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INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE.
_INTRODUCTION TO THE
SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE._
BY
A. H. SAYCE,
DEPUTY PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
[Illustration]
LONDON:
C. KEGAN PAUL & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
1880.
“Ille demum foret nobilissima grammaticæ species, si quis in
linguis tam eruditis quam vulgaribus eximie doctus, de variis
linguarum proprietatibus tractaret; in quibus quæque excellat,
in quibus deficiat ostendens.”—BACON (“De Aug. Scient.,” vi. 1).
_The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved._
PREFACE.
But few words of Preface are needed for a work which will sufficiently
explain itself. It is an attempt to give a systematic account of the
Science of Language, its nature, its progress and its aims, which shall
be at the same time as thorough and exhaustive as our present knowledge
and materials allow. How far the attempt has been successful is for the
reader to judge; the author cannot do more than his best. The method and
theories which underlie the work have been set forth in my “Principles of
Comparative Philology,” where I have criticized certain of the current
assumptions of scientific philology, and endeavoured to show their
inadequacy or positive error. It is gratifying to find that my views and
conclusions have been accepted by leading authorities on the subject,
and I shall, therefore, make no apology for tacitly assuming them in the
present work. So far as the latter is concerned, however, it matters
little whether they are right or wrong; an Introduction necessarily has
mainly to deal with the statement and arrangement of ascertained facts.
The theories the facts are called upon to support are of secondary
importance.
It may be objected that I have handled some parts of the subject at
disproportionate length. But it has seemed to me that an Introduction
should give a survey of the whole field to be explored, and not neglect
any portion of it for the sake of literary unity or easy reading. There
is certain work which must be done once for all, if the ground is to
be cleared for future research and progress, and if well done need
not be done again. The historical retrospect in the first chapter is
indispensable for a right understanding of the “Science of Language;” but
in writing it I have tried not to forget that brevity is a virtue as well
as completeness. It is the fault of the subject-matter if the chapter
seems unduly long.
Exception may perhaps be taken to the use I have made of the languages
and condition of modern savage tribes to illustrate those of primitive
man. It is quite true that in many cases savage tribes are examples of
degeneracy from a higher and less savage state; the Arctic Highlanders
of Ross and Parry, for instance, have retrograded in social habits,
and the disuse of boats and harpoons, from the Eskimaux of the south;
and if we pass from savage to more civilized races there is distinct
evidence in the language of the Polynesians that they have lapsed from
a superior level of civilization. It is also quite true that, however
degraded a tribe or race may now be, it is necessarily much in advance of
palæolithic man when he first began to create a language for himself, and
to discover the use of fire. Nevertheless, it is in modern savages and,
to a less degree, in young children, that we have to look for the best
representatives we can find of primæval man; and so long as we remember
that they are but imperfect representatives we shall not go far wrong
in our scientific inferences. As Professor Max Müller has said:[1] “The
idea that, in order to understand what the so-called civilized people may
have been before they reached their higher enlightenment, we ought to
study savage tribes, such as we find them still at the present day, is
perfectly just. It is the lesson which geology has taught us, applied to
the stratification of the human race.”
In the matter of language, however, we are less likely to make mistakes
in arguing from the modern savage to the first men than in other
departments of anthropology. Here we can better distinguish between old
and new, can trace the gradual growth of ideas and forms, and determine
where articulate language passes into those inarticulate efforts to speak
out of which it originally arose. In fact, a chief part of the services
rendered to glottology by the study and observation of savage and
barbarous idioms consists in the verification they afford of the results
of our analysis of cultivated and historical languages. If, for example,
this leads us to the conclusion that grammatical simplicity is the last
point reached in the evolution of language, we must go to savage dialects
for confirmation before we can accept the conclusion as proven. Moreover,
there is much of the primitive machinery of speech which has been lost
in the languages of the civilized nations of the world, but preserved in
the more conservative idioms of savage tribes—for savages, it must be
remembered, are the most conservative of human beings; while were we to
confine our attention to the groups of tongues spoken by civilized races
we should form but a very partial and erroneous view of language and its
structure, since the conceptions upon which the grammars of the several
families of speech are based are as various as the families of speech
themselves. Nor must we forget the lesson of etymology, that the poverty
of ideas with which even our own Aryan (or rather præ-Aryan) ancestors
started was as great as that of the lowest savages of to-day.
My best thanks are due to Professor Mahaffy for his kindness in looking
over the sheets of the present work during its passage through the press,
and to Mr. Henry Sweet for performing the same kind offices towards
the fourth chapter. Mr. Sweet’s name will guarantee the freedom of the
chapter from phonetic heresies. I have also to tender my thanks to
Professor Rolleston for the help he has given me in the preparation of
the diagrams which accompany the work, while I hardly know how to express
my gratitude sufficiently to Mr. W. G. Hird, of Bradford, who has taken
upon himself the onerous task of providing an index to the two volumes.
How onerous such a labour is can be realized only by those who have
already undergone it.
A. H. SAYCE.
QUEEN’S COLLEGE, OXFORD, _November, 1879_.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
VOL. I.
PAGE
PREFACE v
Chapter I. Theories of Language 1
” II. The Nature and Science of Language 90
” III. The three Causes of Change in Language (Imitation,
Emphasis, and Laziness) 163
Dialectic Variety 202
Appendix to Chapter III. Specimens of Mixed Jargons 219
Chapter IV. The Physiology and Semasiology of Speech (Phonology
and Sematology) 226
Etymology 345
Appendix I. to Chapter IV. The Vocal Organs of Animals 350
” II. ” The Alphabets of Prince L-L. Bonaparte
(Mr. A. J. Ellis) and Mr. H. Sweet 353
Chapter V. The Morphology of Speech 364
The Metaphysics of Language 404
Comparative Syntax 421
CHAPTER I.
THEORIES OF LANGUAGE.
“If we preserve in our histories of the world the names of
those who are said to have discovered the physical elements—the
names of Thales, and Anaximenes, and Empedocles—we ought
not to forget the names of the discoverers of the elements
of language—the founders of one of the most useful and most
successful branches of philosophy—the first grammarians.”—MAX
MÜLLER.
“Speech is silvern, silence is golden,” is the well-known saying of a
modern prophet, wearied with the idle utterances of a transition age, and
forgetful that the _prophet_, or προφητής, is himself but the “spokesman”
of another, and that the era which changed the Hebrew seer into the
_Nabi_, or “proclaimer,” brought with it also the beginning of culture
and civilization, and the consciousness of a high religious destiny. Far
truer was the instinct of the old poet of the Rig-Veda, the most ancient
monument of our Aryan literature, written, it may be, fifteen centuries
before the birth of Christ, when he calls “the Word” one of the highest
goddesses “which rushes onward like the wind, which bursts through heaven
and earth, and, awe-inspiring to each one that it loves, makes him a
Brahman, a poet, and a sage.” The haphazard etymology which saw in the
μέροπες ἄνθρωποι of Homer “articulate-speaking men,” must indeed be
given up, but we may still picture to ourselves the “winged words” which
seemed inspired with the life and divinity of Hermês, or the sacred Muses
from whom the Greek singer drew all his genius and power. Language is at
once the bond and the creation of society, the symbol and token of the
boundary between man and brute.
We must be careful to remember that language includes any kind of
instrumentality whereby we communicate our thoughts and feelings to
others, and therefore that the deaf-mute who can converse only with
the fingers or the lips is as truly gifted with the power of speech as
the man who can articulate his words. The latter has a more perfect
instrument at his command, but that is all. Indeed, it is quite possible
to conceive of a community in which all communications were carried on
with the hands alone; to this day savage tribes make a large use of
gestures, and we are told that the Grebos of Africa ordinarily indicate
the persons and tenses of the verb by this means only. Wherever there is
the power of making our thoughts intelligible to another, or even simply
the possibility of this power, as in the case of the infant, there we
have language, although for ordinary purposes the term may be restricted
to spoken or articulate speech. It is in this sense that language will be
understood in the following pages.
