First Words

Nobody knows how men began to talk, but plenty of scholars have advanced strangely nicknamed theories about it. Last week an eminent psychologist, Edward Lee Thorndike of Columbia University, entered his "babble-babble" (or "babble-luck") thesis in the competition.

Most theories presuppose that primitive man laboriously developed language from what were at first mere random sounds. According to the "ding-dongists," man's first words were based on the characteristic sounds made by objects when they are struck (e.g., the splash of water). The "bow-wowers" hold that man began talking by mimicking the sounds of nature. The "pooh-poohers" believe that instinctive cries of pain, surprise, love or the like were the original source of words. In 1930 British Physicist Sir Richard Paget got more scientific about it, argued that words originated in man's characteristic gestures of the tongue and lips (e.g., blowing air through the larynx while making the gestures of eating produces mnyum, mnyuh). Dr. Thorndike calls this the "yum-yum" theory, waves it aside with the others as inadequate. His own explanation is "a humdrum affair": man discovered words by sheer accident.

Writing in Science, the Columbia psychologist explains that he started with the "safe" assumption that primitive man prattled like a child while at work and play. Observing his own children and grandchildren, Thorndike noted that these babblings sometimes repeated themselves in connection with the same act or object, at first by chance, then deliberately. Thus a primitive man may have babbled "ik" as he poked with a stick or "kuz" as he dug up a clam, then repeated the sound when he poked or dug again.

Eventually, Thorndike believes, the man attached the sound "ik" to stick, in a lifetime developed in this way a private language of perhaps 20 to 25 words. Making himself understood was harder, but his fellows, hearing him cry "Kuz!" whenever he found a clam, finally caught on.

Professor Thorndike acknowledges that under his "babble-luck" system hundreds of different languages could have developed among primitive men. He thinks that is exactly what happened.

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