THE NATURE AND SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE.
“It is a law universally illustrated by organizations
of every kind, that, in proportion as there is to be
efficiency, there must be specialization, both of structure
and function—specialization which, of necessity, implies
accompanying limitation.”—HERBERT SPENCER.
The review given in the preceding chapter of the opinions held by others
on language and its science or philosophy will have prepared the way for
an independent inquiry into the nature and objects of linguistic science.
Before, however, we can discuss the limits and character of the science
we must have a clear idea of the subject-matter with which it deals. Most
of us, no doubt, have a rough-and-ready definition to give of language;
but science requires something more than rough-and-ready definitions,
and the discordant views as to the scope and meaning of the science of
language which have come before us in the foregoing pages are plain
evidence that an accurate definition of language is not so easy as would
at first sight appear.
Provisionally, however, we may define language as _consisting of certain
modulations of the voice, variously combined and arranged, which serve
as symbols for the thoughts or feelings we wish to express_. The sounds
that we utter must have a _meaning_ before they can become language,
otherwise they will be mere cries or gibberish, less worthy of the name
of language than even the howling of the dog upon the prairie or the
wild song of the forest-bird. Language is the outward expression and
embodiment of thought—the garment, so to speak, with which the mind
clothes itself when it would reveal itself to another or even, it may be,
to itself. The words of a foreign tongue form a language only for those
who understand what they signify: for those who do not they are but empty
sounds, the idle murmur of a “barbarous” jargon. “The language of birds”
was discovered to the Eastern sage alone: to all others the notes of the
nightingale and the thrush were as the plashing of the waterfall and the
drowsy humming of the bees. “Lessons in running brooks” may indeed be
read by the mind, but it is the mind itself that puts them there, and
only in so far as it creates a meaning for them does it create also the
language in which they speak.
It is evident that our thoughts could be represented by other symbols
than sounds. The first and most familiar instance that rises to our minds
is writing, though writing symbolizes thoughts only indirectly, its
immediate office being to symbolize sounds. There is a written language
because there is previously a spoken language, and those who learn
foreign tongues know well how detrimental the power of reading a language
is when we wish to speak it: the language of the eye has to be translated
into the language of the ear. Language can only be symbolized directly
to the eye by hieroglyphics; but if our communication with one another
depended upon hieroglyphic writing it would never be very extensive or
progressive. To say nothing of its requiring time, writing materials,
and skill in drawing, hieroglyphic writing can indicate objects alone
with that clearness and certainty which language demands. It is hardly
possible to represent in this way abstract ideas, verbs, or adjectives,
so that what is denoted shall be recognized by another without previous
instruction. Apart from these drawbacks, however, picture-writing has
this advantage over spoken language, that its symbols are not mere
arbitrary signs like sounds, but intelligible all the world over; and
even the degenerated picture-writing of China, by preserving everywhere
the same character for the same idea, has kept up a unity and spread a
culture throughout the empire which would otherwise have been impossible
among a people divided into many and diverse dialects.
Another means of symbolizing thought is “mathematical language,” which
represents the calculations of the mathematician by written symbols such
as 1, 2, 3, _x_, _y_, _z_. But such symbols are of late invention, and
could not well be applied to express the daily concerns of life. Quite
different is gesture-language, whereby our thoughts and emotions are
represented by movements of the hands and other parts of the body. Most
of our common needs could be expressed in this way, though gestures would
be quite inadequate to represent the wants of a civilized community. Only
such ideas as “I am hungry,” “let me drink,” “it is pleasant,” could be
denoted by them. But, like picture-writing, gestures possess the great
advantage of standing for the same ideas everywhere and among all men.
The expression of pain or surprise, the threatening shake of the hand,
the pointing of the finger, have the same message for the Negro as for
the European. The traveller in a strange and unknown region is thrown
back upon the language of gesture. Burton,[49] perhaps, exaggerates
when he says that the Arapahos of North America, “who possess a scanty
vocabulary, can hardly converse with one another in the dark,” and
another reason may be given for this preference for the light; but the
importance of gesture-language where other means of communication are
wanting is too evident to need examples. Thus Fisher[50] tells us that
the Comanches and neighbouring tribes have “a language of signs, by which
all Indians and traders can understand one another; and they always make
these signs when communicating among themselves.” To the same effect
James[51] writes of the Kiawa-Kashaia Indians: “These nations, although
constantly associating together and united under the influence of the
Bear-Tooth, are yet totally ignorant of each other’s language, insomuch
that it was no uncommon occurrence to see two individuals of different
nations sitting upon the ground, and conversing freely by means of the
language of signs. In the art of thus conveying their ideas they were
thorough adepts; and their manual display was only interrupted at remote
intervals by a smile, or by the auxiliary of an articulated word of the
language of the Crow Indians, which to a very limited extent passes
current among them.” Gesture-language is instinctive—the heritage,
it may be, of the days before man acquired articulate language, or
differed thus far from the brute beast: certain ideas call forth certain
corresponding gestures, and we are not obliged to learn what gestures
stand for particular ideas. Hence it is that even now spoken language is
so largely accompanied by gesture. An excited speaker is likely to make
much use of his hands; and we can often tell what a person is saying to
us, though we do not hear him distinctly, by watching the play of his
features. We know from the appearance of his face whether he is asking
a question, whether he is angry, or whether he is dispirited. With the
cultivation of articulate speech and confidence in the use of it, men
become more phlegmatic in speaking, less inclined to have recourse to
subsidiary helps. It is the awkward country girl whose “manners” have
“not that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.” The preacher
who addresses an audience of barristers does well to dispense with the
gesticulation which is necessary to the mob-orator. According to M.
Antoine d’Abbadie, an Abyssinian Galla marks the punctuation of his
speech by the help of a leathern whip, a slight stroke denoting a comma,
a harder one a semi-colon, a still harder one a full stop, while a note
of admiration is represented by a furious cut through the air.[52] Even
in this country, we have not to go far to find gesture-language employed
in default of spoken language. Where the new system of observing the
movements of the lips has not been introduced, the deaf and dumb can
communicate with the outer world only by the help of gestures, though
the gesture-language of the deaf and dumb, like phonetic writing,
implies a previous spoken language. It is, therefore, to the instinctive
gesture-language of the North American Indians what our system of writing
is to hieroglyphics.
It will be noticed that under the general term of “gesture-language” we
have included not only gesticulation, but also that play of feature and
modulation of the voice which outlast gesticulation among a civilized
people. Gesticulation can hardly form a universal language in the same
way that play of feature and modulation of the voice can. Only in part
have such gestures the same meaning for all men, and so serve to bridge
over the gulf that divides articulate from inarticulate speech. Like
play of feature and modulation of the voice, they are common to men
and animals; but, unlike the latter, they are capable of receiving an
arbitrary and conventional meaning. Helvétius, following in the track of
Anaxagoras, asserted that we have become men through the possession of
hands; had our arms terminated in a horse’s hoof, for instance, we should
have been like the beasts that perish, wanderers and defenceless.[53]
Indeed, it is quite conceivable that our forefathers would have remained
contented with a gesture-language, had not the hands been wanted for
other purposes. Food could not be prepared without them, whereas it was
not until the desire of food was satisfied that the mouth was put to
another use than that of asking for it.
Still the arbitrary element in gesture-language is very small compared
with what it is in spoken language. Here beyond a few interjections, or
possibly a few onomatopœic sounds, the whole body of symbols that stand
for thought is purely conventional. The same combination of sounds may
be used to denote very different ideas. There is no necessary connection
between an idea and a word that represents it. It is as arbitrary as our
making the sign 1 symbolize the idea of unity or the sign = the idea of
equivalence. However well we may be acquainted with our own language,
a foreign one will be wholly unintelligible to us until we have learnt
it. Even natural sounds strike the ear of different individuals and
nations in a totally different way. Exactly the same sound was intended
to be reproduced in the “_bilbit_ amphora” of Nævius,[54] the “_glut
glut_ murmurat unda sonans” of the Latin Anthology[55] and the _puls_
of Varro; nay, as Dr. Farrar points out, even in the κόγξ and the βλώψ
of the Greeks. The Persian _bulbul_ has but little resemblance to the
_jugjug_ of Gascoigne, or the _whitwhit_ of other writers; and yet all
are attempts at imitating the note of the nightingale. The first word
uttered by the children on whom Psammitikhus is said to have tried his
famous experiment seemed to their keepers to be βέκ[ος], whereas we
read in the great Papyrus Ebers, the standard work on Egyptian medicine
compiled in the sixteenth century B.C., that if “a child on the day of
birth ... says _ni_, it will live; if it says _ba_, it will die.” And
only the last of these infantile cries bears any likeness to what we
are told are the primitive and original utterances of childhood, _ma_,
_pa_, and _ta_—utterances, by the way, which are only in part possible
to the Mohawks and Hurons, who possess no labials.[56] So arbitrary
and conventional must be the meanings we associate with the sounds of
articulate speech, and so impossible is it to discover in them any signs
of universal currency. There is no reason in the nature of things why the
word _book_ should represent what we mean when we look at the present
volume; it might just as well be denoted by _koob_, or _biblion_, or
_liber_; and if we chose we might always so denote it.
But although we might choose to do so, unless we could get other
people to do the same, we should find ourselves unintelligible to
our neighbours, and talking gibberish instead of a language. For the
essential thing about a language is that it should be _an instrument for
the communication of our thoughts to others_. There is no good in having
symbols for our thoughts unless we wish our thoughts to become known to
those about us. He who has no thoughts to communicate, no wants to be
supplied, has no need of a language. But such a being, to use the words
of Aristotle, is ἢ θηρίον ἢ θεός, “either a beast or a god;” or as we
might, perhaps, render it in modern phraseology, either a hermit or an
angel. The voiceless Yogi of India, or the Bernardine nun of southern
France, is but as a dumb animal, or the hapless deaf-mute who has never
been trained. The records of speech themselves testify to our instinctive
recognition of the fact. The name _Slave_, for instance, by which so
large a body of our Aryan kinsfolk have called themselves, means “the
speaker,” in opposition to the “dumb” and unintelligible German; just
as in Isaiah (xxxiii. 19), the Assyrians are a people “of a stammering
tongue, that one cannot understand.” _Man_, indeed, comes from the
root _man_, “to think;” but it is thinking for others, for the sake of
embodying the thought in spoken utterance. The same root has produced
μάντις, the “seer;” Μέντωρ and _Minerva_, whose counsels are for others,
not for themselves; μηνύω, to “point out,” and _moneo_, to “advise;”
μνή-μη, “recollection,” and _memini_, to “remember,” and _mentio_, “the
bringing to mind” by mentioning in speech. Even in the Semitic idioms,
_zâcâr_, “a man,” seems connected with _zâcâr_, “to remember,” just as
the Latin _mas_ is with μνήμη and _memini_. Language, in short, is the
prerogative of man, distinguishing him from the brute beast, because it
is the basis and bond of society. Man is “a social animal” in virtue
of language; society could not exist without language any more than
language could without society. The two are correlative terms, though
it is for the sake of society that language has been formed. It is a
social product, springing up with the first community, developing with
the increasing needs of culture and civilization, and disappearing when
the individual Robinson Crusoe is cast back on the island of primitive
isolation.
But though it is a social product, it may also with strict truth
be spoken of as growing up. A society never met together to _make_ a
language. To imagine this would be to revive the theories of the last
century, which referred all society and government to a contract entered
into by our remote forefathers. We do not call the present volume a
_book_ because we have made a formal agreement with our neighbours to
do so, but because if we called it _biblion_ or _liber_ we should not
be understood by the majority of them. The language which we speak is
the heritage which has come down to us from the past, like the laws by
which we are governed, or the habits and customs to which we conform. We
represent our idea of a printed work by the word book, because we have
been taught to do so by others, and those who taught us had been taught
by others, and those again by others. But this process of teaching and
learning implies a very slow and gradual change in the language that is
being handed down. New words come into use as new objects and ideas have
to be named, old words are forgotten, the pronunciation gets altered, and
other changes hereafter to be described take place. And so, without any
deliberate intention on the part of any individual or individuals, the
whole character of a language comes in course of time to be transformed.
