ROOTS OF LAXGUAGE. l^J 



principle of imitation is more or less clearly apparent, 

 the greatest diversities occur among the resulting sounds.* 

 In this connection, also, I may adduce yet one further 

 consideration. In his Introduction to the Science of Lan- 

 guage, Professor Sayce argues on several grounds that, 

 when articulation first began, the articulate sounds were 

 probably in large part dependent for their meaning on the 

 gestures with which they were accompanied. Consequently, 

 aboriginal root-words, even supposing that any such had 

 come down to us, and that their origin were imitative, 

 inasmuch as their imitative value may thus have in large 

 part depended on appropriately accompanying gestures, their 

 imitative source would long ago have become obscured. 



In view of all these considerations, therefore, I cannot 

 deem the merely negative evidence against the onomatopoetic 

 origin of articulate sounds as of any value at all. Even if vve 

 had any reason to suppose that philological analysis were in 

 possession of the really aboriginal commencements of spoken 

 language, we should still be unable reasonably to conclude 

 against their imitative origin, merely on the ground that in 

 our greatly altered circumstances of life and of mind we arc 

 not now able to trace the imitations. 



As a matter of fact, however, the evidence which we have 

 on the subject is not all negative. On the contrary, there is 

 an overwhelming body of actual and unquestionable proof of 

 the imitative origin of very many words in all languages — 

 especially those which are spoken by savages, and are known 

 from their general structure to be in a comparatively 

 undeveloped state. The evidence being much too copious 

 for quotation, I must content myself with referring to the 



* Professor Max Miiller has argued that in the Indo-European languages the 

 apparently onomatopoeiic words signifying "thunder "are derived from the root 

 tail, to "stretch," and therefore were not of imitative origin. But Farrar has 

 satisfactorily met this objection, even as regards this one particular case, by 

 showing that even if not originally onomatopoetic, these words afterwards "became 

 so from a feeling of the need that they should be" {Origin of l.an:^ua!^c, p. S2). 

 S.c al.-,o, Chapters on Lansnagc, pp. 178-182 ; Ileyse, System, %. 9J ; and Wundl, 

 I'orLs linden, Cre., ii. 396. 



