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From: HenHanna <HenHanna@devnull.tb>
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Richard Paget theory : (Origin of spoken language) Tongues copied the
 gestures of Hands
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2024 14:36:55 -0700
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        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.