Abstract
Rousseau approaches the issue of the origins and evolution of languages in terms of differences in social and cultural needs. Language, he thought, was unnecessary for the fulfillment of most practical needs. It is necessary, on the other hand, for expressing emotion and for persuasion, and the original languages were especially well-suited to this. In societies where cooperation and trade are essential, however, languages needed to evolve into more rigorous forms, for rational convincing rather than emotive persuasion.
Text from: Scott, John. ed. 1998. Essay on the Origin of Languages and Writings Related to Music. Hanover: University Press of New England.
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Notes
- 1.
[Only 600 men were left of it, without any women and children. See Judges 19–21. Rousseau wrote a prose poem based on this poem, the Levite of Ephraïm, which he intended to publish together with the Essay and his On Theatrical Imitation.]
- 2.
Salaams are a number of the most common things, like an orange, a ribbon, a piece of coal, etc., the sending of which constitutes a meaning known to all the lovers in the countries in which this language is in use.
- 3.
[Giacobbo Rodrigo Pereira or Pereire (1715–1780) presented his method for teaching the deaf to the Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1749.]
- 4.
[For example, by Diderot in the article “Encyclopedie” in the Encyclopedia, and by Condillac in his Essays on the Origins of Human Thought, 2.1.1, sects. 1, 10, and 103.]
- 5.
[Lamy, Rhetoric or the Art of Speaking (4th ed., 1701). Preface and 3.1. In his Second Discourse. Rousseau exclaims that he is “convinced of the almost demonstrated impossibility that languages could have arisen and been established by purely human means,” (Collected Writings, 3:33). However, just as he shows in the Second Discourse how agriculture and metallurgy might have arisen despite a similar quandary, so too in the present work he explains the origin of languages in purely natural terms.]
- 6.
Arabic is said to have more than a thousand different words to say camel, more than a hundred to say sword. [See Chard, Voyages into Persia, 4 vols. (Amsterdam, 1735), 3:143.]
- 7.
[In Plato’s Cratylus Socrates claims that the meaning of names can be derived from the etymological origins in such a way that words are imitations of the realities named.]
- 8.
[The “double convention” of which Rousseau speaks is also discussed by Diderot in the article “Encyclopedie” for the Encyclopedia, and is derived from the double conformity thesis put forward most importantly by Locke (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, esp. 2.32.8; 3.2.1 and 4). Locke’s thesis is opposed to the univocal thesis championed by the adherents of “original” or “Adamic” language, in which the word is presumed to be a univocal representation of the object.]
- 9.
[Tchelminar, or Chihil-Minar, is the ancient name of Persepolis, near the modern city of Shiraz in southern Iran. An “ectype” is a wax impression or other sort of tracing of an original object such as a coin, medal, or inscription.]
- 10.
“People are astonished,” says Chardin, “that two figures could make so many letters, but as for myself, I do not see what is so astonishing about that, since the letters of our alphabet, which are twenty-three in number, are nonetheless composed of only two lines, the straight and the curved, that is, only a “C” and an “I” are used to make up our words. This character is quite beautiful in appearance and has nothing confused or barbarous about it. … One would say that the letters had been gilded, for there are several of them, and especially the capitals, on which the gold still shows, and it is surely something admirable and inconceivable that the air has not been able to eat away at this gilding over so many centuries. … Moreover, it is no wonder that not one of the world’s scholars has ever understood anything of this writing, since it does not come close in any way to any writing with which we have become acquainted, whereas all the systems of writing known today, except the Chinese, have much affinity with one another, and seem to come from the same source. What is most wondrous about this is that the Parsis, who are what is left of the ancient Persians and who preserve and perpetuate their religion, are not only no better acquainted with these characters than we are, but that their own characters no more resemble them than do ours. … From which it follows either that it is a cabalistic character, which is not likely since this character is the common and natural one all throughout the edifice, and there is none other by the same chisel, or that it is of such great antiquity that we should hardly dare state it,” [Chardin, Voyages, 2:167–168]. Indeed, Chardin would make one surmise, from this passage, that from the time of Cyrus and of the Magis this character had already been forgotten and was as little known as it is today. [Rousseau’s abridgments of the passage are indicated by the ellipses. The discovery of the famous Rosetta stone, in 1799, allowed this writing to be deciphered. Rousseau added to his own footnote: “I count the Carthaginians and Phoenicians, since they were a colony of Tyre.”]
- 11.
In the beginning the Latins wrote in the same way, and from that, according to Marius Victorinus, came the word versus. [Pausanias, Arcadia, 5.17.6.]
- 12.
[The lustra were the 5-year periods separating the purification of the Roman people after each census.]
- 13.
The vowels were of the number seven in Greek. Romulus counted six, but later usage mentioned only five, once they came to reject Y as Greek, [Martianus Capella (fl. fifth century A.D.), De Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae, Bk. 3].
- 14.
[The “Gentlemen of Port Royal” refers to Antoine Arnauld and Nicholas Lancelot, who wrote the General and Rational Grammar commonly known as the Port-Royal Grammar. See Pt. 1, chap. 1.]
- 15.
