Abstract

RASTIER, François. Does language have an origin?. Rev. bras. psicanál [online]. 2009, vol.43, n.1, pp. 105-117. ISSN 0486-641X.

The author develops a thesis in which the history of the language is linked and inseparable of human nature’s phylogenesis. It did not appear after mankind, but it is part of its origin. Both allow mankind to move from a continuous evolution to a cumulative and disrupted one. Mankind’s environment, both naturally and culturally, is made of a physical aspect as well as a semiotic and presentational entourage. Therefore, it states that the question regarding language’s origin is not relevant and it affirms that it would be more useful to explore the condition in which semiotics emerged as well as human subject’s creation, where language plays a central role. Its creation frees mankind from being under the siege by things, granting access to the symbolic function; it allows an experience beyond the eternal here-and-now, introduced by a notion of temporality.

Keywords : Language; Origin of the language; Culture; Semiotics; Absence of the siege of the things; Symbolic function; Temporality; Alteridad; Law.

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