1. When the notion of Being is understood, p. 32. 2. When the notion
of Being is expressed by a special word, but without a phonetic
radical, p. 35.
II. The notion of Being is incorporated with the verb as an auxiliary,
p. 37.
Analysis of the Maya Verb, p. 38. Other Examples. The idea of past
time as related to death and negation, p. 40.
III. The notion of Being is present in the verbal form only in idea,
p. 41.
Case 1st. When the person, tense and mode signs are separable, p. 41.
Case 2d. When either the person, or the tense and mode signs, are
attached to the verb, p. 41. Case 3d. When both person and tense
and mode signs are attached to the verb. 1. Approach toward a Fixed
Form, p. 44. 2. Divisibility of Verbal Forms to allow the insertion
of governed parts of speech, p. 47. General Conclusions on the
organism of American Languages, p. 48.
Notes (by the Translator) on the various American Tribes and
Languages mentioned by Humboldt in the preceding Memoir, p. 49.
The Philosophic Grammar of American Languages.
§ 1. INTRODUCTORY.
The foundations of the Philosophy of Language were laid by Wilhelm von
Humboldt (b. June 22, 1767, d. April 8, 1835). The principles he
advocated have frequently been misunderstood, and some of them have
been modified, or even controverted, by more extended research; but a
careful survey of the tendencies of modern thought in this field will
show that the philosophic scheme of the nature and growth of
languages, which he set forth, is gradually reasserting its sway,
after having been neglected and denied through the preponderance of
the so-called naturalistic school during the last quarter of a
century.
The time seems ripe, therefore, to bring the general principles of his
philosophy to the knowledge of American scholars, especially as
applied by himself to the analysis of American languages.
Any one at all acquainted with Humboldt's writings, and the literature
to which they have given rise, will recognize that this is a serious
task. I have felt it such, and have prepared myself for it not only by
a careful perusal of his own published writings, but also by a
comparison of the conflicting interpretations put upon them by Dr. Max
Schasler,[3-*] Prof. H. Steinthal,[3-+] Prof. C. J. Adler,[3-++] and
others, as well as by obtaining a copy of an entirely unpublished
memoir by Humboldt on the "American Verb," a translation of which
accompanies this paper. But my chief reliance in solving the
obscurities of Humboldt's presentation of his doctrines has been a
close comparison of allied passages in his various essays, memoirs and
letters. Of these I need scarcely say that I have attached the
greatest weight to his latest and monumental work sometimes referred
to as his "Introduction to the Kawi Language," but whose proper title
is "On Differences in Linguistic Structure, and their Influence on the
Mental Development of the Human Race."[4-*]
I would not have it understood that I am presenting a complete
analysis of Humboldt's linguistic philosophy. This is far beyond the
scope of the present paper. It aims to set forth merely enough of his
general theories to explain his applications of them to the languages
of the American race.
What I have to present can best be characterized as a series of notes
on Humboldt's writings, indicating their bearing on the problems of
American philology, introducing his theories to students of this
branch, and serving as a preface to the hitherto unpublished essay by
him on the American Verb, to which I have referred.
§ 2. HUMBOLDT'S STUDIES IN AMERICAN LANGUAGES.
The American languages occupied Humboldt's attention earnestly and for
many years. He was first led to their study by his brother Alexander,
who presented him with the large linguistic collection he had amassed
during his travels in South and North America.
While Prussian Minister in Rome (1802-08), he ransacked the library of
the _Collegio Romano_ for rare or unpublished works on American
tongues; he obtained from the ex-Jesuit Forneri all the information
the latter could give about the Yurari, a tongue spoken on the Meta
river, New Granada;[4-+] and he secured accurate copies of all the
manuscript material on these idioms left by the diligent collector
and linguist, the Abbé Hervas.
A few years later, in 1812, we find him writing to his friend Baron
Alexander von Rennenkampff, then in St. Petersburg: "I have selected
the American languages as the special subject of my investigations.
They have the closest relationship of any with the tongues of
north-eastern Asia; and I beg you therefore to obtain for me all the
dictionaries and grammars of the latter which you can."[5-*]
It is probable from this extract that Humboldt was then studying these
languages from that limited, ethnographic point of view, from which he
wrote his essay on the Basque tongue, the announcement of which
appeared, indeed, in that year, 1812, although the work itself was not
issued until 1821.
