MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY
§ 1. After Bopp and Grimm. § 2. K. M. Rapp. § 3. J. H. Bredsdorff.
§ 4. August Schleicher. § 5. Classification of Languages. § 6.
Reconstruction. § 7. Curtius, Madvig and Specialists. § 8. Max Müller
and Whitney.
III.--§ 1. After Bopp and Grimm.
Bopp and Grimm exercised an enormous influence on linguistic thought
and linguistic research in Germany and other countries. Long even
before their death we see a host of successors following in the main
the lines laid down in their work, and thus directly and indirectly
they determined the development of this science for a long time.
Through their efforts so much new light had been shed on a number of
linguistic phenomena that these took a quite different aspect from that
which they had presented to the previous generation; most of what had
been written about etymology and kindred subjects in the eighteenth
century seemed to the new school utterly antiquated, mere fanciful
vagaries of incompetent blunderers, whereas now scholars had found firm
ground on which to raise a magnificent structure of solid science. This
feeling was especially due to the undoubted recognition of one great
family of languages to which the vast majority of European languages,
as well as some of the most important Asiatic languages, belonged: here
we had one firmly established fact of the greatest magnitude, which
at once put an end to all the earlier whimsical attempts to connect
Latin and Greek words with Hebrew roots. As for the name of that family
of languages, Rask hesitated between different names, ‘European,’
‘Sarmatic’ and finally ‘Japhetic’ (as a counterpart of the Semitic
and the Hamitic languages); Bopp at first had no comprehensive name,
and on the title-page of his _Vergl. grammatik_ contents himself with
enumerating the chief languages described, but in the work itself he
says that he prefers the name ‘Indo-European,’ which has also found
wide acceptance, though more in France, England and Skandinavia than
in Germany. Humboldt for a long while said ‘Sanskritic,’ but later he
adopted ‘Indo-Germanic,’ and this has been the generally recognized
name used in Germany, in spite of Bopp’s protest who said that
‘Indo-klassisch’ would be more to the point; ‘Indo-Keltic’ has also
been proposed as designating the family through its two extreme members
to the East and West. But all these compound names are clumsy without
being completely pertinent, and it seems therefore much better to use
the short and convenient term ‘the Aryan languages’: Aryan being the
oldest name by which any members of the family designated themselves
(in India and Persia).[10]
Thanks to the labours of Bopp and Grimm and their co-workers and
followers, we see also a change in the status of the study of
languages. Formerly this was chiefly a handmaiden to philology--but
as this word is often in English used in a sense unknown to
other languages and really objectionable, namely as a synonym of
(comparative) study of languages, it will be necessary first to say a
few words about the terminology of our science. In this book I shall
use the word ‘philology’ in its continental sense, which is often
rendered in English by the vague word ‘scholarship,’ meaning thereby
the study of the specific culture of one nation; thus we speak of
Latin philology, Greek philology, Icelandic philology, etc. The word
‘linguist,’ on the other hand, is not infrequently used in the sense of
one who has merely a practical knowledge of some foreign language; but
I think I am in accordance with a growing number of scholars in England
and America if I call such a man a ‘practical linguist’ and apply the
word ‘linguist’ by itself to the scientific student of language (or of
languages); ‘linguistics’ then becomes a shorter and more convenient
name for what is also called the science of language (or of languages).
Now that the reader understands the sense in which I take these two
terms, I may go on to say that the beginning of the nineteenth century
witnessed a growing differentiation between philology and linguistics
in consequence of the new method introduced by comparative and by
historical grammar; it was nothing less than a completely new way of
looking at the facts of language and trying to trace their origin.
While to the philologist the Greek or Latin language, etc., was only
a means to an end, to the linguist it was an end in itself. The
former saw in it a valuable, and in fact an indispensable, means of
gaining a first-hand knowledge of the literature which was his chief
concern, but the linguist cared not for the literature as such, but
studied languages for their own sake, and might even turn to languages
destitute of literature because they were able to throw some light on
the life of language in general or on forms in related languages. The
philologist as such would not think of studying the Gothic of Wulfila,
as a knowledge of that language gives access only to a translation
of parts of the Bible, the ideas of which can be studied much better
elsewhere; but to the linguist Gothic was extremely valuable. The
differentiation, of course, is not an absolute one; besides being
linguists in the new sense, Rask was an Icelandic philologist, Bopp a
Sanskrit philologist, and Grimm a German philologist; but the tendency
towards the emancipation of linguistics was very strong in them, and
some of their pupils were pure linguists and did no work in philology.
In breaking away from philology and claiming for linguistics the rank
of a new and independent science, the partisans of the new doctrine
were apt to think that not only had they discovered a new method,
but that the object of their study was different from that of the
philologists, even when they were both concerned with language. While
the philologist looked upon language as part of the culture of some
nation, the linguist looked upon it as a natural object; and when in
the beginning of the nineteenth century philosophers began to divide
all sciences into the two sharply separated classes of mental and
natural sciences (geistes- und naturwissenschaften), linguists would
often reckon their science among the latter. There was in this a
certain amount of pride or boastfulness, for on account of the rapid
rise and splendid achievements of the natural sciences at that time,
it began to be a matter of common belief that they were superior
to, and were possessed of a more scientific method than, the other
class--the same view that finds an expression in the ordinary English
usage, according to which ‘science’ means natural science and the other
domains of human knowledge are termed the ‘arts’ or the ‘humanities.’
We see the new point of view in occasional utterances of the pioneers
of linguistic science. Rask expressly says that “Language is a natural
object and its study resembles natural history” (SA 2. 502); but when
he repeats the same sentence (in _Retskrivningslære_, 8) it appears
that he is thinking of language as opposed to the more artificial
writing, and the contrast is not between mental and natural science,
but between art and nature, between what can and what cannot be
consciously modified by man--it is really a different question.
Bopp, in his review of Grimm (1827, reprinted _Vocalismus_, 1836, p.
1), says: “Languages are to be considered organic natural bodies,
which are formed according to fixed laws, develop as possessing an
inner principle of life, and gradually die out because they do not
understand themselves any longer [!], and therefore cast off or
mutilate their members or forms, which were at first significant,
but gradually have become more of an extrinsic mass.... It is not
possible to determine how long languages may preserve their full vigour
of life and of procreation,” etc. This is highly figurative language
which should not be taken at its face value; but expressions like
these, and the constant use of such words as ‘organic’ and ‘inorganic’
in speaking of formations in languages, and ‘organism’ of the whole
language, would tend to widen the gulf between the philological and the
linguistic point of view. Bopp himself never consistently followed the
naturalistic way of looking at language, but in § 4 of this chapter
we shall see that Schleicher was not afraid of going to extremes and
building up a consistent natural science of language.
