Darwin on Language

1871. The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. 1st ed.
http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Freeman_TheDescentofMan.html

Vol. 1. Text
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F937.1&viewtype=text&pageseq=1

Pages 34 - 69 contain a chapter described as this:

CHAPTER II. COMPARISON OF THE MENTAL POWERS OF MAN AND THE LOWER ANIMALS.

The difference in mental power between the highest ape and the lowest savage, immense — Certain instincts in common — The emotions—Curiosity — Imitation—Attention — Memory — Imagination — Reason — Progressive improvement — Tools and weapons used by animals — Language — Self-consciousness — Sense of beauty — Belief in God, spiritual agencies, superstitions

"Language" - between "tools and weapons ..." and "self-consciousness" will here be extracted, interspersed with my comments.

Language.—This faculty has justly been considered as one of the chief distinctions between man and the lower animals. But man, as a highly competent judge, Archbishop Whately remarks, "is not the only animal that can make use of language to express what is passing in his mind, and can understand, more or less, what is so expressed by another."29 In Paraguay the Cebus azaræ when excited utters at least six distinct sounds, which

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excite in other monkeys similar emotions.30

The range of emotions is much more limited than that of notions. Pragmatic and emotive signals are about 500 maximum. Notions can be elaborated on to an infinity of sentences.

It is unfortunate that Darwin while no longer a Christian is still sure that an Anglican "Archbishop" (they lack both jurisdiction and valid orders) and one like Whately (unless the quote is truncated and untypical) should be a very competent judge.

The movements of the features and gestures of monkeys are understood by us, and they partly understand ours, as Rengger and others declare. It is a more remarkable fact that the dog, since being domesticated, has learnt to bark31 in at least four or five distinct tones. Although barking is a new art, no doubt the wild species, the parents of the dog, expressed their feelings by cries of various kinds. With the domesticated dog we have the bark of eagerness, as in the chase; that of anger; the yelping or howling bark of despair, as when shut up; that of joy, as when starting on a walk with his master; and the very distinct one of demand or supplication, as when wishing for a door or window to be opened.

The tones of dog barks are also in the limited range of emotions.

Articulate language is, however, peculiar to man; but he uses in common with the lower animals inarticulate cries to express his meaning, aided by gestures and the movements of the muscles of the face.32 This especially holds good with the more simple and vivid feelings, which are but little connected with our higher intelligence. Our cries of pain, fear, surprise, anger, together with their appropriate actions, and the murmur of a mother to her beloved child, are more expressive than any words. It is not the mere power of articulation that distinguishes man from other animals, for as every one knows, parrots can talk; but it is his large power of connecting definite sounds with definite ideas; and this obviously depends on the development of the mental faculties.

Indeed. Or on the presence of mental faculties.

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As Horne Tooke, one of the founders of the noble science of philology, observes, language is an art, like brewing or baking; but writing would have been a much more appropriate simile. It certainly is not a true instinct, as every language has to be learnt. It differs, however, widely from all ordinary arts, for man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children; whilst no child has an instinctive tendency to brew, bake, or write.

We have a problem here.

For one thing, language has to be learned. Even babbling, however universal it may be, is an attempt to imitate the sounds adults and older children make. At first children explore "the full range of human sounds," except those that need a more adult equipment or more coordination, but babbling narrows down to what sounds children hear in the languages that they are learning.

A child babbling among wolves would soon learn to imitate snarls and barks and howls.

For another, it cannot be learned as a first language after a certain age has passed. It must be learned from infancy. There is a precise timeslot for learning language. If it's past, the opportunity is gone.

You can all of your life, unless senility prevents you from learning anything, learn new languageS, but you cannot learn language.

That's why language cannot begin by a "wise monkey" making an actually unneeded innovation in warning signals.

Moreover, no philologist now supposes that any language has been deliberately invented; each has been slowly and unconsciously developed by many steps.

Yes and no.

Quenya, Sindarin, Na'avi, Klingon, Dothraki, Valyrian, Syldavian, Pal-Ul-Don's language, as well as Ido, Inlingua, Volapük and Esperanto, as well as diverse versions of Proto-Indo-European (with diverse versions of Schleicher's fable to show for the effort) have all been invented.

But they have also all been invented by people who had already started learning a first language before, say, the age of two. It is usually assumed, but not proven, that none of the first languages was invented. What is certain is that a first language cannot be invented by someone who doesn't have one, and a language someone invents cannot be his own first one.