Now one of the earliest subjects of reflection was the language in which
that reflection clothed itself. The power of words was clear even to the
barbarian, and yet at the same time it was equally clear that he himself
exercised a certain power over them. Wonder, it has been said, is the
mother of science, and out of the wonder excited by the great mystery of
language came speculations on its nature and its origin. What, it was
asked, are those modulations of the voice, those emissions of the breath,
which inform others of what is passing in our innermost souls, and
without which the most rudimentary form of society would be impossible?
Perhaps it was in Babylonia that the first attempt was made to answer the
question. Here there was a great mixture of races and languages, and here
it was accordingly that the scene of the confusion of tongues was laid.
The Tower of Babel, the great temple of the Seven Lights of Borsippa,
whose remains we may still see in the ruins of the Birs-i-Nimrúd, was,
it was believed, the cause and origin of the diversity of human speech.
Men endeavoured to make themselves equal to the gods, and to storm heaven
like the giants of Greek mythology, but the winds frustrated their
attempts, and heaven itself confounded their speech. Such was the native
legend, fragments of which have been brought from the Assyrian library of
Assur-bani-pal, or Sardanapalus, and which cannot fail to bring to our
minds the familiar history of Genesis.
Now the same library that has given us these fragments has also given
us the first beginnings of what we may call comparative philology.
The science, the art, and the literature of Babylonia had been the
work of an early people who spoke an agglutinative language, and from
them it had all been borrowed and perhaps improved upon by the later
Semitic settlers in the country. Their language, which for the want of
a better name we will call Accadian, had ceased to be spoken before the
seventeenth century B.C., but not before the civilization and culture it
enshrined had been adopted by a new race, who had to study and learn the
dead tongue in which they were preserved, as the scholars of the Middle
Ages had to study and learn Latin. Hence came the need of dictionaries,
grammars, and reading-books; and the clay tablets of Nineveh accordingly
present us not only with interlinear and parallel Assyrian translations
of Accadian texts, arranged upon the Hamiltonian method, but also with
syllabaries and lexicons, with phrase-books and grammars of the two
languages. It is the first attempt ever made to draw up a grammar, and
the comparative form the attempt has assumed shows how impossible was
even the suggestion of such a thing without the comparison of more
than one form of speech. The vocabularies are compiled sometimes on a
classificatory principle, sometimes on an alphabetic one, sometimes
on the principle of grouping a number of derivations around their
common root; and the latter principle enunciates at once the primary
doctrine and object of comparative philology—the analysis of language
into its simplest elements. With the discovery of roots we may date the
possibility and the beginning of linguistic science.
Next in order of time to the grammarians of Babylonia and Assyria came
the grammarians of India, whose labours again were called forth by the
comparison of different forms of speech. The sacred language of the Veda
had already become antiquated and obscure, while the rise and spread
of Buddhism had raised more than one popular dialect to the rank of a
literary language, and obliged the educated Hindu not only to study his
own speech in its earlier and later forms, but to compare it with other
more or less related idioms as well. Since Indian philology, however, is
intimately connected with the history of the modern science of Language,
it will be more convenient to consider it further on.
The problems of language were naturally among the first to present
themselves to the activity of the Greek mind. Already the instinct of
their wonderful speech, itself the fitting creation and reflex of the
national character, had found in the word λόγος an expression of the
close relationship that exists between reasoned thought and the words
in which it clothes itself; and the question which Greek philosophy
sought to answer was the nature of this relationship, and of the language
wherein it is embodied. Do words exist, it was asked, _by nature_ (φύσει)
or _by convention_ (θέσει); do the sounds which we utter exactly and
necessarily represent things as they are in themselves, or are they
merely the arbitrary marks and symbols conventionally assigned to the
objects we observe and the conceptions we form? This was the question
that the greatest of the Greek thinkers attempted to solve; and the
controversy it called forth divided Greek philosophy into two camps,
and lies at the bottom of all its contributions to linguistic science.
It is true that the question was really a philosophic one, and that the
advocates of free-will on the one side, and of necessity on the other,
naturally saw in speech either the creation and plaything of the human
will, or else a power over which man has as little control as over the
forces of nature. Important as were the results of this controversy, not
only to the philosophy of language, but yet more to the formation of
grammar, it was impossible for a _science_ of language to arise out of
it: its results were logical rather than linguistic, for science requires
the patient _à posteriori_ method of induction, not the _à priori_ method
of immature philosophizing, however brilliantly handled. The Greeks
had, indeed, grasped a truth which has too often been forgotten in
modern times, the truth that language is but the outward embodiment and
crystallization of thought; but they overlooked the fact that to discover
its nature and its laws we must observe and classify its external
phænomena, and not until we have ascertained by this means the conditions
under which thought externalizes itself in language, can we get back to
that thought itself.
Greek researches into language fall into three chief periods, the
period of the præ-Sokratic philosophy, when language in general was the
subject of inquiry, the period of the Sophists, when the categories of
universal grammar were being distinguished and worked out, and the period
of Alexandrine criticism, when the rules of Greek grammar in particular
were elaborated. Herakleitus and Demokritus are the representatives
of the first period: the one the advocate of the innate and necessary
connection between words and the objects they denote, the other of the
absolute power possessed by man to invent or change his speech. The
dispute, however, was soon shifted from words as they are to words as
they once were; since on the one hand it was manifest that the union
assumed to exist between words and objects could no longer be pointed
out in the majority of instances, and on the other hand that numerous
words are merely the later corruptions of earlier forms, so that the
invention of even a single word must be pushed back to an age far
beyond the oldest experience. Hence grew up the so-called science of
_etymology_, a science whose name, it must be confessed, fully justified
one of its leading principles which resulted in the derivation of _lucus
a non lucendo_, “because the sun does _not_ shine therein.” Ἐτυμο-λογία
was “the science of the truth,” the ascertainment of the true origin
of words; but in Greek hands its truer designation would have been the
“science of falsehood” and guess-work. Its follies have been enshrined
in ponderous works like the “Etymologicum Magnum” or the “Onomastikon”
of Pollux; and its curious illustrations of the absurdities into which
a clever and active intellect will fall when deprived of the guidance
of the scientific method of comparison, are scattered broadcast through
the writings of Greek thinkers. Two of its rules, for instance, both
founded on the assumption of the “natural” origin of words, lay down
that the word undergoes the same modifications as the thing it denotes,
and that objects may be named from their contraries (κατ’ ἀντίφρασιν);
and hence it was easy to derive φιλητής, “a thief,” from ὑφέλεσθαι, “to
steal,” by “depriving” the latter word of its first syllable, and to see
in _cœlum_, “heaven,” _cœlatum_, “covered,” “because it is open,” or
in _fœdus_, “covenant,” _fœdus_, “hateful,” “because there is nothing
hateful in it.”[2] After this we need not smile at Plato’s derivation
of θεοί, “gods,” from θέειν, “to run,” because the stars were first
worshipped, or Aristotle’s assumption that objects are easy of digestion
when they are “light” in weight. Dr. Jolly has pointed out that the fact
that ἐτυμός is Ionic indicates the origin of the pseudo-science in the
Ionic schools of philosophy; it is therefore a remarkable illustration of
the “self-sufficient” nature of Greek thought and of Greek contempt for
the “barbarian,” that the dialects of Asia Minor, though so closely akin
to Greek, should have been utterly disregarded, and the investigations
into language consequently left to the vagaries of the fancy without the
light of comparison to guide them to the truth. Plato in the “Kratylus”
is almost the only Greek who has noticed the resemblance of one of these
“barbarous” dialects to his own, and he has only noticed it to draw a
wrong conclusion from the fact. Many Greek words, he maintains, were
borrowed from abroad; and by way of examples he quotes κύων (the Sanskrit
_śwan_, the Latin _canis_, and our _hound_), ὑδώρ (the Sanskrit _udam_,
the Latin _unda_, and our _water_), and πῦρ (the Latin _pruna_, the
Umbrian _pir_, and our _fire_), as being identical with the names of the
same objects in Phrygian. The very fact, however, that Plato has noticed
this resemblance shows that the stimulating influence of contact with
Persia was still felt, even in the domain of language, when the Greeks
found themselves in the presence of an allied and similar civilization,
with all its contrasts to their own, and when men like Themistokles
found it politic to acquire a fluent knowledge of the Persian tongue. It
was not until the Empire of Alexander had overthrown that of Cyrus and
Darius and impressed upon the Greek a sovereign contempt for the Asiatic,
and an equal belief in his own innate superiority, that any regard for
the jargons of the “barbarians” became altogether out of the question.