The cleavage between philology and linguistics did not take place
without arousing warm feeling. Classical scholars disliked the
intrusion of Sanskrit everywhere; they did not know that language and
did not see the use of it. They resented the way in which the new
science wanted to reconstruct Latin and Greek grammar and to substitute
new explanations for those which had always been accepted. Those
Sanskritists chatted of guna and vrddhi and other barbaric terms, and
even ventured to talk of a locative case in Latin, as if the number of
cases had not been settled once for all long ago![11]
Classicists were no doubt perfectly right when they reproached
comparativists for their neglect of syntax, which to them was the most
important part of grammar; they were also in some measure right when
they maintained that linguists to a great extent contented themselves
with a superficial knowledge of the languages compared, which they
studied more in grammars and glossaries than in living texts, and
sometimes they would even exult when they found proof of this in
solecisms in Bopp’s Latin translations from Sanskrit, and even on the
title-page of _Glossarium Sanscritum a Franzisco Bopp_. Classical
scholars also looked askance at the growing interest in the changes
of sounds, or, as it was then usual to say, of letters. But when they
were apt here to quote the scriptural phrase about the letter that
killeth, while the spirit giveth life, they overlooked the fact that
Nature has rendered it impossible for anyone to penetrate to the mind
of anyone else except through its outer manifestations, and that it
is consequently impossible to get at the spirit of a language except
through its sounds: phonology must therefore form the necessary basis
and prerequisite of the scientific study of any group of languages.
Still, it cannot be denied that sometimes comparative phonology was
treated in such a mechanical way as partly to dehumanize the study of
language.
When we look back at this period in the history of linguistics,
there are certain tendencies and characteristics that cannot fail to
catch our attention. First we must mention the prominence given to
Sanskrit, which was thought to be the unavoidable requirement of every
comparative linguist. In explaining anything in any of the cognate
languages the etymologist always turned first to Sanskrit words and
Sanskrit forms. This standpoint is found even much later, for instance
in Max Müller’s _Inaugural Address_ (1868, Ch. 19): “Sanskrit certainly
forms the only sound foundation of Comparative Philology, and it
will always remain the only safe guide through all its intricacies.
A comparative philologist without a knowledge of Sanskrit is like an
astronomer without a knowledge of mathematics.” A linguist of a later
generation may be excused for agreeing rather with Ellis, who says
(_Transact. Philol. Soc._, 1873-4, 21): “Almost in our own days came
the discovery of Sanskrit, and philology proper began--but, alas! at
the wrong end. Now, here I run great danger of being misunderstood.
Although for a scientific sifting of the nature of language I presume
to think that beginning at Sanskrit was unfortunate, yet I freely admit
that, had that language not been brought into Europe ... our knowledge
of language would have been in a poor condition indeed.... We are under
the greatest obligations to those distinguished men who have undertaken
to unravel its secrets and to show its connexion with the languages of
Europe. Yet I must repeat that for the pure science of language, to
begin with Sanskrit was as much beginning at the wrong end as it would
have been to commence zoology with palæontology--the relations of life
with the bones of the dead.”
Next, Bopp and his nearest successors were chiefly occupied with
finding likenesses between the languages treated and discovering things
that united them. This was quite natural in the first stage of the
new science, but sometimes led to one-sidedness, the characteristic
individuality of each language being lost sight of, while forms from
many countries and many times were mixed up in a hotch-potch. Rask, on
account of his whole mental equipment, was less liable to this danger
than most of his contemporaries; but Pott was evidently right when he
warned his fellow-students that their comparative linguistics should be
supplemented by separative linguistics (_Zählmethode_, 229), as it has
been to a great extent in recent years.
Still another feature of the linguistic science of those days is the
almost exclusive occupation of the student with dead languages. It
was quite natural that the earliest comparativists should first give
their attention to the oldest stages of the languages compared, since
these alone enabled them to prove the essential kinship between the
different members of the great Aryan family. In Grimm’s grammar nearly
all the space is taken up with Gothic, Old High German, Old Norse,
etc., and comparatively little is said about recent developments of the
same languages. In Bopp’s comparative grammar classical Greek and Latin
are, of course, treated carefully, but Modern Greek and the Romanic
languages are not mentioned (thus also in Schleicher’s _Compendium_
and in Brugmann’s _Grammar_), such later developments being left to
specialists who were more or less considered to be outside the sphere
of Comparative Linguistics and even of the science of language in
general, though it would have been a much more correct view to include
them in both, and though much more could really be learnt of the life
of language from these studies than from comparisons made in the spirit
of Bopp.
The earlier stages of different languages, which were compared by
linguists, were, of course, accessible only through the medium of
writing; we have seen that the early linguists spoke constantly of
letters and not of sounds. But this vitiated their whole outlook on
languages. These were scarcely ever studied at first-hand, and neither
in Bopp nor in Grimm nor in Pott or Benfey do we find such first-hand
observations of living spoken languages as play a great rôle in the
writings of Rask and impart an atmosphere of soundness to his whole
manner of looking at languages. If languages were called natural
objects, they were not yet studied as such or by truly naturalistic
methods.
When living dialects were studied, the interest constantly centred
round the archaic traits in them; every survival of an old form,
every trace of old sounds that had been dropped in the standard
speech, was greeted with enthusiasm, and the significance of these old
characteristics greatly exaggerated, the general impression being that
popular dialects were always much more conservative than the speech of
educated people. It was reserved for a much later time to prove that
this view is completely erroneous, and that popular dialects, in spite
of many archaic details, are on the whole further developed than the
various standard languages with their stronger tradition and literary
reminiscences.
III.--§ 2. K. M. Rapp.
It was from this archæological point of view only that Grimm
encouraged the study of dialects, but he expressly advised students
not to carry the research too far in the direction of discriminating
minutiæ of sounds, because these had little bearing on the history
of language as he understood it. In this connexion we may mention
an episode in the history of early linguistics that is symptomatic.
K. M. Rapp brought out his _Versuch einer Physiologie der Sprache
nebst historischer Entwickelung der abendländischen Idiome nach
physiologischen Grundsätzen_ in four volumes (1836, 1839, 1840,
1841). A physiological examination into the nature and classification
of speech sounds was to serve only as the basis of the historical
part, the grandiose plan of which was to find out how Greek, Latin
and Gothic sounded, and then to pursue the destinies of these sound
systems through the Middle Ages (Byzantine Greek, Old Provençal, Old
French, Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Old High German) to the present time
(Modern Greek, Italian, Spanish, etc., down to Low and High German,
with different dialects). To carry out this plan Rapp was equipped
with no small knowledge of the earlier stages of these languages
and a not contemptible first-hand observation of living languages.
