Khalid wrote:
I agree with you . There can't be one single root language . But I just tried to highlight the characteristics of Arabic language that really differs in it's vocabularies and structure from most of languages .
I didn't say that, actually. There could have been a single root language. I just don't think we can tell yet. If there was a single original language, then it was such a very, very long time ago (maybe 100,000 years, maybe more) and modern languages have diverged from it to such an degree that it would be difficult to tell. However, it is also possible that language has been independently invented several times over in different parts of the world.
The Wikipedia article on the Origin of Language (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language) has a lot of interesting information. For instance:
Using statistical methods to estimate the time required to achieve the current spread and diversity in modern languages today, Johanna Nichols — a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley — argues that vocal language must have arisen in our species at least 100,000 years ago.[30] Using phonemic diversity, a more recent analysis offers directly linguistic support for a similar date.[31] Estimates of this kind are independently supported by genetic, archaeological, palaeontological and much other evidence suggesting that language probably emerged somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa during the Middle Stone Age, roughly contemporaneous with the speciation of Homo sapiens.[32]
It also gives a great example of a language being invented from scratch:
Genesis of Nicaraguan Sign Language
Beginning in 1979, the recently installed Nicaraguan government initiated the country's first widespread effort to educate deaf children. Prior to this there was no deaf community in the country. A center for special education established a program initially attended by 50 young deaf children. By 1983 the center had 400 students. The center did not have access to teaching facilities of any of the sign languages that are used around the world; consequently, the children were not taught any sign language. The language program instead emphasized spoken Spanish and lipreading, and the use of signs by teachers limited to fingerspelling (using simple signs to sign the alphabet). The program achieved little success, with most students failing to grasp the concept of Spanish words.
The first children who arrived at the center came with only a few crude gestural signs developed within their own families. However, when the children were placed together for the first time they began to build on one another's signs. As more and younger children joined, the language became more complex. The children's teachers, who were having limited success at communicating with their students, watched in awe as the children began communicating amongst themselves.
Later the Nicaraguan government solicited help from Judy Kegl, an American sign-language expert at Northeastern University. As Kegl and other researchers began to analyze the language, they noticed that the younger children had taken the pidgin-like form of the older children to a higher level of complexity, with verb agreement and other conventions of grammar (but no recursion).[122]