One way to escape this double predicament would be to interpret Dante’s argument to mean that our ability to learn different natural languages (according to our place of birth or our first linguistic training) depends on our native faculty for languages. This is certainly an innate faculty that manifests itself in different linguistic forms, that is, in our ability to speak different natural languages.
Such a reading would be legitimated by a number of Dante’s assertions concerning our faculty to learn a mother tongue; this faculty is natural, it exists in all peoples despite differences of word and accent, and it is not associated with any specific language. It is a general faculty, possessed by man as a species, for “only man is able to speak” (I, ii, 1). The ability to speak is thus a specific trait of man, one that is not possessed by angels, or beasts, or demons. Speaking involves an ability to externalize our particular thoughts; angels, on the contrary, have an “ineffable intellectual capacity” (I, ii, 3): they either understand the thoughts of others, or they can read them in the divine mind. Animals, for their part, lack individual feelings, possessing only “specific” passions (I, ii, 5). Consequently, each knows its own feelings and may recognize feelings when displayed by animals of the same species, having no need to understand the feelings of other species. Finally, each demon immediately recognizes the depths of perfidy in others. (By the way, when Dante decides to make his demons talk in the Divine Comedy, they use a not-quite-human speech: the celebrated diabolical expression in Inferno VII, 1, “Papé Satàn, papé Satàn aleppe,” is curiously reminiscent of another expression, “Raphèl may amècche zabì almì” (Inferno XXXI, 67), the fatal words, spoken by Nimrod, that set off the catastrophe of Babel. Even the devils thus speak the language of the confusion. While the first expression seems a mixture of Greek and Semitic words, the second looks like a caricature of Hebrew. This point is worthy of note because it shows Dante did not know Hebrew but had a vague idea of how Hebrew could sound, and this point will prove of some interest for my further hypotheses).
In any case, men are neither angels nor demons, are guided by reason, and need some faculty that can allow them to externalize the contents of their intellect in outward signs (even though, accepting the Aristotelian doctrine, Dante accepts the idea that the relation between signs and thoughts and the things they signify is conventional and changes from language to language).
This tendency to associate sound with thoughts is not to be identified with the existing natural languages; it is a permanent and immutable trait of the human species, whereas natural languages are historically subject to variation and are capable of developing over the course of time, enriching themselves independently of the will of any single speaker. Dante was also aware that a natural language can be enriched through the creativity of single individuals, for the illustrious vernacular that he intended to shape was to be the product of just such an individual creative effort. Yet it seemed that between the faculty of language and the natural languages that are the ultimate result, Dante wished to posit an intermediate stage. We can see this better by looking at Dante’s treatment of the story of Adam.
In referring to his conception of the vernacular, Dante uses terms such as vulgaris eloquentia, locutio vulgarium gentium, and vulgaris locutio, reserving the term locutio secundaria for grammar. We can probably take eloquentia generically to mean “the ability to speak fluently.” Still, the text contains a series of distinctions, and these are probably not casual. In certain instances, Dante speaks of locutio, in others of ydioma, lingua, or loquela. He uses the term ydioma whenever he refers to the Hebrew language and when he expresses his notion of the branching-off of the various languages of the world. In I, vi, 6–7, speaking of the confusion after Babel, Dante used the term loquela. In this same context, however, he uses ydioma for the languages of the confusion, as well as for the Hebrew language, which remained intact. He could speak of the loquela of the Genovese and the Tuscans while at the same time using lingua both for Hebrew and for the Italian vernacular dialects. It thus seems that the terms ydioma, lingua, and loquela are all to be understood as “tongue” or a given language in the modern, Saussurian sense of langue.
A tongue (Saussure’s langue) ydioma
lingua
loquela (locutio)
Way of speaking, utterance (Saussure’s parole) locutio
Often locutio is also used in the sense of “tongue.” For example, when Dante wishes to say that, after the destruction of Babel, the workers in the tower began to speak imperfect languages, he writes: “Tanto rudius nunc barbariusque locuntur.” A few lines later, referring to the Hebrew language in its original state, he uses the phrase “antiquissima locutione” (I, vi, 6–8). Nevertheless, although ydioma, lingua, and loquela are “marked” forms (used only where a specific tongue is meant) the term locutio seems to have another, more elastic sense. It is used whenever the context seems to suggest either the activity of speaking, or the functioning of the linguistic faculty. Dante often uses locutio to mean the act of speaking: for example, he says of animals’ sounds that they cannot be construed as locutio, meaning by this that they do not qualify as proper linguistic activity (I, ii, 6–7). Dante also uses locutio every time Adam addresses God.
These distinctions are clearest in the passage where Dante asks himself “to what man was the faculty of speech [locutio] first given, and what he said at the beginning [quod primus locutus fuerit], and to whom, and where, and when, and in what language [sub quo ydiomate] were the first acts of linguistic behavior [primiloqium] emitted?” (I, iv, 1). I think I am justified here in giving primiloquium this sense of “first linguistic behavior” on the analogy of Dante’s use of the terms tristiloquium and turpiloquium to characterize the evil way of speaking among the Romans and among the Florentines.
In the pages that follow, Dante affirms that, in Genesis, it is written that the first to speak was Eve (mulierem invenitur ante omnes fuisse locutam) when she talked with the serpent. It seems to him “troublesome not to imagine that an act so noble for the human race did not come from the lips of a man but rather from those of a woman.” If anything, of course, we know that it was God who first spoke in Genesis: He spoke to create the world. After that, when God had Adam give names to the animals, Adam presumably emitted sounds as well, though, curiously, the whole episode of the naming of things in Genesis 2:19 is ignored by Dante. Finally, Adam speaks to show his satisfaction at the appearance of Eve. It has been suggested that because, for Dante, speaking meant the externalizing of the thoughts of our mind, references to speaking imply spoken dialogue. Thus, as the encounter of Eve and the serpent is the first instance of dialogue, it is, for Dante, the first instance of linguistic behavior. This is an argument that accords well with Dante’s choice here of the word locutio, whose ambiguous status I have just discussed. We are thus led to imagine that, for Dante, Adam’s satisfaction with the creation of Eve would have been expressed in his heart and that, in naming the animals, rather than speaking (in the usual sense of the word), Adam was laying down the rules of language and thus performing a metalinguistic act.
In any case, Dante mentions Eve only to remark that it seemed to him more reasonable to suppose that Adam had really spoken first. While the first sound that humans let forth is the wail of pain at birth, Dante thought that the first sound emitted by Adam could only have been an exclamation of joy that, at the same time, was an act of homage toward his creator. The first word that Adam uttered must therefore have been the name of God, El (attested in patristic tradition as the first Hebrew name of God). The argument here implies that Adam spoke to God before he named the animals and that consequently God had already provided Adam with some sort of linguistic faculty before he had even constructed a language.
When Adam spoke to God, it was a response. Thus God must have spoken first. To speak, however, the Lord did not necessarily have to use a language. Dante here appealed to the traditional reading of Psalm 148, in which the verses “Fire, and hail; snow, and vapours; stormy wind” all “praise the name of the Lord” thus “fulfilling his word” are taken to mean that God expresses himself naturally through creation. Dante, however, construes this passage in a singular fashion, suggesting that God was able to move the air in such a way that it resonated to form true words. Why did Dante find it necessary to propose such a cumbersome and apparently gratuitous reading? The answer seems to be that, as the first member of the only species that uses speech, Adam could conceive ideas only through hearing linguistic sounds. Moreover, as Dante also makes clear (I, v, 2), God wanted Adam to speak so that he could use the gift to