Ten years more of study and reflection taught him a far loftier
flight. He came to look upon each language as an organism, all its
parts bearing harmonious relations to each other, and standing in a
definite connection with the intellectual and emotional development of
the nation speaking it. Each language again bears the relation to
language in general that the species does to the genus, or the genus
to the order, and by a comprehensive process of analysis he hoped to
arrive at those fundamental laws of articulate speech which form the
Philosophy of Language, and which, as they are also the laws of human
thought, at a certain point coincide, he believed, with those of the
Philosophy of History.
In the completion of this vast scheme, he continued to attach the
utmost importance to the American languages. His illustrations were
constantly drawn from them, and they were ever the subject of his
earnest studies. He prized them as in certain respects the most
valuable of all to the philosophic student of human speech.
Thus, in 1826, he announced before the Berlin Academy that he was
preparing an exhaustive work on the "Organism of Language," for which
he had selected the American languages exclusively, as best suited for
this purpose. "The languages of a great continent," he writes,
"peopled by numerous nationalities, probably never subject to foreign
influence, offer for this branch of linguistic study specially
favorable material. There are in America as many as thirty little
known languages for which we have means of study, each of which is
like a new natural species, besides many others whose data are less
ample."[6-*]
In his memoir, read two years later, "On the Origin of Grammatical
Forms, and their Influence on the Development of Ideas," he chose most
of his examples from the idioms of the New World;[6-+] and the year
following, he read the monograph on the Verb in American languages,
which is printed for the first time with the present essay.
In a later paper, he announced his special study of this group as
still in preparation. It was, however, never completed. His earnest
desire to reach the fundamental laws of language led him first into a
long series of investigations into the systems of recorded speech,
phonetic hieroglyphics and alphabetic writing, on which he read
memoirs of great acuteness.
In one of these he again mentions his studies of the American tongues,
and takes occasion to vindicate them from the current charge of being
of a low grade in the linguistic scale. "It is certainly unjust," he
writes, "to call the American languages rude or savage, although their
structure is widely different from those perfectly formed."[6-++]
In 1828, there is a published letter from him making an appointment
with the Abbé Thavenet, missionary to the Canadian Algonkins, then in
Paris, "to enjoy the pleasure of conversing with him on his
interesting studies of the Algonkin language."[6-||] And a private
letter tells us that in 1831 he applied himself with new zeal to
mastering the intricacies of Mexican grammar.[6-§]
About 1827, he found it indispensable to subject to a critical
scrutiny the languages of the great island world of the Pacific and
Indian oceans. This resulted at last in his selecting the Kawi
language, a learned idiom of the island of Java, Malayan in origin but
with marked traces of Hindu influence, as the point of departure for
his generalizations. His conclusions were set forth in the
introductory essay above referred to.
The avowed purpose of this essay was to demonstrate the thesis that
the _diversity of structure in languages is the necessary condition of
the evolution of the human mind_.[7-*]
In the establishment of this thesis he begins with a profound analysis
of the nature of speech in general, and then proceeds to define the
reciprocal influences which thought exerts upon it, it upon thought.
Portions of this work are extremely obscure even to those who are most
familiar with his theories and style. This arises partly from the
difficulty of the subject; partly because his anxiety to avoid
dogmatic statements led him into vagueness of expression; and partly
because in some cases he was uncertain of his ground. In spite of
these blemishes, this essay remains the most suggestive work ever
written on the philosophy of language.
§ 3. THE FINAL PURPOSE OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE.
Humboldt has been accused of being a metaphysician, and a scientific
idealist.
It is true that he believed in an ideal perfection of language, to
wit: that form of expression which would correspond throughout to the
highest and clearest thinking. But it is evident from this simple
statement that he did not expect to find it in any known or possible
tongue. He distinctly says, that this ideal is too hypothetical to be
used otherwise than as a stimulus to investigation; but as such it is
indispensable to the linguist in the pursuit of his loftiest task--the
estimate of the efforts of man to realize perfection of
expression.[7-+]
There is nothing teleological in his philosophy; he even declines to
admit that either the historian or the linguist has a right to set up
a theory of progress or evolution; the duty of both is confined to
deriving the completed meaning from the facts before them.[8-*] He
merely insists that as the object of language is the expression of
thought, certain forms of language are better adapted to this than
others. What these are, why they are so, and how they react on the
minds of the nations speaking them, are the questions he undertakes to
answer, and which constitute the subject-matter with which the
philosophy of language has to do.
