In carrying on the enquiry into the development of culture, evidence of some weight is to be gained from an examination of Language. Comparing the grammars and dictionaries of races at various grades of civilization, it appears that, in the great art of speech, the educated man at this day substantially uses the method of the savage, only expanded and improved in the working out of details. It is true that the languages of the Tasmanian and the Chinese, of the Greenlander and the Greek, differ variously in structure; but this is a secondary difference, underlaid by a primary similarity in method, namely, the expression of ideas by articulate sounds habitually allotted to them. Now all languages are found on inspection to contain some articulate sounds of a directly natural and directly intelligible kind. These are sounds of interjectional or imitative character, which have their meaning not by inheritance from parents or adoption from foreigners, but by being taken up directly from the world of sound into the world of sense. Like pantomimic gestures, they are capable of conveying their meaning of themselves, without reference to the particular language they are used in connexion with. From the observation of these, there have arisen speculations as to the origin of language, treating such expressive sounds as the fundamental constituents of language in general, and considering those of them which are still plainly recognizable as having remained more or less in their original state, long courses of adaptation and variation having produced from such the great mass of words in all languages, in which no connexion between idea and sound can any longer be certainly made out. Thus grew up doctrines of a ‘natural’ origin of language, which, dating from classic times, were developed in the eighteenth century into a system by that powerful thinker, the President Charles de Brosses, and in our own time have been expanded and solidified by a school of philologers, among whom Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood is the most prominent.[[247]] These theories have no doubt been incautiously and fancifully worked. No wonder that students who found in nature real and direct sources of articulate speech, in interjectional sounds like ah! ugh! h’m! sh! and in imitative sounds like purr, whiz, tomtom, cuckoo, should have thought that the whole secret of language lay within their grasp, and that they had only to fit the keys thus found into one hole after another to open every lock. When a philosopher has a truth in his hands, he is apt to stretch it farther than it will bear. The magic umbrella must spread and spread till it becomes a tent wide enough to shelter the king’s army. But it must be borne in mind that what criticism touches in these opinions is their exaggeration, not their reality. That interjections and imitative words are really taken up to some extent, be it small or large, into the very body and structure of language, no one denies. Such a denial, if anyone offered it, the advocates of the disputed theories might dispose of in the single phrase, that they would neither be pooh-poohed nor hooted down. It may be shown within the limits of the most strict and sober argument, that the theory of the origin of language in natural and directly expressive sounds does account for a considerable fraction of the existing copia verborum, while it raises a presumption that, could we trace the history of words more fully, it would account for far more.
In here examining interjectional and imitative sounds with their derivative words, as well as certain other parts of language of a more or less cognate character, I purpose to bring forward as far as possible new evidence derived from the languages of savage and barbarous races. By so doing it becomes practicable to use a check which in great measure stops the main source of uncertainty and error in such enquiries, the habit of etymologizing words off-hand from expressive sounds, by the unaided and often flighty fancy of a philologer. By simply enlarging the survey of language, the province of the imagination is brought within narrower limits. If several languages, which cannot be classed as distinctly of the same family, unite in expressing some notion by a particular sound which may fairly claim to be interjectional or imitative, their combined authority will go far to prove the claim a just one. For if it be objected that such words may have passed into the different languages from a common source, of which the trace is for the most part lost, this may be answered by the question, Why is there not a proportionate agreement between the languages in question throughout the far larger mass of words which cannot pretend to be direct sound-words? If several languages have independently chosen like words to express like meanings, then we may reasonably suppose that we are not deluding ourselves in thinking such words highly appropriate to their purpose. They are words which answered the conditions of original language, conforming as they do to the saying of Thomas Aquinas, that the names of things ought to agree with their natures, ‘nomina debent naturis rerum congruere.’ Applied in such comparison, the languages of the lower races contribute evidence of excellent quality to the problem. It will at the same time and by the same proofs appear, that savages possess in a high degree the faculty of uttering their minds directly in emotional tones and interjections, of going straight to nature to furnish themselves with imitative sounds, including reproductions of their own direct emotional utterances, as means of expression of ideas, and of introducing into their formal language words so produced. They have clearly thus far the means and power of producing language. In so far as the theories under consideration account for the original formation of language, they countenance the view that this formation took place among mankind in a savage state, and even, for anything appearing to the contrary, in a still lower stage of culture than has survived to our day.[[248]]
The first step in such investigation is to gain a clear idea of the various elements of which spoken language is made up. These may be enumerated as gesture, expression of feature, emotional tone, emphasis, force, speed, &c. of utterance, musical rhythm and intonation, and the formation of the vowels and consonants which are the skeleton of articulate speech.
