1706 roots,(269) that is to say, they have admitted so many radicals in
order to derive from them, according to their system of grammatical
derivation, all nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, prepositions, adverbs,
and conjunctions, which occur in Sanskrit. According to our explanation of
a root, however, this number of 1706 would have to be reduced
considerably, and though a few new roots would likewise have to be added
which Sanskrit grammarians failed to discover, yet the number of primitive
sounds, expressive of definite meanings, requisite for the etymological
analysis of the whole Sanskrit dictionary would not amount to even one
third of that number. Hebrew has been reduced to about 500 roots,(270) and
I doubt whether we want a larger number for Sanskrit. This shows a wise
spirit of economy on the part of primitive language, for the possibility
of forming new roots for every new impression was almost unlimited. Even
if we put the number of letters only at twenty-four, the possible number
of biliteral and triliteral roots would amount together to 14,400; whereas
Chinese, though abstaining from composition and derivation, and therefore
requiring a larger number of radicals than any other language, was
satisfied with about 450. With these 450 sounds raised to 1263 by various
accents and intonations, the Chinese have produced a dictionary of from
40,000 to 50,000 words.(271)
It is clear, however, that in addition to these predicative roots, we want
another class of radical elements to enable us to account for the full
growth of language. With the 400 or 500 predicative roots at her disposal,
language would not have been at a loss to coin names for all things that
come under our cognizance. Language is a thrifty housewife. Consider the
variety of ideas that were expressed by the one root _spaś_, and you will
see that with 500 such roots she might form a dictionary sufficient to
satisfy the wants, however extravagant, of her husband—the human mind. If
each root yielded fifty derivatives, we should have 25,000 words. Now, we
are told, on good authority, by a country clergyman, that some of the
laborers in his parish had not 300 words in their vocabulary.(272) The
vocabulary of the ancient sages of Egypt, at least as far as it is known
to us from the hieroglyphic inscriptions, amounts to about 685 words.(273)
The _libretto_ of an Italian opera seldom displays a greater variety of
words.(274) A well-educated person in England, who has been at a public
school and at the university, who reads his Bible, his Shakespeare, the
“Times,” and all the books of Mudie’s Library, seldom uses more than about
3000 or 4000 words in actual conversation. Accurate thinkers and close
reasoners, who avoid vague and general expressions, and wait till they
find the word that exactly fits their meaning, employ a larger stock; and
eloquent speakers may rise to a command of 10,000. Shakespeare, who
displayed a greater variety of expression than probably any writer in any
language, produced all his plays with about 15,000 words. Milton’s works
are built up with 8000; and the Old Testament says all that it has to say
with 5,642 words.(275)
Five hundred roots, therefore, considering their fertility and pliancy,
was more than was wanted for the dictionary of our primitive ancestors.
And yet they wanted something more. If they had a root expressive of light
and splendor, that root might have formed the predicate in the names of
sun, and moon, and stars, and heaven, day, morning, dawn, spring,
gladness, joy, beauty, majesty, love, friend, gold, riches, &c. But if
they wanted to express _here_ and _there_, _who_, _what_, _this_, _that_,
_thou_, _he_, they would have found it impossible to find any predicative
root that could be applied to this purpose. Attempts have indeed been made
to trace these words back to predicative roots; but if we are told that
the demonstrative root _ta_, this or there, may be derived from a
predicative root _tan_, to extend, we find that even in our modern
languages, the demonstrative pronouns and particles are of too primitive
and independent a nature to allow of so artificial an interpretation. The
sound _ta_ or _sa_, for this or there, is as involuntary, as natural, as
independent an expression as any of the predicative roots, and although
some of these demonstrative, or pronominal, or local roots, for all these
names have been applied to them, may be traced back to a predicative
source, we must admit a small class of independent radicals, not
predicative in the usual sense of the word, but simply pointing, simply
expressive of existence under certain more or less definite, local or
temporal prescriptions.
It will be best to give one illustration at least of a pronominal root and
its influence in the formation of words.
In some languages, and particularly in Chinese, a predicative root may by
itself be used as a noun, or a verb, or an adjective or adverb. Thus the
Chinese sound _ta_ means, without any change of form, great, greatness,
and to be great.(276) If _ta_ stands before a substantive, it has the
meaning of an adjective. Thus _ta jin_ means a great man. If _ta_ stands
after a substantive, it is a predicate, or, as we should say, a verb. Thus
_jin ta_ (or jin ta ye) would mean the man is great.(277) Or again,
ģin ngŏ, li pŭ ngŏ,
would mean, man bad, law not bad.
