dispersed the nations and languages. Each linguistic
stem germinated apart, and grew up alone in its own
sphere ; each family must be studied separately ; and
in each we are completely ignorant of the changes
which took place prior to the historic period.
Must we then admit with M. Michel Br^al that
the origin, not of language, but of the meaning of
words, lies beyond our ken ? But even he, who, with
all his discretion, is so bold, has not abandoned the
quest which he declares to be vain ; and from Plato
down, to Schleicher, Whitney, Steinthal, Noire, Paul
Regnaud, and a hundred others, whose opinions we
shall have to discuss, this central problem has exercised
tlie minds of men.
When experience and induction by their mutual
aid had at length succeeded in tracing the genea-
logical tree of mankind, a fortunate discovery was
made by anthropology. In embryology the student
found an abridgment, a summary, of the transforma-
tions discovered or assumed from age to age. By the
3
Digitized by VjOOQIC
22 The Evolution of Language.
aid of the microscope, foetal life reveals to tbe eye
all the phases in the development of the cell, of the
^^g) of the very simple material aggregate which ia
destined to be clothed with the dignity of humanity —
that is to say, to realise within a few months the
work of a thousand centuries. Now it seems that
language also has in some sort its embryology. Not
that we can ever be the spectators of the formation
of a language ; but we possess the germ nevertheless,
the undoubted embryo of speech — the CVy, which in
most of the higher animals, even in man himself,
exists as an independent utterance, and suffices for
the expression of certain sentiments, and even of a
few ideas, and is consequently the first element of the
crudest forms of speech. From the moment that we
reject supernatural intervention and regard language
as the work of time, it is not possible to seek its
point of departure and its germ elsewhere than in the
resonance of the air against the vocal chords, and
in tbe emission of this resonance by the mouth and
nostril. The production of the voice is at first as
unconscious, as reflex as any other bodily movement
The cry, in the lower species and in the infancy of
the higher, is invariable, like the wail of a new-bom
infant. The toad, for instance, has but one note ; that
of the cuckoo and of a number of wild animals is
hardly richer. Yet, since it responds to some impres-
sion or to some need, the sound already has a mean-
ing, since it attracts or drives away creatures whose
interest it is either to flee from or to approach the
utterer of the sound. This meaning, very vague, or
rather very elastic, grows more exact with the sensation
of which the sound is the result ; the single note of
the toad implies already an affirmative or imperative
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Embryology of Language. 23
proposition, embodying the sexual desire, or something
similar. Repetition, continuance, the raising or lower-
ing of the tone, mark the earliest efforts to attain
to the expression of more varied and more distinctly
realised sensation. Modulations, more or less uncer-
tain, more or less fixed by practice, as consciousness
dawns, come to increase the vocal resources. A given
vocabulary will include five, six, or even ten variations
of the specific cry, each one doubled by a stronger or
weaker form, and susceptible of expressive combina-
tions, comparable to our derivatives and compound
words; the language thus reflects, so to speak, the
shades of joy or pain, fear or desire, sickness or
health, hunger or thirst, changes of temperature, the
approach of day or night. Lucretius in his fourth
book translates with a rare felicity all these utterances
of birds, cows, dogs, and horses, in which are clearly
represented those sensations and affections which are
common to us and to most animals.
In animals the specific utterance is but the imme-
diate expression of a present emotion. This obser-
vation is fairly just, and insisted on by those who
would accentuate the line of demarcation between men
and brutes. It is more to our purpose to find some
modification of a formula which is too absolute as it
stands. For does not the language of the brutes at
times pass the limits assigned to it ? Evoked by an
immediate sensation, does it not sometimes correspond
to some enduring recollection, even to a prevision
which may be realised ?
We are not suflBciently acquainted with the vocabu-
lary of the anthropoids to interpret the nocturnal
choruses of certain apes; but we cannot doubt that
the dog, which so readily distinguishes its friends
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24 The Evolution of Language.
from enemies or strangers, summons, welcomes, or
threatens each of these in a perfectly comprehensible
manner. He warns, thanks, questions, asks to be taken
for a walk or out hunting; in dreams, when memory-
excites certain chambers in his brain, he growls at the
passer-by whom he suspects, he gives tongue when he
imagines he sees a covey put up or a hare start from
her form. Asleep, he does in a measure that which
man does in his waking hours — he specifies by sounds
which are but symbols certain past impressions which
have no present objective existence.
