THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE

  The question of the origin of language was hotly debated in the eighteenth century by philosophers such as Adam Smith and Lord Monboddo in Great Britain, Mandeville, Condillac, and Rousseau in France, Süssmilch in Germany, and many others (cf. Stam 1976). A provisional solution was proposed by Herder in his prize-winning essay (1772). Herder dismissed the theories of the divine origin of language as well as certain philosophical theories put forward by Condillac, Maupertuis, and Rousseau; and he gave the question a new anthropological twist. In his view, man, devoid of natural instincts, had to invent language. But this was only possible because human beings are endowed with a special power or faculty: ‘reflectiveness’ (Besonnenheit). This capacity for reflection compensated for the loss of instinct and won man freedom and language.

  When Sanskrit was discovered towards the end of the eighteenth century, linguists started to believe that the origin of language had finally been ‘found’ and that they could deal with it historically, that is to say, empirically. The reconstruction of the ‘Ursprache’ was believed to be a scientific enterprise, not a vain philosophical speculation. These hopes were fired by Cuvier’s success in reconstructing prehistoric animals through comparative anatomy (cf. Cuvier 1800), and comparative philology was established.

  The nineteenth century witnessed an explosion of interest in this question, discussed in thousands of treatises, but neglected by the great philosophers. This trivialization of the question led the linguistic society in Paris to exclude it from its publications, in the hope of stemming the wave of unscientific speculation (cf. OLS: 279). Curiously though, both Bréal and Whitney indulged in speculation on this popular question. Whitney in particular wanted to make it available to a scientific treatment, thus rescuing it from amateur speculations that did more harm than good. Bréal had a similar goal: he wanted to demythologize linguistics as much as he wanted to demythologize mythology. His main target were those German linguists who believed that they really could reconstruct the ‘Ursprache’. His support of the Linguistic Society’s stand is therefore as understandable as his private efforts to give some sense to the question of the origin itself.

  With the advent of Darwinism the speculations about the origin of language reached a new peak. If Cuvier hadn’t helped, perhaps Darwin could. Accordingly, many writers applied Darwin’s doctrine to the origin and history of language. The most famous were Schleicher ([1863] English trans. 1869), F.W.Farrar (1865), Hensleigh Wedgwood (Darwin’s brother-in-law) (1866), Ernst Haeckel (1875), W.H.J.Bleek ([1867] English trans. 1869 reprinted in Koerner (ed.) 1983). Darwin himself treated the subject in The Descent of Man ([1871] 1894:86ff.), based on some of these illustrious predecessors. He

  Change in language 60

  especially approved of Whitney’s sound view that ‘communication’ is the driving force of language (cf. [1871] 1894:86, n. 53, he refers to Whitney OLS: 354).

  Whitney’s conception of the origin of language

  In his important contribution to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Whitney writes that the ‘Recognition of the impulse to communication as the efficient cause of language-making is an element of primary importance in the history of the origin of language’ (Ph: 766). At the end of this article, he gives the reader some short bibliographical indications. For the historian of linguistics this bibliography provides precious clues to Whitney’s sources of linguistic inspiration. Among Müller, Sayce, Paul, Delbrück, Schleicher, Humboldt, Steinthal, and Hovelacque we find Wedgwood’s Origin of Language, a book written in 1866 (again this pivotal date) in Cambridge.

  Although written seven years after Darwin’s Origin of Species Wedgwood does not refer to him, but to Lyell, whom he uses especially as a weapon against Max Müller. These two points alone—the adherence to Lyell’s uniformitarianist doctrine (cf. 1866:3), and the sarcasm poured over Müller (especially his ding-dong theory, ibid.: 6–7), must have recommended this booklet immediately to Whitney. But it had a more theoretical appeal, too. The key theses of the book, which contains Whitney’s theory of the origin of language in a nutshell, can be summarized as follows.

  Language is not instinctive behaviour, like bird song, for example (cf. ibid.: 1); it is learned from ‘intercourse with those around us’ (ibid.: 5), like baking and weaving; it is a tradition handed down from generation to generation (cf. ibid.: 2). However, the first generation of speakers did not have a supernatural endowment for speech, they gradually developed the institution of language on the basis of the faculty of speech, i.e. a specific constitution of the mind and physical frame (ibid.: 5), and because they needed to communicate (cf. ibid.: 9). From ‘significant gestures’ (ibid.: 11), over onomatopoeia (ibid.: 16ff.), interjections (ibid.: 47ff.) and analogical extensions of words created in that way (ibid.: 101ff.), they slowly developed a language as a ‘system of vocal signs’:

  The essence of language is a system of vocal signs. The mental process underlying the practice of speech is the same as when communication is carried on by means of bodily gestures, such as those in use among the deaf and dumb.