It was then that the masterpieces of early Greek literature came to be
the sole objects of study and investigation, and philological research
took the form of that one-sided, and therefore erroneous, exposition of
the grammar of a single language, which has been the bane of classical
philology down to our own time.
The linguistic labours of the age of the Sophists were occasioned by
the needs of oratory. When rhetoric became a profitable and all-powerful
pursuit, and the end of education was held to be the ability to hold
one’s own, whether right or wrong, and confute one’s neighbour, words
necessarily came to be regarded as more valuable than things, and the
main care and attention of the sophist were bestowed upon the form of
his sentences and the style of his argument. Just as language had been
approached in the preceding period from a purely metaphysical point of
view, and was to be approached in the succeeding period from a logical
point of view, so now it was looked at from the side of rhetoric. It
was not _etymology_, a knowledge of the “truth,” that was wanted, but a
knowledge of the composition of sentences and of the way in which they
could best be arranged for the purposes of persuasion. The first outlines
of European grammar accordingly go back to this Sophistic age. We find
Protagoras criticizing the opening verse of the Iliad, because μῆνις,
“wrath,” is used as a feminine, contrary to the sense of the word, or
distinguishing the three genders and busying himself with the discovery
of the verbal moods, while the lectures of Prodikus were occupied with
the analysis and definition of synonyms. Some idea may be formed of the
grammatical zeal of the Sophists from the “Clouds” of Aristophanes,[3]
where he ridicules the pedantry that would force the artificial rules of
grammar upon the usage of living speech.
Plato and Aristotle, the products of the impulse given to thought
by that greatest of the Sophists, Sokrates, form the connecting link
between the Sophistic and the Alexandrine periods, and renew in the
shape required by the progress of philosophy the old contest regarding
the nature of language between the followers of Herakleitus and those
of Demokritus. In philology as elsewhere, the idealism of Plato stands
opposed to the practical realism of his pupil Aristotle. Plato paints
language as it ought to be; Aristotle reasons upon it as it is. But in
both cases it was not language in general, but the Greek language in
particular, that was meant; and owing to this short-sightedness of view
and disregard of the comparative method, the theories of each, however
suggestive and stimulating, are yet devoid of scientific value and mainly
interesting to the historian alone. The problem of Plato’s “Kratylus” is
the natural fittingness of words, which finally resolves itself into the
question how it happens that a word is understood by the bearer in the
same sense as it is intended by the speaker. No answer is given to the
question; but the dialogue gives occasion for a complete review of the
linguistic opinions prevalent at the time, and the conclusion put into
the mouth of Sokrates is that while in actual (Greek) speech no natural
and innate connection can be traced between words and things, it were
much to be wished that an ideal speech could be created in which this
natural connection would exist. In this wish, as Dr. Jolly remarks, Plato
shows himself the forerunner of Leibnitz and Bishop Wilkins, the one with
his “Lingua characteristica universalis,” and the other with his “Essay
towards a real Character and a Philosophical Language.”
Aristotle, as might be expected, will have nothing to do with the theory
of the natural origin of speech. He declares himself unequivocally on the
side of its opponents, and lays down that language originates through
the agreement and convention of men (συνθήκῃ). Words, he holds, have no
meaning in themselves; this is put into them by those who utter them, and
they then become so many symbols of the objects signified (ὅταν γίνεται
σύμβολον). “For the sentence (λόγος), when heard, makes one’s meaning
intelligible, not necessarily but accidentally, since it consists of
words, and each word is a symbol.”[4] At the same time Aristotle makes
no clear distinction between thought and language; _concept_ and _word_
are with him interchangeable terms; and his famous ten categories into
which all objects can be classed are as much grammatical as logical, or
perhaps more rightly a mixture of both. In his hands the rhetorical gives
way to the logical treatment of language, and the sentence is analyzed
in the interests of formal logic. As Kant and Hegel observed long ago,
the logical system of Aristotle is purely empirical; it is based on the
grammar of a single language, and is nothing but an analysis of the
mode in which the framers of that language unconsciously thought. To
understand and criticize it properly we must bear this fact in mind,
and remember that the system cannot be corrected or replaced until
comparative philology has taught us to distinguish between the universal
and the particular in the grammar of Greek and Aryan. Whatever injury,
however, logic may have suffered from having been thus built up upon the
idiosyncrasies of the Greek Sentence, Greek grammar gained an equivalent
advantage. Besides the ὄνομα or “noun,” and the ῥῆμα or “verb,” Aristotle
now added to it the σύνδεσμος or “particle,” and introduced the term
πτῶσις or “case,” to denote any kind of flection whatsoever. He also
divided nouns into simple and compound, invented for the neuter another
name (τὸ μεταξύ) than that given by Protagoras, and starting from the
termination of the nominative singular endeavoured to ascertain the rules
for denoting a difference of gender.
The work begun by Aristotle was continued by the Stoics, who perfected
his grammatical system just as they had perfected his logical system.
They separated the ἄρθρον or “article” from the particles, and determined
a fifth part of speech, the πανδέκτης or “adverb;” they confined the
πτῶσις or “case” to the flections of the noun, and distinguished the four
principal cases by names, the Latin translations or mistranslations of
which are now so familiar to us; they divided the verb into its tenses,
moods, and classes, and in the person of Chrysippus, the adherent of
the Stoic school (B.C. 280-206), separated nouns into _appellativa_ and
_propria_. But, like Aristotle, they assumed the same laws for both
thought and language, and were thus led into difficulties and fallacies
which the slightest acquaintance with another language might have
prevented. Thus the logical copula was confounded with the substantive
verb by which it was expressed in Greece, and false arguments were framed
and supported on this assumption. Their opponents, the Epicureans,
contented themselves with inquiries into the origin of speech, which had
to be explained, like everything else, in accordance with the theory
of atoms. The large part, however, played by the action of society in
their system gave their theorizing upon the subject an accidental aspect
of truth which at first sight is somewhat surprising; and even the
well-known lines of Horace (Sat. I. 3. 99, _sq._) contain a more correct
representation of the primitive condition of man and the evolution of
language than the speculations current upon the matter up to the last few
years. Language, it was held, existed φύσει, not θέσει; but the nature
which originated speech was not external nature, but the nature of man.
The different sounds and utterances whereby the same object is denoted
in different languages are due to the varying circumstances in which the
speakers find themselves, and are as much determined by their climate and
social condition, their constitution and physique, as the lowing of the
ox or the bleating of the lamb. Men, indeed, create speech, not however
deliberately and with intention (ἐπιστημόνως), but instinctively through
the impulse of their nature (φυσικῶς κινούμενοι).[5] We may perhaps trace
in these expressions the germs of the theory of the onomatopœic origin of
language.
While the Epicureans were speculating on the origin of speech, the
grammarians of Alexandria were busying themselves with the elaboration of
what the French would call a _grammaire raisonnée_. “Alexandria,” says
Dr. Jolly, “was the birthplace of classical philology, a study which has
directly raised itself upon the ruins of the old Hellenic culture and
spiritual originality.” The intense mental activity and productiveness
of Athens had made way for the frigid pedantry and artificial mannerisms
of commentators and court-poets; the free national life and small rival
states of Greece had been replaced by a semi-oriental despotism and a
cosmopolitan centralization; and unable themselves to emulate the great
creations of the classic age, the literary coterie of the Alexandrine
Museum could do no more than admire and edit them. The very dialect
in which the Attic tragedians and historians had composed and written
had become strange and foreign, while the language of the Homeric
Poems, which it must be remembered were to the Greeks what the Bible
is to us, seemed as obscure and obsolete to the Alexandrine, as the
tongue of Layamon or Piers Plowman does to the ordinary Englishman.