In the common intercourse of men, speech is habitually accompanied by gesture, the hands, head, and body aiding and illustrating the spoken phrase. So far as we can judge, the visible gesture and the audible word have been thus used in combination since times of most remote antiquity in the history of our race. It seems, however, that in the daily intercourse of the lower races, gesture holds a much more important place than we are accustomed to see it fill, a position even encroaching on that which articulate speech holds among ourselves. Mr. Bonwick confirms by his experience Dr. Milligan’s account of the Tasmanians as using ‘signs to eke out the meaning of monosyllabic expressions, and to give force, precision, and character to vocal sounds.’ Captain Wilson remarks on the use of gesticulation in modifying words in the Chinook Jargon. There is confirmation to Spix and Martius’ description of low Brazilian tribes completing by signs the meaning of their scanty sentences, thus making the words ‘wood-go’ serve to say ‘I will go into the wood,’ by pointing the mouth like a snout in the direction meant. The Rev. J. L. Wilson, describing the Grebo language of West Africa, remarks that they have personal pronouns, but seldom use them in conversation, leaving it to gesture to determine whether a verb is to be taken in the first or second person; thus the words ‘ni ne’ will mean ‘I do it,’ or ‘you do it,’ according to the significant gestures of the speaker.[[249]] Beside such instances, it will hereafter be noticed that the lower races, in counting, habitually use gesture-language for a purpose to which higher races apply word-language. To this prominent condition of gesture as a means of expression among rude tribes, and to the development of pantomime in public show and private intercourse among such peoples as the Neapolitans of our own day, the most extreme contrast may be found in England, where, whether for good or ill, suggestive pantomime is now reduced to so small a compass in social talk, and even in public oratory.
Changes of the bodily attitude, corresponding in their fine gradations with changes of the feelings, comprise conditions of the surface of the body, postures of the limbs, and also especially those expressive attitudes of the face to which our attention is particularly directed when we notice one another. The visible expression of the features is a symptom which displays the speaker’s state of mind, his feelings of pleasure or disgust, of pride or humility, of faith or doubt, and so forth. Not that there is between the emotion and its bodily expression any originally intentional connexion. It is merely that a certain action of our physical machinery shows symptoms which we have learnt by experience to refer to a mental cause, as we judge by seeing a man sweat or limp that he is hot or footsore. Blushing is caused by certain emotions, and among Europeans it is a visible expression or symptom of them; not so among South American Indians, whose blushes, as Mr. David Forbes points out, may be detected by the hand or a thermometer, but being concealed by the dark skin cannot serve as a visible sign of feeling.[[250]] By turning these natural processes to account, men contrive to a certain extent to put on particular physical expressions, frowning or smiling for instance, in order to simulate the emotions which would naturally produce such expressions, or merely to convey the thought of such emotions to others. Now it is well known to every one that physical expression by feature, &c., forming a part of the universal gesture-language, thus serves as an important adjunct to spoken language. It is not so obvious, but on examination will prove to be true, that such expression by feature itself acts as a formative power in vocal language. Expression of countenance has an action beyond that of mere visible gesture. The bodily attitude brought on by a particular state of mind affects the position of the organs of speech, both the internal larynx, &c., and the external features whose change can be watched by the mere looker-on. Even though the expression of the speaker’s face may not be seen by the hearer, the effect of the whole bodily attitude of which it forms part is not thereby done away with. For on the position thus taken by the various organs concerned in speech, depends what I have here called ‘emotional tone,’ whereby the voice carries direct expression of the speaker’s feeling.