  (ibid.: 13)

  This very modern claim was repeated more than a century later by Margaret Deuchar in her article ‘Sign language research’ (1987:311–35), when she tried to answer the age-old questions ‘(i) What is a language? (ii) How are languages learned? (iii) Where do languages come from?’ (1987:335). She writes:

  We have seen that the similarities between sign languages them-selves as well as between sign languages and creoles can hardly be accounted for in terms of the idea of these languages emerging from a single origin. Instead we have seen that the constraints of the visual medium may have a significant effect on sign language and those of the human mind may We have seen that the similarities between sign languages them-selves as well as between sign languages and creoles can hardly be accounted for in terms of the idea of these languages emerging from a single origin. Instead we have seen that the constraints of the visual medium may have a significant effect on sign language and those of the human mind may

  determine the overall similarities between emerging languages in contrasting media.

  (ibid.)

  ‘Only in the one case’, writes Wedgwood, ‘the sign is addressed to the eye, in the other to the ear. The problem of the origin of language thus becomes a particular case of the general inquiry, how it may be possible to convey meaning by the intervention of signs without previous agreement as to the sense in which the signs are to be understood’ (1866:13).

  For Wedgwood the basis of all sign languages, be they vocal or gestural, is the resemblance between the sign and the thing signified (cf. 1866:13)—at least at the origin of language. This principle could be called, following Peirce (who by 1866 had just begun his work on semiotics), iconicity. For Wedgwood signs were motivated at the origin of language. He thereby mitigated the principle of the arbitrariness of signs put forward so strongly by Whitney. Signs become arbitrary, they are not arbitrary by nature, because otherwise it would be difficult to see ‘how it may be possible to convey meaning by the intervention of signs without previous agreement as to the sense in which the signs are to be understood’.†

  This last quote from Wedgwood indicates that the problem of the origin of language is not so much a purely linguistic question, as a question of linguistic philosophy, as Whitney calls it (cf. OLS: 280). Whitney holds that the question of the origin of language is, though not an historical one, a theoretically important, a scientific question, and that it can be solved by inferences based on the observation of language and careful deduction (cf. 281). It is directly linked to the question concerning the relationship between thought and language.

  Müller had defended the view that language and thought are

  This is essentially the question asked and answered by Lewis (1969). † It is not necessary to postulate an iconic beginning of language. At the beginning speech-sounds

  could just as well have been totally arbitrary, understood contextually. Only later on, when humans had discovered the basic mechanism of language-making, they may have invented iconic signs, for reasons of economy, and to diminish mental effort.

  identical and that there is no reason without language and no language without reason (cf. Müller 1887). From this point of view the origin of language must appear to be a deep mystery: how can language originate without reason and reason without language? The enigma can only be solved by postulating a creative capacity that worked at the origin of language and has now died out. Wedgwood calls Müller’s chicken and egg problem the Humboldtian paradox (1866:4), a ‘fallacy’ that arises, if one does not distinguish, as Whitney and Wedgwood do, between the faculty of speech and the actual knowledge of a language (cf. 1866:4). Müller endorsed the Humboldtian paradox when he argued against Darwin’s view of the gradual evolution of language (cf. Müller 1873, third lecture; quoted by Darwin [1871] 1894:89, n. 63) and against Whitney’s view that language is the instrument of thought and reason, an instrument of communication. For Whitney reason is but the conscious adaptation of means to ends (cf. Ph: 769). It follows, then, that language is one instrument of thought among others, although clearly the most important one, thought being the action of the mind (OLS: 285). Originally, the voice competed with other instruments of thought, such as grimace and gesture (cf. Ph: 766). If the voice

  Change in language 62

  has become the predominant instrument of thought, this ‘is simply a case of the “survival of the fittest”, or analogous to the process by which iron has become the exclusive material of swords, and gold and silver of money: because, namely, experience has shown this to be best adapted to this special use’ (Ph: 767). In opposition to Müller’s anti-Darwinian ding-dong theory of the origin of language, this theory is Darwinian, pragmatic, and semiotic—it could be made the basis of an evolutionary semiotics. The programme of this evolutionary semiotics is laid down in Whitney’s article on ‘Logical consistency in views of language’ (1880):

  The question of the origin of language, as a scientific one, is simply this: to determine how men such as we actually see them to be, if no language were handed down to them from their predecessors, would proceed in order to possess themselves of such an instrumentality. That they would so possess themselves there is no reason to doubt. Men are always making language; … the beginnings need not have been more difficult than the subsequent changes….

  1. Language was brought into being primarily for purposes of communication, and not of self-development. Only the nearest and most obvious, the most external, inducement to its production was the effective one; every other advantage came as an unforeseen result of its possession.

  2. It began with whatever sign could best be turned to account as means of mutual understanding between man and man: grimace, gesture, exclamation, onomatopoeia and other forms of imitation, were drawn upon according to their various availability. What proportion belonged at the outset to each, and what were the steps of the process of natural selection (referred to above) whereby the voice attained its present predominance and almost monopoly, are matters of great interest.

