END OF NINETEENTH CENTURY
§ 1. Achievements about 1870. § 2. New Discoveries. § 3. Phonetic
Laws and Analogy. § 4. General Tendencies.
IV.--§ 1. Achievements about 1870.
In works of this period one frequently meets with expressions of pride
and joy in the wonderful results that had been achieved in comparative
linguistics in the course of a few decades. Thus Max Müller writes:
“All this becomes clear and intelligible by the light of Comparative
Grammar; anomalies vanish, exceptions prove the rule, and we perceive
more plainly every day how in language, as elsewhere, the conflict
between the freedom claimed by each individual and the resistance
offered by the community at large establishes in the end a reign of
law most wonderful, yet perfectly rational and intelligible”; and
again: “There is nothing accidental, nothing irregular, nothing without
a purpose and meaning in any part of Greek or Latin grammar. No one
who has once discovered this hidden life of language, no one who has
once found out that what seemed to be merely anomalous and whimsical
in language is but, as it were, a petrification of thought, of deep,
curious, poetical, philosophical thought, will ever rest again till
he has descended as far as he can descend into the ancient shafts of
human speech,” etc. (Ch 41 f.). Whitney says: “The difference between
the old haphazard style of etymologizing and the modern scientific
method lies in this: that the latter, while allowing everything to be
theoretically possible, accepts nothing as actual which is not proved
by sufficient evidence; it brings to bear upon each individual case a
wide circle of related facts; it imposes upon the student the necessity
of extended comparison and cautious deduction; it makes him careful
to inform himself as thoroughly as circumstances allow respecting
the history of every word he deals with” (L 386). And Benfey, in his
_Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft_ (1869, see pp. 562 f. and 596),
arrives at the conclusion that the investigation of Aryan languages
has already attained a very great degree of certainty, and that the
reconstruction of Primitive Aryan, both in grammar and vocabulary,
must be considered as in the main settled in such a way that only some
details are still doubtful; thus, it is certain that the first person
singular ended in _-mi_, and that this is a phonetic reduction of the
pronoun _ma_, and that the word for ‘horse’ was _akva_. This feeling
of pride is certainly in a great measure justified if we compare the
achievements of linguistic science at that date with the etymologies of
the eighteenth century; it must also be acknowledged that 90 per cent.
of the etymologies in the best-known Aryan languages which must be
recognized as established beyond any reasonable doubt had already been
discovered before 1870, while later investigations have only added a
small number that may be considered firmly established, together with a
great many more or less doubtful collocations. But, on the other hand,
in the light of later research, we can now see that much of what was
then considered firm as a rock did not deserve the implicit trust then
placed in it.
IV.--§ 2. New Discoveries.
This is true in the first place with regard to the phonetic structure
ascribed to Proto-Aryan. A series of brilliant discoveries made about
the year 1880 profoundly modified the views of scholars about the
consonantal and still more about the vocalic system of our family of
languages. This is particularly true of the so-called palatal law.[15]
So long as it was taken for granted that Sanskrit had in all essential
points preserved the ancient sound system, while Greek and the other
languages represented younger stages, no one could explain why Sanskrit
in some cases had the palatals _c_ and _j_ (sounds approximately like
the initial sounds of E. _chicken_ and _joy_) where the other languages
have the velar sounds _k_ and _g_. It was now recognized that so far
from the distribution of the two classes of sounds in Sanskrit being
arbitrary, it followed strict rules, though these were not to be
seen from Sanskrit itself. Where Sanskrit _a_ following the consonant
corresponded to Greek or Latin _o_, Sanskrit had velar _k_ or _g_;
where, on the other hand, it corresponded to Greek or Latin _e_,
Sanskrit had palatal _c_ or _j_. Thus we have, for instance, _c_ in
Sansk. _ca_, ‘and’ = Greek _te_, Lat. _que_, but _k_ in _kakša_ = Lat.