Nor is memory only called into action in this
embryonic language, but foresight also, and therefore
reflection and will. From the beginning the emotional
cry is a summons, understood by those who hear it, if
not by those who utter it ; it soon adapts itself to less
elementary needs than the original instinct ; it is by
turns a warning, a command, a convocation against
danger, for coinraon * defence, for hunting, or for
warfare.
These remarks on the character and use of the cries
of animals, which may be observed by every one, apply
without a shadow of doubt to the language of the
anthropoid which was slowly developing into man.
We may also add with certainty that this utterance,
which tended to become human, was richer in modu-
lations, more expressive, and necessarily conveyed a
more direct intention than that of any other creature ;
and that to the artifices, already numerous, of duplica-
cation, continuance, raising or lowering the note, &c.,
were added the thousand efforts of the voice to articu-
late the consonant, as yet beyond its mastery.
It is said, and with reason, that the interjection is
barren and unchanging ; that it has no place in lan-
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Embryology of Language. 2 5
guage properly so called ; that speech begins where
interjection ends. The interjections common to all
peoples, Ah, Oh, Eh, &c., still indeed suflBce to express
the simple emotions which provoke them — ^joy, pain,
fear, desire, doubt, — and carry us back to the early
period of emotional language. But it must be remem-
bered in the first place, that many interjections may
have disappeared, may have been absorbed into the
words of which they were the original roots ; and in
the second place, that the utterances even of animals
imply memory and reasoning power, and that in man
they have shaped themselves to the growing com-
plexity of a progressive and social being.
Simple sounds like A and / have been, and still
may be, merely exclamations, but they have played a
great part in the Indo-European languages ; long or
short, they have formed pronouns and verbs; they
indicate movement, place, even privation and negation ;
reinforced by a nasal, an aspirate, a liquid, one or
more consonants, their power increases a thousandfold.
The forty thousand monosyllables which compose the
Chinese tongue are formed in the same way. This is
but a single example, but it is a weighty one, of the
ductility, of the almost infinite variability, of human
utterance. Other languages have employed other
methods, and have not sought to increase the number
of monosyllables, but rather to associate and combine
thetn.
This tendency, which results in the rich develop-
ment of grammatical forma, began by the prolongation
or the reduplication of the syllable which is so common
in animals and children — a custom so inveterate that it
still obtains among us without suggesting its ancient
influence upon the development of language. When
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26 The Evolution of Language.
we lay stress upon a syllable or npon a word to give
it prominence, we use an instinctive artifice, natural
to children and to savages, and to all people of limited
vocabulary. Taylor, in the second volume of his
•'Primitive Culture," has collected many examples,
taken from the languages of America and Oceania, of
this prolongation of a sound to mark distance, import-
ance, degrees of comparison. Vowels and liquids are
repeated as many as five and six times. Stress, stereo-
typed by custom, has produced accent, so diverse, so
difficult to reduce to a common principle or law; it
has furnished grammar with a valuable means of dis-
tinguishing gender, tense, and person.
Reduplication suggests the same remarks. When
we say no^ no ; yes^ yes; hip, hip; wdl, well; come, come;
when children say papa^ mama, dada, far far away, we
and they obey the instinct which led our ancestors to
enforce attention by the repetition of the same sound.
There is no tongue in which this primitive expedient
has not left obvious traces. Many Polynesian, Ameri-
can, African, and other tribes call themselves, or are
called by others, by names composed of a reduplicated
syllable — Shoshones, Ohichimecs, Niam-niam, Leleges,
Tatars, Berbers, without reckoning proper or common
names, such as Unkulukulu among the Kaffirs, Tame-
hameha among the Sandwich Islanders.
It is incontestable that the method to which we
owe such words as murmur, Marmar (the ancient form
of Mars, contracted into Mamers, Ma-ors, Mavors),
harharus (stammerer, he who cannot speak aXoXoy),
purpura, turtur, pipio, titio, is very wide-spread ; these
are only surviving fragments of a method of formation
which is still in full vigour in many contemporary
dialects and jargons.
