Today, another blue post, just for the hell of it.
Today I noticed something I do that I was not really aware of before. I was getting out of my car after lunch, keys in my left hand and trying to open the door, a coke in my right hand and also messing with my umbrella. I always seem to have so much crap to carry when I get out of my car. As I messed with the umbrella I saw that I was about to spill the drink in the same hand and I said what can only be spelled as "kp!" After noticing that, I realized I say that a lot. If it's a word, it's one I invented entirely by myself without even being aware of the fact. It means, "Oh shit!" or "uh-oh!" It's an expression of alarm and I say it when I notice that I'm being clumsy and am trying to stop before I screw something up.
So where did I get that, I had to ask myself, before deciding that I had just invented it. It was a spontaneous utterance, but one associated with a particular kind of situation.
Perhaps this is part of how language got its start. Maybe our distant hominid ancestors, perhaps even the australopithecines, made similar spontaneous utterances which were naturally associated with certain situations or events. Apart from commonplace crises such as being about to spill a drink, at the very least you have to say something when confronted with the awesome spectacles of nature. Some sound of some kind will come out of your mouth when you're starring down the barrel of a tornado or lightning strikes so close you wonder if you've been hit.
So I spontaneously say "kp!" when I see I'm about to screw something up and am trying to stop. I believe I say that all the time in such situations. For me the "word" is naturally associated with that kind of situation. So, in the absence of a real language, I can picture our distant ancestors accumulating a collection of such spontaneous but meaningful utterances, all of which are naturally associated with situations and events. From there, observing the communicative utility of such vocalizations, at some point the cognitive leap was made to deliberately invent arbitrary sounds and purposefully associate them with things. In other words naming things. Adam had begun to name the animals, so to speak.
I wonder, is this the way human language got its start?
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