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The President's Address
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
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page xxvi note 1 I am not unmindful of the claims of the mutation theory, which Professor A. H. Pierce has already applied tentatively to the explanation of gesture and other modes of expression (Jnl. of Philos., Psych. and Sci. Method, vol. 3, p. 573), and which Professor Manley has used analogically (and perhaps a little prematurely, if ingeniously) for the interpretation of literary history (Modern Philology, vol. 4, p. 1); but as the theory is still in its inception, and liable to sweeping modifications, I have thought it best to hold for the present purpose to the older view.
page xxviii note 1 Although the two classes have been thus marked off from each other there is a sense in which all overt movements may be said to be at one and the same time life-serving and expressive-communicative. The life-serving function of eating, for example, when it is performed by persons
“Feeding like horses when you hear them feed,”
both expresses hunger and communicates the idea of hunger to others. The provincial guest at a hotel who with his fork spears a slice of bread on the far side of the table, not only performs a life-serving function, but also gives publicity to his lack of manners. Just so the movement of running away expresses fear, the movement of striking expresses anger, the movement of carrying a hod of bricks up a ladder expresses toil. Even covert processes may have this function, as when accelerated beating of the heart in excitement appears in the temporal artery or defective secretion of bile gives a yellow cast to the complexion.
page xxix note 1 This theory has been fully elaborated by Dewey, The Theory of Emotion, Psychological Review, vol. 1, p. 553.
page xxxiii note 1 In like manner, to rise to a higher plane, if spiritual life and progress be the end in view, if existence without it is intolerable, the means of intercommunication which will conserve and propagate spiritual life—say, for example, the maintenance of free speech—is as distinctively a life-serving process as eating, sleeping or breathing.
page xxxiii note 1 For a striking illustration of the psychical value of a seemingly trivial gesture, see May Sinclair's story, The Fault. Compare also the following: “Der Eunuch Euläus war der höchste Bewunderer dieser Füsse [i. e., of Cleopatra, as she lay at the banquet], nicht, wie er vorgab, um ihrer Schönheit willen, sondern weil das Spiel der Zehen der Königin ihm gerade dann zeigte, was in ihr vorging, wenn aus ihrem in der Kunst der Verstellung wohlgeübten Mund und Auge nichts, was ihre Seele erregte, zu erkennen vermochte.”—Georg Ebers, Die Schwestern, 8. Kap., S. 112.
page xxxiii note 2 Principles of Psychology, vol. ii, p. 487.
page xxxiv note 1 Or of whatever else is necessary. For simplicity's sake I use hunger as a typical motive.
page xxxv note 1 Cf. Wundt, Völkerpsychologie, i, S. 129: “Nach so oft wiederholten vergeblichen Versuchen, die Gegenstände zu ergreifen, verselbständigt sich dann erst die Deutebewegung als solche.” Wundt fails to explain, however, how the transition is effected.
page xxxviii note 1 At one of the Henley regattas the panting of an exhausted oarsman could be distinctly heard, amid the confusion of other sounds, at a distance of forty feet.
page xlii note 1 See the interesting and suggestive article on Crying, by A. Borgquist, American Journal of Psychology, vol. 17, p. 149.
page xlii note 2 According to Furness, Home-Life of the Borneo Head-Hunters, nothing is more characteristic of savage life than the ravenous devouring of food. The savage grace before meat in Borneo is ‘Eat slowly.‘ An overplus of food, or a modicum of poisonous food, is commonly rejected by the spontaneous recoil of the digestive system.
page xlii note 3 On the function of the epiglottis in modifying vocal sounds, see Czermak, Sitzungsberichte d. K. Akademie d. Wiss., Wien, Math.-Nat. Klass., 1858, xxix, S. 557 (reprinted in Ges. Schriften, i, 555), and Scripture, Experimental Phonetics, pp. 274, 279.
page xxxix note 1 Principles of Sociology, p. 107.
page xl note 1 I purposely omit, while recognizing its importance for the discussion, the question of the relation of the sexes.
page xl note 2 This view receives confirmation from the well-known fact that the sense of hearing was originally a shake-organ, the sensations of noise having
page xliii note 1 Such sounds as these are frequently said to be meaningless. Thus Jespersen (Progress in Language, p. 361) speaking of the phonation with which he conceives speech to have begun, says: “Originally a jingle of empty sounds without meaning, it came to be an instrument of thought.” Aston also characterizes spitting, gulping, and coughing as “non-significant human vocal sounds” (Japanese Onomatopes and the origin of Language, Jnl. Anthropol. Inst., vol. 23, p. 332). Although significance is a relative term, it seems to me unscientific to apply the word non-significant to any vocal sound which reveals bodily states or affects social relations. In primitive society the sound of sneezing, for example, may at times have been as significant for human events then and there, as are the most solemn words of our modern vocabulary. To take an extreme case, a sneeze which revealed the presence of an individual to his enemy may have resulted in death. The sentence of a judge could do no more.
