The Roanoke daily times. (Roanoke, Va.) 1895-1897, 1896-03-19
HAD BUT FIVE WORDS
A FRENcHMAN WHO POSSESSED THIS
LIMITED VOCABULARY.

ia'e More IMAM LIS Five Words--Whnt
Broca's Investigations Disclosed.
Think OF a man confined to five words
for his entire vocabulary!
n real, living, breathing man; man
with oil the desires, all the needs, all the
passions of ordinary everyday persons; u
man with lungs rs strong as bellows; a
man with voice as natural as a ohild's;
man with face without twitch of
paralysis; man that could laugh, CRY or
even sing; q man who knew his friends
when no saw them, recognized his food
when he ate it, listened with interest to-
music when he heard 1t, felt the resistance
and qualities Of objects when he touched
them; man who could understand per
fectly oil you said to him, and yet himself
could say next to nothing-in short, man
whose thoughts, emotions and feelings
were entirely shut up in the prison of his
own inner experience, except so far as no
could communicate them by means OF
gestures and five small words.
Such man was the famous French
man, lie Long. a five worded man!
Ask lie Long n question, and If he
wanted to say yes, like a polite French
man, he answered, "Oui." If, however,
his answer was negative, with equal po-
likeness he answered, mon" These
were two of his five words. The third
word pronounceable by this few worded
man was his own name, and even that he
couldn't say just right. He called it lie
Lo'-that is to say, the nasal sound "ng,"
when it occurred in his own name, was
too much even for this Frenchman Yet
tho nasal sound in mon no pronounced
with ease But little idiosyncrasy in
pronunciation like this was nothing to n
man of five words. Le Long was glad
enough to pronounce his name in any
fashion, was glad enough to be able TO say
plainly in his own native tongue yes"
and ''no, " for when it came to expressing
all the rest of his human wishes and hui
man thinking. which was Just as normal
rs that of other people, he had only two
words left with which TO do it-''tois'' ca
corruption of 'trois' and 'toujours." BY
tots Le Long indicated numbers from
one 70 the greatest magnitude. BY
"touiours" he tried TO convey all ideas
that he couldn't express by his stool, Of
four words and by gestures.
"Oui, " mon" lie Lo, tots and
"toujoursi' This was the remarkable
verbal outfit of an almost wordless French
man.
1t is not surprising that a five worded
man should have set so eminent scientific
Investigator Us the French physician
Broca, to thinking. a five worded man
would set anybody TO thinking.
When therefore, in 1861, Broca got &C
quanted with lie Long, and at lie Longs
death got an opportunity TO examine his
brain, he did such good thinking that he
soon camc forward with scientific dogma
that excited universal attention AT the time
and set the medical world all agog. Broca
knew what good many physicians before
his day kncw-that there wero on record "A
number of strange cases of disturbance in
speech, all apparently due to injuries sus-
tanned in one way or other to the brain
These cases were Of the most varied and
curious sort, from that of people unable to
utter any words at all, or, at best, able to
calculate but few stock phrases, to those
who seemed TO have lost simply certain
letters or syllables out of words or were
unable to use in new combinations certain
letters or syllabes which they already
mado FREQ use of in certain words Bon
Jour, monsieur one OF Broca's patients
would say to him. But when Broca would
ask the man to pronounce "bonbon" to
him the word stuck to the roof of his
mouth He was spcechless.
knowing these facts, and knowing what
Gall, the founder of modern phrenology.
had said regarding the locating of various
mental faculties in certain portions of the
brain, Broca went to work both on the
some other persons who had shown de
rangcment i'll speech during life. Tho re-
suit was his famous theory. II have To-
Gated the faculty of speech he said 1T
Is in the left hemisphere of the brain. in
the front part of the third convolution"
1t was this part of the brain that he
found, in all his patients, either eaten
away by disease or injured by LESSONS. On
this part OF the left brain, he argues de
ponds, therefore, the development of the
power of articulate speech.
But Paris doctors are skeptical lot
They were not to be persuaded so easily
that Broca, by means of his five worded
man, had located the faculty of speech.
80 they all got together, and in the fol-
lowing two years held number Of autop-
sizes on persons who had suffered from dis
turbnnce in speech. They invited Broca
to attend these autopsies. And in II out
OF II cases it was discovered that the part
OF the brain injured was just exactly whore
Broca had said it was. If you look today
INTO any good modern physiology, or phys
ioiogical psychology, you will find there in
tho diagrams of the brain certain convo-
luton marked 'thc region of Broca
But is there really u dump" of Ian
guaGe2 Modern Psychologists and psy-
biologists, while accepting in the main
tho conclusions of Broca, say "No"
Professor Iadd of Yale is fond of using
some strong language on this point. He
says: The literal meaning of tho state
monts mado by Broca such as that this
part of the brain is the seat of the faculty
of articuate language is not simply in
appropriate to the fact, it is even absurd.
There Is no one faculty OF language
which can, in any possible meaning OF the
word, he regarded rs having its seat, or
locality confined to some particular region
of the brain. Speech involves in n very