ABSTRACT
The search for the aboriginal language often started as an investigation into what Adam's language might or must have been. The taxonomic bestiary, the inventory of names for beasts credited to Adam in Genesis, is hardly an adequate foundation for language; and Jean-Pierre Brisset ignores this unhelpful lead. Naturally enough, thinking and writing in French, and deriving all knowledge from language, Brisset simply has to posit French not only as the Adamic tongue but also as the preadamitic one. Brisset's first shot at a French grammar for home consumption was the short text of 1878, La Grammaire logique, which points forward to the full-scale version of 1883. For Brisset, although everything was included in God's blueprint, language was essentially or in practical terms of natural rather than divine intervention. Brisset's reconstruction of language antedates the Bible, for pre-human animals were the first stammering vocalic experimenters.
