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Getting back to basics...a modest proposal. The first word for word. I was thinking that the etymology of word would reveal some real clues to the original metaphor, the seed, the element, the atomic particle, the gene, that gave rise to language in an organized sense. I tried searching for "Etymolgy of Word" but got nothing. And to search for "Word" here would be futile, a hit on almost every thread. So if this is a YART please advise me and we can call it a wrap. But even more than just the English inception of the word, word , I thought that tracking the word for word back to the most ancient language/languages would offer insight into the first truly linguistic leap at communication. How far back can our Great Wordmaster, tsuwm, help us glimpse?
And did word come before language, or language before word?
And the Word became flesh....
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The American Heritage Dictionary at http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE574.html gives the Indo-European root as wer(schwa), meaning to speak, which has a suffixed zero grade form (no, I don't know what that means either) meaning word. I tried copying and pasting the entry but lost all the diacritical marks and non-standard characters. Bingley
Bingley
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ENTRY:
wer-5
DEFINITION:
Also wer-. To speak. Oldest form *wer1-, with variant *wre1-, contracted to
*wr-. 1. Suffixed zero-grade form *w-dho-. word, from Old English word, word,
from Germanic *wurdam. 2. Suffixed form *wer-dho-. verb, verve; adverb,
proverb, from Latin verbum, word. 3. Suffixed form *wer-yo-. irony, from Greek
eirein, to say, speak. 4. Variant form *wr-. a. Suffixed form *wr-tor-. rhetor,
from Greek rhtr, public speaker; b. suffixed form *wr-m. rheme, from Greek
rhma, word. (Pokorny 6. er- 1162.)
There it is, Bingley! Thanks! (but it deleted all the diacritical marks, etc., for me too???...so click to the site, folks, for the fully annotated copy.)
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Indo-European roots seem to come in forms with either the vowel e or the vowel o, referred to as the e-grade form and the o-grade form, respectively. Roots with neither an e nor an o were referred to as zero-grade forms. In the case of word the zero-grade form was represented as wr-, The r used in the AHD transcription WO'N copied got lost in the copy. The suffix, -dh, didn't.
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One wonders very much if any amount of researching will get back far enough to pinpoint an architypical form of "word", or "wer", or "verbum". Besides the always-present possibility that all the words related to the "wer" root may be simply an offshoot in the family tree; maybe the parent stock is something that produced the Greek "logos".
Here's a theory of mine:
At least some aspects of the earliest history of the human race are revealed in, of all places, the Bible. Not necessarily as a literal history, but as a general indication, perhaps wrapped in an allegorical form. For instance: Gen. 2:19 Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man [Heb. Adam ]to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. I think this is an early version of what used to be called (I guess maybe still is) the Ding-Dong Theory of language -- words first arose from the way a thing sounds or looks or appears. Presumably, when the camel was presented to Adam, he said, "Camel!", or whatever the ancient Semitic word was. More historically likely, I suppose some cavemen somewhere came back after a hard day's hunting grunting about "mammoth" or some such and the name stuck. This still goes on. You could list lots of English words which have been fairly recently invented and came about this way.
Connected with this is St. John's famous opening line: In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. which tells me that words (read: communication or the means of communication between persons) has always been; it's something endemic to the cosmos.
Any thoughts on this?
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Bobyoungbalt suggests maybe the parent stock is something that produced the Greek "logos". Without going too deeply into the details of the etymology (see http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE267.html) AHD gives To collect; with derivatives meaning "to speak." for the history of the Greek logos
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details of etymology? did someone say details....
[OE. word str. n. = OFris., OS. word, MDu. wort (Du. woord), OHG., MHG., G. wort, ON. orð (Sw., Da. ord), Goth. waurd:—OTeut. *wurdom:—pre-Teut. *wrdho-; cf. Lith. va<rtilde>das name, Lett. wàrds word, forename, OPruss. wirds word, OIr. fordat ‘inquiunt’.
Indo-Eur. werdh- is generally taken to be a deriv. of wer-, werU-, which appears in Gr. eqŒx I shall say, q–sxq speaker, L. verbum word, Skr. vratám command, law, etc.]
good heavens, this word is found *everywhere.
[sorry about those Gr. renderings]
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did someone say details...
Illustrating my point quite nicely. Thank you, tsuwm*.
*Is that where the word zoom comes from?
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Thanks, tsuwm, for that detailed word entymology! The legends of your powers preceed you, sir!
And, yes, BobY, I also thought of the Biblical symbolism for the essence of language. That's why I ended the original post with "And the Word became flesh." But after reading your response I'm wondering if just searching for "the first word for word" isn't guiding us off track. Perhaps that's a good start into trying to discover the linguistic genetic code, as it were. But, as you said, the very first "words" would have been sounds associated with certain animals, emotions, or activities. I don't think I agree, however, that the selection process would have been quite as random as you propose. Being intelligent beings, smart enough to communicate through mutual sound at this point, I would have to believe there would be some reason certain sounds came to be attached to the identity of certain animals, say. ..and not just an arbitrary accident. Maybe one time when they saw a mammoth someone made a sound and it stuck...but there was a reason that specific sound was birthed to eruption at the sight of a mammoth instead of a rabbit....the size of the animal, the threat it posed, the way it lumbered across the ground, etc.
And if, then, indeed, we might carry it a step further and seek what might have been the first word to erupt into language (now seeing that "word" was more probably an eventual means for linguistic identification), I propose that the true first-word would have something to do with A. Survival -- a noise to signify danger or fear, for instance; B. (never underestimating the power of human greed) perhaps a tussle over a piece of meat became a sound that signified "mine;" or C. a sound to indicate self-identity, as in the Biblical I AM BEFORE ALL WAS, the great I AM.
Is there a branch of science, a sort of linguistic archaeology, that delves into these questions. Paleolinguistics maybe? Or does this all just fall under the general study of Linguistics?
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According to Terrence Deacon's The Symbolic Species the ability to symbolise must have preceded the development of language. I'm not sure I completely understood the argument at all points, but that was the basic thrust of at least one part of what he was saying.
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