Chapter XXI: The Origin of Speech (2)

If by a mental effort we transport ourselves to a period in which language consisted solely of such graphic concrete words, we shall discover that, in spite of their number, they would not suffice, taken all together, to cover everything that needed expression; a wealth in such words is not incompatible with a certain poverty. They would accordingly often be required to do service outside of their proper sphere of application. That a figurative or metaphorical use of words is a factor of the utmost importance in the life of all languages is indisputable; but I am probably right in thinking that it played a more prominent part in old times than now. In the course of ages a great many metaphors have lost their freshness and vividness, so that nobody feels them to be metaphors any longer. Examine closely such a sentence as this: “He _came_ to _look upon_ the low _ebb_ of morals as an _outcome_ of bad _taste_,” and you will find that nearly every word is a dead metaphor.[109] But the better stocked a language is with those ex-metaphors which have become regular expressions for definite ideas, the less need there is for going out of one’s way to find new metaphors. The expression of thought therefore tends to become more and more mechanical or prosaic.

Primitive man, however, on account of the nature of his language, was constantly reduced to using words and phrases figuratively: he was forced to express his thoughts in the language of poetry. The speech of modern savages is often spoken of as abounding in similes and all kinds of figurative phrases and allegorical expressions. Just as in the literature transmitted to us poetry is found in every country to precede prose, so poetic language is on the whole older than prosaic language; lyrics and cult songs come before science, and Oehlenschläger is right when he sings (in N. Møller’s translation):

Thus Nature drove us; warbling rose
Man’s voice in verse before he spoke in prose.

XXI.--§ 12. Emotional Songs.

If we now try to sum up what has been inferred about primitive speech, we see that by our backward march we arrived at a language whose units had a very meagre substance of thought, and this as specialized and concrete as possible; but at the same time the phonetic body was ample; and the bigger and longer the words, the thinner the thoughts! Much cry and little wool! No period has seen less taciturn people than the first framers of speech; primitive speakers were not reticent and reserved beings, but youthful men and women babbling merrily on, without being so very particular about the meaning of each word. They did not narrowly weigh every syllable--what were a couple of syllables more or less to them? They chattered away for the mere pleasure of chattering, resembling therein many a mother of our own time, who will chatter away to baby without measuring her words or looking too closely into the meaning of each; nay, who is not a bit troubled by the consideration that the little deary does not understand a single word of her affectionate eloquence. But primitive speech--and we return here to an idea thrown out above--still more resembles the speech of little baby himself, before he begins to frame his own language after the pattern of the grown-ups; the language of our remote forefathers was like that ceaseless humming and crooning with which no thoughts are as yet connected, which merely amuses and delights the little one. Language originated as play, and the organs of speech were first trained in this singing sport of idle hours.

Primitive language had no great store of ideas, and if we consider it as an instrument for expressing thoughts, it was clumsy, unwieldy and ineffectual; but what did that matter? Thoughts were not the first things to press forward and crave for expression; emotions and instincts were more primitive and far more powerful. But what emotions were most powerful in producing germs of speech? To be sure not hunger and that which is connected with hunger: mere individual self-assertion and the struggle for material existence. This prosaic side of life was only capable of calling forth short monosyllabic interjections, howls of pain and grunts of satisfaction or dissatisfaction; but these are isolated and incapable of much further development; they are the most immutable portions of language, and remain now at essentially the same standpoint as thousands of years ago.

If after spending some time over the deep metaphysical speculations of a number of German linguistic philosophers you turn to men like Madvig and Whitney, you are at once agreeably impressed by the sobriety of their reasoning and their superior clearness of thought. But if you look more closely, you cannot help thinking that they imagine our primitive ancestors after their own image as serious and well-meaning men endowed with a large share of common-sense. By their laying such great stress on the communication of thought as the end of language and on the benefit to primitive man of being able to speak to his fellow-creatures about matters of vital importance, they leave you with the impression that these “first framers of speech” were sedate citizens with a strong interest in the purely business and matter-of-fact side of life; indeed, according to Madvig, women had no share in the creating of language.

In opposition to this rationalistic view I should like, for once in a way, to bring into the field the opposite view: the genesis of language is not to be sought in the prosaic, but in the poetic side of life; the source of speech is not gloomy seriousness, but merry play and youthful hilarity. And among the emotions which were most powerful in eliciting outbursts of music and of song, love must be placed in the front rank. To the feeling of love, which has left traces of its vast influence on countless points in the evolution of organic nature, are due not only, as Darwin has shown, the magnificent colours of birds and flowers, but also many of the things that fill us with joy in human life; it inspired many of the first songs, and through them was instrumental in bringing about human language. In primitive speech I hear the laughing cries of exultation when lads and lasses vied with one another to attract the attention of the other sex, when everybody sang his merriest and danced his bravest to lure a pair of eyes to throw admiring glances in his direction. Language was born in the courting days of mankind; the first utterances of speech I fancy to myself like something between the nightly love-lyrics of puss upon the tiles and the melodious love-songs of the nightingale.[110]

XXI.--§ 13. Primitive Singing.

