THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2095, 10 December 1885, Page 4

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.

Professor Brows of tlio Otago University, dehveied a lecture on the above subject at Oainirn a few days ago. The Piofessor remaiked that the question, llow did iii.vn hrst learn to speak?" had engaged the Ktteiition of enquiimg men over Miice man became capable of looking into the proce-ses of hit i»vn mind. In the earliest stage of thought, men always attiibuted wli.it they did not understand to a lnuacle. In accordance with this nieth'id, eaily nn,i s.ud tli it -«i Mi; god provided us with speech. It was noticeable that some pcoplo uow-a-days scon ed to think that Gone»is teaches m that our hr.t parents received language) ready made But an examination of the Bible would sfcuw that so far fioin Having so, it siys nothing directly, but r.ither implies that language giew. In the ne\t stage of thought, men proceeded to philosophical instead of theological explanations. They jumped at any plausible theory, such as that man imitated the cries of bc.iiti and the noise of the wind, and, without a, fact to prove their theory, called it the result of philosophical inquiry. Such was the system of early Greek philosophers. The Piofossor then gave the amusing results of certain expeiiments made with infants by putting them under the care of dumb nurses, in ordor to fiee what language the children would speak, the rosult in one ca.se being that the children wore declared by the savans to "speak excellent Hebrew." These experiments proved failures, because sufficient time was not given for the formation of a Jangmge ; but the Profest.or gave it as bis opinion that had the experiments lasted over several generations it would have been found that a rude language had been formed. Other theories to account for the origin of speech were alluded to, the most farfetched being that of a certain Dr Murray, who declared that language could be resolved into eight grotesque noises, which he dignified by the name of root 1 - But all this kind of nonsense was swt.pt away by the discovery of Sanscrit, and of its relation to the European language*. Towaids the end of the last century v\uie discoveied tho Vedas written in Smscrit, which hid ceased to be spoken 300 B. c. The resemblance of this language to Greek, Latin, and Gothic was so marked that the translatois at once jumped to the conclusion thxt this was the parent .speech. A fuiious controversy waged o\er this new theory, but it was soon pro\ed that many things in Greek and Latin could not havo come from Sanscrit, while some things m Sanscrit might have como from Greek and Litin. These facts* led to tho conclusion that there was an earlier and unknown language from which all these were derived. Mince Sanscrit was not tho pnmitnc language, scholors set to w ork to recon*tmct tli.it primitive tongue by comparing S msciit and Zend on the one hand and Greek, Lvtin, and Gothic on the other, just as, if Litin h td become extinct, leaving no written records, we could restoie it, or a good part of it, by companion of Ficnch, Ttah.m, Spanish, Portuguese, and othci languages derived from it. This language, thus .in ned at by pure analysis, in called Indo European. We now posses a dictionary of this Language in which we can find out what our language was 4000 years ago. The lecturer here invited the attention of his audience to some sheets of illustrations with which they had been supplied, an ion the^o ho pointed out the ramifications of the Indo-European tongue — into Sanscut and Zend on the one hand, and into Teutonic, Greek, Latin, Celtic, J<'iunch, Spanish, German, (Jothic. l'nglish, and numerous other languages on thcothei. The mode of hfo of our Indo-European fmcfathci'd was neAt touched upon. They weic, said Professor Brown, a people of no veiy high ciuhsation, being far infcnor to tho contemporary Egyptians and to their own descendants the Greeks, but still showing the marks of a people strong and just and brave. With them man was manu«, tho thinker ; not tho vvauior or the thief, or even tho shepherd, but tho thinker— the man with mental power. By th* 1 tchtimony of words tho lecturer showed that we can hnd as surely what men they were of whom wo come as it we, could take the testimony of tho rock.s and disinter them and their animals and their implements. And by observing the resemblances of words, scholars concluded, though not so harmoniously as in the previous cast;, that agieat part of the original stock set otf westward from a region