The ascertaining of the precise physical mode in which certain attitudes of the internal and external face come to correspond to certain moods of mind, is a physiological problem as yet little understood; but the fact that particular expressions of face are accompanied by corresponding and dependent expressions of emotional tone, only requires an observer or a looking-glass to prove it. The laugh made with a solemn, contemptuous, or sarcastic face, is quite different from that which comes from a joyous one; the ah! oh! ho! hey! and so on, change their modulations to match the expression of countenance. The effect of the emotional tone does not even require fitness in the meaning of the spoken words, for nonsense or an unknown tongue may be made to convey, when spoken with expressive intonation, the feelings which are displayed upon the speaker’s face. This expression may even be recognized in the dark by noticing the tone it gives forth, while the forced character given by the attempt to bring out a sound not matching even the outward play of the features can hardly be hidden by the most expert ventriloquist, and in such forcing, the sound perceptibly drags the face into the attitude that fits with it. The nature of communication by emotional tone seems to me to be somewhat on this wise. It does not appear that particular tones at all belong directly and of themselves to particular emotions, but that their action depends on the vocal organs of the speaker and hearer. Other animals, having vocal organs different from man’s, have accordingly, as we know, a different code of emotional tones. An alteration in man’s vocal organs would bring a corresponding alteration in the effect of tone in expressing feeling; the tone which to us expresses surprise or anger might come to express pleasure, and so forth. As it is, children learn by early experience that such and such a tone indicates such and such an emotion, and this they make out partly by finding themselves uttering such tones when their feelings have brought their faces to the appropriate attitudes, and partly by observing the expression of voice in others. At three or four years old they are to be seen in the act of acquiring this knowledge, turning round to look at the speaker’s face and gesture to make sure of the meaning of the tone. But in later years this knowledge becomes so familiar that it is supposed to have been intuitive. Then, when men talk together, the hearer receives from each emotional tone an indication, a signal, of the speaker’s attitude of body, and through this of his state of mind. These he can recognize, and even reproduce in himself, as the operator at one end of a telegraphic wire can follow, by noticing his needles, the action of his colleague at the other. In watching the process which thus enables one man to take a copy of another’s emotions through their physical effects on his vocal tone, we may admire the perfection with which a means so simple answers an end so complex, and apparently so remote.
By eliminating from speech all effects of gesture, of expression of face, and of emotional tone, we go far toward reducing it to that system of conventional articulate sounds which the grammarian and the comparative philologist habitually consider as language. These articulate sounds are capable of being roughly set down in signs standing for vowels and consonants, with the aid of accents and other significant marks; and they may then again be read aloud from these written signs, by any one who has learnt to give its proper sound to each letter.
What vowels are, is a matter which has been for some years well understood.[[251]] They are compound musical tones such as, in the vox humana stop of the organ, are sounded by reeds (vibrating tongues) fitted to organ-pipes of particular construction. The manner of formation of vowels by the voice is shortly this. There are situated in the larynx a pair of vibrating membranes called the vocal chords, which may be rudely imitated by stretching a piece of sheet india-rubber over the open end of a tube, so as to form two half-covers to it, ‘like the parchment of a drum split across the middle;’ when the tube is blown through, the india-rubber flaps will vibrate as the vocal chords do in the larynx, and give out a sound. In the human voice, the musical effect of the vibrating chords is increased by the cavity of the mouth, which acts as a resonator or sounding-box, and which also, by its shape at any moment, modifies the musical ‘quality’ or ‘timbre’ of the sound produced. This, not the less felt because its effects are not registered in musical notation, depends on the harmonic overtones accompanying the fundamental tone which alone musical notation takes account of. It makes the difference between the same note on two instruments, flute and piano for instance, while some instruments, as the violin, can give to one note a wide variation of quality. To such quality the formation of vowels is due. This is perfectly shown by the common Jew’s harp, which when struck can be made to utter the vowels a, e, i, o, u, &c., by simply putting the mouth in the proper position for speaking these vowels. In this experiment the player’s voice emits no sound, but the vibrating tongue of the Jew’s harp placed in front of the mouth acts as a substitute for the vocal chords, and the vowel-sounds are produced by the various positions of the cavity of the mouth, modifying the quality of the note, by bringing out with different degrees of strength the series of harmonic tones of which it is composed. As to musical theory, emotional tone and vowel-tone are connected. In fact, an emotional tone may be defined as a vowel, whose particular musical quality is that produced by the human vocal organs, when adjusted to a particular state of feeling.