If we add to this the existence of numerous and discordant copies of
Homer, we have abundant reason for the growth of that large army of
commentators, grammarians, and lexicographers which characterized the
schools of Alexandria and laid the foundations of literary criticism. A
minute investigation of the grammatical facts of the Greek language was
rendered necessary, and a comparison of the older and later forms of the
language as well as of its dialects grounded this investigation upon a
comparatively secure basis. The metaphysical turn, however, given to
the first linguistic inquiries still overshadowed the whole study, and
the absurd and misleading “science of etymology” remained to the last
the evil genius of Greek philology. The old dispute as to the origin of
words now assumed a new form, mainly through the influence of the Stoic
and Epicurean systems of philosophy, and the schools of Alexandria were
divided into the two contending factions of Analogists and Anomalists.
The first, among whom was counted the famous Homeric critic Aristarchus,
found in language a strict law of analogy between concept and word,
which was wholly denied by the others. It was round this question that
Greek philology ranged itself from the third century B.C. to the first
century A.D., and out of the controversy it occasioned was formed that
Greek grammar which created the scholars of the last four hundred years,
and is still so widely taught in our own country. Thus Aristarchus, for
instance, in his anxiety to smooth away every irregularity and remove all
exceptions to the rules he had formulated, determined that the genitive
and dative of Ζεύς should no longer be Διός or Ζῆνος, but Ζεός, and Ζεΐ,
and the endeavours of his opponents to upset this piece of pedantry led
to the discovery of other similar exceptions to the general rule, and to
the complete settlement of this portion of the grammar. Krates of Mallos,
the head of the Pergamenian school, stands forward as the chief rival
of Aristarchus on the opposite side. In his hands “anomaly” was made
the leading principle of language, and general rules of any sort flatly
denied, except in so far as they were consecrated by custom. The purism
of his opponents, who wished to correct everything which contravened
the grammatical laws they had laid down, was thus met by an unqualified
defence of the rights of usage—“quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma
loquendi.” Our own schoolmasters who have introduced an _l_ into _could_
(_coud_), the past tense of _can_, because _should_ from _shall_ has one,
or have prefixed a _w_ to _whole_, the twin-brother of _hale_ (Greek
καλός), because of the analogy of _wheel_ and _which_, are the fitting
successors of the Alexandrine Analogists, and it was unfortunate for both
that they had no Aristophanes to transfer them to cloudland, and ridicule
them in the light of common sense.
Krates, however, has better claims upon our attention than as leader
of the Anomalists. To him we owe the first formal Greek grammar and
collection of the grammatical facts obtained by the labours of the
Alexandrine critics. That a formal grammar, which implies an enunciation
of general rules as well as of the exceptions to them, should have been
the work of an Anomalist rather than of an Analogist, may at first sight
seem surprising; but we must recollect that the Anomalist did not deny
the existence of general rules altogether, but only their universal and
unqualified applicability; while the Analogist who sought to produce
an artificial uniformity in language instead of accepting the facts
of speech as they are, was totally unfitted for composing a practical
grammar.[6]
The immediate cause, however, of the grammar in question was really
the tardy comparison of Greek with a foreign tongue, the Latin, and the
need of a Greek grammar felt by the citizens of Rome. Appius Claudius
Cæcus (censor in B.C. 312) had already written upon grammar,[7] and
Spurius Carvilius, a writing-master (B.C. 234), had regulated the Latin
alphabet, substituting the indispensable _g_ for the useless _z_, and
when Krates came to Rome in 159 B.C., as the Ambassador of Attalus,
the King of Pergamos, he found a ready audience for his ἀκροάσεις, or
“lectures” upon the study of Greek. Almost all that the Romans knew of
literary culture and civilization came from the Greeks; their native
literature was coarse and insignificant, and their language uncultivated
and inflexible. Education at Rome, therefore, meant education upon
Greek models and in the Greek language. Boys learned Greek before they
learned Latin, and the Greek words with which the plays of Plautus are
strewn, as well as their Alexandrine origin, show pretty plainly that a
familiarity with the language of Greece was not confined to the literary
_salon_ of a Scipio, or the houses of a wealthy aristocracy. Livius
Andronicus, the father of Latin literature, was a Greek professor (272
B.C.), and his translation of the “Odyssey” into Latin was doubtless
for the use of his pupils;[8] the first history of Rome, that of
Fabius Pictor (in 200 B.C.), was written in Greek; and even a popular
tribune like Tiberius Gracchus published the Greek speech he had made
at Rhodes. In fact, a knowledge of Greek was necessary not only for
acquiring the barest amount of culture and education, but even for a
proper acquaintance with the Latin language itself. Partly through its
stiff and cumbrous immobility, partly through the want of originality in
its speakers, Latin literature and Latin oratory were alike impossible
without the genial and fructifying influence of the Greek. With Greek
teachers and Greek models, a native literature came into existence, and
the language was artificially trained to become a suitable instrument
for communication between the more polished nations of the ancient world
and their Roman masters. It is true that classical Latin was really
more or less of a hothouse exotic, interesting therefore rather to the
student of literature than to the student of linguistic science; but
the attempt to rear and nurture it, to keep it unpolluted by the spoken
dialects of Rome or the provinces, and to confine it within the rules and
metres of a foreign rhythm made it the seedplot of grammatical questions
and philological investigations. The study of grammar was of practical
importance to the practical Roman; he applied himself to it with all the
energy of his nature, and treated the whole subject in a practical rather
than a philosophical way. Julius Cæsar, the type and impersonation of the
Roman spirit, found time to compose a work, “De Analogiâ,” and invent the
term _ablative_, amid the distractions of political life, and even Cato
with all his dogged conservatism, learnt Greek in his old age in order
that he might be able to teach it to his son. The zeal with which the
deepest problems of grammar were discussed seems strange to us of to-day,
but upon the settlement of these problems depended the possibility of
making Latin the vehicle of law and oratory, and preventing the Roman
world from becoming Greek.
The first school grammar ever written in Europe was the Greek grammar
of Dionysius Thrax, a pupil of Aristarchus, which he published at Rome in
the time of Pompey. The grammar is still in existence,[9] and its opening
sentence, in which grammar is defined as “a practical acquaintance” with
the language of literary men, and divided into six parts—accentuation
and phonology, explanation of figurative expressions, definition,
etymology, general rules of flection, and critical canons[10]—has
formed the starting-point of the innumerable school-grammars which have
since seen the light. It has also been the cause of much of that absurd
etymologizing which the Romans received from the Greeks and handed on to
the lexicographers of modern Europe. Not content with transcribing the
grotesque etymologies of their Greek teachers, the Latin writers strove
to emulate them by still more grotesque etymologies of their own. Lucius
Ælius Stilo, of Lanuvium, about 100 B.C. first gave a course of lectures
on Latin literature and rhetoric, and one of his pupils, Marcus Terentius
Varro, wrote five books, “De Linguâ Latinâ,” which he dedicated to his
friend Cicero. The “science” of Latin etymology was now founded, and a
fruitful field opened to future explorers. Every word had to be provided
with a derivation, and on the received principles of etymology this was
no difficult task. By the law of _antiphrasis_, _bellum_ is made the
neuter of _bellus_, “because there is _nothing_ beautiful in war;” and
_parcus_ is so named because the niggard “spares (_parcere_) nobody.” It
has been left to the vagaries of a later day to excel the Romans in this
part of their labours. The lawyers tell us that _parliament_ is derived
from _parler_, “to speak,” _mentem_, “one’s mind;” Junius[11] that the
_soul_ is “the well of life” from the Greek ζάω, “to live,” and the
Teutonic _wala_, “well,” while _merry_ comes from μυρίζειν, because the
ancients anointed themselves at feasts; and a book entitled “Ereuna,”
published as late as the year of grace 1875, would raise the envy of a
Latin etymologist. When we find Jupiter (Diespiter) gravely derived in it
from the “Celtic” _oyo-meir_, “infinite,” and _peitir_, “a thunderbolt;”
_Nemesis_ discovered to be the “Celtic” _neam-aire_, “pitiless,” and
_manna man-neam_, “food of heaven”—we may trace the last results of
that unhappy disease of “popular etymologizing” which it is the work of
comparative philology to cure.[12]
The introduction of Greek grammar into Rome, however, was attended by
another evil than the propagation of a false system of etymology. The
technical terms of Greek grammar were in many cases misunderstood, and,
accordingly, mistranslated. Thus, in the province of phonology, the mutes
were divided into the ψιλά (_k_, _t_, _p_), and their corresponding
“rough” or aspirated sounds (δασέα), the soft _g_, _d_, and _b_ being
placed between the ψιλά and δασέα, and consequently named μέσα, or
“middle.” The Romans rendered μέσα by _mediæ_, and δασέα by _aspiratæ_,
but ψιλά they mistranslated _tenues_, and the mistranslation still causes
confusion in modern treatises on pronunciation. Similarly, _genitivus_,
the “genitive” or case of “origin,” is a blundering misrepresentation of
the Greek γενική, or case of “the genus,” a wholly different conception;
and _accusativus_, “the accusative,” or case “of accusing,” perpetuates
the mistake which saw in the Greek αἰτιατική a derivative from αἰτιάομαι,
to “blame,” instead of αἰτία, “an object;” while the Greek ἀπαρέμφατος
signifies “without a secondary meaning” of tense or person, and not “the
indefinite” or “indetermining” as the Latin _infinitivus_ would imply. We
still suffer from the errors made in transferring to Rome the grammatical
terminology of Alexandria.
