Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/256

 242 CRITICAL NOTICES : and the Vocative, and Imperative ; between primary interjections {such as ah ! weh ! heu !) and certain verbs (as to howl) or nouns '(as father and mother: he follows Buschmann in rejecting the theory that these words are formed from conceptual roots). He next passes in review the instances of imitative sounds in de- veloped speech. They fall into two main classes : words that 'bear an immediate resemblance to objective sounds (cuckoo, to tick), and words that bear an auditory resemblance to some visible or tangible object. German is particularly wealthy in such in- stances ; but surely German is not the only language able to throw light upon a process which Wundt regards as one of the most primitive in the building-up of speech. Surely this is a case in which we have a right to insist upon a much wider survey of linguistic material than a mere parcel of facts from a highly developed tongue ! Wundt insists upon the continuity of the evolution of language (p. 314 et passim). Well and good, yet it is but one more reason for a comprehensive study of languages belonging to all possible stages of development. He rejects the root-theory of word-formation, and considers roots to be mere grammatical abstractions ; that is a question no argument about which is anything but waste of breath, unless it be supported by corroborative evidence. This evidence may be familiar to the philologist, but it is not to the student of psychology, and Wundt makes no serious attempt to enlighten us. Again in discussing the second class of imitative sounds that of imitation of some non-auditory object by means of an articulated sound it would have been most instructive to study not merely the traditional expressions of literary speech, but that large mass of new forma- tions, the slang of the populace ; for here we have indeed speech in the making. Of all this material, Wundt uses not a scrap. What now is the exact nature of the similarity between word and object in this second class of imitative sounds? By what process do they come into existence ? He answers that it is not in the sound itself, but in the movements of articulation upon which its pro- duction depends, that we must look for the essential factor. " Die Beziehung zwischen Laut und Bewegung kann keine im voraus gewollte, sondern nur eine nachtraglich entstandene sein. . . . Unrnittelbar sind es nicht die Laute, sondern die Lautbewegungen, die durch den ausseren Eindruck triebartig ausgelost werden " (p. 321). In short, these movements of articulation are to be regarded as belonging to the class of imitative gestures (nach- bildende geberde). And he even asserts (p. 323) that the source of the apparent similarity between words such as bummeln, torkeln, kribbeln, and the actions they denote, is not the sound, but the movement of the tongue and the lips. Surely this is a most paradoxical theory. Is our perception of the movements of articulation in and for themselves so very fine as Wundt supposes ? So far as my own introspection goes, this is not true. Muscular sensation and auditory image seem, in my own case, to