Now and then, it is true, we can trace the invention of a wholly new word
to an individual, like _gas_ to the Dutch chemist van Helmont, or _od_
force to Baron von Reichenbach; and still oftener of a new derivative
like _liberalize_, introduced by the Marquis of Lansdowne, _fatherland_
by Isaac Disraeli, _incuriosité_ by Montaigne, _urbanité_ by Balzac,
or _bienfaisance_ by the Abbé de Saint Pierre. But such words must be
accepted by society, be ratified by the tacit agreement of the whole
community, before they can become a part of living speech. Though _gas_
has made its way into common use, _blas_, which van Helmont proposed at
the same time to describe that property of the heavenly bodies whereby
they regulate the changes of time, failed to commend itself to the
general sense of the community, and so passed out of sight;[57] and such
was also the fate of Balzac’s _sériosité_, of Malherbe’s _dévouloir_, and
of Burke’s _literator_. In spite of his 262 works, and the grammars and
vocabularies written to explain the jargon employed in them, Caramuel, a
famous Spanish bishop of the seventeenth century, was unable to bequeath
to posterity a single one of his numerous coinages. The “Cabalistic
Grammar,” published at Brussels in 1642, and the “Audacious Grammar,”
printed at Frankfurt twelve years later, remained unread and unknown, a
monument of “cabalistic” dreams and “audacious” folly.[58] A paternal
government may compel the acceptance of a foreign speech, in place of
the familiar mother-tongue, like the rulers of Japan, who were said, a
short time ago, to be meditating the substitution of English for the
native language under pain of death. But even a government of this kind
cannot invent a new grammar and a new dictionary; it can only borrow
from others: and if we are to judge from the experiences of certain
Oxford colleges where French was similarly enforced in the days of the
Plantagenets, and Latin in those of the Commonwealth, the attempt,
though backed by all the powers of State and Church, is likely to end in
failure. Language must be the unconscious creation of the whole society,
and the changes it undergoes must be equally that society’s unconscious
work.
Now the sum of knowledge possessed by a society increases the longer
the society exists and the more civilized it becomes. This increase
of knowledge is reflected in the language; and hence languages grow
fuller and richer—more developed, as it is termed—the longer they last.
The further back we can trace a language, the poorer it is seen to be.
Not only are words, or rather derivatives and compounds, wanting, but
the words that exist embody but a few out of the many meanings which
afterwards cluster around them. The dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon, of
the Ormulum, or even of Chaucer, is scant and meagre compared with that
at the disposal of a modern English writer. The dialects of savages,
which most resemble what all languages originally were, have few
words, because they have few ideas to express, and such ideas as are
expressed are wonderfully simple. Thus, the Tasmanians, when they wanted
to denote what we mean by “tall” and “round,” had to say “long legs”
and “like a ball” or the “moon” or some other round object, eking out
their scanty vocabulary by the help of gesture.[59] So, too, the New
Caledonians cannot be brought to understand such ideas as those conveyed
by _yesterday_ and _to-morrow_, and the jungle Veddahs of Ceylon are
unable to remember even the names they give to their wives, unless the
latter be present.[60] After this, it is not surprising that, like the
Dammaras of South Africa, they are unable to count, and, consequently,
have no numerals in their language. According to Mr. Galton,[61] indeed,
the Dammaras are able to count as far as three, though he adds that
they discover the loss of an ox, “not by the number of the herd being
diminished, but by the absence of a face that they know.” If two sticks
of tobacco are “the rate of exchange for one sheep, it would sorely
puzzle a Dammara to take two sheep and give him four sticks.” “Once,”
he goes on to say, “while I watched a Dammara floundering hopelessly in
a calculation on one side of me, I observed Dinah, my spaniel, equally
embarrassed on the other. She was overlooking half-a-dozen of her
new-born puppies, which had been removed two or three times from her;
and her anxiety was excessive, as she tried to find out if they were all
present, or if any were still missing. She kept puzzling and running her
eyes over them, backwards and forwards, but could not satisfy herself.
She evidently had a vague notion of counting, but the figure was too
large for her brain. Taking the two as they stood, dog and Dammara, the
comparison reflected no great honour on the man.”
The number of abstracts possessed by a language is a good gauge of its
development. It is difficult for us to realize the mental struggles and
the ages of previous preparation required for the discovery of those
ideas which now seem to us so familiar. The day on which, according to
the ancient legend, Pythagoras struck out the idea of the _world_, and
named it κόσμος, summed up all the labours of Eastern philosophy and
Greek thought before which the law and order of the universe at last lay
revealed. It is to Anaxagoras, to Herakleitus, to Xenophanes that we owe
those ideas of mind, of motion, of existence which form the groundwork
of modern science. Nay, our own generation has witnessed the creation of
more than one great abstract idea, henceforth to be the common property
of mankind, through the word by which it is expressed. To have won for
the race a single idea like that of _natural selection_ is a higher glory
than the conquests of a Cæsar. Man’s first work, according to the old
Hebrew writer, was to give names to “every living creature;” and the
Assyrian story of the Creation, with the profound conviction that chaos
is there where language is not, begins its record with the words:
“At that time the heaven on high was unnamed;
In the earth below no name had been recorded:
And chaos unopened was their sire.”
The words by which we express such abstract and spiritual ideas as those
of _spirit_, of _virtue_, or of _intellect_ are all, when examined, found
to have a purely sensuous origin. The _spirit_ was but “the breath,”
_virtue_ “the quality of a man,” _intellect_ “a choosing between.” We can
only rise from the known to the unknown, from that which we perceive to
that which is invisible. As the developing mind starts from the objects
of sense, and passes over the bridge of analogy to objects of thought
and reason, so, too, language, at the outset, had words only for the
visible and the sensuous; and not until it called in the aid of metaphor
could it express the higher imaginations of the soul. If we look closely
into language, we may see how strewn it is with worn-out and forgotten
metaphors. “They are,” as Carlyle has said, “its muscles and tissues and
living integuments,” the aids whereby language can communicate something
more than the things which we see and feel. Even among ourselves, there
are few who can afford to dispense with the assistance of concrete
illustration and metaphor when dealing with abstract subjects. They
throw a halo of light around the impalpable objects of philosophic
reasoning, and enable us to picture them before our minds. It is this
picture-language, as we may call it, which gives so much of its charm
to poetry, which made verse the first embodiment of literature, and
lends to savage speech its poetical garb. The creations of mythology
are in the main its work; and even modern science does not despise a
“nature” which clothes itself with the attributes of humanity and of
sex. It was the power possessed by language of rising from the concrete
to the abstract that made the earliest hieroglyphic systems of writing
possible, and which to this day enables the Chinaman to adapt his mode of
writing to the introduction of new ideas. Like the Chinese lexicon, the
multitudinous wealth of language can be traced back to a few and simple
elements.
If we watch the first attempts of children to speak, we find that their
wants and wishes are conveyed in a very small number of sounds, and
that often a single word is made to express what we should represent by
several. Now children, in spite of their inherited instinct of speech,
are the best example we can have of the way in which the first men
acquired their language, remembering only that the child nowadays has a
complete language already framed for him, whereas the first men had to
frame theirs for themselves. What the individual child now learns in a
few years has been the laborious production of many a century and many
a generation. But the child has still to learn it like his forefathers
before him, and in learning it he may modify its sounds, its forms, or
the meaning of its words, and so take part in bringing about what we call
the growth of speech.
But it is not only by watching children that we can gain some idea of
the way in which languages originally grew up. When we try to acquire
a foreign tongue, not from books, but from conversation, we first pick
up a few sentences and words, and then, by the help of these, endeavour
to make our thoughts and wishes intelligible to others. But since the
sentences and words we know are but few, we have to look about us for
the simplest mode of expressing ourselves, and are obliged to make our
expressions stand for many different ideas. Even then, however, our
vocabulary is imperfect, and we often find ourselves wholly at a loss
for any word by which to convey our meaning. Gestures are the only
resource left to us, and it is by their help that we supplement our
deficient knowledge of the spoken language. Indeed, the first words
and sentences learnt at all may have been acquired by the same means.
Travellers have drawn up vocabularies and phrase-books of the idioms of
unknown tribes by pointing to objects or making use of gesticulations,
and then observing what articulate sounds were associated with these
movements by the persons addressed. It is a good example of the way in
which gestures precede spoken language, and lead on to the latter. The
same gestures are for the most part understood in the same sense among
all the manifold races of men; a shake of the head signifies “no,” a
pointing of the finger symbolizes “locality.” Gestures bridge over the
gulf which separates inarticulate from articulate speech, and they are
still a means of communication for the deaf-mute. But we must distinguish
between gestures and that instinctive play of feature which Mr. Darwin
has treated of in his work on the “Expression of the Emotions.” Gestures,
in the proper sense of the term, are only partly the same for all races
of men; no doubt the instinctive element preponderates in them, but we
have to allow also for a certain element of conventionality. There is
not the same physiological reason why a shake of the head should denote
a negative as there is why a particular expression of the face should
indicate pleasure, or pain, or surprise, or why a feeling of shame should
bring a blush to the cheek. When we are told that the Veddahs of Ceylon
are never seen to laugh, we at once infer that they have no sense of
humour and no power of merriment. Gestures are rather a sign for the
intellect than for the emotion, and since the same feeling must express
itself similarly in the case of every one while the same thought need
not, it is evident that that which expresses thought admits the element
of conventionality more than that which expresses feeling. Pain must
always be pain, and affect the nerves and muscles in the same way; what
is thought of, on the contrary, may be conceived very differently, and
represented in an equally varying manner. Hence it is that we share the
play of feature with the brutes, whereas gestures—embodying as they do a
rational rather than an emotional element—are for the most part peculiar
to man. Man is man in virtue of language, and it was gestures that first
made language possible.
But gestures alone are often but a poor resource for either the
child or the traveller. They fail to express the meaning intended. Let
us suppose a child, for example, to have been scratched by a cat, or
frightened by a herd of cows. It can represent the pain it has suffered,
or the terror it has experienced by gestures, but if it be unacquainted
with the names of cat and cow, it can only point out those animals by
imitating the sounds they utter; and _miow_ and _moo-moo_ become the
nursery names for “cat” and “cow.” And what still goes on in the nursery
was a general procedure in the childhood of mankind. The domestic cat was
introduced into Egypt from Nubia in the time of the eleventh or twelfth
dynasty, and the Egyptians forthwith called it the _miau_, a name which
it still bears in China. Indeed, the French and German equivalents of
“puss,” _mimi_ and _mitz_, have the same origin as the _miow_ of the
nursery or of Egypt, though German could not refrain from borrowing the
unmelodious ending of _katz_. Dr. Comrie states[62] that the natives of
the north-east coast of Papua call the dog a “bow-wow,” and when first
shown an iron axe named it _din-din_, from the sound which it seemed to
make.[63] This imitation of natural sounds goes by the long and barbarous
name of _Onomatopœia_, and though an attempt has been made to substitute
“Imson” (_imitatio son-i_) for “onomatopœic word,” it has failed.[64] Now
if we are to infer anything from the habits of the nursery, and of those
savage tribes which best represent the infancy of mankind, onomatopœia
must have played a large part in the formation of language. Its advocates
have done much harm to what Professor Max Müller has happily termed “The
Bow-wow Theory,” by endeavouring to trace back words as we now find them
to an onomatopœic origin; but this does not prove that the theory when
scientifically applied is false. It is true that there are few words
like _miow_ which can be immediately referred to an onomatopœic source;
it is true also that articulate language begins with roots, from which
its scientific student must derive its words; but it is equally true
that a large proportion of these roots—or rather of what these roots
presuppose—was formed by the help of onomatopœia. It is not only objects
like a dog or an iron axe that the Papuans met by Dr. Comrie named from
the sounds they made upon his ear; an action like that of “eating” was
equally called _nam-nam_ from the noise produced by the process. We who
speak a highly developed language, the worn-out _débris_ of which are
more than sufficient for the creation of new words and forms, can hardly
realize the influence of onomatopœia upon rude and uncivilized jargons.