Europeans, while using modulation of musical pitch as affecting the force of words in a sentence, know nothing of making it alter the dictionary-meaning of a word. But this device is known elsewhere, especially in South-East Asia, where rises and falls of tone, to some extent like those which serve us in conveying emphasis, question and answer, &c., actually give different signification. Thus in Siamese, há=to seek, hã=pestilence, hà=five. The consequence of this elaborate system of tone-accentuation is the necessity of an accumulation of expletive particles, to supply the place of the oratorical or emphatic intonation, which being thus given over to the dictionary is lost for the grammar. Another consequence is, that the system of setting poetry to music becomes radically different from ours; to sing a Siamese song to a European tune makes the meaning of the syllables alter according to their rise and fall in pitch, and turns their sense into the wildest nonsense.[[252]] In West Africa, again, the same device appears: thus in Dahoman so=stick, só=horse, sò=thunder; Yoruba, bá=with, bà=bend.[[253]] For practical purposes, this linguistic music is hardly to be commended, but theoretically it is interesting, as showing that man does not servilely follow an intuitive or inherited scheme of language, but works out in various ways the resources of sound as a means of expression.
The theory of consonants is much more obscure than that of vowels. They are not musical vibrations as vowels are, but noises accompanying them. To the musician such noises as the rushing of the wind from the organ-pipe, the scraping of the violin, the sputtering of the flute, are simply troublesome as interfering with his musical tones, and he takes pains to diminish them as much as may be. But in the art of language noises of this kind, far from being avoided, are turned to immense account by being used as consonants, in combination with the musical vowels. As to the positions and movements of the vocal organs in producing consonants, an excellent account with anatomical diagrams is given in Professor Max Müller’s second series of Lectures. For the present purpose of passing in review the various devices by which the language-maker has contrived to make sound a means of expressing thought, perhaps no better illustration of their nature can be mentioned than Sir Charles Wheatstone’s account of his speaking machine;[[254]] for one of the best ways of studying difficult phenomena is to see them artificially imitated. The instrument in question pronounced Latin, French, and Italian words well: it could say, ‘Je vous aime de tout mon cœur,’ ‘Leopoldus Secundus Romanorum Imperator,’ and so forth, but it was not so successful with German. As to the vowels, they were of course simply sounded by suitable reeds and pipes. To affect them with consonants, contrivances were arranged to act like the human organs. Thus p was made by suddenly removing the operator’s hand from the mouth of the figure, and b in the same way, except that the mouth was not quite covered, while an outlet like the nostrils was used in forming m; f and v were rendered by modifying the shape of the mouth by a hand; air was made to rush through small tubes to produce the sibilants s and sh; and the liquids r and l were sounded by the action of tremulous reeds. As Wheatstone remarks, the most important use of such ingenious mechanical imitations of speech may be to fix and preserve an accurate register of the pronunciation of different languages. A perfectly arranged speaking machine would in fact represent for us that framework of language which consists of mere vowels and consonants, though without most of those expressive adjuncts which go to make up the conversation of speaking men.