INARTICULATE SPEECH.
The cries of animals and the wails and croonings of infants are exam ples of inarticulate speech. So also are many of the interjections and emotional expressions of adult men. The vocal sounds produced in ad dressing animals are generally inarticulate ; that is to say, they are not divided by consonants and vowels into words arranged in grammatical sequence. A dog is called by whistling, swine by a prolonged vowel sound, horses are urged to a faster gait by vocal clucks. The phonetic elements which appear in inarticulate speech may be entirely different from those in the articulate language of the locality. Thus, in the United States both horses and dogs are admonished by vocal utterances produced by inspiration, while not a single inspirant occurs in any Aryan language, and scarcely in any on the globe, except the idioms of the Bushmen and Hottentots of South Africa. The half-articulate baby language in which parents among the Iroquois talk to their very young children contains labials, a class of sounds wholly absent from the adult speech of the tribe.
The spontaneous expressions of the emotions are generally inarticulate. The scream of pain, the cry of joy, the exclamation of surprise or fright, are not words, but mere sounds, corresponding to the utterances of ani mals under similar conditions. These have already been referred to as one of the possible sources of true speech (see p. 5u).
How little even the most cultivated nations are removed from those "touches of nature which make the whole world kin" is seen in the meaningless chorus to many popular songs thrown in simply as emotional stimulants, as Shakespeare's " Heigho ho! sing heigho ho! Ho! the green holly," • or the melancholy Jaques' " Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame," which we may understand as an intentional travesty on unmeaning cho ruses, and which he explains satirically as "a Greek invocation to call fools into a circle."
There is, however, a certain measure of sound philosophy in them. The emotional nature more readily sways to the gusts of passion when it is wholly uncontrolled by the intelligence. Sounds which are outbursts of feeling only, true " songs without words," are therefore more sure to elicit a response in the bosom of the audience than those which are framed in intelligible words, which occupy the intellect by communicating to it definite ideas. The prima donna who sings wild notes of passion to an audience who do not understand her language is more popular than she who recites the noblest songs of the common tongue. The chants of all rude nations are largely made up of these inarticulate sounds, sometimes altogether so. The Comanche dance-song is a monotonous repetition in the minor key of the syllables He ya! a! he! He ya! a! he! He ya! a! he! etc.
The war-song of the Iroquois runs— We yo hi yo we hi an, We yo hi yo we hi an, etc.
In neither instance have the syllables any meaning. They are used solely to excite and maintain a certain emotional condition.
The language of affection approaches this inarticulate condition by dropping or altering the consonants of the usual speech, lengthening to an extraordinary degree the vowels, and indulging in frequent repetitions. The most celebrated example of this in the English language is Swift's correspondence with " Stella " and " Vanessa," but it is everywhere familiar to lovers and to "baby-talk." Even among the Tchuktchis of Siberia, Nordenskji5ld relates that the girls when they would show their affection lisped in a softened and altered speech.