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?