The Romans continued to take an interest in questions of grammar and of
etymology down to the last. It is true that they confined their inquiries
to their own and the Greek language; the descent they claimed from Æneas
and the Trojans inspired them with no desire to investigate the dialects
of Asia, and even the Etruscan language and literature which lingered on
almost to the Christian era at their own doors, were left unregarded by
the leading philologists of Rome. In language, as in everything else,
the provincial had to adapt himself to the prejudices of his conqueror.
Never before or since has the principle of centralization been carried
out with greater logical precision. Even Cæsar who found time to discuss
grammatical questions in the midst of his campaigns in Gaul, never
troubled himself to examine the language of his Gallic adversaries, or to
compare the grammatical forms they used with those of Latin.
Passing by the Emperor Claudius, who endeavoured to reform the
Roman alphabet, and actually introduced three new letters, we come
to Apollonius Dyskolus and his son Herodian, two eminent Alexandrine
grammarians of the second century. We possess part of the “Syntax” of
the former, who specially devoted himself to this branch of the subject,
and expressed himself so briefly and technically (like the grammarians
of ancient India) as to gain the name of Dyskolos, “the Difficult.” His
son Herodian continued the labours of his father, and in the works of
these Græco-Roman grammarians we see the long controversy between the
Analogists and the Anomalists finally settled. Analogy is recognized as
the principle that underlies language; but in actual speech exceptions
occur to every rule, and break through the hard-and-fast lines of
artificial pedantry. The Greek and Latin school-grammars of our boyhood
are the heritage that has come down to us from this old dispute and its
final settlement. Dr. Jolly remarks with justice[13] that the radical
fault of these grammatical labours was the confusion between thinking
and speaking, between logic and grammar—a confusion which intruded
the empirical terminology of formal logic into grammar, and was only
dissipated when an investigation of the languages of the East introduced
the comparative method into the treatment of speech, and showed that to
interpret aright the phænomena of Greek and Latin we must study them in
the light of other tongues.
The tradition handed down by Herodian was taken up by Ælius Donatus
in the fourth century, and Priscian in the sixth; the former the author
of the Latin grammar which dominated the schools of the Middle Ages;
the latter of eighteen books on grammar, the most extensive work of the
kind we have received from classical antiquity. Priscian flourished at
Constantinople during the short revival of the Roman Empire and glory
that marked the reign of Justinian; and one of the most noticeable things
in his writings is his comparison of Latin with Greek, especially the
Æolic dialect. In this he followed Tyrannio or Diokles, the manumitted
slave of Cicero’s wife and the author of a treatise “On the Derivation
of the Latin Language from the Greek.” Donatus and Priscian were the
philological lights of Europe for more than a thousand years, and such
lights were little better than darkness. Once, and once only, was an
attempt made to break down their monopoly and to introduce oriental
learning into Western education. Pope Clement V., at the Council of
Vienne in 1311, exhorted the four great Universities of Europe—Paris,
Bologna, Salamanca, and Oxford—to establish two Chairs of Hebrew, two of
Arabic, and two of Chaldee, in order that their students might be able
to dispute successfully with Jews and Mohammedans. About the same time
Dante, in his treatise “De Vulgari Eloquentiâ,” compared the dialects
of Italy, and selected one which he calls “Illustrious, Cardinal and
Courtly,” spoken wherever education and refinement were to be found,
and sprung from the brilliant Sicilian court of Frederick II.[14]—a
dialect destined to become the language of the “Divina Commedia” and the
nursing-mother of the languages and literatures of modern Europe. But
elsewhere the “Doctrinale puerorum” of the priest Alexander de Villa Dei,
or Villedieu, of Paris, written in leonine verses, was the sole grammar
taught and learnt; and the Latin dictionary of Giovanni de Balbis, of
Genoa, was the only guide to Latin literature. No wonder that Roger
Bacon, in his “Opus Majus,”[15] has to lay down that Greek, Hebrew, and
Latin are three separate and independent languages, which must be learned
and treated separately and independently, and that “those words only
which are derived from Greek and Hebrew ought to be interpreted by those
tongues, since those which are purely Latin cannot be explained except by
Latin words.” “For,” he goes on to say, “Latin pure and simple is quite
different from every other language, and therefore cannot be interpreted
from any other.” The most approved scholars and etymologists of his day
amused themselves by deriving _amen_ from the Latin _a_, “without,” and
the Greek _mene_ (? μείων), “defect,” _parascene_ (_parasceve_) from the
Latin _parare_ and _cæna_, and _cælum_ from the hybrid _case-helios_, or
“house of the sun” (!), much in the same way that Jacobus de Voragine,
the genial author of the “Legenda Aurea,”[16] derives Clemens from
“cleos, quod est gloria, et mens, quasi gloriosa mens;” and says of
the name Cæcilia, “quasi _cæli lilia_, vel _cæcis via_, vel a _cælo_
et _lya_: vel Cæcilia quasi _cæcitate carens_; vel dicitur a _cælo_ et
_leos_ quod est populus.”
But even the older Humanists were not much better. They knelt before
the spirit of classical antiquity with a worship at once child-like and
unreasoning. Their object was to write and speak Latin correctly—that is
to say, in accordance with the usage of certain literary men of Rome, not
to discover the grounds on which this usage rested. Switheim declares
that it matters as little to know why this or that verb governs a case,
as it does to know why _bin_, the Latin _sum_, “governs the nominative,
_ich_, _ego_.” “We can say that the verb governs the nominative, because
it was once so agreed among the grammarians of antiquity that the verb
should govern the nominative _ante se_. If it had been agreed among the
ancients that the object of the verb should be in the accusative, the
verb would govern the accusative.” The grammatical term “to govern” was,
by the way, a legacy bequeathed by the schoolmen; and a very mischievous
legacy it was. Priscian does not yet know it, though it is found in
Consentius. Unreasoning and unreasonable, however, as the Humanists were
in their treatment of grammar, they were outdone by the orthodox who
found in the “errors” of the Vulgate—such as _Da mihi bibere_—direct
proofs of Divine inspiration, and the power of the Holy Spirit to
override the usual rules of grammar. Johannes de Gallandia, for instance,
states boldly:—“Pagina divina non vult se subdere legi Grammatices, nec
vult illius arte regi.” So, again, Smaragdus writes in reference to the
rule laid down by Donatus, that _scalæ_, _scopæ_, _quadrigæ_ must be used
in the plural: “We shall not follow him because we know that the Holy
Spirit has always (namely, in the Vulgate) employed these words in the
singular.”[17]
We have seen that a knowledge of more than one language is an
indispensable preliminary to the formation of a grammar of either; we
have seen also that it was among the Semites of Babylonia and Assyria
that the earliest grammatical essays were first made. The impulse given
to grammatical studies by these attempts did not survive the fall of
Babylon; and though the Jewish schools in Babylonia and elsewhere were
forced to accompany the extinct Hebrew of their sacred books with glosses
and commentaries in Aramaic, they produced nothing that can be called
with any truth a grammatical work. It was not until the foundation of
the School of Edessa, in the sixth century, that the traditions of
the scribes of Assur-bani-pal were taken up by their successors in
Mesopotamia. The study of Greek for ecclesiastical purposes among the
Syrian Christians led to the compilation of a Syrian grammar; and Jacob
of Edessa (A.D. 650-700) succeeded in elaborating one which served as a
model for all succeeding works. His whole grammar, however, was based
on that of the Greeks, and his terminology was either borrowed directly
from the Greek, or formed after the analogy of his Greek originals.
