ver more, at best, than a
decorative edging to the ample, complex fabric.

What applies to the interjections applies with even greater force to the
sound-imitative words. Such words as "whippoorwill," "to mew," "to caw"
are in no sense natural sounds that man has instinctively or
automatically reproduced. They are just as truly creations of the human
mind, flights of the human fancy, as anything else in language. They do
not directly grow out of nature, they are suggested by it and play with
it. Hence the onomatopoetic theory of the origin of speech, the theory
that would explain all speech as a gradual evolution from sounds of an
imitative character, really brings us no nearer to the instinctive level
than is language as we know it to-day. As to the theory itself, it is
scarcely more credible than its interjectional counterpart. It is true
that a number of words which we do not now feel to have a
sound-imitative value can be shown to have once had a phonetic form that
strongly suggests their origin as imitations of natural sounds. Such is
the English word "to laugh." For all that, it is quite impossible to
show, nor does it seem intrinsically reasonable to suppose, that more
than a negligible proportion of the elements of speech or anything at
all of its formal apparatus is derivable from an onomatopoetic source.
However much we may be disposed on general principles to assign a
fundamental importance in the languages of primitive peoples to the
imitation of natural sounds, the actual fact of the matter is that these
languages show no particular preference for imitative words. Among the
most primitive peoples of aboriginal America, the Athabaskan tribes of
the Mackenzie River speak languages in which such words seem to be
nearly or entirely absent, while they are used freely enough in
languages as sophisticated as English and German. Such an instance shows
how little the essential nature of speech is concerned with the mere
imitation of things.

The way is now cleared for a serviceable definition of language.
Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating
ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily
produced symbols. These symbols are, in the first instance, auditory and
they are produced by the so-called "organs of speech." There is no
discernible instinctive basis in human speech as such, however much
instinctive expressions and the natural environment may serve as a
stimu