ORIGIN OF SPEECH

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 118, 14 November 1929, Page 24

ORIGIN OF SPEECH

DEVELOPED AS GESTURE SCIENTIST'S THEORY (By Albert Parsons Sachs.) (Copyright.) There do not seem to have been any clear-cut explanations of how the human race began its habits of speech and how the particular words we happen to use were chosen for the purposes they now fulfil. It is, of course, possible that words themselves contain the solution of the mystery of their origin, but it must be remembered that language as we know it is far removed from its original form, and that in its present complex developed status the clues may be hidden beneath the growth of centuries and the changes occurring in the natural evolution of speech.

Sir Richard A. S. Paget has offered a theory which is of great interest and seems to have the germs of truth in it. It correlates a good deal of scattered information which we now have, and it seems to offer a sound theory of the evolution of language and words.

PRIMITIVE COMMUNICATION. -His theory is that human speech developed as a branch of human gesture. Primitive human communication was by gesture accompanied by sounds, the sound suited tho gesture, or, as we might say in modern speech, the word suited the action. Sir Richard tried to find out what sound suited the action.

When we speak to a baby or smile at it, move our face ingratiatingly toward the child, and we say in gentle tones: "You dear, little child." We probably purse our lips. As a matter of fact, we do not expect the child to understand pur words, but we hope, sometimes vainly, that it will understand our gestures of smiling, moving gently forward" and making soft, pleasant sounds. In fact, we almost seem to mimic with our mouth gestures the smallness of the child.

And when we speak to the bully we wave our fists defiantly in his face and, with jaw protruding menacingly, we shout loudly, according to our feelings. It almost seems that we are not so much trying to say something in words as with gestures, accompanied by appropriate sounds. In our emotional moments we return in our methods to the childhood of the race and do things more- nearly as our unknown ancestors did them. "*

.'. Sir Richard has found that previous writers noted that in many different languages words containing the vowel sound "i" (as in the word, "it") are used to mean "little" or "near," while words containing the vowel sound "aw" or "o" or "v" mean "large" or "far," Sir Richard assumes the reason for this relatively constant use of -these vowel sounds in these classes of words to be that the sound "i" is formed by using the small resonator, between the front of the tongue and lips, which is the near position of the tongue and lips. In other words, words for little and near are formed with the mouth shaped as a little cavity with the tongue and lips near each other. Contrawise, the sound "aw" or "o" and "v" are made by the use of a large front resonator, or with ■ the tongue in the far , position from the lips. If the reader will utte? these sounds he will understand the point more easily. \ THE ORIGINAL WORD.

On the basis of this speculation, Sir Richard hazarded the suggestion that the original word in human, speech for "little was "i-i" (pronounced "ee-ee"; it must be remembered that it is almost impossible to indicate exact shades of vowel sounds with the few vowel letters which our language possesses unless special marks are added). Similarly, he suggested that the word for "large" was "aw-aw." An expert was able to point out that in primitive Polynesian and archaic Japanese the words for "little" and "big," respectively are I'l and OHO.

In view of this apparent confirmation in a simple case of his suggestion, Sir Richard set out to produce a number of what might be called fabricated words in which the pantomimic hand gesture considered necessary for the action was simulated by the motion of the tongue and lips. Dr. Gregory, of the American Museum of Natural History, has pointed out that the original gesture used in human communication was probably a generalised gesture, a gesture not only of the hands but of t.he body itself, and included. a mouth gesture. The mouth gesture would lead to the utterance of a sound, and in the course of time the accompanying bodily gestures were dropped, leaving only the sound or word. Such behaviour would be quite in accord with what we know of conditional reflexes. ,

Sir Richard made a list of actions to be described, and then he performed the accompanying pantomimic hand gesture; then he simulated the hand gesture by a tongue and lip gesture, and obtained a phonetic resultant which in turn was compared with words of corresponding or similar significance in Polynesian, Melanesian, Indoesian, and archaic Japanese.

The same principle should apply to our own language, especially in • its primitive form. Modern European languages are derived chiefly from a common ancestral language which is now lost. Comparative studies of languages have, however, indicated the existence of a large number of common roots known as Aryan roots. These common roots are undoubtedly closer to the original language of our ancestors than any modern offspring from the primitive Aryan language. Lists of these Aryan roots or root-words are given in various text books. Professor Walter Skeat has included a large number in his Etymological Dictionary of1 the English language. Sir Richard has tested a considerable number of these to determine whether the tongue and lip gesture is related to the pantomimic hand or body gesture. . -■ CHILDREN'S INVENTED LANGUAGE. It is possible that these pantomimic derivations of the root words are fanciful and the correspondence may be accidental. An additional observation, however, supports Sir Richard's theory and lends' support to his conclusions. It might be reasonable to suppose that the language of children, if devised by themselves and not taught by adults to them, would somewhat resemble the language of .primitive man. The theory then is that original communication was by means of gestures j complemented by sounds uttered w.hen the tongue and lips participated in'the generalised bodily gesture. Later the • sound itself was dissociated from the generalised bodily gesture and we had words. But in all ages and all climes those who have attempted to sway men by words have availed themselves of the power, of the bodily gesture to add meaning to mere words of sound.