More than this, I believe that by a judicious study of existing languages, especially those which have suffered little by admixture or by distant removals, we can picture with reasonable fidelity the character of the earliest tongues spoken by man, the speech of the Palæolithic Age.
This primitive utterance was, of course, not the same everywhere. It varied indefinitely. But for all that it is almost certain that in all localities it proceeded on analogous lines of development, just as languages have everywhere and at all times since. By studying simple and isolated languages, those which have suffered least by contact with others, or by alterations in conditions of culture, we can catch some glimpses of the character of man’s earliest significant expression, the “baby-talk of the race,” if I may use the expression. I have gleaned a certain number of such traits in the field of American linguistics, and present them to you as curiosities, which, like other curiosities, have considerable significance to those who will master their full purport.
The question I am about to consider, is, you will observe, quite different from that which concerns itself with the origin of _linguistic stocks_. Many of these unquestionably arose long after man had acquired well-developed languages, and when the cerebral convolutions whose activity is manifested in articulate expression had acquired a high grade of development through hereditary training. How such stocks may have arisen has been lucidly set forth by my learned friend Mr. Horatio Hale. He demonstrates by many examples that in the present cerebral evolution of man, infants develop an articulate language with the same natural facility that any other species of animal does the vocal utterances peculiar to its kind.[334]
But in this essay I am contemplating man as he was before hundreds of generations of speaking ancestors had evolved such cerebral powers.
I begin with some observations on the phonetic elements. These are no other than what we call the alphabet, the simple sounds which combined together make up the words of a language. In all European tongues, the mere letters of the alphabet, by themselves, have no meaning and convey no idea; furthermore, their value in a word is fixed; and, thirdly, arranged in a word, they are sufficient to convey its sound and sense to one acquainted with their values.