The origin of language, favored topic of the siicie des iumieres, has in the past decade begun to reemerge from a century and a half of neglect and even of interdiction. To examine the reasons for this fluctuation would be to go beyond the scope of the present work, although not beyond that of the historical reevaluation it suggests. Let it suffice to say that the anthropological naivete of the pbilosophes' constructions instilled in the minds of linguists and others a skepticism that still casts its shadow over recent discussions of the subject. This would be all for the best, of course, if the rigor of these discussions effected a genuine "sublation" of this not unjustified skepticism.