Elements of Folk Psychology: Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of MankindWundt, Wilhelm Max
Science
Elements of Folk Psychology: Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
Wundt, Wilhelm Max
Ethnopsychology
passive) by a deep tone, and activity (or our active) by a high tone.
This accounts for a phenomenon prevalent in other languages remote from
those of the Soudan. In Semitic and Hamitic languages, the letter 'U,'
particularly, has the force of a passive when occurring either as a
suffix to the root of a word or in the middle of the word itself. For
example, in the Hebrew forms of the so-called 'Pual' and 'Piel,' as
well as 'Hophal' and 'Hiphil,' the first of each pair is passive, and
the second, active in meaning. It was frequently supposed that this
was accidental, or was due to linguistic causes of phonetic change
other than the above. But when we meet the same variations of sound
and meaning in other radically different languages, we must stop
to ask ourselves whether this is not the result of a psychological
relationship which, though generally lost in the later development
of language, here still survives in occasional traces. In fact, when
we recall the way in which we relate stories to children, we at once
notice that precisely the same phenomenon recurs in child-language--a
language, of course, first created, as a rule, by adults. This
connection of sound and meaning is clearly due to the unconscious
desire that the sound shall impart to the child not merely the meaning
of the idea, but also its feeling-tone. In describing giants and
monsters, she who relates fairy-tales to the child deepens her tone;
when fairies, elves, and dwarfs appear in the narrative, she raises
her voice. If sorrow and pain enter, the tone is deepened; with joyous
emotions, high tones are employed. In view of these facts, we might say
that this direct correlation of expression and meaning, observed in
that most primitive of all languages, gesture-language, has disappeared
even from the relatively primitive spoken languages; nevertheless,
the latter have retained traces of it in greater abundance than have
the cultural languages. In the cultural languages they recur, if at
all, only in the onomatopoetic word-formations of later origin. We
may recall such words as _sausen_ (soughing), _brummen_ (growling),
_knistern_ (crackling), etc.
The question still remains how the other characteristics of
gesture-language, particularly the absence of grammatical categories
and a syntax which follows the principle of immediate and perceptual
intelligibility, compare with the corresponding characteristics of the
relatively primitive spoken languages. These characteristics, indeed,
are of incomparably greater importance than the relations of sound and
meaning. The latter are more strongly exposed to external, transforming
influences. Word-formations, however, and the position of the words
within the sentence, mirror the forms of thought itself; whenever the
thought undergoes vital changes, the latter inevitably find expression
in the grammatical categories of the language, and in the laws of
syntax which it follows.
6. THE THINKING OF PRIMITIVE MAN.
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