諸言語の形容詞に含まれる母音の共通性についての研究 : 笑い声と言語の起源,特に言葉の意味との関連性追求の手段として(予備的研究)(自然科学系)

The author has studied on physical emotion of human being, especially on laughter by using several procedures including electromyogram observation (cf. Refs. 1-7 in this paper). The author also reported a solution to the Darwin's question, why human being expresses some special emotions as laughing actions (A-Ha-Ha, etc.) (cf. Refs. 5-7). Recently, Dr. R. Provine proposed a hypothesis that human laughter is indispensable for the origin of language (cf. Ref. 8). If laughter is concerned with the origin of language, there may be some commonality of phonation of words with similar meaning in various languages. As a further study in the author's analysis of laughter, especially on the relation with the origin of language, the present study was conducted to analyze vowels in adjectives, chosen as words expressing various emotions, in various languages in order to reveal whether languages might originate in laughter. Actually, adjectives expressing a similar meaning in 14 different languages were classified into 5 vowel groups ('a', 'i', 'u', 'e' and 'o') according to the main vowel in the words and then the frequencies of each vowel group were compared. From these analysis it was found that each vowel is likely to have some peculiar meaning or emotion as follows: "a ([a(:)], [〓(:)], [〓] or [〓]),": nonspecific meaning (this phonation may be a prototype of laughing phonation without special meaning); "i ([i(:)])" intimate, small, familiar, with acuity or tension; "u ( [u(:)])": cool, calm, with some acuity; "e ( [e(:)])"; relaxed; and "o ([o(:)] or [〓(:)])": longing, far away, respectful. These results indicates that the vowels in laughter have a close relationship with the vowels phonated in adjectives of various languages, suggesting that languages might originate in laughter. Thus, Provine's Laughter-Language Theory is further supported