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Can there be a more defining characteristic to the human species than that of complex
language? There has to be an explanation to this facet of civilization on Earth. How can one of the ten
million or so species on Earth be the only one with the ability to construct a multitude of complex
languages? An array of explanations have been put forth but only one of them seems to hint at our
inheritance of language and symbol recognition. On one hand there are linguistic theoreticians that
believe language to be a product of the tabula rasa, or of blank slate origin. The idea is that humans
learn language by repetition, reward and corrected mistakes. On the other hand there are linguists who
believe that the nature of language is inherent at the genetic level. Everything mankind has been able to
accomplish culturally and technologically is largely owed to our ability to translate the world into words.
It is no question that humans are unique from the rest of Earths diverse forms of life but it is a
different kind of unique than most humans would agree upon. By genetic standards, humans are not
more than 2% different than chimpanzees. I am going to be spending a lot of time explaining biological
evolution but why is it so important to know how genes function when investigating the origins of
human language? If language is a product of genetic coding then its lineage can be traced to show that
functionally, all modern humans share different variants or replicas of the same gene. To understand
what genes do, one must think of time not in terms of a single human lifetime because genes of our
ancestors 40,000 generations past live on as copies within you and I. The Selfish Gene, written by
evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, explains what DNA is doing from the point of view of the gene.
This includes a wider perspective when dealing with the idea of deep time. For DNA to appear there
must be subsequent steps for molecules to find the right materials to make stable copies of itself. DNA is
a highly intricate molecule consisting of amino acids which are proteins but how were these proteins
constituted and why is it important to the origin of language?
If we say that language is a product of our genes then we must understand what process occurs
to make a gene. There are different theories but chemists and biologists have performed several
Christopher Munoz Grammar Writ in Molecular Code ENG 1302.57
experiments that aim to simulate chemical composition of the molecules in the early earth. When
mixing what scientists believe to be the early make-up of the earth and providing a source of energy
something amazing happens. Among the candidates for molecules present in the early earth are
ammonium(NH
3
), water(H
2
O), methane(CH
4
) and carbon dioxide(CO
2
). Only after a couple of weeks
given a source of energy (ultraviolet light) the simple molecules became more complex. It turns out the
more complex molecules are amino acids! This means the primordial soup of the earth gave rise to the
building blocks used in the production of DNA. All molecules want to become stable or find and maintain
an equilibrium. When given more energy the amino acids become unstable on their own and will react
with the energy present in the system. This excites the molecules and makes them behave differently.
By chance a molecule was made with the extraordinary property of being able to make copies of itself.
When this molecule multiplied it first needed to obtain the necessary building blocks to make the
copies. These molecules would hunt down other ones and by processes of chemistry and physics, broke
down weak molecules for the raw material needed. Eventually molecules developed defense
mechanisms or more efficient ways of hunting because the raw material needed for copying was finite.
This began the process of natural selection. In the process of making copies of itself, over time, the
molecule will make some errors and a mutation occurs. These mutations or accidents turned out to be
important for evolution to happen at all. Natural selection then determines which mutations are
successful and which are discarded. So if at one time there was not a species which could harbor
functions for language and now there is, which error in the DNA copying process resulted in one of
mankinds most important biological tools?
Language is an evolutionary tool used by humans in order to relay our cognizance to one
another to increase the odds of survivability. Though language may seem to have been consciously
developed, it is a product of the brain and the brain is completely dependent on our genetic instruction.
For example, there are neurological disorders caused by defective genetic replication that effect
Christopher Munoz Grammar Writ in Molecular Code ENG 1302.57
processes of language output. We know this because diseases like dyslexia and aphasia hinder the ability
for people to effectively communicate. In many cases the people prevalent for these diseases tend to
show up within a family line which is suggestive that these diseases are genetically inherited. It should
be noted that language disorders can be the result of an injury such as a stroke but there are genetic
irregularities that cause the brain to malfunction similarly to an injury as is the case of aphasia. Aphasia
causes an abnormal swelling of parts of the brain, putting pressure on areas vital to memory and speech
output. There are multiple diseases that hinder language processes like aphasia but it isnt a result of
miscopied DNA that code for language development. So aphasia isnt likely the root code of the genome
associated with how the mind creates language. Rather it is miscopied DNA that results in the
malformation of local organs that put pressure and stress on the language centers of the brain where
otherwise it would have been healthy and functioning. No doubt that if somehow these disorders could
be understood then maybe geneticists could help to avert these erratic errors of the genome that make
life difficult for those afflicted by it. By understanding how genes function at the molecular level,
scientists today are beginning to develop a new study of medicine known as genetic therapy. Meaning
that corrective DNA can be transplanted into cells in place of defective DNA. The corrected cells will
exponentially multiply, eventually outnumbering and eliminating the ones containing the faulty DNA. If
the abnormal sequences of the gene are recognized then it is possible we may one day be able to
completely remove the defective code by substituting the correct sequence once it is identified.