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Embryology of Language. 27
Analysis discovers, moreover, in a number of roots,
slightly differentiated in form and meaning, the origi-
nal identity of repeated sounds which time has obli-
terated and fused together ; sometimes one of the twin
syllables has lost or modified its vowel or consonant;
sometimes they are contracted and agglutinated. Hen<;e
the search is hazardous, but the fact admits of no doubt;
it is enough to compare such forms as genus, genuiy
getiitor, with gignOj yiyvoixai, yeyova^ or again mens,
moneo, mania, with memini, mem^ria, memnon, to re-
cognise, in the second term of the comparison, the
reduplication of the roots gen and men, which have
thus given rise to liundreds of derivatives. A whole
class of verbs in Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin has been
formed in this way : daddmi, SISw/jli, dedi ; cf. datum,
Sdxrw, dare. The system of the Greek conjugation
rests in great part on the ingenious use of these varia-
tions, where the weakened reduplication of the root
syllable characterises certain moods and tenses. Thus
the most rudimentary expedients of language in its in-
fancy reappear in the elaborate devices of an advanced
state of civilisation.
We have said enough to show that the specific cry,
somewhat modified by the vocal resources of man, may
have been amply suflBcient for the humble vocabulary
of the earliest ages, and that there exists no gulf, no
impassable barrier between the language of birds, dogs,
anthropoid apes, and human speech. The summoning
cry, so largely used by animals, has been developed
and defined into command, into indication of distance,
number, person, sex ; or demonstrative terms retained
and exchanged by members of fixed or ephemeral
societies, — horde, family, or tribe, — have grown beyond
it, and been accepted, modified, or increased by neigh-
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28 The Evolution of Language.
bouring groups. With regard to the emotional cry, it
is perhaps, in spite of its reflex and involuntary char-
acter, a yet more important factor. Being associated
with all sensations, and with all the movements called
forth by these, it affirms a state, the passing from one
state to another, and, subsequently, an action and the
result of an action. Now all this is characteristic of
the verb ; so that, placed between two demonstratives,
it gives to these respectively the value of what we call
subject and object ; it makes the pivot of a proposi-
tion, of a very elementary nature indeed, but in which
is epitomised the fundamental mechanism of speech.
To make my meaning clearer, I will use English or"
Latin words, but it must be understood that each word
should be considered as a simple emission of the voice,
entirely uninflected. Let us take the most neuter of
demonstratives, this, that, hoc, id, and place between
them an utterance which indicates pain, joy, anger,
desire, an utterance known and understood of those
who hear it : this pain that ; that joy or anger or
desire this; add appropriate gesture, and the right
translation of the meaning is easy in each case. He,
you, or I am hurt or pleased by this arrow or claw, by
this food or drink ; that he or you strikes, pursues,
devours, or fears this, him or me. Replace the vague
demonstrative by the names of persons or things, and
you have in its essentials the speech of negroes, or
even of the civilised Chinese.
But the name, the substantive, or at any rate a
large class of these, differs from the verb only by ter-
minations or inflexions of very much later date than
the primitive form, and non-existent in the mono-
syllabic group. The possible verbs, of which we see
the germ in the emotional cry, include also potential
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Embryology of Language. ' 29
nouns, names of sensations, states, movements, actions.
This is so true, that in our efforts to convey the thouglit,
yet vague and undefined, of our remote ancestors, we
have been obliged to use indiffereutly the words pain
and suffer, blow and strike, fright and fear, in order
not to use the naked root, which would have required
a long explanation. Let us take, however, a single
example from the Latin tongue: in dolor and dolere
(pain and to suffer), if you suppress the substantive
termination or and the verbal form ere^ there remains
the significant or root syllable, which is neither verb
nor noun, but may be used for the one or the other.
Some people may be surprised to find that so early an
origin is attributed to nouns which are often called
abstract ; for, on this hypothesis, what becomes of the
received opinion that the first substantives were the
names of concrete objects ? This distinction does not
seem to me as valid as it is often considered. The
faculty of abstraction is inseparable from the intelli-
gence, which signifies, etymologically, the choice among
several facts or qualities. A sensation realised is
already an abstraction ; and the vocal utterance which
corresponds to it distinguishes or abstracts it from
other sensations ; language has no other oflSce. And
since the impression upon the subject, or subjective
impression, precedes of necessity the knowledge of the
object, or objective impression, it is the former which
is first expressed in speech. An increased power of
abstraction led to the need of designating objects
external to man.