Here we see that there is no outward distinction whatever between a root
and a word, and that a noun is distinguished from a verb merely by its
collocation in a sentence.
In other languages, however, and particularly in the Aryan languages, no
predicative root can by itself form a word. Thus in Latin there is a root
_luc_, to shine. In order to have a substantive, such as light, it was
necessary to add a pronominal or demonstrative root, this forming the
general subject of which the meaning contained in the root is to be
predicated. Thus by the addition of the pronominal element _s_ we have the
Latin noun, _luc-s_, the light, or literally, shining-there. Let us add a
personal pronoun, and we have the verb _luc-e-s_, shining-thou, thou
shinest. Let us add other pronominal derivatives, and we get the
adjectives, _lucidus_, _luculentus_, &c.
It would be a totally mistaken view, however, were we to suppose that all
derivative elements, all that remains of a word after the predicative root
has been removed, must be traced back to pronominal roots. We have only to
look at some of our own modern derivatives in order to be convinced that
many of them were originally predicative, that they entered into
composition with the principal predicative root, and then dwindled down to
mere suffixes. Thus _scape_ in _landscape_, and the more modern _ship_ in
_hardship_ are both derived from the same root which we have in
Gothic,(278) _skapa_, _skôp_, _skôpum_, to create; in Anglo-Saxon,
_scape_, _scôp_, _scôpon_. It is the same as the German derivative,
_schaft_, in _Gesellschaft_, &c. So again _dom_ in _wisdom_ or
_christendom_ is derived from the same root which we have in _to do_. It
is the same as the German _thum_ in _Christenthum_, the Anglo-Saxon _dôm_
in _cyning-dom_, _Königthum_. Sometimes it may seem doubtful whether a
derivative element was originally merely demonstrative or predicative.
Thus the termination of the comparative in Sanskrit is _tara_, the Greek
_teros_. This might, at first sight, be taken for a demonstrative element,
but it is in reality the root _tar_, which means _to go beyond_, which we
have likewise in the Latin _trans_. This _trans_ in its French form _très_
is prefixed to adjectives in order to express a higher or transcendent
degree, and the same root was well adapted to form the comparative in the
ancient Aryan tongues. This root must likewise be admitted in one of the
terminations of the locative which is _tra_ in Sanskrit; for instance from
_ta_, a demonstrative root, we form _ta-tra_, there, originally this way;
we form _anyatra_, in another way; the same as in Latin we say _ali-ter_,
from _aliud_; compounds no more surprising than the French _autrement_
(see p. 55) and the English _otherwise_.
Most of the terminations of declension and conjugation are demonstrative
roots, and the _s_, for instance, of the third person singular, he loves,
can be proved to have been originally the demonstrative pronoun of the
third person. It was originally not _s_ but _t_. This will require some
explanation. The termination of the third person singular of the present
is _ti_ in Sanskrit. Thus _dâ_, to give, becomes _dadâti_, he gives;
_dhâ_, to place, _dadhâti_, he places.
In Greek this _ti_ is changed into _si_; just as the Sanskrit _tvam_, the
Latin _tu_, thou, appears in Greek as _sy_. Thus Greek _didōsi_
corresponds to Sanskrit _dadâti_; _tithēsi_ to _dadhâti_. In the course of
time, however, every Greek _s_ between two vowels, in a termination, was
elided. Thus _genos_ does not form the genitive _genesos_, like the Latin
_genus_, _genesis_ or _generis_, but _geneos_ = _genous_. The dative is
not _genesi_ (the Latin _generi_), but _geneï_ = _genei_. In the same
manner all the regular verbs have _ei_ for the termination of the third
person singular. But this _ei_ stands for _esi_. Thus _typtei_ stands for
_typtesi_, and this for _typteti_.
The Latin drops the final _i_, and instead of _ti_ has _t_. Thus we get
_amat_, _dicit_.
Now there is a law to which I alluded before, which is called Grimm’s Law.
According to it every tenuis in Latin is in Gothic represented by its
corresponding aspirate. Hence, instead of _t_, we should expect in Gothic
_th_; and so we find indeed in Gothic _habaiþ_, instead of Latin _habet_.
