congress for settling the proper exponents of such relations as
nominative, genitive, singular, plural, active, and passive, it stands to
reason that if such abstruse problems could have been discussed in a
language void of inflections, there was no inducement for agreeing on a
more perfect means of communication. And as to imagining language, that is
to say nouns and verbs, endowed with an inward principle of growth, all we
can say is, that such a conception is really inconceivable. Language may
be conceived as a production, but it cannot be conceived as a substance
that could itself produce. But the science of language has nothing to do
with mere theories, whether conceivable or not. It collects facts, and its
only object is to account for these facts, as far as possible. Instead of
looking on inflections in general either as conventional signs or natural
excrescences, it takes each termination by itself, establishes its most
primitive form by means of comparison, and then treats that primitive
syllable as it would treat any other part of language,—namely, as
something which was originally intended to convey a meaning. Whether we
are still able to discover the original intention of every part of
language is quite a different question, and it should be admitted at once
that many grammatical forms, after they have been restored to their most
primitive type, are still without an explanation. But with every year new
discoveries are made by means of careful inductive reasoning. We become
more familiar every day with the secret ways of language, and there is no
reason to doubt that in the end grammatical analysis will be as successful
as chemical analysis. Grammar, though sometimes very bewildering to us in
its later stages, is originally a much less formidable undertaking than is
commonly supposed. What is grammar after all but declension and
conjugation? Originally declension could not have been anything but the
composition of a noun with some other word expressive of number and case.
How the number was expressed, we saw in a former lecture; and the same
process led to the formation of cases.
Thus the locative is formed in various ways in Chinese:(206) one is by
adding such words as _ćung_, the middle, or _néi_, inside. Thus,
_kûŏ-ćung_, in the empire; _i sûí ćung_, within a year. The instrumental
is formed by the preposition _ẏ_, which preposition is an old root,
meaning _to use_. Thus _ẏ ting_, with a stick, where in Latin we should
use the ablative, in Greek the dative. Now, however complicated the
declensions, regular and irregular, may be in Greek and Latin, we may be
certain that originally they were formed by this simple method of
composition.
There was originally in all the Aryan languages a case expressive of
locality, which grammarians call the _locative_. In Sanskrit every
substantive has its locative, as well as its genitive, dative, and
accusative. Thus, _heart_ in Sanskrit is _hṛid_; in the heart, is _hṛidi_.
Here, therefore, the termination of the locative is simply short _i_. This
short _i_ is a demonstrative root, and in all probability the same root
which in Latin produced the preposition _in_. The Sanskrit _hṛidi_
represents, therefore, an original compound, as it were, _heart-within_,
which gradually became settled as one of the recognized cases of nouns
ending in consonants. If we look to Chinese,(207) we find that the
locative is expressed there in the same manner, but with a greater freedom
in the choice of the words expressive of locality. “In the empire,” is
expressed by _kûŏ ćung_; “within a year,” is expressed by _ĭ sûí ćung_.
Instead of _ćung_, however, we might have employed other terms also, such
as, for instance, _néi_, inside. It might be said that the formation of so
primitive a case as the locative offers little difficulty, but that this
process of composition fails to account for the origin of the more
abstract cases, the accusative, the dative, and genitive. If we derive our
notions of the cases from philosophical grammar, it is true, no doubt,
that it would be difficult to convey by a simple composition the abstract
relations supposed to be expressed by the terminations of the genitive,
dative, and accusative. But remember that these are only general
categories under which philosophers and grammarians endeavored to arrange
the facts of language. The people with whom language grew up knew nothing
of datives and accusatives. Everything that is abstract in language was
originally concrete. If people wanted to say the King of Rome, they meant
really the King at Rome, and they would readily have used what I have just
described as the locative; whereas the more abstract idea of the genitive
would never enter into their system of thought. But more than this, it can
be proved that the locative has actually taken, in some cases, the place
of the genitive. In Latin, for instance, the old genitive of nouns in _a_
was _as_. This we find still in _pater familiâs_, instead of _pater
familiæ_. The Umbrian and Oscan dialects retained the _s_ throughout as
the sign of the genitive after nouns in _a_. The _æ_ of the genitive was
originally _ai_, that is to say, the old locative in _i_. “King of Rome,”
if rendered by _Rex Romæ_, meant really “King at Rome.” And here you will
see how grammar, which ought to be the most logical of all sciences, is
frequently the most illogical. A boy is taught at school, that if he wants
to say “I am staying at Rome,” he must use the genitive to express the
locative. How a logician or grammarian can so twist and turn the meaning
of the genitive as to make it express rest in a place, is not for us to
inquire; but, if he succeeded, his pupil would at once use the genitive of
Carthage (Carthaginis) or of Athens (Athenarum) for the same purpose, and
he would then have to be told that these genitives could not be used in
the same manner as the genitive of nouns in _a._ How all this is achieved
by what is called philosophical grammar, we know not; but comparative
grammar at once removes all difficulty. It is only in the first declension
that the locative has supplanted the genitive, whereas _Carthaginis_ and
_Athenarum_, being real genitives, could never be employed to express a
locative. A special case, such as the locative, may be generalized into
the more general genitive, but not _vice versâ_.