page xliii note 2 Scripture, Experimental Phonetics, p. 380: “Experiments on the nervous and mental reactions of the vasomotor system, of the heart, of the muscles, of the sweat glands, bladder, anus, etc., make it probably safe to say that the production of any vocal sound is accompanied by nerve impulses to and from every organ of the body. Vocal sounds of a certain character, such as clear, smooth, energetic phrase in song, become associated with the regulation not only of the vocal muscles but also of those of the arms and hands, and, in fact, of the entire body. The disturbance of any of these by restraint or unnatural posture interferes to a greater or less degree—depending on the individual and on circumstances—with the vocal action. To produce the proper modulation the singer or speaker should put his entire body into the appropriate condition.”
page xliv note 1 And to the muscles of the legs as well. Thus the runner in a hundred-yard dash, first taking a full inspiration, closes the glottis tightly, and if closely pressed keeps it closed during the entire race. Cf. the interesting article by Dr. E. Tait McKenzie on The Facial Expression of Violent Effort, Breathlessness, and Fatigue, in the London Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, October, 1905, p. 51.
page xliv note 2 Darwin, Expression of the Emotions, p. 284; Dewey, The Theory of Emotion, Psychological Review, vol. i, p. 553.
page xlv note 1 Nor is the comparison merely fanciful. The lungs hunger for their proper food. A diver rising to the surface after a long stay under water “clutches” the air as fiercely as a starving cat clutches a piece of meat.
page xlvii note 1 I use this term, it must be remembered, to indicate any constriction of the lower part of the air passage. ‘Tracheal stop’ would be more precise.
page xlvii note 2 For example, as others have surmised, the nasal stop involved in suckling may have given rise to the sound nga, na, or ma, which in 80 per cent. of all languages is the word for mother.
page xlix note 1 For the sake of simplicity I will confine myself to a single phenomenon.
page l note 1 Fanciful though this description may be, it was suggested in all its outward details by the behavior of a mother and baby Macacus in the London Zoölogical Gardens.
page liiii note 1 It will be observed that among the factors of speech-genesis I have given but a modest rôle to imitation. Considering the great importance which philologists have assigned to the imitative instinct, this view may excite surprise and at least deserves a word of explanation.
It must be apparent to persons who are familiar with the recent literature of psychology, that the imitation-theory, not only with respect to speech, but with respect to origins of mental aptitudes of all kinds, especially in infants, has been sadly overworked. Imitation has been treated as a purely reflex and mechanical act, as an inscrutable instinct prompting men and animals to repeat exactly the movements of others or to reproduce in one way or another certain natural phenomena. The truth is, however, as Professor C. H. Cooley has well said, that much of what we call imitation is a difficult and complicated exercise of attention, will, and even judgment. It is more characteristic of adults than of the very young. Referring to the speech of young children, Professor Cooley says: “The imitativeness of children is stimulated by the imitativeness of parents. A baby cannot hit upon any sort of a noise, but the admiring family, eager for communication, will imitate it again and again, hoping to get a repetition. They are usually disappointed, but the exercise probably causes the child to notice the likeness of the sounds and so prepares the way for imitation. It is perhaps safe to say that up to the end of the first year the parents are more imitative than the child.” (Human Nature and the Social Order, p. 25.)
Applying this principle to the genesis of speech, we may say that the primitive mother's imitation of the child's irregularities of respiration are a more potent factor in the development of speech than the child's imitation of the mother, or of anything else. The so-called imitation words pop, crack, bang, sizzle, and the like are probably late creations. Primitive man must have attained to a relatively advanced stage of intelligence and discriminative power before he detected the similarity of the sounds he was making with his breath to the sounds made by the forces and objects of nature—to the rippling of streams, the murmuring of the winds in the trees, or the rolling of thunder in the clouds. (Cf. Wundt, Schallnachahmungen und Lautmetaphern in der Sprache. Beilage zur Münchener Allg. Zeit., 16. Feb., 1907.) I say nothing about the sounds made by other animals, because, as I have said before, I assume that man or his precursor was the earliest of his kind to develop voice.