The sounds uttered by birds offer in several respects the nearest analogy to language, for all the members of the same species utter the same instinctive cries expressive of their emotions; and all the kinds that have the power of singing exert this power instinctively; but the actual song, and even the call-notes, are learnt from their parents or foster-parents. These sounds, as Daines Barrington33 has proved, "are no more innate than language is in man." The first attempts to sing "may be compared to the imperfect endeavour in a child to babble." The young males continue practising, or, as the bird-catchers say, recording, for ten or eleven months. Their first essays show hardly a rudiment of the future song; but as they grow older we can perceive what they are aiming at; and at last they are said "to sing their song round." Nestlings which have learnt the song of a distinct species, as with the canary-birds educated in the Tyrol, teach and transmit their new song to their offspring. The slight natural differences of song in the same species inha-

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biting different districts may be appositely compared, as Barrington remarks, "to provincial dialects;" and the songs of allied, though distinct species may be compared with the languages of distinct races of man. I have given the foregoing details to shew that an instinctive tendency to acquire an art is not a peculiarity confined to man.

The problem is, again, bird songs and calls are emotive and practical, not notional.

With respect to the origin of articulate language, after having read on the one side the highly interesting works of Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, the Rev. F. Farrar, and Prof. Schleicher,34 and the celebrated lectures of Prof. Max Müller on the other side, I cannot doubt that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification, aided by signs and gestures, of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries.

No linguist today would share Darwin's optimism about this theory. Or Müller's.

When we treat of sexual selection we shall see that primeval man, or rather some early progenitor of man, probably used his voice largely, as does one of the gibbon-apes at the present day, in producing true musical cadences, that is in singing; we may conclude from a widely-spread analogy that this power would have been especially exerted during the courtship of the sexes, serving to express various emotions, as love, jealousy, triumph, and serving as a challenge to their rivals. The imitation by articulate sounds of musical cries might have given rise to words expressive of various complex emotions. As bearing on the subject of imitation, the strong tendency in our nearest allies, the monkeys, in microcephalous

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idiots,35 and in the barbarous races of mankind, to imitate whatever they hear deserves notice.

Did you get "in the barbarous races of mankind"?

When it comes to idiots, it is arguably a question of trying to sound as smart as they can. But they do understand most of the words if not always all of the concepts. Indeed, they may be repeating words like children, in the hope to get feedback to understand more.

But do monkeys really "imitate whatever they hear"? And would the creatures that do (parrots) be anything like a key to language? Parrots don't talk. They imitate speech, but they don't talk.

As monkeys certainly understand much that is said to them by man, and as in a state of nature they utter signal-cries of danger to their fellows,36 it does not appear altogether incredible, that some unusually wise ape-like animal should have thought of imitating the growl of a beast of prey, so as to indicate to his fellow monkeys the nature of the expected danger. And this would have been a first step in the formation of a language.

I don't think that is the least likely. Monkeys have shrieks of anguish as danger signals, and some of them have different strategies for different dangers. The vervet has three different strategies and three different cries of anguish to suit three different types of predator. From crawling snakes, they run, from lions and such, they climb, from birds of prey they crouch under vegetation. A young vervet that utters the wrong danger signal is chastised. But the danger signals remain pragmatic, like emotions are pragmatic. The danger signals are never in cold blood reused to discuss the beasts of prey.

As the voice was used more and more, the vocal organs would have been strengthened and perfected through the principle of the inherited effects of use; and this would have reacted on the power of speech.

When you lose your charity, you generally also use your good sense, as Chesterton remarked (or his character Father Brown). St. Paul said If I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. As Darwin lost faith, he lost charity, and he thinks of his own language capacity as "sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal" - no ...

But the relation between the continued use of language and the development of the brain has no doubt been far more important. The mental powers in some early progenitor of man must have been more highly developed than in any existing ape, before even the most imperfect form of speech could have come into use;

There is no such thing as imperfect speech in sane adults. Feral children have no speech at all. Even at adult age. Small children have imperfections that go away as they grow up among language users. Every man alive has the capacity to express himself in perfect speech. No human language ever studied is imperfect speech.

And similarily, the mental powers of notionality (apart from three different strategies that are pragmatic) are not a "development of the mental powers of emotion" ...

but we may confidently believe that the continued use and advancement of this power would have reacted on the mind by enabling and encouraging it to carry on long trains of thought.

No, there is an unbridgeable gap. Notionality. Articulation involving three levels of a message - the complete message (of which there are an infinity of possible ones), being subdivided into morphemes, and these having partial and usually notional (sometimes also pragmatic or emotive) meaning, and then each morpheme subdivided into meaningless sounds. But where the combination of several sounds distinct from each other carry the meaning as a kind of code.