He relates how from his childhood he had a “morbidly sharpened ear
for all acoustic impressions”; he had early observed the difference
between dialectal and educated speech and taken an interest in foreign
languages, such as French, Italian and English. He visited Denmark, and
there made the acquaintance of and became the pupil of Rask; he often
speaks of him and his works in terms of the greatest admiration. After
his return he took up the study of Jacob Grimm; but though he speaks
always very warmly about the other parts of Grimm’s work, Grimm’s
phonology disappointed him. “Grimm’s theory of letters I devoured with
a ravenous appetite for all the new things I had to learn from it,
but also with heartburning on account of the equally numerous things
that warred against the whole of my previous research with regard to
the nature of speech sounds; fascinated though I was by what I read,
it thus made me incredibly miserable.” He set to his great task with
enthusiasm, led by the conviction that “the historical material gives
here only one side of the truth, and that the living language in all
its branches that have never been committed to writing forms the other
and equally important side which is still far from being satisfactorily
investigated.” It is easy to understand that Rapp came into conflict
with Grimm’s _Buchstabenlehre_, that had been based exclusively on
written forms, and Rapp was not afraid of expressing his unorthodox
views in what he himself terms “a violent and arrogating tone.” No
wonder, therefore, that his book fell into disgrace with the leaders
of linguistics in Germany, who noticed its errors and mistakes, which
were indeed numerous and conspicuous, rather than the new and sane
ideas it contained. Rapp’s work is extraordinarily little known; in
Raumer’s _Geschichte der germanischen Philologie_ and similar works
it is not even mentioned, and when I disinterred it from undeserved
oblivion in my _Fonetik_ (1897, p. 35; cf. _Die neueren Sprachen_, vol.
xiii, 1904) it was utterly unknown to the German phoneticians of my
acquaintance. Yet not only are its phonetic observations[12] deserving
of praise, but still more its whole plan, based as it is on a thorough
comprehension of the mutual relations of sounds and writing, which
led Rapp to use phonetic transcription throughout, even in connected
specimens both of living and dead languages; that this is really the
only way in which it is possible to obtain a comprehensive and living
understanding of the sound-system of any language (as well as to get a
clear perception of the extent of one’s own ignorance of it!) has not
yet been generally recognized. The science of language would have made
swifter and steadier progress if Grimm and his successors had been able
to assimilate the main thoughts of Rapp.
III.--§ 3. J. H. Bredsdorff.
Another (and still earlier) work that was overlooked at the time
was the little pamphlet _Om Aarsagerne til Sprogenes Forandringer_
(1821) by the Dane J. H. Bredsdorff. Bopp and Grimm never really asked
themselves the fundamental question, How is it that language changes:
what are the driving forces that lead in course of time to such
far-reaching differences as those we find between Sanskrit and Latin,
or between Latin and French? Now, this is exactly the question that
Bredsdorff treats in his masterly pamphlet. Like Rapp, he was a very
good phonetician; but in the pamphlet that concerns us here he speaks
not only of phonetic but of other linguistic changes as well. These he
refers to the following causes, which he illustrates with well-chosen
examples: (1) Mishearing and misunderstanding; (2) misrecollection; (3)
imperfection of organs; (4) indolence: to this he inclines to refer
nine-tenths of all those changes in the pronunciation of a language
that are not due to foreign influences; (5) tendency towards analogy:
here he gives instances from the speech of children and explains by
analogy such phenomena as the extension of _s_ to all genitives, etc.;
(6) the desire to be distinct; (7) the need of expressing new ideas.
He recognizes that there are changes that cannot be brought under any
of these explanations, e.g. the Gothonic sound shift (cf. above, p.
43 note), and he emphasizes the many ways in which foreign nations or
foreign languages may influence a language. Bredsdorff’s explanations
may not always be correct; but what constitutes the deep originality
of his little book is the way in which linguistic changes are always
regarded in terms of human activity, chiefly of a psychological
character. Here he was head and shoulders above his contemporaries; in
fact, most of Bredsdorff’s ideas, such as the power of analogy, were
the same that sixty years later had to fight so hard to be recognized
by the leading linguists of that time.[13]
III.--§ 4. August Schleicher.
In Rapp, and even more in Bredsdorff, we get a whiff of the scientific
atmosphere of a much later time; but most of the linguists of the
twenties and following decades (among whom A. F. Pott deserves to be
specially named) moved in essentially the same grooves as Bopp and
Grimm, and it will not be necessary here to deal in detail with their
work.
August Schleicher (1821-68) in many ways marks the culmination of the
first period of Comparative Linguistics, as well as the transition to
a new period with different aims and, partially at any rate, a new
method. His intimate knowledge of many languages, his great power
of combination, his clear-cut and always lucid exposition--all this
made him a natural leader, and made his books for many years the
standard handbooks of linguistic science. Unlike Bopp and Grimm, he was
exclusively a linguist, or, as he called it himself, ‘glottiker,’ and
never tired of claiming for the science of linguistics (‘glottik’),
as opposed to philology, the rank of a separate natural science.
Schleicher specialized in Slavonic and Lithuanian; he studied the
latter language in its own home and took down a great many songs
and tales from the mouths of the peasants; he was for some years
a professor in the University of Prague, and there acquired a
conversational knowledge of Czech; he spoke Russian, too, and thus
in contradistinction to Bopp and Grimm had a first-hand knowledge
of more than one foreign language; his interest in living speech is
also manifested in his specimens of the dialect of his native town,
_Volkstümliches aus Sonneberg_. When he was a child his father very
severely insisted on the constant and correct use of the educated
language at home; but the boy, perhaps all the more on account of the
paternal prohibition, was deeply attracted to the popular dialect he
heard from his playfellows and to the fascinating folklore of the old
townspeople, which he was later to take down and put into print. In the
preface he says that the acquisition of foreign tongues is rendered
considerably easier through the habit of speaking two dialects from
childhood.
What makes Schleicher particularly important for the purposes of this
volume is the fact that in a long series of publications he put forth
not only details of his science, but original and comprehensive views
on the fundamental questions of linguistic theory, and that these had
great influence on the linguistic philosophy of the following decades.
He was, perhaps, the most consistent as well as one of the clearest of
linguistic thinkers, and his views therefore deserve to be examined in
detail and with the greatest care.
Apart from languages, Schleicher was deeply interested both in
philosophy and in natural science, especially botany. From these he
fetched many of the weapons of his armoury, and they coloured the whole
of his theory of language. In his student days at Tübingen he became
an enthusiastic adherent of the philosophy of Hegel, and not even the
Darwinian sympathies and views of which he became a champion towards
the end of his career made him abandon the doctrines of his youth.
As for science, he says that naturalists make us understand that in
science nothing is of value except facts established through strictly
objective observation and the conclusions based on such facts--this
is a lesson that he thinks many of his colleagues would do well to
take to heart. There can be no doubt that Schleicher in his practice
followed a much more rigorous and sober method than his predecessors,
and that his _Compendium_ in that respect stands far above Bopp’s
_Grammar_. In his general reasonings on the nature of language, on the
other hand, Schleicher did not always follow the strict principles of
sober criticism, being, as we shall now see, too dependent on Hegelian
philosophy, and also on certain dogmatic views that he had inherited
from previous German linguists, from Schlegel downwards.
The Introductions to Schleicher’s two first volumes are entirely
Hegelian, though with a characteristic difference, for in the first
he says that the changes to be seen in the realm of languages are
decidedly historical and in no way resemble the changes that we may
observe in nature, for “however manifold these may be, they never
show anything but a circular course that repeats itself continually”
(Hegel), while in language, as in everything mental, we may see new
things that have never existed before. One generation of animals or
plants is like another; the skill of animals has no history, as human
art has; language is specifically human and mental: its development
is therefore analogous to history, for in both we see a continual
progress to new phases. In Schleicher’s second volume, however, this
view is expressly rejected in its main part, because Schleicher now
wants to emphasize the natural character of language: it is true, he
now says, that language shows a ‘werden’ which may be termed history
in the wider sense of this word, but which is found in its purest form
in nature; for instance, in the growing of a plant. Language belongs
to the natural sphere, not to the sphere of free mental activity, and
this must be our starting-point if we would discover the method of
linguistic science (ii. 21).
It would, of course, be possible to say that the method of linguistic
science is that of natural science, and yet to maintain that the
object of linguistics is different from that of natural science, but
Schleicher more and more tends to identify the two, and when he was
attacked for saying, in his pamphlet on the Darwinian theory, that
languages were material things, real natural objects, he wrote in
defence _Ueber die bedeutung der sprache für die naturgeschichte des
menschen_, which is highly characteristic as the culminating point of
the materialistic way of looking at languages. The activity, he says,
of any organ, e.g. one of the organs of digestion, or the brain or
muscles, is dependent on the constitution of that organ. The different
ways in which different species, nay even different individuals, walk
are evidently conditioned by the structure of the limbs; the activity
or function of the organ is, as it were, nothing but an aspect of the
organ itself, even if it is not always possible by means of the knife
or microscope of the scientist to demonstrate the material cause of the
phenomenon. What is true of the manner of walking is true of language
as well; for language is nothing but the result, perceptible through
the ear, of the action of a complex of material substances in the
structure of the brain and of the organs of speech, with their nerves,
bones, muscles, etc. Anatomists, however, have not yet been able to
demonstrate differences in the structures of these organs corresponding
to differences of nationality--to discriminate, that is, the organs of
a Frenchman (_quâ_ Frenchman) from those of a German (_quâ_ German).
Accordingly, as the chemist can only arrive at the elements which
compose the sun by examining the light which it emits, while the source
of that light remains inaccessible to him, so must we be content to
study the nature of languages, not in their material antecedents
but in their audible manifestations. It makes no great difference,
however, for “the two things stand to each other as cause and effect,
as substance and phenomenon: a philosopher [i.e. a Hegelian] would say
that they are identical.”
Now I, for one, fail to understand how this can be what Schleicher
believes it to be, “a refutation of the objection that language is
nothing but a consequence of the activity of these organs.” The
sun exists independently of the human observer; but there could be
no such thing as language if there was not besides the speaker a
listener who might become a speaker in his turn. Schleicher speaks
continually in his pamphlet as if structural differences in the brain
and organs of speech were the real language, and as if it were only
for want of an adequate method of examining this hidden structure that
we had to content ourselves with studying language in its outward
manifestation as audible speech. But this is certainly on the face of
it preposterous, and scarcely needs any serious refutation. If the
proof of the pudding is in the eating, the proof of a language must be
in the hearing and understanding; but in order to be heard words must
first be spoken, and in these two activities (that of producing and
that of perceiving sounds) the real essence of language must consist,
and these two activities are the primary (or why not the exclusive?)
object of the science of language.
Schleicher goes on to meet another objection that may be made to his
view of the ‘substantiality of language,’ namely, that drawn from the
power of learning other languages. Schleicher doubts the possibility
of learning another language to perfection; he would admit this only
in the case of a man who exchanged his mother-tongue for another in
his earliest youth; “but then he becomes by that very fact a different
being from what he was: brain and organs of speech develop in another
direction.” If Mr. So-and-So is said to speak and write German, English
and French equally well, Schleicher first inclines to doubt the fact;
and then, granting that the same individual may “be at the same time
a German, a Frenchman and an Englishman,” he asks us to remember that
all these three languages belong to the same family and may, from a
broader point of view, be termed species of the same language; but he
denies the possibility of anyone’s being equally at home in Chinese and
German, or in Arabic and Hottentot, etc., because these languages are
totally different in their innermost essence. (But what of bilingual
children in Finland, speaking Swedish and Finnish, or in Greenland,
speaking Danish and Eskimo, or in Java, speaking Dutch and Malay?)
Schleicher has to admit that our organs are to some extent flexible and
capable of acquiring activities that they had not at first; but one
definite function is and remains nevertheless the only natural one,
and thus “the possibility of a man’s acquiring foreign languages more
or less perfectly is no objection to our seeing the material basis of
language in the structure of the brain and organs of speech.”
Even if we admit that Schleicher is so far right that in nearly all (or
all?) cases of bilingualism one language comes more naturally than
the other, he certainly exaggerates the difference, which is always
one of degree; and at any rate his final conclusion is wrong, for we
might with the same amount of justice say that a man who has first
learned to play the piano has acquired the structure of brain and
fingers peculiar to a pianist, and that it is then unnatural for him
also to learn to play the violin, because that would imply a different
structure of these organs. In all these cases we have to do with a
definite proficiency or skill, which can only be obtained by constant
practice, though of course one man may be better predisposed by nature
for it than another; but then it is also the fact that people who speak
no foreign language attain to very different degrees of proficiency
in the use of their mother-tongue. It cannot be said too emphatically
that we have here a fundamental question, and that Schleicher’s view
can never lead to a true conception of what language is, or to a real
insight into its changes and historical development.
Schleicher goes on to say that the classification of mankind into
races should not be based on the formation of the skull or on the
character of the hair, or any such external criteria, as they are by no
means constant, but rather on language, because this is a thoroughly
constant criterion. This alone would give a perfectly natural system,
one, for instance, in which all Turks would be classed together, while
otherwise the Osmanli Turk belongs to the ‘Caucasian’ race and the
so-called Tataric Turks to the ‘Mongolian’ race; on the other hand,
the Magyar and the Basque are not physically to be distinguished from
the Indo-European, though their languages are widely dissimilar.
According to Schleicher, therefore, the natural system of languages
is also the natural system of mankind, for language is closely
connected with the whole higher life of men, which is therefore taken
into consideration in and with their language. In this book I am not
concerned with the ethnographical division of mankind into races, and
I therefore must content myself with saying that the very examples
adduced by Schleicher seem to me to militate against his theory that
a division of mankind based on language is the natural one: are we to
reckon the Basque’s son, who speaks nothing but French (or Spanish) as
belonging to a different race from his father? And does not Schleicher
contradict himself when on p. 16 he writes that language is “ein völlig
constantes merkmal,” and p. 20 that it is “in fortwährender veränderung
begriffen”? So far as I see, Schleicher never expressly says that he
thinks that the physical structure conditioning the structure of a
man’s language is hereditary, though some of his expressions point
that way, and that may be what he means by the expression ‘constant.’
In other places (Darw. 25, Bed. 24) he allows external conditions of
life to exercise some influence on the character of a language, as when
languages of neighbouring peoples are similar (Aryans and Semites, for
example, are the only nations possessing flexional languages). On such
points, however, he gives only a few hints and suggestions.
III.--§ 5. Classification of Languages.
In the question of the classification of languages Schleicher
introduces a deductive element from his strong preoccupation with
Hegelian ideas. Hegel everywhere moves in trilogies; Schleicher
therefore must have three classes, and consequently has to tack
together two of Pott’s four classes (agglutinating and incorporating);
then he is able philosophically to deduce the tripartition. For
language consists in _meaning_ (bedeutung; matter, contents, root) and
_relation_ (beziehung; form), tertium non datur. As it would be a sheer
impossibility for a language to express form only, we obtain three
classes:
I. Here meaning is the only thing indicated by sound; relation is
merely suggested by word-position: isolating languages.
II. Both meaning and relation are expressed by sound, but the formal
elements are visibly tacked on to the root, which is itself invariable:
agglutinating languages.