This aspirate likewise appears in Anglo-Saxon, where _he loves_ is
_lufað_. It is preserved in the Biblical _he loveth_, and it is only in
modern English that it gradually sank to _s_. In the _s_ of _he loves_,
therefore, we have a demonstrative root, added to the predicative root
_love_, and this _s_ is originally the same as the Sanskrit _ti_. This
_ti_ again must be traced back to the demonstrative root _ta_, this or
there; which exists in the Sanskrit demonstrative pronoun _tad_, the Greek
_to_, the Gothic _thata_, the English _that_; and which in Latin we can
trace in _talis_, _tantus_, _tunc_, _tam_, and even in _tamen_, an old
locative in _men_. We have thus seen that what we call the third person
singular of the present is in reality a simple compound of a predicative
root with a demonstrative root. It is a compound like any other, only that
the second part is not predicative, but simply demonstrative. As in
pay-master we predicate pay of master, meaning a person whose office it is
to pay, so in _dadâ-ti_, _give-he_, the ancient framers of language simply
predicated giving of some third person, and this synthetic proposition,
_give-he_, is the same as what we now call the third person singular in
the indicative mood, of the present tense, in the active voice.(279)
We have necessarily confined ourselves in our analysis of language to that
family of languages to which our own tongue, and those with which we are
best acquainted, belong; but what applies to Sanskrit and the Aryan family
applies to the whole realm of human speech. Every language, without a
single exception, that has as yet been cast into the crucible of
comparative grammar, has been found to contain these two substantial
elements, predicative and demonstrative roots. In the Semitic family these
two constituent elements are even more palpable than in Sanskrit and
Greek. Even before the discovery of Sanskrit, and the rise of comparative
philology, Semitic scholars had successfully traced back the whole
dictionary of Hebrew and Arabic to a small number of roots, and as every
root in these languages consists of three consonants, the Semitic
languages have sometimes been called by the name of triliteral.
To a still higher degree the constituent elements are, as it were, on the
very surface in the Turanian family of speech. It is one of the
characteristic features of that family, that, whatever the number of
prefixes and suffixes, the root must always stand out in full relief, and
must never be allowed to suffer by its contact with derivative elements.
There is one language, the Chinese, in which no analysis of any kind is
required for the discovery of its component parts. It is a language in
which no coalescence of roots has taken place: every word is a root, and
every root is a word. It is, in fact, the most primitive stage in which we
can imagine human language to have existed. It is language _comme il
faut_; it is what we should naturally have expected all languages to be.
There are, no doubt, numerous dialects in Asia, Africa, America, and
Polynesia, which have not yet been dissected by the knife of the
grammarian; but we may be satisfied at least with this negative evidence,
that, as yet, no language which has passed through the ordeal of
grammatical analysis has ever disclosed any but these two constituent
elements.
The problem, therefore, of the origin of language, which seemed so
perplexing and mysterious to the ancient philosophers, assumes a much
simpler aspect with us. We have learnt what language is made of; we have
found that everything in language, except the roots, is intelligible, and
can be accounted for. There is nothing to surprise us in the combination
of the predicative and demonstrative roots which led to the building up of
all the languages with which we are acquainted, from Chinese to English.
It is not only conceivable, as Professor Pott remarks, “that the formation
of the Sanskrit language, as it is handed down to us, may have been
preceded by a state of the greatest simplicity and entire absence of
inflections, such as is exhibited to the present day by the Chinese and
other monosyllabic languages.” It is absolutely impossible that it should
have been otherwise. After we have seen that all languages must have
started from this Chinese or monosyllabic stage, the only portion of the
problem of the origin of language that remains to be solved is this: How
can we account for the origin of those predicative and demonstrative roots
which form the constituent elements of all human speech, and which have
hitherto resisted all attempts at further analysis? This problem will form
the subject of our two next Lectures.
LECTURE VIII. MORPHOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION.
We finished in our last Lecture our analysis of language, and we arrived
at the result that _predicative_ and _demonstrative_ roots are the sole
constituent elements of human speech.
We now turn back in order to discover how many possible forms of language
may be produced by the free combination of these constituent elements; and
we shall then endeavor to find out whether each of these possible forms
has its real counterpart in some or other of the dialects of mankind. We
are attempting in fact to carry out a _morphological classification_ of
speech, which is based entirely on the form or manner in which roots are
put together, and therefore quite independent of the genealogical
classification which, according to its very nature, is based on the
formations of language handed down ready made from generation to
generation.
