In his book, L'Instinct du sens, published in 2021, published by Des auteurs des livres, Philippe Barbaud, born in 1940, presents a scholarly and masterful scientific study on the question of the origins of speech and thought.
Philippe Barbaud, a renowned linguist
This researcher, who was a professor of linguistics at the Université du Québec au Canada, has published several books on languages, grammar, their values and their history: for example, Syntaxe référentielle de la composition lexicale, L'Harmattan, 2009, and, Le Choc des patois en Nouvelle-France. Un essai sur la francisation du Canada, PUQ, 1984. We can mention, in particular, his approach to the singular evolution of Canadian French and his invention of the notion of "grammatical québécisme" characteristic of this study, where he takes liberties with neologisms and the meaning of words. This remarkable feature throughout the book brings a new look at the reflection that attaches to the origin of languages, language, and its expression, in speech, in the era of prehistory.
A highly contradicted field
The essay combines methods of analysis from different disciplinary fields, addressing this question difficult to define, for lack of convincing documents, both by biology, neuroscience, paleontology, linguistics and the philosophy of the historian of ideas, … This study thus constitutes a sum for the researcher, who takes stock of research in a field where there is no shortage of opponents.
L'instinct du sens, essai sur la préhistoire de la parole
Philippe Barbaud marks his positions on the origins of speech, giving room to the foundational importance of meaning in the evolution of the different parlures. The study of language is part of a so-called evolutionary approach, even more than evolutionary (Darwin), by its central contribution to man, which is distinguished from his ancestors and animals, by the thought of language. The homo sapiens of prehistory knew how to invent a language, which he shaped, little by little: this revolution is the fruit of 2.5 million years. The word was born in communication with the world and in exchanges that have suffered the corrosion of time, linguistic recursion and the spiritual imprint of memory, in environments that are always singular, which should not be neglected.
How did Man begin to speak?
Instead of opposing instinct to meaning, the phonation of protolanguage, to the faculty of abstraction and to thought in language, the researcher associates them, from the outset, by the choice of his title. One can read a paradoxical but undeniable tribute to the "spirit-memory" of language that crosses the centuries: "I speak, therefore I think". The encounter between prehistory and linguistics (structuralist) will have given pride of place to the spirit of language, a "Big Data" in its own right, according to Philippe Barbaud, despite the current prowess of artificial intelligence. If this researcher relies, more specifically, on the progress of science, he nevertheless returns to the overhanging aim of the thinker. Man would be dependent on his word, which determines a language, a "universal grammar" (Chomsky). If Philippe Barbaud reconnects with the philosophers of the Enlightenment, by his approach, partly mechanistic and sensualist of the birth of language (instinct), he associates it, always, with a paradoxical evolutionary historical approach, by the part of freedom of the speaking man.
A linguistic encounter
The essay thus opens with the image of a boat, the New France, and the encounter between the languages of several countries. Numerous references to these languages underpin the pragmatic approach of this research, where the analysis of language theory and speech expression in languages is an essential starting point. Similarly, the author insists on the lexicon and on the place of the invention of words, before turning to the sentence. The study consists of three parts that go back from the more biological and neuroscientific approach ("Man is an animal that has lost his language"), to philosophical questions ("What the pebble means"), before coming to a more linguistic approach ("The matrix of all languages"), in the name of a universal grammar.
The importance of the lexicon
The book is accompanied by a specialized glossary that sheds light on the importance of the lexicon: the word opens the way to the evolution of thought and its deepening in vast abstract ramifications. From the invention of fire to the word, and from words to meaning, Philippe Barbaud traces multiple links, which cannot be compared to the learning of a language by a child. The newborn inherits, prehistoric man invents. No doubt this is where man, contemporary, finds his share of freedom, his humanity, a primary meaning. Philippe Barbaud, L'Instinct du sens, 2021, éditions Des auteurs des livres / 978-29570999-9-3
