The cry is the primordial fact, the pure animal language, a simple vocal aspiration, without articulation. It is either reflex, expressing needs and emotions, or, at a stage higher, intentional (to call, warn, menace, etc.). It has been said that the speechlessness of animals is due to the imperfection of their auditory[?] organs, and want of organic correspondence between their acoustic images and the muscular movements that produce sound: but the cause of this aphasia must also, and above all, be referred to their weak cerebral development; this applies also to primitive man. “What function could words have fulfilled when the anthropoid of the Neanderthal or the Naulette roamed, naked and solitary, from ditch to ditch, through the thick atmosphere, over marshy soil, stone in hand, seeking edible plants or berries, or the trail of females as savage as himself?”[47] It is intelligence that creates its instruments, as well speech as all the rest.
Vocalisation (emission of vowels only) does not in itself contain the essential elements of speech. Many animals practise it; our vowels, long or short, even our diphthongs, can readily be recognised in the voice of different species (dog, cat, horse, birds in large numbers, etc.). In the child, it succeeds the period of the simple cry; and since it is admitted that the development of the individual hints at that of the race; that, moreover, many primitive languages or rudimentary idioms (as such, near the time of their origin) are very rich in vowels,—it has been concluded that there existed a longer or shorter period intermediate between those of the cry and of articulation (this thesis has close affinities with the theory of Darwin, Spencer, etc., which has been rejected by other evolutionists); that speech is derived from song, intellectual language from emotional language; in other words, that man could sing before he could speak. Various facts are alleged in support of this theory: (1) In monosyllabic languages, which are generally held to be the most ancient, the accent plays a cardinal rôle; the same syllable, according to the tone which accompanies it, takes on the most widely different meanings. Such is the case of the Chinese. In Siamese, hă = to seek; hâ = plague; hà = five. (2) Other languages in which intonation is of less importance, are nevertheless in close relation with song, and by reason of their vocabulary and of the grammatical construction, modulation is necessary for giving a complete sense to the words and phrases. (3) Even in our own languages, which are completely dissociated from song, the voice is not even in tone; it can be greatly modified according to circumstances. Helmholtz showed that for such banal phrases as “I have been for a walk,” “Have you been for a walk?” the voice drops a quarter-tone for the affirmation, and rises a fifth for the interrogation. H. Spencer called attention to several facts of the same order, all commonplace. (4) The impassioned language of emotion resembles song: the voice returns to its original form; “it tends,” according to Darwin, “to assume a musical character, in virtue of the principle of association.”
Whatever may be the force of this reasoning, conclusive for some, doubtful for others, the conditions necessary to the existence of speech arose with articulation only, consonants being its firmest element. The origin of speech has been much disputed. Romanes invokes natural selection: “The first articulation probably consisted in nothing further than a semiotic breaking of vocal tones, in a manner resembling that which still occurs in the so-called chattering of monkeys,—the natural language for the expression of their mental states.”[48] It should, however, be noted that the question, under this form, has merely a physiological interest. The voice is as natural to man as are the movements of his limbs; between simple voice and articulate voice there is but the same distance as between the irregular movements of the limbs of the newly born, and such well-co-ordinated movements as walking. Articulation is merely one of the forms of expression: it is so little human that it is met with, as we have seen, among many of the lower animals. The true psychological problem lies elsewhere: in the employment of articulate sounds as objective signs, and the attaching of these to objects with which they are related by no natural tie.
Geiger in his Ursprung der Sprache (1878) brought forward a hypothesis which has been sustained by other authors. It may be summed up as follows: words are an imitation of the movements of the mouth. The predominant sense in man is that of sight; man is pre-eminently visual. Prior to the acquisition of speech, he communicated with his fellows by the aid of gestures, and movements of the mouth and face; he appealed to their eyes. Their facial “grimaces,” fulfilled and elucidated by gesture, became signs for others; they fixed their attention on them. When articulate sounds came into being, these lent themselves to a more or less conventional language by reason of their acquired importance. For support of this hypothesis, we are referred to the case of non-educated deaf-mutes. These invent articulate sounds (which of course they cannot hear), and use them to designate certain things. While many of these words appear to be an arbitrary creation (e. g., ga = one, ricke = I will not, etc.), others result from the imitation by their mouth of the movements perceived on the mouth of others. Such are mumm = to eat; chip = to drink; be-yr = barking of a dog, etc.[49] Why should primitive man have done less than the deaf-mute, when he not only saw the movements but heard the sounds to boot?
