplicate it accurately (Napier, 1970). Proposing a close relationship
between the presence of thumb and language, Mellars (1998)
comments thatitisdoubtful thatNeanderthals were capable of symbolic
language because of the absence of a fully evolved thumb. It is
possible that the neural substrate for precision thumb use might have
been present in early hominids (Place, 2000) and could have been
later put to exaptative use for writing.
Language Is as Old as Humankind
SPOKEN LANGUAGE
Based on evidence from historical linguistics, archeology,
anthropology, and paleontology, it is thought that a potential for
language emerged after the Upper Paleolithic period during the postNeanderthal era, which is estimated to be anywhere from 50,000
to100,000 years ago (Mellars, 1998; Renfrew, 1998).
Written Language Is Natural
295
However, we do not know how long it took gesture and protolanguage to mature into full-fledged spoken language.
WRITTEN LANGUAGE
Even though cave paintings date back to some 20,000 years,
archaeological records indicate that some time in the fourth millennium B.C., Sumerians resorted to keeping written records when the
number of commercial transactions exceeded memory capacity. Even
though spoken language is thought to be 50 to 100,000 years old, in
terms of geological times this represents a relatively brief moment.
Thus, when compared to written language, spoken language may be
relatively ancient, but not so in absolute terms. A short history does
not necessarily mean that the neural substrates that mediate writing
came into place only about 5000 years ago, but very likely the
potential for writing could have remained nascent in the human brain
for a very long time until environmental conditions (such as
commerce, papyrus) necessary for triggering the expression of the
potential made their appearance. This explanation will fit in well
within the neophenogenetic theory of the evolution of language.
In addition, if ontogeny repeats phylogeny, albeit in a limited
form, it may provide an explanation for the fact that written language
is historically not as ancient as spoken language. Children begin to
talk in holophrases before the age of 2 years, but begin to scribble
only by about age 3. If the biogenetic law that ontogeny repeats
phylogeny can be applied to this difference in onset times, this oneyear difference in the ontogeny of speaking and scribbling may
parallel the difference of perhaps 100,000 years reported to have
elapsed between the emergence of spoken language and written
language.
Is Written Language as Natural as Spoken Language?
Interactive Nature of Language, Functionalism,
and Neophenogenetic Perspective
Language Faculty Is Thought to Be the Product of an Interaction between
Innate and Sociocultural Factors
SPOKEN LANGUAGE
Foley and Van Valin (1984) and Velichkovsky (1996) have
pointed out that since there are over 6000 natural languages in
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P. G. Aaron and R. M. Joshi
the world, each with its own inventory of symbols and constructions,
the human child must be prepared to acquire whichever set of
linguistic construction he/she encounters. This means that a large part
of the task of language acquisition must be environment-specific,
accomplished by means of social interactions. After studying
discourse interactions among users of languages such as Cayuga,
Ngandi, and Coos, the linguist Mithun (1992) concludes that a basic
syntactically defined fixed word order is not universally present but in
some languages the word order is flexible and reflects pragmatic
functions. In such “free, scrambled word order” languages, meaning is
determined primarily with reference to external factors such as
newsworthiness of discourse and context (Hale, 1992). From a
neophenogenetic perspective, language therefore can be viewed as the
result of interaction between ge-nomic potential and environmental
factors.
WRITTEN LANGUAGE
The view that written language is much influenced by sociocultural factors is likely to be accepted more readily than the claim
that the acquisition of spoken language also depends on socio-cultural
factors.AsnotedbyWaller (1984),the choiceofanoptimal language form
is a pragmatic one dependent on the communication context, the
means available, and the purposes and limitations of the language
user. There is an abundance of evidence attesting to the influence of
socio-cultural factors on the phylogeny and ontogeny of written
language. As noted earlier, in early Mesopotomia, writing arose to
meet a commercial need; in ancient Egypt, writing was used to ensure
eternal after-life; the Maya code was used for calendrical purposes. In
contemporary societies, when children are exposed to the proper
environment with adults functioning as role models, young children
initiate their own writing even before formal instruction begins
(Sulzby, 1986). After reviewing a number of recent studies, Baker,
Fernandex-Fein, Scher, and Williams (1998) have concluded that
there is evidence that children’s home experiences involving print do
help to prepare them for learning to read.
An interesting instance of neophenogenesis is the possibility that
experience with written language can exert an influence on neural
organization as well. Neurologists who have treated illiterate aphasic
patients have noted that even though right handed, a
Written Language Is Natural
297
surprising number of these patients did not show typical Broca’s
aphasic symptoms (e.g., von Gorlitzer, 1957; Moutier, 1908). These
clinical observations led Cameron, Currier, and Haerer (1971) to
suggest that language is not well planted in the dominant hemisphere
in illiterates. On the basis of a large-scale empirical study, Lecours,
Mehler, and Parente (1988) came to the conclusion that an interaction
does occur between a genetic tendency toward left-right asymmetry
and literacy experience.
