The Language Instinct

What is the origin of human language?

And is it innate to the human mind,

Or contingent, and acquired?

And as we sat around our fires,

By what strange combination 

Of sounds and gesticulations

Did language first arise?

Let’s think about what’s happening now — 

I’m speaking, you’re reading 

Or hearing these sounds —  

Phonemes are linked

Into morphemes, bound 

In a bundle of meaning,

A feature that’s found 

In Language — 

Talking ‘bout language — 

Making up language is what makes us human, 

For it’s a function that no other creature 

We’ve found in creation is certainly doing.

Sure you’ve got monkeys 

That make certain calls

When danger falls,

And then you’ve got dolphins — 

Each with a signature whistle involved

In presenting itself 

To the pods it bonds with — 

And parrots are known to parrot,

And it’s apparent

We prate to our pets, 

And African elephants even have sounds

For “There’s humans around” — 

They don’t forget.

— And yet, this is not language:

For language is way more intense:

Language has grammar,

And ways of referring 

To future intentions and absent events.

So monkey may see,

And monkey may do,

And monkey may even have words for it too — 

But the only known ape that can talk about whether apes talk, is me and you.

A great ape with a language instinct,

A Language instinct,

A Language instinct — 

But is language innate? Or did they have to wait 

For the day when it came? — you can say what you think.

Children learn it naturally

From their habitat and their family,

And they add to it and organically

Expand and adapt its vocabulary.

That’s based. ….And basically,

It ain’t even limited to makin’ these 

Vibrations, see?

Ere anyone teaches them signs,

Deaf kids make gestures speak.

— We’ve been on this sphere 

Several hundred thousand years,

But it’s hard to tell how long it’s been

Bending one another’s ears

With the hopes and fears

And the myths and truths

In the twisted roots 

Of our mind’s ground — 

Cuz until 5000 BC

No one tried to write it down. 

Went from the sea foam,

Then to a tree home,

Then got a great big brain in our wee dome — 

Whether obtained, or innate in our genome,

It’s set the agenda by which we’ve grown

Into what we’ve known — 

Our projects, our politics

All are conditioned by words:

Language conceptualizes relations,

And yet where it came from, no one is sure 

Am I made with language instinct,

A language instinct,

A language instinct? — 

It’s framed in the brain — and yet, when none speaks

A language once made, it becomes extinct.

I say,

I think,

A complex thought — 

We may thank language for all we’ve got,

But what we’ve wrought 

Is often fraught 

With conflict, brah — 

It’s costly bought.

For language makes culture 

And culture imposes 

It’s codes on the self — 

It’s collective psychosis, 

Commandments of Moses, 

The Babel that crashes — 

Animals don’t have to have all that baggage!

For that advantage

That has had us align

In the days we had to survive 

May have advanced humankind

To the point that every species that has languished behind,

Lacking language, pays the price of peaceful silence by dying.

And I would be lying — 

Which only my kind can do — 

If I didn’t acknowledge that while I’m an ape, 

It’s probably equally true 

That me and you, ecologically, are not — we’re something new:

The language-using planet-changing ape that made the zoo.

We’ve come this far,

It can get us beyond:

The language by which 

We’ve been getting along 

With sufficient success 

To survive the best 

Can be used next to address our wrongs —  

Let this song start conversation

We survived — now that we’ve made it,

Let’s apply our very language

Solving problems we’ve created.

Am I made with a language instinct? 

A language instinct, 

A language instinct — 

Whether obtained, or innate, we can think

We can change what we made and return from the brink.

A great ape with a language instinct,

A Language instinct,

A Language instinct — 

We can make change, in remaking the link

With the nature we came from —

Say what you think.