We may perhaps succeed in forming some idea of the most primitive process of associating sound and sense if we call to mind what was said above on the signification of the earliest words, and try to fathom what that means. The first words must have been as concrete and specialized in meaning as possible. Now, what are the words whose meaning is the most concrete and the most specialized? Without any doubt proper names—that is, of course, proper names of the good old kind, borne by and denoting only one single individual. How easily might not such names spring up in a primitive state such as that described above! In the songs of a particular individual there would be a constant recurrence of a particular series of sounds sung with a particular cadence; no one can doubt the possibility of such individual habits being contracted in olden as well as in present times. Suppose, then, that “in the spring time, the only pretty ring time” a lover was in the habit of addressing his lass “with a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino.” His comrades and rivals would not fail to remark this, and would occasionally banter him by imitating and repeating his “hey-and-a-ho-and-a-hey-nonino.” But when once this had been recognized as what Wagner would term a person’s ‘leitmotiv,’ it would be no far cry from mimicking it to using the “hey-and-a-ho-and-a-hey-nonino” as a sort of nickname for the man concerned; it might be employed, for instance, to signal his arrival. And when once proper names had been bestowed, common names (or nouns) would not be slow in following; we see the transition from one to the other class in constant operation, names originally used exclusively to denote an individual being used metaphorically to connote that person’s most characteristic peculiarities, as when we say of one man that he is a ‘Crœsus’ or a ‘Vanderbilt’ or ‘Rockefeller,’ and of another that he is ‘no Bismarck.’ A German schoolboy in the ’eighties said in his history lesson that Hannibal swore he would always be a Frenchman to the Romans. This is, at least, one of the ways in which language arrives at designations of such ideas as ‘rich,’ ‘statesman’ and ‘enemy.’ From the proper name of Cæsar we have both the Russian tsar’ and the German kaiser, and from Karol (Charlemagne) Russian korol’ ‘king’ (also in the other Slav languages) and Magyar király. Besides being designations for persons, proper names may also in some cases come to mean tools or other objects, originally in most cases probably as a term of endearment, as when in thieves’ slang a crowbar or lever is called a betty or jemmy; E. derrick and dirk, as well as G. dietrich, Dan. dirk, Swed. dyrk, is nothing but Dietrich (Derrick, Theodoricus), and thus in innumerable instances. In the École polytechnique in Paris there are many words of the same character: bacha ‘cours d’allemand’ from a teacher, M. Bacharach, borius ‘bretelles’ from General Borius, malo ‘éperon’ from Captain Malo, etc. (MSL 15. 179). Pamphlet is from Pamphilet, originally Pamphilus seu de Amore, the name of a popular booklet on an erotic subject. Compare also the history of the words bluchers, jack (boot-jack, jack for turning a spit, a pike, etc., also jacket), pantaloon, hansom, boycott, to burke, to name only a few of the best-known examples.
XXI.—§ 15. The Earliest Sentences.
Again, we saw above that the further back we went in the history of known languages, the more the sentence was one indissoluble whole, in which those elements which we are accustomed to think of as single words were not yet separated. Now, the idea that language began with sentences, not with words, appears to Whitney (Am. Journ. of Philol. 1. 338) to be, “if capable of any intelligent and intelligible statement, a fortiori, too wild and baseless to deserve respectful mention” (cf. also Madvig Kl 85). But the absurdity appears only if we think of sentences like those found in our languages, consisting of elements (words) capable of being used in other combinations and there forming other sentences: this seems to be what Gabelentz (Spr 351) imagines; but it is not so wild to imagine as the first beginning something which can be translated into our languages by means of a sentence, but which is not ‘articulated’ in the same way as such a sentence; we translate or explain the dental click (‘tut’) by means of the sentence ‘that is a pity,’ but the interjection is not in other respects a grammatical ‘sentence.’ Or we may take an illustration from the modern use of a telegraphic code: if suzaw means ‘I have not received your telegram,’ or sempo ‘reserve one single room and bath at first-class hotel’—we have unanalyzable wholes capable of being rendered in complete sentences, but not in every way analogous to these sentences.