Jacob, to whom the systematization of the Syriac vowel-points is to be
ascribed, was followed by Elias of Nisibis (eleventh century), and John
Barzugbi (thirteenth century), who, says M. Renan, “may be regarded as
the author of the first complete grammar of the Syriac language.”[18] The
Arabs were not slow to imitate the example of their Syrian neighbours.
The preservation of the text of the Korân turned their attention to
philological studies at an early period; and we may assign the real
foundation of Arabic grammar to the end of the seventh century, when
Abul-Aswed (who died 688 A.D.) introduced the diacritical points and
vowel-signs, and wrote some treatises on several questions of grammar.
His labours were continued in the schools of Basra and Kufa, and Sibawaih
(770), the oldest grammarian whose works have come down to us, shows us
Arabic grammar almost complete. His successors, as M. Renan remarks,
did little more than fill out the details of his teaching; and in the
fifteenth century, Suyuthi knows of no less than 2,500 grammarians who
had made a name in Arabic literature.
With Syriac and Arabic grammars thus formed, and the doctrine of
triliteral roots enunciated, all that was wanting was to work out a
comparative grammar of the Semitic dialects. Just as the grammarians
of Greece and Rome had perceived the connection that existed between
the two languages, and in their haphazard and arbitrary fashion had
endeavoured to trace the origin of Latin words to Greek sources, so the
relationship between the Semitic idioms could not but be detected as
soon as serious labours were commenced upon them; and the closeness of
this relationship prevented the errors and absurdities into which the
classical grammarians were betrayed by their ignorance of other tongues.
To the Jews belongs the merit of first formulating what we may term a
comparative grammar. The Saboreans and Masoretes in the sixth century
did for the Old Testament what the Alexandrine Greeks had done for
Homer, the Arabs for the Korân, and the Hindus for the Veda; and in the
tenth century a Hebrew grammar was founded under Arabic influence, and
with it a comparative grammar of the Semitic languages. The Jews, who
had warmly received Mohammedan culture, and even become intermediaries
between their Arabic masters and the “infidel” philosophy of Greece, were
necessarily bilingual; and the first fruits of this necessity were the
grammatical works of the Gaon, Saadia-el-Fayyumi (who died 942). After
Saadia came Menahem-ben-Seruk of Tortosa (960), and Dunash-ben-Librât of
Fez (970), who composed the first works on Hebrew lexicography, and of
whom the latter declares that he “compares the relation of Arabic and
Hebrew, counts all the genuine words of Arabic which are found in Hebrew,
and points out that Hebrew is pure Arabic.” About the same time Judah
Khayyug of Fez gave an exhaustive account of defective roots and the
permutation of servile letters, while Jonah ben Gannach of Cordova (in
Arabic Abul Walid Mervan-ibn-Janah), in the eleventh century, completed
the grammatical labours of his predecessors.
With the decline of Arabic supremacy and the introduction of Neo-Hebrew
arose a new school of Hebrew philology, of which the Kimchi of Narbonne
(A.D. 1200) are the leading representatives. This school was less
comparative than the foregoing, and the rabbinical spirit that prevailed
in it, though conducing to minute accuracy, was not favourable to
philological progress. It was, however, the instructor of the Christian
scholars of the Renaissance, whose zeal for knowledge and learning
brought the study of Hebrew and its cognate languages within the circle
of European thought. The Reformation, breaking as it did with the
mediæval Church, and making its appeal to the Scriptures themselves, made
a knowledge of the original language of the Old Testament indispensable.
Christian scholars like Reuchlin, the two Buxtorfs, Richard Simon,
Ludolf, Schultens, or our own Castell and Pococke, devoted themselves to
a study of Semitic philology with the same energy and success as men like
the Stephenses, the Scaligers, and the Vosses to a study of classical
philology. Lexicons and grammars were compiled, texts were critically
examined and edited, and a comparative dictionary of the Semitic
languages was brought out. It was inevitable that men who were at once
masters of Hebrew and Greek should discover resemblances and coincidences
between the two languages. Hebrew grammar was cast into a classical
mould, and Latin and Greek words were derived from Hebrew roots. Hebrew,
it was argued, was the sacred language which had been spoken by Adam and
the patriarchs, since the names of our first parents and their offspring
are of Hebrew origin; and it was therefore clear that Hebrew must have
been the primæval speech used before the confusion of tongues at Babel,
the primitive source from which the manifold dialects of the world have
been derived. A new etymological system accordingly sprang up, quite as
grotesque in its rules and its results as the old etymological system
of Greece and Rome; and dictionaries of Latin and English appeared in
which every word was provided with its Hebrew original.[19] Since Hebrew
is written from right to left, it was assumed that a Hebrew root could
be read the reverse way if a satisfactory etymology was not otherwise
forthcoming; and as the profane languages might be expected to retain
some reminiscences of their sacred mother, a similar procedure was
adopted to connect words in English and the classical tongues with one
another, and so _stum_ was proved to come from the Latin _mustum_, and
the Latin _forma_ from the Greek μορφή. It was not the only instance in
which theological prepossessions have injured the cause of philology.
With Herder and Lessing, however, a new era of thought and philosophy
began. The mechanical explanation of the world was superseded by a
psychological one; the idea of development took the place of the idea of
contract and convention. Herder devoted a special treatise to the “Ideal
of Speech,”[20] and a prize offered by the Berlin Academy for the best
essay on “the Ideal of a Perfect Language,” was won by Jenisch in 1796.
The work of Jenisch bore the ambitious title, “A philosophico-critical
Comparison and Estimate of Fourteen of the Ancient and Modern Languages
of Europe, viz., Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French,
English, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Polish, Russian, Lithuanian.”
But Jenisch was still under the dominion of the assumption which made the
Roman jurist discover his _jus gentium_ in those points in which the laws
of different nations agreed; he finds the ideal of a perfect language in
the fourteen languages of his title, all deviations from their grammar
being characterized as “less perfect formations.” Richness in the
vocabulary, expressiveness, clearness, and euphony are the four marks of
superiority. The value of Jenisch’s lucubrations, however, may be judged
from his statement that the Greek case-endings were probably modelled
after those of Hebrew. It needed the genius of Herder to recognize
that the language of a people is but the expression of its spiritual
life, and to lay down in his “Ideen” (1785) that “in each language the
understanding and character of its speakers reflects itself.” A step
forward was made by Mahn in his “Representation of Lexicography from
every Point of View,” published in 1817. In this (p. 264) he divides
the history of speech into three periods corresponding with the periods
in the life of the individual—childhood, youth, and age—severally
distinguished by memory, imagination, and intellect. The first period
is that in which language was formed, the second that in which it was
perfected, the third that in which it was made logical.
If language is logical it is evident that the categories of grammar ought
to correspond with the categories of logic, and attempts were accordingly
made to sketch the outlines of a universal grammar. In 1801 Vater brought
out his “Versuch einer allgemeinen Sprachlehre,” with an introduction on
the nature and origin of speech, and an appendix on the adaptation of
the rules of universal grammar to those of the grammars of individual
tongues. But Vater chose “the high _priori_ road;” he assumed that the
first men spoke in accordance with the forms of logic, and instead of
tracing the history of grammar in the records of living speech, made
that alone normal and correct which seemed to himself to be so. This
work of Vater’s was followed, three years later, by a translation of
De Sacy’s “Axioms of Universal Philology,” and in 1805 by a “Lehrbuch
allgemeiner Grammatik.” Comparative grammar is defined as a setting side
by side of the forms of different languages for the sake of reaching
that which is “common” to them; but this definition is only scientific
in appearance; what is “common” turns out to be not the original forms
of a parent-speech, but the forms which a philosopher of the eighteenth
century believed to lie at the bottom of “universal grammar.”