Love, however, was not the only feeling which tended to call forth primitive songs. Any strong emotion, and more particularly any pleasurable excitement, might result in song. Singing, like any other sort of play, is due to an overflow of energy, which is discharged in “unusual vivacity of every kind, including vocal vivacity.” Out of the full heart the mouth sings! Savages will sing whenever they are excited: exploits of war or of the chase, the deeds of their ancestors, the coming of a fat dog, any incident “from the arrival of a stranger to an earthquake” is turned into a song; and most of these songs are composed extempore. “When rowing, the Coast negroes sing either a description of some love intrigue or the praise of some woman celebrated for her beauty.” The Malays beguile all their leisure hours with the repetition of songs, etc. “In singing, the East African contents himself with improvising a few words without sense or rime and repeats them till they nauseate.” (These quotations, and many others, are found in Herbert Spencer’s _Essay on the Origin of Music_, with his Postscript.) The reader of Karl Bücher’s painstaking work _Arbeit und Rhythmus_ (2te aufl. 1899) will know from his numerous examples and illustrations what an enormous rôle rhythmic singing plays in the daily life of savages all over the world, how each kind of work, especially if it is done by many jointly, has its own kind of song, and how nothing is done except to the sound of vocal music. In many instances savages are mentioned as very expert in adapting the subjects of their songs to current events. Nor is this sort of singing on every and any occasion confined to savages; it is found wherever the indoor life of civilization has not killed all open-air hilarity; formerly in our Western Europe people sang much more than they do now. The Swedish peasant Jonas Stolt (ab. 1820) writes: “I have known a time when young people were singing from morning till eve. Then they were carolling both out- and indoors, behind the plough as well as at the threshing-floor and at the spinning-wheel. This is all over long ago: nowadays there is silence everywhere; if someone were to try and sing in our days as we did of old, people would term it bawling.”

The first things that were expressed in song were, to be sure, neither deep nor wise; how could you expect it? Note the frequency with which we are told that the songs of savages consist of or contain totally meaningless syllables. Thus we read about American Indians that “the native word which is translated ‘song’ does not suggest any use of words. To the Indian, the music is of primal importance; words may or may not accompany the music. When words are used in song, they are rarely employed as a narrative, the sentences are not apt to be complete” (Louise Pound, Mod. Lang. Ass. 32. 224), and similarly: “Even where the slightest vestiges of epic poetry are missing, lyric poetry of one form or another is always present. It may consist of the musical use of meaningless syllables that sustain the song; or it may consist largely of such syllables, with a few interspersed words suggesting certain ideas and certain feelings; or it may rise to the expression of emotions connected with warlike deeds, with religious feeling, love, or even to the praise of the beauties of nature” (Boas, _International Journ. Amer. Ling._ 1. 8). The magic incantations of the Greenland Eskimo, according to W. Thalbitzer, contain many incomprehensible words never used outside these songs (but have they ever been real words?), and the same is said about the mystic religious formulas of Maoris and African negroes and many other tribes, as well as about the old Roman hymns of the Arval Brethren. The mere joy in sonorous combinations here no doubt counts for very much, as in the splendid but meaningless metrical lists of names in the Old Norse Edda, and in many a modern refrain, too. Let me give one example of half (or less than half) understood strings of syllables from “The Oath of the Canting Crew” (1749, Farmer’s _Musa Pedestris_, 51):

No dimber, dambler, angler, dancer,
Prig of cackler, prig of prancer;
No swigman, swaddler, clapper-dudgeon,
Cadge-gloak, curtal, or curmudgeon;
No whip-jack, palliard, patrico;
No jarkman, be he high or low;
No dummerar or romany ...
Nor any other will I suffer.

In the cultic and ceremonial songs of savage tribes in many parts of the world this is a prominent trait: it seems, indeed, to be universal. Even with us the thoughts associated with singing are generally neither very clear nor very abstruse; like humming or whistling, singing is often nothing more than an almost automatic outcome of a mood; and “What is not worth saying can be sung.” Besides, it has been the case at all times that things transient and trivial have found readier expression than Socratic wisdom. But the frivolous use tuned the instrument, and rendered it little by little more serviceable to a multiplicity of purposes, so that it became more and more fitted to express everything that touched human souls.

Men sang out their feelings long before they were able to speak their thoughts. But of course we must not imagine that “singing” means exactly the same thing here as in a modern concert hall. When we say that speech originated in song, what we mean is merely that our comparatively monotonous spoken language and our highly developed vocal music are differentiations of primitive utterances, which had more in them of the latter than of the former. These utterances were at first, like the singing of birds and the roaring of many animals and the crying and crooning of babies, exclamative, not communicative--that is, they came forth from an inner craving of the individual without any thought of any fellow-creatures. Our remote ancestors had not the slightest notion that such a thing as communicating ideas and feelings to someone else was possible. They little suspected that in singing as nature prompted them they were paving the way for a language capable of rendering minute shades of thought; just as they could not suspect that out of their coarse pictures of men and animals there should one day grow an art enabling men of distant countries to speak to one another. As is the art of writing to primitive painting, so is the art of speaking to primitive singing. And the development of the two vehicles of communication of thought presents other curious and instructive parallels. In primitive picture-writing, each sign meant a whole sentence or even more--the image of a situation or of an incident being given as a whole; this developed into an ideographic writing of each word by itself; this system was succeeded by syllabic methods, which had in their turn to give place to alphabetic writing, in which each letter stands for, or is meant to stand for, one sound. Just as here the advance is due to a further analysis of language, smaller and smaller units of speech being progressively represented by single signs, in an exactly similar way, though not quite so unmistakably, the history of language shows us a progressive tendency towards analyzing into smaller and smaller units that which in the earlier stages was taken as an inseparable whole.

One point must be constantly kept in mind. Although we now regard the communication of thought as the main object of speaking, there is no reason for thinking that this has always been the case; it is perfectly possible that speech has developed from something which had no other purpose than that of exercising the muscles of the mouth and throat and of amusing oneself and others by the production of pleasant or possibly only strange sounds. The motives for uttering sounds may have changed entirely in the course of centuries without the speakers being at any point conscious of this change within them.

XXI.--§ 14. Approach to Language.

We get the first approach to language proper when communicativeness takes precedence of exclamativeness, when sounds are uttered in order to ‘tell’ fellow-creatures something, as when birds warn their young ones of some imminent danger. In the case of human language, communication is infinitely more full and rich and elaborate; the question therefore is a very complex one: How did the association of sound and sense come about? How did that which originally was a jingle of meaningless sounds come to be an instrument of thought? How did man become, as Humboldt has somewhere defined him, “a singing creature, only associating thoughts with the tones”?