_coxa_; the difference between the two consonants in a perfect like
_cakara_, ‘have done,’ is dependent on the same vowel alternation as
that of Greek _léloipa_; _c_ in the verb _pacati_, ‘cooks,’ as against
_k_ in the substantive _pakas_, ‘cooking,’ corresponds to the vowels
in Greek _légei_ as against _lógos_, etc. All this shows that Sanskrit
itself must once have had the vowels _e_ and _o_ instead of _a_; before
the front vowel _e_ the consonant has then been fronted or palatalized,
as _ch_ in E. _chicken_ is due to the following front vowel, while _k_
has been preserved before _o_ in _cock_. Sanskrit is thus shown to be
in some important respects less conservative than Greek, a truth which
was destined profoundly to modify many theories concerning the whole
family of languages. As Curtius said, with some resentment of the
change in view then taking place, “Sanskrit, once the oracle of the
rising science and trusted blindly, is now put on one side; instead
of the traditional _ex oriente lux_ the saying is now _in oriente
tenebræ_” (K 97).
The new views held in regard to Aryan vowels also resulted in a
thorough revision of the theory of apophony (ablaut). The great mass
of Aryan vowel alternations were shown to form a vast and singularly
consistent system, the main features of which may be gathered from the
following tabulation of a few select Greek examples, arranged into
three columns, each representing one ‘grade’:
I II III
(1) pétomai pótē eptómai
(s)ékhō (s)ókhos éskhon
(2) leípō léloipa élipon
(3) peúthomai -- eputhómēn
(4) dérkomai dédorka édrakon
(5) teínō (*tenjo) tónos tatós
It is outside our scope to show how this scheme gives us a natural clue
to the vowels in such verbs as E. I _ride_, II _rode_, III _ridden_
(2), G. I _werde_, II _ward_, III _geworden_ (4), or I _binde_, II
_band_, III _gebunden_ (5). It will be seen from the Greek examples
that grade I is throughout characterized by the vowel _e_ and grade
II by the vowel _o_; as for grade III, the vowel of I and II has
entirely disappeared in (1), where there is no vowel between the
two consonants, and in (2) and (3), where the element found after
_e_ and _o_ and forming a diphthong with these has now become a full
(syllabic) vowel _i_ and _u_ by itself. In (4) Sanskrit has in grade
III a syllabic _r_ (_adrçam_ = Gr. _édrakon_), while Greek has _ra_,
or in some instances _ar_, and Gothonic has _ur_ or _or_ according to
the vowel of the following syllable. It was this fact that suggested
to Brugmann his theory that in (5) Greek _a_, Lat. _in_, Goth. _un_ in
the third grade originated in syllabic _ṇ_, and that _tatós_ thus stood
for *_tṇtós_; he similarly explained Gr. _déka_, Lat. _decem_, Gothic
_taihun_, E. _ten_ from *_dekṃ_ with syllabic _m_. I do not believe
that his theory is entirely correct; but so much is certain, that in
all instances grade III is characterized by a reduction of the vowel
that appears in the two other grades as _e_ and _o_, and there can be
no doubt that this reduction is due to want of stress. This being so,
it becomes impossible to consider _lip_ the original root-form, which
in _leip_ and _loip_ has been extended, and the new theory of apophony
thus disposes of the old theory, based on the Indian grammarians’
view that the shortest form was the root-form, which was then raised
through ‘guna’ and ‘vrddhi.’ This now is reversed, and the fuller
form is shown to be the oldest, which in some cases was shortened
according to a process paralleled in many living languages. Bopp was
right in his rejection of Grimm’s theory of an inner, significatory
reason for apophony, as apophony is now shown to have been due to a
mechanical cause, though a different one from that suggested by Bopp
(see above, p. 53); and Grimm was also wrong in another respect,
because apophony is found from the first in noun-formations as well as
in verbs, where Grimm believed it to have been instituted to indicate
tense differences, with which it had originally nothing to do. Apophony
even appears in other syllables than the root syllable; the new view
thus quite naturally paved the way for skepticism with regard to the
old doctrine that Aryan roots were necessarily monosyllabic; and
scholars soon began to admit dissyllabic ‘bases’ in place of the old
roots; instead of _lip_, the earliest accessible form thus came to be
something like _leipo_ or _leipe_. In this way the new vowel system had
far-reaching consequences and made linguists look upon many problems
in a new light. It should be noted, however, that the mechanical
explanation of apophony from difference in accent applies only to
grade III, in contradistinction to grades I and II; the reason of the
alternation between the _e_ of I and the _o_ of II is by no means clear.
The investigations leading to the discovery of the palatal law and
the new theory of apophony were only a part of the immense labour of
a number of able linguists in the ’seventies and ’eighties, which
cleared up many obscure points in Aryan phonology and morphology. One
of the most famous discoveries was that of the Dane Karl Verner, that
a whole series of consonant alternations in the old Gothonic languages
was dependent on accent, and (more remarkable still) on the primeval
accent, preserved in its oldest form in Sanskrit only, and differing
from that of modern Gothonic languages in resting in some instances
on the ending and in others on the root. When it was realized that
the fact that German has _t_ in _vater_, but _d_ in _bruder_, was due
to a different accentuation of the two words three or four thousand
years ago, or that the difference between _s_ and _r_ in E. _was_ and
_were_ was connected with the fact that perfect singulars in Sanskrit
are stressed on the root, but plurals on the ending, this served not
only to heighten respect for the linguistic science that was able to
demonstrate such truths, but also to increase the feeling that the
world of sounds was subject to strict laws comparable to those of
natural science.
IV.--§ 3. Phonetic Laws and Analogy.
The ‘blind’ operation of phonetic laws became the chief tenet of a
new school of ‘young-grammarians’ or ‘junggrammatiker’ (Brugmann,
Delbrück, Osthoff, Paul and others), who somewhat noisily flourished
their advance upon earlier linguists and justly roused the anger
not only of their own teachers, including Curtius, but also of
fellow-students like Johannes Schmidt and Collitz. For some years a
fierce discussion took place on the principles of linguistic science,
in which young-grammarians tried to prove deductively the truth of
their favourite thesis that “Sound-laws admit of no exceptions” (first,
it seems, enounced by Leskien). Osthoff wrongly maintained that sound
changes belonged to physiology and analogical change to psychology; but
though that distribution of the two kinds of change to two different
domains was untenable, the distinction in itself was important and
proved a valuable, though perhaps sometimes too easy instrument in the
hands of the historical grammarian. It was quite natural that those who
insisted on undeviating phonetic laws should turn their attention to
those cases in which forms appeared that did not conform to these laws,
and try to explain them; and thus they inevitably were led to recognize
the immense importance of analogical formations in the economy of all
languages. Such formations had long been known, but little attention
had been paid to them, and they were generally termed ‘false analogies’
and looked upon as corruptions or inorganic formations found only or
chiefly in a degenerate age, in which the true meaning and composition
of the old forms was no longer understood. Men like Curtius were
scandalized at the younger school explaining so many even of the
noble forms of ancient Greek as due to this upstart force of analogy.
His opponents contended that the name of ‘false analogy’ was wrong
and misleading: the analogy in itself was perfect and was handled
with unerring instinct in each case. They likewise pointed out that
analogical formations, so far from being perversions of a late age,
really represented one of the vital principles of language, without
which it could never have come into existence.
One of the first to take the new point of view and to explain it
clearly was Hermann Paul. I quote from an early article (as translated
by Sweet, CP 112) the following passages, which really struck a new
note in linguistic theory:
“There is one simple fact which should never be left out of sight,
namely, that even in the parent Indogermanic language, long before its
split-up, there were no longer any roots, stems, and suffixes, but only
ready-made _words_, which were employed without the slightest thought
of their composite nature. And it is only of such ready-made words
that the store is composed from which everyone draws when he speaks.
He has no stock of stems and terminations at his disposal from which
he could construct the form required for each separate occasion. Not
that he must necessarily have heard and learnt by heart every form he
uses. This would, in fact, be impossible. He is, on the contrary, able
of himself to form cases of nouns, tenses of verbs, etc., which he has
either never heard or else not noticed specially; but, as there is no
combining of stem and suffix, this can only be done on the pattern of
the other ready-made combinations which he has learnt from his fellows.