Humboldt taught that in its highest sense this philosophy of language
is one with the philosophy of history. The science of language misses
its purpose unless it seeks its chief end in explaining the
intellectual growth of the race.[8-+]
Each separate tongue is "a thought-world in tones" established between
the minds of those who speak it and the objective world without.[8-++]
Each mirrors in itself the spirit of the nation to which it belongs.
But it has also an earlier and independent origin; it is the product
of the conceptions of antecedent generations, and thus exerts a
formative and directive influence on the national mind, an influence,
not slight, but more potent than that which the national mind exerts
upon it.[8-||]
So also every word has a double character, the one derived from its
origin, the other from its history. The former is single, the latter
is manifold.[8-§]
Were the gigantic task possible to gather from every language the full
record of every word and the complete explanation of each grammatical
peculiarity, we should have an infallible, the only infallible and
exhaustive, picture of human progress.
§ 4. HISTORICAL, COMPARATIVE AND PHILOSOPHIC GRAMMAR.
The Science of Grammar has three branches, which differ more in the
methods they pursue than in the ends at which they aim. These are
Historic, Comparative and Philosophic Grammar. Historic Grammar
occupies itself with tracing the forms of a language back in time to
their earlier expression, and exhibits their development through the
archaic specimens of the tongue. Comparative Grammar extends this
investigation by including in the survey the similar development of a
number of dialects of the same stock or character, and explains the
laws of speech, which account for the similarities and diversities
observed.
Both of these, it will be observed, begin with the language and its
forms, and are confined to these. Philosophic Grammar, on the other
hand, proceeds from the universal constructive principles of language,
from the abstract formulæ of grammatical relations, and investigates
their application in various languages. It looks upon articulate
speech as the more or less faithful expression of certain logical
procedures, and analyzes tongues in order to exhibit the success, be
it greater or less, which attends this effort. The grammatical
principles with which it deals are universals, they exist in all
minds, although it often happens that they are not portrayed with
corresponding clearness in language.[9-*]
Philosophic Grammar, therefore, includes in its horizon all languages
spoken by men; it essays to analyze their inmost nature with reference
to the laws of thought; it weighs the relations they bear to the
character and destiny of those who speak them; and it ascends to the
psychological needs and impulses which first gave them existence.
It was grammar in this highest sense, it was the study of languages
for such lofty purposes as these, with which Humboldt occupied himself
with untiring zeal for the last fifteen years of his life, when he had
laid aside the cares of the elevated and responsible political
positions which he had long filled with distinguished credit.
§ 5. DEFINITION AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.
Humboldt remarks that the first hundred pages or so of his celebrated
"Introduction" are little more than an expansion of his definition of
language. He gives this definition in its most condensed form as
follows: "Language is the ever-recurring effort of the mind to make
the articulate sound capable of expressing thought."[10-*]
According to this definition, language is not a dead thing, a
completed product, but it is an ever-living, active function, an
energy of the soul, which will perish only when intelligence itself,
in its highest sense, is extinguished. As he expresses it, language is
not an ~ergon~, but an ~energeia~. It is the proof and the product of
a mind _consciously_ working to a definite end.
Hence, in Humboldt's theory the psychological element of
_self-consciousness_ lies at the root of all linguistic expression. No
mere physical difference between the lower animals and man explains
the latter's possession of articulate speech. His self-consciousness
alone is that trait which has rendered such a possession
possible.[10-+]
The idea of Self necessarily implies the idea of Other. A thought is
never separate, never isolated, but ever in relation to another
thought, suggested by one, leading on to another. Hence, Humboldt
says: "The mind can only be conceived as in action, and _as action_."
