How did language begin? This feature’s second-to-last subject is the question linguistics has found both the hardest to handle and the hardest to resist. In Chapter XXI, Jespersen introduces the theories that came before him, one at a time, and dismisses each briskly.
Four named theories
The bow-wow theory — the claim that the first words were imitations of animal cries: a word for “dog” arising from imitating a dog’s bark, and so on.
The pooh-pooh theory — the claim that language began in interjections triggered by pain or surprise (“ow,” “ouch”).
The ding-dong theory — a theory starting from a mystical harmony in which every object carries its own inherent “ring,” naturally expressed as sound. Jespersen reveals its source without ceremony:
This theory, which Max Müller propounded and afterwards wisely abandoned, is mentioned here for the curiosity of the matter only.
As read in this site’s Max Müller feature, Müller was the man who named “Grimm’s Law” and theorized comparative mythology. Here, one more theory he proposed — and then let go of himself — makes an appearance.
The yo-he-ho theory — the claim that the grunts released under muscular effort during shared labor became the words for that labor.
Jespersen’s own answer — from a love song
Having worked through and dismissed each of these, Jespersen offers his own hypothesis. His clue is the “song” that arises naturally out of courtship and shared living. Suppose a young man, addressing his sweetheart, habitually voices the same refrain — something like the “hey nonino” from a Shakespeare song. His friends imitate it to tease him, and in time that very refrain becomes a name for the young man himself. From there, Jespersen traces a path branching out into proper names, and then common nouns. It’s hard to verify, but by starting from an emotionally charged song or refrain, it forms his own loose synthesis, connecting back to the pooh-pooh and yo-he-ho theories he had just dismissed.
Summary
| Theory | Claim | Proposed by |
|---|---|---|
| Bow-wow | Imitation of animal cries | (various) |
| Pooh-pooh | Emotional interjections | (various) |
| Ding-dong | A mystical harmony of sound and meaning | Max Müller (later abandoned) |
| Yo-he-ho | Grunts of shared labor | Noiré |
| Jespersen’s own | Courtship songs and refrains turning into names | Jespersen |
In a nutshell — even while dismissing every theory of language’s origin that came before him, Jespersen calmly recorded, as just one more piece of source material, the fact that Müller had abandoned his own. The scholars read across this feature kept citing each other, and sometimes contradicting each other, and it was through exactly that process that the discipline took its shape.