Primitive culture, vol. 1 (of 2)

The device of conveying different ideas of distance by the use of a graduated scale of vowels seems to me one of great philological interest, from the suggestive hint it gives of the proceedings of the language-makers in most distant regions of the world, working out in various ways a similar ingenious contrivance of expression by sound. A typical series is the Javan: iki ‘this’ (close by) ika ‘that’ (at some distance); iku ‘that’ (farther off). It is not likely that the following list nearly exhausts the whole number of cases in the languages of the world, for about half the number have been incidentally noted down by myself without any especial search, but merely in the course of looking over vocabularies of the lower races.[291]

It is obvious on inspection of this list of pronouns and adverbs that they have in some way come to have their vowels contrasted to match the contrast of here and there, this and that. Accident may sometimes account for such cases. For instance it is well known to philologists that our own this and that are pronouns partly distinct in their formation, thi-s being probably two pronouns run together, but yet the Dutch neuters dit ‘this,’ and dat ‘that,’ have taken the appearance of a single form with contrasted vowels.[292] But accident cannot account for the frequency of such words in pairs, and even in sets of three, in so many different languages. There must have been some common intention at work, and there is evidence that some of these languages do resort to a change of sound as a means of expressing change of distance. Thus the language of Fernando Po can not only express ‘this’ and ‘that’ by olo, ole, but it can even make a change of the pronunciation of the vowel distinguish between o boehe ‘this month,’ and oh boehe, ‘that month.’ In the same way the Grebo can make the difference between ‘I’ and ‘thou,’ ‘we,’ and ‘you,’ ‘solely by the intonation of the voice, which the final h of the second persons mâh and ăh is intended to express.’

The set of Zulu demonstratives which express the three distances of near, farther, farthest, are very complex, but a remark as to their use shows how thoroughly symbolic sound enters into their nature. The Zulus not only say nansi, ‘here is,’ nanso, ‘there is,’ nansiya, ‘there is in the distance,’ but they even express the greatness of this distance by the emphasis and prolongation of the ya. If we could discern a similar gradation of the vowels to express a corresponding gradation of distance throughout our list, the whole matter would be easier to explain; but it is not so, the i-words for instance, are sometimes nearer and sometimes farther off than the a-words. We can only judge that, as even children can see that a scale of vowels makes a most expressive scale of distances, many pronouns and adverbs in use in the world have probably taken their shape under the influence of this simple device, and thus there have arisen sets of what we may call contrasted or ‘differential’ words.

How the differencing of words by change of vowels may be used to distinguish between the sexes, is well put in a remark of Professor Max Müller’s: ‘The distinction of gender ... is sometimes expressed in such a manner that we can only explain it by ascribing an expressive power to the more or less obscure sound of vowels. Ukko, in Finnic, is an old man; akka, an old woman.... In Mandshu chacha is mas. ... cheche, femina. Again, ama, in Mandshu, is father; eme, mother; amcha, father-in-law, emche, mother-in-law.’[293] The Coretú language of Brazil has another curiously contrasted pair of words tsáackö, ‘father,’ tsaacko ‘mother,’ while the Carib has baba for father, and bibi for mother, and the Ibu of Africa has nna for father and nne for mother. This contrivance of distinguishing the male from the female by a difference of vowels is however but a small part of the process of formation which can be traced among such words as those for father and mother. Their consideration leads into a very interesting philological region, that of ‘Children’s language.’

