“Of miscellaneous words may be mentioned gar, ‘horse;’ deer, ‘money of any kind;’ beer, ‘literature, books, or school;’ peer, ‘ball;’ bau, ‘soldier, music;’ odo, ‘to send for, to go out, to take away;’ keh, ‘to soil;’ pa-ma, ‘to go to sleep, pillow, bed.’ The variety of acceptations which each word was capable of receiving is exemplified in many ways. Thus feu might become an adjective, as ne-pa-feu, ‘not warm.’ The verb odo had many meanings, according to its position or the words which accompanied it. Ma odo, ‘I (want to) go out;’ gar odo, ‘send for the horse;’ too odo, ‘all gone.’ Gaan signified God; and we are told—When it rains, the children often run to the window, and call out, Gaan odo migno-migno, feu odo, which means, ‘God take away the rain, and send the sun’—odo before the object meaning ‘to take away,’ and after the object, ‘to send.’ From this remark and example we learn, not merely that the language had—as all real languages must have—its rules of construction, but that these were sometimes different from the English rules. This also appears in the form mea waia-waiaw, ‘dark furs’ (literally, ‘furs dark’), where the adjective follows its substantive.
“The odd and unexpected associations which in all languages govern the meaning of words are apparent in this brief vocabulary. We can gather from it that the parents were Catholics, and punctual in church observances. The words papa and mamma were used separately in their ordinary sense; but when linked together in the compound term papa-mamma, they signified (according to the connection, we may presume), ‘church,’ ‘prayer-book,’ ‘cross,’ ‘priest,’ ‘to say their prayers.’ Bau was ‘soldier;’ but, we are told, from seeing the bishop in his mitre and vestments, thinking he was a soldier, they applied the word bau to him. Gar odo properly signified ‘send for the horse;’ but as the children frequently saw their father, when a carriage was wanted, write an order and send it to the stable, they came to use the same expression (gar odo) for pencil and paper.
“There is no appearance of inflection, properly speaking, in the language; and this is only what might be expected. Very young children rarely use inflected forms in any language. The English child of three or four years says, ‘Mary cup,’ for ‘Mary’s cup;’ and ‘Dog bite Harry’ will represent every tense and mood. It is by no means improbable that, if the children had continued to use their own language for a few years longer, inflections would have been developed in it, as we see that peculiar forms of construction and novel compounds—which are the germs of inflection—had already made their appearance.
“These two recorded instances of child-languages have led to further inquiries, which, though pursued only for a brief period, and in a limited field, have shown that cases of this sort are by no means uncommon.”
The author then proceeds to furnish other corroborative instances; but the above quotations are, I think, sufficient for my purposes.[88] For they show (1) that the spontaneous and to all appearances arbitrary word-making, which is more or less observable in all children when first beginning to speak, may, under favourable circumstances, proceed to an astonishing degree of fulness and efficiency; (2) that although the words, or articulate signs, thus invented are sometimes of a plainly onomatopoetic origin, as a general rule they are not so; (3) that the words are far from being always monosyllabic; (4) that they admit of becoming sufficiently numerous and varied to constitute a not inefficient language, without as yet having advanced to the inflexional stage; and (5) that the syntax of this language presents obvious points of resemblance to that of the gesture-languages of mankind previously considered.
CHAPTER VIII.
RELATION OF TONE AND GESTURE TO WORDS.
We have already seen that spoken language differs from the language of tone and gesture in being, as a system of signs, more purely conventional. This means that for semiotic purposes articulation is a higher product of mental evolution than either gesticulation or intonation. It also means that as an instrument of such evolution articulate speech is more efficient. The latter point is an important one, so I shall proceed to deal with it at some length.