| Recent posts of mine have focused on grandiose vocabulary, onomatopoeia, and the development of human language – and I have one loose end from yesterday to tie up. I shared Dickinson’s poem “How many times these low feet staggered,” a somber lamentation of a deceased housewife, and asked. “If you were to provide a title for this poem, what would you call it?” I noted that the title Mabel Loomis Todd gave the poem when she first published in 1891 was a bit odd – and that title was… **drum roll** …“Troubled About Many Things.” Alas, I’d say that the dead housewife “in daisies lain” is more than somewhat untroubled at this point. |  |
Anyway, in yesterday’s post I also included a link to Michael Corballis’s 1999 article “The Gestural Origins of Language: Human language may have evolved from manual gestures, which survive today as a ‘behavioral fossil’ coupled to speech" (HERE). It was fascinating!
“If,” said Corballis, “the earliest language were indeed gestural, this would help to explain one of the mysteries of the evolution of speech: how words came to represent objects and events in arbitrary fashion…With very few exceptions, such as onomatopoeic words like ‘buzz’ or ‘shriek’...there is nothing in the actual sound of a word that gives a clue as to its meaning. It has been argued that the earliest words did in fact mimic their referents, a notion pejoratively dubbed the "bow-wow theory" by the 19th-century Oxford philologist Max Müller.”
By the way, I mentioned the “bow-wow theory” in one of my recent posts; info is HERE.
Anywho, I discussed all of this with my wife the other day, and we pondered what might have been the actual first words in human speech; after some extensive research, we came up with this top-ten list:
1. Ouw – or some utterance of pain.
2. Mmmuh – or some voice bilabial nasal consonantal sound – which occurs in about 96% of spoken languages – to indicate one’s mother figure.
3. Aaaaiiiiiyyyyy – or some sort of alarm call or a “term” to signify “I’m falling” or “I’m being eaten by a black-backed jackal.”
4. Pleeeh – “this baobab bark tastes terrible.”
5. Bah (with waving arms) – a greeting, “Here I am.”
6. Bah bah bah (wiht frantic pointing) – “Look over there!”
7. BAH BHA BAAAAHHH BAAAAHHH – “RUN!”
8. Various grunts – “Honey, I’m home.”
9. WRREAGH – “Don’t make me stop this caravan.”
10. B’haa hah hah – “Look at Thok! He fell down!”
“If,” said Corballis, “the earliest language were indeed gestural, this would help to explain one of the mysteries of the evolution of speech: how words came to represent objects and events in arbitrary fashion…With very few exceptions, such as onomatopoeic words like ‘buzz’ or ‘shriek’...there is nothing in the actual sound of a word that gives a clue as to its meaning. It has been argued that the earliest words did in fact mimic their referents, a notion pejoratively dubbed the "bow-wow theory" by the 19th-century Oxford philologist Max Müller.”
By the way, I mentioned the “bow-wow theory” in one of my recent posts; info is HERE.
Anywho, I discussed all of this with my wife the other day, and we pondered what might have been the actual first words in human speech; after some extensive research, we came up with this top-ten list:
1. Ouw – or some utterance of pain.
2. Mmmuh – or some voice bilabial nasal consonantal sound – which occurs in about 96% of spoken languages – to indicate one’s mother figure.
3. Aaaaiiiiiyyyyy – or some sort of alarm call or a “term” to signify “I’m falling” or “I’m being eaten by a black-backed jackal.”
4. Pleeeh – “this baobab bark tastes terrible.”
5. Bah (with waving arms) – a greeting, “Here I am.”
6. Bah bah bah (wiht frantic pointing) – “Look over there!”
7. BAH BHA BAAAAHHH BAAAAHHH – “RUN!”
8. Various grunts – “Honey, I’m home.”
9. WRREAGH – “Don’t make me stop this caravan.”
10. B’haa hah hah – “Look at Thok! He fell down!”
| Of course, Dickinson never used any of these words in any of her poems, nor did she use the word “grunt”; however, she did use the word “shriek” in two poems (“We dream – it is good we are dreaming” and “I dont sound so terrible – quite – as it did”). She also used the word “cave” in one poem, and what an interesting, multivalent work it is. Take a look, and I’ll return to it tomorrow. |  |
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