NURSERY PRATTLE. Some Ideas About How Languages are Formed.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 180, 27 November 1886, Page 7

NURSERY PRATTLE. Some Ideas About How Languages are Formed.

In a late number of " Science" (August 27, 188G) a new theory of the utmost interest is brought forward by one of the most eminent of American philologists, JBhratio Hale. It forms the substance of aD address given at Buffalo, N. V., in his capacity as VicePresident of the anthropological section of the American Aesociation for the Advancement of Science. He thinks that it solves one of the scientific questions that seemed hopeless, and the solution has peculiar interest as showing how the most important result may follow from things usually held, trifling — in this case, from the most unintelligible chatter of children. For many readers his conclusions will have special interest through this fact, that the earliest clue to this remarkable discovery — if such it be— was given by the observations of a mother in her nursery. No puzzle outstanding in science haß been greater than how to account for the variety of languages among men. It is easy enough to explain the diversity that exists among various dialects of the same stock } ac that, taking the most familiar ease, between. French, Italian and Spanish ; or, in a wider sense, among all the sixty languages of the Aryan or Indo-European stock ; the twenty of the Semitic family (Hebrew, Chaldaic, etc.). the 168 of the great South African stock, the thirty-five of the Algonkin (Indian) stock, and co on. These groups offer comparatively slight variations within themselves, but the moment we go beyond a single atock the. several groups eeem to have nothing in common. The parent stock in the Aryan group, for instance, is absolutely separated from the Semitic, that from the Chinese, and co on. Of these last two it was said by William yon Humboldt— who wasnot inclined toeupernaturaloxplanationa — that it was easier to believe that each, came by some direct communication from heaven than that either could have been developed out of the other. And as there are estimated to be about 200 of these utterly distinct and remote parent stocks, the difficulty of accounting for them has hitherto seemed .almost insuperable. Yet all this while, Mr Hale thinks, the real solution was one of the simplest things in. the world, and lay close at hand, namely, in the nurpery. Some observations made by a woman and recorded — not, unhappily, at once, but long after — gave the key ta the whole mystery. The solution is to bo found, according to Mr Hale, in what ho calls "the language-making instinct of very young children." There were born near Boston, in 1860, twin boys who were peculiarly devoted to each other. They began to talk at the usual age, bub the language they talked was not even so near to English aa is usual in such cases — in fact, ie was not English, at all. They made up a jargon of their own, and entirely refused to speak anything else. Their motner could not really understand it, but only guessed at what was, eefcential. Yet they perfectly understood one another, so that it wa a , for all purposes of communication, a complete language. At last they were pent to school, where they learned English as a foreign tongue, and f rgot their childish prattle, only one word of which, unluckily, was preserved. The matter was not madepublic till eighteen years afterward, when it was described by Miss E. H. Watson, of Boston, in an e?say on the origin of language, prefaced to her edition of a work by her t«ther, the late George Watson, on the "The Structure of Language." Mis 3 Watson did not herself observe the children, but had the facts afterward from the mother, and her statement attracted little attention. It happened fortunately, however, that in the interval between these facts and their record a series of more exact obsei> vations was made and published by an. Albany physician, Dr. E. R Hun. In a periodical of email circulation, the "Monthly Journal of Psychological Medicine," he gave what Mr Bale calls " a clear and scientific account " of something more of the same kind. It waa a language contrived by a little girl four years and a half oIJ, in connection with her brother of three, " About twenty of the words are given* most of which are used in several allied acceptations, as mea, meaning both cat and I furs ; migno-miyno, water, wash, bath ; bau % soldier, music ; odo, te send for, to go our,, to take away : waiaw-aiar, black, darkness* a negro. This language had its own forms of construction, as ia mena waia ivaiar % "dark furs," literally "furs dark," whenthe adjective foliows its substantive." Dr, Hun eay3 the children had talked in this way with the greatest rapidity and fluency 1 . Further inquiiies have shown, Mr Hale saye, that this phenomenon i 3 not unusual* and the theory he founds it upon is very simple. The only question is, indeed, whether it is not too simple. Suppose, h& thinks, a family of children in whom the. language-making instinct i 3 thus strong, to be suddenly placed by come social or physical catastrophe in a position of entire isolation, where the parents presently die. If the children are young they will blbo die, but if they are old enough to survive—which would be particularly easy in a tropical country — they will grow up speaking a wholly new language, not de» rived directly from any other. In time, should other wanderers join them, the language will be accepted by these als=o. Th©. children of the little colony will crow up hearing no other, In time philologists will get hold of it— by which timo it will have worked out a grammar and inflections of its own— and they will vainly speculate whence it came. There ia nothing intrinsic callyitnposeibteinouch a situation, and if ifc be, said that it would be one of extreme rarity it must be remembered that the world is very large, and that 200 Buch instances would account for all the entirely distinct stocks upon the face of the earth. Mr Hale points out, in confirmation of his. theory, that much the larger part of the separate linguistic stocks may be traced; to the warm regions of the earth, where such scattered households -of very young childron could beet be kept alive. Many of them occur among the American aborigines* with whom it was a thing of frequent, occurrence for a single family to wander off from the main tribe into banishment or be exiled, for come offence against the tribal Jaw.. Then there are the wide island populations, of the world, where the isolation is more, complete than that of sierras and prairies. But, after all, the important facts may Ha close at hand. Mr Hale suggests a fleld for scientific observation in evt-ry nursery. Nothing has as yet been less reduced to. careful investigation or statement than the> process by which a child learns to talk— the most wonderful mental feat, probably, that any of us ever achieved. If such important inferences follow, in the judgment of philologist?, from a few stray observations, made by mothers and nurses, how probable it is that there are multitudes of other fact* observable and yet carefully watobed or. r©-* corded !