A long and complex train of thought can no more be carried on without the aid of words, whether spoken or silent, than a long calculation without the use of figures or algebra.

And words, my dear Darwin, are either morphemes or combinations of morphemes, and they are notional.

It appears, also, that even ordinary trains of thought almost require some form of language, for the dumb, deaf, and blind girl, Laura Bridgman, was observed to use her fingers whilst dream-

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ing.37 Nevertheless a long succession of vivid and connected ideas, may pass through the mind without the aid of any form of language, as we may infer from the prolonged dreams of dogs.

Darwin confused "ideas" with "images" - they are not the same.

We have, also, seen that retriever-dogs are able to reason to a certain extent; and this they manifestly do without the aid of language.

What exactly did Darwin here mean by "reason"? It's earlier on in the same chapter:

Nevertheless I will give one case with respect to dogs, as it rests on two distinct observers, and can hardly depend on the modification of any instinct.

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Mr. Colquhoun16 winged two wild-ducks, which fell on the opposite side of a stream; his retriever tried to bring over both at once, but could not succeed; she then, though never before known to ruffle a feather, deliberately killed one, brought over the other, and returned for the dead bird. Col. Hutchinson relates that two partridges were shot at once, one being killed, the other wounded; the latter ran away, and was caught by the retriever, who on her return came across the dead bird; "she stopped, evidently greatly puzzled, and after one or two trials, finding she could not take it up without permitting the escape of the winged bird, she considered a moment, then deliberately murdered it by giving it a severe crunch, and afterwards brought away both together. This was the only known instance of her ever having wilfully injured any game." Here we have reason, though not quite perfect, for the retriever might have brought the wounded bird first and then returned for the dead one, as in the case of the two wild-ducks.

Darwin simply means, they can find pragmatic solutions. But he does not mean dogs can reason through notions. And that is what language is used for.

The intimate connection between the brain, as it is now developed in us, and the faculty of speech, is well shewn by those curious cases of brain-disease, in which speech is specially affected, as when the power to remember substantives is lost, whilst other words can be correctly used.38 There is no more improbability in the effects of the continued use of the vocal and mental organs being inherited, than in the case of hand-writing, which depends partly on the structure of the hand and partly on the disposition of the mind; and hand-writing is certainly inherited.39

Indeed, we have areas like Wernicke's and Broca's. We have genes like the human FOXP2 gene.

Why the organs now used for speech should have been originally perfected for this purpose, rather than any other organs, it is not difficult to see. Ants have considerable powers of intercommunication by means of their antennæ, as shewn by Huber, who devotes a whole chapter to their language. We might have used our fingers as efficient instruments, for a person with practice can report to a deaf man every word of a speech rapidly delivered at a public meeting; but the loss of our hands, whilst thus employed, would have been a serious inconvenience. As all the higher mammals possess vocal organs constructed on the same general

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plan with ours, and which are used as a means of communication, it was obviously probable, if the power of communication had to be improved, that these same organs would have been still further developed; and this has been effected by the aid of adjoining and well-adapted parts, namely the tongue and lips.46 The fact of the higher apes not using their vocal organs for speech, no doubt depends on their intelligence not having been sufficiently advanced. The possession by them of organs, which with long-continued practice might have been used for speech, although not thus used, is paralleled by the case of many birds which possess organs fitted for singing, though they never sing. Thus, the nightingale and crow have vocal organs similarly constructed, these being used by the former for diversified song, and by the latter merely for croaking.41

The fact of the matter is, apes have thicker ears. Thicker every bone. A sound made by lips or teeth is too shrill to be apprehended by ape ears, or (according to computer modelling) even Australopithecus ears. Even though the outer ductus and the malleus are more human than ape in thickness.

And Australopithecus lacks the skull modification made by the presence of Broca's area too.

The formation of different languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously the same.42

No, by now, they are not.

But we can trace the origin of many words further back than in the case of species, for we can perceive that they have arisen from the imitation of various sounds, as in alliterative poetry.

I don't know what is "many" to Darwin. Five? Ten? Milk for the sound of suckling and aqua for the sound of water dropping into water come to mind. But that's just too. Cuckoo, three. Well, at least provided the linguist assures Darwin it is "many" ... or perhaps it is that lots of etymologies seriously entertained by Max Müller would by now make linguists simply cringe.

We find in distinct languages striking homologies due to community of descent, and analogies due to a similar process of

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formation. The manner in which certain letters or sounds change when others change is very like correlated growth. We have in both cases the reduplication of parts, the effects of long-continued use, and so forth.

