116 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



These naturally expressive words are very often repre- 

 - sented by closely allied forms in some of the Teutonic, 

 Celtic, or other Aryan languages, and they have thus every 

 appearance of constituting a remnant of that original 

 imitative or expressive speech, the essential features of 

 which have undergone little change, although the exact 

 form of the words may have been continually modified. 

 But even when it can be shown that a word which is now 

 strikingly suggestive of its meaning has been derived from 

 some other words which are less, or not at all, suggestive 

 of the same idea, or which even refer to some totally 

 different idea, the obvious conclusion will be that, even in 

 the present day, there is so powerful a tendency to bring 

 sound and sense into unison, as to render it in the highest 

 degree probable that we have here a fundamental 

 principle which has always been at work, both in 

 the origin and in the successive modifications of human 

 speech. 



Many writers have discussed the inter] ectional and 

 imitative origin of language especially, in this coun- 

 try, Dean Farrar and Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood but 

 neither in their volumes, nor in any other English work 

 with which I am acquainted, is the subject elaborated 

 with any approach to completeness, while many of its. 

 most important features appear to have been overlooked. 

 One of the most celebrated philological scholars and 

 writers has treated it with extreme contempt, and has 

 christened it the " Bow-wow and Pooh-pooh theory ; " and, 

 perhaps in consequence of this contempt, its advocates 

 often adopt an apologetic tone, and, while urging the cor- 

 rectness of the principle, are prepared to admit that its 

 application is very limited, and that it can only be used 

 to explain a very small portion of any language. This is, 

 no doubt, true, if we go no further than the ordinary 

 classes of inter] ectional and imitative words the Oh ! 

 of astonishment, the Ah ! and Ugh ! of pain, the infantile 

 Ba, Pa, and Ma, as the origin of father and mother terms, 

 and the direct imitation of animal or human sounds, as 

 in cuckoo, mew, whinny, sneeze, snore, and many others, 

 together with the various words that may be derived from 