In the case of an onomatopoetic or echo-word like _bow-wow_ and an interjection like _pooh-pooh_ the association was easy and direct; such words were at once employed and understood as signs for the corresponding idea. But this was not the case with the great bulk of language. Here association of sound with sense must have been arrived at by devious and circuitous ways, which to a great extent evade inquiry and make a detailed exposition impossible. But this is in exact conformity with very much that has taken place in recent periods; as we have learnt in previous chapters, it is only by indirect and roundabout ways that many words and grammatical expedients have acquired the meanings they now have, or have acquired meaning where they originally had none. Let me remind the reader of the word _grog_ (p. 308), of interrogative particles (p. 358), of word order (p. 356), of many endings (Ch. XIX § 13 ff.), of tones (Ch. XIX § 5), of the French negative _pas_, of vowel-alternations like those in _drink_, _drank_, _drunk_, or in _foot_, _feet_, etc. Language is a complicated affair, and no more than most other human inventions has it come about in a simple way: mankind has not moved in a straight line towards a definitely perceived goal, but has muddled along from moment to moment and has thereby now and then stumbled on some happy expedient which has then been retained in accordance with the principle of the survival of the fittest.

We may perhaps succeed in forming some idea of the most primitive process of associating sound and sense if we call to mind what was said above on the signification of the earliest words, and try to fathom what that means. The first words must have been as concrete and specialized in meaning as possible. Now, what are the words whose meaning is the most concrete and the most specialized? Without any doubt proper names--that is, of course, proper names of the good old kind, borne by and denoting only one single individual. How easily might not such names spring up in a primitive state such as that described above! In the songs of a particular individual there would be a constant recurrence of a particular series of sounds sung with a particular cadence; no one can doubt the possibility of such individual habits being contracted in olden as well as in present times. Suppose, then, that “in the spring time, the only pretty ring time” a lover was in the habit of addressing his lass “with a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino.” His comrades and rivals would not fail to remark this, and would occasionally banter him by imitating and repeating his “hey-and-a-ho-and-a-hey-nonino.” But when once this had been recognized as what Wagner would term a person’s ‘leitmotiv,’ it would be no far cry from mimicking it to using the “hey-and-a-ho-and-a-hey-nonino” as a sort of nickname for the man concerned; it might be employed, for instance, to signal his arrival. And when once proper names had been bestowed, common names (or nouns) would not be slow in following; we see the transition from one to the other class in constant operation, names originally used exclusively to denote an individual being used metaphorically to connote that person’s most characteristic peculiarities, as when we say of one man that he is a ‘Crœsus’ or a ‘Vanderbilt’ or ‘Rockefeller,’ and of another that he is ‘no Bismarck.’ A German schoolboy in the ’eighties said in his history lesson that Hannibal swore he would always be a _Frenchman_ to the Romans. This is, at least, one of the ways in which language arrives at designations of such ideas as ‘rich,’ ‘statesman’ and ‘enemy.’ From the proper name of _Cæsar_ we have both the Russian _tsar’_ and the German _kaiser_, and from _Karol_ (Charlemagne) Russian _korol’_ ‘king’ (also in the other Slav languages) and Magyar _király_. Besides being designations for persons, proper names may also in some cases come to mean tools or other objects, originally in most cases probably as a term of endearment, as when in thieves’ slang a crowbar or lever is called a _betty_ or _jemmy_; E. _derrick_ and _dirk_, as well as G. _dietrich_, Dan. _dirk_, Swed. _dyrk_, is nothing but _Dietrich_ (_Derrick_, _Theodoricus_), and thus in innumerable instances. In the École polytechnique in Paris there are many words of the same character: _bacha_ ‘cours d’allemand’ from a teacher, M. Bacharach, _borius_ ‘bretelles’ from General Borius, _malo_ ‘éperon’ from Captain Malo, etc. (MSL 15. 179). _Pamphlet_ is from Pamphilet, originally _Pamphilus seu de Amore_, the name of a popular booklet on an erotic subject. Compare also the history of the words _bluchers_, _jack_ (boot-jack, jack for turning a spit, a pike, etc., also _jacket_), _pantaloon_, _hansom_, _boycott_, _to burke_, to name only a few of the best-known examples.

XXI.--§ 15. The Earliest Sentences.

Again, we saw above that the further back we went in the history of known languages, the more the sentence was one indissoluble whole, in which those elements which we are accustomed to think of as single words were not yet separated. Now, the idea that language began with sentences, not with words, appears to Whitney (_Am. Journ. of Philol._ 1. 338) to be, “if capable of any intelligent and intelligible statement, _a fortiori_, too wild and baseless to deserve respectful mention” (cf. also Madvig Kl 85). But the absurdity appears only if we think of sentences like those found in our languages, consisting of elements (words) capable of being used in other combinations and there forming other sentences: this seems to be what Gabelentz (Spr 351) imagines; but it is not so wild to imagine as the first beginning something which can be _translated_ into our languages by means of a sentence, but which is not ‘articulated’ in the same way as such a sentence; we translate or explain the dental click (‘_tut_’) by means of the sentence ‘that is a pity,’ but the interjection is not in other respects a grammatical ‘sentence.’ Or we may take an illustration from the modern use of a telegraphic code: if _suzaw_ means ‘I have not received your telegram,’ or _sempo_ ‘reserve one single room and bath at first-class hotel’--we have unanalyzable wholes capable of being rendered in complete sentences, but not in every way analogous to these sentences.

