|
Some Theories Upon Primitive Language
Cresollius, writing in 1620, was strongly in
favor of giving precedence to gesture. He says, "Man, full
of wisdom and divinity, could have appeared nothing superior
to a naked trunk or block had he not been adorned with the
hand as the interpreter and messenger of his thoughts." He
quotes with approval the brother of St. Basil in declaring
that had men been formed without hands they would never have
been endowed with an articulate voice, and concludes:
"Since, then, nature has furnished us with two instruments
for the purpose of bringing into light and expressing the
silent affections of the mind, language and the hand, it has
been the opinion of learned and intelligent men that the
former would be maimed and nearly useless without the
latter; whereas the hand, without the aid of language, has
produced many and wonderful effects."
Rabelais, who incorporated into his satirical work much true
learning and philosophy, makes his hero announce the
following opinion:
"Nothing less, quoth Pantagruel [Book iii, ch. xix], do I
believe than that it is a mere abusing of our understandings
to give credit to the words of those who say that there is
any such thing as a natural language. All speeches have had
their primary origin from the arbitrary institutions,
accords, and agreements of nations in their respective
condescendments to what should be noted and betokened by
them. An articulate voice, according to the dialecticians,
hath naturally no signification at all; for that the sense
and meaning thereof did totally depend upon the good will
and pleasure of the first deviser and imposer of it."
Max Müller, following Professor Heyse, of Berlin, published
an ingenious theory of primitive speech, to the effect that
man had a creative faculty giving to each conception, as it
thrilled through his brain for the first time, a special
phonetic expression, which faculty became extinct when its
necessity ceased. This theory, which makes each radical of
language to be a phonetic type rung out from the organism of
the first man or men when struck by an idea, has been
happily named the "ding-dong" theory. It has been abandoned
mainly through the destructive criticisms of Prof. W.D.
Whitney, of Yale College. One lucid explanation by the
latter should be specially noted: "A word is a combination
of sounds which by a series of historical reasons has come
to be accepted and understood in a certain community as the
sign of a certain idea. As long as they so accept and
understand it, it has existence; when everyone ceases to use
and understand it, it ceases to exist."
Several authors, among them Kaltschmidt, contend that there
was but one primitive language, which was purely onomatopœic,
that is, imitative of natural sounds. This has been
stigmatized as the "bow-wow" theory, but its advocates might
derive an argument from the epithet itself, as not only our
children, but the natives of Papua, call the dog a
"bow-wow." They have, however, gone too far in attempting to
trace back words in their shape as now existing to any
natural sounds instead of confining that work to the roots
from which the words have sprung.
Another attempt has been made, represented by Professor
Noiré, to account for language by means of interjectional
cries. This Max Müller revengefully styled the "pooh-pooh"
theory. In it is included the rhythmical sounds which a body
of men make seemingly by a common impulse when engaged in a
common work, such as the cries of sailors when hauling on a
rope or pulling an oar, or the yell of savages in an attack.
It also derives an argument from the impulse of life by
which the child shouts and the bird sings. There are,
however, very few either words or roots of words which can
be proved to have that derivation.
Professor Sayce, in his late work, Introduction to the
Science of Language, London, 1880, gives the origin of
language in gestures, in onomatopœia, and to a limited
extent in interjectional cries. He concludes it to be the
ordinary theory of modern comparative philologists that all
languages are traced back to a certain number of abstract
roots, each of which was a sort of sentence in embryo, and
while he does not admit this as usually presented, he
believes that there was a time in the history of speech,
when the articulate or semi-articulate sounds uttered by
primitive men were made the significant representations of
thought by the gestures with which they were accompanied.
This statement is specially gratifying to the present writer
as he had advanced much the same views in his first
publication on the subject in the following paragraph, now
reproduced with greater confidence:
"From their own failures and discordancies, linguistic
scholars have recently decided that both the 'bow-wow' and
the 'ding-dong' theories are unsatisfactory; that the search
for imitative, onomatopœic, and directly expressive sounds
to explain the origin of human speech has been too
exclusive, and that many primordial roots of language have
been founded in the involuntary sounds accompanying certain
actions. As, however, the action was the essential, and the
consequent or concomitant sound the accident, it would be
expected that a representation or feigned reproduction of
the action would have been used to express the idea before
the sound associated with that action could have been
separated from it. The visual onomatopœia of gestures, which
even yet have been subjected to but slight artificial
corruption, would therefore serve as a key to the audible.
It is also contended that in the pristine days, when the
sounds of the only words yet formed had close connection
with objects and the ideas directly derived from them, signs
were as much more copious for communication than speech, as
the sight embraces more and more distinct characteristics of
objects than does the sense of hearing."
Conclusions The preponderance of authority is in favor of the view that
man, when in the possession of all his faculties, did not
choose between voice and gesture, both being originally
instinctive, as they both are now, and never, with those
faculties, was in a state where the one was used to the
absolute exclusion of the other. The long neglected work of
Dalgarno, published in 1661, is now admitted to show wisdom
when he says: "non minus naturale fit homini communicare
in Figuris quam Sonis: quorum utrumque dico
homini naturale." With the voice man at first imitated
the few sounds of nature, while with gesture he exhibited
actions, motions, positions, forms, dimensions, directions,
and distances, and their derivatives. It would appear from
this unequal division of capacity that oral speech remained
rudimentary long after gesture had become an art. With the
concession of all purely imitative sounds and of the
spontaneous action of the vocal organs under excitement, it
is still true that the connection between ideas and words
generally depended upon a compact between the speaker and
hearer which presupposes the existence of a prior mode of
communication. That was probably by gesture, which, in the
apposite phrase of Professor Sayce, "like the rope-bridges
of the Himalayas or the Andes, formed the first rude means
of communication between man and man." At the very least it
may be gladly accepted provisionally as a clue leading out
of the labyrinth of philologic confusion.
For the purpose of the present paper there is, however, no
need of an absolute decision upon the priority between
communication of ideas by bodily motion and by vocal
articulation. It is enough to admit that the connection
between them was so early and intimate that gestures, in the
wide sense indicated of presenting ideas under physical
forms, had a direct formative effect upon many words; that
they exhibit the earliest condition of the human mind; are
traced from the remotest antiquity among all peoples
possessing records; are generally prevalent in the savage
stage of social evolution; survive agreeably in the scenic
pantomime, and still adhere to the ordinary speech of
civilized man by motions of the face, hands, head, and body,
often involuntary, often purposely in illustration or for
emphasis.
It may be unnecessary to explain that none of the signs to
be described, even those of present world-wide prevalence,
are presented as precisely those of primitive man. Signs as
well as words, animals, and plants have had their growth,
development, and change, their births and deaths, and their
struggle for existence with survival of the fittest. It is,
however, thought probable from reasons hereinafter mentioned
that their radicals can be ascertained with more precision
than those of words.
Indian Sign
Language
This site includes some historical
materials that may imply negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or
language of a particular period or place. These items are presented as
part of the historical record and should not be interpreted to mean that
the WebMasters in any way endorse the stereotypes implied.
Sign Language
Among North American Indians Compared with
that Among Other Peoples and Deaf-Mutes,
1881
Free
Genealogy |
Indian
Genealogy |
Indian Sign Language
|
|