These latter are first learnt one by one, and then gradually associated
into groups which correspond to the grammatical categories, but are
never clearly conceived as such without special training. This grouping
not only greatly aids the memory, but also makes it possible to produce
other combinations. And this is what we call _analogy_.”
“It is, therefore, clear that, while speaking, everyone is incessantly
producing analogical forms. _Reproduction by memory_ and _new-formation
by means of association_ are its two indispensable factors. It is a
mistake to assume a language as given in grammar and dictionary, that
is, the whole body of possible words and forms, as something concrete,
and to forget that it is nothing but an abstraction devoid of reality,
and that _the actual language exists only in the individual_, from whom
it cannot be separated even in scientific investigation, if we will
understand its nature and development. To comprehend the existence
of each separate spoken form, we must not ask ‘Is it current in the
language?’ or ‘Is it conformable to the laws of the language as deduced
by the grammarians?’ but ‘Has he who has just employed it previously
had it in his memory, or has he formed it himself for the first time,
and, if so, according to what analogy?’ When, for instance, anyone
employs the plural _milben_ in German, it may be that he has learnt
it from others, or else that he has only heard the singular _milbe_,
but knows that such words as _lerche_, _schwalbe_, etc., form their
plural _lerchen_, etc., so that the association _milbe_-_milben_ is
unconsciously suggested to him. He may also have heard the plural
_milben_, but remembers it so imperfectly that he would forget it
entirely were it not associated in his mind with a series of similar
forms which help him to recall it. It is, therefore, often difficult to
determine the share memory and creative fancy have had in each separate
case.”
Linguists thus set about it seriously to think of language in terms
of speaking individuals, who have learnt their mother-tongue in the
ordinary way, and who now employ it in their daily intercourse with
other men and women, without in each separate case knowing what they
owe to others and what they have to create on the spur of the moment.
Just as Sokrates fetched philosophy down from the skies, so also now
linguists fetched words and forms down from vocabularies and grammars
and placed them where their natural home is, in the minds and on the
lips of ordinary men who are neither lexicographers nor grammarians,
but who nevertheless master their language with sufficient ease and
correctness for all ordinary purposes. Linguists now were confronted
with some general problems which had not greatly troubled their
predecessors (with the solitary exception of Bredsdorff, whose work
was entirely overlooked), namely, What are the causes of changes
in language? How are they brought about, and how should they be
classified? Many articles on these questions appeared in linguistic
periodicals about the year 1880, but the profoundest and fullest
treatment was found in a masterly book by H. Paul, _Prinzipien der
Sprachgeschichte_, the first edition of which (1880) exercised a very
considerable influence on linguistic thought, while the subsequent
editions were constantly enlarged and improved so as to contain a
wealth of carefully sifted material to illustrate the various processes
of linguistic change. It should also be noted that Paul paid more and
more attention to syntax, and that this part of grammar, which had been
neglected by Bopp and Schleicher and their contemporaries, was about
this time taken up by some of the leading linguists, who showed that
the comparative and historical method was capable of throwing a flood
of light on syntax no less than on morphology (Delbrück, Ziemer).
IV.--§ 4. General Tendencies.
