Without pursuing the inquiry whether language is born of inarticulate cries, of onomatopæias or otherwise, whether it has a single or a multiple origin, we may content ourselves with stating the fact, that language does not constitute the only means by which men may understand each other and communicate ideas. There are several others. They may be arranged in three groups:—means of communicating near at hand: gestures and words; means of communicating at a relatively remote distance: various signals; means of communicating at any distance and time whatever: writing.
Gestures.—Many gestures are natural and common to all men. All who have had to ask for anything to eat or drink in a foreign country without knowing the language, must have appreciated this means of international communication. However, the same gestures do not always and everywhere signify the same thing. Let us take, for example, the simplest ideas, negation and affirmation. In Central and Northern Europe these ideas are expressed, as every one knows, by a bending of the head forward and by lateral movements of the head. But there are few exotic peoples (Andamanese, Ainus, certain Hindus) who make use of the same gestures. Most of them, on the contrary, affirm by shaking the head laterally (Arabs, Botocudos, certain Negroes) and deny by raising it; most frequently this latter gesture is accompanied by an uplifting of the eyebrows (Abyssinians) or a particular smacking of the tongue (Syro-Arabs, Naya-Kurumbas, etc.). The natives of the Admiralty Islands express negation by a tap on the nose.[153] In Italy and generally in Mediterranean Europe, the signs of negation, with many other feelings besides, are expressed by gestures of the hands; thus to say “no,” the hand is moved sharply before the breast, the fingers being closed except the forefinger, which is held up vertically. Perhaps the practice of carrying burdens on the head, thus preventing the movements of this part of the body, has had something to do with the abundant development of gestures with the arms by which the European of the south may be recognised. An almost analogous sign, but consisting in a slow movement outward and downward, signifies “yes” among the Indians of North America. These last have pushed to the utmost limits the use of the language of gesture. G. Mallery has collected the treasures of this language, which is being lost to-day, and has drawn up a vocabulary of it.[154] At the period when this language flourished, the Indians were able to express by gestures not only common and proper nouns, but also verbs, pronouns, particles, etc.; they made elaborate speeches by combining the gestures of the body, the head, and the arms. They introduced abbreviations exactly as that is done in pictographic writing. Here is an example of how a Dakota Indian (Fig. [26]) says by means of gestures, I am going home: he brings his hand with the forefinger stretched out towards his breast (I), then extends it forward and outward as high as the shoulder (am going), and, closing the fist, he lets it drop abruptly (home). It is supposed that extreme diversity of dialects has been the chief cause of the development of this strange sign-language; it would serve as a bond between tribes which could not converse with one another.
FIG. 26.—Dakota Indian gesture language.
(After Mallery.)
Speech.—Setting aside the almost unique example of the North American Indians, gestures are generally only the auxiliaries of speech. The latter, which is the exclusive appanage of the genus Homo, while it is formed of a somewhat limited number of articulate sounds, nevertheless presents such a mass of varied combinations of these sounds that at first one would expect to be lost in the multitude of languages, dialects, idioms, vernacular forms, etc. Fortunately, linguists have been able to establish the fact that, in spite of their apparent diversity, dialects are capable of being grouped into languages, and the latter into linguistic families, which, in their turn, have been reduced, according to their morphological structure, to three principal groups: monosyllabic or isolating languages, agglutinative languages, and inflectional languages.
In the monosyllabic languages all the words are roots, there are neither suffixes nor prefixes nor any modification of the words, and their relation in a proposition is only given by the respective places which they occupy in it. Thus in the Chinese language the word ta may signify “great, greatness, greatly, to enlarge,” according to its position in the phrase. The grammar is entirely a matter of syntax. Homophonous words of various signification abound in it, and in speech are only distinguished by the way in which they are pronounced, by the tones, high, low, rising, falling, interrogatory, etc.
In agglutinative languages the words are formed of several elements, adhering, agglutinated together, of which one only possesses its own peculiar value, the others being coupled with it to define it, and having an entirely relative signification. The first of these elements is the root of the word, whilst the others are only obsolete roots, having lost their own signification, and are reduced to the rank of determinative particles or affixes with a definite meaning. The affixes may be placed before the root (as in the Bantu languages), and then they bear the name of prefixes, or at the end (as in Turkish and Mongolian), and then they are called suffixes. Thus the suffix lar or liar in Turkish gives the signification of the plural of the word to which it is joined (ex. arkan, the rope; arkanlar, the ropes); the suffix tchi designates the person concerned with something, etc., for instance, arkantchi, rope-maker; the suffix ly indicates possession (ex. arkanly, with a cord, attached). Other suffixes, la, lyk, denote action, quality (arkanla, to attach with a cord; arkanlyk, the best kind of cord).[155]
Among the agglutinative languages we distinguish a special group called polysynthetic or incorporating languages; this group is formed exclusively of American idioms. It is characterised by the phenomenon of incorporation, by syncope or by ellipsis, of nouns to the verb, so as to form but one word of the whole proposition; for instance, in Algonkin, the phrase-word nadholiniu, “bring us the canoe,” is formed of the elided words naten bring, amochol canoe, i euphonic, and niu to us. A similar incorporation takes place when in Italian they say, for instance, dicendo-ci-lo, “in telling it to us.”
The inflectional languages differ from the agglutinative to this extent, that the root may modify its form to express its relations with another root. But this change is not indispensable; sometimes the inflection may be attained by the modification of prefix or suffix. Thus, in Hebrew, the root mlch gives, when modified, malach he reigned, malchu they reigned, melechu the king, melachim kings, etc.