This idea of a universal grammar was due partly to the influence of
an age which believed the ultimate analyses of logic to represent the
thoughts of primitive man, partly to the unmethodical comparison of a
variety of languages, some ancient, some modern, and some as unrelated
to one another as Greek and Hebrew. But it was also in some measure the
result of a revived study of the old Greek theories about language. Our
countryman James Harris led the way with his “Hermes, or a Philosophical
Enquiry concerning Universal Grammar” (1765). The work was an important
one, for it not only stimulated an interest in linguistic studies, but
also recalled attention to the labours of those who had built up the
framework of our school grammars. Harris was succeeded by Horne Tooke,
whose “Diversions of Purley,” however imperfect and erroneous from the
point of view of modern scientific philology, threw a charm over what had
hitherto seemed repulsive inquiries into the words and forms of speech,
and laid down the axiom that we must first investigate the older forms of
a language before we can determine the origin and nature of their later
equivalents. But Horne Tooke’s work was composed in the interests of a
philosophical theory, and its keynote is struck in the assertion that
_truth_ is that which a man _troweth_. Things are but the reflection
of words, and words are what men deliberately make them. Grammar is no
organic growth, but the mechanical invention of mankind. And just as the
first men framed it in ignorance and imperfection, so the philosophers
of the eighteenth century could reframe it according to the requirements
of formal logic. It was the old mistake of the Greek Analogists over
again, only with the difference that they thought of the grammar of a
single language alone, whereas the more ambitious philologists of the
“Aufklärung” aimed at producing a grammar which would be applicable to
all tongues.
The French Encyclopædia was the manifesto of the “Aufklärung,” and
the Encyclopædia devoted six of its volumes to grammar and literature.
Grammar is divided into general and particular, and while general grammar
is defined as “la science raisonnée des principes immuables et généraux
de la parole prononcée ou écrite dans toutes les langues,” particular
grammar is defined as “the art of applying to the immutable and general
principles of the word whether pronounced or written the arbitrary and
customary usages (_institutions_) of a special language.” In accordance
with the lines thus traced out, Gottfried Hermann, in 1801, published his
work, “De emendendâ ratione Græcæ Grammaticæ,” and G. M. Roth brought out
his “Antihermes, or Philosophical Researches into the pure apprehension
of Human Speech and Universal Philology” in 1795, and his “Outlines
of pure Universal Philology for the use of Academies and advanced
classes in the Gymnasia” in 1815. As yet neither families of speech nor
the morphology of language were even dreamt of; and the “principles”
derived from the school grammars of Greece and Rome, supplemented by
the categories of modern philosophical systems, were supposed to apply
to all languages alike. It was reserved for A. F. Bernhardi, the pupil
of F. A. Wolf and Fichte, the friend of Tieck and Schlegel, to approach
towards a truer conception of the nature and relationship of speech in
his “Sprachlehre,” which he dedicated to his master Wolf. The first
part of this work appeared at Berlin in 1801, under the title of “Reine
Sprachlehre,” the second part, “Angewandte Sprachlehre,” being published
in 1803, and the third part, “Anfangsgründe der Sprachwissenschaft,”
in 1805. Bernhardi first caught sight of the fact that whereas, from a
purely scientific point of view, the grammar of every language follows
its own independent and peculiar line, for practical purposes we must
dwell mainly upon those particulars in which it agrees with the grammars
of other tongues.[21] According to Haym his book was “the first entrance
of the spirit of the romantic movement into the sphere of real science.”
Language is defined “as an allegory of the understanding, which expresses
and represents itself, according to its inherent nature, through this
externalization.” Hence a connection is sought between the sound and the
thing signified; the initial liquid of _light_, for instance, indicates
the sense of the word, whether used as a substantive or as an adjective.
In the second part of his work Bernhardi discusses the relation of
language to poetry on the one side, and to science on the other, and,
as might have been expected from his definition of it as an allegory,
regards it as being in its very essence the lyrical utterance of the
primitive poet.[22]
Meanwhile the etymologists went on with their work of random guessing,
with little heed to the labours of continental scholars upon a philosophy
of grammar. In this country Dr. Murray’s “History of the European
Languages” was posthumously published in 1823, in which he holds that all
the manifold languages of the world are derived from a single primeval
one which consisted of a few monosyllables, AG or WAG being the first
articulate sound. To this primeval language the Teutonic, and not the
Hebrew, “comes nearest;” and it is only fair to say that the relationship
of Sanskrit and Persian to the Aryan dialects of Europe is recognized,
and a full account given of the ancient Indian speech. In an appendix Dr.
Murray also pointed out what we should now term the Aryan affinities of
the Scythian words preserved by the classical authors. But his principles
of etymology were the same as those of the Greeks; similarity of sound
was sufficient to prove identity of origin. And every word, from whatever
quarter it may be gathered, is forced to become a proof or an example
of the descent of language from his nine monosyllabic interjections.
A volume, published in 1800 by W. Whiter, under the ambitious title
of “Etymologicum Magnum, or Universal Etymological Dictionary,” is
not content even with the limits prescribed to himself by Dr. Murray.
English, Greek, Latin, French, Irish, Welsh, Slavonic, Hebrew, Arabic,
Gipsey, Coptic, and many more, are all mixed up together with the most
impartial prodigality. The character of the work may be judged of by
the assertion of the writer, “that from a hord of vagrant Gipsies once
issued that band of sturdy robbers—the companions of Romulus and Remus;”
this being based on the fact that the Gipsies “are in their own language
called Romans, or Romani.” After this we need not be surprised at being
told that the English _give_ and _shaft_, the Hebrew _gabbe_ (_sic_),
the Chaldee _gavav_, the French _javeau_, the German _garbe_, and the
Latin _sparum_, have all one and the same origin; or that _sepulcrum_ is
derived from the Hebrew _kabar_, “to bury,” and the Celtic _pen_ from the
Hebrew _phânâh_, “to incline.”
What has been termed the discovery of Sanskrit by Western scholars put an
end to all this fanciful playing with words and created the science of
language. The native grammarians of India had at an early period analyzed
both the phonetic sounds and the vocabulary of Sanskrit with astonishing
precision, and drawn up a far more scientific system of grammar than
the philologists of Alexandria or Rome had been able to attain. The
Devanâgari alphabet is a splendid monument of phonological accuracy, and
long before the time of Saadia and Khayyug, the Hindu “Vaiyâkaranas,” or
grammarians, had not only discovered that roots are the ultimate elements
of language, but had traced all the words of Sanskrit to a limited number
of roots. Their grammatical system and nomenclature rest upon a firm
foundation of inductive reasoning, and though based on the phænomena of
a single language, show a scientific insight into the nature of speech
which has never been surpassed.