  (1880:340f.)

  The first intelligible signs denoted what was most directly denotable: acts and qualities, ‘not concrete existences, for the latter are only signifiable by means of their characteristic acts and qualities’ (1880:15). These signs were what Whitney calls roots. The period of time during which roots were produced is supposed to be a limited one. Once enough roots accumulated, new names could be made ‘by combination and extension and change of application’ (1880:341): ‘Human language began when sign-making by instinct became sign-making by intention; when expression for personal relief was turned into expression of communication’ (LI: 731).

  In the framework of this ‘evolutionary semiotics’ the origin and evolution of language, as one sign system among others, would be governed by three factors: variation, combination, and adaptation (selection). Vocal signs were best adapted to convey thought and meaning—thus generally selected for the purpose of communication—because they could be readily understood by the others (cf. OLS: 288), over long distances without visual contact. They are also most freely variable, combinable and thus adaptable to all sorts of needs and circumstances. They were thus the best means through which to achieve the basic end of human intercourse: communication and mutual understanding: In the framework of this ‘evolutionary semiotics’ the origin and evolution of language, as one sign system among others, would be governed by three factors: variation, combination, and adaptation (selection). Vocal signs were best adapted to convey thought and meaning—thus generally selected for the purpose of communication—because they could be readily understood by the others (cf. OLS: 288), over long distances without visual contact. They are also most freely variable, combinable and thus adaptable to all sorts of needs and circumstances. They were thus the best means through which to achieve the basic end of human intercourse: communication and mutual understanding:

  The process of mutual understanding would be a tentative one, every imagined expedient being tried, and adopted if it proved successful; and ere long a foundation would be laid which would admit of rapid and indefinite expansion.

  (OLS: 288; cf. also Ph: 769)

  However, the adaptation of means to ends does not stop once vocal signs have been adopted as the best means of communication. Each act of communication being a new tentative, a new experiment to bring about understanding, the inventory of signs is rapidly increased (and the stage of roots overcome (cf. Ph: 769f.)) by variation and combination. These procedures for the extension of the lexicon are exploited in vocal sign systems in a unique way. Other means to extend the sign system are borrowing and analogical transfer. But this increase of signs cannot go on indefinitely—the sign system must be adapted to the capacities of our memory, as Lyell had already noted. By the consenting action of the community only certain signs are selected, others drop out of use. In this evolution of language in a truly Darwinian sense, natural signs are gradually transformed so as to become merely conventional and arbitrary. Strictly context-bound understanding is replaced by the understanding of conventional, context-free signs, needing only a minimal contextual grounding. But it will never be ‘ideal’ in the sense of not needing any context or any effort of interpretation on the part of the hearer: ‘one speech-sign was like another, calling up a conception in its indefinite entirety, and leaving the circumstances of the case to limit its application’ (Ph: 771, col. 1). This was also Bréal’s opinion, even in so far as our modern languages are concerned, where the signs have accumulated significations over the years, have become ‘polysemous’ (cf. p. 123). He writes that: ‘the words in themselves are a poor guide, and they need the whole set of circumstances, which, like the key in music, fix the value of the signs’ (HM: 193). The signs have also tended to lose their original significance. This is what Whitney calls the process of the ‘elimination of original meaning, and reduction to the value of conventional designation’ (Ph: 768, col. 2). What matters to the speaker is not the etymology, but the actual value of a sign in the currently used sign-system.

  Finally, languages have developed an increasingly complex structure. At the origin of language—Whitney’s root-stage—linguistic signs were used as sentences, or better as all purpose utterances. They functioned as sentences, although lacking their ideal form:

  In point of fact, between the holophrastic gesture or uttered sign and the sentence which we can now substitute for it—for example, between the sign of beckoning and the equivalent sentence, ‘I want you to come here’—lies the whole history of development of inflective speech.

  (Ph: 771, col. 1)

  This history of inflective speech was written by Philipp Wegener in his Untersuchungen, and we shall present it in Part two. It will be surprising to see that Wegener’s objections to Wundt (who regarded only the full-blown sentence as ‘sentence’ and everything else, especially the one-word sentence, as mere sentence-equivalents) had already been spelt out by Whitney:

  Change in language 64

  But to us, with our elaborated apparatus of speech, the sentence, composed of subject and predicate, with a verb or special predicative word to signify the predication, is established as the norm of expression, and we regard everything else as an abbreviated sentence, or as involving

  a virtual sentence.

