Lectures on The Science of Language 43

Lectures on The Science of Language 43

And so we find many philosophers, and among them Condillac, protesting

against a theory which would place man even below the animal. Why should

man be supposed, they say, to have taken a lesson from birds and beasts?

Does he not utter cries, and sobs, and shouts himself, according as he is

affected by fear, pain, or joy? These cries or interjections were

represented as the natural and real beginnings of human speech. Everything

else was supposed to have been elaborated after their model. This is what

I call the Interjectional, or Pooh-pooh, Theory.

 

Our answer to this theory is the same as to the former. There are no doubt

in every language interjections, and some of them may become traditional,

and enter into the composition of words. But these interjections are only

the outskirts of real language. Language begins where interjections end.

There is as much difference between a real word, such as “to laugh,” and

the interjection ha, ha! between “I suffer,” and oh! as there is between

the involuntary act and noise of sneezing, and the verb “to sneeze.” We

sneeze, and cough, and scream, and laugh in the same manner as animals,

but if Epicurus tells us that we speak in the same manner as dogs bark,

moved by nature,(334) our own experience will tell us that this is not the

case.

 

An excellent answer to the interjectional theory has been given by Horne

Tooke.

 

“The dominion of speech,” he says,(335) “is erected upon the downfall of

interjections. Without the artful contrivances of language, mankind would

have had nothing but interjections with which to communicate, orally, any

of their feelings. The neighing of a horse, the lowing of a cow, the

barking of a dog, the purring of a cat, sneezing, coughing, groaning,

shrieking, and every other involuntary convulsion with oral sound, have

almost as good a title to be called parts of speech, as interjections

have. Voluntary interjections are only employed where the suddenness and

vehemence of some affection or passion returns men to their natural state;

and makes them for a moment forget the use of speech; or when, from some

circumstance, the shortness of time will not permit them to exercise it.”

 

As in the case of Onomatopoieia, it cannot be denied that with

interjections, too, some kind of language might have been formed; but not

a language like that which we find in numerous varieties among all the

races of men. One short interjection may be more powerful, more to the

point, more eloquent than a long speech. In fact, interjections, together

with gestures, the movements of the muscles of the mouth, and the eye,

would be quite sufficient for all purposes which language answers with the

majority of mankind. Lucian, in his treatise on dancing, mentions a king

whose dominions bordered on the Euxine. He happened to be at Rome in the

reign of Nero, and, having seen a pantomime perform, begged him of the

emperor as a present, in order that he might employ him as an interpreter

among the nations in his neighborhood with whom he could hold no

intercourse on account of the diversity of language. A pantomime meant a

person who could mimic everything, and there is hardly anything which

cannot be thus expressed. We, having language at our command, have

neglected the art of speaking without words; but in the south of Europe

that art is still preserved. If it be true that one look may speak

volumes, it is clear that we might save ourselves much of the trouble

entailed by the use of discursive speech. Yet we must not forget that

_hum!_ _ugh!_ _tut!_ _pooh!_ are as little to be called words as the

expressive gestures which usually accompany these exclamations.

 

As to the attempts at deriving some of our words etymologically from mere

interjections, they are apt to fail from the same kind of misconception

which leads us to imagine that there is something expressive in the sounds

of words. Thus it is said “that the idea of disgust takes its rise in the

senses of smell and taste, in the first instance probably in smell alone;

that in defending ourselves from a bad smell we are instinctively impelled

to screw up the nose, and to expire strongly through the compressed and

protruded lips, giving rise to a sound represented by the interjections

faugh! foh! fie! From this interjection it is proposed to derive, not only

such words as _foul_ and _filth_, but, by transferring it from natural to

moral aversion, the English _fiend_, the German _Feind_.” If this were

true, we should suppose that the __EXPRESSION__ of contempt was chiefly

conveyed by the aspirate f, by the strong emission of the breathing with

half-opened lips. But _fiend_ is a participle from a root _fian_, to hate;

in Gothic _fijan_; and as a Gothic aspirate always corresponds to a tenuis

in Sanskrit, the same root in Sanskrit would at once lose its expressive

power. It exists in fact in Sanskrit as _pîy_, to hate, to destroy; just

as _friend_ is derived from a root which in Sanskrit is _prî_, to

delight.(336)

 

There is one more remark which I have to make about the Interjectional and

the Onomatopoëtic theories, namely this: If the constituent elements of

human speech were either mere cries, or the mimicking of the cries of

nature, it would be difficult to understand why brutes should be without

language. There is not only the parrot, but the mocking-bird and others,

which can imitate most successfully both articulate and inarticulate

sounds; and there is hardly an animal without the faculty of uttering

interjections, such as huff, hiss, baa, &c. It is clear also that if what

puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes is the having of general

ideas, language which arises from interjections and from the imitation of

the cries of animals could not claim to be the outward sign of that

distinctive faculty of man. All words, in the beginning at least (and this

is the only point which interests us), would have been the signs of

individual impressions and individual perceptions, and would only

gradually have been adapted to the __EXPRESSION__ of general ideas.