Animals, which see, and even recognise, local peculi-
arities, seem very rarely to analyse into its details the
whole which has impressed them. Their attention is
sluggish or ephemeral. It was the same, in his degree,
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30 The Evolution of Language.
with man when as yet hardly raised above the brute.
Very slowly, after having in some degree succeeded in
expressing his own emotions and intentions, he began
to try to fix in his memory, by a vocal symbol, the
fluctuating image of those objects whose contact or
approach excited his sensations or provoked his actions.
At first he encountered difiiculties apparently insur-
mountable ; how describe by means of sound, colour,
odour, taste ? how paint with the voice ? It had to
be done, however, and man attained to this art by
degrees and unconsciously, rendering at first, like an
echo, sound for sound ; then referring the sound to
the thing which gave the sound ; then to the things
and phenomena which a given sound accompanies or
heralds ; and finally to the thousand ideas excited in
a brain progressively more rich and active by the
mere mention of the symbol which connoted already
several series of metaphors.
The imitation of the utterances of animals and of
the sounds of inanimate nature has been almost uni-
versally considered as the principal source of the roots
called attributive, with which are connected the greater
number of substantives and verbs ; whence the name
onomatopoeia, that which creates names. It is so
plausible an hypothesis that it has conquered most
philosophers {pvoikara ixiix^ixara^ says Aristotle), and
also philologists such as Kenan, Whitney, Farrer,
Wedgwood.
Max Mliller and Paul Regnaud, speaking on behalf
of Indo-European philology, reject this theory, the
latter especially with vehement conviction ; but their
criticism and their reservations fail to eliminate the
well-known tendency of children, and even of grown
men, to more or less accurate onomatopoeia ; and if
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Embryology of Language. 3 1
such phrases as divAf-dong^ tic-toe, hang, &c., constitute
only an infinitesimal and barren portion of our voca-
bularies, it cannot be denied that they abound in a
number of languages which have not attained to the
inflected state. Moreover, not to mention words like
hihda (cock) in Sanscrit, ululare, balare, mugire,
hinnire, &c., in Latin, we find throughout the Indo-
European tongues roots with many derivatives of
every kind, in which can be traced, through all
changes of sense and sound, the primitive onomatopoeia,
but an onomatopoeia which is, so to speak, generic,
and applicable to a whole class of allied sounds. It
will be readily understood that this symbolical onoma-
topoeia is vague and doubtful, and has led the acutest
intellects into grave errors.
The earliest theory of this onomatopoeia, resulting
from the adaptation of the sound to the idea, occurs
in the " Cratylus " of Plato. ** In the first place," says
Socrates, " the letter r appears to me the general in-
strument expressing motion. . . . Now the imposer of
names frequently used it for this purpose ; for example,
in the actual words peiv^ poi], he represents motion by
r ... by the letter i he represents the subtle elements
which pass through all things ; by the sibilants ph, ps,
s, z, all which shakes, agitates, swells ; by d and t,
that which binds or rests in a place ; by /, all things
smooth and gliding; by gl, things of a glutinous,
clammy nature," &c. I omit the examples taken from
the tongue which Plato spoke, and of the earlier
phases of which he had no conception. The Stoics, ac-
cording to St. Augustine, had entirely accepted these
fanciful theories; they held, with Court de Gobelin,
that the " voice indicates agreeable objects by agree-
able sounds, and unpleasing objects by harsh and
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32 The Evolution of Language.
strident sounds." Thus in lana^ lenis, mel, the liquid
I expresses softness; in ctsper, vepres, acre, sp, pr, cr
mark roughness ; ci^ra (thighs) renders at once the
ideas of length and hardness.
Leibnitz, one of the promoters of the study of com-
parative philology, is not more fortunate in the sug-
gestions which he brings to the support of the doctrine
of "Cratylus." M. Paul Kegnaud, in his interesting
book " On the Origin of Language," has quoted the
most curious of these, and we quote them from him in
order to show that neither genius, nor serious inten-
tion, nor real knowledge, avail to protect us from the
wildest errors. But it matters not, since the errors of
yesterday beget the truths of to-day ; philology has
had its alchemists.
