(no subject)

[novapsyche]

I wonder what the first question was.

How did the question come about?

When I think about language, I think of man uttering a sentence. Man makes a statement, so to speak.

But a statement is not a question. How did man learn to question? to phrase a question? to inflect a question?

Comments

[arjuna.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine a situation where a species develops a sophisticated language system without the concept of a questions. I can imagine the absence of the question mark but the absence of the inflection that goes along with the delivery of a question even is hard to phathom. Although it's hard to say whether or not animals ask for things when they are hungry they definately communicate differently under certain circumstances which can be contextualized as a question. But I wouldn't go so far as to say they've developed the concept of a question. But that's because animals don't have sophisticated language skills (for the most part certain nonverbal communications I don't consider sophisticated). But yeah so my point is in order to have language you have to have questions and the first ape-man who developed cognitive skills sophisticated enough to ask a question through inflection of his voice probably did so out of a need and natural instinct to differentiate the utterance from a statement. Inflection is always the easiest and most natural way to accentuate a statement as being different from those statements around it. It was only until written language began to develop in my opinion that you can say that the concept of a question was developed to an extent that the phrasing and marking (on paperm re: question mark) was important besides the intonation. So language must entail questions otherwise it can't be a developed language.

[kittenkissies.livejournal.com]

What was that noise?

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Inflection came first - that and perhaps something facial, like raised eyebrows or something indicating a waiting attention.

so probably mnm? oh? or aeh? was the first question...