Nice parallel, but this is like comparing dog breeds.

Language has no origin in evolution from apes just because languageS have origins in Indo-European, any more than dogs have an evolutionary origin in Eothyris just because we see dog breeds diversify.

The frequent presence of rudiments, both in languages and in species, is still more remarkable. The letter m in the word am, means I; so that in the expression I am, a superfluous and useless rudiment has been retained.

Reflecting the development known as devolution. Evolving downward. In a (supposed) Proto-Indo-European, *ego *esmi would have meant, not "I am" but "I for my part, I am" ... and its descendant (if such) in English, only means "I am" ...

In the spelling also of words, letters often remain as the rudiments of ancient forms of pronunciation.

A different story entirely. Keeping a spelling allows us to read old texts. Changing the spelling every time the pronunciation changes is bothersome for the tradition of writing, and also makes older texts than say 300 years or so unreadable.

Languages, like organic beings, can be classed in groups under groups; and they can be classed either naturally according to descent, or artificially by other characters. Dominant languages and dialects spread widely and lead to the gradual extinction of other tongues. A language, like a species, when once extinct, never, as Sir C. Lyell remarks, reappears. The same language never has two birth-places.

Already disproven by Theodor Herzl, and by the guys whose mastery of Sumerian by now allow them to translate Elvis' Blue Suede Shoes into Sumerian - or the guys whose mastery of Old Egyptian allow them to translate Wellerman into it.

Distinct languages may be crossed or blended together.43 We see variability in every tongue, and new words are continually cropping up; but as there is a limit to the powers of the memory, single words, like whole languages, gradually become extinct. As Max Müller44 has well remarked:—"A struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and grammatical forms in each language. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue." To these more important causes of the survival of certain words, mere novelty may, I think, be added; for there is in the mind of man a strong love for slight changes in all things. The survival or

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preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.

If you check footnote 44, Müller made this observation well after Darwin's Origin of the Species.

The perfectly regular and wonderfully complex construction of the languages of many barbarous nations has often been advanced as a proof, either of the divine origin of these languages, or of the high art and former civilisation of their founders. Thus F. von Schlegel writes: "In those languages which appear to be at the lowest grade of intellectual culture, we frequently observe a very high and elaborate degree of art in their grammatical structure. This is especially the case with the Basque and the Lapponian, and many of the American languages."45

Unless by "high grade of intellectual culture" Schlegel means "what passes as intelligent in modern Western Academia" I see no evidence that Basque, Lapponian and many American languages are "at the lowest grade of intellectual culture" ... it can be added, that while Victorian England willingly used "grade" like German "Grad," contemporary English prefers "degree" like French "degrée" - I suppose World Wars I and II had something to do with that. Exactly as the Danish-German war triggered Swedish orthography professionals (teachers, for instance) to change the default spelling of the short open E sound as well as of the open E sound after Yod, from E to Ä ... in solidarity with Danes who (themselves or through their erstwhile subjects in Norway) spelled some words with Æ where German has E. Or at least Swedish teachers and editors thought Danish and Norwegian would have Æ here.

This example should show that the changes of language are actually not all that subconscious or unconscious in its changes, it's closer to fashion.

But it is assuredly an error to speak of any language as an art in the sense of its having been elaborately and methodically formed.

Not really.

Philologists now admit that conjugations, declensions, &c., originally existed as distinct words, since joined together;

Or thought. Since then language typology has shown conjugations and declinsions to be so omnipresent in human languages, that an origin in distinct words need not be the case at all.

It can happen. It seems Middle Persian (or Pehlevi) had an ending -ra, which designated Accusative and Dative, and which went back to an Old Persian word "rad" meaning "way" ... it has been proposed that the weak preterite ending of Germanic languages in -ed, could go back to a preterite form of "do" as a separate word. When on the other hand Greek uses an augment of adding an initial e- to designate past tenses, whether aorist or imperfect or pluperfect, when it uses reduplication around -e- for perfect, and after augment for pluperfect, and when stems get simplified for the past, while the present often uses infixes, it seems somewhat farfetched to be sure that this once was an independent word. Especially as agglutination is the most often occurring language type.

and as such words express the most obvious relations between objects and persons, it is not surprising that they should have been used by the men of most races during the earliest ages.

Please note, such relations between objects and persons are not the least obvious to apes.

With respect to perfection, the following illustration will best shew how easily we may err: a Crinoid sometimes consists of no less than 150,000 pieces of shell,46 all arranged with perfect symmetry in radiating lines; but a naturalist does not consider an animal of this kind as more perfect than a bilateral one with comparatively few parts, and with none of these alike, excepting on the opposite sides of the body. He justly considers the differentiation and specialisation of organs as the test of perfection.

