XPost: alt.usage.english
From: HenHanna@devnull.tb

        Do linguists support this Theory (of  mouth pantomime)  ???

__________________________

Richard Paget's theory was....

         that spoken language developed when people could no longer use
their hands (e.g.,   they were full)

          ...  that the tongues copied the gestures



 >>>   'Let us take, as an example of our supposed method of word or
speech formation, the sign for a simple action, that of lift up or be
up, as compared with to lower, or be down. The hand sign for up would
obviously be to point up with finger or hand, and we are to suppose that
this body pantomime was unconsciously accompanied by a corresponding
mouth pantomime.

Let the reader try the experiment for himself...of raising the tip of
his tongue to touch the roof of his mouth, as if pointing up to the sky.

If, while performing this tongue-gesture, the reader simultaneously
grunts, or blows air through his mouth, so that it passes out on either
side of the tip of his tongue, he will find that it results in
articulating a sound which might be written ULL or OLL in English, or aL
in the Latin languages.

AL (as we shall write it) is therefore a natural gesture-word meaning
up. It is satisfactory to find that it does in fact form the root of
words meaning up in a great variety of different languages'

                             ---------    Paget, Babel, p 31.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
 * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)