As Prof. Adler, in his comments on Humboldt's philosophy, admirably
observes: "Man does not possess any such thing as an absolutely
isolated individuality; the 'I' and the 'thou' are the essential
complements of each other, and would, in their last analysis, be found
identical."[11-*]
On these two fundamental conceptions, those of Identity and Relation,
or, as they may be expressed more correctly, those of Being and
Action, Humboldt builds his doctrines concerning the primitive
radicals of language and the fundamental categories of grammar.
§ 6. PRIMITIVE ROOTS AND GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES.
The roots of a language are classified by Humboldt as either
_objective_ or _subjective_, although he considers this far from an
exhaustive scheme.[11-+]
The objective roots are usually descriptive, and indicate an origin
from a process of mental analysis. They bear the impress of those two
attributes which characterize every thought, Being and Action. Every
complete objective word must express these two notions. Upon them are
founded the fundamental grammatical categories of the Noun and the
Verb; or to speak more accurately, they lead to the distinction of
nominal and verbal themes.
The characteristic of the Noun is that it expresses Being; of the Verb
that it expresses Action. This distinction is far from absolute in the
word itself; in many languages, especially in Chinese and some
American languages, there is in the word no discrimination between its
verbal and nominal forms; but the verbal or nominal _value_ of the
word is clearly fixed by other means.[11-++]
Another class of objective root-words are the adjective words, or
Determinatives. They are a later accession to the list, and by their
addition bring the three chief grammatical categories, the Noun, the
Verb and the Adjective, into correlation with the three logical
categories of Substance, Action and Quality.
By the subjective roots, Humboldt meant the personal pronouns. To
these he attributed great importance in the development of language,
and especially of American languages. They carry with them the mark of
sharp individuality, and express in its highest reality the notion of
Being.
It is not easy to understand Humboldt's theory of the evolution of the
personal pronouns. In his various essays he seems to offer conflicting
statements. In one of his later papers, he argues that the origin of
such subjective nominals is often, perhaps generally, locative. By
comparing the personal pronouns with the adverbs of place in a series
of languages, he showed that their demonstrative antedated their
personal meaning.[12-*] With regard to their relative development, he
says, in his celebrated "Introduction":
"The first person expresses the individuality of the speaker, who is
in immediate contact with external nature, and must distinguish
himself from it in his speech. But in the 'I' the 'Thou' is assumed;
and from the antithesis thus formed is developed the third
person."[12-+]
But in his "Notice of the Japanese Grammar of Father Oyanguren,"
published in 1826, he points out that infants begin by speaking of
themselves in the third person, showing that this comes first in the
order of knowledge. It is followed by the second person, which
separates one object from others; but as it does so by putting it in
conscious antithesis to the speaker, it finally develops the
"I."[12-++]
The latter is unquestionably the correct statement so far as the
history of language is concerned and the progress of knowledge. I can
know myself only through knowing others.
The explanation which reconciles these theories is that the one refers
to the order of thought, or logical precedence, the other to the order
of expression. Professor Ferrier, in his "Institutes of Metaphysics,"
has established with much acuteness the thesis that, "What is first in
the order of nature is last in the order of knowledge," and this is an
instance of that philosophical principle.
§ 7. FORMAL AND MATERIAL ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE.
A fundamental distinction in philosophic grammar is that which divides
the _formal_ from the _material_ element of speech. This division
arises from the original double nature of each radical, as expressing
both Being and Action.
On the one hand, Action involves Relation; it assumes an object and a
subject, an agent, a direction of effort, a result of effort; usually
also limitations of effort, time and space, and qualifications as to
the manner of the effort. In other words, Action is capable of
increase or decrease both in extension and intension.
On the other hand, Being is a conception of fixed conditions, and is
capable of few or no modifications.
The _formal_ elements of a language are those which express Action, or
the relation of the ideas; they make up the affixes of conjugations
and declensions, the inflections of words; they indicate the parts of
speech, the so-called "grammatical categories," found in developed
tongues. The _material_ elements are the roots or stems expressing the
naked ideas, the conceptions of existence apart from relation.
Using the terms in this sense, Humboldt presents the following terse
formula, as his definition of Inflection: "_Inflection is the
expression of the category in contrast to the definition of the
idea._"[13-*] Nothing could be more definitive and lucid than this
concise phrase.
