A quite different view of the beginnings of language is based on the concept of natural
sounds.
The human auditory system is already functioning before birth (at around seven months).
Among several nicknames that he invented to talk about the origins of speech,
Jespersen (1922) called this idea the “bow-wow” theory.
In this scenario, when different objects flew by, making a Caw-Caw or Coo-Coo
sound, the early human tried to imitate the sounds and then used them to refer to
those objects even when they weren’t present.
Another of Jespersen’s nicknames was the “pooh-pooh” theory, which proposed that
speech developed from the instinctive sounds people make in emotional circumstances.