VII INHERITED PRONUNCIATION 365 



can also be no doubt that this pronunciation, which occurs 

 only among a limited population, and moreover only in one 

 part of a single town, has been inherited. It seems to me 

 that such a peculiar pronunciation could only have been 

 developed in one of two ways : either some man possessed it 

 accidentally in consequence of laryngeal peculiarities, and 

 transmitted it to his descendants ; or some influential per- 

 sonages introduced it by a deliberate perversion of pronuncia- 

 tion, and others imitated them, and thereby the larynx 

 gradually acquired peculiar characters, which in course of 

 time were more strongly developed and inherited. These are 

 probably the two ways in which dialects in general and ulti- 

 mately languages have arisen.-^ 



My conclusions concerning this subject are strongly sup- 

 ported by the facts presented by the voice and speech of 



^ It is certain that the accurate investigation of the order in which sounds 

 appear in children, of the development of the powers of pronunciation and of 

 forming words, such as Professor Preyer carried out on his own children (cf. Die 

 Seele der Kinder), might throw a great deal of light on this subject if it were 

 applied to the most various nations. We might by its means discover the primi- 

 tive sounds which formed the basis of subsequent evolution. It has struck me 

 that many children use the sound " eng " at a very early age to express any feel- 

 ing or the desire for anything. In the latter case it is often very vigorously 

 uttered, the head, arms, and hands being at the same time stretched out in 

 sudden jerks towards the desired object. Idiots sometimes have recourse to the 

 same sound all their lives. I have a remembrance dating from my early youth 

 of such a man in a village, who was for this reason nick-named " Eng-eng." Pos- 

 sibly there is a profound connection between these phenomena and the fact that 

 the anthropomorphous apes of Africa have the same or similar names in their 

 native habitat. The gorilla is called "engena" or "ingjina," the chimpanzee 

 " engesego " or " ingjisego." On the speech of children compare also K. Vierordt, 

 Deutsche Revue, Bd. iii. p. 29. Herodotus (ii. 2) relates that the Egyptian king 

 Psammetich (670-616) endeavoured to discover which was the most ancient of all 

 nations and languages in the following way : He gave two new-born children to 

 one of his shepherds to be brought up without hearing any sound of human 

 speech. They were to lie in an isolated hut, and the shepherd was to take she- 

 goats to them at proper intervals that they might suck milk. After two years 

 the children came to the shepherd with outstretched hands and cried " Bekos " 

 (evidently an imitation of the bleating of the goats). As that was the Phrygian 

 word for bread the Egyptians concluded that the Phrygians were older than they. 

 A similar experiment was made by the Emperor Frederick II, but the children 

 under trial died too soon ( Vide Kaumer, Geschichte der Hohenstau/en). 