Of course it is not necessary that the imitation of natural sounds should
be an exact one; indeed, that it never can be: all that is wanted is
that the imitation should be recognizable by those addressed. The same
natural sound, consequently, may strike the ear of different persons very
differently, and so be represented in articulate speech in a strangely
varying manner. Thus, as has been noted before, _bilbit_, _glut-glut_,
and _puls_, are all attempts to represent the same sound. Just as colours
strike differently upon the eyes of different men, so also do sounds upon
their ears, and the poverty of primitive languages in terms to denote
the colours is parallel to the imperfection with which they represented
natural sounds.[65]
Besides gestures and onomatopœia, there is a third way in which we can
make ourselves intelligible without knowing the articulate language of
those to whom we are speaking. This is by making use of interjectional
cries. Like the play of feature, interjectional cries are the same for
all men; we all make much the same kind of exclamation when hurt, or
angry, or surprised. They express our emotions, not our ideas; and since
the main object of language is to express ideas, interjectional cries
can have had but a small share in its formation. Here and there we can
point to a few roots, like _agh_ (_ach_) in Aryan, which seem to have
this derivation; but before the root _agh_ could become a root in the
linguistic sense of the word, and give rise to a number of derivatives,
it was needful for it to cease to be an interjection; that is to say,
it had to express an idea, and not an emotion. Many of our modern
interjections, like _alas_, _lo_, are words that once possessed a full
conceptual meaning, but have lost their original signification, and
been degraded to the level of mere emotional cries. So hard is it for
language to admit anything which was not from the first significant in
thought. Interjections remind us of the animal side of our nature, and
they have forced their way into language only because that animal side
must be represented to the mind. But in thus forcing their way they have
ceased to be the simple utterances of pleasure and pain, and become
expressive of conceivable states of feeling. Only in so far as the first
men approached the brutes more nearly than we do, were interjectional
cries likely to help them in building up the structure of speech. We
may, however, include under the head of interjections those instinctive
cries uttered by men when engaged in a common work, to which Professor
Noiré would trace all roots whatsoever.[66] The sense of life and power
that makes the child shout or the bird sing, and is the ultimate motive
of human speech, causes us to beat time by the help of rhythmical
utterances. And though the utterance be but a monotonous sing-song, it
becomes a symbol and sign of the action it accompanies to all those who
have taken part in it, and in course of time may pass into a word. How
many of the roots of languages were formed in this way it is impossible
to say, but when we consider that there is no modern word which we can
derive from such cries as the sailor makes when he hauls a rope, or the
groom when he cleans a horse, it does not seem likely that they can have
been very numerous. Still they were probably more numerous than the roots
formed from other interjectional cries.
The origin of language, then, is to be sought in _gestures_,
_onomatopœia_, and to a limited extent _interjectional cries_. Like
the rope-bridges of the Himalayas or the Andes, they formed the first
rude means of communication between man and man. Onomatopœic words and
interjections came to be metaphorically applied to denote other ideas
than those for which they properly stood, while the relations of grammar
were pointed out by the help of gesticulation. Thus, by imitating the
gurgling of water and pointing to the mouth, a man could signify what we
express by the sentence, “I wish to drink,” or, “I am thirsty;” and by
uttering a cry of pain and pointing to a knife, he could show that he had
been cut by it. In course of time a collection of words would be formed,
each of which represented what we now call a sentence. For a sentence,
it must be remembered, is the name given by the grammarian to what the
logician would call a proposition or a judgment, and though a judgment
may be analyzed into subject and object and connecting copula (or mental
act of comparison), we cannot, if we wish to be intelligible, separate
its elements one from the other. The whole sentence, the whole Λόγος, as
the Greeks would have termed it, is the only possible unit of thought;
subject and object are as much correlated as the positive and negative
poles of the magnet.
Language, then, we may lay down, begins with sentences, not with
single words. The latter exist only for the lexicographer, and even the
lexicographer has to turn them into sentences by affixing a definition
if he would render them intelligible. We are accustomed to see sentences
divided into their individual words in writing, and so we come to fancy
that this is right and natural. But the very accent which we lay upon
our words ought to show us how far this is from the truth. The accent
of a word varies according to its place in a sentence; for purposes of
accentuation, we regard not the individual words, but the whole sentence
which they compose. And this outward fact of accentuation is but an
indication of the inward fact of signification. All language must be
significant; but until the whole sentence is uttered, until the whole
thought which lies behind it is expressed, this cannot be the case. The
expression of the thought may be faulty and imperfect, but unless the
thought be sufficiently expressed to be intelligible to another, it has
not yet embodied itself in the form of language. The Greek Λόγος was not
the individual word, which, apart from its relation to other parts of the
sentence, has no meaning in itself, but the complete act of reasoning,
which on the inward side is called a judgment, and on the outward side
a sentence or proposition. The single word is to the sentence what
syllables and letters are to the single word. We may break up a word
into the several sounds of which it is composed, but this is the work of
the phonologist, not of the speaker. So, too, we may break up a sentence
like “Don’t do that” into the four words _Do-not-do-that_, but this,
again, is the conscious procedure of the grammarian. Sentences may be of
any length; they may consist of a single syllable, like _go!_ or _yes_,
or they may have to be expressed by a large number of separate “words”;
what is essential is that they should be significant to another, should
adequately convey to his mind the whole thought that is intended to be
expressed. Unless the sounds we utter are combined into a sentence, they
have no more meaning than the cries of the jackal or the yelping of the
cur; and until they have a meaning, and so represent our thought, they do
not constitute language. The sentence, in short, is the only unit which
language can know, and the ultimate starting-point of all our linguistic
inquiries.
It is not necessary that the sentence should be divided into its
component words in writing any more than it actually is in speech. The
French _je le vois_ is as much a single, undivided group of sounds
as the Basque _dakust_ or the Latin _amatur_. In the polysynthetic
languages of America, in which the separate words of a sentence are cut
down to their bare stems and fused into a single whole, the sentence
can as little be split up into its elements as an ordinary compound in
Greek or German. The ancient Hindu grammarians, with that wonderful
insight into language which has made their labours the basis of modern
scientific philology, treated the several words of a sentence just as
we treat syllables and letters. A number of single words are run into
one, the sounds at the end of each word being modified to suit those
that follow, in accordance with the so-called rules of Sandhi, and the
whole group of words is then written without division. Thus the word
_trinairguṇatwamâpannairbadhyante_ must be analyzed into _trinais_,
“with grass blades” (an instrumental pl.), _guṇatwam_, “a rope’s state”
(acc. sing), _â-pannais_, “having attained” (part. pass. of the compound
verb _â-pad_, agreeing with _trinais_), and _badhyante_, “they are bound”
(3rd pl. pres. pass. of the verb _bandh_). In fact, a little attention
will convince every one that even in our own language not only does the
accent of a word depend upon its place in the sentence, but that the
sound with which it terminates equally depends upon the sound which
follows. We pronounce “of” in one way when it stands by itself in the
dictionary, in another way when it precedes “the” or “that.”
If the sentence is the unit of significant speech, it is evident that
all individual words must once have been sentences; that is to say,
when first used they must each have implied or represented a sentence.
And this is borne out by an examination of the records of speech.
We shall see hereafter that words may be divided into conceptual or
presentative, and pronominal or representative, and that wherever we
can trace back the latter to their source, we find them to have been
originally presentative. Thus words like “and” or “because” are now
purely symbolic and representative; there was a time, however, when they
denoted the very definite ideas of “a going further,”[67] and “by the
cause.”[68] Now, if we look carefully into the nature and essence of
these presentative words, it becomes clear that they were at the outset
so many shorthand notes or summaries of various sentences. Take, for
example, the word _memorandum_. Before it can form a part of language,
_memorandum_ must be significant. This can come about only in two ways.
Either we must accompany the utterance of the word _memorandum_ with
gestures which imply “This is a memorandum,” or “Write a memorandum,” or
something similar, or else we must express the meaning of these gestures
by equivalent words. That is to say, the isolated word _memorandum_ must
be incorporated into a sentence by being brought into relation with other
words, before it can become part and parcel of living speech. Taken by
itself, it belongs to the dictionary-maker only, and even he has to add
a definition, that is to say, to make it the subject of a sentence, if
his dictionary is to be something more than a mere catalogue of unmeaning
sounds. Before a definition is supplied by the lexicographer or the
reader, a word is not yet a word; it has no meaning.
The student of language, then, cannot deal with words apart from
sentences. The significant word—that combination of sounds which
represents a thought—is really a crystallized sentence, a kind of
shorthand note in which a proposition has been summed up. Each advance
in philosophy and science is marked by the acquisition of a new idea
or fact, the result of a long train of previous observations and
reasonings: and the more complex the idea or the fact, the more numerous
will be the reasonings, the sentences or judgments, which underlie
it. What a multitude of judgments, which when expressed in language
we call sentences, are implied by the two simple words _humanity_
and _gravitation_! It is a truism in psychology that the terms of a
proposition, when closely interrogated, turn out to be nothing but
abbreviated judgments. The ordinary theory of modern comparative
philologists traces all languages back to a certain number of abstract
roots, each of which was a sort of sentence in embryo, and though this
theory is scarcely tenable in the form in which it is usually presented,
it is yet certain that there was a time in the history of speech when the
articulate or semi-articulate sounds uttered by primitive man were made
the significant representatives of thought by the gestures with which
they were accompanied. And this complex of sound and gesture—a complex
in which, it must be remembered, the sound had no meaning apart from the
gesture—was the earliest sentence. The isolating languages of Further
India still express a new concept by the juxtaposition of two words which
denote that it is the species of a higher genus. Thus, in Taic or Siamese
_kin_ is to “eat,” but when _nam_, “water,” is added, _kin-nam_ means “to
drink;” _mi_ is “rich,” _mi din_, _mi nám_, “earthy,” and “watery,” that
is to say, “rich (in) earth” and “water.”[69]
These examples from the far East show us the way in which our words
first came into existence. They have grown out of sentences by a process
of comparison and determination. Two or more sentence-words, referring to
the same object or idea viewed under different relations to the speaker,
might be set over against one another, and the phonetic part in which
they agreed taken to denote the object or idea considered by itself.
Thus in Semitic _kâtal_ is “he killed,” _kotêl_, “killing,” _k’tol_, “to
kill” and “kill,” _kâtûl_, “killed,” and _katl_, _kitl_, or _kutl_, “a
killing,” where the difference of signification is marked by a difference
of vowel, and co-existing forms of this kind, when compared with each
other, would determine that the three consonants _k-t-l_ had the general
sense of “killing.” But an inflectional language does not permit us to
watch the word-making process so clearly as do those savage jargons in
which a couple of sounds like the Grebo _ni ne_ signify “I do it” or
“you do it,” according to the context and the gestures of the speaker.
