Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin - Otto Jespersen

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scholars have produced work both in their particular branch of linguistics and in the corresponding philology. There can be no doubt that this development has been profitable to both domains of scientific activity.

      Another beneficial change is the new attitude taken with regard to the study of living speech. The science of linguistics had long stood in the sign of Cancer and had been constantly looking backwards—to its own great loss. Now, with the greater stress laid on phonetics and on the psychology of language, the necessity of observing the phenomena of actual everyday speech was more clearly perceived. Among pioneers in this respect I must specially mention Henry Sweet; now there is a steadily growing interest in living speech as the necessary foundation of all general theorizing. And with interest comes knowledge.

      It is outside the purpose of this volume to give the history of linguistic study during the last forty years in the same way as I have attempted to give it for the period before 1880, and I must therefore content myself with a few brief remarks on general tendencies. I even withstand the temptation to try and characterize the two greatest works on general linguistics that have appeared during this period, those by Georg v. d. Gabelentz and Wilhelm Wundt: important and in many ways excellent as they are, they have not exercised the same influence on contemporary linguistic research as some of their predecessors. Personally I owe incomparably much more to the former than to the latter, who is much less of a linguist than of a psychologist and whose pages seem to me often richer in words than in fertilizing ideas. As for the rest, I can give only a bare alphabetical list of some of the writers who during this period have dealt with the more general problems of linguistic change or linguistic theory, and must not attempt any appreciation of their works: Bally, Baudouin de Courtenay, Bloomfield, Bréal, Delbrück, van Ginneken, Hale, Henry, Hirt, Axel Kock, Meillet, Meringer, Noreen, Oertel, Pedersen, Sandfeld (Jensen), de Saussure, Schuchardt, Sechehaye, Streitberg, Sturtevant, Sütterlin, Sweet, Uhlenbeck, Vossler, Wechssler. In the following parts of my work there will be many opportunities of mentioning their views, especially when I disagree with them, for I am afraid it will be impossible always to indicate what I owe to their suggestions.

      In the history of linguistic science we have seen in one period a tendency to certain large syntheses (the classification of languages into isolating, agglutinative and flexional, and the corresponding theory of three periods with its corollary touching the origin of flexional endings), and we have seen how these syntheses were later discredited, though never actually disproved, linguists contenting themselves with detailed comparisons and explanations of single words, forms or sounds without troubling about their ultimate origin or about the evolutionary tendencies of the whole system or structure of language. The question may therefore be raised, were Bopp and Schleicher wrong in attempting these large syntheses? It would appear from the expressions of some modern linguists that they thought that any such comprehensive generalization or any glottogonic theory were in itself of evil. But this can never be admitted. Science, of its very nature, aims at larger and larger generalizations, more and more comprehensive formulas, so as finally to bring about that “unification of knowledge” of which Herbert Spencer speaks. It was therefore quite right of the early linguists to propound those great questions; and their failure to solve them in a way that could satisfy the stricter demands of a later generation should not be charged too heavily against them. It was also quite right of the moderns to reject their premature solutions (though this was often done without any adequate examination), but it was decidedly wrong to put the questions out of court altogether.[16] These great questions have to be put over and over again, till a complete solution is found; and the refusal to face these difficulties has produced a certain barrenness in modern linguistics, which must strike any impartial observer, however much he admits the fertility of the science in detailed investigations. Breadth of vision is not conspicuous in modern linguistics, and to my mind this lack is chiefly due to the fact that linguists have neglected all problems connected with a valuation of language. What is the criterion by which one word or one form should be preferred to another? (most linguists refuse to deal with such questions of preference or of correctness of speech). Are the changes that we see gradually taking place in languages to be considered as on the whole beneficial or the opposite? (most linguists pooh-pooh such questions). Would it be possible to construct an international language by which persons in different countries could easily communicate with one another? (most linguists down to the present day have looked upon all who favour such ideas as visionaries and Utopians). It is my firm conviction that such questions as these admit of really scientific treatment and should be submitted to serious discussion. But before tackling those of them which fall within the plan of this work, it will be well to deal with some fundamental facts of what is popularly called the ‘life’ of language, and first of all with the manner in which a child acquires its mother-tongue. For as language exists only in individuals and means some specific activities of human beings which are not inborn, but have to be learnt by each of them separately from his fellow-beings, it is important to examine somewhat in detail how this interaction of the individual and of the surrounding society is brought about. This, then, will occupy us in Book II.

       THE CHILD

       Table of Contents

       SOUNDS

       Table of Contents

      § 1. From Screaming to Talking. § 2. First Sounds. § 3. Sound-laws of the Next Stage. § 4. Groups of Sounds. § 5. Mutilations and Reduplications. § 6. Correction. § 7. Tone.

      V.—§ 1. From Screaming to Talking.

      A Danish philosopher has said: “In his whole life man achieves nothing so great and so wonderful as what he achieved when he learnt to talk.” When Darwin was asked in which three years of his life a man learnt most, he said: “The first three.”

      A child’s linguistic development covers three periods—the screaming time, the crowing or babbling time, and the talking time. But the last is a long one, and must again be divided into two periods—that of the “little language,” the child’s own language, and that of the common language or language of the community. In the former the child is linguistically an individualist, in the latter he is more and more socialized.

      Of the screaming time little need be said. A child’s scream is not uttered primarily as a means of conveying anything to others, and so far is not properly to be called speech. But if from the child’s side a scream is not a way of telling anything, its elders may still read something in it and hurry to relieve the trouble. And if the child comes to remark—as it soon will—that whenever it cries someone comes and brings it something pleasant, if only company, it will not be long till it makes use of this instrument whenever it is uneasy or wants something. The scream, which was at first a reflex action, is now a voluntary action. And many parents have discovered that the child has learnt to use its power of screaming to exercise a tyrannical power over them—so that they have had to walk up and down all night with a screaming child that prefers this way of spending the night to lying quietly in its cradle. The only course is brutally to let the baby scream till it is tired, and persist in never letting it get its desire because it screams for it, but only because what it desires is good for it. The child learns its lesson, and a scream is once more what it was at first, an involuntary, irresistible result of the fact that something is wrong.

      

      Screaming has, however, another side. It is of physiological value as an exercise of all the muscles and appliances which are afterwards to be called into play for speech and song. Nurses say—and there may be something in it—that the child who screams loudest as a baby becomes the best singer later.

      Babbling time produces pleasanter sounds which are more adapted for the purposes of speech. Cooing, crowing, babbling—i.e. uttering meaningless sounds and series of sounds—is a delightful exercise like sprawling with outstretched arms and legs or trying to move the

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