"He gave man speech, and speech created thought, Which is the measure of
the universe" ("Prometheus Unbound" II. 4.),
it seems more probable that the development was just the opposite--that
the development of new activities originated new thoughts which required
new symbols to express them, symbols which may at first have been, even
to a greater extent than with some of the lower races at present, sign
language as much as articulation. When once the faculty of articulation
was developed, which, though we cannot trace the process, was probably a
very gradual growth, there is no reason to suppose that words developed
in any other way then they do at present. An erroneous notion of the
development of language has become widely spread through the adoption
of the metaphorical term "roots" for the irreducible elements of human
speech. Men never talked in roots; they talked in words. Many words of
kindred meaning have a part in common, and a root is nothing but that
common part stripped of all additions. In some cases it is obvious that
one word is derived from another by the addition of a fresh element; in
other cases it is impossible to say which of two kindred words is the
more primitive. A root is merely a convenient term for an abstraction.
The simplest word may be called a root, but it is nevertheless a
word. How are new words added to a language in the present day? Some
communities, like the Germans, prefer to construct new words for new
ideas out of the old material existing in the language; others, like the
English, prefer to go to the ancient languages of Greece and Rome for
terms to express new ideas. The same chemical element is described in
the two languages as sour stuff (Sauerstoff) and as oxygen. Both terms
mean the same thing etymologically as well as in fact. On behalf of the
German method, it may be contended that the new idea is more closely
attached to already existing ideas, by being expressed in elements of
the language which are intelligible even to the meanest capacity. For
the English practice it may be argued that, if we coin a new word which
means one thing, and one thing only, the idea which it expresses is
more clearly defined than if it were expressed in popularly intelligible
elements like "sour stuff." If the etymological value of words were
always present in the minds of their users, "oxygen" would undoubtedly
have an advantage over "sour stuff" as a technical term. But the
tendency in language is to put two words of this kind which express but
one idea under a single accent, and when this has taken place, no one
but the student of language any longer observes what the elements really
mean. When the ordinary man talks of a "blackbird" it is certainly not
present to his consciousness that he is talking of a black bird, unless
for some reason conversation has been dwelling upon the colour rather
than other characteristics of the species.
But, it may be said, words like "oxygen" are introduced by learned men,
and do not represent the action of the man in the street, who, after
all, is the author of most additions to the stock of human language. We
may go back therefore some four centuries to a period, when scientific
study was only in its infancy, and see what process was followed. With
the discovery of America new products never seen before reached Europe,
and these required names. Three of the most characteristic were tobacco,
the potato, and the turkey. How did these come to be so named? The first
people to import these products into Europe were naturally the Spanish
discoverers. The first of these words--tobacco--appears in forms which
differ only slightly in the languages of all civilised countries:
Spanish tabaco, Italian tabacco, French tabac, Dutch and German tabak,
Swedish tobak, etc. The word in the native dialect of Hayti is said to
have been tabaco, but to have meant not the plant (According to William
Barclay, "Nepenthes, or the Virtue of Tobacco", Edinburgh, 1614, "the
countrey which God hath honoured and blessed with this happie and holy
herbe doth call it in their native language 'Petum'.") but the pipe
in which it was smoked. It thus illustrates a frequent feature of
borrowing--that the word is not borrowed in its proper signification,
but in some sense closely allied thereto, which a foreigner,
understanding the language with difficulty, might readily mistake for
the real meaning. Thus the Hindu practice of burning a wife upon the
funeral pyre of her husband is called in English "suttee", this word
being in fact but the phonetic spelling of the Sanskrit "sati", "a
virtuous woman," and passing into its English meaning because formerly
the practice of self-immolation by a wife was regarded as the highest
virtue.