Here by degrees, with the growth of consciousness and the analysis of
thought, the external gesture is replaced by some portion of the uttered
sounds which agrees in a number of different instances, and in this way
the words by which the relations of grammar are expressed come into
being. A similar process has been at work in producing those analogical
terminations whereby our Indo-European languages adapt a word to express
a new grammatical relation. Thus, in English, the Greek termination _ize_
(or -_ise_) has been abstracted from the words to which it properly
belonged by comparing them together, and has been instinctively, as it
were, invested with a particular meaning, so that we can now turn any
word we like, whether of Greek origin or not, into a transitive verb by
attaching to it this suffix. In _humanize_, for instance, it is added to
an adjective of Latin origin, in _jeopardize_ to a Romanic compound. When
once a sentence-word had been broken up into single words by comparing
it with other sentence-words relating to the same subject, it was easy
to extend the operation to other sentence-words, which were accordingly
broken up and analyzed without being compared with related sentences. The
phonetic expression of the verbal copula by which the subject and object
were connected together, was the last result of this analytic process;
it was long left to be supplied by the mind, the simple juxtaposition
of subject and object being considered sufficient to suggest the mental
act by which they were compared or contrasted, and to this day many
languages, those of Polynesia, for example, still remain without a verb.
Thus, in Dayak _kutoh ka-halap-e arut-m_, “thy boat is very beautiful,”
is literally “very its-beauty thy-boat,” _andi-m handak imukul-ku_,
“thy brother will be struck by me,” means properly, “thy-brother my
striking-being,” while to express “he has a white jacket on,” the Dayak
must say, _ia ba-klambi ba-puti_, “he with-jacket with-white.”[70]
As we shall see hereafter, all the facts at our disposal tend
to show that the roots of speech, or at all events the earliest
sentence-words out of which the later languages of mankind have sprung,
were polysyllabic, and other facts go equally towards proving that the
terminations of these primitive roots or sentence-words displayed a
wearisome monotony of agreement. Survivals, as Mr. Tylor has happily
termed them, are among the most valuable means we have of arguing back to
an earlier state of things, and we can only treat as a survival the habit
of a child whom I know, who in her first essays at speech affixed a final
_ö_ to almost all her words, saying for instance, _come-ö_ and _dog-ö_
for “come” and “dog.” The older a speech is, the more it has suffered
from the wasting and wearing effects of time, and a language like the
Chinese, which stands out as some weather-beaten granite peak among the
languages of a later day, has so concealed all traces of the originally
pluriliteral character of its vocabulary, that it is only within the last
few years that Sinologues, like Dr. Edkins and M. de Rosny, have detected
it. So, we may infer, will it also be found with all the other languages
of the world; the first utterances of mankind were polysyllabic, though
not perhaps of such monstrous length as the sentence-words of Eskimaux
or Algonquin. In the friction and comparison of these utterances similar
terminations came in some instances to be set apart to denote the
relations of grammar; in other instances the grammatical relations which
lay implicit in the sentence-word were made explicit by its being set
over against another sentence-word similarly employed elsewhere; and so
it came in course of time to be what the Chinese would call an “empty
word” with no presentative meaning of its own. Thus, on the one side, as
M. Bergaigne has shown, the old adjectival suffix _bha_ (_bhi_) in our
own family of speech has become the sign of the dative and genitive cases
(Latin _ti-bi_, dat., Old Slavonic _te-be_, gen.) just as the adjectival
termination _sya_ or _tya_ (as in δημόσιος, “belonging to the people”)
has become the sign of the genitive (ἱππο[σ]ιο); while, on the other
side, the Chinese _tsĭ̥ h‘ai_, “to be hurt,” is literally “eat hurt,”
and _tshyeu tha̤n_, “autumn,” “harvest-heaven.” The Chinese word can
still be used indifferently as a noun, a verb, an adverb or the sign
of a case much like such English words as _silver_ and _picture_, and
its place in the sentence alone determines in what sense it shall be
construed. This is an excellent illustration of the early days of speech,
when the sentence-words contained within themselves all the several
parts of speech at once—all that was needed for a complete sentence;
and it was only by bringing them into contact and contrast with other
sentence-words, that they came to be restricted in their meaning and
use, and to be reduced into mere “words.” Language never forgot the
mode in which it had framed its first vocabulary, and the Greek and
Roman, as much as the Red Indian of America, in framing their compounds
instinctively stripped off the so-called inflections, and reduced the
word they placed first to its simple stem. That part alone of the word
which remained unchanged and unchangeable, could be made use of when
the word was to be treated as simply a word and nothing more. The North
American languages reflect more faithfully than the languages of the
Old World the primitive condition of speech, and the North American
languages can possess from six to eight thousand different verbal forms
or sentences without having abstracted from them a single _word_ which
will express the sense of the verb out of all relation to anything
else.[71] Thus, the Cheroki has thirteen verbs to denote particular kinds
of “washing,” such as “washing the head,” or “the hands,” or “myself,”
and each of these verbs has a multitude of forms, but no isolated word
to denote “washing” in general has as yet been extracted from them.[72]
The difficulty has often been noticed of getting a savage or barbarian
to give the name of an object without incorporating it into a sentence
or bringing it into relation with something else. Thus, a Kurd who
supplied Dr. Sandwith with a vocabulary of the Zaza dialect, was so
little able to conceive of words like “head,” “father,” “hair,” except
as related to himself or some one else, that he had to combine them
with a personal pronoun, saying _sèrè-min_, “my head,” _piè-min_, “my
father,” _porè-min_, “my hair.” The Hoopah and Navaho vocabularies,
published by Schoolcraft,[73] similarly prefix the possessive pronoun
_h’_, _hut_ to all their words, as _hotsintah_, _hut-tah_, “forehead,”
_huanah_, _hunnah_, “eye,” _hoithlani_, _hutcon_, “arm;” and Dr. Latham
points out the same fact in Wallace’s vocabularies from the river Uapes,
where _eri-bida_, _eri-numa_ in Uainambeu, _tcho-kereu_, _tcho-ia_ in
Juri, and _no-dusia_, _no-nunia_ in Barrè, literally “my head,” “my
mouth,” are given as the equivalents of simple “head” and “mouth.” He
also states that he has noticed the same peculiarity among the English
Gipsies.[74] The making of words as distinct from sentences was a long
and laborious process, and there are many languages like those of North
America in which the process has hardly yet begun. A dictionary is the
result of reflection, and ages must elapse before a language can enter
upon its reflective stage. Our children still learn the languages they
speak by first acquiring the knowledge of certain phrases and sentences,
and then gradually analyzing them into words, and the adult who wishes to
gain a successful acquaintance with another tongue must pursue the same
plan. What Steinthal says of the Chinese, that its “smallest real whole
is a sentence, or at least a sentence-relation,”[75] is true of other
languages as well, and the words of which a sentence is composed have no
actual existence apart from that sentence, except for the phonologist and
the lexicographer. Until the whole sentence is completed the individual
words of which it consists have no more signification than the syllables
_ful_ and _ness_ or _cy_ and _ly_ which occur so plentifully in English.
The first condition of language is that it should be significant, and
words are only significant when they stand in relation to one another.
The _logos_, the true word, said Aristotle, was the cause of knowledge;
the individual words of which it was composed were but symbols and tokens
of the impressions of sense.
Now, if language be the embodiment of thought, and if thought can only
express itself under the form of the complete sentence, it is plain that
we must look to the sentence for a true classification of languages. The
sentence expresses the way in which we think, and the different forms
assumed by the sentence—that is to say, the different modes in which
the relations of subject, object, and verb are denoted will constitute
the only sound basis for classifying speech. The particular relation
between the several ideas summed up in a judgment or sentence agrees
with the manner in which we regard the objects about which we think and
speak. If, for instance, we have no clear idea of any distinction between
ourselves and the objects around us, in talking about them any reference
to ourselves will be left out of sight. Instead of saying, “_I_ am
running,” where the speaker distinguishes himself from the act in which
he is engaged, we should say like the Romans _curro_, where the personal
pronoun has no separate and independent mark of its own. Different races
of men do not think in the same way; and, consequently, the forms taken
by the sentence in different languages are not the same. Thus in the
so-called isolating languages, the separate terms or ideas which make
up the sentence are not subordinated to each other, and fused into a
single whole, but every word remains a separate and distinct sentence.
The Chinaman has to say, “_thya̤n-hi le̥ṅ tsyaṅ-s̆aṅ-lei_”-literally,
“heaven-air cold begin-rise-come,”—if he wants to state that “the weather
began to be cold;” and the Burman’s way of expressing “we are going,” is
by saying, “_ṅā dō dhwā kra dhań_”—“I multitude go multitude which.” In
cases such as these, the ideas are each set down independently, instead
of being subordinated one to another, and the words which embody them
are accordingly contrasted with each other like so many independent
sentences. On the other hand, in the agglutinative languages, the ideas
which make up the sentence, though still kept distinct and independent,
are no longer set over against one another, but brought into mutual
relation and harmony, and regarded as of equal force and meaning. The
root or stem still stands out clearly and separately, and the suffixes
of relation are marked with equal distinctness; But for all that, the
inward fact of the incipient subordination which exists between them is
denoted by the outward fact of vocalic harmony, whereby the vowels of
both stem and suffix have to belong to the same class. The Turkish sign
of the infinitive, _mak_, has to become _mek_ after a root like _sev_,
“love,” though both root and suffix still retain their own individuality;
and while _at-lar_ is “horses,” _ev-ler_ is “houses.” The grammatical
relations expressed in the Aryan class of languages by case-endings
and person-endings, or by prefixed pronouns and prepositions, have to
be represented, as a general rule, by postfixes, since in no other way
can sufficient emphasis be laid upon them, and the danger avoided of
their being swallowed up in the verb or noun. Our “I love,” or “the
man,” look but little different in writing from the Turkish _sev-r-im_,
or the Basque _gizoná_, _gizonák_; the case is quite altered, however,
when we try to pronounce these words, the accent falling on the verb in
our “I love,” but allowing the distinction between verb and pronoun to
be clearly felt in the Turkish _sevrim_. It is among the inhabitants
of mountainous and cold regions in the Aryan and Semitic families of
speech—among Albanians, Bulgarians, Scandinavians, and Aramæans—that
the definite article is postfixed instead of being prefixed; and we
can see at once what an emphasis and distinctness would be given to it
by such a position. Only where foreign influences have been at work
do the agglutinative languages change the order of the words in the
sentence and, as in the case of the Hungarian definite article _a_,
_az_, prefix the words expressive of the grammatical relations, instead
of postfixing them. Still further, to mark out the several parts or
terms of the sentence, the objective pronoun may be inserted between
the subjective pronoun and the verbal root or stem; and so we may have
a sentence-word like the French _je vous donne_, as in the Basque
_zamaztet_ (from _eman_, “to give”), or the converse arrangement of the
terms, as in _n-aza-zu-n_, “that you may have me” (“me-have-you-may”).
The incorporating languages, as they are called, are the oldest examples
of the agglutinative class, for they go back to the time when the speaker
had not yet begun to analyze his sentences, and when he could not say
simply, “I give,” without finishing the sentence with the objective
pronoun. Hence it is that in Basque we must say _dituzte beren liburnac_,
“they have them their books,” instead of simply “they have their books;”
and in Accadian, the language of primitive Chaldea, “I built a house”
would be _ê mu-n-rû_,[76] literally “house I-it-built.”