Before, however, we enter on this, the principal subject of our present
Lecture, we have still to examine, as briefly as possible, a second family
of speech, which, like the Aryan, is established on the strictest
principles of genealogical classification, namely, the _Semitic_.
The Semitic family is divided into three branches, the _Aramaic_, the
_Hebraic_, and the _Arabic_.(280)
The _Aramaic_ occupies the north, including Syria, Mesopotamia, and part
of the ancient kingdoms of Babylonia and Assyria. It is known to us
chiefly in two dialects, the _Syriac_ and _Chaldee_. The former name is
given to the language which has been preserved to us in a translation of
the Bible (the Peshito(281)) ascribed to the second century, and in the
rich Christian literature dating from the fourth. It is still spoken,
though in a very corrupt form, by the Nestorians of Kurdistan, near the
lakes of Van and Urmia, and by some Christian tribes in Mesopotamia; and
an attempt has been made by the American missionaries,(282) stationed at
Urmia, to restore this dialect to some grammatical correctness by
publishing translations and a grammar of what they call the Neo-Syriac
language.
The name of _Chaldee_ has been given to the language adopted by the Jews
during the Babylonian captivity. Though the Jews always retained a
knowledge of their sacred language, they soon began to adopt the dialect
of their conquerors, not for conversation only, but also for literary
composition.(283) The book of Ezra contains fragments in Chaldee,
contemporaneous with the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes, and
several of the apocryphal books, though preserved to us in Greek only,
were most likely composed originally in Chaldee, and not in Hebrew. The
so-called _Targums_(284) again, or translations and paraphrases of the Old
Testament, written during the centuries immediately preceding and
following the Christian era,(285) give us another specimen of the Aramaic,
or the language of Babylonia, as transplanted to Palestine. This Aramaic
was the dialect spoken by Christ and his disciples. The few authentic
words preserved in the New Testament as spoken by our Lord in His own
language, such as _Talitha kumi_, _Ephphatha_, _Abba_, are not in Hebrew,
but in the Chaldee, or Aramaic, as then spoken by the Jews.(286)
After the destruction of Jerusalem the literature of the Jews continued to
be written in the same dialect. The Talmud(287) of Jerusalem of the
fourth, and that of Babylon of the fifth, century exhibit the Aramean, as
spoken by the educated Jews settled in these two localities, though
greatly depraved and spoiled by an admixture of strange elements. This
language remained the literary idiom of the Jews to the tenth century. The
_Masora_,(288) and the traditional commentary of the Old Testament, was
written in it about that time. Soon after the Jews adopted Arabic as their
literary language, and retained it to the thirteenth century. They then
returned to a kind of modernized Hebrew, which they still continue to
employ for learned discussions.
It is curious that the Aramaic branch of the Semitic family, though
originally the language of the great kingdoms of Babylon and Nineveh,
should have been preserved to us only in the literature of the Jews, and
of the Christians of Syria. There must have been a Babylonian literature,
for the wisdom of the Chaldeans had acquired a reputation which could
hardly have been sustained without a literature. Abraham must have spoken
Aramaic before he emigrated to Canaan. Laban spoke the same dialect, and
the name which he gave to the heap of stones that was to be a witness
between him and Jacob, (Jegar-sahadutha) is Syriac, whereas Galeed, the
name by which Jacob called it, is Hebrew.(289) If we are ever to recover a
knowledge of that ancient Babylonian literature, it must be from the
cuneiform inscriptions lately brought home from Babylon and Nineveh. They
are clearly written in a Semitic language. About this there can be no
longer any doubt. And though the progress in deciphering them has been
slow, and slower than was at one time expected, yet there is no reason to
despair. In a letter, dated April, 1853, Sir Henry Rawlinson wrote:—
“On the clay tablets which we have found at Nineveh, and which now are to
be counted by thousands, there are explanatory treatises on almost every
subject under the sun: the art of writing, grammars, and dictionaries,
notation, weights and measures, divisions of time, chronology, astronomy,
geography, history, mythology, geology, botany, &c. In fact we have now at
our disposal a perfect cyclopædia of Assyrian science.” Considering what
has been achieved in deciphering one class of cuneiform inscriptions, the
Persian, there is no reason to doubt that the whole of that cyclopædia
will some day be read with the same ease with which we read the mountain
records of Darius.