The name of the potato exhibits greater variety. The English name was
borrowed from the Spanish "patata", which was itself borrowed from a
native word for the "yam" in the dialect of Hayti. The potato appeared
early in Italy, for the mariners of Genoa actively followed the
footsteps of their countryman Columbus in exploring America. In Italian
generally the form "patata" has survived. The tubers, however,
also suggested a resemblance to truffles, so that the Italian word
"tartufolo", a diminutive of the Italian modification of the Latin
"terrae tuber" was applied to them. In the language of the Rhaetian Alps
this word appears as "tartufel". From there it seems to have passed
into Germany where potatoes were not cultivated extensively till the
eighteenth century, and "tartufel" has in later times through some
popular etymology been metamorphosed into "Kartoffel". In France the
shape of the tubers suggested the name of earth-apple (pomme de terre),
a name also adopted in Dutch (aard-appel), while dialectically in German
a form "Grumbire" appears, which is a corruption of "Grund-birne",
"ground pear". (Kluge "Etymologisches Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache"
(Strassburg), s.v. "Kartoffel".) Here half the languages have adopted
the original American word for an allied plant, while others have
adopted a name originating in some more or less fanciful resemblance
discovered in the tubers; the Germans alone in Western Europe, failing
to see any meaning in their borrowed name, have modified it almost
beyond recognition. To this English supplies an exact parallel in
"parsnep" which, though representing the Latin "pastinaca" through the
Old French "pastenaque", was first assimilated in the last syllable to
the "nep" of "turnep" ("pasneppe" in Elizabethan English), and later had
an "r" introduced into the first syllable, apparently on the analogy of
"parsley".
The turkey on the other hand seems never to be found with its original
American name. In England, as the name implies, the turkey cock was
regarded as having come from the land of the Turks. The bird no doubt
spread over Europe from the Italian seaports. The mistake, therefore,
was not unnatural, seeing that these towns conducted a great trade
with the Levant, while the fact that America when first discovered was
identified with India helped to increase the confusion. Thus in French
the "coq d'Inde" was abbreviated to "d'Inde" much as "turkey cock" was
to "turkey"; the next stage was to identify "dinde" as a feminine word
and create a new "dindon" on the analogy of "chapon" as the masculine.
In Italian the name "gallo d'India" besides survives, while in German
the name "Truthahn" seems to be derived onomatopoetically from
the bird's cry, though a dialectic "Calecutischer Hahn" specifies
erroneously an origin for the bird from the Indian Calicut. In the
Spanish "pavo", on the other hand, there is a curious confusion with
the peacock. Thus in these names for objects of common knowledge,
the introduction of which into Europe can be dated with tolerable
definiteness, we see evinced the methods by which in remoter ages
objects were named. The words were borrowed from the community whence
came the new object, or the real or fancied resemblance to some known
object gave the name, or again popular etymology might convert the
unknown term into something that at least approached in sound a
well-known word.
"The Origin of Species" had not long been published when the parallelism
of development in natural species and in languages struck investigators.
At the time, one of the foremost German philologists was August
Schleicher, Professor at Jena. He was himself keenly interested in the
natural sciences, and amongst his colleagues was Ernst Haeckel, the
protagonist in Germany of the Darwinian theory. How the new ideas struck
Schleicher may be seen from the following sentences by his colleague
Haeckel. "Speech is a physiological function of the human organism,
and has been developed simultaneously with its organs, the larynx and
tongue, and with the functions of the brain. Hence it will be quite
natural to find in the evolution and classification of languages the
same features as in the evolution and classification of organic species.
The various groups of languages that are distinguished in philology as
primitive, fundamental, parent, and daughter languages, dialects, etc.,
correspond entirely in their development to the different categories
which we classify in zoology and botany as stems, classes, orders,
families, genera, species and varieties. The relation of these groups,
partly coordinate and partly subordinate, in the general scheme is just
the same in both cases; and the evolution follows the same lines in
both." (Haeckel, "The Evolution of Man", page 485, London, 1905. This
represents Schleicher's own words: Was die Naturforscher als Gattung
bezeichnen wurden, heisst bei den Glottikern Sprachstamm, auch
Sprachsippe; naher verwandte Gattungen bezeichnen sie wohl auch als
Sprachfamilien einer Sippe oder eines Sprachstammes... Die Arten einer
Gattung nennen wir Sprachen eines Stammes; die Unterarten einer Art sind
bei uns die Dialekte oder Mundarten einer Sprache; den Varietaten
und Spielarten entsprechen die Untermundarten oder Nebenmundarten und
endlich den einzelnen Individuen die Sprechweise der einzelnen
die Sprachen redenden Menschen. "Die Darwinische Theorie und die
Sprachwissenschaft", Weimar, 1863, page 12 f. Darwin makes a more
cautious statement about the classification of languages in "The Origin
of Species", page 578, (Popular Edition, 1900).) These views were set
forth in an open letter addressed to Haeckel in 1863 by Schleicher
entitled, "The Darwinian theory and the science of language".
Unfortunately Schleicher's views went a good deal farther than is
indicated in the extract given above. He appended to the pamphlet a
genealogical tree of the Indo-Germanic languages which, though to a
large extent confirmed by later research, by the dichotomy of each
branch into two other branches, led the unwary reader to suppose their
phylogeny (to use Professor Haeckel's term) was more regular than our
evidence warrants.