The inflectional or formal elements of language are usually derived
from words expressing accessory ideas. Generally, they are worn down
to single letters or a single syllable, and they usually may be traced
back to auxiliary verbs and pronouns.
Often various accessories are found which are not required by the main
proposition. This is a common fault in the narratives of ignorant men
and in languages and dialects of a lower grade. It is seen in the
multiplication of auxiliaries and qualifying particles observed in
many American languages, where a vast number of needless accessories
are brought into every sentence.
The nature of the relations expressed by inflections may be manifold,
and it is one of the tasks of philosophic grammar to analyze and
classify them with reference to the direction of mental action they
imply.
It is evident that where these relations are varied and numerous, the
language gains greatly in picturesqueness and force, and thus reacts
with a more stimulating effect on the mind.
§ 8. THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGES.
Humboldt believed that in this respect languages could be divided into
three classes, each representing a stage in progressive development.
In the first and lowest stage all the elements are material and
significant, and there are no true formal parts of speech.
Next above this is where the elements of relation lose their
independent significance _where so used_, but retain it elsewhere. The
words are not yet fixed in grammatical categories. There is no
distinction between verbs and nouns except in use. The plural conveys
the idea of many, but the singular not strictly that of unity.
Highest of all is that condition of language where every word is
subject to grammatical law and shows by its form what category it
comes under; and where the relational or formal elements convey no
hint of anything but this relation. Here, only, does language attain
to that specialization of parts where each element subserves its own
purpose and no other, and here only does it correspond with clear and
connected thinking.
These expressions, however, must not be understood in a genetic sense,
as if historically one linguistic class had preceded the other, and
led up to it. Humboldt entertained no such view. He distinctly
repudiated it. He did not believe in the evolution of languages. The
differences of these classes are far more radical than that of sounds
and signs; they reach down to the fundamental notions of things. His
teaching was that a language without a passive voice, or without a
grammatical gender can never acquire one, and consequently it can
never perfectly express the conceptions corresponding to these
features.[14-*]
In defining and appraising these inherent and inalienable qualities of
languages lies the highest end and aim of linguistic science. This is
its true philosophic character, its mission which lifts it above the
mere collecting of words and formulating of rules.
If the higher languages did not develop from the lower, how did they
arise? Humboldt answered this question fairly, so far as he was
concerned. He said, he did not know. Individuals vary exceedingly in
their talent for language, and so do nations. He was willing to call
it an innate creative genius which endowed our Aryan forefathers with
a richly inflected speech; but it was so contrary to the results of
his prolonged and profound study of languages to believe, for
instance, that a tongue like the Sanscrit could ever be developed from
one like the Chinese, that he frankly said that he would rather accept
at once the doctrine of those who attribute the different idioms of
men to an immediate revelation from God.[15-*]
He fully recognized, however, a progress, an organic growth, in human
speech, and he expressly names this as a special branch of linguistic
investigation.[15-+] He lays down that this growth may be from two
sources, one the cultivation of a tongue within the nation by
enriching its vocabulary, separating and classifying its elements,
fixing its expressions, and thus adapting it to wider uses; the
second, by forcible amalgamation with another tongue.
The latter exerts always a more profound and often a more beneficial
influence. The organism of both tongues may be destroyed, but the
dissolvent force is also an organic and vital one, and from the ruins
of both constructs a speech of grander plans and with wider views.
"The seemingly aimless and confused interminglings of primitive tribes
sowed the seed for the flowers of speech and song which flourished in
centuries long posterior."
The immediate causes of the improvement of a language through forcible
admixture with another, are: that it is obliged to drop all
unneccessary[TN-1] accessory elements in a proposition; that the
relations of ideas must be expressed by conventional and not
significant syllables; and that the limitations of thought imposed by
the genius of the language are violently broken down, and the mind is
thus given wider play for its faculties.
Such influences, however, do not act in accordance with fixed laws of
growth. There are no such laws, which are of universal application.