Now, it is just units of this character (though not, of course, with exactly the same kind of meaning as the two code words) whose genesis we can most easily imagine on the supposition of a primitive period of meaningless singing. If a certain number of people have together witnessed some incident and have accompanied it with some sort of impromptu song or refrain, the two ideas are associated, and later on the same song will tend to call forth in the memory of those who were present the idea of the whole situation. Suppose some dreaded enemy has been defeated and slain; the troop will dance round the dead body and strike up a chant of triumph, say something like ‘Tarara-boom-de-ay!’ This combination of sounds, sung to a certain melody, will now easily become what might be called a proper name for that particular event; it might be roughly translated, ‘The terrible foe from beyond the river is slain,’ or ‘We have killed the dreadful man from beyond the river,’ or, ‘Do you remember when we killed him?’ or something of the same sort. Under slightly altered circumstances it may become the proper name of the man who slew the enemy. The development can now proceed further by a metaphorical transference of the expression to similar situations (‘There is another man of the same tribe: let us kill him as we did the first!’) or by a blending of two or more of these proper-name melodies. How this kind of blending may lead to the development of something like derivative affixes may be gathered from our chapter on Secretion; it may also result in parts of the whole melodic utterance being disengaged as something more like our ‘words.’ From the nature of the subject it is impossible to give more than hints, but I seem to see ways by which primitive ‘lieder ohne worte’ may have become, first, indissoluble rigmaroles, with something like a dim meaning attached to them, and then gradually combinations of word-like smaller units, more and more capable of being analyzed and combined with others of the same kind. Anyhow, this theory seems to explain better than any other the great part which fortuitous coincidence and irregularity always play in that part of any language which is not immediately intelligible, thus both in lexical and grammatical elements.

Primitive man came to attach meaning to what were originally rambling sequences of syllables in pretty much the same way as the child comes to attach a meaning to many of the words he hears from his elders, the whole situation in which they are heard giving a clue to their interpretation. The difference is that in the latter case the speaker has already associated a meaning with the sound; but from the point of view of the hearer this is comparatively immaterial: the savage of a far-distant age hearing some syllables for the first time and the child hearing them nowadays are in essentially the same position as to their interpretation. Parallels are also found in the words of the _mamma_ class (Ch. VIII § 8), in which hearers give a signification to something pronounced unintentionally, the same syllables being then capable of serving afterwards as real words. If one of our forebears on some occasion accidentally produced a sequence of sounds, and if the people around him were seen (or heard) to respond appreciatively, he would tend to settle on the same string of sounds and repeat it on similar occasions, and in this way it would gradually become ‘conventionalized’ as a symbol of what was then foremost in his and in their minds. As in agriculture primitive man reaped before he sowed, so also in his vocal outbursts he first reaped understanding, and then discovered that by intentionally sowing the same seed he was able to call forth the same result. And as with corn, he would slowly and gradually, by weeding out (i.e. by not using) what was less useful to him, improve the quality, till finally he had come into possession of the marvellous, though far from perfect, instrument which we now call our language. The development of our ordinary speech has been largely an intellectualization, and the emotional quality which played the largest part in primitive utterances has to some extent been repressed; but it is not extinct, and still gives a definite colouring to all passionate and eloquent speaking and to poetic diction. Language, after all, is an art--one of the finest of arts.

XXI.--§ 16. Conclusion.

Language, then, began with half-musical unanalyzed expressions for individual beings and solitary events. Languages composed of, and evolved from, such words and quasi-sentences are clumsy and insufficient instruments of thought, being intricate, capricious and difficult. But from the beginning the tendency has been one of progress, slow and fitful progress, but still progress towards greater and greater clearness, regularity, ease and pliancy. No one language has arrived at perfection; an ideal language would always express the same thing by the same, and similar things by similar means; any irregularity or ambiguity would be banished; sound and sense would be in perfect harmony; any number of delicate shades of meaning could be expressed with equal ease; poetry and prose, beauty and truth, thinking and feeling would be equally provided for: the human spirit would have found a garment combining freedom and gracefulness, fitting it closely and yet allowing full play to any movement.

But, however far our present languages are from that ideal, we must be thankful for what has been achieved, seeing that--

Language is a perpetual orphic song,
Which rules with Dædal harmony a throng
Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.

FOOTNOTES:

[107] It may not be superfluous expressly to point out that there is no contradiction between what is said here on the disappearance of tones and the remarks made above (Ch. XIX § 4) on Chinese tones. There the change wrought in the meaning of a word by a mere change of tone was explained on the principle that the difference of meaning was at an earlier stage expressed by affixes, the tone that is now concentrated on one syllable belonging formerly to two syllables or perhaps more. But this evidently presupposes that each syllable had already some tone of its own--and that is what in this chapter is taken to be the primitive state. Word-tones were originally frequent, but meaningless; afterwards they were dropped in some languages, while in others they were utilized for sense-distinguishing purposes.

[108] On the lack of abstract and general terms in savage languages, see also Ginneken LP 108 and the works there quoted.

[109] Of course, if instead of _look upon_ and _outcome_ we had taken the corresponding terms of Latin root, _consider_ and _result_, the metaphors would have been still more dead to the natural linguistic instinct.

[110] From the experience I had with my previous book, _Progress_, from which this chapter has, with some alterations and amplifications, passed into this volume, I feel impelled here to warn those critics who do me the honour to mention my theory of the origin of language, not to look upon it as if it were contained simply in my remarks on primitive love-songs, etc., and as if it were based on _a priori_ considerations, like the older speculative theories. What I may perhaps claim as my original contribution to the solution of this question is the _inductive_ method based on the three sources of information indicated on p. 416, and especially on the ‘backward’ consideration of the history of language. Some critics think they have demolished my view by simply representing it as a romantic dream of a primitive golden age in which men had no occupation but courting and singing. I have never believed in a far-off golden age, but rather incline to believe in a progressive movement from a very raw and barbarous age to something better, though it must be said that our own age, with its national wars, world wars and class wars, makes one sometimes ashamed to think how little progress our so-called civilization has made. But primitive ages were probably still worse, and the only thing I have felt bold enough to maintain is that in those days there were some moments consecrated to youthful hilarity, and that this gave rise, among other merriment, to vocal play of such a character as closely to resemble what we may infer from the known facts of linguistic history to have been a stage of language earlier than any of those accessible to us. There is no ‘romanticism’ (in a bad sense) in such a theory, and it can only be refuted by showing that the view of language and its development on which it is based is erroneous from beginning to end.