III. The elements of meaning and of relation are fused together or
absorbed into a higher unity, the root being susceptible of inward
modification as well as of affixes to denote form: flexional languages.
Schleicher employs quasi-mathematical formulas to illustrate these
three classes: if we denote a root by _R_, a prefix by _p_ and a suffix
by _s_, and finally use a raised _x_ to denote an inner modification,
we see that in the isolated languages we have nothing but _R_ (a
sentence may be represented by _R R R R ..._), a word in the second
class has the formula _R s_ or _p R_ or _p R s_, but in the third class
we may have _p R^x s_ (or _R^x s_).
Now, according to Schleicher the three classes of languages are
not only found simultaneously in the tongues of our own day, but
they represent three stages of linguistic development; “to the
_nebeneinander_ of the system corresponds the _nacheinander_ of
history.” Beyond the flexional stage no language can attain;
the symbolic denotation of relation by flexion is the highest
accomplishment of language; speech has here effectually realized its
object, which is to give a faithful phonetic image of thought. But
before a language can become flexional it must have passed through an
isolating and an agglutinating period. Is this theory borne out by
historical facts? Can we trace back any of the existing flexional
languages to agglutination and isolation? Schleicher himself answers
this question in the negative: the earliest Latin was of as good
a flexional type as are the modern Romanic languages. This would
seem a sort of contradiction in terms; but the orthodox Hegelian is
ready with an answer to any objection; he has the word of his master
that History cannot begin till the human spirit becomes “conscious
of its own freedom,” and this consciousness is only possible after
the complete development of language. The formation of Language
and History are accordingly successive stages of human activity.
Moreover, as history and historiography, i.e. literature, come into
existence simultaneously, Schleicher is enabled to express the same
idea in a way that “is only seemingly paradoxical,” namely, that
the development of language is brought to a conclusion as soon as
literature makes its appearance; this is a crisis after which language
remains fixed; language has now become a means, instead of being the
aim, of intellectual activity. We never meet with any language that
is developing or that has become more perfect; in historical times
all languages move only downhill; linguistic history means decay of
languages as such, subjugated as they are through the gradual evolution
of the mind to greater freedom.
The reader of the above survey of previous classifications will easily
see that in the matter itself Schleicher adds very little of his own.
Even the expressions, which are here given throughout in Schleicher’s
own words, are in some cases recognizable as identical with, or closely
similar to, those of earlier scholars.
He made one coherent system out of ideas of classification and
development already found in others. What is new is the philosophical
substructure of Hegelian origin, and there can be no doubt that
Schleicher imagined that by this addition he contributed very much
towards giving stability and durability to the whole system. And yet
this proved to be the least stable and durable part of the structure,
and as a matter of fact the Hegelian reasoning is not repeated by a
single one of those who give their adherence to the classification. Nor
can it be said to carry conviction, and undoubtedly it has seemed to
most linguists at the same time too rigid and too unreal to have any
importance.
But apart from the philosophical argument the classification proved
very successful in the particular shape it had found in Schleicher.
Its adoption into two such widely read works as Max Müller’s and
Whitney’s Lectures on the Science of Language contributed very much
to the popularity of the system, though the former’s attempt at
ascribing to the tripartition a sociological importance by saying that
juxtaposition (isolation) is characteristic of the ‘family stage,’
agglutination of ‘the nomadic stage’ and amalgamation (flexion) of
the ‘political stage’ of human society was hardly taken seriously by
anybody.
The chief reasons for the popularity of this classification are not far
to seek. It is easy of handling and appeals to the natural fondness
for clear-cut formulas through its specious appearance of regularity
and rationality. Besides, it flatters widespread prejudices in so
far as it places the two groups of languages highest that are spoken
by those nations which have culturally and religiously exercised the
deepest influence on the civilization of the world, Aryans and Semites.
Therefore also Pott’s view, according to which the incorporating or
‘polysynthetic’ American languages possess the same characteristics
that distinguish flexion as against agglutination, only in a still
higher degree, is generally tacitly discarded, for obviously it
would not do to place some languages of American Indians higher than
Sanskrit or Greek. But when these are looked upon as the very flower
of linguistic development it is quite natural to regard the modern
languages of Western Europe as degenerate corruptions of the ancient
more highly flexional languages; this is in perfect keeping with the
prevalent admiration for classical antiquity and with the belief in
a far past golden age. Arguments such as these may not have been
consciously in the minds of the framers of the ordinary classification,
but there can be no doubt that they have been unconsciously working in
favour of the system, though very little thought seems to be required
to show the fallacy of the assumption that high civilization has any
intrinsic and necessary connexion with the _grammatical_ construction
of the language spoken by the race or nation concerned. No language
of modern Europe presents the flexional type in a purer shape than
Lithuanian, where we find preserved nearly the same grammatical system
as in old Sanskrit, yet no one would assert that the culture of
Lithuanian peasants is higher than that of Shakespeare, whose language
has lost an enormous amount of the old flexions. Culture and language
must be appraised separately, each on its own merits and independently
of the other.
From a purely linguistic point of view there are many objections to the
usual classification, and it will be well here to bring them together,
though this will mean an interruption of the historical survey which is
the main object of these chapters.
First let us look upon the tripartition as purporting a comprehensive
classification of languages as existing side by side without any
regard to historic development (the _nebeneinander_ of Schleicher).
Here it does not seem to be an ideal manner of classifying a great
many objects to establish three classes of such different dimensions
that the first comprises only Chinese and some other related languages
of the Far East, and the third only two families of languages, while
the second includes hundreds of unrelated languages of the most
heterogeneous character. It seems certain that the languages of Class
I represent one definite type of linguistic structure, and it may be
that Aryan and Semitic should be classed together on account of the
similarity of their structure, though this is by no means quite certain
and has been denied (by Bopp, and in recent times by Porzezinski);
but what is indubitable is that the ‘agglutinating’ class is made to
comprehend languages of the most diverse type, even if we follow Pott
and exclude from this class all incorporating languages. Finnish is
always mentioned as a typically agglutinative language, yet there
we meet with such declensional forms as nominative _vesi_ ‘water,’
_toinen_ ‘second,’ partitive _vettä_, _toista_, genitive _veden_,
_toisen_, and such verbal forms as _sido-n_ ‘I bind,’ _sido-t_ ‘thou
bindest,’ _sito-o_ ‘he binds,’ and the three corresponding persons in
the plural, _sido-mme_, _sido-tte_, _sito-vat_. Here we are far from
having one unchangeable root to which endings have been glued, for the
root itself undergoes changes before the endings. In Kiyombe (Congo)
the perfect of verbs is in many cases formed by means of a vowel
change that is a complete parallel to the apophony in English _drink_,
_drank_, thus _vanga_ ‘do,’ perfect _venge_, _twala_ ‘bring,’ perfect
_twele_ or _twede_, etc. (_Anthropos_, ii. p. 761). Examples like these
show that flexion, in whatever way we may define this term, is not
the prerogative of the Aryans and Semites, but may be found in other
nations as well. ‘Agglutination’ is either too vague a term to be used
in classification, or else, if it is taken strictly according to the
usual definition, it is too definite to comprise many of the languages
which are ordinarily reckoned to belong to the second class.