If we set down a few of the pairs of words which stand for ‘father’ and ‘mother’ in very different and distant languages—papa and mama; Welsh, tad (dad) and mam; Hungarian, atya and anya; Mandingo, fa and ba; Lummi (N. America), man and tan; Catoquina (S. America), payú and nayú; Watchandie (Australia), amo and ago—their contrast seems to lie in their consonants, while many other pairs differ totally, like Hebrew ab and im; Kuki, p’ha and noo; Kayan, amay and inei; Tarahumara, nono and jeje. Words of the class of papa and mama, occurring in remote parts of the world, were once freely used as evidence of a common origin of the languages in which they were found alike. But Professor Buschmann’s paper on ‘Nature-Sound,’ published in 1853,[294] effectually overthrew this argument, and settled the view that such coincidence might arise again and again by independent production. It was clearly of no use to argue that Carib and English were allied because the word papa, ‘father,’ belongs to both, or Hottentot and English because both use mama for ‘mother,’ seeing that these childish articulations may be used in just the opposite way, for the Chilian word for mother is papa, and the Tlatskanai for father is mama. Yet the choice of easy little words for ‘father’ and ‘mother’ does not seem to have been quite indiscriminate. The immense list of such words collected by Buschmann shows that the types pa and ta, with the similar forms ap and at, preponderate in the world as names for ‘father,’ while ma and na, am and an, preponderate as names for ‘mother.’

His explanation of this state of things as affected by direct symbolism choosing the hard sound for the father, and the gentler for the mother, has very likely truth in it, but it must not be pushed too far. It cannot be, for instance, the same principle of symbolism which leads the Welshmen to say tad for ‘father’ and mam for ‘mother,’ and the Indian of British Columbia to say maan, ‘father’ and taan, ‘mother,’ or the Georgian to say mama ‘father’ and deda ‘mother.’ Yet I have not succeeded in finding anywhere our familiar papa and mama exactly reversed in one and the same language; the nearest approach to it that I can give is from the island of Meang, where mama meant ‘father, man,’ and babi, ‘mother, woman.’[295]

Between the nursery words papa and mama and the more formal father and mother there is an obvious resemblance in sound. What, then, is the origin of these words father and mother? Up to a certain point their history is clear. They belong to the same group of organized words with vater and mutter, pater and mater, πατήρ and μήτηρ, pitar and mâtar, and other similar forms through the Indo-European family of languages. There is no doubt that all these pairs of names are derived from an ancient and common Aryan source, and when they are traced back as far as possible towards that source, they appear to have sprung from a pair of words which may be roughly called patar and matar, and which were formed by adding tar, the suffix of the actor, to the verb-roots pa and ma. There being two appropriate Sanskrit verbs pâ and mâ, it is possible to etymologize the two words as patar, ‘protector,’ and matar, ‘producer.’ Now this pair of Aryan words must have been very ancient, lying back at the remote common source from which forms parallel to our English father and mother passed into Greek and Persian, Norse and Armenian, thus holding fixed type through the eventful course of Indo-European history. Yet, ancient as these words are, they were no doubt preceded by simpler rudimentary words of the children’s language, for it is not likely that the primitive Aryans did without baby-words for father and mother until they had an organized system of adding suffixes to verb-roots to express such notions as ‘protector’ or ‘producer.’

Nor can it be supposed that it was by mere accident that the root-words thus chosen happened to be the very sounds pa and ma, whose types so often occur in the remotest parts of the world as names for ‘father’ and ‘mother.’ Prof. Adolphe Pictet makes shift to account for the coincidence thus: he postulates first the pair of forms pâ and mâ as Aryan verb-roots of unknown origin, meaning ‘to protect’ and ‘to create,’ next another pair of forms pa and ma, children’s words commonly used to denote father and mother, and lastly he combines the two by supposing that the root-verbs pâ and mâ were chosen to form the Indo-European words for parents, because of their resemblance to the familiar baby-words already in use. This circuitous process at any rate saves those sacred monosyllables, the Sanskrit verb-roots, from the disgrace of an assignable origin. Yet those who remember that these verb-roots are only a set of crude forms in use in one particular language of the world at one particular period of its development, may account for the facts more simply and more thoroughly. It is a fair guess that the ubiquitous pa and ma of the children’s language were the original forms; that they were used in an early period of Aryan speech as indiscriminately substantive and verb, just as our modern English, which so often reproduces the most rudimentary linguistic processes, can form from the noun ‘father’ a verb ‘to father;’ and that lastly they became verb-roots, whence the words patar and matar were formed by the addition of the suffix.[296]