Very distinct from these incorporating tongues are the polysynthetic
or incapsulating dialects of America, in which the words that make up a
sentence are stripped of their grammatical terminations, and then fused
into a single word of monstrous length and appearance. Thus the Algonquin
would say, _wut-ap-pé-sit-tuk-quś-sun-noo-weht-unḱ-quoh_, if he wished
to express the sentence “he, falling on his knees, worshipped him;”
and this cumbrous compound denotes exactly what we split up into seven
words. These polysynthetic languages are an interesting survival of the
early condition of language everywhere, and are but a fresh proof that
America is in truth “the _new_ world.” Primitive forms of speech that
have elsewhere perished long ago still survive there, like the armadillo,
to bear record of a bygone past. The conception of the sentence that
underlies the polysynthetic dialects is the precise converse of that
which underlies the isolating or the agglutinative groups. The several
ideas into which the sentence may be analyzed, instead of being made
equal or independent, are combined like a piece of mosaic into a single
whole. The sentence has not passed beyond its primitive form, or rather
that primitive form has been retained in spite of the growth and
development of the languages to which it belongs. It is possible that
the Eskimaux may be the descendants of the savage races who inhabited
the caves of southern France, when the rivers were stiff with ice for
half the year, and the reindeer roamed freely through the woods and
meers; at all events, among the icebergs and dark winters of the North,
they have preserved their old habits of thought, their old mode of
viewing the world about them, almost unchanged. And yet our own class of
speech, that class to which we give the name inflectional, and which we
sometimes think is the crown and standard of all other kinds of language,
is not so far removed in usage from the Eskimaux or the Algonquin as
are the isolating dialects of China and the agglutinative jargons of
Mongol and Turk. In the inflectional group the words or suffixes which
denote grammatical relations are subordinated to the words which express
objects or actions—that is to say, to nouns and verbs. The termination
of the Latin _currit_ has lost all distinct and independent meaning
of its own; apart from the verbal stem to which it is subordinated,
it is a mere _flatus vocis_, a mere empty sound. In flection proper,
which we may see best exemplified in the Semitic tongues, the relations
of grammar are denoted by internal vowel change—_adamu_, “man,” for
instance, being nominative, _adami_ genitive, and _adama_ accusative. It
was only afterwards, and by the force of analogy, that first unmeaning
suffixes and then agglutinated words which were gradually assimilated
to them, came to take the place of internal vowel change. What we may
term the inflectional instinct sought to express the various relations
of the sentence, as they successively rose to consciousness, out of the
original sentence-word itself. When separate words like _wards_ or _ly_
(_like_) were afterwards employed for the same purpose, they first had
to lose their own individuality, to become empty words, representative
and not presentative, and as such to be engrafted upon the old stems.
The Greek φη-μί, or the Sanskrit _ad-mi_, “I eat,” are single wholes;
the first personal pronoun _ma_, weakened to _mi_, has lost all life of
its own, and its sole right to existence lies in its absorption into the
stems φη- and _ad_-. But an inflectional language cannot carry out its
fundamental principle with logical completeness. All the subordinate
relations of a sentence cannot be brought into the same close connection
with the principal idea as in φημί and _admi_. Sentences like “I speak”
or “I eat” may be comprehended under a single word; but there are many
sentences where this is impossible, and where the attempt to express
in language the relation between the principal and the subordinate,
between the subject and the attribute, has to be given up. In the Latin
_poeta bonus_, for example, the subject and the attribute appear as
separate words; and there is nothing in the flection attached to each
to show that they stand in any relation whatsoever one to the other. So
far as the form goes there is nothing to tell us whether the two words
mean “a good poet” or “the poet is good.” The fundamental principle of
flection has been violated, and the language is on the high road to that
more developed condition in which, as in Chinese, the two ideas are set
plainly and distinctly one against the other, and the mind is left to
supply the relation between them. This impossibility of carrying out
thoroughly the principle of flection brings about an analytic tendency
in all inflectional forms of speech. The longer an inflectional language
lives the more analytic it becomes. The Englishman says “I will go,” and
the Frenchman _le monde_, where the Latin was contented with _ibo_ and
_mundus_. One by one the grammatical relations implied in an inflectional
compound are brought out, as it were, into full relief, and provided with
special forms in which to be expressed; but the change that has taken
place is but an apparent one, the inflectional spirit of the language
still remains; and though we write “he runs,” “I will go,” we pronounce
as if they were single words. The pronoun and the verb, taken apart and
by themselves, convey no meaning to our minds; we have to combine them
before they become significant, and (the order of the words excepted)
there is but slight difference between an English sentence like “never to
be sufficiently relied upon,” and the Tamil _sārndāykku_, “to thee that
hast approached,” to be analyzed into _sār_, “approach,” _d_ sign of the
past, _āy_, “thee,” and _ku_, “to.”
Each of the leading classes of speech naturally comprises various
species or subdivisions. Thus the isolating Chinese differs from the
isolating dialects of Further India, in that the Chinese mode of
expressing the relations of the sentence by position is replaced in
these by the use of words like _prū_, “do;” _khã_, “suffer;” _khōṅ_,
“possession,” _mha_, “from.” So, again, in the agglutinative class,
the Bâ-ntu languages of Southern Africa prefix the same substantive,
worn down, it may be, to a mere unmeaning symbol, to each of the words
in a sentence which have to be brought into relation with each other;
_o_-ka-_ti_ k-_etu_ _o_-ka-_ua_, for instance, being “our fine stick,”
or literally, “stick ours fine.” The Malayo-Polynesian dialects have not
yet attained to the conception of the verb; thus _yaku imukul olo_ (“I
smitten people”) is “I am smitten by the people;” _iṅga̤ra̤-ku ia̤ tatau_
(“my-thought he rich”) “I thought he is rich;” _ia̤ baklambi baputi_ (“he
with-jacket with-white”) “he has a white jacket on.” Basque grammarians
generally hold that the Basque has but two verbs, “to be” and “to have,”
while, on the other hand, there are many languages which lack precisely
these two.
But in all these sub-classes, just as in the main classes of speech,
it is the different conception of the sentence and the form it takes
which characterize the whole language. However much alike may have been
the circumstances by which the first communities of men were surrounded,
they yet viewed the world without them and their own relation to it with
different eyes. The idea they formed of the sentence and its parts was
not the same everywhere. When with the growth of consciousness came also
the formal expression in utterance of the relations of the several parts
of the sentence, it was inevitable that this expression should clothe
itself in essentially various forms. And the psychological peculiarity
which originated each of these forms—a peculiarity itself the result of
previous experiences and tendencies—became continually more definite,
more confirmed, more unalterable. The logician may reduce all forms of
the affirmative proposition or judgment to the single “A is B,” but the
grammarian knows that this is like the _jus gentium_ of the Romans, a
mere abstraction from a limited number of observed instances. It may
be the right form for the sentence to take in the manifold languages
of the world, but as a matter of fact it has never been taken in any
one of them. The form of the sentence as shaped by the primitive
language-builders of each human community has imprinted itself indelibly
upon the linguistic consciousness of their successors. Racial type and
characteristics will change as soon as the conception of the sentence.
Many of the agglutinative languages have approached so nearly to the
phænomena of inflection, as to make it difficult to determine why they
should not be classed with the inflectional tongues; and yet for all
that they remain agglutinative, and have remained so as far back as we
can trace them. Our own language is agglutinative, and even isolating in
many respects, while the French _je vous donne_ seems a clear instance
of incorporation. The Chinese, on the other hand, shows much that is
agglutinative, much even that resembles inflection, and it is only the
polysynthetic languages of America that remain true to their stereotyped
primæval character. Nevertheless, in spite of all this apparent confusion
and overlapping, this borrowing, as it were, of characteristics from
other families of speech, the great types of language stand out each
of them visibly and distinctly. Their broad characteristics can be
clearly sketched, their essential diversity easily felt. It is only
when we come to map out the boundaries between them, to determine where
isolation ends and agglutination begins, that we find ourselves at
fault. Here as elsewhere in nature there is no sharply-defined line
of division to be drawn; species passes gradually and insensibly into
species, class into class. But in spite of this, species and classes
really exist, each with its own type and characteristics, each founded
upon its own conception of the sentence and its parts. When we remember
that the sentence, and not the isolated word, is the starting-point of
philology—when we make it what the logician would term the _fundamentum
divisionis_ for our classification of speech—there is no longer any
difficulty in distinguishing between the several families of speech,
and assigning to each its character and place. The Finnic idioms have
become so nearly inflectional as to have led a recent scholar to suggest
their relationship to our Aryan group; nevertheless, they have never
cleared the magical frontier between flection and agglutination, hard as
it may be to define, since to pass from agglutination to inflection is
to revolutionize the whole system of thought and language and the basis
on which it rests, and to break with the past psychological history
and tendencies of a speech. There are South American butterflies whose
colours have come to resemble so closely those of the plants on which
they are found as to be indistinguishable from them; for all that, the
butterfly still remains a butterfly, and the plant a plant.
Such, then, is language in its origin and its nature. It is significant
sound, the outward embodiment and expression, however imperfect, of
thought. Before sound can become significant it must express the whole
thought or judgment; that is, it must take the form of a sentence.
Historically, the sentence and not the word comes first. The sentence
consists of two factors, one the external sound, the other the internal
thought, and neither of these factors can be disregarded by a true
science of language.
Now, science is accurate knowledge. The statement may seem a truism,
but it is a truism which has sometimes been forgotten. For that which is
accurate is only that which can be defined and limited, that of which
all the boundaries, as it were, are distinctly mapped out and known.
But the boundaries of knowledge can only be discovered by the help of
comparison. It is, in fact, the comparative method that constitutes the
very life of inductive science; it is the application of the comparative
method to any subject which brings that subject within the domain of
scientific knowledge. Our knowledge that night and day follow one another
alternately, or that if we put our hands into the fire they will be
burnt, is not yet scientific. In order to know anything scientifically
we must be able to compare it with something else, and so determine
its size, or weight, or character. Our feelings may tell us that the
atmosphere is hot or cold, but we have no scientific knowledge of either
fact until we can measure one degree of heat or cold against another
by means of the thermometer. As soon as we know the exact amount and
character of each degree of heat or cold, we have laid the foundations
of a science of thermology. It is just the same in the case of language.
Here, too, as soon as we can compare languages and the elements of
languages together, and so measure and determine their character, we
shall have the beginning of a science of language. But the comparison
must be made by the aid of a common standard. The old attempts to
compare Latin with Greek, or both with Hebrew, were failures because the
test applied was a capricious one, depending on the subjective fancies
and prejudices of the inquirer. We cannot compare two things together
without having a third term—a common standard by which to measure them.
We must not have one rule and measure for one set of words or languages
and another rule and measure for another set. The comparative method we
employ must be alike in all cases.
Language is a social product, at once the creation and the creator
of society. It is independent of the caprice of the single individual,
and the Emperor Tiberius could no more change a Latin word[77] than the
slavish obedience of a Benedictine monastery could turn _sumpsimus_ into
_mumpsimus_. Unless the community as a body agree to accept the new
word or form, Cæsar himself is powerless to introduce it. The changes
undergone by language are brought about by the action of circumstances
over which the individual has no control. They are circumstances which
affect the whole community, not the individual member of it. The primary
condition of speech that it should be significant requires that it
should be stamped and recognized by the common consciousness. Now, the
circumstances that affect a whole community will always act in the
same way should the conditions remain the same. Individual caprice is
rendered impossible, and the forms assumed by language will be found
referable to general laws. We have to deal, not with the infinite
complexity of individual motives and caprice, but with the consentient
action of many minds swayed by the same feelings, surrounded by the same
atmosphere. The joint action of a multitude eliminates the accidental
differences of individual character; all that is left is just that
in which all agree, the result of the influences of which all alike
are sensible. The circumstances that determine the common nature of a
society determine also its common utterance, and this common utterance
we call its language. It embodies all the past life and history of the
community that speaks it; each phase in the development of its speakers
is reflected in it as in a mirror, and its worn-out words and forms are
so many crystallized embodiments of dead and bygone thought, so many
fossil relics, as it were, of the past strata of social growth. The facts
of language—its sentences and its words—are the result of the action of
general laws and conditions; by comparing and classifying them we can
discover what these general laws are, and how they act. A knowledge of
these laws and their action constitutes glottology or the science of
language; the use of the comparative method by which they are discovered
constitutes comparative philology.