There is, however, another miserable remnant of what was once the
literature of the Chaldeans or Babylonians, namely, the “Book of Adam,”
and similar works preserved by the _Mendaïtes_ or _Nasoreans_, a curious
sect settled near Bassora. Though the composition of these works is as
late as the tenth century after Christ, it has been supposed that under a
modern crust of wild and senseless hallucinations, they contain some
grains of genuine ancient Babylonian thought. These _Mendaïtes_ have in
fact been identified with the _Nabateans_, who are mentioned as late as
the tenth century(290) of our era, as a race purely pagan, and distinct
from Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans. In Arabic the name Nabatean(291)
is used for Babylonians,—nay, all the people of Aramaic origin, settled in
the earliest times between the Euphrates and Tigris are referred to by
that name.(292) It is supposed that the Nabateans, who are mentioned about
the beginning of the Christian era as a race distinguished for their
astronomical and general scientific knowledge, were the ancestors of the
mediæval Nabateans, and the descendants of the ancient Babylonians and
Chaldeans. You may have lately seen in some literary journals an account
of a work called “The Nabatean Agriculture.” It exists only in an Arabic
translation by Ibn-Wahshiyyah, the Chaldean,(293) who lived about 900
years after Christ, but the original, which was written by Kuthami in
Aramean, has lately been referred to the beginning of the thirteenth
century B. C. The evidence is not yet fully before us, but from what is
known it seems more likely that this work was the compilation of a
Nabatean, who lived about the fourth century after Christ;(294) and though
it contains ancient traditions, which may go back to the days of the great
Babylonian monarchs, these traditions can hardly be taken as a fair
representation of the ancient civilization of the Aramean race.
The second branch of the Semitic family is the _Hebraic_, chiefly
represented by the ancient language of Palestine, where Hebrew was spoken
and written from the days of Moses to the times of Nehemiah and the
Maccabees, though of course with considerable modifications, and with a
strong admixture of Aramean forms, particularly since the Babylonian
captivity, and the rise of a powerful civilization in the neighboring
country of Syria. The ancient language of Phœnicia, to judge from
inscriptions, was most closely allied to Hebrew, and the language of the
Carthaginians too must be referred to the same branch.
Hebrew was first encroached upon by Aramaic dialects, through the
political ascendency of Babylon, and still more of Syria; and was at last
swept away by Arabic, which, since the conquest of Palestine and Syria in
the year 636, has monopolized nearly the whole area formerly occupied by
the two older branches of the Semitic stock, the Aramaic and Hebrew.
This third, or Arabic, branch sprang from the Arabian peninsula, where it
is still spoken by a compact mass of aboriginal inhabitants. Its most
ancient documents are the _Himyaritic_ inscriptions. In very early times
this Arabic branch was transplanted to Africa, where, south of Egypt and
Nubia, on the coast opposite Yemen, an ancient Semitic dialect has
maintained itself to the present day. This is the _Ethiopic_ or
_Abyssinian_, or, as it is called by the people themselves, the _Gees_
language. Though no longer spoken in its purity by the people of Habesh,
it is still preserved in their sacred writings, translations of the Bible,
and similar works, which date from the third and fourth centuries. The
modern language of Abyssinia is called _Amharic_.
The earliest literary documents of Arabic go back beyond Mohammed. They
are called _Moallakat_, literally, suspended poems, because they are said
to have been thus publicly exhibited at Mecca. They are old popular poems,
descriptive of desert life. With Mohammed Arabic became the language of a
victorious religion, and established its sway over Asia, Africa, and
Europe.
These three branches, the Aramaic, the Hebraic, and Arabic, are so closely
related to each other, that it was impossible not to recognize their
common origin. Every root in these languages, as far back as we know them,
must consist of three consonants, and numerous words are derived from
these roots by a simple change of vowels, leaving the consonantal skeleton
as much as possible intact. It is impossible to mistake a Semitic
language; and what is most important—it is impossible to imagine an Aryan
language derived from a Semitic, or a Semitic from an Aryan language. The
grammatical framework is totally distinct in these two families of speech.
This does not exclude, however, the possibility that both are diverging
streams of the same source; and the comparisons that have been instituted
between the Semitic roots, reduced to their simplest form, and the roots
of the Aryan languages, have made it more than probable that the material
elements with which they both started were originally the same.