The development of the Mongolian or Aryan tongues is not at all that
of the American. The goal is one and the same, but the paths to it are
infinite. For this reason each group or class of languages must be
studied by itself, and its own peculiar developmental laws be
ascertained by searching its history.[16-*]
With reference to the growth of American languages, it was Humboldt's
view that they manifest the utmost refractoriness both to external
influence and to internal modifications. They reveal a marvellous
tenacity of traditional words and forms, not only in dialects, but
even in particular classes of the community, men having different
expressions from women, the old from the young, the higher from the
lower classes. These are maintained with scrupulous exactitude through
generations, and except by the introduction of words, three centuries
of daily commingling with the white race, have not at all altered the
grammer[TN-2] and scarcely the phonetics of many of their languages.
Nor is this referable to the contrast between an Aryan and an American
language. The same immiscibility is shown between themselves. "Even
where many radically different languages are located closely together,
as in Mexico, I have not found a single example where one exercised a
constructive or formative influence on the other. But it is by the
encounter of great and contrasted differences that languages gain
strength, riches, and completeness. Only thus are the perceptive
powers, the imagination and the feelings impelled to enrich and extend
the means of expression, which, if left to the labors of the
understanding alone, are liable to be but meagre and arid."[16-+]
§ 9. INTERNAL FORM OF LANGUAGES.
Besides the grammatical form of a language, Humboldt recognized
another which he called its _internal form_. This is that subtle
something not expressed in words, which even more than the formal
parts of speech, reveals the linguistic genius of a nation. It may be
defined as the impression which the language bears of the clearness of
the conceptions of those speaking it, and of their native gift of
speech. He illustrates it by instancing the absence of a developed
mode in Sanscrit, and maintains that in the creators of that tongue
the conception of modality was never truly felt and distinguished from
tense. In this respect its inner form was greatly inferior to the
Greek, in the mind of which nation the ideally perfect construction of
the verb unfolded itself with far more clearness.
The study of this inner form of a language belongs to the highest
realm of linguistic investigation, and is that which throws the most
light on the national character and capacities.[17-*]
§ 10. CRITERIA OF RANK IN LANGUAGES.
Humboldt's one criterion of a language was its tendncy[TN-3] to
_quicken and stimulate mental action_. He maintained that this is
secured just in proportion as the grammatical structure favors clear
definition of the individual idea apart from its relations, in other
words, as it separates the material from the inflectional elements of
speech. Clear thinking, he argued, means progressive thinking.
Therefore he assigned a lower position both to those tongues which
inseparably connect the idea with its relations, as the American
languages, and to those which, like the Chinese and in a less degree
the modern English, have scarcely any formal elements at all, but
depend upon the position of words (placement) to signify their
relations.
But he greatly modified this unfavorable judgment by several
extenuating considerations.
Thus he warns us that it is of importance to recognize fully "that
grammatical principles dwell rather in the mind of the speaker than in
the material and mechanism of his language."[17-+]
This led him to establish a distinction between _explicit_ grammar,
where the relations are fully expressed in speech, and _implicit_
grammar, where they are wholly or in part left to be understood by the
mind.
He expressly and repeatedly states that an intelligent thinker,
trained in the grammatical distinctions of a higher language, can
express any thought he has in the grammar of any other tongue which he
masters, no matter how rude it is. This adaptability lies in the
nature of speech in general. A language is an instrument, the use of
which depends entirely on the skill of him who handles it. It is
doubtful whether such imported forms and thoughts appeal in any direct
sense to those who are native to the tongue. But the fact remains that
the forms of the most barbarous languages are such that they may be
developed to admit the expression of any kind of idea.
But the meaning of this must not be misconstrued. If languages were
merely dead instruments which we use to work with, then one would be
as good as another to him who had learned it. But this is not the
case. Speech is a living, physiological function, and, like any other
function, is most invigorating and vitalizing when it works in the
utmost harmony with the other functions. Its special relationship is
to that brain-action which we call thinking; and entire harmony
between the two is only present when the form, structure and sounds of
speech correspond accurately to the logical procedure of thought. This
he considered "an undeniable fact."