It is possible that the democratic movement of Buddhism which broke
down caste and raised the inferior dialects and languages of India to the
same level as the sacred Sanskrit of the Veda, had much to do with the
extraordinary success of the Hindu grammarians. The immediate object of
their investigation was the language of the Rig-Veda, which had become
obscure and partly obsolete through the changes wrought by time upon the
spoken tongue. The Rig-Veda, pre-eminently called “_the_ Veda,” is a
collection of hymns and poems of various dates, some of which go back to
the earliest days of the Aryan invasion of north-western India; the whole
collection, however, may be roughly ascribed to at least the fourteenth
or fifteenth century B.C. In course of time it came to assume a sacred
character, and the theory of inspiration invented to support this goes
much beyond the most extreme theory of verbal inspiration ever held in
the Jewish or the Christian Church. The Rig-Veda was divided into ten
_mandalas_ or books, each _mandala_ being assigned to some old family;
and out of these were formed three new Vedas—the Yajur, the Sâma, and
the Âtharva. The Yajur and the Sâma may be described as prayer-books
compiled from the Rig for the use of the choristers and the ministers of
the priests, and contain little besides what is found in the earliest
and most sacred Veda. Along with the latter they sometimes go under the
name of the Trayî or “Triad,” a name which implies that the Âtharva-Veda
was not yet in existence when it was given. In fact, the Âtharva_n_a may
be described as a collection of poems mixed up with popular sayings,
medical advice, magical formulæ, and the like. It was assigned to the
Brahman or fourth class of priests, who superintended the ritual, just
as the Sâma-Veda was assigned to the choristers, the Yajur-Veda to the
acolytes, to whom the manual work involved in a sacrifice was delegated,
and the Rig-Veda to the Hotri, or priest proper, who had to recite
portions of it, whence its name of Rig, or “Praise.” The period that
must have elapsed before the hymns of the Rig could have been collected
together, invested with a sacred character, and elaborated into a ritual,
must have been considerable; but not until this was done, and the three
supplementary Vedas composed, was the whole Veda or depository of sacred
“knowledge” complete. At a later date came the Brâhmanas, or commentaries
on the Veda, the object of which was to explain obscure passages in the
old hymns, and the erroneous and absurd explanations sometimes offered
show pretty plainly how much both the language and the ideas of the
people had changed. The sacredness of the Veda was reflected upon the
Brâhmanas themselves, and a time came when they too began to be regarded
as divine, and to be superseded by the Sûtras, the “strings” or manuals
of the grammarians. The diffuse style of the Brâhmanas made way for the
scientific brevity of the Sûtras, and Hindu literature entered upon its
Alexandrine stage. Even the grammar of the Brâhmanas became archaic; and
accordingly, though the Veda was the primary object of the grammarians’
labours, the Brâhmanas also had a share in their regard. The Sûtras
endeavour to explain the Veda and all connected with it—a principal part
of their work being naturally an explanation of the Vedic language and
grammar. But, before this could be effected, an accurate register of
the facts was required, and the Masoretes of India accordingly divided
and counted, not only the verses and words, but even the syllables of
the Rig-Veda. According to Śaunaka, the teacher of Kâtyâyana, the 1,028
hymns of the Rig-Veda contain 10,616 (or 10,622) verses, 153,826 words
(_padas_), and 432,000 syllables, eleven of the hymns being of later
date than the rest; and since the number of syllables and words given by
Śaunaka is the number found in our present texts, it is clear that the
Rig-Veda has been handed down, from the sixth century B.C. to our own
day, with the most perfect precision. This is the more astonishing at
first sight, from its being handed down orally alone; but the labours
of Śaunaka and his brother scholars had much to do with the result.
The numbering of the syllables of the Veda led to the formation of the
so-called Pada-text, in which the single words are divided one from
another, instead of being run together in accordance with the laws of
Sandhi. These laws require that the final letter of a word should be
modified by the initial letter of the word that follows, the consequence
being that two separate syllables (as in _tad śrutwâ_, “having heard
that”) are made to coalesce into one (_tachchhrutwâ_). To resolve these
amalgamated syllables was to discover the phonetic rules and principles
which regulated the pronunciation of Sanskrit, and to lay the foundation
of a scientific phonology.
But a more important work remained behind. Kautsa, a grammarian of the
fifth or sixth century B.C., tells us that the language of the Rig-Veda
had by that time become so obsolete as to be understood with difficulty,
and yet the exact recital of the hymns had come to be regarded as
indispensable for the performance of religious service. The Prâtiśâkhyas,
the oldest production of the grammatical school, show a surprising
acquaintance with the physiological facts of phonetic utterance, and far
surpass the most advanced labours of the Greeks in the same direction.
The Nighantavas, a little later, contain a list of rare Vedic words,
and perhaps started the controversy which broke out shortly afterwards
among the grammarians as to the origin of the nouns. Śâka_t_âyana and
his followers, the Nairuktas, or Etymologists, maintained that they were
all derived from verbs; while his opponents, Gârgya and others, called
the Vaiyâkaranas or Analyzers, sought to show that some at least had a
different origin. In the end, however, the party of Śâka_t_âyana proved
victorious, and the result was not only the formation of the Sanskrit
dictionary, but, what was far more important, the clear enunciation of
the doctrine of roots. In the hands of Yâska and Pânini the doctrine
became fruitful in consequences; the classical language of India was
thoroughly analyzed, and the essential part of each word marked off from
its formative suffixes. In short, a scientific grammar was created. The
_Nirukta_, or “Etymology,” of Yâska is a model of method and conciseness,
though it is thrown into the shade by the grammar of Pânini. This was the
crowning work of the Hindu grammarians, and, composed as it was in the
fourth century B.C., may well excite our astonishment and admiration.
In eight books, and about 4,000 short rules, it sums up the principles
of Sanskrit phonology, the declension of the noun and the conjugation
of the verb (which agree in the main with those worked out by the Greek
grammarians), the nature of the adverbs and other particles, the rules
of syntax, which are interspersed among the various divisions of the
accidence, the etymology of words, with an exhaustive list of “primary”
and “secondary” formative suffixes, and a minute analysis of composition
which has been the basis of modern attempts to deal with this intricate
subject. As an appendix to his Grammar, Pânini also compiled a list of
roots (_dhâtus_, or “elements”), amounting in all to about 1,700.
The brevity and compactness of the work was much aided by the algebraic
system of symbols by which the various terms of grammar were expressed.
Thus, in Pânini, a verbal termination is denoted by _l_, the endings of
the primary tenses by _lt_, those of the secondary tenses by _ln_, the
special tenses and moods being pointed out by an inserted vowel, as _lât_
for the present, _lot_ for the imperative, and so on. The mathematical
character of this device shows the precision with which the several rules
of grammar had been ascertained and laid down, as well as the instinctive
recognition that there was a science of grammar as well as a science of
mathematics. It only remained for a later generation of Western scholars
to demonstrate that such was really the case.
It may seem strange that this later generation was so long in coming.
Already, at the end of the sixteenth century, an Italian, Philippo
Sassetti, during a five years’ residence in India, had made himself
acquainted with Sanskrit, and drew attention to the likeness between the
Sanskrit numerals and other words and corresponding words in his native
language.[23] Another Italian, Roberto de Nobili, who went to India
in 1606 as a missionary, actually transformed himself into a Brahman,
in order to win over the Hindus; and after acquiring a knowledge not
only of Tamil and Telugu, but also of Sanskrit, “showed himself in
public, dressed in the proper garb of the Brahmans, wearing their cord
and their frontal mark, observing their diet, and submitting even to
the complicated rules of caste.”[24] One of his converts—so at least
Professor Max Müller thinks—composed the curious Ezur, or fourth Veda,
which professes to be a lost Veda that he came to preach, and “contains
a wild mixture of Hindu and Christian doctrine.” Fifty years after De
Nobili a German missionary, named Heinrich Roth, was able to dispute in
Sanskrit with the Brahmans, and in 1740 a Frenchman, Père Pons, sent home
a comprehensive and fairly accurate report upon Sanskrit literature. It
was not till 1790, however, that the first Sanskrit grammar was published
in Europe, at Rome, by two German friars, Hanxleden and Paulinus a Sancto
Bartholomeo, whose real name was Philipp Wesdin. Some years before (in
1767) the Frenchmen Cœurdoux and Barthélemy had written from Pondicherry
to the Academy to express their opinion that a relationship existed
between the vocabularies of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, and to prove
that this relationship could not be accounted for by the hypothesis of
borrowing. Their letter, however, though read in 1768, was not printed
until 1808, after the death of Anquetil-Duperron, and at the end of one
of his Mémoires. Meanwhile English and German scholars had entered the
field, and the opinion expressed by the French missionaries had become a
belief of the learned world.
In 1784 the Asiatic Society was founded at Calcutta, and its first
members did their utmost to extend a knowledge of the Sanskrit language
and literature. Halhed, in the preface to his “Grammar of Bengali,”
published in 1778, had noticed the “similitude of Sanskrit words with
those of Persian and Arabic, and even of Latin and Greek;” and Sir
William Jones,[25] addressing the Asiatic Society at Calcutta in 1786,
states that “no philologer could examine the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin,
without believing them to have sprung from some common source which,
perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason,” he goes on to
say, “though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic
and Celtic had the same origin with the Sanskrit. The old Persian may be
added to the same family.”