Language

From Epicurus Wiki

The explanation of language by Epicurus and his followers may be termed "exclamatory" linguistics: this suggests that, as primitive people saw the world around them, and experienced various feelings inside them, they made sounds that seemed to somehow capture what the thing or feeling experienced was. By interaction between members of tribes, and by the exchange of such exclamations between fellow-tribesmen, the first languages emerged; this would also explain quite naturally why different tribes call things by different such sounds, i.e. why different people speak different languages.

In De Rerum Natura (V, 1028-1029), Lucretius writes:

At varios linguae sonitus natura subegit mittere, et utilitas expressit nomina rerum...

(But) nature drove [humans] to utter various sounds of the tongue, and [a sense of] usefulness coined the names of [the various] things.

The Epicurean explanation may hold some truth, especially as modern linguistics postulates that this "exclamatory" stage was preceded by a yet earlier, "gestural" one, when even more primitive people (as, demonstrably, other primates still do) communicated by gestures alone first, then gestures plus characteristic sounds.

Epicurus was most concerned, again, with proving that no gods had descended on earth and taught humans some ready-made language; he also wished to debunk the myth (common in several cultures) that some imaginary sage fully developed a language first, then somehow shared it with his less fortunate (or less intelligent) fellow-tribesmen.