So if the aptitude for language is a result of how the genes are arranged and disorders that
impair language can help locate where on the genome in which the language processes are found then
we can determine about how long ago that gene was born by comparing our DNA to the DNA analysis
found in the bones of our ancient ancestors. Paleontologist may possibly distinguish the moment when
prehistoric primates began to define the world into distinct sounds embedded with transient meaning.
Christopher Munoz Grammar Writ in Molecular Code ENG 1302.57
Now, imagine being trapped in your mind without words to think with and that everything you
tried to get across to anyone fell on deaf ears. The thought of never being able to express what we feel
to one another can possibly cause us to shiver in fear but how would we know what fear is if we havent
developed a word for it? That is because emotions and descriptions of the world around us are
intuitively internalized as patterns. If anything has helped the human species become what it is today it
has been the ability to recognize and understand patterns. But how can one recognize patterns without
having learned any words to describe them? Steven Pinker, author of The Language Instinct: How the
Mind Creates Language, provides evidence of babies who show signs of some sort of computational
process happening in the brain. Pinker does this by citing an experiment performed in which 5 day old
infants were put in front of a table and an object they had never seen before that was veiled behind a
screen. The researchers would then remove the screen to reveal a small Mickey Mouse doll and
recorded how long the baby would spend looking at the object. The object was then veiled once more
and a second Mickey Mouse doll was put in with the first without the baby being able to see what in fact
was happening. Again the screen was removed and the time that the infant stared at the object was
recorded. The results showed that all of the babies maintained attention on the objects longer when
there was some sort of change. A control was set up by showing an object, covering it with the screen
and revealing the same object with no change. The babies attention was shorter when there was
nothing different in the pattern. This means that the 5 day old infants had the thought that there was a
difference in the pattern they saw before and even without words, babies begin to recognize the world.
Steven Pinker refers to this as Mentalese. It is a computational process of pattern recognition that is
the root process of acquiring and developing language.
In no way am I saying that our genes help us to predetermine our primary language. Our genes
contain the template to help us acquire language. Noam Chomsky was among the first of linguists
propose and coin something he referred to as universal grammar. This sparked an uproar in the 1950s
Christopher Munoz Grammar Writ in Molecular Code ENG 1302.57
among linguists and researchers but allowed a new window to view language. Now the expertise and
credibility of scientists within the field of evolutionary biology now had a voice in the question. In an
interview with Chomsky he states his original hypothesis for universal grammar, There are fixed,
invariant, structural principles which are simply part of the human biological endowment and that
determine what counts as a human language. This means that it doesnt matter what language you
speak as a human being, there are always similar rules to describing the world. Every language
encompasses a grammar that identifies the thing we are describing (nouns) and what it is doing (verbs).
There may be differences here and there but it is always to communicate things doing something. In the
case of English and Spanish, the noun and verb are backwards when saying the same thing. In Spanish,
Me [duele][verb] la {cabeza}{noun} would be switched around to be translated in English, My
{head}{noun} [hurts][verb]. The same components are present in the sentence. Under these conditions
there is only one difference in the construction of these sentences. Such is true of all human languages.
What does all this mean and how can we leverage this information for the benefit of mankind?
It is always essential to understand the origin of a given topic when looking for meaningful answers.
Whether it be the origin of a particular argument or the evolutionary origin of language, they provoke
ideas with relevant answers but also consistently lead to questions of deeper importance. Reverse
engineering is the method by which one deconstructs a design that achieves a result, analyzing its
components to develop an understanding of how those parts work together. In doing so, we are allowed
to peer into a complex construct that was previously incomprehensible to excite innovation and
revision. It seems clear to me that language is a result of the computational processes of the brain which
are structured accordingly with its DNA sequence and by that description, genetics and evolutionary
biology are the means to which human beings will decrypt our naturally evolved blueprints to rewrite
the self.