The ability to communicate is clearly a
prerequisite for cooperation and humans are a cooperative, social species. The
evolution of language puts us at the top of the tree for group actions. The
ubiquitous ownership of smartphones is taking that instant communication way
beyond earshot.
At some point in our past, our ancestors started to
formulate words for objects and actions instead of using grunts and screeches.
So an interesting question arises as to what was the word order used in the
earliest language? For example, dogs are quick to understand our directions,
although following them may be something else entirely. So we attract our dog's attention, hold up a ball, throw it and shout, “fetch,” and Fido rushes off
after the ball.
Here our order is that the our dog (the subject, S)
is established when we make eye contact. The ball (the object, O) is waved
around to establish what we are interested in and we shout “Fetch” our verb, V,
as the only spoken part of the sentence. Our word order here is SOV. But we
also have been known to gaze into those big eyes and say, “Fido, find the ball”
with great enthusiasm. In this case it’s SVO.
Of course none of our dogs are pernickety academics
and so have no desire to question our grammar or indeed get into a discussion
of language, but the question remains: what was the word order of the earliest
spoken language?
Gell-Mann and Ruhlen in this week’s Proceedings of
the National Academy of Science have sorted this out for us (1). The short
answer is SOV. The study of old languages indicates that this is the common
syntax. When changes did occur, they tended to go from SOV to SVO rather than VOS
or VSO, the latter two being very rare.
My dog won’t mind as long as I keep throwing the
ball. Editors aren’t so compliant.