Communication through Language is a Social Act that Involves More
than One Person. Consequently, the Speaker and Listener Influence Each
Other, Which Affects Language Production and Comprehension. Without
This Interaction, Languages Will Perish
SPOKEN LANGUAGE
According to some premises based on generative grammar,
young children have adult-like syntactic competence, and for this
reason children learn the language without much effort and do so
within a very short span of time. This assumption, however, may need
some modification. Studies by Tomasello (2000) show that young
children’s early language is more concrete and item-based
(Tomasello, 1992).
The fact that language requires a minimum number of speakers is
made obvious by the fact that a significant number of the world’s
languages are on the verge of extinction. According to Comrie et al.
(1996), about 90% of today’s spoken languages will be either dead or
moribund about a hundred years from now.
WRITTEN LANGUAGE
The growth, spread, and extinction of written languages also
show trends similar to the ones seen in spoken languages. Written
language, however, is more durable than oral language for two
reasons. One is that, whereas oral language is ephemeral and fleeting,
writing language is relatively permanent. The other reason is that a
script can be adapted to a new language and, therefore, can represent
more than one language. Nevertheless, there are numerous examples
of written languages that have fallen into disuse. Examples are the
cuneiform script used to write Sumerian, Old Akkadian, and
Babilonian, and, of course, Egyptian hieroglyphics.
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The Relationship between Written Language
and Spoken Language
In order to bestow legitimacy to the arguments so far presented,
namely written language is as natural as language studied in its
spoken form, it has to be shown that the parallelism seen between
writing systems and spoken language is not a mere consequence of
written language being an attendant and a proxy of spoken language
but that written language has a status all its own.
During Its Early Stages of Its Evolution, Written Language Was Not
Used to Represent Speech
In the historical past, writing began not as a means of recording
spoken language, but as a counting device for keeping track of
business transactions. The early Mesopotamian writings were records
of transactions of agricultural commodities (Schmandt-Basserat,
1992). Coulmas (1997) describes early Sumerianas“word writing” and
Falkenstein (1964) calls it “sentenceless language.” Early Egyptian
writing (3000 B.C.), similarly, was merely “king lists” (Waterson,
1997). In China, the oldest writings were used for keeping track of
offerings to gods; in MesoAmerica, writing was initially used for
recording astronomical events and calendrical information (Daniels,
1996). A documentary form of list-writing can be seen even in the
Torah (e.g., Irad begat Mehajael; Mehajael begat Methusael; etc.,
Ong, 1982). According to Goody (1977), these lists were not mere
records of items or events but also reflect the opening up of a new
mode of cognition, namely the recognition of the significance of past
events and the importance of transmitting information to future
generation.
There Are Qualitative Differences between Written Language and
Spoken Language
Some investigators have shown that written texts have more integrated linguistic units, containing noun or verb phrases often
expanded with clauses, whereas informal oral discourse is of a rather
fragmented nature with limited reference to syntax, with intonation
providing a major clue for linking utterances (Chafe, 1985; Olson,
1977). After noting that the labels “spoken language”
Written Language Is Natural
299
and “written language” do not refer merely to different mediums,
Miller and Weinert (1998) have proceeded to show that “the syntactic
structure of phrases and clauses in spontaneous spoken language is
notably different from the structure of phrases and clauses in written
language” (p. 1). They support this view by comparing samples from
languages such as English, German, and Russian.
There Are Functional Differences between Written Language
and Spoken Language
The phenomenon of “diglossia” is an instance wherein functional
differences between written and spoken language are readily seen.
Diglossia refers toa relatively stable language situationin that there is
a highly codified and grammatically complex high variety that is used
for most written purposes but not for ordinary conversation
(Ferguson, 1959; Hudson, 1999). Diglossia is seen in several
languages, such as Tamil and Bengali spoken in India and Sinhalese
spoken in Sri Lanka. The origin of linguistic dimorphism of Indian
languages has historical roots dating back to samskrta and prakrta,
which are literally formal and colloquial forms of Sanskrit, respectively. According to De Silva (1982), high Sinhalese is not a spoken
language at all; it is a language of written Sinhalese.
Written Language Can Have an Influence on Spoken Language
The differences observed between spoken and written languages have
led to the expectation that experience with written language will have
a facilitating effect on cognitive competence as well as spoken
language. An investigation of the Vai language speakers by Scribner
and Cole (1981) confirms this expectation. These researchers tested
literate and nonliterate subjects in Vai language for their ability to
produce sentences and found that literates produced speech forms
derived mostly from written models, whereas non-literates did not,
indicating that writing has a general influence on speech. Michaels
and Collins (1984) analyzed spoken narratives produced by Englishspeaking children and found that familiarity with written language
greatly affects the children’s use of cohesive devices even in
narratives. Scholes and Willis (1991) tested knowledge of morphemes
of literate and nonliterate adults (in adult education classes) and their
ability
300
P. G. Aaron and R. M. Joshi
to comprehend syntactically complex sentences. The investigators
concluded that literacy contributes to a knowledge of morphemic
analysis and that attainment of many of the transformational syntactic
rules employed by literate adult native speakers of English is not
found in those who have not acquired literacy.
