ought to be called, the natural growth, of language, and we shall easily
see that it consists chiefly in the play of the two principles which we
have just examined, _phonetic decay_ and _dialectical regeneration_ or
_growth_. Let us take the six Romance languages. It is usual to call these
the daughters of Latin. I do not object to the names of parent and
daughter as applied to languages; only we must not allow such apparently
clear and simple terms to cover obscure and vague conceptions. Now if we
call Italian the daughter of Latin, we do not mean to ascribe to Italian a
new vital principle. Not a single radical element was newly created for
the formation of Italian. Italian is Latin in a new form. Italian is
modern Latin, or Latin ancient Italian. The names _mother_ and _daughter_
only mark different periods in the growth of a language substantially the
same. To speak of Latin dying in giving birth to her offspring is again
pure mythology, and it would be easy to prove that Latin was a living
language long after Italian had learnt to run alone. Only let us clearly
see what we mean by Latin. The classical Latin is one out of many dialects
spoken by the Aryan inhabitants of Italy. It was the dialect of Latium, in
Latium the dialect of Rome, at Rome the dialect of the patricians. It was
fixed by Livius Andronicus, Ennius, Nævius, Cato, and Lucretius, polished
by the Scipios, Hortensius, and Cicero. It was the language of a
restricted class, of a political party, of a literary set. Before their
time, the language of Rome must have changed and fluctuated considerably.
Polybius tells us (iii. 22), that the best-informed Romans could not make
out without difficulty the language of the ancient treaties between Rome
and Carthage. Horace admits (Ep. ii. 1, 86), that he could not understand
the old Salian poems, and he hints that no one else could. Quintilian (i.
6, 40) says that the Salian priests could hardly understand their sacred
hymns. If the plebeians had obtained the upperhand over the patricians,
Latin would have been very different from what it is in Cicero, and we
know that even Cicero, having been brought up at Arpinum, had to give up
some of his provincial peculiarities, such as the dropping of the final
_s_, when he began to mix in fashionable society, and had to write for his
new patrician friends.(49) After having been established as the language
of legislation, religion, literature, and general civilization, the
classical Latin dialect became stationary and stagnant. It could not grow,
because it was not allowed to change or to deviate from its classical
correctness. It was haunted by its own ghost. Literary dialects, or what
are commonly called classical languages, pay for their temporary greatness
by inevitable decay. They are like stagnant lakes at the side of great
rivers. They form reservoirs of what was once living and running speech,
but they are no longer carried on by the main current. At times it may
seem as if the whole stream of language was absorbed by these lakes, and
we can hardly trace the small rivulets which run on in the main bed. But
if lower down, that is to say, later in history, we meet again with a new
body of stationary language, forming or formed, we may be sure that its
tributaries were those very rivulets which for a time were almost lost
from our sight. Or it may be more accurate to compare a classical or
literary idiom with the frozen surface of a river, brilliant and smooth,
but stiff and cold. It is mostly by political commotions that this surface
of the more polite and cultivated speech is broken and carried away by the
waters rising underneath. It is during times when the higher classes are
either crushed in religious and social struggles, or mix again with the
lower classes to repel foreign invasion; when literary occupations are
discouraged, palaces burnt, monasteries pillaged, and seats of learning
destroyed,—it is then that the popular, or, as they are called, the vulgar
dialects, which had formed a kind of undercurrent, rise beneath the
crystal surface of the literary language, and sweep away, like the waters
in spring, the cumbrous formations of a by-gone age. In more peaceful
times, a new and popular literature springs up in a language which _seems_
to have been formed by conquests or revolutions, but which, in reality,
had been growing up long before, and was only brought out, ready made, by
historical events. From this point of view we can see that no literary
language can ever be said to have been the mother of another language. As
soon as a language loses its unbounded capability of change, its
carelessness about what it throws away, and its readiness in always
supplying instantaneously the wants of mind and heart, its natural life is
changed into a merely artificial existence. It may still live on for a
long time, but while it seems to be the leading shoot, it is in reality
but a broken and withering branch, slowly falling from the stock from
which it sprang. The sources of Italian are not to be found in the
classical literature of Rome, but in the popular dialects of Italy.
English did not spring from the Anglo-Saxon of Wessex only, but from the
dialects spoken in every part of Great Britain, distinguished by local
peculiarities, and modified at different times by the influence of Latin,
Danish, Norman, French, and other foreign elements. Some of the local
dialects of English, as spoken at the present day, are of great importance
for a critical study of English, and a French prince, now living in this
country, deserves great credit for collecting what can still be saved of
English dialects. Hindustani is not the daughter of Sanskrit, as we find
it in the Vedas, or in the later literature of the Brahmans: it is a
branch of the living speech of India, springing from the same stem from
which Sanskrit sprang, when it first assumed its literary independence.
While thus endeavoring to place the character of dialects, as the feeders
of language, in a clear light, I may appear to some of my hearers to have
exaggerated their importance. No doubt, if my object had been different, I
might easily have shown that, without literary cultivation, language would
never have acquired that settled character which is essential for the
communication of thought; that it would never have fulfilled its highest
purpose, but have remained the mere jargon of shy troglodytes. But as the
importance of literary languages is not likely to be overlooked, whereas
the importance of dialects, as far as they sustain the growth of language,
had never been pointed out, I thought it better to dwell on the advantages
which literary languages derive from dialects, rather than on the benefits
which dialects owe to literary languages. Besides, our chief object to-day
was to explain the growth of language, and for that purpose it is
impossible to exaggerate the importance of the constant undergrowth of
dialects. Remove a language from its native soil, tear it away from the
dialects which are its feeders, and you arrest at once its natural growth.
There will still be the progress of phonetic corruption, but no longer the
restoring influence of dialectic regeneration. The language which the
Norwegian refugees brought to Iceland has remained almost the same for
seven centuries, whereas on its native soil, and surrounded by local
dialects, it has grown into two distinct languages, the Swedish and
Danish. In the eleventh century, the languages of Sweden, Denmark, and
Iceland are supposed(50) to have been identical, nor can we appeal to
foreign conquest, or to the admixture of foreign with native blood, in
order to account for the changes which the language underwent in Sweden
and Denmark, but not in Iceland.(51)
We can hardly form an idea of the unbounded resources of dialects. When
literary languages have stereotyped one general term, their dialects will
supply fifty, though each with its own special shade of meaning. If new
combinations of thought are evolved in the progress of society, dialects
will readily supply the required names from the store of their so-called
superfluous words. There are not only local and provincial, but also class
dialects. There is a dialect of shepherds, of sportsmen, of soldiers, of
farmers. I suppose there are few persons here present who could tell the
exact meaning of a horse’s poll, crest, withers, dock, hamstring, cannon,
pastern, coronet, arm, jowl, and muzzle. Where the literary language
speaks of the young of all sorts of animals, farmers, shepherds, and
sportsmen would be ashamed to use so general a term.
“The idiom of nomads,” as Grimm says, “contains an abundant wealth of
manifold expressions for sword and weapons, and for the different stages
in the life of their cattle. In a more highly cultivated language these
expressions become burthensome and superfluous. But, in a peasant’s mouth,
the bearing, calving, falling, and killing of almost every animal has its
own peculiar term, as the sportsman delights in calling the gait and
members of game by different names. The eye of these shepherds, who live
in the free air, sees further, their ear hears more sharply,—why should
their speech not have gained that living truth and variety?”