INDEX

_a_ Sanskrit, 52;
_-a_ in fem., 392;
in pl., 394

_abbot_, 156

ablaut, _see_ apophony

abstract terms, 429

accent, _see_ stress _and_ tone

accusative, name, 20

actors, 276

adaptation of suffixes, 386 f.

adjective flexion, 129;
concord, 348 f.

African languages, _see_ Bantu

agglutination, 54, 58, 76, 376;
agglutination theory, 367 ff., 375 ff.

agreement, _see_ concord

ambiguities, 319, 341 ff.

America, race mixtures, 203 ff.

American English, 260

American Indian languages, 57, 181, 187, 229, 233, 256, 334, 425, 427, 430

analogy, 70, 93 f., 129 f., 162 f., 289

analytic languages, 36, 334 ff., 422 ff.

anatomical causes of change, 255

aphesis, 273

apophony, 46, 53, 91 ff., 311

aposiopesis, 273

appreciation of languages, 29 ff., 57 f., 60, 62, 319 ff.;
formula, 324

archaic forms, 294

Armenian, 195 f.

article, 378

Aryan, name, 63 f.;
languages, _passim_

_as_, root, 49

Ascoli, 192 ff.

assimilation, 109, 168 f., 264 f., 280

auxiliary words, 358

_babe_, 157

_bacco_, 171

back-formations, 173, 178

Balkan tongues, agreements, 215

Bantu, 239, 352 ff., 365

_-bar_, suffix, 377

Basque, 210, 427

Baudouin de Courtenay, 327

Bavarian _wo-st bist_, 281

Beach-la-Mar, 216 ff.

_bead_, 175

_bhu_, root, 49

bilinguism, 147 ff.

biographical or biological science of language, 8

blending, 132, 281 f., 311, 312 f., 390

Bloomfield, 390

_boon_, 175

Bopp, 47 ff., 56 n.

borrowing of words, 208

_bound_, 176

bow-wow theory, 413

boys, 146

Bredsdorff, 43 n., 70

Bridges, 286

Bröndal, 200

Brugmann, 92 f.;
on gender, 391

_bube_, 157

_buncombe_, 409

cacuminals, 196

Caribbean, 237 ff.

Carlyle, 145

case-system, English, 268 ff.;
in old languages, 337 ff.;
importance, 341

_catch_, 400

_ch_ becomes _f_, 168

changes, causes of, 255 ff.

child, 103 ff.;
sounds, 105;
understanding, 113;
classification of things, 114 f.;
vocabulary, 124;
grammar, 128 ff.;
sentences, 133;
echoism, 135;
why learns so well, 140;
influence of other children, 147;
word-invention, 151 ff.;
influence of, 161 ff.;
indirect influence, 178;
new languages, 180 ff.

Chinese, 36, 54, 57, 286, 369 ff.

Chinook, 228 ff.

classification of languages, 35 f., 54, 76 ff.

classifying instinct, 388

clicks, 415, 419

climate, 256

clippings, _see_ stump-words

coalescence of words, 174, 376 ff.

Cœurdoux, 33

Collitz, 45 n., 257, 381

concord, verbal, 335;
nominal, 348;
in Bantu, 352 ff.

concrete words, 429

Condillac, 27

confusion of words, 122, 172

congeneric groups, 389 f.

conjugation, _see_ verb

consciousness, 130;
threshold of, 138

consonant-shift, 43 ff., 195, 197, 204, 256, 258 f.

contamination, _see_ blending

convergent changes, 284 f.

copula, 48 f.

correctness, latitude of, 282 ff.

creation of new words, 151 ff.

Creole, 226 ff.

_cuckoo_, 406

cultural loan-words, 209

_curry favour_, 173

curtailing of words, 108, 169 f., 328 f.

Curtius, 83, 94

_-d_ in _loved_, 51, 381

Darwin, 414

dead languages, 67

decay, 55, 59, 62, 77, 319 ff.

declension, _see_ case-system

Delbrück, 93, 96

dialect, study of, 68;
spoken by children, 147

Diez, 85

differentiations, 176, 272

diminutives, 180, 402

ding-dong theory, 415

divergent changes, 288

doublets, 272

Dravidian influence on Indian, 196

drunken speech, 279

_dump_, 313

_e_ original in Aryan, 52, 91

ease theory, 261 ff.

echoism, 135;
cf. echo-words

echo-words, 313, 398 ff.

economizing of effort, _see_ ease-theory

effort in speaking, 261 ff., 324 ff.