The measure of the excellence of a language, therefore, is the
clearness, definiteness and energy of the ideas which it awakes in the
nation. Does it inspire and incite their mind? Has it positive and
clear tones, and do these define sharply the ideas they represent,
without needless accessories? Does its structure present the leading
elements of the proposition in their simplicity, and permit the
secondary elements to be grouped around them in subordinate positions,
with a correct sense of linguistic perspective? The answers to these
queries decide its position in the hierarchy of tongues.[18-*]
As its capacity for expression is no criterion of a language, still
less is the abundance or regularity of its forms. For this very
multiplicity, this excessive superfluity, is a burden and a drawback,
and obscures the integration of the thought by attaching to it a
quantity of needless qualifications. Thus, in the language of the
Abipones, the pronoun is different as the person spoken of is
conceived as present, absent, sitting, walking, lying, or running, all
quite unnecessary specifications.[19-*]
In some languages much appears as form which, on close scrutiny, is
nothing of the kind.
This misunderstanding has reigned almost universally in the treatment
of American tongues. The grammars which have been written upon them
proceed generally on the principles of Latin, and apply a series of
grammatical names to the forms explained, entirely inappropriate to
them and misleading. Our first duty in taking up such a grammar as,
for instance, that of an American language, is to dismiss the whole of
the arrangement of the "parts of speech," and, by an analysis of words
and phrases, to ascertain by what arrangement of elements they express
logical, significant relations.[19-+]
For example, in the Carib tongue, the grammars give _aveiridaco_ as
the second person singular, subjunctive imperfect, "if thou wert."
Analyze this, and we discover that _a_ is the possessive pronoun
"thy;" _veiri_ is "to be" or "being" (in a place); and _daco_ is a
particle of definite time. Hence, the literal rendering is "on the day
of thy being." The so-called imperfect subjunctive turns out to be a
verbal noun with a preposition. In many American languages the
hypothetical supposition expressed in the Latin subjunctive is
indicated by the same circumlocution.
Again, the infinitive, in its classical sense, is unknown in most,
probably in all, American languages. In the Tupi of Brazil and
frequently elsewhere it is simply a noun; _caru_ is both "to eat" and
"food;" _che caru ai-pota_, "I wish to eat," literally "my food I
wish."
In the Mexican, the infinitive is incorporated in the verb as an
accusative, and the verb is put in the future of the person spoken of.
Many writers continue to maintain that a criterion of rank of a
language is its lexicographical richness--the number of words it
possesses. Even very recently, Prof. Max Müller has applied such a
test to American languages, and, finding that one of the Fuegian
dialects is reported to have nearly thirty thousand words, he
maintains that this is a proof that these savages are a degenerate
remnant of some much more highly developed ancestry. Founding his
opinion largely on similar facts, Alexander von Humboldt applied the
expression to the American nations that they are "des débris échappés
à un naufrage commun."
Such, however, was not the opinion of his brother Wilhelm. He sounded
the depths of linguistic philosophy far more deeply than to accept
mere abundance of words as proof of richness in a language. Many
savage languages have twenty words signifying to eat particular
things, but no word meaning "to eat" in general; the Eskimo language
has different words for fishing for each kind of fish, but no word "to
fish," in a general sense. Such apparent richness is, in fact, actual
poverty.
Humboldt taught that the quality, not merely the quantity, of words
was the decisive measure of verbal wealth. Such quality depends on the
relations of concrete words, on the one hand, to the primitive
objective perceptions at their root, and, on the other, to the
abstract general ideas of which they are particular representatives;
and besides this, on the relations which the spoken word, the
articulate sound, bears to the philosophic laws of the formation of
language in general.[20-*]
In his letter to Abel-Remusat he discusses the theory that the
American languages point to a once higher condition of civilization,
and are the corrupted idioms of deteriorated races. He denies that
there is linguistic evidence of any such theory. These languages, he
says, possess a remarkable regularity of structure, and very few
anomalies. Their grammar does not present any visible traces of
corrupting intermixtures.[21-*]
In a later work he returns to the subject when speaking of the Lenape
(Algonkin Delaware) dialect, and asks whether the rich imaginative
power, of which it bears the evident impress, does not point to some
youthful, supple and vigorous era in the life of language in
general?[21-+] But he leaves the question unanswered.
§ 11. CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES.
The lower unit of language is the Word; the higher is the Sentence.
The plans on which languages combine words into sentences are a basic
character of their structure, and divide them into classes as distinct
and as decisive of their future, as those of vertebrate and
invertebrate animals in natural history.
These plans are four in number: