A gift of tongues

This being by way of proper notice of reference 1, first noticed at reference 2.

Figure 1

Figure 2

A wartime economy book, on very cheap paper. Notwithstanding, nicely bound and otherwise nicely produced. Furthermore, someone has taken a bit of trouble with the dedication inside. My guess being that it was a gift for a teacher who was leaving.

Figure 3

 A book about languages designed for the lay reader; just about 300 pages of text arranged in twelve chapters, written by someone who, inter alia, lectured on Chaucer. To plug the gap between the magazine article intended for the general public and the heavy tomes intended for the professional linguists. From the same stable as ‘Mathematics for the Million’ and ‘Science for the Citizen’, at least one of which featured in my boyhood. All books from a time when we in the west were striving for the improvement of mankind, for the education of all.

While I am neither a beginner nor an expert, I found the book a useful and interesting canter through the study of languages. And I think it would be fair to say from someone with a particular interest in the phonological end of the business; the business of shaping words out of the sort of sounds that our vocal tract can manage. In which connection, I should perhaps add that the human vocal tract is almost as special as the human brain; not many other animals have anything like it; probably just some monkeys and some birds.

Someone also who, despite having written this book well over half a century ago, has an approach to grammar which strikes me as entirely modern, a belief that grammar is an attempt to corral living and breathing languages into a formal framework which is never going to be a very good fit. An approach which includes comments about how our western understanding of grammar – including here word order, parts of speech, inflections of nouns, inflections of verbs, the use of particles, suffixes and prefixes – is perhaps influenced too much by the grammar of stylised, self-conscious authors like Cicero. Whose written word might be a long way from the spoken word of ordinary citizens, soldiers and subjects. And we need to be reminded that some languages, perhaps not in the Indo-European group of languages, do things very differently indeed.

Along the way she points to some interesting uses of negative and double negative particles in both English and French, defying grammarians or logicians to make sense of them. One example being: ‘he don’t like me no more’. Another being: ‘it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it’.

She starts the book with the function of language in communication, in the course of which she talks about the magic that can be done with names, particularly proper names, thought to be tightly bound up with whatever it is that is so named. To the point that one needs to be very careful with one’s use of certain names, for example those of kings and gods. She points up the connection from there to the way that bits of peoples’ bodies – for example nail clippings – or images of faces – for example portrait photographs - can be bound in the same way. Magical relics which persist to this day. See for example, reference 11.

Figure 4

She goes onto the business, mentioned above, of making sounds. Presenting an organisation of same from which I associate to the all-important periodic table of chemists. A table in which neighbours are related in an organised way, from where we get to the international phonetic alphabet; sadly not standardised to quite the same standard as the orderly scheme of the elements of the chemists. But, bearing in mind that many syllables are of the form consonant-vowel-consonant, where consonants are often short and vowels are often long, and that there are usually rather more consonants than vowels, the figure above gives something of the organisation of consonants, with the vocal tract being something in the way of the wind instrument of music, with the sound in question being generated from different positions, from the lips left through to the back of the throat right. With babies finding it easier to decipher and reproduce the former, more visible sounds. While down the left hand side we have other ways of classifying consonants.

The idea being that any one language must have chosen and arranged consonants on such a chart in such a way that there are enough of them to give one a reasonable repertoire of syllables and that they are far enough apart, one from another, that they can be reliably produced and consumed.

Another idea being that diagrams of this sort are good at predicting the way the words are apt to shift over time, with constituent sounds slipping from one position in the table, to another nearby position.

She points up the connections between language and technology. Cuneiform, for example, is well adapted to being punched out in the soft clay of its day. Spelling can be in the grip of printers like Gutenburg and Caxton. While I can point up the impact of communication by text message, by busy people on the move, on language. Mandarins – that is to say highly trained and polished civil servants – and their antique language skills are out and the likes of Dominic Cummings are in. To name just one person who is supposed to be behind the news, not in the news.