Thus Juliana Berners, lady prioress of the nunnery of Sopwell in the
fifteenth century, the reputed author of the book of St. Albans, informs
us that we must not use names of multitudes promiscuously, but we are to
say, “a congregacyon of people, a hoost of men, a felyshyppynge of yomen,
and a bevy of ladies; we must speak of a herde of dere, swannys, cranys,
or wrenys, a sege of herons or bytourys, a muster of pecockes, a watche of
nyghtyngales, a flyghte of doves, a claterynge of choughes, a pryde of
lyons, a slewthe of beeres, a gagle of geys, a skulke of foxes, a sculle
of frerys, a pontificality of prestys, a bomynable syght of monkes, and a
superfluyte of nonnes,” and so of other human and brute assemblages. In
like manner, in dividing game for the table, the animals were not carved,
but “a dere was broken, a gose reryd, chekyn frusshed, a cony unlaced, a
crane dysplayed, a curlewe unioynted, a quayle wynggyd, a swanne lyfte, a
lambe sholdered, a heron dysmembryd, a pecocke dysfygured, a samon chynyd,
a hadoke sydyd, a sole loynyd, and a breme splayed.”(52)
What, however, I wanted particularly to point out in this lecture is this,
that neither of the causes which produce the growth, or, according to
others, constitute the history of language, is under the control of man.
The phonetic decay of language is not the result of mere accident; it is
governed by definite laws, as we shall see when we come to consider the
principles of comparative grammar. But these laws were not made by man; on
the contrary, man had to obey them without knowing of their existence.
In the growth of the modern Romance languages out of Latin, we can
perceive not only a general tendency to simplification, not only a natural
disposition to avoid the exertion which the pronunciation of certain
consonants, and still more, of groups of consonants, entails on the
speaker: but we can see distinct laws for each of the Romance dialects,
which enable us to say, that in French the Latin _patrem_ would naturally
grow into the modern _père_. The final _m_ is always dropped in the
Romance dialects, and it was dropped even in Latin. Thus we get _patre_
instead of _patrem_. Now, a Latin _t_ between two vowels in such words as
_pater_ is invariably suppressed in French. This is a law, and by means of
it we can discover at once that _catena_ must become _chaine_; _fata_, a
later feminine representation of the old neuter _fatum_, _fée_; _pratum_ a
meadow, _pré_. From _pratum_ we derive _prataria_, which in French becomes
_prairie_; from _fatum_, _fataria_, the English _fairy_. Thus every Latin
participle in _atus_, like _amatus_, loved, must end in French in _é_. The
same law then changed _patre_(pronounced _pa-tere_) into _paere_, or
_père_; it changed _matrem_ into _mère_, _fratrem_ into _frère_. These
changes take place gradually but irresistibly, and, what is most
important, they are completely beyond the reach or control of the free
will of man.
Dialectical growth again is still more beyond the control of individuals.
For although a poet may knowingly and intentionally invent a new word, its
acceptance depends on circumstances which defy individual interference.
There are some changes in the grammar which at first sight might seem to
be mainly attributable to the caprice of the speaker. Granted, for
instance, that the loss of the Latin terminations was the natural result
of a more careless pronunciation; granted that the modern sign of the
French genitive _du_ is a natural corruption of the Latin _de illo_,—yet
the choice of _de_, instead of any other word, to express the genitive,
the choice of _illo_, instead of any other pronoun, to express the
article, might seem to prove that man acted as a free agent in the
formation of language. But it is not so. No single individual could
deliberately have set to work in order to abolish the old Latin genitive,
and to replace it by the periphrastic compound _de illo_. It was necessary
that the inconvenience of having no distinct or distinguishable sign of
the genitive should have been felt by the people who spoke a vulgar Latin
dialect. It was necessary that the same people should have used the
preposition _de_ in such a manner as to lose sight of its original local
meaning altogether (for instance, _una de multis_, in Horace, _i.e._, one
out of many). It was necessary, again, that the same people should have
felt the want of an article, and should have used _illo_ in numerous
expressions, where it seemed to have lost its original pronominal power.
It was necessary that all these conditions should be given, before one
individual and after him another, and after him hundreds and thousands and
millions, could use _de illo_ as the exponent of the genitive; and change
it into the Italian _dello_, _del_, and the French _du_.
The attempts of single grammarians and purists to improve language are
perfectly bootless; and we shall probably hear no more of schemes to prune
languages of their irregularities. It is very likely, however, that the
gradual disappearance of irregular declensions and conjugations is due, in
literary as well as in illiterate languages, to the dialect of children.
The language of children is more regular than our own. I have heard
children say _badder_ and _baddest_, instead of _worse_ and _worst_.
Children will say, _I gaed_, _I coomd_, _I catched_; and it is this sense
of grammatical justice, this generous feeling of what ought to be, which
in the course of centuries has eliminated many so-called irregular forms.
Thus the auxiliary verb in Latin was very irregular. If _sumus_ is _we
are_, and _sunt_, _they are_, the second person, _you are_, ought to have
been, at least according to the strict logic of children, _sutis_. This,
no doubt, sounds very barbarous to a classical ear accustomed to _estis_.
And we see how French, for instance, has strictly preserved the Latin
forms in _nous sommes_, _vous êtes_, _ils sont_. But in Spanish we find
_somos_, _sois_, _son_; and this _sois_ stands for _sutis_. We find
similar traces of grammatical levelling in the Italian _siamo_, _siete_,
_sono_, formed in analogy of regular verbs such as _crediamo_, _credete_,
_credono_. The second person, _sei_, instead of _es_, is likewise
infantine grammar. So are the Wallachian _súntemu_, we are, _súnteti_, you
are, which owe their origin to the third person plural _súnt_, they are.
And what shall we say of such monsters as _essendo_, a gerund derived on
principles of strict justice from an infinitive _essere_, like _credendo_
from _credere_!
However, we need not be surprised, for we find similar barbarisms in
English. Even in Anglo-Saxon, the third person plural, _sind_, has by a
false analogy been transferred to the first and second persons; and
instead of the modern English,
in Old in Gothic.
Norse.
we are ër-um sijum(53)
you are we find ër-udh sijuth
they are ër-u. sind.
Dialectically we hear _I be_, instead of _I am_; and if Chartism should
ever gain the upper hand, we must be prepared for newspapers adopting such
forms as _I says_, _I knows_.
These various influences and conditions under which language grows and
changes, are like the waves and winds which carry deposits to the bottom
of the sea, where they accumulate, and rise, and grow, and at last appear
on the surface of the earth as a stratum, perfectly intelligible in all
its component parts, not produced by an inward principle of growth, nor
regulated by invariable laws of nature; yet, on the other hand, by no
means the result of mere accident, or the production of lawless and
uncontrolled agencies. We cannot be careful enough in the use of our
words. Strictly speaking, neither _history_ nor _growth_ is applicable to
the changes of the shifting surface of the earth. _History_ applies to the
actions of free agents; _growth_ to the natural unfolding of organic
beings. We speak, however, of the growth of the crust of the earth, and we
know what we mean by it; and it is in this sense, but not in the sense of
growth as applied to a tree, that we have a right to speak of the growth
of language. If that modification which takes place in time by continually
new combinations of given elements, which withdraws itself from the
control of free agents, and can in the end be recognized as the result of
natural agencies, may be called growth; and if so defined, we may apply it
to the growth of the crust of the earth; the same word, in the same sense,
will be applicable to language, and will justify us in removing the
science of language from the pale of the historical to that of the
physical sciences.
There is another objection which we have to consider, and the
consideration of which will again help us to understand more clearly the
real character of language. The great periods in the growth of the earth
which have been established by geological research are brought to their
close, or very nearly so, when we discover the first vestiges of human
life, and when the history of man, in the widest sense of the word,
begins. The periods in the growth of language, on the contrary, begin and
run parallel with the history of man. It has been said, therefore, that
although language may not be merely a work of art, it would, nevertheless,
be impossible to understand the life and growth of any language without an
historical knowledge of the times in which that language grew up. We ought
to know, it is said, whether a language which is to be analyzed under the
microscope of comparative grammar, has been growing up wild, among wild
tribes, without a literature, oral or written, in poetry or in prose; or
whether it has received the cultivation of poets, priests, and orators,
and retained the impress of a classical age. Again, it is only from the
annals of political history that we can learn whether one language has
come in contact with another, how long this contact has lasted, which of
the two nations stood higher in civilization, which was the conquering and
which the conquered, which of the two established the laws, the religion,
and the arts of the country, and which produced the greatest number of
national teachers, popular poets, and successful demagogues. All these
questions are of a purely historical character, and the science which has
to borrow so much from historical sources, might well be considered an
anomaly in the sphere of the physical sciences.
Now, in answer to this, it cannot be denied that among the physical
sciences none is so intimately connected with the history of man as the
science of language. But a similar connection, though in a less degree,
can be shown to exist between other branches of physical research and the
history of man. In zoölogy, for instance, it is of some importance to know
at what particular period of history, in what country, and for what
purposes certain animals were tamed and domesticated. In ethnology, a
science, we may remark in passing, quite distinct from the science of
language, it would be difficult to account for the Caucasian stamp
impressed on the Mongolian race in Hungary, or on the Tatar race in
Turkey, unless we knew from written documents the migrations and
settlements of the Mongolic and Tataric tribes in Europe. A botanist,
again, comparing several specimens of rye, would find it difficult to
account for their respective peculiarities, unless he knew that in some
parts of the world this plant has been cultivated for centuries, whereas
in other regions, as, for instance, in Mount Caucasus, it is still allowed
to grow wild. Plants have their own countries, like races, and the
presence of the cucumber in Greece, the orange and cherry in Italy, the
potatoe in England, and the vine at the Cape, can be fully explained by
the historian only. The more intimate relation, therefore, between the
history of language and the history of man is not sufficient to exclude
the science of language from the circle of the physical sciences.
Nay, it might be shown, that, if strictly defined, the science of language
can declare itself completely independent of history. If we speak of the
language of England, we ought, no doubt, to know something of the
political history of the British Isles, in order to understand the present
state of that language. Its history begins with the early Britons, who
spoke a Celtic dialect; it carries us on to the Saxon conquest, to the
Danish invasions, to the Norman conquest: and we see how each of these
political events contributed to the formation of the character of the
language. The language of England may be said to have been in succession
Celtic, Saxon, Norman, and English. But if we speak of the history of the
English language, we enter on totally different ground. The English
language was never Celtic, the Celtic never grew into Saxon, nor the Saxon
into Norman, nor the Norman into English. The history of the Celtic
language runs on to the present day. It matters not whether it be spoken
by all the inhabitants of the British Isles, or only by a small minority
in Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. A language, as long as it is spoken by
anybody, lives and has its substantive existence. The last old woman that
spoke Cornish, and to whose memory it is now intended to raise a monument,
represented by herself alone the ancient language of Cornwall. A Celt may
become an Englishman, Celtic and English blood may be mixed; and who could
tell at the present day the exact proportion of Celtic and Saxon blood in
the population of England? But languages are never mixed. It is
indifferent by what name the language spoken in the British Islands be
called, whether English or British or Saxon; to the student of language
English is Teutonic, and nothing but Teutonic. The physiologist may
protest, and point out that in many instances the skull, or the bodily
habitat of the English language, is of a Celtic type; the genealogist may
protest and prove that the arms of many an English family are of Norman
origin; the student of language must follow his own way. Historical
information as to an early substratum of Celtic inhabitants in Britain, as
to Saxon, Danish, and Norman invasions may be useful to him. But though
every record were burned, and every skull mouldered, the English language,
as spoken by any ploughboy, would reveal its own history, if analyzed
according to the rules of comparative grammar. Without the help of
history, we should see that English is Teutonic, that like Dutch and
Friesian it belongs to the Low-German branch; that this branch, together
with the High-German, Gothic, and Scandinavian branches, constitute the
Teutonic class; that this Teutonic class, together with the Celtic,
Slavonic, the Hellenic, Italic, Iranic, and Indic classes constitute the
great Indo-European or Aryan family of speech. In the English dictionary
the student of the science of language can detect, by his own tests,
Celtic, Norman, Greek, and Latin ingredients, but not a single drop of
foreign blood has entered into the organic system of the English language.
