Philological Proofs of the Original Unity and Recent Origin of the Human Race

by Arthur James Johnes

Those writers who have espoused, and those who have impugned, the conclusion that language is the natural fruit of the endowments which have been conferred on our species, have, for the most part, mutually assumed that conclusion to be irreconcilable with the common origin of the different nations and languages of the globe. Each ancient sept, they take for granted, must in that case be inferred to have had a distinct origin, and to have invented a distinct language for itself. But there is no necessary connexion between the premises and the conclusion. All nations may have emanated from one parent sept, and all languages may have sprung from one parent tongue, and yet the parent speech may, notwithstanding, have been the product of Man's own native energies in the earliest era of his existence! Our species may have been invested with the faculty of constructing a language adequate to meet all its first wants, and yet that faculty may have been exercised only once!

The conclusion adopted above is supported by the dictates of Analogy, as traceable in the instance of provisions made for wants analogous to those which language is calculated to supply. Destined to pass successively through various phases of civilization, and to push his colonies into every clime and country, Man required and has received, both in his physical and mental constitution, powers of adaptation [pg 101] that enable him to conform to those marvellous changes which are incident to his condition as a Progressive Being. His first infantine feelings are expressed by imitations of surrounding objects, and as his higher moral and intellectual faculties are developed, they find utterance in metaphors derived from the organs of sensation. In those advances which he was mysteriously intended to make from age to age, he would have been fettered and not aided by the gift of an immutable language! His wants in this respect have been more wisely provided for by the power which has evidently been conferred upon him of framing in the first instance a language calculated to express his earliest wants as they successively arose, and of subsequently moulding it to suit the emergencies of his condition.

It was the opinion of Adam Smith that the elements of language consist of Nouns or Names of things. From this opinion, M. Du Ponceau dissents. Nor is this conclusion confirmed by an analysis of languages, which serves to show, on the contrary, that these elements or roots partake less of the character of Nouns or Names of Objects than of that of Verbs or terms descriptive of their actions and qualities. This result appears to be a necessary consequence of the imitative origin of language, for it is only their characteristic sounds or other salient qualities that admit of imitation, it is impossible to copy by the voice the objects themselves! The English word Cuc-koo furnishes an excellent example. This word is now used as a Noun or Name. But it is quite manifest that originally it was a mere imitation of the characteristic cry of the bird, in other words it was descriptive of a single quality or action!

But though they partake of the character of Verbs rather than of that of Nouns, it will, I conceive, appear that the roots or elements of language do not in reality belong to any existing class of grammatical terms. In the Hebrew and the [pg 102] Sanscrit the “Root” is neither a Noun nor a Verb, but the common basis of both. Nor is the application of this maxim confined to ancient languages; it may be shown to apply extensively to modern languages also, as in the following examples, derived from the English:

Root.	Noun.	Verb.
Burst.	Burst.	I burst.
Thrust.	Thrust.	I thrust.
Crack.	Crack. Crack-er.	I crack.
Wrench.	Wrench.
Hiss.	Hiss.	I hiss.
Rumble.	Rumbl-er.	It rumbles.
Break.	Break. Break-er.	I break, &c.
Croak.	Croak. Croak-er.	I croak.

The previous examples will serve to illustrate at once the proposition they are intended to support, and also the imitative character of the roots or elements of language. This character, it will be observed, does not occur exclusively in terms primarily descriptive of sounds, it is displayed in an equally unequivocal manner in terms descriptive of other physical qualities, as in “Thrust, Burst, Wrest,” &c.

It is obvious that the human voice possesses the power of copying sounds more perfectly than other external impressions. But the attempt at imitation is not more conspicuous than it is in other cases, in which the imitation is necessarily more imperfect. Thus Kōōm, used in Persia and Wales for “a hollow circular valley,” “Coop” (English), are attempts by means of the motion of the lips, &c. to imitate the shapes of the subjects of description.

The evidence furnished by language in support of the proposition [pg 103] suggested above, viz., that its roots or elements do not consist either of Nouns or Verbs, but of sounds which constitute the common basis of both, will be found, I conceive, to derive direct confirmation from an examination of the faculties employed in the formation of language, and the order of their development.

Man is endowed with two faculties of a very different nature, of which language seems to be the joint product, viz., with powers of imitation and powers of reflection. Now the elementary sounds, or roots of language, may be viewed as exclusively the work of the imitative propensity; the steady appropriation of these elements as recognized descriptions of actions and objects seems, on the other hand, to be the result of the progressive growth and of the reiterated subsequent exercise of the functions of Memory and Abstraction. Thus we find infants mimic sounds long before we can suppose their minds to be sufficiently developed permanently to associate such sounds with particular objects; afterwards, as their faculties are gradually unfolded, these imitations are appropriated as names. Accordingly we find that almost all children are in the habit of using a certain number of words thus formed, which are understood and employed by the guardians and companions of their infancy.[89] An instructive example of the natural activity of those mental qualities to which language first owed its existence—an activity which is repressed by no other cause than by the maturity of languages in use, which fully meet all the exigencies of the social state!

The vehement gesticulations of uncivilized tribes is another manifestation of the imitative propensity. Nor are the vestiges of its influence among civilized nations altogether confined [pg 104] to the period of childhood. They may be recognized in the marked, though generally unconscious, disposition we feel to select words imitative of the ideas we seek to convey, and in the pleasure we derive from works of imagination, in which the sound is rendered “an echo of the sense,” in conformity to the critical rule of classical antiquity. Of the sublime associations called forth by a happy appeal to the imitative faculty, we possess a fine example in the lines of the great living Poet, which, with a fastidiousness as marvellous as the genius by which they were conceived, he proposed to cancel, as being “Drum and Trumpet lines!”[90]