The baby-names for parents must not be studied as though they stood alone in language. They are only important members of a great class of words, belonging to all times and countries within our experience, and forming a children’s language, whose common character is due to its concerning itself with the limited set of ideas in which little children are interested, and expressing these ideas by the limited set of articulations suited to the child’s first attempts to talk. This peculiar language is marked quite characteristically among the low savage tribes of Australia; mamman ‘father,’ ngangan ‘mother,’ and by metaphor ‘thumb,’ ‘great toe’ (as is more fully explained in jinnamamman ‘great toe,’ i.e. foot’s father), tammin ‘grandfather or grandmother,’ bab-ba ‘bad, foolish, childish,’ bee-bee, beep ‘breast,’ pappi ‘father,’ pappa ‘young one, pup, whelp,’ (whence is grammatically formed the verb papparniti ‘to become a young one, to be born.’) Or if we look for examples from India, it does not matter whether we take them from non-Hindu or Hindu languages, for in baby-language all races are on one footing. Thus Tamil appâ ‘father,’ ammâ ‘mother,’ Bodo aphâ ‘father,’ âyâ ‘mother;’ the Kocch group nânâ and nâni ‘paternal grandfather and grandmother,’ mâmâ ‘uncle,’ dâdâ ‘cousin,’ may be set beside Sanskrit tata ‘father,’ nanâ ‘mother,’ and the Hindustani words of the same class, of which some are familiar to the English ear by being naturalized in Anglo-Indian talk, bâbâ ‘father,’ bâbû ‘child, prince, Mr.,’ bîbî ‘lady,’ dadâ ‘nurse’ (âyâ ‘nurse’ seems borrowed from Portuguese).

Such words are continually coming fresh into existence everywhere, and the law of natural selection determines their fate. The great mass of the nana’s and dada’s of the nursery die out almost as soon as made. Some few take more root and spread over large districts as accepted nursery words, and now and then a curious philologist makes a collection of them. Of such, many are obvious mutilations of longer words, as French faire dodo ‘to sleep’ (dormir), Brandenburg wiwi, a common cradle lullaby (wiegen). Others, whatever their origin, fall, in consequence of the small variety of articulations out of which they must be chosen, into a curiously indiscriminate and unmeaning mass, as Swiss bobo ‘a scratch;’ bambam ‘all gone;’ Italian bobò ‘something to drink,’ gogo ‘little boy,’ for dede ‘to play.’ These are words quoted by Pott, and for English examples nana ‘nurse,’ tata! ‘good-bye!’ may serve. But all baby-words, as this very name proves, do not stop short even at this stage of publicity. A small proportion of them establish themselves in the ordinary talk of grown-up men and women, and when they have once made good their place as constituents of general language, they may pass on by inheritance from age to age. Such examples as have been here quoted of nursery words give a clue to the origin of a mass of names in the most diverse languages, for father, mother, grandmother, aunt, child, breast, toy, doll, &c.

The negro of Fernando Po who uses the word bubboh for ‘a little boy,’ is on equal terms with the German who uses bube; the Congo-man who uses tata for ‘father’ would understand how the same word could be used in classic Latin for ‘father,’ and in mediæval Latin for ‘pedagogue;’ the Carib and the Caroline Islander agree with the Englishman that papa is a suitable word to express ‘father,’ and then it only remains to carry on the word, and make the baby-language name the priests of the Eastern Church and the great Papa of the Western. At the same time the evidence explains the indifference with which, out of the small stock of available materials, the same sound does duty for the most different ideas; why mama means here ‘mother,’ there ‘father,’ there ‘uncle,’ maman here ‘mother,’ there ‘father-in-law,’ dada here ‘father,’ there ‘nurse,’ there ‘breast,’ tata here ‘father,’ there ‘son.’ A single group of words may serve to show the character of this peculiar region of language: Blackfoot Indian ninnah ‘father;’ Greek νέννος ‘uncle,’ νέννα ‘aunt;’ Zulu nina, Sangir nina, Malagasy nini ‘mother;’ Javan nini ‘grandfather or grandmother;’ Vayu nini ‘paternal aunt;’ Darien Indian ninah ‘daughter;’ Spanish niño, niña ‘child;’ Italian ninna ‘little girl;’ Milanese ninin ‘bed;’ Italian ninnare ‘to rock the cradle.’