Comparative philology, therefore, furnishes the materials whereby the
science of language investigates such questions as the origin of speech,
the nature of roots, or the meaning of flection. It may be said to
comprise both comparative and historical grammar, comparative grammar
being primarily occupied in comparing the grammatical forms and syntax of
different languages of the same group; historical grammar in tracing the
history of the forms and syntax of a single language. The two studies,
however, necessarily overlap, comparative grammar requiring a knowledge
of the individual languages compared at the successive periods of their
history, or restoring the older forms of the individual languages by
means of comparison, and historical grammar calling in the aid of the
allied dialects to supply the deficiencies of the literary or monumental
record. Quite apart from either is philology proper in the old sense
of the word, which busied itself solely with literary languages and
the literature they enshrine. The business of philology is to compare
author with author, style with style, to determine the employment of
words and phrases in the writers it investigates and pronounce upon
their correctness, to emend the readings of MSS. and imitate the
idiosyncrasies of particular writers. From the old-fashioned classical
philology to the so-called philosophy of speech there is a wide leap,
but both have been equally transformed by the new comparative method.
The philosophy of speech in the hands of men like Harris or Stoddart[78]
endeavoured to attack the problems of language by “the high _priori_
road,” and by unverified and unverifiable reasoning from the phænomena
of modern dialects to discover the origin of speech and the relation
between grammar and logic. The philosophy of speech under the guidance
of comparative philology has become the science of language, which may
be said to comprehend both. The questions which the _à priori_ method
failed to resolve are now yielding their answers to _à posteriori_
research, and the results already obtained have overthrown the
unsubstantial speculations of the last century. The science of language
has been variously termed “La Linguistique,”[79] “Linguistic Science,”
Glottic,[80] and Glottology,[81] and it stands in the same relation to
comparative philology that physiology stands to comparative anatomy.
Now, the ultimate facts with which comparative philology has to deal are
sentences and the words that have been evolved out of them. These words
and sentences must be real and not imaginary—that is, they must either
belong to some living speech, or be preserved in a written record, or
else be restored by a sound comparison of existing words which presuppose
some common ancestor. Where such real and well-attested words are not
to be had, no conclusions can be drawn. Unless inscribed monuments are
hereafter brought to light or comparison with the Malayan dialects
results in the recovery of a common parent-speech, the condition of the
Polynesian languages 1,000 years ago must remain unknown. Much no doubt
may be effected by comparing the scattered relics of these languages
together, by showing that a sibilant, for instance, has been preserved in
Samoan which has become a simple aspirate elsewhere, or that a guttural
is retained between two vowels in Maori which has been dropped in most
of the other Polynesian settlements; but to assert that some thousand
years back they resembled another language to which they bear little
similarity at present, would be to argue without data, and to violate the
fundamental principles of comparative philology.
The object of the science of language is threefold:—
(1). It compares and classifies sentences, grammatical relations and
words.
(2). It compares and classifies languages and dialects.
(3). By means of this comparison and classification it discovers the laws
which govern language in general and certain languages and dialects in
particular.
Thus by comparing the languages of the Aryan family we discover the
phonetic law that an English _th_ must always represent _t_ in Sanskrit,
Greek, and Latin, unless the action of other determinate laws interfere,
and by comparing different groups of languages together, we find that the
dual number everywhere preceded the plural. There are still many tongues
in which the plural is formed by reduplication, tongues, that is, where
duality, the repetition of the idea, is or has been the only conception
of plurality yet reached; and others in which the number “three” is
denoted by words like _prica_, “many” (in the dialect of the Puris of
South America,) expressive of vague indefiniteness, and an inability to
form a clear idea of anything beyond “two.” Indeed, in our own Aryan
family of speech there was a time when _one_, and _two_, or that which
was “divided” (δύω, δίς, διὰ, &c.) from one, were the only numerals
known, and it required a fresh effort of thought to attain and conceive
of a new numeral, which was accordingly named _tri_, _tres_, _three_, or
that which is “beyond” (_trans_, _through_, Sansk., _tar-â-mi_, “I pass
beyond”).
The laws of speech may be either primary or empirical. Empirical laws
are those generalizations made from the survey of a limited number of
phænomena, the reason of which we do not know. All we know is that given
one particular fact, another particular fact follows, or that wherever
we meet with a particular class of phænomena the same generalization is
sure to hold good. Thus in astronomy, Kepler’s discovery that the planets
move in an ellipse may be termed an empirical law, and the same may be
said of the phonetic law mentioned above which obliges us to compare
an English _th_ with the Greek and Latin _t_. Primary laws are those
higher and more comprehensive laws or generalizations which embrace
the empirical laws and give the reason of them. Such a primary law is
gravitation, such, too, probably is the law of natural selection. In
the science of language examples of these primary laws would be the law
that all language is based on roots, or the law of economy in the use of
speech. The determination of the primary laws of language leads us very
nearly into the charmed land of metaphysic; as the physicist with his
doctrine of force is transported out of the region of pure experiment and
observation, and brought face to face with metaphysical problems, so is
the scientific student of language with his doctrine of roots. Hence that
part of the science of language which stands in the most direct relation
with the old philosophy of speech, which would investigate such subjects
as the origin of gender and case, or determine the priority of thought or
language, has sometimes been called linguistic metaphysics.
When once the laws of language have been laid down we are able to apply
them to our facts (that is, words and sentences), to whatever period
these belong. The science of language, like all other sciences, rests
upon the postulate of uniformity. So long as the conditions remain the
same, the laws of the science will act with undeviating regularity. It
does not matter whether the words we are dealing with are still living
and spoken, or have been dead and obsolete for thousands of years; if
we can show that they fall under the action of a particular law, we
can apply that law to them in either case with equal certainty. When
once we have ascertained that an English _d_ represents a Sanskrit _t_,
only those Sanskrit words which contain a _t_ must be compared with
English words of Teutonic origin which have a _d_ in the corresponding
place, whatever their antiquity may be. A knowledge that an English _d_
answers to a Sanskrit and Latin _t_, and an English _h_ to a Sanskrit
and Latin _c_ (_k_ or _ś_) shows that the English _hundred_ has the
same origin as the Latin _centum_, and the Sanskrit _śatam_, and that,
consequently, our linguistic ancestors were able to count as far as one
hundred before they separated from each other, the one to conquer India,
the other to occupy Europe. Words, in fact, are like the fossils of the
rocks; they embody the thought and knowledge of the society that first
coined and used them, and if we can find out their primitive meaning
by the aid of the comparative method, we shall know the character of
the society that produced them, and the degree of civilization it had
attained. The palæontologist can reconstruct the animal life of the past
ages of the globe with no greater ease than the comparative philologist
can reconstruct the life of bygone and forgotten communities. If the
fragment of a fossil bone can tell us the history of an extinct world,
so, too, can the fragment of a word reveal to us the struggles of ancient
societies, and ideas and beliefs that have long since perished.
But the laws of a science must be verified before they can be accepted
as such. However brilliant or ingenious a hypothesis may be, it remains
a hypothesis, more or less probable, until it has been verified by
experiment and observation. It is to history, to psychology, and to
physiology that the science of language has to look for the verification
of its laws. In the phonautograph of König, or the phonograph of Edison,
we can discover the very forms assumed by the waves of air set in motion
by each sound we utter; and the first lessons of psychology confirm
the conclusion of glottology, that the concrete precedes the abstract.
Sometimes it is not so much the law, the generalization itself, that can
best be verified; but the application of it to the phænomena of speech.
Thus, a sound application of the laws of language makes it clear that the
words possessed in common by Spanish and Arabic are not due to a common
ancestry, but to contact between the two tongues, and the history of the
Moorish conquest of Spain confirms the conclusion.
But we may ask, What is meant precisely by that comparison of words
and sentences on which the laws of language are said to rest? A word,
a sentence, a grammatical form, consists of two elements, one, the
articulate utterance, the other, the signification or thought which the
utterance symbolizes. Sound and sense are the two factors which make up
speech, and it is, therefore, in respect of both sound and sense that our
comparisons have to be made. Comparative philology divides itself into
phonology and sematology, to which, perhaps, we may also add morphology.
Phonology is the science of sounds, sematology the science of meanings,
and morphology the science of grammatical forms. But inasmuch as
grammatical forms are but a combination of the relations of the sentence
(or rather of the meaning those relations convey to the mind) and of the
phonetic sounds by which they are expressed, morphology may be strictly
included partly under phonology, partly under sematology. We must never
forget that the study of sounds is intended to be the vestibule through
which we approach the thought within. The phonological investigations we
carry on, the phonological laws we formulate, are the outworks by which
we may storm the fortress of the inward signification. They enable us to
trace to a common source words that have flowed through diverse regions,
or to discover the origin of some strangely-changed form of grammar, but
the value they possess is the value that belonged to the magic ring of
the Nibelungs: it gives access to the treasure, but is not the treasure
itself. Phonology is not commensurate with comparative philology, as
seems sometimes to be thought. It forms but one side of the science, the
instrument by which we discover the true force and meaning of sentences
and words.
As the instrument of linguistic science, however, phonology is of the
highest importance. In fact the modern science of language is wholly
based upon it, and that which distinguishes comparative philology from
the abortive attempts of former centuries is its scientific investigation
into the laws of articulate utterance and of phonetic change. Here, and
almost here only, we can as yet trace the nature and working of the
laws of speech. It is only because we know that an English _h_ and _d_
must answer to a Sanskrit _k_ (_ś_) and _t_ that we are able to assert
that the primitive Aryan community had attained the conception of “one
hundred.” Sematology is still in a far more backward state; its laws are
still a subject of investigation, and the differences of opinion that
exist as to some of the great questions of linguistic science show only
too plainly how much in this department of it still remains to be done.
But the relative position of phonology and sematology is, after all,
but natural. Phonology deals with the outward and physical, that which,
can be weighed and measured, and imitated by mechanical contrivances;
sematology belongs to the inward and the spiritual—to that realm of
thought, in short, which can only be examined in so far as it makes
itself accessible to the inspection of the senses, and submits itself
to the action of physical laws. Thought seems infinite, manifold, and
free, determining and determined by itself. Like the wind, it “bloweth
where it listeth;” we hear “the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence
it cometh and whither it goeth.” All the capriciousness and complex
mobility of the individual appears to belong to it; we may formulate the
laws of thinking, but not of the forms which that thinking takes. The
vocal organs, on the other hand, through which thought becomes realized
in speech, are subject to all the conditions of the material world. The
utterance of each articulate sound and its relations to another are
conditioned and defined by the physical constitution of man, by the
circumstances in which he finds himself, and by measurable laws of sound.
The outward form of language, the flesh-garment, as it were, in which
thought clothes itself, falls entirely into the domain of physiology
and acoustics. Here we can observe and experimentalize, can weigh and
measure, can even reproduce artificially for ourselves. Every consonant
and vowel can be accurately determined, the machinery and effort needed
to produce them precisely known, the variations they are capable of
exactly ascertained. But when we turn to the informing thought, to
that inner essence which gives life and reality to each modulation of
articulate sound, all appears different. What wonder that the science of
significations should be so far behind the science of sounds?
Let us not forget, however, that thought, in so far as it finds its
expression in language, is not so infinitely free and capricious as we
might at first sight suppose. The very fact of its finding expression
in language, that is, of being embodied in articulate sounds, implies
restraint and submission to conditions. Thought is thus, as it were,
arrested and crystallized; it is only gradually and in consequence of
ascertainable causes that the signification attached to a particular
sound or group of sounds comes to be changed. That these sounds should
symbolize certain ideas is, after all, a matter of convention; it
follows from the tacit agreement, not indeed of isolated individuals,
but of individuals as forming a society. Changes, therefore, in the
signification of words and sentences can only result from causes which
affect the whole society, and as such causes necessarily work slowly
and by degrees, significant change can accordingly be brought under
the action of general laws. But these laws can only be established by
the help of phonology: until we know what words and forms the laws of
phonology will allow us to compare together and refer to a common origin,
we cannot begin to discuss the genesis and history of the significations
they bear. No doubt structure, that is, the conception of the sentence
formed by a language, and the order in which the several parts of a
sentence are arranged, is a very important element in the classification
of languages; still it is only one element, and unless phonology prove
that the roots and derivatives of two idioms are related, no amount of
structural similarity will justify us in deriving them from the same
stock.