probably notth of the Himalayas, and divided into the Celts on the north, and the Greeks on the southeast, and tho Italians on the south west. So one branch of this stock in Athens learnt the wisdom of the Egyptians arid led the world in science and literature. Later on the Italian branch conquered the world. And meanwhile in the inhospitable north, the Celtic members of the family lived, fighting perpetually. Then, down on the now fallen Greek, on the conquering Roman, on the distant Celt fell the countless hosts of their brethren the Teutons, who, coming after them from the old home in Asia, crushed, by means of numbers, and stiength, and undisciplined courage, all the nations with whom they came m contact. Italy and Spain *till show marks of a Teutonic influence hardly less important than that «f Home. For instance, who, would have supposed that the national hi.'io of Italy, Garibaldi, was a German? Yet his name shows unmistakeably his descent from som« Lombard invader. But, continued the Professor, when wo get to the Indo-European, we have not got so very far. Indo-European is not necos sanly the primitive speech. It is nine probably the worn-down remains of many older speeches, just an English in of AngloHaxon, Norse, Latin, French, &c. Iho question now arises, was there ever a, pumitive speech? In answer to tin-., philology has nothing to say. It does not know. The lectiuer dwelt at some length on tho relationship supposed by some to exist between Hebrew and thu Indo-European tongue, and gave it as hi-> opinion that philology had triumphantly provid that Hebiew belonged to quite another group, namely, the Semitic. He then piocoeded to luy before his au lience. the n ont modern speculations on the origin of speech, enteiing at length into the meiits and demeiits of tho different theoiies. Tlieio were two main schools of thcoii^ts, the one saying that language arose fiom imitation, and the other that it nr,j from exel uuation. The former contended that language was formed by man's imitating the hounds which he h^ard ; the latter assertiii;,' that out of the natural exclamation and uic. of the human being a language w.is formulated. Ma\ Mi Her, wh'Mi he b' gau hi) Cwiiumaturn of the question, deviated tho fhit tho " Bowwow school," and the second the " Poohpooh hchool. ' A third theoiy, of which Dr Tylor is the chief exponent, maintains that both imitation and exclamation had to do with the origin of language, but that there is something further at work. Dr Tylor thinks of man as originally endowed, not with a language, but with the power of making one, and then he proceeds on a curious system. He examines the efforts of the deaf and dumb to make their thoughts comprehended. Here the lecturer gave some very interesting illustrations of tho efforts made by the deaf and dumb to make themselves understood, and showed how a language of signs was formed among them. After dwelling upon the theory of Dr. Tylor at considerable length and with great clearness, Professor Brown summed up m follows : — Tho generally accepted notion about the origin of language now in that it arose out of n mixture of signs, imitativa sou ruin, and natural interjections, and that, fiom sj<\ a n beginnings, itgrew by every prin»it»"e word sending out offshoots to exproif uew ideas while, as language became more explosive, signs declined in importance till nearly everything came to depend on tho manage ment of the voice. An to a jnmntne language, there may havo been one or many. Philologists have ; proved conclusively the existence of the primitive unity of the IndoEuropean, Semitic, and possibly stone other tongues. But they do not say that all those who speafc them are necessarily of tho same iace. A race may change its speech M *h» Northmen did m trance and again iv England. When we go beyond the mother tongues of U*> Semitic and Indo-European r,rimiiu« families we can only proceed by judging from what i.s now g Oln g on. We cannot find any trao of a primitivo universal language, and as to- how language arose, we can only guess, from the actions of childron, of mut«B and ■avagea. Back to the peint of the mother tongue*, to the point of tho Serrjtic and Indo-European languages, we havo scientific certainty ; beyond it we havo mgenions theories which may prove to bo as correct as the most elaborate a nd perfect system of knowledge, but which may at any moment be totally overthrown Toy the discovery of some single fact.

The German guimiaker* have their foundaries filled with gigan tic cannon for Turkish vessels and for Turk,nh coast defence^ \