_eglino_, 281

emotion, influence on sound, 276

_-en_ in plural, 385

ending, _see_ flexion, suffix

English, Grimm’s appreciation, 62;
foreign influence, 202, 210, 212 ff.;
rapid change, 261;
case-system, 268 ff.;
future tense, 274;
vowel-shift, 243, 284;
word-order, 344 f.;
genitive, 350

entangling, 422

equidistant changes, 284

_-er_ in plural, 386

estimation of languages, _see_ appreciation

Etruscan, 195

etymology, sound laws, 295;
principles, 305 ff.;
object of, 316;
etymology of _rag_, 300;
of _sun_, _say_, _see_, 306;
of _krieg_, 307;
of _grog_, _ganz_, 308;
of _hope_, 309;
of _nut_, _stumm_, 311;
of _mais_, _maar_, _men_, 315;
of _moon_, _daughter_, _mother_, 318

euphemism, 245 ff.

euphony, 278

exceptions to sound-laws, 296 ff.

exertion in speaking, 261 ff., 324 ff.

expressive sounds preserved, 288

extension of sound laws, 290;
of suffixes, 386 ff.

extra-lingual influences, 278

_f_ for _th_, 167;
in _enough_, etc., 168;
in Spanish, 193

fable in Proto-Aryan, 81

_fain_, 176

fashion in language, 291

_father_, 117

Feist, 194 ff.

feminine, 391 ff.;
in _-i_, 394, 402;
cf. woman

Finnic, 197 f., 207

flexion, 35, 54 f., 58 f., 76 ff., 79;
origin of, 377 ff.

foreign languages, mistakes in noting down, 116 f.;
influence of, 191 ff.

forgetfulness, 176

forms, number of, 332, 337;
origin of, 49, 58, 377 ff.

French influence on English, 202, 209, 214;
pronouns and verbs, 422 f.

frequency, influence on phonetic development, 267

_-ful_, suffix, 376

Gabelentz, 98, 369

_ganz_, 308

_gape_, 288

gender, 346 f., 391 ff.

general and specific terms, 274, 429 f.

genitive, name, 20;
group, 351;
_s_ in, 382, 383 n.

geographical distribution of languages, 187;
influence on change, 256

German language, appreciation of, 29, 31, 60;
sound-shift, 43 ff., 195 f., 283;
forms, 341 ff.;
word-order, 344

Germanic, _see_ Gothonic

gibberish, 149 f.

girls, 146

_gleam_, _gloom_, 401

glottogonic theories abandoned, 96

Gothonic (Germanic, Teutonic), 42;
sound-shift, _see_ consonant-shift

gradation, _see_ apophony

grammar, children’s, 128 ff.;
foreign influence, 213;
of primitive languages, 421

grammatical elements, origin, 48, 58, 61

Greek linguistic speculation, 19 f.;
vowels, 91;
personal pronouns, 286 n.;
Modern Greek, 301

Grimm, 37, 40 ff., 60 ff.

Grimm’s Law, 43 f.;
_see_ consonant-shift

_grog_, 308

group genitive, 129, 351;
groups of words with similar meaning, 389

_h_ for _f_ in Spanish, 193;
for _s_, etc., 263

_habaidedeima_, 322, 329, 331 f.

Hale, 181 ff.

haplology, 281, 329

harmony of vowels, 280

Hebrew, 21

Hegel, 72 f.

Hempl, 201 ff.

Herder, 27 f.

hereditary aptness for a language, 75, 141

Hermann, 48

Hervas, 22

Herzog, 164 f.

_hide_, 121

Hirt, 192, 203 f., 382 f.

historical point of view, 32, 42

homophones, 285 f.

_-hood_, suffix, 376

_hope_, 309

humanization of language, 327 f.

Humboldt, 55 ff.

hypercorrect forms, 294

I, the pronoun, 123 f.

_i_ denoting small, feminine, near, 402

idioms, 139

imitation, 291 ff.;
of sounds, 398, 413 f.

imperative, 403

incorporation, 58, 79, 425

Indian grammarians, 20;
cacuminals, 196;
cf. American Indian, Sanskrit

indirect ways of obtaining expressions, 438

indissoluble expressions of several ideas, 334, 422 ff., 428 ff.

Indo-European (Indo-Germanic), _see_ Aryan

indolence, _see_ ease-theory

inflexion, _see_ flexion

interjections, 414

interrogative sentences, 137;
particles, 358

invention of words, 151 ff.

irregularities in old languages, 338 f., 379, 425

isolating languages, 36, 76, 366 ff.

Japanese, 243

jaw-breakers, 280

jaw-measurements, 104

Jenisch, 29 ff.

Johannson, 341 ff.

Jones, William, 33

[ju·], 290 f.

Karlgren, 372 f.

Keltic languages, 38, 39, 53;
substratum, 192 ff.

Kuhn, 371

_kw_ becomes _p_, 168

languages, rise of new, 180 ff.

language-teaching, 145

lapses, 279

Latin, study of, 22 f.;
influence, 209, 215;
forms, 334, 338 f., 343;
word-order, 350

latitude of correctness, 282

law as applied to sound-changes, 297

leaps in phonetic development, 167;
in meanings, 175

Leibniz, 22

lengthening, emotional, 277, 403;
of words, 330

Lenz, 204

Lepsius, 370

Leskien, 93

life as applied to language, 7

lingua geral, 234

linguistics, position of, 64 f., 73, 86, 97

_little_, 407

little language, 103, 106, 144, 147

living languages, study of, 97

loan-words, sound-substitution, 207;
general theory, 208;
culture, 209;
classes, 211;
with symbolic sounds, 409

loss of sounds, 108, 168, 328 f.

love-songs, 433 f.

Luxemburg, bilinguism in, 148

_-ly_, suffix, 377

_m_ in adversative conjunctions, 314 ff.;
case-ending, 382

_ma_, _maar_, 314 f.

Madvig, 84, 433

_magis_, _mais_, 314 f.

makeshift languages, 232 ff.

_mamma_, 154 ff.

man and woman, 142, 237 ff.