" With Socrates, or rather with Plato, Leibnitz be-
lieved that the letter r has been employed by the natural
instinct of different peoples, such as the ancient Ger-
mans, the Celts, &c., to signify violent movement and
a sound like that of the letter. This appears, he says,
in pew, to flow ; rinnen, rilren (Jluere), rutir, flowing ;
Bhemis, Bhodanics, Eridamis, Bura (Rhine, Rhone,
Po, Roer) ; ravhen, rapere, to rob, ravish ; radt^ rota
(wheel) ; rauscJien, to rustle ; racJcken, to stretch vio-
lently, to rack, whence reichen^ to reach ; der Bick (in
l^latt-Deutsch), a long stick or pole ; whence also Bige^
Beihe, regula, regere, words implying length or straight-
ness ; BeJc, a long or tall person, a giant, and then
a powerful or rich man, as is seen in Beich (German),
and in riche and ricco (French and Italian). In Spanish
ricos homhres means nobles or chief personages, which
shows how metaphors have caused words to acquire a
new meaning of which the connection is far from obvi-
ous." This observation recoils upon its author. Of
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Embryology of Language. 3 3
nil the words hitherto cited, there are hardly two which
are not out of place in each other's company.
But to continue. The letter r is not exhausted,
" It indicates also violent movement and noise in Riss,
rupture, with which the Latin rumpere, Greek pr\yv\>ixi^
French arr acker, and Italian straccio are connected.
Now, just as r indicates naturally a violent movement,
so I signifies a more gentle movement. So we find
children and others for whom the r is too harsh and
too difficult to pronounce substitute the I, and say, for
example, velly for very. This gentle movement ap-
pears in leben^ to live ; Idberhy to comfort ; lieben, to love
{Inhere, libido) ; lind, lenis, lentus, gentle, soft ; laufen^
to pass rapidly like flowing water, labi (labitur uncta
vadis dbies) ; legen, to lay, whence liegen, to lie, and
Lage and Zaye, layer, as in Lay stein, stratified stone,
slate ; Zaub, leaf, a thing easily moved ; Zap, labra,
lip ; lenkeUj luo, loosen, dissolve ; lien (Platt-Deutsch),
to melt, whence the Zeine, a river in Holland, which,
rising among mountains, is swollen in spring by melt-
ing snows. Not to mention a number of other similar
words which prove that there is something natural in
their origin, something which indicates a relation be-
tween things and sounds, the movements and organs
of the voice. And for this reason also the letter I
indicates the' diminutive in Latin, and in languages
derived from Latin, as also in High German. Yet it
must not be supposed (a happy reservation !) that this
tendency can be everywhere observed, for the lion^ the
lynx^ and wolf c^xmot be styled gentle. But it may
be that the attention has been directed to another cir-
cumstance, and that is their swiftness, which causes
them to be feared, and puts to flight : as though he who
saw such an aniuial cried to his companion, ' lauf^
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34 Tfi^ Evolution of Language.
(flee) ; besides, throngh many accidents and changes,
most words have become very diflFerent from what they
were in their primitive pronunciation and meaning."
Here good sense appears through this collection of
childish subtleties. (New Essay on the Understand-
ing-)
Nothing can be more far-fetched than the genealogy
of the word Ange, eye, as Leibnitz gives it. " -4," he
says, ** the first letter, followed by a slight breathing,
becomes Ah, and as this emission of the breath makes
a sound distinct enough at its beginning, and then
grows faint, this sound signifies naturally a breath,
spiHtum lenem, when a and h are but faintly heard.
Hence the origin of "Aoo, aura, haugh, halare, haleincy
OLT/JLO^, athem, odem. But as water is also a fluid, it
would seem that Ah, rendered stronger by reduplica-
tion. Aha or Ahha, has come to mean water. The
Teutons and Celts, for the better indication of move-
ment, have prefixed their w to the one and the other ;
thus wehen, wind, vent, mark the movement of the air ;
and waten, vadum, water, the movement of water or
in water. But to return to Aha, it seems to be, as I
have said, a root which indicates water," (Observe
that there is no reason for the supposition.) "The
Icelanders, whose language is akin to the ancient Scan-
dinavian, omit the aspirate and say Aa; others, who
say Aken (meaning Aix, Aquas Granni, the waters of
the Gallic god Grannus), have strengthened it, as have