Phonology, then, is the key and mainstay of modern linguistic
science; it guarantees the correctness of the results already obtained,
and is the indispensable preliminary to future researches. As will be
shown in a later chapter, our knowledge of sounds and their laws is now
tolerably complete. So, too, is the application of this knowledge to
certain groups of language. The phonological laws of the Aryan family,
for instance, are pretty well ascertained; we know what sounds in one
member of the family answer to other sounds in another member, and what
particular changes of sound are permissible within each of the several
members themselves. It follows from the physical formation of the organs
of speech that the various sounds capable of being articulated are
limited in number. Prince Lucien Bonaparte has enumerated as many as
385, though some of these are not to be met with in any known language
or dialect.[82] The number of different sounds occurring in any single
language is not large among European languages; for instance, Modern
Greek, Spanish, and Illyrian have but five vowel-sounds, while Gaelic,
which has the largest number, possesses twenty-one, Portuguese and
English following next with nineteen a-piece. So far as consonantal
sounds are concerned the number tends to diminish with the culture and
age of a language, and the evidence of facts is against identifying the
hypothetical alphabet to which the sounds of the various Aryan dialects
can be reduced with the actual alphabet of the parent Aryan speech. The
physical formation of our vocal organs, due to climate, food, habit,
and inherited aptitudes, obliges us to pronounce in a particular way.
There are sounds, for instance, which birds and animals can make, but we
cannot; while nothing is harder than to catch and reproduce the exact
pronunciation of a foreign tongue. The Polynesian turns David into
_Raviri_, Samuel into _Hemara_, London into _Ranana_, and Frederick into
_Waratariki_, and the word _steel_ has been adopted in the Sandwich
Islands in the shape of _tila_. It has been said that a foreigner can
never speak another language so perfectly as to conceal all traces of
his origin, and though this is going too far, it is quite certain that
there are languages the pronunciation of which can never be thoroughly
acquired after the age when growth has ended and the organs of speech
have ceased to be plastic. There are numerous sounds which particular
races or individuals are unable to imitate successfully; and those who
have watched the attempt of children to learn their mother-tongue know
how slowly some special sound is often acquired, and how in some cases
it is never acquired at all. The sound which one person will pronounce
as _r_ will be pronounced _l_ by another. Thus, the Chinese change every
_l_ into _r_, and the nearest approach they can make to the pronunciation
of _Christ_ is _Ki-li-sse-t(ŭ)_. The Japanese, on the other hand,
cannot manage _l_, and in their mouths accordingly _idolatry_ becomes
_idoratry_. The native children of Bengal, quick as they are in other
respects, seldom pronounce rightly those English words which begin with
a sibilant and a mute when a consonant precedes them, _ten stamps_,
for instance, being made into _ten-y-stamps_, and _this string_ into
_this-y-string_. The same sound which is pronounced without difficulty in
certain combinations may be a hopeless puzzle in others, and the English
tourist who mispronounces _Boulogne_ and _Cologne_, will yet ask for an
_onion_ and talk of a _barrier_. No individual, it would seem, pronounces
all his sounds exactly like his neighbours, and even the same individual
will vary his pronunciation of the same word in the course of a few
seconds. Variations of pronunciation, in fact, are like the variations we
observe in plants and animals, and if any variation becomes marked and is
rendered popular and general from some cause or other, it brings about an
alteration in the form of words. Such alterations resemble new species in
natural history, and we may compare the different species of pigeons or
dogs with the differences of pronunciations given by different dialects
to what was originally the same sound. Changes in the pronunciation of
words are constantly going on, causing a language to alter its form
and appearance or to branch out into dialects. As these changes are
determined by circumstances and physical necessities, and not by the
arbitrary will of the individual, the laws they follow can be discovered
and laid down. The laws once known, we can tell what words and sounds
in different dialects, or in the different periods of the same dialect,
may be compared together and referred to a common source, supposing,
that is, that the significations they bear allow us to ascribe the
identity of their phonetic elements to anything more than coincidence.
The laws of phonology enable us to assert that the Greek καλός, and
the English _hale_ or _(w)hole_, may be traced back to a common origin
so far as their outward crust and garment—the phonetic sounds of which
they are composed—is concerned; it then remains for sematology to decide
whether the ideas of “beauty” and “soundness” can be connected together.
Distinctions between sounds must be studied in spoken languages, and we
must not forget that it is always very difficult to discover what was the
_exact_ sound attached to a word no longer spoken, but preserved only in
the custody of writing.
Different tribes and races vary much as to the sounds which they find it
easy or hard to pronounce and imitate. A sound which has been changed
into a certain other sound in one language, may have been preserved
or changed into quite a different sound in another language. In our
Aryan group the palatals were originally gutturals; in Malayan, on the
contrary, dentals. Because our Teutonic forefathers turned _k_ into _h_,
we must not conclude that such a change was possible all over the world,
and that wherever we come across an _h_ we are at liberty to assume an
earlier _k_. Indeed, there is clear evidence that in some languages
_h_ may become _k_. The phonetic laws which hold good of one group of
languages, or of one member of a group, do not necessarily hold good of
another.
In comparing languages we have first to compare their grammars, not
their vocabularies. The reason of this is obvious. It is in the sentence,
not in the isolated word, that languages agree or differ, and grammar
deals with the relations that the several parts of the sentence bear
to one another. Single words may accidentally resemble each other in
both sound and sense, and yet belong to languages which have nothing in
common. In the Quichua, or dialect of the Incas, three words—_inti_,
“sun;” _munay_, “love;” and _veypul_, “great”—resemble the Sanskrit
_indra_, _manyu_, and _vipula_,[83] but this is the only likeness that
can be detected between the two tongues. So, too, the Mandshu _shun_,
“the sun,” coincides in sound and meaning with the English word, like
the Mandshu _sengi_ and Latin _sanguis_, “blood,” or the North American
Indian _potómac_ and the Greek πόταμος, “river.” Such accidental
coincidences turn up all the world over. The number of articulate sounds
used in actual speech is, after all, not so very large, nor also the
number of different ideas needed by primitive man; and when we bear
in mind the probable onomatopœic origin of the greater part of our
vocabulary, it is not wonderful that these coincidences should occur.
Indeed, the wonder would be if they did not. But a coincidence of this
sort is one of the surest evidences we can have that the words which seem
to resemble one another have no connection whatsoever. As Professor Max
Müller has said, “sound etymology has nothing to do with sound.” Language
is continually changing; and as the phonetic and significant changes in
it are occasioned by outward conditions and circumstances which vary
from age to age and from country to country, they must necessarily take
a different direction in the mouths of different speakers. The very fact
that the English _call_ and the Greek καλέω have almost every letter
in common, ought to have raised a presumption against their identity,
even before the law was known that an English _c_ answers to a Greek γ,
and a Greek κ to an English _h_, and that, consequently, the true Greek
representative of _call_ is γήρυω, and the true English representative of
καλέω is _hail_.
But if we are not to compare words of the same sound and sense
together, how, it may be asked, are we to ascertain the relationship
of two or more languages, and discover what sounds correspond to each
other in them? Our only guide is grammar. If we find that two languages
express the relations of grammar in the same way, and by the help of
the same machinery, we may conclude that the two languages come from a
common source, and, therefore, possess a common stock of words. Under
grammar will also be included structure—that is to say, the order and
position of the parts of the sentence, as well as the conception of
the sentence itself. Grammar and structure, therefore, are the clue by
which comparative philology must be guided in its researches. It was
the neglect of such a clue that caused Latin and Greek to be compared
with Hebrew, and made the etymological dictionaries of the last century
a rubbish heap of wasted labour. Those languages only which agree in
their way of viewing the relations of thought can be grouped together.
When once agreement in grammar and structure has determined the probable
connection of two tongues, the aid of phonology may be called in to
complete and verify the inquiry. Where the grammars are really connected,
we may feel quite certain that there will be a community of roots. Where,
on the contrary, there is no connection between the grammars, a community
of roots must be due to accident. What proved the existence of an Aryan
family of speech, and thereby founded comparative philology, was not the
resemblances between individual words, striking as these were, but the
exact correspondence between the grammatical forms of the several members
of the family. The lists of words drawn up by Sir W. Jones, by Adelung
or by Vater, remain mere literary curiosities. The comparative philology
of Aryan speech was really created by the comparative grammar of Bopp.
When once the grammatical relationship of the Indo-European languages had
been established, there was a solid basis for phonology to work upon, and
it was not long before Grimm discovered the laws which regulate their
interchanges of sound.
But in comparing grammar and structure, we must be careful to exclude
the accidental, or rather the phænomena due to the peculiar circumstances
in which an individual tongue has been placed. We ought to be able to
trace the history and development of each special language as far back
as possible, ascertaining its oldest forms and noting the successive
changes they have undergone. For this purpose it is necessary that
the language should be a literary one, and that the various phases of
its growth should have been preserved on monuments or in books. Where
this is not the case, we have to fall back upon a simple comparison of
existing dialects, and endeavour to restore from these the common forms
to which their variant derivatives seem to point. The greater the number
of dialects the more satisfactory will be the results of our comparison;
accidental resemblances will be better eliminated, and intermediate
forms are more likely to be preserved. Where the dialects to be compared
are few, we have to contend against one of two difficulties—either the
differences between them are so slight—as in the case of the Semitic
languages—that the parent-speech from which they branched off must be too
recent to throw any light on its earlier history and relationships; or
else the differences are so great, the time during which they have been
separated so considerable, that the links have been lost by which we may
connect them together and reduce them to a single origin.
Phonology requires a knowledge of the past history and development of
the languages it deals with even more than the study of grammar. In the
comparison of words we may lay down the general rule that roots and not
derivatives should be compared together. We should trace the history of
the words we examine as far back as may be, should reduce them to their
simplest forms, and strip off the accretions that have grown round them
like the lichen round the stone. Words derived from the same radical
will often assume different forms in different languages, or even in
the same dialect; while words derived from different radicals will, on
the other hand, assume the same form in different languages, or even in
the same one. _Captive_ and _caitiff_ have the same origin in the Latin
_captivus_; _sound_ may be either the Latin _sonus_ or _subundare_, or
the Anglo-Saxon _sund_, “hale,” or _sund_ from _swimman_. The American
_potómac_, quoted above, is a compound, while the Greek πόταμος comes
from the root πο-, which we find in πίνω and πότος, in the Sanskrit
_pânam_, “a drink,” and our own _potion_. The lexicographers who have
declared _monkey_ to be a corruption of _mannikin_ were little aware that
the word is really the Italian _monichio_, the derivative of _monna_, and
that _monna_, again, is a contraction of _madonna_, _mea domina_. Before
we know the history of a word, we must not venture to compare it with
another, though it may happen that the history will be learnt through
the process of comparison itself. Thus we know that the Gothic _fimf_,
“five,” has lost two gutturals, as well as a final labial, from the
analogy of the Latin _quinque_ (for _quinquem_), the Sanskrit _panchan_
and the Lithuanian _penki_, and we can thus trace it back to the period
when the Aryans of Europe and of Asia were still undivided. But at this
point our materials fail us. We may feel pretty sure that _quemquem_, the
original Aryan word for “five,” is a simple root, and that its numerical
meaning is a derived one; we may even hazard the guess that it has been
formed by reduplication, but beyond this a sound method of etymology
cannot go. To connect it with the Semitic _khâmésh_, as Ewald has done,
is to violate the rules of comparative philology. We know the history
neither of _khâmésh_ nor of _quemquem_.
