MALLERY.] THEORIES UPON PRIMITIVE LANGUAGE. 283 
descendments to what should be noted and betokened by them. An ar- 
ticulate voice, according to the dialecticians, hath naturally no significa- 
tion at all; for that the sense and meaning thereof did totally depend 
upon the good will and pleasure of the first deviser and imposer of it.” 
Max Miiller, following Professor Heyse, of Berlin, published an in- 
genious theory of primitive speech, to the effect that man had a creative 
faculty giving to each conception, as it thrilled through his brain for the 
first time, a special phonetic expression, which faculty became extinct 
when its necessity ceased. This theory, which makes each radical of 
janguage to be a phonetic type rung out from the organism of the first 
man or men when struck by an idea, has been happily named the “ding- 
dong” theory. It has been abandoned mainly through the destructive 
criticisms of Prof. W. D. WHITNEY, of YaleCollege. One lucid explana- 
tion by the latter should be specially noted: ‘A word isa combination 
of sounds which by a series of historical reasons has come to be ac- 
cepted and understood in a certain community as the sign of a certain 
idea. As long as they so accept and understand it, it has existence ; 
when every one ceases to use and understand it, it ceases to exist.” 
Several authors, among them Kaltschmidt, contend that there was but 
one primitive language, which was purely onomatopeie, that is, imitative 
of natural sounds. This has been stigmatized as the ‘“bow-wow” 
theory, but its advocates might derive an argument from the epithet 
itself, as not only our children, but the natives of Papua, call the dog a 
“pbow-wow.” They have, however, gone too far in attempting to trace 
back words in their shape as now existing to any natural sounds in- 
stead of confining that work to the roots from which the words have 
sprung. 
Another attempt has been made, represented by Professor Noiré, 
to account for language by means of interjectional cries. This Max 
Miiller revengefully styled the “pooh-pooh” theory. In it is included 
the rhythmical sounds which a body of men make seemingly by a com- 
mon impulse when engaged in a common work, such as the cries of 
sailors when hauling on a rope or pulling an oar, or the yell of savages 
in an attack. It also derives an argument from the impulse of life by 
which the child shouts and the bird sings. There are, however, very few 
either words or roots of words which can be proved to have that deri- 
vation. 
Professor SAYCE, in his late work, Introduction to the Science of Lan- 
guage, London, 1880, gives the origin of language in gestures, in onoma- 
topeia, and to a limited extent in interjectional cries. He concludes 
it to be the ordinary theory of modern comparative philologists that all 
languages are traced back to a certain number of abstract roots, each of 
which was a sort of sentence in embryo, and while he does not admit 
this as usually presented, he believes that there was a time in the history 
