The Paleolinguist Bulletin Summer 2023
Aberdeen Journal, and General Advertiser for the North of Scotland, 09 February 1878, Page 8
MAGAZINES:
The Contemporary Review contains several interesting articles this month, but Professor Max Muller's paper on "The Origin of Reason," deservedly occupies the first place. (Excerpts from article)
" How do mere cries become phonetic types?"; and " How can sensations be changed into concepts?" He considers Professor Noire to be the first philosopher who has clearly perceived that there was a new field of discovery in this the highest problem of all philosophy. After a summary of the modern philosophy of language, perception and conception, Professor Muller comes to the question, how concepts, were expressed in sounds. After a few remarks on the Interjectional Theory (i.e., that roots are derived from involuntary exclamations forced out by powerful impressions), and the Mimetic Theory (that they are formed from imitations of natural sounds), to both of which he admits there are powerful objections when they are regarded as sufficient to account for all roots, he thus frankly explains Professor Noire's Sympathic Theory:—
He has started a new theory which, so far as it reaches, supplies certainly a better explanation of phonetic types and rational concepts than my own. He points out that whenever our senses are excited and the muscles hard at work, we feel a kind of relief in uttering sounds. He remarks that particularly when people work together, when peasants dig or thresh, when sailors row, when women spin, when soldiers march, they are, inclined to accompany their occupation with certain more or less vibratory or rhythmical utterances. These utterances, noises, shouts, hummings, songs, are a kind of reaction against the inward disturbance caused by muscular effort. These sounds, he thinks, possess two great advantages. They are from the beginning signs of repeated acts, acts performed by ourselves and perceived by ourselves, but standing before us and continuing in our memory as concepts only. Every repeated act can be to us nothing but a concept, comprehending the many as one, and having really nothing tangible corresponding to it in the outer world. Here therefore was certainly an easy bridge from perception to conception. Secondly, as being uttered not by one solitary man, but by men associated in the same work, these sounds have another great advantage of being at once intelligible. It cannot be
denied that Noire's arguments in support of his theory are very strong, nor can there be any doubt that, as most of our modern tools find their primitive types in cave dwellings and lacustrian huts, a very large portion of our vocabulary can be derived, and has been derived, from roots expressive of such primitive acts as digging, cutting, rubbing, pulling, striking, weaving, rowing, marching, &c.
My only doubt is whether we should restrict ourselves to this one explanation, and whether a river so large, so broad, so deep as language may not have had more than one source.
Max Muller, Lectures on the Science of Language
James C. L'Angelle University of Nevada, Reno Summer 2023
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