The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Donovan - The Festal Origin of Human Speech
Every event of life and nature that has awakened the reflection which distinguishes man from brute, is dwelt on by the savage through festal excitement. Of what use are measured sounds amid the wild excitement of the festal players? Musical sounds will, above all else, attract and absorb attention. Without implying anything of the nature of conscious choice, we may fairly assume that savages would be driven, at each revival of festal excitement, to feel out a way of making the sounds more and more absorbing. They could do this by bringing the sounds, however produced, into a more or less regular succession. At this very low stage of development musical instruments could not have existed ; hence the vocal organs would be brought most prominently into use. Here the impulse to produce successive sounds would naturally result in articulation. The rudest music, too, would imply the modification of some sound in the continuous succession, e.g. by increase of stress in the blow struck. Hence, beyond a succession of mere units of sound, there would now be a succession of groups. To provide a similar modification in the vocal utterance required only a jerk of the breath. Articulate sounds could impose no particular order upon the confused feelings and perceptions of festal play; they could only wait while they entered into the order imposed upon them by the players' wild imitation of actions, and then preserve them in that order. When particular syllables got fixed upon particular actions, they would be brought up with them; and here two chief interests of the festal excitement would begin to clash, the interest of significance and that of merely pleasing sound. In later stages of development, the simply ear-attracting syllables are driven out of the significant phrases altogether, and left to refrains. D. does not attempt to show how impulses of festal excitement came to blend with conscious endeavors to make distinctions of meaning, or what the results of the blending would be.