In comparing words together, it is safest to begin with two classes
of words, those which, like the numerals, have acquired a fixed and
arbitrary meaning, and terms of relationship and every day use. In the
case of the former, the signification, once fixed, remains unaltered,
however much the phonetic crust of the word may change, while new names
are less likely to come into vogue; in the case of the latter, the
very frequency of their use tends to keep them in existence. If a few
families here and there adopt new modes of expression, still it may be
expected that the larger part of the community will be more conservative.
Hence, when we find two languages agreeing in their numerals and words
expressive of common objects and ideas, we may infer that they are
related to one another. The pronouns are not so sure a criterion, as they
have generally been worn down by constant use to monosyllabic forms,
while their antiquity prevents us from discovering their true history
and origin. Like the names of “father” and “mother,” moreover, the first
and second personal pronouns show a tendency to be represented in most
languages by the simplest and earliest sounds uttered by the child.
The laws of phonology must be established by as large a number of
instances as possible. In no other way can the chances of accident or
mistake be avoided. A law, in fact, must hold good of all the phænomena
that are summed up under it, and the more numerous the phænomena, the
wider and more firmly established will the law be. Grimm’s laws of
the interchanges of sound in the Aryan family of speech depend on the
observation and comparison of a very large number of words. As soon
as it was found that English words which contained a _th_ answered in
signification and general form to Latin and Greek words which had a _t_
in the same place, it was possible to formulate the law: English _th_ =
Latin and Greek _t_; all that remained was to verify the law by fresh
instances, and in this way to strengthen the proof of the connection of
the two languages. If it could be shown that real exceptions to the law
occur which are not due to the interference of other laws, the law would
have to be given up, however numerous might be the apparent instances on
which it rested. The progress of comparative philology is continually
strengthening its phonological laws and adding to their number.
The intimate connection of sound and sense must never be lost sight
of in etymological research. They are as it were the outer and inner
sides of the same object. Where the significations are unrelated, we
cannot connect two words which agree in phonetic sound any more than we
can connect two words of the same signification but different sound. In
our own group of tongues the two separate roots _dhā_ “to suck,” and
_dhā_ “to place,” for example, are identical in sound; and if we turn
to languages like Chinese or Ancient Egyptian, we shall find numberless
cases in which the same word, so far as pronunciation is concerned,
has a variety of unallied meanings like our English _box_ or _scale_.
Of course, it is not necessary that the signification of the words we
compare should be exactly the same; the signification of words changes as
much as their outward phonetic form; but we must be able to show that one
meaning is derived from the other, or from a common parentage, just as we
show that one sound is derived from another or from a common source.
For the purposes of phonology more especially, the study of living
spoken dialects is indispensable. No doubt the historical character of
glottology requires us to investigate the records of extinct languages
with as much care as the facts of living ones, and it is only by learning
what a language once was that we can properly know what it is now.
Nevertheless, it is only in the modern languages that we can discover
the nature and laws of pronunciation; it is only here, moreover, that
we are brought face to face with the problems and realities of speech.
The biologist, it is true, cannot dispense with the aid of comparative
anatomy, but his primary object is the study of the living organism. What
has been termed “antiquarian philology” has sometimes stood in the way of
scientific progress; sounds have been confounded with letters, and words
instead of sentences have been made the units of speech. Antiquarian
philology, furthermore, still has the shadow of classical scholasticism
hanging over it; it will need a long education before the world is
disabused of the idea that superiority in literature means superiority
in language, and that a scientific study of language is identical with
the old-fashioned “philology” of the classical scholar. Before the forms
of an extinct speech can be made available for scientific investigation,
they must be revivified by the translation of their written symbols
into phonetic sounds, and how hard such a task is need not be pointed
out. If we wish to work back to the former pronunciation of a language
we must start from its modern and actual pronunciation, and in spite
of all that we can do, in spite of slow and patient induction and a
careful weighing of the facts, our conclusions will be at the best
imperfect and approximative. The older and more scanty the remains of a
language, the more defective and uncertain will be our restoration of
its pronunciation. In the larger number of cases we have to be content
with merely approximative results. What Mr. Ellis and Mr. Sweet have
done for the pronunciation of early English, is due to the abundance of
the data and the unbroken tradition which they embody; to restore the
pronunciation of Latin is a work of greater difficulty, to restore that
of ancient Greek of greater difficulty still. In short, the records of
dead speech must be interpreted by the facts of living language, just as
the conditions which brought about the deposition of the rocks can only
be explained by the forces still at work upon the surface of the globe.
Here as elsewhere in science, we must proceed from the known to the
unknown. The laws of consonantal change laid down for Latin and Greek,
for Sanskrit and Zend, for Keltic and Old High German, receive their
verification and explanation from the Romance dialects of modern Europe;
while it is in the study of savage idioms, in the languages of Bushmen
and of Kafirs, of North American Indians and of Papuans, that some of the
most precious facts of linguistic science have been obtained. An extinct
literary language, indeed, is by its very nature less serviceable to the
comparative philologist than the artless jargons of barbarous tribes.
It is artificial rather than natural, and the product of individual
idiosyncrasies rather than of the whole community. The further removed
it is from the fresh current of living speech, the less capable it
becomes of strictly scientific treatment. The individual element, with
all its arbitrary capriciousness, has entered too largely into it. The
grammatical forms invented and enforced by ignorant grammarians, the
words coined after false analogy by the Homeric rhapsodists and their
successors, or the stilted phrases and inverted expressions employed by
a particular writer and his imitators, all belong to the domain of the
“philologist” rather than to that of the scientific student of language.
He has nothing to do with textual criticism or the study of style, much
less with the successful reproduction of the idiosyncrasies of classical
authors.
Philology in the narrower sense of the term has to prepare materials for
comparative philology in so far as the latter is concerned with literary
languages or dialects. In its turn it is guided in its researches and
kept within the limits of scientific accuracy by comparative philology
which tests and rectifies its conclusions, and prevents for the future
attempts like that of Buttmann to derive ἄφνος from ἄφθονος or that
of K. O. Müller to extract πελασγός from πελαργός. The particular can
only be understood in the light of the universal, and as long as we are
dealing with one language only our comparisons must be limited to that
language alone at different stages of its growth, and will consequently
sometimes lead us astray. Error can only be avoided by making our field
of comparison as wide as possible, and so bringing our theory to the
test of the greatest possible number of facts. It is evident from this,
however, that the comparative philologist will have a special and minute
acquaintance with but a few out of the many facts which come before
his view. The memory even of a Mezzofanti is limited, and the ordinary
student of language must be content to derive from others a large
proportion of the materials on which he works. Caution in the choice and
use of his authorities is here absolutely requisite, and it ought to be
the business of the specialists in each language to see that the facts
presented to him are thoroughly accurate and exact. Their work is the
foundation upon which the structure of comparative philology has to be
built.
But the comparative philologist cannot dispense with a specialist’s
knowledge of at least two languages. In no other way can he have that
intimate acquaintance with the inner life of speech requisite for his
studies, or possess the necessary instinct for selecting the right
authorities to whom to trust when dealing with tongues with which he is
unacquainted. The more languages he knows thus thoroughly the better,
especially if these belong to different classes of speech. Unless
the Aryan scholar is acquainted with a Semitic language, his theory
of flection is likely to be one-sided and faulty, and unless he have
a further knowledge of some agglutinative dialect, his views on the
relation between flection and agglutination must be received with a
certain amount of distrust. Grammars and dictionaries will not give us
that grasp upon the inner structure and spirit of a dialect which is
all-important in determining some of the chief problems of speech. They
present us only with the external facts of a language: before we can
_think_ in it, before we can place ourselves in the mental attitude of
its framers and speakers, we must be saturated with it, as it were, and
have that knowledge of it which can only come from daily and constant use.
At the same time, it must not be forgotten that the comparative
philologist should not introduce the frame of mind of the specialist
into his comparative inquiries. The specialist who takes up comparative
philology as a subsidiary pursuit is likely to spoil it in the taking.
The minor details of his special subject, whether it be Greek or
Sanskrit or Hebrew, will assume an unreal importance in his eyes, and
the main phænomena to which his attention ought to be directed will be
correspondingly dwarfed. Bopp was the father of comparative philology
simply because he was not a specialist in any one of the Aryan languages;
had he been a Sanskritist, and nothing else, he would doubtless have
produced an excellent Sanskrit grammar, but not the famous text-book
of scientific philology. The errors into which he fell have since been
corrected by the special students of the various languages he handled so
freely: the knowledge he acquired of them was sufficient for the great
purpose he had in view, and an exhaustive study of any one of them would
merely have consumed the time and energy which were needed for his other
work.
We can now see clearly what is the object and scope of the science of
language. It has to do with language in all its forms as the significant
utterance of society. Where utterance ceases to be significant, the
science of language also ceases to investigate it. Beyond the barrier
of roots it is unable to pass; other sciences—ethnology, psychology,
physiology—must be called in if we wish to know what lies beyond that
barrier, what, in short, were the inarticulate utterances and gestures
which gave rise to articulate speech. Glottology has to investigate the
origin of language so far as it is really language, but no further. By
the use of the comparative method, words, forms, sentences, dialects, and
languages are classified and traced back to their most primitive form,
and the laws which govern their development and relationships determined
and explained. In this work of comparison, phonology and sematology ought
to go hand in hand, since language consists in the intimate union of
sound and thought; but inasmuch as the facts and laws of phonology can
be more readily discovered and tested than those of sematology, it is
necessary that our linguistic researches should have their starting-point
on the phonological side. Inasmuch as language is the reflection of the
thought of a community, the history of words and forms, as determined by
the application of the laws of glottology, will be also the mental and
spiritual history of the community that used them. Like the geologist,
therefore, who can reconstruct the material history of the earth and
restore the various forms of life that have successively peopled it,
the scientific student of language can read the past history of human
society in the fossil-records of speech. By tracing the Greek δῆμος to
the root δα, “to divide,” he can show that private property in Attica
originated in that allotment of land by the commune which still prevails
among the Slavs, while not only the existence but even the mode of life
and intellectual horizon of the primitive Aryans has been revealed by
comparative philology with more certainty and minuteness than could
have been done by any chronicle, however perfect. But perhaps the most
important of the results obtained by the application of the comparative
method to language, has been the light thrown upon the origin and nature
of mythology and the history of religion. Two new sciences, those of
comparative mythology and comparative religion, have grown up under the
shelter of glottology, and form subordinate sciences dependent upon it.
In the more immediately practical sphere of education, again, the science
of language has lightened the labours of the learner by explaining
the reason of the rule while it insists upon the reversal of the old
unscientific mode of teaching languages by beginning with the dead ones,
and points out that the method of science and of nature alike is to
proceed from the known to the unknown. By breaking down the prejudices
that have so long maintained our present cumbrous and inaccurate
spelling, it is preparing the way for a reform in that direction, with
its consequent saving of time and labour, while the construction of an
universal language is the aim towards which its students ultimately look.
But meanwhile, though much has been accomplished, much more still
remains to be done. Comparative philology and the science of language
are not yet a century old, and the problems of speech that still await
solution are many and important. The previous chapter will have shown
how various are the opinions still held as to the nature of language
and its science, while the belief that the exceptional—we might almost
say abnormal—Aryan family of speech is the type and rule of all others
still unconsciously influences a large amount of philological reasoning.
Is the science of language a physical or a historical one? Did roots
constitute a spoken language or are they phonetic types which never
entered into actual speech? Have isolating languages become agglutinative
and agglutinative languages inflectional? Do dialects precede the common
language or does the common language precede dialects? Have the languages
of the world been all derived from one or two primitive centres or do
they point to an infinite diversity of origin? Such are some of the
questions which still await an answer, and the answer requires more
investigation, more patient observation and induction, and, above all,
more labourers in the field of research.