TEANSACTIONS. 



I. — On the Principle of Onomatopoeia in Language. By Professor Blackie. 



(Read 19th December 1864.) 



By omfiuromuu the Greek grammarians understood that principle, or tendency 

 in the growth of language, according to which certain words are formed by an 

 imitation of the sounds which they signify. Thus, hy%, the root of the Greek 

 word oyxasSai, to bra?/, may be considered to have been formed of a human mimicry 

 of that animal to which human beings of the lowest cerebral capacity are peculiarly 

 compared ; and in the same way, laogh, the Gaelic for a calf, seems to contain a 

 sound to which only the throats of Highland calves, Highland chieftains, and 

 Highland crofters are competent. The word onomatopoeia, like some other tech- 

 nical terms of the old grammarians, is not particularly happy, for it means only 

 and generally word-making, or rather name-making, and says nothing of the prin- 

 ciple by which the special class of words in question is made. Instead of this 

 term, therefore, I should prefer to speak of the imitative or pictorial principle in 

 the formation of human speech ; and I should contrast the whole class of words 

 in which the operation of this principle can be traced, with another class, derived 

 from ideas or notions [about the thing to be named in the mind of the word- 

 maker. Thus, the modern Greeks call a cock kztwo, that is, the fowl, or flying 

 animal, from airopu.!, to fly ; and the Latin word, equus, a horse, if it comes, as 

 Professor Muller says, from the Sanscrit root d'su, swift, will be another word 

 formed on the same principle. The roots of these words I propose to call notional 

 roots, as contrasted with the onomatopcetic class of roots, which I propose to 

 call pictorial roots, or roots formed by plwnic imitation. 



Professor Muller, in his valuable work on the Science of Language, has, in 

 both volumes, either denied altogether the existence of this class of words, or 

 treated them with such marked disfavour, that in his system they do not appear 

 at all as effective agents in the formation of reasonable speech, but merely play a 

 subordinate and scarcely human part in the precincts of the poultry-yard and 

 the pig- sty. If, in the central table-land of Asia, before the divarication of the 

 great Aryan races, a Persian pig gave a grunt, the learned Professor might perhaps 



VOL. XXIV. PART I. A 