[Charles Pinot Duclos, Rousseau’s friend, wrote a commentary on the Port-Royal Grammar, the Remarks on the General and Rational Grammar (1754), 1, 1.]
- 16.
The best of these means, and one that would not have this defect, would be punctuation, if it had been left less imperfect. Why, for example, do we not have a vocative mark? The question mark we do have was much less necessary, for one sees by construction alone whether or not a question is being asked, at least in our language. Are you coming and you are coming are not the same thing. But how does one distinguish in writing a man who is being mentioned from one being addressed? Here is a real equivocation, which the vocative point would have removed. The same equivocation occurs in irony, when accent does not make it felt.
- 17.
I call the first times those of men’s dispersion, at whatever age of mankind one might wish to fix the epoch. Genuine languages do not at all have a domestic origin; it is only a more general and more lasting convention that may establish them. The savages of America almost never speak except outside of their homes; each keeps silent in his cabin, he spoke to his family by signs, and these signs are infrequent because a savage is less restless, less impatient than a European, because he does not have so many needs and takes care to provide for them himself. [In the Second Discourse, Rousseau cites approvingly the researches that Condillac made on the origin of languages, “which all fully confirm my sentiment, and which perhaps gave me the first idea of it,” but objects that Condillac assumes what he himself questions, “namely, a kind of society already established among the inventors of language,” (Collected Writings, 3:29–30). For Condillac’s discussion of families and the origin of languages, with reference to the Scriptural account, see Essays on the Origin of Human Knowledge, 2.1, preamble.]
- 18.
[For Adam being taught to speak by God, see Genesis 2:19–20 and 3:10 and 12; for Noah, see ibid., 9:20–27; for the Tower of Babel, see ibid., 11:19.]
- 19.
The hunter’s trade is not at all conducive to population. This observation, which was made when the Islands of Santo Domingo and of Tortuga were inhabited by buccaneers, is confirmed by the state of North America. None of the fathers of any considerable nations are seen to have been hunters by station; they have all been farmers or shepherds. Hunting, therefore, must be considered here less as a resource of subsistence than as an accessory to the pastoral state.
- 20.
The extent to which man is naturally lazy is inconceivable. One would say that he lives only in order to sleep, to vegetate, to remain immobile; he can scarcely resolve to devote the motions necessary to prevent himself from dying of hunger. Nothing upholds the love of so many savages for their state as this delightful indolence. The passions that make man restless, provident, active, are born only in society. To do nothing is man’s first and strongest passion after that of self-preservation. Were this considered carefully, it would be seen that even among us it is in order to achieve repose that each works; it is still laziness that makes us industrious.
- 21.
The names Autochthons and Aboriginals mean merely that the first inhabitants of the land were savages without societies, without laws, without traditions, and that they populated it before they spoke.
- 22.
Fire gives great pleasure to animals as well as to man, once they are accustomed to its sight and have felt its gentle warmth. Often, it would even be no less useful to them than to us, at the very least to warm their young. Nevertheless, no one has ever heard of any beast, either wild or domestic, having acquired sufficient ingenuity to make fire, even after our example. These, then, are the reasoning beings who are said to form a fleeting society prior to man, whose intelligence nevertheless has never been able to raise itself to the level of striking sparks from a stone and catching them, or at least of keeping some abandoned fires going! By my word, the Philosophers make fun of us entirely openly. One clearly sees by their writings that they indeed take us for being stupid. [See the example of them both in chapter 21 of Genesis, between Abraham and Abilemech in connection with the well of the oath.]
- 23.
It is claimed that by a kind of natural action and reaction, the various species of the animal kingdom would of themselves maintain themselves in a perpetual balance which for them would take the place of an equilibrium. Once the devouring species has increased too much at the expense of the devoured species, it is said, then the first, no longer finding its subsistence, will have to decrease and allow the second time to repopulate itself, until, furnishing anew an abundant subsistence for the first, it again decreases while the devouring species repopulates itself anew. But such an oscillation does not seem at all probable to me: for according to this system there has to be a time when the species that serves as prey increases and the one that feeds on it decreases, which seems to me against all reason.
- 24.
The first men simply had to marry their sisters. Given the simplicity of the first morals, this practice was perpetuated without drawback as long as families remained isolated and even after the coming together of the most ancient peoples: but the law that abolished it was no less sacred for being a human institution. Those who consider it only in terms of the tie it forms between families do not see its most important side. Given the familiarity that domestic commerce necessarily establishes between the two sexes, from the moment when such a sacred law should cease to speak to the heart and impose on the senses, there would no longer be decency among men and the most frightful morals would soon cause mankind’s destruction.
- 25.
[The first word among them was not “aimez-moi, ”but “aidez-moi.” As Starobinski remarks in his edition of the Essay, Rousseau takes advantage here of the contrast between the hard “d” and the nasal “m” in the two phrases in order to make the opposition between them evident to the ear in French.]
- 26.
Turkish is a northern language.
- 27.
Remarks on the General and Rational Grammar , [by M. Duclos, p. 11].
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Green, M.S. (2017). Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In: Cameron, M., Hill, B., Stainton, R. (eds) Sourcebook in the History of Philosophy of Language. Springer Graduate Texts in Philosophy, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26908-5_35
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