An agglutinating language or a higly flective one is precisely as useful to intelligent discourse as an analytical one, like English. I hope the translation of the passage to Russian and to Turkish - Russian having six cases, Turkish being perfectly agglutinating - made some readers of Darwin in these languages smile. Or even guffaw.

So with languages, the most symmetrical and complex ought not to be ranked above irregular, abbre-

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viated, and bastardised languages, which have borrowed expressive words and useful forms of construction from various conquering, or conquered, or immigrant races.

The presence of many words are not an exclusive privilege of analytical language structures, as mentioned.

From these few and imperfect remarks I conclude that the extremely complex and regular construction of many barbarous languages, is no proof that they owe their origin to a special act of creation.47 Nor, as we have seen, does the faculty of articulate speech in itself offer any insuperable objection to the belief that man has been developed from some lower form.

Well, yes, it does. The three levels of articulation are there whether the language be as agglutinating as Turkish or as analytical as Chinese - one of the few languages even more analytical than English.

So is the ability to negate.

To speak of yesterday, tomorrow and unrealised ifs.

To imbricate subclause after subclause or genitive after genitive.

This is the house that Jack built.

This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.

Translatable (if not in equally rhythmic verse) to any human language. Intranslatable to cat miawls or dog barks. Even to the cat miawl of the mentioned cat who ate the mouse who had eaten the malt in the house that Jack built. Or even bird songs. The structures do not overlap. They do not even overlap so partially as to make a development possible, from the structure of a few emotively symbolic sounds giving up to 500 different pragmatic signals, to human language.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
II Lord's Day of Advent
4.XII.2022

Instead of giving the notes "after each page" I give them after the essay:

16 'The Moor and the Loch,' p. 45. Col. Hutchinson on 'Dog Breaking,' 1850, p. 46.

29 Quoted in 'Anthropological Review,' 1864, p. 158.

30 Rengger, ibid. s. 45.

31 See my 'Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. i. p. 27.

32 See a discussion on this subject in Mr. E. B. Tylor's very interesting work,'Researches into the Early History of Mankind,' 1865, chaps. ii. to iv.

33 Hon. Daines Barrington in 'Philosoph. Transactions,' 1773, p. 262. See also Dureau de la Malle, in 'Ann. des Sc. Nat.' 3rd series, Zoolog. tom. x. p. 119.

34 'On the Origin of Language,' by H. Wedgwood, 1866. 'Chapters on Language,' by the Rev. F. W. Farrar, 1865. These works are most interesting. See also 'De la Phys. et de Parole,' par Albert Lemoine, 1865, p. 190. The work on this subject, by the late Prof. Aug. Schleicher, has been translated by Dr. Bikkers into English, under the title of 'Darwinism tested by the Science of Language,' 1869.

35 Vogt, 'Mémoire sur les Microcéphales,' 1867, p. 169. With respect to savages, I have given some facts in my 'Journal of Researches,' &c., 1845, p. 206.

36 See clear evidence on this head in the two works so often quoted, by Brehm and Rengger.

37 See remarks on this head by Dr. Maudsley, 'The Physiology and Pathology of Mind,' 2nd edit. 1868, p. 199.

38 Many curious cases have been recorded. See, for instance, 'Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers,' by Dr. Abercrombie, 1838, p. 150.

39 'The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,' vol. ii. p. 6.

40 See some good remarks to this effect by Dr. Maudsley, 'The Physiology and Pathology of Mind,' 1868, p. 199.

41 Macgillivray, 'Hist. of British Birds,' vol. ii. 1839, p. 29. An excellent observer, Mr. Blackwall, remarks that the magpie learns to pronounce single words, and even short sentences, more readily than almost any other British bird; yet, as he adds, after long and closely investigating its habits, he has never known it, in a state of nature, display any unusual capacity for imitation. 'Researches in Zoology,' 1834, p. 158.

42 See the very interesting parallelism between the development of speech and languages, given by Sir C. Lyell in 'The Geolog. Evidences of the Antiquity of Man,' 1863, chap. xxiii.

43 See remarks to this effect by the Rev. F. W. Farrar, in an interesting article, entitled "Philology and Darwinism" in 'Nature,' March 24th, 1870, p. 528.

44 'Nature,' Jan. 6th, 1870, p. 257.

45 Quoted by C. S. Wake, 'Chapters on Man,' 1868, p. 101.

46 Buckland, 'Bridgewater Treatise,' p. 411.