  (Ph: 771, col. 1)

  Bréal’s conception of the origin of language

  Bréal only dealt sporadically with the problem of the origin of language, a topic that smacked so much of mysticism, being linked to the search for a primitive language. However, when he did allude to it, he did so graciously; he even expressed his regret at the fact that linguistics had for too long neglected the question that had so much intrigued the eighteenth-century philosophers (SL: 1010). But not everything produced in the eighteenth century was well. In a chapter added to the 6th edition of the Essai in 1913, on ‘Les commencements du verbe’, he criticized the eighteenth-century philosophers. Some, especially the French philosophers in the tradition of Port-Royal, had supposed that the sole function of language was to formulate judgements (1913:334), that language was an instrument of pure reason—this was the opinion of the advocates of a ‘grammaire générale et raisonnée’—whereas others regarded language as a spontaneous work of the poetic imagination, a view that Bréal attributed to Herder (ibid.), one of the major exponents of German linguistic romanticism. Bréal was in agreement with Whitney when

  he condemned these two tendencies of thought, the ‘classic’ and the ‘romantic’ accounts of language:

  Language has been over and above everything else a necessary instrument of communication between human beings. Nobody has expressed this better than the great Roman poet:

  Utilitas expressit nomina rerum which the French translator of Lucretius has rendered in the following way:

  The pressing need has created the name of things.

  (1913:334–5)

  The basic function of language is communication and the origin of language is not poetic imagination, but the satisfaction of fundamental needs and desires. It was not created suddenly, ex nihilo, but is the product of a slow and gradual evolution and transformation, which proceeds in parallel with our mental powers. Like Whitney, Bréal believed that the science of language can and must attack the problem of the origin of language scientifically, that is by observation (HM: 211). Observation can be used because the creative faculty that has produced language is not extinct (as Müller believed), but is still working, and with the same procedures and the same effectiveness. It can be especially well observed in the domain of semantic change, where our communicative needs have a direct influence on how we use, and thus change, language. As these procedures of change are the same procedures by which language was created,

  he concludes one reflection on the origin of language with this crucial statement: he concludes one reflection on the origin of language with this crucial statement:

  If you want me to give you my opinion on the beginning of language, I would say that I believe that language has had no beginning; it was through a long evolution [my emphasis], where the transitions are almost unnoticeable, that language has emerged from the first stammerings. If we could witness this evolution we would find undoubtedly that it was governed by the same laws which we observe in the transformation of modern languages. These laws are two: differentiation, which attributes different values to signs that are at first synonymous; and analogy [my emphasis], which makes sure that, once a sign has been created to express an idea, we resort to it in all similar circumstances. The same causes which are acting under our very eyes must have made their influence felt from the first days onwards.

  (SL: 1010)

  Just as the question ‘When did the first human being appear?’ is nonsensical in a theory of gradual (Darwinian) evolution, so is the question: ‘When did language begin?’ There never was a first human being, but only primates that gradually acquired more and more human characteristics—among which, language. Above and beyond expressing Bréal’s conception of linguistic evolution and the origin of language, this short passage contains Bréal’s essay on semantics in nuce: signs having the ‘same’ meaning are differentiated, fine-tuned to express the most nuanced differences made by the speakers. One sign, once being adopted, is used analogously in every possible circumstance, thus creating systems of signs—in short, language. In the Essai Bréal enumerates more laws of semantic change, but the two laws mentioned here (differentiation of synonyms and analogy) are the most basic. All laws of semantic change for Bréal are ‘intellectual’ laws, they are observable regularities in the speakers’ behaviour, based on certain operations of the mind.

  This psychologistic interpretation of the origin and evolution of language was a heresy in the eyes of the ‘naturalist’ linguists, Hovelacque and Chavée. One of their followers, Paul Regnaud, who also reviewed Bréal’s Essai, took up the challenge by writing yet another book on the origin of language, Origine et philosophie du langage (1888), from an entirely different point of view from the one adopted by Bréal. Victor Henry, Bréal’s spokesman in the Revue Critique reviewed this book. He applauded Regnaud’s effort to give a summary of the question as treated from antiquity to modern times (this makes up the first part of the book); but there his agreement with Regnaud ends. Henry severely criticized the second part of the book, devoted to the reconstruction of roots and of a proto-language. Both attempts are in vain, and this for reasons clearly exposed by Bréal (Henry only refers to him as ‘notre maître à tous’, 1888:181). Roots are abstractions, and we cannot prove that they correspond to anything real in the proto-language. The existence of the reconstructed proto-language is even more chimerical, given that it is constituted at probably only a very late stage in a very long evolution. Henry notes that there is such a gulf between Regnaud and the new school of linguistics founded by Bréal that mutual understanding seems to be impossible (cf. 185). Henry follows strictly in Bréal’s footsteps: ‘we know nowadays no doubt, not how human beings began to speak, but at least how they speak by increasing and transforming incessantly their linguistic

  Change in language 66

  stock’ (1885:182). The question of the origin of language has been superseded by that of its continuous transformations and changes.

  The mystery of language-change 67