While linguists in the ’eighties were taking up, as we have seen,
a great many questions of vast general importance that had not
been treated by the older generation, on the other hand they were
losing interest in some of the problems that had occupied their
predecessors. This was the case with the question of the ultimate
origin of grammatical endings. So late as 1869 Benfey included among
Bopp’s ‘brilliant discoveries’ his theory that the _s_ of the aorist
and of the future was derived from the verb _as_, ‘to be,’ and that
the endings of the Latin imperfect _-bam_ and future _-bo_ were from
the synonymous verb _fu_ = Sanskrit _bhu_ (Gesch 377), and the next
year Raumer reckons the same theories among Bopp’s ‘most important
discoveries.’ But soon after this we see that speculations of this kind
somehow go out of fashion. One of the last books to indulge in them
to any extent is Scherer’s once famous _Zur Geschichte der deutschen
Sprache_ (2nd ed., 1878), in the eighth chapter of which the writer
disports himself among primitive roots, endings, prepositions and
pronouns, which he identifies and differentiates with such extreme
boldness and confidence in his own wild fancies that a sober-minded
man of the twentieth century cannot but feel dazed and giddy. The
ablest linguists of the new school simply left these theories aside:
no new explanations of the same description were advanced, and the old
ones were not substantiated by the ascertained phenomena of living
languages. So much was found in these of the most absorbing interest
that scholars ceased to care for what might lie behind Proto-Aryan;
some even went so far as to deprecate in strong expressions any
attempts at what they termed ‘glottogonic’ theories. To these
matter-of-fact linguists all speculations as to the ultimate origin of
language were futile and nebulous, a verdict which might be in no small
degree justified by much of what had been written on the subject by
quasi-philosophers and quasi-linguists. The aversion to these questions
was shown as early as 1866, when La Société de Linguistique was
founded in Paris. Section 2 of the statutes of the Society expressly
states that “La Société n’admet aucune communication concernant, soit
l’origine du langage, soit la création d’une langue universelle”--both
of them questions which, as they _can_ be treated in a scientific
spirit, should not be left exclusively to dilettanti.
The last forty years have witnessed an extraordinary activity on the
part of scholars in investigating all domains of the Aryan languages
in the light of the new general views and by the aid of the methods
that have now become common property. Phonological investigations
have no doubt had the lion’s share and have to a great extent been
signalized by that real insight into physiological phonetics which
had been wanting in earlier linguists; but very much excellent work
has also been done in morphology, syntax and semantics; and in all
these domains much has been gained by considering words not as mere
isolated units, but as parts of sentences, or, better, of connected
speech. In phonetics more and more attention has been paid to sentence
phonetics and ‘sandhi phenomena’; the heightened interest in everything
concerning ‘accent’ (stress and pitch) has also led to investigations
of sentence-stress and sentence-melody; the intimate connexion between
forms and their use or function in the sentence, in other words their
syntax, has been more and more recognized; and finally, if semantics
(the study of the significations of words) has become a real science
instead of being a curiosity shop of isolated specimens, this has only
been rendered possible through seeing words as connected with other
words to form complete utterances. But this change of attitude could
not have been brought about unless linguists had studied texts in the
different languages to a far greater extent than had been done in
previous periods; thus, naturally, the antagonism formerly often felt
between the linguistic and the purely philological study of the same
language has tended to disappear, and many scholars have produced work
both in their particular branch of linguistics and in the corresponding
philology. There can be no doubt that this development has been
profitable to both domains of scientific activity.
Another beneficial change is the new attitude taken with regard to the
study of living speech. The science of linguistics had long stood in
the sign of Cancer and had been constantly looking backwards--to its
own great loss. Now, with the greater stress laid on phonetics and on
the psychology of language, the necessity of observing the phenomena
of actual everyday speech was more clearly perceived. Among pioneers
in this respect I must specially mention Henry Sweet; now there is a
steadily growing interest in living speech as the necessary foundation
of all general theorizing. And with interest comes knowledge.
It is outside the purpose of this volume to give the history of
linguistic study during the last forty years in the same way as I have
attempted to give it for the period before 1880, and I must therefore
content myself with a few brief remarks on general tendencies. I even
withstand the temptation to try and characterize the two greatest works
on general linguistics that have appeared during this period, those by
Georg v. d. Gabelentz and Wilhelm Wundt: important and in many ways
excellent as they are, they have not exercised the same influence
on contemporary linguistic research as some of their predecessors.
Personally I owe incomparably much more to the former than to the
latter, who is much less of a linguist than of a psychologist and whose
pages seem to me often richer in words than in fertilizing ideas. As
for the rest, I can give only a bare alphabetical list of some of
the writers who during this period have dealt with the more general
problems of linguistic change or linguistic theory, and must not
attempt any appreciation of their works: Bally, Baudouin de Courtenay,
Bloomfield, Bréal, Delbrück, van Ginneken, Hale, Henry, Hirt, Axel
Kock, Meillet, Meringer, Noreen, Oertel, Pedersen, Sandfeld (Jensen),
de Saussure, Schuchardt, Sechehaye, Streitberg, Sturtevant, Sütterlin,
Sweet, Uhlenbeck, Vossler, Wechssler. In the following parts of my work
there will be many opportunities of mentioning their views, especially
when I disagree with them, for I am afraid it will be impossible always
to indicate what I owe to their suggestions.