It will be seen, also, that those writers who aim at giving
descriptions of a variety of human tongues, or of them all, do
not content themselves with the usual three classes, but have a
greater number. This began with Steinthal, who in various works
tried to classify languages partly from geographical, partly from
structural points of view, without, however, arriving at any definite
or consistent system. Friedrich Müller, in his great _Grundriss
der Sprachwissenschaft_, really gives up the psychological or
structural division of languages, distributing the more than hundred
different languages that he describes among twelve races of mankind,
characterized chiefly by external criteria that have nothing to do with
language. Misteli establishes six main types: I. Incorporating. II.
Root-isolating. III. Stem-isolating. IV. Affixing (Anreihende). V.
Agglutinating. VI. Flexional. These he also distributes so as to form
four classes: (1) languages with sentence-words: I; (2) languages with
no words: II, III and IV; (3) languages with apparent words: V; and
(4) languages with real words: VI. But the latter division had better
be left alone; it turns on the intricate question “What constitutes a
word?” and ultimately depends on the usual depreciation of ‘inferior
races’ and corresponding exaltation of our own race, which is alone
reputed capable of possessing ‘real words.’ I do not see why we should
not recognize that the vocables of Greenlandic, Malay, Kafir or Finnish
are just as ‘real’ words as any in Hebrew or Latin.
Our final result, then, is that the tripartition is insufficient and
inadequate to serve as a comprehensive classification of languages
actually existing. Nor shall we wonder at this if we see the way in
which the theory began historically in an _obiter dictum_ of Fr. v.
Schlegel at a time when the inner structure of only a few languages had
been properly studied, and if we consider the lack of clearness and
definiteness inherent in such notions as agglutination and flexion,
which are nevertheless made the corner-stones of the whole system. We
therefore must go back to the wise saying of Humboldt quoted on p. 59,
that the structural diversities of languages are too great for us to
classify them comprehensively.
In a subsequent part of this work I shall deal with the tripartition
as representing three successive stages in the development of such
languages as our own (the _nacheinander_ of Schleicher), and try to
show that Schleicher’s view is not borne out by the facts of linguistic
history, which give us a totally different picture of development.
From both points of view, then, I think that the classification here
considered deserves to be shelved among the hasty generalizations in
which the history of every branch of science is unfortunately so rich.
III.--§ 6. Reconstruction.
Probably Schleicher’s most original and important contribution to
linguistics was his reconstruction of the Proto-Aryan language,
_die indogermanische ursprache_. The possibility of inferentially
constructing this parent language, which to Sanskrit, Greek, Latin,
Gothic, etc., was what Latin was to Italian, Spanish, French, etc.,
was early in his thoughts (see quotations illustrating the gradual
growth of the idea in Oertel, p. 39 f.), but it was not till the
first edition of his _Compendium_ that he carried it out in detail,
giving there for each separate chapter (vowels, consonants, roots,
stem-formation, declension, conjugation) first the Proto-Aryan forms
and then those actually found in the different languages, from which
the former were inferred. This arrangement has the advantage that the
reader everywhere sees the historical evolution in the natural order,
beginning with the oldest and then proceeding to the later stages, just
as the Romanic scholar begins with Latin and then takes in successive
stages Old French, Modern French, etc. But in the case of Proto-Aryan
this procedure is apt to deceive the student and make him take these
primitive forms as something certain, whose existence reposes on
just as good evidence as the forms found in Sanskrit literature or
in German or English as spoken in our own days. When he finds some
forms given first and used to _explain_ some others, there is some
danger of his forgetting that the forms given first have a quite
different status to the others, and that their only _raison d’être_ is
the desire of a modern linguist to explain existing forms in related
languages which present certain similarities as originating from a
common original form, which he does not find in his texts and has,
therefore, to reconstruct. But apart from this there can be no doubt
that the reconstruction of older forms (and the ingenious device, due
to Schleicher, of denoting such forms by means of a preposed asterisk
to distinguish them from forms actually found) has been in many ways
beneficial to historical grammar. Only it may be questioned whether
Schleicher did not go too far when he wished to base the whole grammar
of all the Aryan languages on such reconstructions, instead of using
them now and then to explain single facts.
Schleicher even ventured (and in this he seems to have had no follower)
to construct an entire little fable in primitive Aryan: see “Eine fabel
in indogermanischer ursprache,” _Beiträge zur vergl. sprachforschung_,
5. 206 (1868). In the introductory remarks he complains of the
difficulty of such attempts, chiefly because of the almost complete
lack of particles capable of being inferred from the existing
languages, but he seems to have entertained no doubt about the phonetic
and grammatical forms of the words he employed. As the fable is not
now commonly known, I give it here, with Schleicher’s translation, as
a document of this period of comparative linguistics.
AVIS AKVASAS KA
Avis, jasmin varna na ā ast, dadarka akvams, tam, vāgham garum
vaghantam, tam, bhāram magham, tam, manum āku bharantam. Avis
akvabhjams ā vavakat: kard aghnutai mai vidanti manum akvams agantam.
Akvāsas ā vavakant: krudhi avai, kard aghnutai vividvantsvas: manus
patis varnām avisāms karnanti svabhjam gharmam vastram avibhjams ka
varnā na asti.
Tat kukruvants avis agram ā bhugat.
[DAS] SCHAF UND [DIE] ROSSE
[Ein] schaf, [auf] welchem wolle nicht war (ein geschorenes schaf)
sah rosse, das [einen] schweren wagen fahrend, das [eine] grosse
last, das [einen] menschen schnell tragend. [Das] schaf sprach [zu
den] rossen: [Das] herz wird beengt [in] mir (es thut mir herzlich
leid), sehend [den] menschen [die] rosse treibend.
[Die] rosse sprachen: Höre schaf, [das] herz wird beengt [in den]
gesehend-habenden (es thut uns herzlich leid, da wir wissen): [der]
mensch, [der] herr macht [die] wolle [der] schafe [zu einem] warmen
kleide [für] sich und [den] schafen ist nicht wolle (die schafe aber
haben keine wolle mehr, sie werden geschoren; es geht ihnen noch
schlechter als den rossen).
Dies gehört habend bog (entwich) [das] schaf [auf das] feld (es
machte sich aus dem staube).
The question here naturally arises: Is it possible in the way initiated
by Schleicher to reconstruct extinct linguistic stages, and what degree
of probability can be attached to the forms thus created by linguists?
The answer certainly must be that in some instances the reconstruction
may have a very strong degree of probability, namely, if the data on
which it is based are unambiguous and the form to be reconstructed is
not far removed from that or those actually found; but that otherwise
any reconstruction becomes doubtful, and naturally the more so
according to the extent of the reconstruction (as when a whole text
is constructed) and to the distance in time that intervenes between
the known and the unknown stage. If we look at the genitives of Lat.
