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Yo-he-ho

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Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

Synonyms

Origin of language; Social interaction source; Yo-Heave-Ho theory

Definition

The growls and moans humans used for coordinating their bodily activities when they performed teamwork are the origin of language, as per the belief of the early Yo-he-ho theory of language.

Introduction

Verbal communication commenced as growls, moans, and rhythmic chants which occur from the overwrought efforts of ancient menfolk to move a bole or heave a rock, as it is suggested by the Yo-he-ho theory (Mandavilli 2016). Every time these people were working hard to move something heavy, they produced a sound which slowly developed into words such as heave and lift. Therefore, if they didn’t want to memorize their favorite growl sound and use it over and over again, this sound would seem to be random. However, these growls would not be accounted as words in a lingual meaning since they would seem unlikely to fall into consonant-vowel patterns (Rice 1976).

The Yo-he-ho theorydoes, however, have a...

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Correspondence to Xenia Anastassiou-Hadjicharalambous .

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Themistocleous, D., Anastassiou-Hadjicharalambous, X. (2018). Yo-he-ho. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1120-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_1120-1

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