Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

CHAPTER VII.

ARTICULATION.

It will be my aim in this chapter to take a broad view of Articulation as a special development of the general faculty of sign-making, reserving for subsequent chapters a consideration of the philosophy of Speech.

On the threshold of articulate language, then, we have four several cases to distinguish: first, articulation by way of meaningless imitation; second, meaningless articulation by way of a spontaneous or instinctive exercise of the organs of speech; third, understanding of the signification of articulate sounds, or words; and fourth, articulation with an intentional attribution of the meaning understood as attaching to the words. I shall consider each of these cases separately.

The meaningless imitation of articulate sounds occurs in talking birds, young children, not unfrequently in savages, in idiots, and in the mentally deranged. The faculty of such meaningless imitation, however, need not detain us; for it is evident that the mere re-echoing of a verbal sound is of no further psychological significance than is the mimicking of any other sound.

Meaningless articulation of a spontaneous or instinctive kind occurs in young children, in uneducated deaf-mutes, and also in idiots.[77] Infants usually (though not invariably) begin with such syllables as “alla,” “tata,” “mama,” and “papa” (with or without the reduplication) before they understand the meaning of any word. One of my own children could say all these syllables very distinctly at the age of eight months and a half; and I could detect no evidence at that time of his understanding words, or of his having learnt these syllabic utterances by imitation. Another child of mine, which was very long in beginning to speak, at fourteen and a half months old said once, and only once, but very distinctly “Ego.” This was certainly not said in imitation of any one having uttered the word in her presence, and therefore I mention the incident to show that meaningless articulation in young children is spontaneous or instinctive, as well as intentionally imitative; for at that age the only other syllables which this child had uttered were those having the long [=a], as above mentioned. Were it necessary, I could give many other instances of this fact; but, as it is generally recognized by writers on infant psychology, I need not wait to do so.

We now come to the third of our divisions, or the understanding of articulate sounds. And this is an important matter for us, because it is evident that the faculty of appreciating the meaning of words betokens a considerable advance in the general faculty of language. As we have before seen, tone and gesture, being the natural expression of the logic of recepts—and so even in their most elaborated forms being intentionally pictorial,—are as little as possible conventional; but words, being coined expressly for the subservience of concepts, are always less graphic, and usually arbitrary. Therefore, although it would of course be wrong to say that a higher faculty is required to learn the arbitrary association between a particular verbal sound and a particular act or phenomenon, than is required to depict an abstract idea in gesture; this only shows that where higher faculties are present, they are able to display themselves in gesture as well as in speech. The consideration which I now wish to present is that understanding a word implies (other things equal, or supposing the gesture not to be so purely conventional as a word) a higher development of the sign-making faculty than does the understanding of a tone or gesture—so that, for instance, if an animal were to understand the word “Whip,” it would show itself more intelligent in appreciating signs than it would by understanding the gesture of threatening as with a whip.

Now, the higher animals unquestionably do understand the meanings of words; idiots too low in the scale themselves to speak are in the same position; and infants learn the signification of many articulate sounds long before they begin themselves to utter them.[78] In all these cases it is of course important to distinguish between the understanding of words and the understanding of tones; for, as already observed, both in the animal kingdom and in the growing child it is evident that the former represents a much higher grade of mental evolution than does the latter—a fact so obvious to common observation that I need not wait to give illustrations. But although the fact is obvious, it is no easy matter to distinguish in particular cases whether the understanding is due to an appreciation of words, to that of tones, or to both combined. We may be sure, however, that words are never understood unless tones are likewise so, and that understanding of words may be assisted by understanding of the tones in which they are uttered. Therefore, the only method of ascertaining where words as such are first understood, is to find where they are first understood irrespective of the tones in which they are uttered. This criterion—so far, at least, as my evidence goes—excludes all cases of animals obeying commands, answering to their names, &c., with the exception of the higher mammalia. That is to say, while the understanding of certain tones of the human voice extends at least through the entire vertebrated series,[79] and occurs in infants only a few weeks old; the understanding of words without the assistance of tones appears to occur only in a few of the higher mammalia, and first dawns in the growing child during the second year.[80]

The fact that the more intelligent Mammalia are able to understand words irrespective of tones is, as I have said, important; and therefore I shall devote a few sentences to prove it.

My friend Professor Gerald Yeo had a terrier, which was taught to keep a morsel of food on its snout till it received the verbal signal “Paid for;” and it was of no consequence in what tones these words were uttered. For even if they were introduced in an ordinary stream of conversation, the dog distinguished them, and immediately tossed the food into his mouth. Seeing this, I thought it worth while to try whether the animal would be able to distinguish the words “Paid for” from others presenting a close similarity of sound; and, therefore, while he was expecting the signal, I said “Pinafore;” the dog gave a start, and very nearly threw the food off his nose; but immediately arrested the movement, evidently perceiving his mistake. This experiment was repeated many times with these two closely similar verbal sounds, and always with the same result: the dog clearly distinguished between them. I have more recently repeated this experiment on another terrier, which had been taught the same trick, and obtained exactly the same results.