Mauritius Creole, 226 ff.

meaning, delimitation of, 118 f.;
words of opposite meaning, 120;
words with several meanings, 121;
shifting of meaning, 174;
cf. semantic changes

meaningless gibberish, 149 f.;
singing, 436

Meillet, 55, 198 f.

memory, children’s, 143

_men_, 315

mental states, words for, 401

Meringer, 162 f., 280, 291

metanalysis, 173

metaphors, 431

metathesis, 108, 281

Meyer-Benfey, 256

_milk_, 158

Misteli, 79

misunderstandings, 282, 286 f., 319

mixed languages, 191 ff.

modern languages, study of, 68;
compared with ancient, 322 ff.

Möller, H., 139, 308, 382

_mon_, 358

monosyllabic languages, 36, 367 ff.

_month_, 318

moods, 380

_moon_, 318

_mother_, 155, 318

mother-tongue, 146

movement, words denoting, 399

mountains, linguistic changes in, 256 f.

mouth-filling words, 403

Müller, Friedrich, 79, 338

Müller, Max, 88 ff., 414

Murray, 269

mutation, 37, 46

mutilation of lips, 256;
of words, 266

_my_, 384 f.

_-n_ in _mine_, 384 f.

names of relations, 118;
proper, 439

nasalis sonans, 92, 317 f.

national psychology, 258

negation, 136;
redundant, 352

neo-grammarians, _see_ young-grammarians

new languages, 180 ff.

Noiré, 415

nominal forms, 337 ff.;
concord, 348 ff.

number in verbs, 335;
in pronouns, 347;
in nouns, 129, 349, 355, 385, 394 f.

numerals, 119;
borrowed, 211;
in succession, 281;
distinct for various classes, 430

nursery language, 179

_nut_, 311

_o_ original in Aryan, 52, 91

old languages compared with modern, 322 ff.

_on_, 287

_oncle_, 271 n.

onomatopœia, 150, 313, 398 ff.

opposite meaning, 120

order of words, _see_ word-order

organism, language as an, 7, 65

organs of speech, used for other purposes, 278;
development, 416, 436

_orient_, 175

origin of language, 26 ff., 61, 412 ff.;
of grammatical elements, 367 ff.

Osthoff, 93

_ox_, _oxen_, 385

palatal law, 90 f.

Panini, 20

_pap_, 158

_papa_, 154 ff.

parenthesizing, 350 f.

passive, Scandinavian, 50, 377;
Latin, 50, 381

_patter_, 407

Paul, 94 f., 162

periods of rapid change, 259

personal forms in verbs, 53, 335, 383

pet-names, 108, 169

philology, 64 f., 97

phonetic laws, _see_ sound changes, sound laws

Pidgin-English, 221 ff.

_pittance_, 408

Plato, 19, 396

playfulness, 148, 298 f., 432 ff.

_plumbum_, _plummet_, _plunge_, 313 f.

plural, _see_ number

poetry, 300, 431 f.

polysynthetic, 423, 425

pooh-pooh theory, 414

_pope_, 156

popular etymology, 122

portmanteau words, 313

possessive pronouns, 384 f.

prepositions, 137 f.;
borrowed, 211

prescriptive grammar, 24

preterit, weak, 51, 381

primitive languages, 417 ff.

progressive tendency, 319 ff.

pronouns, 123;
borrowed, 212;
possessive, 384;
French, 422

proper names, 436

prosiopesis, 273

Proto-Aryan, 80 f., 90 f.

punning phrases, 300

_pupil_, 157

_puppet_, 157

Pușcariu, 205

question, 137;
word-order and auxiliaries, 357 ff.

quick, 407

_r_ in Latin passive, 381;
sound of _r_ weakened, 244;
_r-_ and _n-_ stems, 339, 390

race and language, 75;
race-mixture, 201 ff.

rapidity of change, 259

Rapp, 68 ff.

Rask, 36 ff., 43, 46

rational, everything originally r., 316

reaction against change, 293

reconstruction, 80 ff., 317

reduplication, 109, 169

relationship between languages, 38, 53;
terms of, 117, 154 ff.

_right_, 180

_roll_, 374, 408

Romanic languages, 202, 205 f., 234 ff., 260;
future, 378

root-determinatives, 311

roots, 52, 367 ff., 373 ff.

Rousseau, 26

_s_ in passive, 50, 377, 381;
case-ending, 213, 381 ff.;
in English plural, 214;
in Russian and Spanish, 266;
Latin disappears, 362

Sandfeld, 215

Sanskrit, 33, 67;
vowels, 52, 90 f.;
consonants, 90 f., 196;
drama, 241 f.

savages, languages of, 417, 426 ff.

saving of effort, of space, of time, 264

Scandinavian influence on English, 212, 214;
passive, 50, 377;
article, 378

Scherer, 96

Schlegel, A. W., 36

Schlegel, F., 34 f.

Schleicher, 71 ff.

Schuchardt, 191, 213, 219, 267

scorn, words expressive of, 401

Scotch, 193 n.

screaming, 103

secondary echoism, 406

secret languages, 149 f.

secretion, 384 ff.

semantic changes, 174 f., 274 ff.

Semitic, 36, 52

sentences, 133;
the earliest, 439 ff.;
sentence stress, 272

separative linguistics, 67

_seqw-_, 306 f.

sex, 146, 237 ff.;
cf. gender

shifters, 123

shortening, 328 f.;
cf. stump-words

signification, how apprehended, 113 ff.;
cf. semantic changes

significative sounds preserved, 267 f., 271, 287

similarities cause confusion, 120 f.

simplification, 332 ff.

singing, 420, 432 ff.

slang, 247, 299 f.

small, words for, 402

smile, 278

_so_, 250

Société de Linguistique, 96, 412

_son_, E., 120, 286

songs, primitive, 420, 432 ff.

sound changes, _passim_;
_see_ especially 161 ff., 191 ff., 242 ff., 255 ff.

sound laws, 93;
in children, 106 f.;
extension and metamorphosis, 290;
destructive, 289;
spreading, 291;
in the science of etymology, 295 ff.

sound-shift, Gothonic, _see_ consonant-shift

special terms in primitive speech, 429 ff.

speed of utterance, 258

spelling pronunciations, 294

splitting, _see_ differentiation

Spoonerism, 280

stable and unstable sounds, 199 f.