 

The theory which is suggested to us by an analysis of language carried out

according to the principles of comparative philology is the very opposite.

We arrive in the end at roots, and every one of these expresses a general,

not an individual, idea. Every name, if we analyze it, contains a

predicate by which the object to which the name applies was known.

 

There is an old controversy among philosophers, whether language

originated in general appellations, or in proper names.(337) It is the

question of the _primum cognitum_, and its consideration will help us

perhaps in discovering the true nature of the root, or the _primum

appellatum_.

 

Some philosophers, among whom I may mention Locke, Condillac, Adam Smith,

Dr. Brown, and with some qualification Dugald Stewart, maintain that all

terms, as at first employed, are expressive of individual objects. I quote

from Adam Smith. “The assignation,” he says, “of particular names to

denote particular objects, that is, the institution of nouns substantive,

would probably be one of the first steps towards the formation of

language. Two savages who had never been taught to speak, but had been

bred up remote from the societies of men, would naturally begin to form

that language by which they would endeavor to make their mutual wants

intelligible to each other by uttering certain sounds whenever they meant

to denote certain objects. Those objects only which were most familiar to

them, and which they had most frequent occasion to mention, would have

particular names assigned to them. The particular cave whose covering

sheltered them from the weather, the particular tree whose fruit relieved

their hunger, the particular fountain whose water allayed their thirst,

would first be denominated by the words _cave_, _tree_, _fountain_, or by

whatever other appellations they might think proper, in that primitive

jargon, to mark them. Afterwards, when the more enlarged experience of

these savages had led them to observe, and their necessary occasions

obliged them to make mention of, other caves, and other trees, and other

fountains, they would naturally bestow upon each of those new objects the

same name by which they had been accustomed to express the similar object

they were first acquainted with. The new objects had none of them any name

of its own, but each of them exactly resembled another object which had

such an appellation. It was impossible that those savages could behold the

new objects without recollecting the old ones; and the name of the old

ones, to which the new bore so close a resemblance. When they had

occasion, therefore, to mention or to point out to each other any of the

new objects, they would naturally utter the name of the correspondent old

one, of which the idea could not fail, at that instant, to present itself

to their memory in the strongest and liveliest manner. And thus those

words, which were originally the proper names of individuals, became the

common name of a multitude. A child that is just learning to speak calls

every person who comes to the house its papa or its mamma; and thus

bestows upon the whole species those names which it had been taught to

apply to two individuals. I have known a clown who did not know the proper

name of the river which ran by his own door. It was _the river_, he said,

and he never heard any other name for it. His experience, it seems, had

not led him to observe any other river. The general word _river_ therefore

was, it is evident, in his acceptance of it, a proper name signifying an

individual object. If this person had been carried to another river, would

he not readily have called it _a river_? Could we suppose any person

living on the banks of the Thames so ignorant as not to know the general

word _river_, but to be acquainted only with the particular word _Thames_,

if he were brought to any other river, would he not readily call it a

_Thames_? This, in reality, is no more than what they who are well

acquainted with the general word are very apt to do. An Englishman,

describing any great river which he may have seen in some foreign country,

naturally says that it is another Thames.... It is this application of the

name of an individual to a great multitude of objects, whose resemblance

naturally recalls the idea of that individual, and of the name which

expresses it, that seems originally to have given occasion to the

formation of those classes and assortments which, in the schools, are

called _genera_ and _species_.”

 

This extract from Adam Smith will give a clear idea of one view of the

formation of thought and language. I shall now read another extract,

representing the diametrically opposite view. It is taken from

Leibniz,(338) who maintains that general terms are necessary for the

essential constitution of languages. He likewise appeals to children.

“Children,” he says, “and those who know but little of the language which

they attempt to speak, or little of the subject on which they would employ

it, make use of general terms, as _thing_, _plant_, _animal_, instead of

using proper names, of which they are destitute. And it is certain that

all proper or individual names have been originally appellative or

general.” And again: “Thus I would make bold to affirm that almost all

words have been originally general terms, because it would happen very

rarely that man would invent a name, expressly and without a reason, to

denote this or that individual. We may, therefore, assert that the names

of individual things were names of species, which were given _par

excellence_, or otherwise, to some individual; as the name _Great Head_ to

him of the whole town who had the largest, or who was the man of the most

consideration of the great heads known.”

 

It might seem presumptuous to attempt to arbitrate between such men as

Leibniz and Adam Smith, particularly when both speak so positively as they