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At the Dawn of the Call: From Human to Animal before the Division of the World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Rèmy Dor
Rèmy Dor*
Affiliation:
IFEAC, Tashkent

Abstract

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‘In the beginning was the word And the word was aardvark’

Oulipo, Aux origines du langage, Bibliothéque oulipienne no. 121

First I think I should explain that call. It echoed in my ears for the first time a very long time ago and far, far away: on the Roof of the World, the Afghan Pamir, more than 30 years ago. It was uttered by a Kirghiz shepherd following a herd of sheep. Even if it is not in fact possible to transcribe that call accurately - the combination of the phonetic parameters that determine it would necessitate a representation using a graph or numerical matrices - I will attempt to give it a written shape, HAY, while admitting that this transcription denotes an abstraction that subsumes many possible realizations. But be that as it may. A few years later, when I was living in the Haut-Livradois, in the deepest heart of rural France, I was surprised to hear that call again on the lips of an Auvergnat peasant who was taking his sheep to the meadow. This unlikely coincidence led me to take a closer interest in the problem of communication between humans and animals. It is the essence of that thinking that I would today like to pass on to the readers of Diogenes in an issue devoted to the East/West contrast.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 50 , Issue 4: From East to West - Civilizations in a Looking-Glass: 50 Years, 1952-2002 , November 2003 , pp. 105 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2003

References

Notes

1. E. Decroix, Projet de langage phonétique universel pour la conduite des animaux, Paris, Société Nationale d'Acclimatation de France, 1898.

2. N. Edelman, Biologie de la Conscience, Paris, 1992, pp. 317-31.

3. S. J. Gould, Wonderful Life, New York and London, 1989; Life's Grandeur, London, 1997.

4. W. C. Lanyon and W. N. Travolga (eds), Animal Sound and Communication, Washington, 1960; H. Frings and M. Frings, Animal Communication, New York, 1964.

5. J. Corraze, Les Communications non verbales, Paris, 1983.

6. S. Pinker, The Language Instinct, New York and London, 1994.

7. C. Ramírez de la Lasta and M. García Vives, Les Réflexes linguistiques, Paris, 1981, pp.184 et seq.

8. ‘Un tableau des produits animaux et deux hypothèses qui en découlent’, Production pastorale et société, 7, 1980, pp. 20-36.

9. P.A. Lemare, Cours de langue française, vol. I, Paris, 1819.

10. O. Ferhinger, Encyclopédie des oiseaux, Paris, 1956, p. 396.

11. J. Corraze, 1983, op. cit., p. 82.

12. This does not contradict what I say above: if, for instance, I want my dog to run by my side while I am jogging, I use a somatoneutral huchement; similarly, if I am on a horse (yak, camel) and I want us to move forward together in the same direction.

13. H.C. Bolton in American Anthropologist X(3), 1897, pp. 69-90.

14. E. Maillart, Oasis interdites, Paris, 1937, p. 173.

15. See R. Dor, ‘Les huchements du berger turc: Du huchement-aux-morts à l'appel des chevaux’, in Les Ottomans et la mort, Leiden, 1996, pp. 38-55.

16. A. Hali, Z. Li and K. Luckert, Kazakh Tradition of China, University Press of America, 1997, p. 60.

17. J. Bynon, ‘Domestic Animal Calling in a Berber Tribe’, Language & Man, The Hague, 1976, pp. 39-61.

18. C. Petit, Orissa ou les chasseurs de pluie, Paris, 2002, p. 10.

19. A.M. Brisebarre, Bergers des Cévennes, Paris, 1978, p.56.

20. V. García de Diego, Diccionario de voces naturales, Madrid, 1968.

21. D. Thomas, Animal Call-words, Carmarthen, 1939, p. 68.

22. See R. Dor, ‘Les huchements du berger turc: I. Interpellates adressés aux animaux de la cour et de la demeure’, Journal asiatique CCLXXIII (3-4), 1985, pp. 371-424.

23. W. G. Aston, ‘Japanese Onomatopes and the Origin of Language’, Journal of the Anthropological Society of Great Britain & Ireland XXIII, 1894, pp. 332-62.

24. See R. Dor, ‘Les huchements du berger turc: III. Interpellates adressés au gros bétail’, Turcica XXVII, 1995, pp. 199-222.

25. Tchingiz Aitmatov, Adieu Goulsary, Paris, EFR, 1968, p. 47.

26. Ibid., pp. 28, 98.

27. Tchingiz Aitmatov, ‘Jamila’, Charqi surx, no. 12, 1960, pp. 77-114.

28. Erzählstoffe rezenter Mongolische Heldendichtung, Wiesbaden, 1988, vol. I, pp. 301-2 and note 110.