Steinthal, 79, 87

strengthening of sounds, 404 f.

stress, Aryan, 93;
Gothonic, 195;
nature and influence of, 271 ff.

_stumm_, 311

stump-words, 108, 169 f.

substantive, _see_ nominal _and_ flexion

substratum theory, 191 ff.

subtraction, 173

suffixes, origin, 376 f.;
extension, 386 f.;
tainting, 388

suggestiveness, 408;
cf. symbolism

_suppletivwesen_, 426

Sweet, 97, 161, 264

syllables, number of, 330

symbolism, 396 ff.

syntax, 66, 95;
foreign influence, 214;
blends, 282;
simplification, 340

synthetic languages, 36, 334 ff., 421 f.

_ta_, 159

tabu, 239 ff., 431

tainting of suffixes, 388

_tata_, 158

_-teer_, suffix, 388

Telugu, 301

tempo, 258

Teutonic, _see_ Gothonic

_th_ becomes _f_, _v_, 167

_they_ for _he or she_, 347

_this_ and _that_, 403

Thomson, 90 n., 267, 427

threshold, under the, 138

_ti_, 358 f.

time, a child’s conception of, 120

tone, 111;
in Chinese, 369, 370;
in Danish dialect, 371;
in primitive languages, 419

Tooke, Horne, 49

translation-loans, 215

translators introduce foreign words, 210

_tripos_, 115

twins having separate language, 185 f.

_u_, French, 192 ff.;
English, 290 f.

umlaut, 37

understanding, a baby’s, 113 f.

units of language, 422

value, influence on phonetic development, 266 ff.

verb, substantive, 48;
flexional forms, 130;
simplification, 332 ff.;
concord, 335

verbal character of roots, 374 f.

Verner, 93;
Verner’s Law, 195, 197 f.

vocabulary, extent of, 124 ff.;
in primitive speech, 429

voicing of consonants, in Gothonic and English, 198;
symbolic, 405

vowel-harmony, 280

vowels, number of Aryan, 44, 52, 91

vulgar speech, 261, 299

wars, influence on language, 260

weak preterit, 51, 381

weakening of words, 266

Wessely, 197

Wheeler, 293

Whitney, 88, 323, 367

Windisch, 208

women as language teachers, 142;
women’s language, 237 ff.

word, what constitutes one, 125, 422 f.

word-division, 132, 173 f.

word-formation, 131;
cf. invention, suffixes

word-order, 344 ff., 355 ff.;
in Chinese, 369 ff.

worthless words or sounds, 266 ff.

Wundt, 98, 258

_yesterday_, 120

yo-he-ho theory, 415

_you_ for _I_, 124

young-grammarians, 93

Zulu, _see_ Bantu

_Printed in Great Britain by_
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED WOKING AND LONDON

* * * * *

Transcriber's Note

On p. 373, "ź" is used to represent a letter "z" with a vertical line diacritic.

The following apparent errors have been corrected:

p. 9 "etc" changed to "etc."

p. 49 "will" changed to "_will_"

p. 63 "‘Sanskritic," changed to "‘Sanskritic,’"

p. 98 "Bréal Delbrück" changed to "Bréal, Delbrück"

p. 98 "Meillet Meringer" changed to "Meillet, Meringer"

p. 109 "VIII, § 9" changed to "VIII, § 8"

p. 173 (note) "‘Subtraktionsdannelser,”" changed to "“Subtraktionsdannelser,”"

p. 184 "pronunication" changed to "pronunciation"

p. 216 (note) "25 1" changed to "251"

p. 216 "Mittleilungen" changed to "Mitteilungen"

p. 228 "chapter" changed to "chapter."

p. 234 (note) "ii" changed to "ii."

p. 237 "Grammar" changed to "Grammar."

p. 239 "accounted for" changed to "accounted for."

p. 247 "a women" changed to "a woman"

p. 254 "peoples" changed to "peoples."

p. 266 "a might" changed to "as might"

p. 274 "economzie" changed to "economize"

p. 280 "word·" changed to "word;"

p. 284 "(æ·]" changed to "[æ·]"

p. 290 "[see" changed to "(see"

p. 294 (note) "laughing" changed to "laughing."

p. 301 "_A Memorandum on Modern Telugu_" changed to "_A Memorandum on Modern Telugu_,"

p. 309 "_Glossar_" changed to "_Glossar._"

p. 339 "Nolde, _Einleit. in die Altertumswiss_" changed to "Norden, _Einleit. in die Altertumswiss._"

p. 353 "_isizwe_" changed to "_isi_zwe"

p. 355 "_amazwe_" changed to "_ama_zwe"

p. 358 "uo longer" changed to "no longer"

p. 358 "qnestion" changed to "question"

p. 358 "_oexn_" changed to "_oxen_"

p. 370 "is has" changed to "it has"

p. 375 "with may" changed to "which may"

p. 393 "respectively" changed to "respectively."

p. 394 "ablative" changed to "ablative."

p. 400 "hill;" changed to "hill;’"

p. 417 "forgotten than" changed to "forgotten that"

p. 441 "Ch. VIII § 9" changed to "Ch. VIII § 8"

p. 443 "_wost bist_" changed to "_wo-st bist_"

p. 447 "Puscariu" changed to "Pușcariu"

p. 447 "stump-words," changed to "stump-words"

Inconsistent or old spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have otherwise been retained as printed.

The following possible errors have been left as printed:

p. 130 Il a pleuvy

p. 215 austellung

p. 292 abusee

p. 359 dison

p. 378 finire