Morning journal and courier., 1891-02-03
DIR. GARNER'S SYLVAN LEXICON. The Compiler Thinks That He Has Secured One-Eighth of the Monkey Vocabulary.
From the Washington Star


 Dr. R. L. Garner, of Roanoke, Va, is | convinced of the fact that monkeys have | articulate speech like that of human be- | ings, and differing from the latter only in | development. He has been experimenting | of late with the graphophone, securing a record of squeaks and gibberings by one monkey and subsequently, grinding them out through trumpet for the benefit of another monkey, in order to observe what remarks were elicited from the second monkey in response. In this way he has hoped to gradually make up a lexicon of the monkey language, which would proba- ply not be very voluminous, inasmuch as the simian vocabulary does not appear to contain more than about forty words. The doctor thinks that he has secured five of them.
 The other day Dr. Garner suffered se- were pang in consequence of a misunder- standing incidental to correspondence which he has been conducting with the monkey business. He sent letter to Dr. Baker of the Smithsonian in the usual business form in the shape of 8 grapho- phoue cylinder, beginning: Roanoke, Va. My Dear Sir," &c. Dr. Baker put the cylinder upon his own graphophone, knowing by the superscription on the en- velope that it was from Dr. Garner, and turned on the electro-motor attached with much interest, anticipating some commu nication of i'm portance regarding monkey talk
 Unfortunately he put on the cylinder wrong end foremost, the result being that Dr. Gamers letter came out backward. Dr. Baker up to this time had been @ skep- | tic regarding the theory of the gentleman | from Roanoke, but upon hearing this ren- | dering of the communication in question | he supposed it was monkey record and became at once convinced that there was more in the idea than he had originally supposed. He even went so far as to say that there was an unmistakable semblance of articulate speech in the record, al- though he was unable to understand the remarks.
 Dr. Garner was in town three days ago and enlightened Dr. Baker on the subject, after the latter expert in zoology and his assistants had ground off the supposed monkey talk in the manner described some scores of times He explained that | there was something in the idea after all, as unintentionally adopted by his friend, inasmuch as in the case there was an illus tration b be found of evolution backward from the language of man to monkeys. Dr. Garner said to 8 Star reporter the other day that in his opinion monkey talk l WdS QulCe u ulRuly uGVo1Opou speech, COH- sidering the fact that the monkey has no such facilities for the development of Ian guage as are enjoyed by human beings. As he expressed it, the speech of monkeys is almost wholly vowel. So, for that mat ter, is the human infants. But it must be remembered that the child has the superi- or advantage of education for it's vocal or gans from the cradle, not to mention an hereditary experience of the use of those | When you hear an ignorant person speak of "instinct" in animals you ought tc know that he means hereditary and trans mitted experience or practice. It seems wonderful, under the circumstances, that the more intelligent monkeys should have so many as forty words, approximately speaking, at their command.
 In trying to find out what a monkey says, according to Dr. Garner, there is diff fculty, to begin with, from the very fact that the consonant clements of it's Ian expressed by squeaks and other sounds not to be comprehended off-hand. Un doubtedly there is a monkey word fol food; but it is not to be expressed in typ, otherwise than by phrasing it in this wise
 "E-e-f-f sharp-e." That gives notior of the word to any person who knows mu sic; it can hardly be conveyed otherwise
 Make that sound to a monkey and it vii always respond in some fashion, because it knows that food of some sort is meant The other four words which Dr. Garner has thus far secured for his monkey lexi con are "pain," satisfaction" "fear" and "menace." It is simply question, ht thinks, of going on from this point ani discovering the other words of the vocab ulary of our arboreal cousins.
 It seems, as he states the fact, that il the monosyllabic vocabulary of monkeys there are no negatives. Furthermore, em phasis is made in no other fashion than by 1.-the repetition of one utterance. Also, single utterance slightly varied means many things, accentuation transforming nouns into verbs, and so on. One objec1 of the investigation of this subject is te discover whether monkey talk represents the incipiency of human language as it ex ists to-day or not. One thing Dr. Garner thinks very certain-namely, that the Ian guage of monkeys at present is as we'll de veloped as is the animal itself, compared with civilized man.
 A lexicon of monkey words once ob tained, Dr. Garner believes that it will be practicable to establish intelligent commu. nication with monkeys, and as to the pos abilities to be secured in this way of hu manizing the anthropoid apes in particu lar, only the widest speculations can bt indulged.
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