_genus_ and Gr. _génos_, which are found as _generis_ and _génous_,
it is easy to see that both presuppose a form with _s_ between two
vowels, as we see a great many intervocalic _s_’s becoming _r_ in
Latin and disappearing in Greek; but when Schleicher gives as the
prototype of both (and of corresponding forms in the other languages)
Aryan _ganasas_, he oversteps the limits of the permissible in so far
as he ascribes to the vowels definite sounds not really warranted by
the known forms. If we knew the modern Scandinavian languages and
English only, we should not hesitate to give to the Proto-Gothonic
genitive of the word for ‘mother’ the ending _-s_, cf. Dan. _moders_,
E. _mother’s_; but G. _der mutter_ suffices to show that the conclusion
is not safe, and as a matter of fact, both in Old Norse and in Old
English the genitive of this word is without an _s_. An analogous case
is presented when Schleicher reconstructs the nom. of the word for
‘father’ as _patars_, because he presupposes _-s_ as the invariable
sign of every nom. sg. masc., although in this particular word not
a single one of the old languages has _-s_ in the nominative. All
Schleicher’s reconstructions are based on the assumption that Primitive
Aryan had a very simple structure, only few consonant and fewer vowel
sounds, and great regularity in morphology; but, as we shall see,
this assumption is completely gratuitous and was exploded only a few
years after his death. Gabelentz (Spr 182), therefore, was right when
he said, with a certain irony, that the Aryan _ursprache_ had changed
beyond recognition in the short time between Schleicher and Brugmann.
The moral to be drawn from all this seems to be that hypothetical and
starred forms should be used sparingly and with the extremest caution.
With regard to inferential forms denoted by a star, the following
note may not be out of place here. Their purely theoretical character
is not always realized. An example will illustrate what I mean. If
etymological dictionaries give as the origin of F. _ménage_ (OF.
_maisnage_) a Latin form *_mansionaticum_, the etymology may be correct
although such a Latin word may never at any time have been uttered. The
word was framed at some date, no one knows exactly when, from the word
which at various times had the forms (acc.) _mansionem_, *_masione_,
_maison_, by means of the ending which at first had the form _-aticum_
(as in _viaticum_), and finally (through several intermediate stages)
became _-age_; but at what stage of each the two elements met to make
the word which eventually became _ménage_, no one can tell, so that
the only thing really asserted is that _if_ the word had been formed
at a very early date (which is far from probable) it would have been
_mansionaticum_. It would, therefore, perhaps be more correct to say
that the word is from _mansione_ + _-aticum_.
III.--§ 7. Curtius, Madvig, and Specialists.
Second only to Schleicher among the linguists of those days was Georg
Curtius (1820-85), at one time his colleague in the University of
Prague. Curtius’s special study was Greek, and his books on the Greek
verb and on Greek etymology cleared up a great many doubtful points;
he also contributed very much to bridge the gulf between classical
philology and Aryan linguistics. His views on general questions
were embodied in the book _Zur Chronologie der indogermanischen
Sprachforschung_ (1873). While Schleicher died when his fame was at its
highest and his theories were seemingly victorious in all the leading
circles, Curtius had the misfortune to see a generation of younger
men, including some of his own best disciples, such as Brugmann,
advance theories that seemed to him to be in conflict with the most
essential principles of his cherished science; and though he himself,
like Schleicher, had always been in favour of a stricter observance of
sound-laws than his predecessors, his last book was a polemic against
those younger scholars who carried the same point to the excess of
admitting no exceptions at all, who believed in innumerable analogical
formations even in the old languages, and whose reconstructions of
primitive forms appeared to the old man as deprived of that classical
beauty of the _ursprache_ which was represented in his own and
Schleicher’s works (_Zur Kritik der neuesten Sprachforschung_, 1885).
But this is anticipating.
If Curtius was a comparativist with a sound knowledge of classical
philology, Johan Nikolai Madvig was pre-eminently a classical
philologist who took a great interest in general linguistics and
brought his critical acumen and sober common sense to bear on many of
the problems that exercised the minds of his contemporaries. He was
opposed to everything of a vague and mystical nature in the current
theories of language and disliked the tendency of some scholars to
find deep-lying mysterious powers at the root of linguistic phenomena.
But he probably went too far in his rationalism, for example, when he
entirely denied the existence of the sound-symbolism on which Humboldt
had expatiated. He laid much stress on the identity of the linguistic
faculty in all ages: the first speakers had no more intention than
people to-day of creating anything systematic or that would be good
for all times and all occasions--they could have no other object in
view than that of making themselves understood at the moment; hence
the want of system which we find everywhere in languages: a different
number of cases in singular and plural, different endings, etc. Madvig
did not escape some inconsistencies, as when he himself would explain
the use of the soft vowel _a_ to denote the feminine gender by a kind
of sound-symbolism, or when he thought it possible to determine in what
order the different grammatical ideas presented themselves to primitive
man (tense relation first in the verb, number before case in the noun).
He attached too little value to phonological and etymological research,
but on the whole his views were sounder than many which were set forth
on the same subjects at the time; his papers, however, were very little
known, partly because they were written in Danish, partly because his
style was extremely heavy and difficult, and when he finally brought
out his _Kleine philologische schriften_ in German (1875), he expressed
his regret in the preface at finding that many of the theories he
had put forward years before in Danish had in the meantime been
independently arrived at by Whitney, who had had the advantage of
expressing them in a world-language.
One of the most important features of the period with which we are
here dealing is the development of a number of special branches of
historical linguistics on a comparative basis. Curtius’s work on
Greek might be cited as one example; in the same way there were
specialists in Sanskrit (Westergaard and Benfey among others), in
Slavonic (Miklosich and Schleicher), in Keltic (Zeuss), etc. Grimm
had numerous followers in the Gothonic or Germanic field, while in
Romanic philology there was an active and flourishing school, headed
by Friedrich Diez, whose _Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen_ and
_Etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Sprachen_ were perhaps the
best introduction to the methodical study of linguistics that anyone
could desire; the writer of these lines looks back with the greatest
gratitude to that period of his youth when he had the good fortune to
make the acquaintance of these truly classical works. Everything was so
well arranged, so carefully thought out and so lucidly explained, that
one had everywhere the pleasant feeling that one was treading on firm
ground, the more so as the basis of the whole was not an artificially
constructed nebulous _ursprache_, but the familiar forms and words of
an historical language. Here one witnessed the gradual differentiation
of Latin into seven or eight distinct languages, whose development it
was possible to follow century by century in well-authenticated texts.
The picture thus displayed before one’s eyes of actual linguistic
growth in all domains--sounds, forms, word-formation, syntax--and (a
very important corollary) of the interdependence of these domains,
could not but leave a very strong impression--not merely enthusiasm for
what had been achieved here, but also a salutary skepticism of theories
in other fields which had not a similarly solid basis.
III.--§ 8. Max Müller and Whitney.
