HUMAN SPEECH 45 



THE HISTORY AND VARIETIES OF HUMAN SPEECH 1 



By Dr. EDWARD SAPIR 



THE CANADIAN GEOLOGICAL SURVEY 



PERHAPS no single feature so markedly sets off man from the rest 

 of the animal world as the gift of speech, which he alone pos- 

 sesses. No community of normal human beings, be their advance in 

 culture ever so slight, has yet been found, or is ever likely to be found, 

 who do not communicate among themselves by means of a complex 

 system of sound symbols; in other words, who do not make use of a 

 definitely organized spoken language. It is indeed one of the para- 

 doxes of linguistic science that some of the most complexly organized 

 languages are spoken by so-called primitive peoples, while, on the other 

 hand, not a few languages of relatively simple structure are found 

 among peoples of considerable advance in culture. Relatively to the 

 modern inhabitants of England, to cite but one instance out of an in- 

 definitely large number, the Eskimos must be considered as rather 

 limited in cultural development. Yet there is just as little doubt that 

 in complexity of form the Eskimo language goes far beyond English. 

 I wish merely to indicate that, however much we may indulge in speak- 

 ing of primitive man, of a primitive language in the true sense of the 

 word we find nowhere a trace. It is true that many of the lower ani- 

 mals, for example birds, communicate by means of various cries, yet 

 no one will seriously maintain that such cries are comparable to the 

 conventional words of present-day human speech; at best they may be 

 compared to some of our interjections, which, however, falling outside 

 the regular morphologic and syntactic frame of speech, are least typ- 

 ical of the language of human beings. We can thus safely make the 

 absolute statement that language is typical of all human communities 

 of to-day, and of such previous times as we have historical knowledge 

 of, and that language, aside from reflex cries, is just as untypical of 

 all non-human forms of animal life. Like all other forms of human 

 activity, language must have its history. 



Much has been thought and written about the history of language. 

 Under this term may be included two more or less distinct lines of 

 inquiry. One may either trace the changes undergone by a particular 

 language or group of languages for as long a period as the evidence at 

 band allows, or one may attempt to pass beyond the limits of histor- 

 ically recorded or reconstructed speech, to reconstruct the ultimate 



1 Lecture delivered at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, April 1, 1911. 