Without qualification Schleicher declared languages to be "natural
organisms which originated unconditioned by the human will,
developed according to definite laws, grow old and die; they also are
characterised by that series of phenomena which we designate by the
term 'Life.' Consequently Glottic, the science of language, is a natural
science; its method is in general the same as that of the other natural
sciences." ("Die Darwinische Theorie", page 6 f.) In accordance with
this view he declared (op. cit. page 23.) that the root in language
might be compared with the simple cell in physiology, the linguistic
simple cell or root being as yet not differentiated into special organs
for the function of noun, verb, etc.
In this probably all recent philologists admit that Schleicher went too
far. One of the most fertile theories in the modern science of language
originated with him, and was further developed by his pupil, August
Leskien ("Die Declination im Slavisch-litanischen und Germanischen",
Leipzig, 1876; Osthoff and Brugmann, "Morphologische Untersuchungen",
I. (Introduction), 1878. The general principles of this school were
formulated (1880) in a fuller form in H. Paul's "Prinzipien der
Sprachgeschichte", Halle (3rd edition, 1898). Paul and Wundt (in his
"Volkerpsychologie") deal largely with the same matter, but begin their
investigations from different points of view, Paul being a philologist
with leanings to philosophy and Wundt a philosopher interested in
language.), and by Leskien's colleagues and friends, Brugmann and
Osthoff. This was the principle that phonetic laws have no exceptions.
Under the influence of this generalisation much greater precision in
etymology was insisted upon, and a new and remarkably active period in
the study of language began. Stated broadly in the fashion given above
the principle is not true. A more accurate statement would be that an
original sound is represented in a given dialect at a given time and in
a given environment only in one way; provided that the development of
the original sound into its representation in the given dialect has not
been influenced by the working of analogy.
It is this proviso that is most important for the characterisation of
the science of language. As I have said elsewhere, it is at this point
that this science parts company with the natural sciences. "If the
chemist compounds two pure simple elements, there can be but one result,
and no power of the chemist can prevent it. But the minds of men do
act upon the sounds which they produce. The result is that, when this
happens, the phonetic law which would have acted in the case is stopped,
and this particular form enters on the same course of development as
other forms to which it does not belong." (P. Giles, "Short Manual of
Comparative Philology", 2nd edition, page 57, London, 1901.)
Schleicher was wrong in defining a language to be an organism in the
sense in which a living being is an organism. Regarded physiologically,
language is a function or potentiality of certain human organs; regarded
from the point of view of the community it is of the nature of an
institution. (This view of language is worked out at some length by
Prof. W.D. Whitney in an article in the "Contemporary Review" for 1875,
page 713 ff. This article forms part of a controversy with Max Muller,
which is partly concerned with Darwin's views on language. He criticises
Schleicher's views severely in his "Oriental and Linguistic Studies",
page 298 ff., New York, 1873. In this volume will be found criticisms of
various other views mentioned in this essay.) More than most influences
it conduces to the binding together of the elements that form a state.
That geographical or other causes may effectively counteract the
influence of identity of language is obvious. One need only read the
history of ancient Greece, or observe the existing political separation
of Germany and Austria, of Great Britain and the United States of
America. But however analogous to an organism, language is not an
organism. In a less degree Schleicher, by defining languages as such,
committed the same mistake which Bluntschli made regarding the State,
and which led him to declare that the State is by nature masculine and
the Church feminine. (Bluntschli, "Theory of the State", page 24, Second
English Edition, Oxford, 1892.) The views of Schleicher were to some
extent injurious to the proper methods of linguistic study. But this
misfortune was much more than fully compensated by the inspiration
which his ideas, collected and modified by his disciples, had upon the
science. In spite of the difference which the psychological element
represented by analogy makes between the science of language and the
natural sciences, we are entitled to say of it as Schleicher said of
Darwin's theory of the origin of species, "it depends upon observation,
and is essentially an attempt at a history of development."
Other questions there are in connection with language and evolution
which require investigation--the survival of one amongst several
competing words (e.g. why German keeps only as a high poetic word
"ross", which is identical in origin with the English work-a-day
"horse", and replaces it by "pferd", whose congener the English
"palfrey" is almost confined to poetry and romance), the persistence
of evolution till it becomes revolution in languages like English or
Persian which have practically ceased to be inflectional languages, and
many other problems. Into these Darwin did not enter, and they require
a fuller investigation than is possible within the limits of the present
paper.