most distant sources as English. Every country of the globe seems to have
brought some of its verbal manufactures to the intellectual market of
England. Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Celtic, Saxon, Danish, French, Spanish,
Italian, German—nay, even Hindustani, Malay, and Chinese words, lie mixed
together in the English dictionary. On the evidence of words alone it
would be impossible to classify English with any other of the established
stocks and stems of human speech. Leaving out of consideration the smaller
ingredients, we find, on comparing the Teutonic with the Latin, or
Neo-Latin or Norman elements in English, that the latter have a decided
majority over the home-grown Saxon terms. This may seem incredible; and if
we simply took a page of any English book, and counted therein the words
of purely Saxon and Latin origin, the majority would be no doubt on the
Saxon side. The articles, pronouns, prepositions, and auxiliary verbs, all
of which are of Saxon growth, occur over and over again in one and the
same page. Thus, Hickes maintained that nine tenths of the English
dictionary were Saxon, because there were only three words of Latin origin
in the Lord’s prayer. Sharon Turner, who extended his observations over a
larger field, came to the conclusion that the relation of Norman to Saxon
was as four to six. Another writer, who estimates the whole number of
English words at 38,000, assigns 23,000 to a Saxon, and 15,000 to a
classical source. On taking, however, a more accurate inventory, and
counting every word in the dictionaries of Robertson and Webster, M.
Thommerel has established the fact that of the sum total of 43,566 words,
29,853 came from classical, 13,230 from Teutonic, and the rest from
miscellaneous sources.(54) On the evidence of its dictionary, therefore,
and treating English as a mixed language, it would have to be classified
together with French, Italian, and Spanish, as one of the Romance or
Neo-Latin dialects. Languages, however, though mixed in their dictionary,
can never be mixed in their grammar. Hervas was told by missionaries that
in the middle of the eighteenth century the Araucans used hardly a single
word which was not Spanish, though they preserved both the grammar and the
syntax of their own native speech.(55) This is the reason why grammar is
made the criterion of the relationship and the base of the classification
in almost all languages; and it follows, therefore, as a matter of course,
that in the classification and in the science of language, it is
impossible to admit the existence of a mixed idiom. We may form whole
sentences in English consisting entirely of Latin or Romance words; yet
whatever there is left of grammar in English bears unmistakable traces of
Teutonic workmanship. What may now be called grammar in English is little
more than the terminations of the genitive singular, and nominative plural
of nouns, the degrees of comparison, and a few of the persons and tenses
of the verb. Yet the single _s_, used as the exponent of the third person
singular of the indicative present, is irrefragable evidence that in a
scientific classification of languages, English, though it did not retain
a single word of Saxon origin, would have to be classed as Saxon, and as a
branch of the great Teutonic stem of the Aryan family of speech. In
ancient and less matured languages, grammar, or the formal part of human
speech, is far more abundantly developed than in English; and it is,
therefore, a much safer guide for discovering a family likeness in
scattered members of the same family. There are languages in which there
is no trace of what we are accustomed to call grammar; for instance,
ancient Chinese; there are others in which we can still watch the growth
of grammar, or, more correctly, the gradual lapse of material into merely
formal elements. In these languages new principles of classification will
have to be applied, such as are suggested by the study of natural history;
and we shall have to be satisfied with the criteria of a morphological
affinity, instead of those of a genealogical relationship.
I have thus answered, I hope, some of the objections which threatened to
deprive the science of language of that place which she claims in the
circle of the physical sciences. We shall see in our next lecture what the
history of our science has been from its beginning to the present day, and
how far it may be said to have passed through the three stages, the
empirical, the classificatory, and the theoretical, which mark the
childhood, the youth, and the manhood of every one of the natural
sciences.
LECTURE III. THE EMPIRICAL STAGE.
We begin to-day to trace the historical progress of the science of
language in its three stages, the _Empirical_, the _Classificatory_, and
the _Theoretical_. As a general rule each physical science begins with
analysis, proceeds to classification, and ends with theory; but, as I
pointed out in my first lecture, there are frequent exceptions to this
rule, and it is by no means uncommon to find that philosophical
speculations, which properly belong to the last or theoretical stage, were
attempted in physical sciences long before the necessary evidence had been
collected or arranged. Thus, we find that the science of language, in the
only two countries where we can watch its origin and history—in India and
Greece—rushes at once into theories about the mysterious nature of speech,
and cares as little for facts as the man who wrote an account of the camel
without ever having seen the animal or the desert. The Brahmans, in the
hymns of the Veda, raised language to the rank of a deity, as they did
with all things of which they knew not what they were. They addressed
hymns to her in which she is said to have been with the gods from the
beginning, achieving wondrous things, and never revealed to man except in
part. In the Bráhmaņas, language is called the cow, breath the bull, and
their young is said to be the mind of man.(56) Brahman, the highest being,
is said to be known through speech, nay, speech herself is called the
Supreme Brahman. At a very early period, however, the Brahmans recovered
from their raptures about language, and set to work with wonderful skill
dissecting her sacred body. Their achievements in grammatical analysis,
which date from the sixth century, B. C., are still unsurpassed in the
grammatical literature of any nation. The idea of reducing a whole
language to a small number of roots, which in Europe was not attempted
before the sixteenth century by Henry Estienne,(57) was perfectly familiar
to the Brahmans, at least 500 B. C.
The Greeks, though they did not raise language to the rank of a deity,
paid her, nevertheless, the greatest honors in their ancient schools of
philosophy. There is hardly one of their representative philosophers who
has not left some saying on the nature of language. The world without, or
nature, and the world within, or mind, did not excite more wonder and
elicit deeper oracles of wisdom from the ancient sages of Greece than
language, the image of both, of nature and of mind. “What is language?”
was a question asked quite as early as “What am I?” and, “What is all this
world around me?” The problem of language was in fact a recognized
battle-field for the different schools of ancient Greek philosophy, and we
shall have to glance at their early guesses on the nature of human speech,
when we come to consider the third or theoretical stage in the science of
language.
At present, we have to look for the early traces of the first or empirical
stage. And here it might seem doubtful what was the real work to be
assigned to this stage. What can be meant by the empirical treatment of
language? Who were the men that did for language what the sailor did for
his stars, the miner for his minerals, the gardener for his flowers? Who
was the first to give any thought to language?—to distinguish between its
component parts, between nouns and verbs, between articles and pronouns,
between the nominative and accusative, the active and passive? Who
invented these terms, and for what purpose were they invented?
We must be careful in answering these questions, for, as I said before,
the merely empirical analysis of language was preceded in Greece by more
general inquiries into the nature of thought and language; and the result
has been that many of the technical terms which form the nomenclature of
empirical grammar, existed in the schools of philosophy long before they
were handed over, ready made, to the grammarian. The distinction of noun
and verb, or more correctly, of subject and predicate, was the work of
philosophers. Even the technical terms of case, of number, and gender,
were coined at a very early time for the purpose of entering into the
nature of thought; not for the practical purpose of analyzing the forms of
language. This, their practical application to the spoken language of
Greece, was the work of a later generation. It was the teacher of
languages who first compared the categories of thought with the realities
of the Greek language. It was he who transferred the terminology of
Aristotle and the Stoics from thought to speech, from logic to grammar;
and thus opened the first roads into the impervious wilderness of spoken
speech. In doing this, the grammarian had to alter the strict acceptation
of many of the terms which he borrowed from the philosopher, and he had to
coin others before he could lay hold of all the facts of language even in
the roughest manner. For, indeed, the distinction between noun and verb,
between active and passive, between nominative and accusative, does not
help us much towards a scientific analysis of language. It is no more than
a first grasp, and it can only be compared with the most elementary
terminology in other branches of human knowledge. Nevertheless, it was a
beginning, a very important beginning; and if we preserve in our histories
of the world the names of those who are said to have discovered the four
physical elements, the names of a Thales and Anaximenes, we ought not to
forget the names of the discoverers of the elements of language—the
founders of one of the most useful and most successful branches of
philosophy—the first Grammarians.
Grammar then, in the usual sense of the word, or the merely formal and
empirical analysis of language, owes its origin, like all other sciences,
to a very natural and practical want. The first practical grammarian was
the first practical teacher of languages, and if we want to know the
beginnings of the science of language, we must try to find out at what
time in the history of the world, and under what circumstances, people
first thought of learning any language besides their own. At _that_ time
we shall find the first practical grammar, and not till then. Much may
have been ready at hand through the less interested researches of
philosophers, and likewise through the critical studies of the scholars of
Alexandria on the ancient forms of their language as preserved in the
Homeric poems. But rules of declension and conjugation, paradigms of
regular and irregular nouns and verbs, observations on syntax, and the
like, these are the work of the teachers of languages, and of no one else.
Now, the teaching of languages, though at present so large a profession,
is comparatively a very modern invention. No ancient Greek ever thought of
learning a foreign language. Why should he? He divided the whole world
into Greeks and Barbarians, and he would have felt himself degraded by
adopting either the dress or the manners or the language of his barbarian
neighbors. He considered it a privilege to speak Greek, and even dialects
closely related to his own, were treated by him as mere jargons. It takes
time before people conceive the idea that it is possible to express
oneself in any but one’s own language. The Poles called their neighbors,
the Germans, _Niemiec_, _niemy_ meaning _dumb_;(58) just as the Greeks
called the Barbarians _Aglossoi_, or speechless. The name which the
Germans gave to their neighbors, the Celts, _Walh_ in old High German,
_vealh_ in Anglo-Saxon, the modern _Welsh_, is supposed to be the same as
the Sanskrit _mlechha_, and means a person who talks indistinctly.(59)
Even when the Greeks began to feel the necessity of communicating with
foreign nations, when they felt a desire of learning their idioms, the
problem was by no means solved. For how was a foreign language to be
learnt as long as either party could only speak their own? The problem was
almost as difficult as when, as we are told by some persons, the first
men, as yet speechless, came together in order to invent speech, and to
discuss the most appropriate names that should be given to the perceptions
of the senses and the abstractions of the mind. At first, it must be
supposed that the Greek learned foreign languages very much as children
learn their own. The interpreters mentioned by ancient historians were
probably children of parents speaking different languages. The son of a
Scythian and a Greek would naturally learn the utterances both of his
father and mother, and the lucrative nature of his services would not fail
to increase the supply. We are told, though on rather mythical authority,
that the Greeks were astonished at the multiplicity of languages which
they encountered during the Argonautic expedition, and that they were much
inconvenienced by the want of skilful interpreters.(60) We need not wonder
at this, for the English army was hardly better off than the army of
Jason; and such is the variety of dialects spoken in the Caucasian
Isthmus, that it is still called by the inhabitants “the Mountain of
Languages.” If we turn our eyes from these mythical ages to the historical
times of Greece, we find that trade gave the first encouragement to the
profession of interpreters. Herodotus tells us (iv. 24), that caravans of
Greek merchants, following the course of the Volga upwards to the Oural
mountains, were accompanied by seven interpreters, speaking seven
different languages. These must have comprised Slavonic, Tataric, and
Finnic dialects, spoken in those countries in the time of Herodotus, as
they are at the present day. The wars with Persia first familiarized the
Greeks with the idea that other nations also possessed real languages.
Themistocles studied Persian, and is said to have spoken it fluently. The
expedition of Alexander contributed still more powerfully to a knowledge
of other nations and languages. But when Alexander went to converse with
the Brahmans, who were even then considered by the Greeks as the guardians
of a most ancient and mysterious wisdom, their answers had to be
translated by so many interpreters that one of the Brahmans remarked, they
must become like water that had passed through many impure channels.(61)
We hear, indeed, of more ancient Greek travellers, and it is difficult to
understand how, in those early times, anybody could have travelled without
a certain knowledge of the language of the people through whose camps and
villages and towns he had to pass. Many of these travels, however,
particularly those which are said to have extended as far as India, are
mere inventions of later writers.(62) Lycurgus may have travelled to Spain
and Africa, he certainly did not proceed to India, nor is there any
mention of his intercourse with the Indian Gymnosophists before
Aristocrates, who lived about 100 B. C. The travels of Pythagoras are
equally mythical; they are inventions of Alexandrian writers, who believed
that all wisdom must have flowed from the East. There is better authority
for believing that Democritus went to Egypt and Babylon, but his more
distant travels to India are likewise legendary. Herodotus, though he
travelled in Egypt and Persia, never gives us to understand that he was
able to converse in any but his own language.
As far as we can tell, the barbarians seem to have possessed a greater
facility for acquiring languages than either Greeks or Romans. Soon after
the Macedonian conquest, we find(63) _Berosus_ in Babylon, _Menander_ in
Tyre, and _Manetho_ in Egypt, compiling, from original sources, the annals
of their countries.(64) Their works were written in Greek, and for the
Greeks. The native language of Berosus was Babylonian, of Menander
Phenician, of Manetho Egyptian. Berosus was able to read the cuneiform
documents of Babylonia with the same ease with which Manetho read the
papyri of Egypt. The almost contemporaneous appearance of three such men,
barbarians by birth and language, who were anxious to save the histories
of their countries from total oblivion, by entrusting them to the keeping
of their conquerors, the Greeks, is highly significant. But what is
likewise significant, and by no means creditable to the Greek or
Macedonian conquerors, is the small value which they seem to have set on
these works. They have all been lost, and are known to us by fragments
only, though there can be little doubt that the work of Berosus would have
been an invaluable guide to the student of the cuneiform inscriptions and
of Babylonian history, and that Manetho, if preserved complete, would have
saved us volumes of controversy on Egyptian chronology. We learn, however,
from the almost simultaneous appearance of these works, that soon after
the epoch marked by Alexander’s conquests in the East, the Greek language
was studied and cultivated by literary men of barbarian origin, though we
should look in vain for any Greek learning or employing any but his own
tongue for literary purposes. We hear of no intellectual intercourse
between Greeks and barbarians before the days of Alexander and Alexandria.
