SCIENCE 



FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1888. 



Nature says, that, so far as numbers are concerned, the 

 Bath meeting of the British Association has been below the aver- 

 age. The number of ticl<ets sold has been about fifty less than 

 two thousand, forming a marked contrast to last year's meeting, 

 which beat the record. The diminished attendance has told to 

 some extent on the grants, several of which had to be reduced be- 

 low the sums originally proposed and approved of. The meeting 

 next year will be presided over by Professor Flower. Among the 

 grants allotted by the general council, the following may be men- 

 tioned. For the question of electrical standards ;£ioo have been 

 granted, the Ben Nevis Observatory receives ^50, and six smaller 

 amounts have been granted for researches in various branches of 

 physics and chemistry. For the ' Geological Record ' ;i^8o have 

 been allotted, and provisions have been made for studying the vol- 

 canic phenomena of Japan, the distribution of erratic blocks, and 

 several paleontological and stratigraphical questions. The greatest 

 grants have been allotted to the biological section. The Marine 

 Biological Association and the Naples Zoological Station continue to 

 be supported by the association by grants of ^200 and ^100 respec- 

 tively. An amount of ^100 each has been given to a study of the 

 zoology and botany of the West India Islands and of the Friendly 

 Islands. The same sum will be devoted to explorations of the geol- 

 ogy and geography of the Atlas Range, and to an investigation of es- 

 tuaries by means of models. In the anthropological section two im- 

 portant grants have been made, — one for continuing the studies on 

 the north-western tribes of Canada of ^150 ; and another of £100 

 for exploring the Roman Bath at Bath, a great part of which was 

 excavated last year, and found in a remarkably good state of pres- 

 ervation. Besides this, a number of minor grants have been allot- 

 ted, the total amount to be expended being £1,645. 



THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE. 



The existence of a great number of independent linguistic stocks 

 offers one of the most difficult problems to ethnology. Numerous 

 attempts have been made to compare apparently separate stocks, 

 and to trace their origin, but there remain a great number which 

 cannot be derived from a common source. The most recent theory 

 on the origin of linguistic stocks is the one offered by Prof. Horatio 

 Hale, h was first set forth in his address as vice-president of the 

 anthropological section at the Buffalo meeting of the American 

 Association in 18S6, and more fully expounded in a paper read re- 

 cently before the Canadian Institute at Toronto. 



The foundation of this theory is the frequently observed fact that 

 children occasionally form a language of their own, apparently to- 

 tally different from that of their parents. Hale has carefully com- 

 piled observations on this subject, and gives in both his papers 

 very interesting and remarkable instances of such languages. He 

 assumes that in a favorable climate a group of children may have 

 become separated from grown-up persons, and thus developed a 

 language of their own. He assumes that the process of forming 

 dialects is entirely and fundamentally distinct from that of forming 

 linguistic stocks. He concludes that children's languages of the 

 type mentioned above are formed at one stroke, complete in all 

 their grammatical elements. A few of the examples mentioned go 

 far to show that this view is correct ; but so far we miss the proof 

 that these languages are really fundamentally distinct from that of 

 the parents, as no philologist has ever studied one of them thor- 

 oughly. Hale explains the similarity of groups of linguistic 

 stocks in regard to their structure by assuming a potential faculty in 



the child to develop on a certain line. Such a faculty, in as com- 

 plex a phenomenon as speech is, seems to us very improbable, and 

 we are more inclined to see in such structural similarities a genetic 

 connection. 



Undoubtedly Hale has pointed out for the first time one of the 

 most potent factors in the evolution of language, and the problem 

 he propounds is so important that it ought to be taken up energet- 

 ically. 



As in every community child-language dies before being far ad- 

 vanced, it is self-evident that Hale's theory holds good only in such 

 countries where a complete isolation of a few individuals, and com- 

 plete interruption of their intercourse with the tribe from which 

 they separated, are possible. Such can only have been the case 

 where vast tracts of land were uninhabited ; and, as this is no 

 longer the case, the non-occurrence of such phenomena in historic 

 times cannot be considered proof against the theory. One phenome- 

 non of great importance we will mention in this place, as it is greatly 

 in favor of Hale's theory, but unfortunately we do not know whether 

 the authority is a good one. The children of a tribe of hunters in 

 South Africa are said to speak a language of their own, which they 

 do not give up until they take part in the expeditions of their par- 

 ents. If this really means that a language has developed, spoken 

 by all the children of the tribe, it would be an important step on 

 the line indicated by Hale. 



If this theory is correct, the difference between the development 

 of dialects and linguistic stocks cannot be as fundamental as Hale 

 assumes. Wherever occasion is given for a complete isolation of a 

 few children, occasion also arises for an isolation of a few adults 

 and many children, forming one household. In this case the lan- 

 guage of the children may gain a dominating influence over that of 

 the adults. The result of such an event would be a language sim- 

 ilar in structure to the original language, while the vocabularies 

 would be distinct in important features. It seems probable that 

 children's speech may have had a great influence in the origin of 

 dialects of certain linguistic stocks in which numerous words occur 

 that have undoubtedly originated independently in the respective 

 dialects. The probability of such an event has been recognized 

 by Hale, who points out that his theory explains the fact that cer- 

 tain words are common to a great number of stocks, although they 

 may differ in all other respects. He thinks that such words were 

 remembered by the children, and retained in their new language. 

 The character of the new language will also depend entirely upon 

 the stage of development of the language of the respective children. 

 We all know that the common baby-talk has to a certain extent the 

 same, although simplified, structure as the mother-tongue, while its 

 vocabulary includes many independent words. Undoubtedly there 

 exist numerous intermediate stages between such baby-talk and a 

 child-language of absolutely independent character — if such exists. 

 Therefore, if these languages really gave rise to new languages, we 

 might expect to observe a gradual shading-off between dialects and 

 stocks. It is very probable that by the process suggested by Hale 

 numerous new elements may have developed in the language of 

 isolated families. 



We are not inclined to accept his theory as explaining the origin 

 of stocks entirely distinct in structure until it has been proved that 

 a child's language of such character exists. Our reason for this 

 opinion is, that a child's language cannot originate until the child 

 has learned from its parents, and from other people with whom it 

 comes in contact, that speech is a means of communication ; that is, 

 until it has apperceived the connection of certain sounds with certain 

 other sensations. Therefore it seems probable that even an appar- 

 ently independent child's language must be to a great extent influ- 

 enced by the language it hears. 



Therefore it appears of the'greatest importance that the child's 

 language should be studied m all its aspects. Some of the in- 