Working, as we have seen, in many fields, linguists had now brought to
light a shoal of interesting facts affecting a great many languages
and had put forth valuable theories to explain these facts; but most
of their work remained difficult of access except to the specialist,
and very little was done by the experts to impart to educated people
in general those results of the new science which might be enjoyed
without deeper study. But in 1861 Max Müller gave the first series
of those _Lectures on the Science of Language_ which, in numerous
editions, did more than anything else to popularize linguistics and
served to initiate a great many students into our science. In many
ways these lectures were excellently adapted for this purpose, for
the author had a certain knack of selecting interesting illustrations
and of presenting his subject in a way that tended to create the same
enthusiasm for it that he felt himself. But his arguments do not bear
a close inspection. Too often, after stating a problem, he is found to
fly off at a tangent and to forget what he has set out to prove for
the sake of an interesting etymology or a clever paradox. He gives an
uncritical acceptance to many of Schleicher’s leading ideas; thus, the
science of linguistics is to him a physical science and has nothing to
do with philology, which is an historical science. If, however, we look
at the book itself, we shall find that everything that he counts on to
secure the interest of his reader, everything that made his lectures
so popular, is really non-naturalistic: all those brilliant exposés of
word-history are really like historical anecdotes in a book on social
evolution; they may have some bearing on the fundamental problems,
but these are rarely or never treated as real problems of natural
science. Nor does he, when taken to task, maintain his view very
seriously, but partly retracts it and half-heartedly ensconces himself
behind the dictum that everything depends on the definition you give
of “physical science” (see especially Ch 234, 442, 497)--thus calling
forth Whitney’s retort that “the implication here is that our author
has a right at his own good pleasure to lay down such a definition of
a physical science as should make the name properly applicable to the
study of this particular one among the products of human capacities....
So he may prove that a whale is a fish, if you only allow him to define
what a fish is” (M 23 f.).
Though Schleicher and Max Müller in their own day had few followers
in defining linguistics as a natural or physical science--the
opposite view was taken, for instance, by Curtius (K 154), Madvig and
Whitney--there can be no doubt that the naturalistic point of view
practically, though perhaps chiefly unconsciously, had wide-reaching
effects on the history of linguistic science. It was intimately
connected with the problems chiefly investigated and with the way
in which they were treated. From Grimm through Pott to Schleicher
and his contemporaries we see a growing interest in phonological
comparisons; more and more “sound-laws” were discovered, and those
found were more and more rigorously applied, with the result that
etymological investigation was attended with a degree of exactness
of which former generations had no idea. But as these phonological
studies were not, as a rule, based on a real, penetrating insight into
the nature of speech-sounds, the work of the etymologist tended more
and more to be purely mechanical, and the science of language was to
a great extent deprived of those elements which are more intimately
connected with the human ‘soul.’ Isolated vowels and consonants were
compared, isolated flexional forms and isolated words were treated more
and more in detail and explained by other isolated forms and words
in other languages, all of them being like dead leaves shaken off a
tree rather than parts of a living and moving whole. The speaking
individual and the speaking community were too much lost sight of.
Too often comparativists gained a considerable acquaintance with the
sound-laws and the grammatical forms of various languages without
knowing much about those languages themselves, or at any rate without
possessing any degree of familiarity with them. Schleicher was not
blind to the danger of this. A short time before his death he brought
out an _Indogermanische Chrestomathie_ (Weimar, 1869), and in the
preface he justifies his book by saying that “it is of great value,
besides learning the grammar, to be acquainted, however slightly,
with the languages themselves. For a comparative grammar of related
languages lays stress on what is common to a language and its sisters;
consequently, the languages may appear more alike than they are in
reality, and their idiosyncrasies may be thrown into the shade.
Linguistic specimens form, therefore, an indispensable supplement to
comparative grammar.” Other and even more weighty reasons might have
been adduced, for grammar is after all only one side of a language,
and it is certainly the best plan, if one wants to understand and
appreciate the position of any language, to start with some connected
texts of tolerable length, and only afterwards to see how its forms are
related to and may be explained by those of other languages.
Though the mechanical school of linguists, with whom historical and
comparative phonology was more and more an end in itself, prevailed
to a great extent, the trend of a few linguists was different.
Among these one must especially mention Heymann Steinthal, who drew
his inspiration from Humboldt and devoted numerous works to the
psychology of language. Unfortunately, Steinthal was greatly inferior
to Schleicher in clearness and consistency of thought: “When I read
a work of Steinthal’s, and even many parts of Humboldt, I feel as if
walking through shifting clouds,” Max Müller remarks, with good reason,
in a letter (_Life_, i. 256). This obscurity, in connexion with the
remoteness of Steinthal’s studies, which ranged from Chinese to the
language of the Mande negroes, but paid little regard to European
languages, prevented him from exerting any powerful influence on the
linguistic thought of his generation, except perhaps through his
emphatic assertion of the truth that language can only be understood
and explained by means of psychology: his explanation of syntactic
attraction paved the way for much in Paul’s _Prinzipien_.
The leading exponent of general linguistics after the death of
Schleicher was the American William Dwight Whitney, whose books,
_Language and the Study of Language_ (first ed. 1867) and its replica,
_The Life and Growth of Language_ (1875), were translated into several
languages and were hardly less popular than those of his antagonist,
Max Müller. Whitney’s style is less brilliant than Max Müller’s, and he
scorns the cheap triumphs which the latter gains by the multiplication
of interesting illustrations; he never wearies of running down Müller’s
paradoxes and inconsistencies,[14] from which he himself was spared by
his greater general solidity and sobriety of thought. The chief point
of divergence between them was, as already indicated, that Whitney
looked upon language as a human institution that has grown slowly
out of the necessity for mutual understanding; he was opposed to all
kinds of mysticism, and words to him were conventional signs--not, of
course, that he held that there ever was a gathering of people that
settled the meaning of each word, but in the sense of “resting on a
mutual understanding or a community of habit,” no matter how brought
about. But in spite of all differences between the two they are in
many respects alike, when viewed from the coign of vantage of the
twentieth century: both give expression to the best that had been
attained by fifty or sixty years of painstaking activity to elucidate
the mysteries of speech, and especially of Aryan words and forms, and
neither of them was deeply original enough to see through many of
the fallacies of the young science. Consequently, their views on the
structure of Proto-Aryan, on roots and their rôle, on the building-up
and decay of the form-system, are essentially the same as those of
their contemporaries, and many of their theories have now crumbled
away, including much of what they probably thought firmly rooted for
all time.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] It has been objected to the use of Aryan in this wide sense that
the name is also used in the restricted sense of Indian + Iranic; but
no separate name is needed for that small group other than Indo-Iranic.
[11] In Lefmann’s book on Bopp, pp. 292 and 299, there are some
interesting quotations on this point.
[12] For example, the correct appreciation of Scandinavian _o_ sounds
and especially the recognition of syllables without any vowel, for
instance, in G. _mittel_, _schmeicheln_, E. _heaven_, _little_; this
important truth was unnoticed by linguists till Sievers in 1876 called
attention to it and Brugmann in 1877 used it in a famous article.
[13] A young German linguist, to whom I sent the pamphlet early in
1886, wrote to me: “Wenn man sich den spass machte und das ding
übersetzte mit der bemerkung, es sei vor vier jahren erschienen, wer
würde einem nicht trauen? Merkwürdig, dass solche sachen so unbemerkt,
‘dem kleinen veilchen gleich,’ dahinschwinden können.” A short time
afterwards the pamphlet was reprinted with a short preface by Vilh.
Thomsen (Copenhagen, 1886).
[14] In numerous papers in _North Am. Review_ and elsewhere, and
finally in the pamphlet _Max Müller and the Science of Language, a
Criticism_ (New York, 1892). Müller’s reply to the earlier attacks is
found in _Chips from a German Workshop_, vol. iv.