At Alexandria, various nations, speaking different languages, and
believing in different gods, were brought together. Though primarily
engaged in mercantile speculations, it was but natural that in their
moments of leisure they should hold discourse on their native countries,
their gods, their kings, their law-givers, and poets. Besides, there were
Greeks at Alexandria who were engaged in the study of antiquity, and who
knew how to ask questions from men coming from any country of the world.
The pretension of the Egyptians to a fabulous antiquity, the belief of the
Jews in the sacred character of their laws, the faith of the Persians in
the writings of Zoroaster, all these were fit subjects for discussion in
the halls and libraries of Alexandria. We probably owe the translation of
the Old Testament, the Septuagint, to this spirit of literary inquiry
which was patronized at Alexandria by the Ptolemies.(65) The writings of
Zoroaster also, the Zend-Avesta, would seem to have been rendered into
Greek about the same time. For Hermippus, who is said by Pliny to have
translated the writings of Zoroaster, was in all probability
Hermippus,(66) the Peripatetic philosopher, the pupil of Callimachus, one
of the most learned scholars at Alexandria.
But although we find at Alexandria these and similar traces of a general
interest having been excited by the literatures of other nations, there is
no evidence which would lead us to suppose that their languages also had
become the subject of scientific inquiry. It was not through the study of
other languages, but through the study of the ancient dialects of their
own language, that the Greeks at Alexandria were first led to what we
should call critical and philological studies. The critical study of Greek
took its origin at Alexandria, and it was chiefly based on the text of
Homer. The general outline of grammar existed, as I remarked before, at an
earlier period. It grew up in the schools of Greek philosophers.(67) Plato
knew of noun and verb as the two component parts of speech. Aristotle
added conjunctions and articles. He likewise observed the distinctions of
number and case. But neither Plato nor Aristotle paid much attention to
the forms of language which corresponded to these forms of thought, nor
had they any inducement to reduce them to any practical rules. With
Aristotle the verb or _rhēmha_ is hardly more than predicate, and in
sentences such as “the snow is white,” he would have called _white_ a
verb. The first who reduced the actual forms of language to something like
order were the scholars of Alexandria. Their chief occupation was to
publish correct texts of the Greek classics, and particularly of Homer.
They were forced, therefore, to pay attention to the exact forms of Greek
grammar. The MSS. sent to Alexandria and Pergamus from different parts of
Greece varied considerably, and it could only be determined by careful
observation which forms were to be tolerated in Homer and which were not.
Their editions of Homer were not only _ekdoseis_, a Greek word literally
rendered in Latin by _editio_, _i.e._ issues of books, but _diorthōseis_,
that is to say, critical editions. There were different schools, opposed
to each other in their views of the language of Homer. Each reading that
was adopted by Zenodotus or Aristarchus had to be defended, and this could
only be done by establishing general rules on the grammar of the Homeric
poems. Did Homer use the article? Did he use it before proper names? These
and similar questions had to be settled, and as one or the other view was
adopted by the editors, the text of these ancient poems was changed by
more or less violent emendations. New technical terms were required for
distinguishing, for instance, the article, if once recognized, from the
demonstrative pronoun. _Article_ is a literal translation of the Greek
word _arthron_. _Arthron_ (Lat. artus) means the socket of a joint. The
word was first used by Aristotle, and with him it could only mean words
which formed, as it were, the sockets in which the members of a sentence
moved. In such a sentence as: “Whoever did it, he shall suffer for it,”
Greek grammarians would have called the demonstrative pronoun _he_ the
first socket, and the relative pronoun _who_, the second socket;(68) and
before Zenodotus, the first librarian of Alexandria, 250 B. C., all
pronouns were simply classed as sockets or articles of speech. He was the
first to introduce a distinction between personal pronouns or
_antonymiai_, and the mere articles or articulations of speech, which
henceforth retained the name of _arthra_. This distinction was very
necessary, and it was, no doubt, suggested to him by his emendations of
the text of Homer, Zenodotus being the first who restored the article
before proper names in the Iliad and Odyssey. Who, in speaking now of the
definite or indefinite article, thinks of the origin and original meaning
of the word, and of the time which it took before it could become what it
is now, a technical term familiar to every school-boy?
Again, to take another illustration of the influence which the critical
study of Homer at Alexandria exercised on the development of grammatical
terminology,—we see that the first idea of numbers, of a singular and a
plural, was fixed and defined by the philosopher. But Aristotle had no
such technical terms as singular and plural; and he does not even allude
to the dual. He only speaks of the cases which express one or many, though
with him _case_, or _ptōsis_, had a very different meaning from what it
has in our grammars. The terms singular and plural were not invented till
they were wanted, and they were first wanted by the grammarians.
Zenodotus, the editor of Homer, was the first to observe the use of the
dual in the Homeric poems, and, with the usual zeal of discoverers, he has
altered many a plural into a dual when there was no necessity for it.