The grammar, the blood and soul of the language, is as pure and unmixed in
English as spoken in the British Isles, as it was when spoken on the
shores of the German Ocean by the Angles, Saxons, and Juts of the
continent.
In thus considering and refuting the objections which have been, or might
be, made against the admission of the science of language into the circle
of the physical sciences, we have arrived at some results which it may be
useful to recapitulate before we proceed further. We saw that whereas
philology treats language only as a means, comparative philology chooses
language as the object of scientific inquiry. It is not the study of one
language, but of many, and in the end of all, which forms the aim of this
new science. Nor is the language of Homer of greater interest, in the
scientific treatment of human speech, than the dialect of the Hottentots.
We saw, secondly, that after the first practical acquisition and careful
analysis of the facts and forms of any language, the next and most
important step is the classification of all the varieties of human speech,
and that only after this has been accomplished would it be safe to venture
on the great questions which underlie all physical research, the questions
as to the what, the whence, and the why of language.
We saw, thirdly, that there is a distinction between what is called
history and growth. We determined the true meaning of growth, as applied
to language, and perceived how it was independent of the caprice of man,
and governed by laws that could be discovered by careful observation, and
be traced back in the end to higher laws, which govern the organs both of
human thought, and of the human voice. Though admitting that the science
of language was more intimately connected than any other physical science
with what is called the political history of man, we found that, strictly
speaking, our science might well dispense with this auxiliary, and that
languages can be analyzed and classified on their own evidence
particularly on the strength of their grammatical articulation, without
any reference to the individuals, families, clans, tribes, nations, or
races by whom they are or have been spoken.
In the course of these considerations, we had to lay down two axioms, to
which we shall frequently have to appeal in the progress of our
investigations. The first declares grammar to be the most essential
element, and therefore the ground of classification in all languages which
have produced a definite grammatical articulation; the second denies the
possibility of a mixed language.
These two axioms are, in reality, but one, as we shall see when we examine
them more closely. There is hardly a language which in one sense may not
be called a mixed language. No nation or tribe was ever so completely
isolated as not to admit the importation of a certain number of foreign
words. In some instances these imported words have changed the whole
native aspect of the language, and have even acquired a majority over the
native element. Turkish is a Turanian dialect; its grammar is purely
Tataric or Turanian. The Turks, however, possessed but a small literature
and narrow civilization before they were converted to Mohammedanism. Now,
the language of Mohammed was Arabic, a branch of the Semitic family,
closely allied to Hebrew and Syriac. Together with the Koran, and their
law and religion, the Turks learned from the Arabs, their conquerors, many
of the arts and sciences connected with a more advanced stage of
civilization. Arabic became to the Turks what Latin was to the Germans
during the Middle Ages; and there is hardly a word in the higher
intellectual terminology of Arabic, that might not be used, more or less
naturally, by a writer in Turkish. But the Arabs, again, at the very
outset of their career of conquest and conversion, had been, in science,
art, literature, and polite manners, the pupils of the Persians, whom they
had conquered; they stood to them in the same relation as the Romans stood
to the Greeks. Now, the Persians speak a language which is neither
Semitic, like Arabic, nor Turanian, like Turkish; it is a branch of the
Indo-European or Aryan family of speech. A large infusion of Persian words
thus found its way into Arabic, and through Arabic into Turkish; and the
result is that at the present moment the Turkish language, as spoken by
the higher ranks at Constantinople, is so entirely overgrown with Persian
and Arabic words, that a common clod from the country understands but
little of the so-called Osmanli, though its grammar is exactly the same as
the grammar which he uses in his Tataric utterance.