In the history of linguistic science we have seen in one period a
tendency to certain large syntheses (the classification of languages
into isolating, agglutinative and flexional, and the corresponding
theory of three periods with its corollary touching the origin of
flexional endings), and we have seen how these syntheses were later
discredited, though never actually disproved, linguists contenting
themselves with detailed comparisons and explanations of single words,
forms or sounds without troubling about their ultimate origin or
about the evolutionary tendencies of the whole system or structure
of language. The question may therefore be raised, were Bopp and
Schleicher wrong in attempting these large syntheses? It would appear
from the expressions of some modern linguists that they thought that
any such comprehensive generalization or any glottogonic theory were
in itself of evil. But this can never be admitted. Science, of its
very nature, aims at larger and larger generalizations, more and more
comprehensive formulas, so as finally to bring about that “unification
of knowledge” of which Herbert Spencer speaks. It was therefore quite
right of the early linguists to propound those great questions; and
their failure to solve them in a way that could satisfy the stricter
demands of a later generation should not be charged too heavily
against them. It was also quite right of the moderns to reject their
premature solutions (though this was often done without any adequate
examination), but it was decidedly wrong to put the questions out
of court altogether.[16] These great questions have to be put over
and over again, till a complete solution is found; and the refusal to
face these difficulties has produced a certain barrenness in modern
linguistics, which must strike any impartial observer, however much he
admits the fertility of the science in detailed investigations. Breadth
of vision is not conspicuous in modern linguistics, and to my mind
this lack is chiefly due to the fact that linguists have neglected all
problems connected with a valuation of language. What is the criterion
by which one word or one form should be preferred to another? (most
linguists refuse to deal with such questions of preference or of
correctness of speech). Are the changes that we see gradually taking
place in languages to be considered as on the whole beneficial or
the opposite? (most linguists pooh-pooh such questions). Would it be
possible to construct an international language by which persons in
different countries could easily communicate with one another? (most
linguists down to the present day have looked upon all who favour such
ideas as visionaries and Utopians). It is my firm conviction that such
questions as these admit of really scientific treatment and should be
submitted to serious discussion. But before tackling those of them
which fall within the plan of this work, it will be well to deal with
some fundamental facts of what is popularly called the ‘life’ of
language, and first of all with the manner in which a child acquires
its mother-tongue. For as language exists only in individuals and means
some specific activities of human beings which are not inborn, but have
to be learnt by each of them separately from his fellow-beings, it is
important to examine somewhat in detail how this interaction of the
individual and of the surrounding society is brought about. This, then,
will occupy us in Book II.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] Who was the discoverer of the palatal law? This has been
hotly discussed, and as the law was in so far anticipated by other
discoveries of the ’seventies as to be “in the air,” it is perhaps
futile to try to fix the paternity on any single man. However, it seems
now perfectly clear that Vilhelm Thomsen was the first to mention it in
his lectures (1875), but unfortunately the full and able paper in which
he intended to lay it before the world was delayed for a couple of
years and then kept in his drawers when he heard that Johannes Schmidt
was preparing a paper on the same subject: it was printed in 1920 in
the second volume of his _Samlede Afhandlinger_ (from the original
manuscript). Esaias Tegnér had found the law independently and had
printed five sheets of a book _De ariska språkens palataler_, which
he withdrew when he found that Collitz and de Saussure had expressed
similar views. Karl Verner, too, had independently arrived at the same
results; see his _Afhandlinger og Breve_, 109 ff., 305.
[16] “Es ist besser, bei solchen versuchen zu irren als gar nicht
darüber nachzudenken,” Curtius, K 145.
_BOOK II_
THE CHILD