She appears to be sceptical about attempts to hold the line, attempts to stop the continual evolution of language. About, for example, the attempts of the French to maintain the supposed Gallic purity of their language in the face of Anglo-Saxon incursions. Or about teachers in English grammar schools attempting to maintain correct usage, what ever that might be.

Generally very good on the way that languages change, leaving all kinds of relics of past times in place, with lots of entertaining examples. So loyal and legal come from the one root in the same way as royal and regal. Words in English starting with ‘sk’ – words like sky, skull and skill – are generally imports from the time of the Vikings – although some of them have been palatised (see reference 6…) to ‘sh’, as is shield. And with a lot of English spelling being more of these relics. On the way that languages evolve over even longer periods of time. On the family connections between languages – taking care to remind us that some apparent similarities are no more than coincidences.

She has quite a lot of say about what comparative linguistics can teach us about history. So where a group of languages share a word for something, that word is evidence that the group had a common ancestor or precursor, that word is apt to be old and may say something about the place from which that precursor came. For example, the precursor for a group of languages sharing a word for polar bears is unlikely to have come from the tropics. Or the precursor for a group of languages sharing words for ploughing is likely come from a people practising agriculture rather than hunting and gathering. Speculations which have been complemented by the work of Reich with old DNA (reference 8), with various notices at reference 9.

There is some talk of the way that intellectuals, writers and other creative types push at the boundaries of languages, for one reason or another. Perhaps to get new mileage out of old words, perhaps to try and express new things in a new way. Quite a lot of space is given to Joyce’s experiments with language, already noticed at reference 2.

Near the end of chapter 10, that is to say very near the end of the book, we are reminded of the cynical observation about the chief function of language being to conceal thought, an observation which Bing attributes to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince de Benevento - also known simply as (that duplicitous survivor) Talleyrand: ‘La parole a été donné à l’homme pour déguiser sa pensée’. A thought which I think Simenon – I have recently been reading his cahiers of the early 1960’s would recognise. With his take being that trying to express what one thinks in words is often a bad thing, with the mere attempt at expression corrupting and fixing what should be unexpressed and fluid. With ‘flou’ being an important word in the world of detection by Maigret. So, to my mind, a cynical observation, but one which serves to remind us of the limits of language.

All in all, an excellent introductory text, which has stood the test of time well. Although the reason that I bought the book, the idea that the word ‘I’ is a relatively late arrival in the evolution of language, not needed in the first instance, and noticed at reference 10, gets just a fairly weak statement, no more than a sentence, in the introductory chapter 1 (on page 11).

PS 1: only yesterday I read (elsewhere) that ‘Prussia’ and ‘Russia’ came from the same root. From the time when the Elector of Brandenburg was – or perhaps the Teutonic Knights were – pushing into the border lands in the east, towards what are now the Baltic states, Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine. Did either Hitler or Stalin know this?

PS 2: while just now I have read some language which might have come from the texting generation. In the form of a flyer about protesting plans to move hospital services about in north Surrey, in which there is loose talk of ‘health bosses’ as if they were the enemy. With the bosses in question, in all probability, being men and women who have given their working lives to public service, to the health service, and who are doing their best to get a quart out of a pint pot. They deserve a bit more respect.

References

Reference 1: The gift of tongues - Schlauch – 1943.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/10/ebay.html. 

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet.

Reference 4: http://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/.

Reference 5: https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/.

Reference 6: English phonetics and phonology glossary: a little encyclopaedia of phonetics - Peter Roach – 2009. A freely accessible, handy guide, turned up by Bing in the course of my travels.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Maurice_de_Talleyrand-Périgord.

Reference 8: Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the new science of the human past - David Reich – 2018.

Reference 9: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/search?q=reich.

Reference 10: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/some-contrasts-between-old-and-new.html.

Reference 11: https://shewhomustnotbenamed93.blogspot.com/. Found among the rather odd collection of material that Bing turns up for this expression. Some unpleasantly pornographic.