In this way a dozen easy child’s articulations, ba’s and na’s, ti’s and de’s, pa’s and ma’s, serve almost as indiscriminately to express a dozen child’s ideas as though they had been shaken in a bag and pulled out at random to express the notion that came first, doll or uncle, nurse or grandfather. It is obvious that among words cramped to such scanty choice of articulate sounds, speculations as to derivation must be more than usually unsafe. Looked at from this point of view, children’s language may give a valuable lesson to the philologist. He has before him a kind of language, formed, under peculiar conditions, and showing the weak points of his method of philological research, only exaggerated into extraordinary distinctness. In ordinary language, the difficulty of connecting sound with sense lies in great measure in the inability of a small and rigid set of articulations to express an interminable variety of tones and noises. In children’s language, a still more scanty set of articulations fails yet more to render these distinctly. The difficulty of finding the derivation of words lies in great measure in the use of more or less similar root-sounds for most heterogeneous purposes. To assume that two words of different meanings, just because they sound somewhat alike, must therefore have a common origin, is even in ordinary language the great source of bad etymology. But in children’s language the theory of root-sounds fairly breaks down. Few would venture to assert, for instance, that papa and pap have a common derivation or a common root.

All that we can safely say of connexion between them is that they are words related by common acceptance in the nursery language. As such, they are well marked in ancient Rome as in modern England: papas ‘nutricius, nutritor,’ pappus ‘senex;’ ‘cum cibum et potum buas ac papas dicunt, et matrem mammam, patrem tatam (or papam).’[297]

From children’s language, moreover, we have striking proof of the power of consensus of society, in establishing words in settled use without their carrying traces of inherent expressiveness. It is true that children are intimately acquainted with the use of emotional and imitative sound, and their vocal intercourse largely consists of such expression. The effects of this are in some degree discernible in the class of words we are considering. But it is obvious that the leading principle of their formation is not to adopt words distinguished by the expressive character of their sound, but to choose somehow a fixed word to answer a given purpose. To do this, different languages have chosen similar articulations to express the most diverse and opposite ideas. Now in the language of grown-up people, it is clear that social consensus has worked in the same way. Even if the extreme supposition be granted, that the ultimate origin of every word of language lies in inherently expressive sound, this only partly affects the case, for it would have to be admitted that, in actual languages, most words have so far departed in sound or sense from this originally expressive stage, that to all intents and purposes they might at first have been arbitrarily chosen. The main principle of language has been, not to preserve traces of original sound-signification for the benefit of future etymologists, but to fix elements of language to serve as counters for practical reckoning of ideas. In this process much original expressiveness has no doubt disappeared beyond all hope of recovery.

Such are some of the ways in which vocal sounds seem to have commended themselves to the mind of the word-maker as fit to express his meaning, and to have been used accordingly. I do not think that the evidence here adduced justifies the setting-up of what is called the Interjectional and Imitative Theory as a complete solution of the problem of original language. Valid as this theory proves itself within limits, it would be incautious to accept a hypothesis which can perhaps satisfactorily account for a twentieth of the crude forms in any language, as a certain and absolute explanation of the nineteen-twentieths whose origin remains doubtful. A key must unlock more doors than this, to be taken as the master-key. Moreover, some special points which have come under consideration in these chapters tend to show the positive necessity of such caution in theorizing. Too narrow a theory of the application of sound to sense may fail to include the varied devices which the languages of different regions turn to account. It is thus with the distinction in meaning of a word by its musical accent, and the distinction of distance by graduated vowels. These are ingenious and intelligible contrivances, but they hardly seem directly emotional or imitative in origin. A safer way of putting the theory of a natural origin of language is to postulate the original utterance of ideas in what may be called self-expressive sounds, without defining closely whether their expression lay in emotional tone, imitative noise, contrast of accent or vowel or consonant, or other phonetic quality.