Now, it is just units of this character (though not, of course, with exactly the same kind of meaning as the two code words) whose genesis we can most easily imagine on the supposition of a primitive period of meaningless singing. If a certain number of people have together witnessed some incident and have accompanied it with some sort of impromptu song or refrain, the two ideas are associated, and later on the same song will tend to call forth in the memory of those who were present the idea of the whole situation. Suppose some dreaded enemy has been defeated and slain; the troop will dance round the dead body and strike up a chant of triumph, say something like ‘Tarara-boom-de-ay!’ This combination of sounds, sung to a certain melody, will now easily become what might be called a proper name for that particular event; it might be roughly translated, ‘The terrible foe from beyond the river is slain,’ or ‘We have killed the dreadful man from beyond the river,’ or, ‘Do you remember when we killed him?’ or something of the same sort. Under slightly altered circumstances it may become the proper name of the man who slew the enemy. The development can now proceed further by a metaphorical transference of the expression to similar situations (‘There is another man of the same tribe: let us kill him as we did the first!’) or by a blending of two or more of these proper-name melodies. How this kind of blending may lead to the development of something like derivative affixes may be gathered from our chapter on Secretion; it may also result in parts of the whole melodic utterance being disengaged as something more like our ‘words.’ From the nature of the subject it is impossible to give more than hints, but I seem to see ways by which primitive ‘lieder ohne worte’ may have become, first, indissoluble rigmaroles, with something like a dim meaning attached to them, and then gradually combinations of word-like smaller units, more and more capable of being analyzed and combined with others of the same kind. Anyhow, this theory seems to explain better than any other the great part which fortuitous coincidence and irregularity always play in that part of any language which is not immediately intelligible, thus both in lexical and grammatical elements.
Primitive man came to attach meaning to what were originally rambling sequences of syllables in pretty much the same way as the child comes to attach a meaning to many of the words he hears from his elders, the whole situation in which they are heard giving a clue to their interpretation. The difference is that in the latter case the speaker has already associated a meaning with the sound; but from the point of view of the hearer this is comparatively immaterial: the savage of a far-distant age hearing some syllables for the first time and the child hearing them nowadays are in essentially the same position as to their interpretation. Parallels are also found in the words of the mamma class (Ch. VIII § [8]), in which hearers give a signification to something pronounced unintentionally, the same syllables being then capable of serving afterwards as real words. If one of our forebears on some occasion accidentally produced a sequence of sounds, and if the people around him were seen (or heard) to respond appreciatively, he would tend to settle on the same string of sounds and repeat it on similar occasions, and in this way it would gradually become ‘conventionalized’ as a symbol of what was then foremost in his and in their minds. As in agriculture primitive man reaped before he sowed, so also in his vocal outbursts he first reaped understanding, and then discovered that by intentionally sowing the same seed he was able to call forth the same result. And as with corn, he would slowly and gradually, by weeding out (i.e. by not using) what was less useful to him, improve the quality, till finally he had come into possession of the marvellous, though far from perfect, instrument which we now call our language. The development of our ordinary speech has been largely an intellectualization, and the emotional quality which played the largest part in primitive utterances has to some extent been repressed; but it is not extinct, and still gives a definite colouring to all passionate and eloquent speaking and to poetic diction. Language, after all, is an art—one of the finest of arts.
XXI.—§ 16. Conclusion.
Language, then, began with half-musical unanalyzed expressions for individual beings and solitary events. Languages composed of, and evolved from, such words and quasi-sentences are clumsy and insufficient instruments of thought, being intricate, capricious and difficult. But from the beginning the tendency has been one of progress, slow and fitful progress, but still progress towards greater and greater clearness, regularity, ease and pliancy. No one language has arrived at perfection; an ideal language would always express the same thing by the same, and similar things by similar means; any irregularity or ambiguity would be banished; sound and sense would be in perfect harmony; any number of delicate shades of meaning could be expressed with equal ease; poetry and prose, beauty and truth, thinking and feeling would be equally provided for: the human spirit would have found a garment combining freedom and gracefulness, fitting it closely and yet allowing full play to any movement.
But, however far our present languages are from that ideal, we must be thankful for what has been achieved, seeing that—
Language is a perpetual orphic song,
Which rules with Dædal harmony a throng