You see thus by one instance how what grammarians call a genitive was
formed by the same process of composition which we can watch in Chinese,
and which we can prove to have taken place in the original language of the
Aryans. And the same applies to the dative. If a boy is told that the
dative expresses a relation of one object to another, less direct than
that of the accusative, he may well wonder how such a flying arch could
ever have been built up with the scanty materials which language has at
her disposal; but he will be still more surprised if, after having
realized this grammatical abstraction, he is told that in Greek, in order
to convey the very definite idea of being in a place, he has to use after
certain nouns the termination of the dative. “I am staying at Salamis,”
must be expressed by the dative _Salamînĭ_. If you ask why? Comparative
grammar again can alone give an answer. The termination of the Greek
dative in _i_, was originally the termination of the locative. The
locative may well convey the meaning of the dative, but the faded features
of the dative can never express the fresh distinctness of the locative.
The dative _Salamînĭ_ was first a locative. “I live at Salamis,” never
conveyed the meaning, “I live to Salamis.” On the contrary, the dative, in
such phrases as “I give it to the father,” was originally a locative; and
after expressing at first the palpable relation of “I give it unto the
father,” or “I place it on or in the father,” it gradually assumed the
more general, the less local, less colored aspect which logicians and
grammarians ascribe to their datives.(208)
If the explanation just given of some of the cases in Greek and Latin
should seem too artificial or too forced, we have only to think of French
in order to see exactly the same process repeated under our eyes. The most
abstract relations of the genitive, as, for instance, “The immortality of
the soul” (_l’immortalité de l’âme_); or of the dative, as, for instance,
“I trust myself to God” (_je me fie à Dieu_), are expressed by
prepositions, such as _de_ and _ad_, which in Latin had the distinct local
meanings of “down from,” and “towards.” Nay, the English _of_ and _to_,
which have taken the place of the German terminations _s_ and _m_, are
likewise prepositions of an originally local character. The only
difference between our cases and those of the ancient languages consists
in this,—that the determining element is now placed before the word,
whereas, in the original language of the Aryans, it was placed at the end.
What applies to the cases of nouns, applies with equal truth to the
terminations of verbs. It may seem difficult to discover in the personal
terminations of Greek and Latin the exact pronouns which were added to a
verbal base in order to express, _I_ love, _thou_ lovest, _he_ loves; but
it stands to reason that originally these terminations must have been the
same in all languages,—namely, personal pronouns. We may be puzzled by the
terminations of _thou lovest_ and _he loves_, where _st_ and _s_ can
hardly be identified with the modern _thou_ and _he_; but we have only to
place all the Aryan dialects together, and we shall see at once that they
point back to an original set of terminations which can easily be brought
to tell their own story.
Let us begin with modern formations, because we have here more daylight
for watching the intricate and sometimes wayward movements of language;
or, better still, let us begin with an imaginary case, or with what may be
called the language of the future, in order to see quite clearly how, what
we should call grammatical forms, may arise. Let us suppose that the
slaves in America were to rise against their masters, and, after gaining
some victories, were to sail back in large numbers to some part of Central
Africa, beyond the reach of their white enemies or friends. Let us suppose
these men availing themselves of the lessons they had learnt in their
captivity, and gradually working out a civilization of their own. It is
quite possible that some centuries hence, a new Livingstone might find
among the descendants of the American slaves, a language, a literature,
laws, and manners, bearing a striking similitude to those of his own
country. What an interesting problem for any future historian and
ethnologist! Yet there are problems in the past history of the world of
equal interest, which have been and are still to be solved by the student
of language. Now I believe that a careful examination of the language of
the descendants of those escaped slaves would suffice to determine with
perfect certainty their past history, even though no documents and no
tradition had preserved the story of their captivity and liberation. At
first, no doubt, the threads might seem hopelessly entangled. A missionary
might surprise the scholars of Europe by an account of that new African
language. He might describe it at first as very imperfect—as a language,
for instance, so poor that the same word had to be used to express the
most heterogeneous ideas. He might point out how the same sound, without
any change of accent, meant _true_, a _ceremony_, a _workman_, and was
used also as a verb in the sense of literary composition. All these, he
might say, are expressed in that strange dialect by the sound _rait_
(right, rite, wright, write). He might likewise observe that this dialect,
as poor almost as Chinese, had hardly any grammatical inflections, and
that it had no genders, except in a few words such as man-of-war, and a
railway-engine, which were both conceived as feminine beings, and spoken
of as _she_. He might then mention an even more extraordinary feature,
namely, that although this language had no terminations for the masculine
and feminine genders of nouns, it employed a masculine and feminine
termination after the affirmative particle, according as it was addressed
to a lady or a gentleman. Their affirmative particle being the same as the
English, _Yes_, they added a final _r_ to it if addressed to a man, and a
final _m_ if addressed to a lady: that is to say, instead of simply
saying, _Yes_, these descendants of the escaped American slaves said
_Yesr_ to a man, and _Yesm_ to a lady.
Absurd as this may sound, I can assure you that the descriptions which are
given of the dialects of savage tribes, as explained for the first time by
travellers or missionaries, are even more extraordinary. But let us
consider now what the student of language would have to do, if such forms
as _Yeśr_ and _Yeśm_ were, for the first time, brought under his notice.
He would first have to trace them back historically, as far as possible to
their more original types, and if he discovered their connection with _Yes
Sir_ and _Yes Ma’m_, he would point out how such contractions were most
likely to spring up in a vulgar dialect. After having traced back the
_Yesr_ and _Yesm of_ the free African negroes to the idiom of their former
American masters, the etymologist would next inquire how such phrases as
_Yes Sir_ and _Yes Madam_, came to be used on the American continent.
Finding nothing analogous in the dialects of the aboriginal inhabitants of
America, he would be led, by a mere comparison of words, to the languages
of Europe, and here again, first to the language of England. Even if no
historical documents had been preserved, the documents of language would
show that the white masters, whose language the ancestors of the free
Africans adopted during their servitude, came originally from England,
and, within certain limits, it would even be possible to fix the time when
the English language was first transplanted to America. That language must
have passed, at least, the age of Chaucer before it migrated to the New
World. For Chaucer has two affirmative particles, _Yea_ and _Yes_, and he
distinguishes between the two. He uses _Yes_ only in answer to negative
questions. For instance, in answer to “Does he not go?” he would say,
_Yes_. In all other cases Chaucer uses _Yea_. To a question, “Does he go?”
he would answer _Yea_. He observes the same distinction between _No_ and
_Nay_, the former being used after negative, the latter after all other
questions. This distinction became obsolete soon after Sir Thomas
More,(209) and it must have become obsolete before phrases such as _Yes
Sir_ and _Yes Madam_ could have assumed their stereotyped character.
But there is still more historical information to be gained from these
phrases. The word _Yes_ is Anglo-Saxon, the same as the German _Ja_, and
it therefore reveals the fact that the white masters of the American
slaves who crossed the Atlantic after the time of Chaucer, had crossed the
Channel at an earlier period after leaving the continental fatherland of
the Angles and Saxons. The words _Sir_ and _Madam_ tell us still more.
They are Norman words, and they could only have been imposed on the
Anglo-Saxons of Britain by Norman conquerors. They tell us more than this.
For these Normans or Northmen spoke originally a Teutonic dialect, closely
allied to Anglo-Saxon, and in that dialect words such as _Sir_ and _Madam_
could never have sprung up. We may conclude therefore that, previous to
the Norman conquest, the Teutonic Northmen must have made a sufficiently
long stay in one of the Roman provinces to forget their own and adopt the
language of the Roman Provincials.
We may now trace back the Norman _Madam_ to the French _Madame_, and we
recognize in this a corruption of the Latin _Mea domina_, my mistress.
_Domina_ was changed into _domna_, _donna_, and _dame_, and the same word
_Dame_ was also used as a masculine in the sense of lord, as a corruption
of _Domino_, _Domno_ and _Donno_. The temporal lord ruling as
ecclesiastical seigneur under the bishop, was called a _vidame_, as the
Vidame of Chartres, &c. The French interjection _Dame!_ has no connection
with a similar exclamation in English, but it simply means Lord!
_Dame-Dieu_ in old French is Lord God. A derivative of _Domina_, mistress,
was _dominicella_, which became _Demoiselle_ and _Damsel_. The masculine
_Dame_ for _Domino_, Lord, was afterwards replaced by the Latin _Senior_,
a translation of the German _elder_. This word _elder_ was a title of
honor, and we have it still both in _alderman_, and in what is originally
the same, the English _Earl_, the Norse _Jarl_, a corruption of the A.-S.
_ealdor_. This title _Senior_, meaning originally _older_, was but
rarely(210) applied to ladies as a title of honor. _Senior_ was changed
into _Seigneur_, _Seigneur_ into _Sieur_, and _Sieur_ soon dwindled down
to _Sir_.
Thus we see how in two short phrases, such as _Yesr_ and _Yesm_, long
chapters of history might be read. If a general destruction of books, such
as took place in China under the Emperor Thsin-chi-hoang-ti (213 B. C.),
should sweep away all historical documents, language, even in its most
depraved state, would preserve the secrets of the past, and would tell
future generations of the home and migrations of their ancestors from the
East to the West Indies.
It may seem startling at first to find the same name, _the East Indies_
and _the West Indies_, at the two extremities of the Aryan migrations; but
these very names are full of historical meaning. They tell us how the
Teutonic race, the most vigorous and enterprising of all the members of
the Aryan family, gave the name of _West Indies_ to the country which in
their world-compassing migrations they imagined to be India itself; how
they discovered their mistake and then distinguished between the East
Indies and West Indies; how they planted new states in the west, and
regenerated the effete kingdoms in the east; how they preached
Christianity, and at last practised it by abolishing slavery of body and
mind among the slaves of West-Indian landholders, and the slaves of
Brahmanical soulholders, till they greeted at last the very homes from
which the Aryan family had started when setting out on their discovery of
the world. All this, and even more, may be read in the vast archives of
language. The very name of India has a story to tell, for India is not a
native name. We have it from the Romans, the Romans from the Greeks, the
Greeks from the Persians. And why from the Persians? Because it is only in
Persian that an initial s is changed into _h_, which initial _h_ was as
usual dropped in Greek. It is only in Persian that the country of the
_Sindhu_ (_sindhu_ is the Sanskrit name for _river_), or of the _seven
sindhus_, could have been called _Hindia_ or _India_ instead of _Sindia_.
Unless the followers of Zoroaster had pronounced every _s_ like _h_, we
should never have heard of the West Indies!
We have thus seen by an imaginary instance what we must be prepared for in
the growth of language, and we shall now better understand why it must be
laid down as a fundamental principle in Comparative Grammar to look upon
nothing in language as merely formal, till every attempt has been made to
trace the formal elements of language back to their original and
substantial prototypes. We are accustomed to the idea of grammatical
terminations modifying the meaning of words. But words can be modified by
words only; and though in the present state of our science it would be too
much to say that all grammatical terminations have been traced back to
original independent words, so many of them have, even in cases where only
a single letter was left, that we may well lay it down as a rule that all
formal elements of language were originally substantial. Suppose English
had never been written down before the time of Piers Ploughman. What
should we make of such a form as _nadistou_,(211) instead of _ne hadst
thou_? _Ne rechi_ instead of _I reck not_? _Al ô’m_ in Dorsetshire is _all
of them_. _I midden_ is _I may not_; _I cooden_, _I could not_. Yet the
changes which Sanskrit had undergone before it was reduced to writing,
must have been more considerable by far than what we see in these
dialects.
Let us now look to modern classical languages such as French and Italian.
Most of the grammatical terminations are the same as in Latin, only
changed by phonetic corruption. Thus _j’aime_ is _ego amo_, _tu aimes_,
_tu amas_, _il aime_, _ille amat_. There was originally a final _t_ in
French _il aime_, and it comes out again in such phrases as _aime-t-il?_
Thus the French imperfect corresponds to the Latin imperfect, the Parfait
défini to the Latin perfect. But what about the French future? There is no
similarity between _amabo_ and _j’aimerai_. Here then we have a new
grammatical form, sprung up, as it were, within the recollection of men;
or, at least, in the broad daylight of history. Now, did the termination
_rai_ bud forth like a blossom in spring? or did some wise people meet
together to invent this new termination, and pledge themselves to use it
instead of the old termination _bo_? Certainly not. We see first of all
that in all the Romance languages the terminations of the future are
identical with the auxiliary verb _to have_.(212) In French you find—
j’ai and je chanter-ai nous avons and nous chanterons.
tu as and tu chanter-as vous avez and vous chanterez.
il a and il chanter-a ils ont and ils chanteront.
But besides this, we actually find in Spanish and Provençal the apparent
termination of the future used as an independent word and not yet joined
to the infinitive. We find in Spanish, instead of “_lo hare_,” I shall do
it, the more primitive form _hacer lo he_; _i.e._, _facere id habeo_. We
find in Provençal, _dir vos ai_ instead of _je vous dirai_; _dir vos em_
instead of _nous vous dirons_. There can be no doubt, therefore, that the
Romance future was originally a compound of the auxiliary verb _to have_
with an infinitive; and _I have to say_, easily took the meaning of _I
shall say_.
Here, then, we see clearly how grammatical forms arise. A Frenchman looks
upon his futures as merely grammatical forms. He has no idea, unless he is
a scholar, that the terminations of his futures are identical with the
auxiliary verb _avoir_. The Roman had no suspicion that _amabo_ was a
compound; but it can be proved to contain an auxiliary verb as clearly as
the French future. The Latin future was destroyed by means of phonetic
corruption. When the final letters lost their distinct pronunciation it
became impossible to keep the imperfect _amabam_ separate from the future
_amabo_. The future was then replaced by dialectical regeneration, for the
use of _habeo_ with an infinitive is found in Latin, in such expressions
as _habeo dicere_, I have to say, which would imperceptibly glide into I
shall say.(213) In fact, wherever we look we see that, the future is
expressed by means of composition. We have in English _I shall_ and _thou
wilt_, which mean originally _I am bound_ and _thou intendest_. In German
we use _werden_, the Gothic _vairthan_, which means originally to go, to
turn towards. In modern Greek we find thelō, I will, in thelō dōsei, I
shall give. In Roumansch we meet with _vegnir_, to come, forming the
future _veng a vegnir_, I shall come; whereas in French _je viens de
dire_, I come from saying, is equivalent to “I have just said.” The French
_je vais dire_ is almost a future, though originally it is _vado dicere_,
I go to say. The Dorsetshire, “I be gwâin to goo a-pickèn stuones,” is
another case in point. Nor is there any doubt that in the Latin _bo_ of
_amabo_ we have the old auxiliary _bhû_, to be, and in the Greek future in
σω, the old auxiliary _as_, to be.(214)
We now go back another step, and ask the question which we asked many
times before, How can a mere _d_ produce so momentous a change as that
from _I love_ to _I loved_? As we have learnt in the meantime that English
goes back to Anglo-Saxon, and is closely related to continental Saxon and
Gothic, we look at once to the Gothic imperfect in order to see whether it
has preserved any traces of the original compound; for, after what we have
seen in the previous cases, we are no doubt prepared to find here, too,
grammatical terminations mere remnants of independent words.
In Gothic there is a verb _nasjan_, to nourish. Its preterite is as
follows:—
Singular. Dual. Plural.
nas-i-da nas-i-dêdu nas-i-dêdum.
nas-i-dês nas-i-dêtuts nas-i-dêduþ.
nas-i-da —— nas-i-dedun.
The subjunctive of the preterite:
Singular. Dual. Plural.
nas-i-dêdjau nas-i-dêdeiva nas-i-dêdeima.
nas-i-dêdeis nas-i-dêdeits nas-i-dêdeiþ.
nas-i-dêdi —— nas-i-dêdeina.
This is reduced in Anglo-Saxon to: