nce
of which, except in the simplest type of pictorial writing,
the written form develops.[2]

[Footnote 2: Bloomfield: _loc. cit._, pp. 7-8.]

From the point of view of the student of behavior, language,
spoken language especially, is a habit, acquired like walking
or swimming. It is made possible primarily by the fact that
human beings possess a variety and flexibility of vocal reflexes
possessed by no other animal. All the higher animals have a
number of vocal reflexes, which are called out primarily in the
expression of emotion or desire. Cries of pain, hunger, rage,
sex desire or desire for companionship, are common to a great
number of the animal species. But these cries and vocal
utterances are limited, and comparatively unmodifiable.
They are moreover expressed, so far as experimental observation
can reveal, with no consciousness of the specific significance
of particular sounds and are used as the involuntary
expression of emotion rather than as a specific means of
communication.

... The primates have a much larger number of such vocal instincts
than the other mammals, and a much larger number of stimuli
can call them out, _e.g._, injury to bodily tissue calls out one group;
hunger calls out a certain group; sex stimuli (mate, etc.) another;
and similarly cold, swiftly moving objects, tones, strange animals
call out others. When attachments are formed between the female
and her offspring another large group is called into action. There is
no evidence to show in the case of mammals that these vocal instincts
are modified by the sounds of other animals.... These throat habits
may be cultivated to such an extent in birds that we may get an
approximation, more or less complete, to a few such habits possessed
by the human being. Such throat habits, however, are not language
habits.[1]

[Footnote 1: Watson: _Behavior_, p. 323.]

In human beings language, it is clear, may attain extraordinary
refinement and complexity, and may convey extremely
fine shades and subtleties of emotion or idea. This
results from the fact that man is born with a vocal
apparatus far superior in development to that of any of the
animals.

It is pretty clear that the mutant man, when thrown off from the
primate stock, sprang forth with a vocal apparatus different from
that of the parent stock, and possessing abundant richness in reflexes,
even far surpassing that found in the bird. It is interesting to
observe, too, in this connec