We have regarded the reproduction, with intent to signify something, of the natural tones and cries, as the positively earliest speech; but this would so immediately and certainly come to be combined with imitative or onomatopoetic utterances, that the the distinction in time between the two is rather theoretical than actual. Indeed, the reproduction itself is in a certain way onomatopoetic: it imitates, so to speak, the cries of the human animal, in order to intimate secondarily what those cries in their primary use signified directly.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.294-295