The evolution of language - an unsolvable mystery?

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, printed single-sided, grade: 2,0, University of Cologne (Institut für Englische Sprache und ihre Didaktik), course: The Evolution of Language, 13 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: For many years, theorizing about language evolution was banned from the scientific discourse. Thus, only little research in this field had been developed up to the beginning of the last century.Nowadays, however, the research of the origins of language has achieved a very high status in numerous fields and not only linguists are the leading research-workers anymore.This essay presents some of the recent attempts to explain the evolution of language and especially clarifies the difficulties that come about when tackling this problem.