To conclude with a subject in which individual hypotheses abound, and which for us is only of indirect interest, we may summarise the sketch given recently enough (1888) by one of the principal partisans of the evolutionary theory:
“Starting from the highly intelligent and social species of anthropoid ape as pictured by Darwin, we can imagine that this animal was accustomed to use its voice freely for the expression of its emotions, uttering of danger-signals, and singing. Possibly enough also it may have been sufficiently intelligent to use a few imitative sounds; and certainly sooner or later the receptual life of this social animal must have advanced far enough to have become comparable with that of an infant at about two years of age. That is to say, this animal, although not yet having begun to use articulate signs, must have advanced far enough in the conventional use of natural signs (or signs with a natural origin in tone and gesture, whether spontaneous only or intentionally imitative) to have admitted of a tolerably free exchange of receptual ideas, such as would be concerned in animal wants, and even, perhaps, in the simplest forms of co-operative action. Next, I think it probable that the advance of receptual intelligence which would have been occasioned by this advance in sign-making, would in turn have led to a further development of the latter,—the two thus acting and reacting on each other until the language of tone and gesture became gradually raised to the level of imperfect pantomime, as in children before they begin to use words. At this stage, however, or even before it, I think very probably vowel-sounds must have been employed in tone-language, if not also a few of the consonants. Eventually the action and reaction of receptual intelligence and conventional sign-making must have ended in so far developing the former as to have admitted of the breaking up (or articulation) of vocal sounds, as the only direction in which any further improvement of vocal sign-making was possible. I think it not improbable that this important stage in the development of speech was greatly assisted by the already existing habit of articulating musical notes, supposing our progenitors to have resembled the gibbons or the chimpanzees in this respect. But long after this first rude beginning of articulate speech, the language of tone and gesture would have continued as much the most important machinery of communication. Even if we were able to strike in again upon the history thousands of years later, we should find that pantomime had been superseded by speech. I believe it was an inconceivably long time before this faculty of articulate sign-making had developed sufficiently far to begin to starve out the more primitive and natural systems; and I believe that, even after this starving-out process did begin, another inconceivable lapse of time must have been required for such progress to have eventually transformed Homo alalus into Homo sapiens.”[50]
Among all these hypotheses we may choose or not choose; and while we have dwelt briefly on this debated problem, whose literature is copious, we may yet have said too much on what is mere conjecture.
One certain fact remains, that—notwithstanding the theory by which speech is likened to an instinct breaking forth spontaneously in man—it was at its origin so weak, so inadequate and poor, that it perforce leaned upon the language of gesture to become intelligible. Specimens of this mixed language are still surviving among inferior races that have nothing in common between them, inhabiting regions of the earth with no common resemblances.
In some cases speech coexists with the language of action (Tasmanians, Greenlanders, savage tribes of Brazil, Grebos of Western Africa, etc.). Gesture is here indispensable for giving precision to the vocal sounds; it may even modify the sense. Thus, in one of these idioms, ni ne signifies “I do it,” or “You do it,” according to the gesture of the speaker. The Bushman vocabulary is so incomplete and has to be reinforced by so many mimic signs, that it cannot be understood in the dark. In order to converse at night, the tribe is obliged to gather round the fire.
In other cases, speech coexists with inarticulate sounds (Fuegians, Hottentots, certain tribes of North America) which travellers have compared, respectively, to clinking and clapping. These sounds have been classified according to the physiological process by which they are produced, into four (or even six) species: dental, palatal, cerebral, lateral; it is impossible to translate them by an articulated equivalent. “Their clappings survive,” says Sayce, “as though to show us how man, when deprived of speech, can fix and transmit his thought by certain sounds.” Among the Gallas, the orator haranguing the assembly marks the punctuation of his discourse by cracking a leather thong. The blow, according to its force, indicates a comma, semi-colon, or stop; a violent blow makes an exclamation.[51]