Developmental studies also indicate that oral languageof even
very young children reflects the influence of written language. Sulzby
(1996), who studied children’s acts of reading and writing and
collected children’s speech samples, concluded that the conversational
level of children who read is more complex than those who do not
read. It is also documented that vocabulary growth depends much on
reading experience and that children who do not have much exposure
to reading are limited in their vocabulary knowledge, and over a
period of time fail to keep up with their reading peers. Stanovich
(1986) has described this phenomenon as the “Matthew effect” after
the gospel of St. Matthew, chapter 25, verse 29.
One of the most durable findings of recent research in the area of
reading instruction is the relationship between phoneme awareness
and reading skill. A number of studies have shown that training in
phoneme awareness has a facilitating effect on reading achievement
(Bradley & Bryant, 1985; Lundberg, Frost, & Petersen, 1988). These
results are generally understood to imply a cause-effect relationship
between phoneme awareness and reading; that is, an awareness of
phoneme produces positive effects on reading skill. However, some
investigators are reluctant to attribute a causal role for phoneme
awareness. Hewes (1983), for instance, noted that it is unlikely that
linguists would have hit upon the notion of phonemes had they not
been familiar with alphabetic systems. This means exposure to written
language is responsible for creating an awareness of phonemes and
not necessarily the other way around. Support for this position comes
from a study by Morais, Bertelson, Cary, and Alegria (1986), who
found that Portuguese peasants who had received only a minimal
amount of schooling and instruction in reading were, years later,
superior in tasks that tested phoneme awareness compared to those
who had no experience with reading. Scholes and Willis (1991) report
a similar finding with adult non-literates enrolled in an adult literacy
program in the United States. A review study by Bertelson and
DeGelder (1988) indicates that phoneme awareness is present
Written Language Is Natural
301
only if a person can read an alphabetic representation of that language. Pontecorvo and Orsolini (1996) even assert that awareness of
the phoneme is acquired only through the mastery of an alphabetic
system of writing. Castles and Coltheart (2004) have also questioned
the causal link between phonological awareness and reading,
questioning the validity of the findings of studies that report
improvement in reading after phonemic awareness training on the
grounds that it is highly unlikely that these children were not exposed
to print (TV, billboards, etc.) before receiving phonemic awareness
training. In other words, exposure to print prior to phonemic
awareness training might have helped these children to become
sensitive to phonemes, which, in turn, might have improved their
reading skills.
An example of a spoken language having been influenced by
written language is Japanese, whose Kanji characters had been
borrowed from Chinese. Eventually, these borrowed characters entered spoken language in the form of Sino- Japanese loan words,
which constitute as much as 50% of today’s Japanese vocabulary
(Taylor, 1976).
Taken together, these studies indicate that written and spoken
language complement each other. These observations also indicate
that writing need not be a mere phonetic transcription of spoken
language and neither is a text simply speech written down (Coulmas,
1997). The Egyptian hieroglyphic system is one instance where the
independent status of the writing system is clearly demonstrable.
Some of the contemporary writing systems also exhibit a
tendencytodrift away from spoken language because languages are
constantly changing. For instance, Chinese orthography is a
logographic system that is less phonetic now than it was earlier in
history. Furthermore, modern English, unlike its ancestral inflectional
form, has become more of an isolating language in which grammatical
relations are signaled by word order rather than by inflexions (Leith,
1996). Correspondingly, English orthography has become more
morphophonemic and less phonetic.
Discussion and Conclusions
In this article, we examined the question of whether the written form
of language could be considered to be as natural as the spoken form of
language from a bio-linguistic point of view. A
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second aim was to evaluate the validity of the belief that spoken
language represents the essence of human mind, whereas written
language is a proxy for spoken language. These issues were examined
within the framework of micro-evolution, macro-evolution, and
neophenogenesis.
Evidence was presented to show that the biological features and
the presumed evolutionary trends claimed for spoken language can
also be seen in written language. Instances of the biological basis of
writing systems include the heritability of certain forms of spelling
disorders, the modularity of spelling skills, the spontaneous tendency
of very young children to resort to scribbling and then writing, and the
species-specific nature of writing. Instances of evolutionary trends
seen in the evolution of written language are the long-term changes
that have taken place in writing systems such as the Egyptian
hieroglyphics and the observed parallels between phylogeny of
writing system and the ontogeny of children’s writing. It would be
reasonable, therefore, to conclude that written language, similar to
spoken language, is a product of natural and socio-cultural forces even
though we are not in a position to compute the proportion of
biological and socio-cultural contribution toward the evolution of
written language.
From an educational perspective, the evolutionary history of
written language suggests strongly that written language should be
given much importance in literacy instruction. Legislative acts such as
“no child left behind” are a step in the right direction. More
specifically, intense training in written language can be used for
improving not only literacy skills but also comprehension and the
quality of spoken language.
Several studies have cast doubt on the expectation that phoneme
awareness alone will increase reading skills but propose that
experience with written language can facilitate awareness of
phonemes and that instruction in letter knowledge in combination
with phonological training produces optimal literacy effects (Hammil,
2004).
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