mankind point to one common source, that therefore the human race must
descend from one pair. For language might have been the property of one
favored race, and have been communicated to the other races in the
progress of history.
The science of language and the science of ethnology have both suffered
most seriously from being mixed up together. The classification of races
and languages should be quite independent of each other. Races may change
their languages, and history supplies us with several instances where one
race adopted the language of another. Different languages, therefore, may
be spoken by one race, or the same language may be spoken by different
races; so that any attempt at squaring the classification of races and
tongues must necessarily fail.
Secondly, the problem of the common origin of languages has no connection
with the statements contained in the Old Testament regarding the creation
of man, and the genealogies of the patriarchs. If our researches led us to
the admission of different beginnings for the languages of mankind, there
is nothing in the Old Testament opposed to this view. For although the
Jews believed that for a time the whole earth was of one language and of
one speech, it has long been pointed out by eminent divines, with
particular reference to the dialects of America, that new languages might
have arisen at later times. If, on the contrary, we arrive at the
conviction that all languages can be traced back to one common source, we
could never think of transferring the genealogies of the Old Testament to
the genealogical classification of language. The genealogies of the Old
Testament refer to blood, not to language, and as we know that people,
without changing their name, did frequently change their language, it is
clearly impossible that the genealogies of the Old Testament should
coincide with the genealogical classification of languages. In order to
avoid a confusion of ideas, it would be preferable to abstain altogether
from using the same names to express relationship of language which in the
Bible are used to express relationship of blood. It was usual formerly to
speak of _Japhetic_, _Hamitic_ and _Semitic_ languages. The first name has
now been replaced by _Aryan_, the second by _African_; and though the
third is still retained, it has received a scientific definition quite
different from the meaning which it would have in the Bible. It is well to
bear this in mind, in order to prevent not only those who are forever
attacking the Bible with arrows that cannot reach it, but likewise those
who defend it with weapons they know not how to wield, from disturbing in
any way the quiet progress of the science of language.
Let us now look dispassionately at our problem. The problem of the
possibility of a common origin of all languages naturally divides itself
into two parts, the _formal_ and the _material_. We are to-day concerned
with the formal part only. We have examined all possible forms which
language can assume, and we have now to ask, can we reconcile with these
three distinct forms, the radical, the terminational, and the
inflectional, the admission of one common origin of human speech? I answer
decidedly, Yes.
The chief argument that has been brought forward against the common origin
of language is this, that no monosyllabic or radical language has ever
entered into an agglutinative or terminational stage, and that no
agglutinative or terminational language has ever risen to the inflectional
stage. Chinese, it is said, is still what it has been from the beginning;
it has never produced agglutinative or inflectional forms; nor has any
Turanian language ever given up the distinctive feature of the
terminational stage, namely, the integrity of its roots.
In answer to this it should be pointed out that though each language, as
soon as it once becomes settled, retains that morphological character
which it had when it first assumed its individual or national existence,
it does not lose altogether the power of producing grammatical forms that
belong to a higher stage. In Chinese, and particularly in Chinese
dialects, we find rudimentary traces of agglutination. The _li_ which I
mentioned before as the sign of the locative, has dwindled down to a mere
postposition, and a modern Chinese is no more aware that _li_ meant
originally interior, than the Turanian is of the origin of his
case-terminations.(308) In the spoken dialects of Chinese, agglutinative
forms are of more frequent occurrence. Thus, in the Shanghai dialect, _wo_
is to speak, as a verb; _woda_, a word. Of _woda_ a genitive is formed,
_woda-ka_, a dative _pela woda_, an accusative _tang woda_.(309) In
agglutinative languages again, we meet with rudimentary traces of
inflection. Thus in Tamil the root _tûngu_, to sleep, has not retained its
full integrity in the derivative _tûkkam_, sleep.
I mention these instances, which might be greatly multiplied, in order to
show that there is nothing mysterious in the tenacity with which each
language clings in general to that stage of grammar which it had attained
at the time of its first settlement. If a family, or a tribe, or a nation,
has once accustomed itself to express its ideas according to one system of
grammar, that first mould remains and becomes stronger with each
generation. But, while Chinese was arrested and became traditional in this
very early stage the radical, other dialects passed on through that stage,
retaining their pliancy. They were not arrested, and did not become
traditional or national, before those who spoke them had learnt to
appreciate the advantage of agglutination. That advantage being once
perceived, a few single forms in which agglutination first showed itself
would soon, by that sense of analogy which is inherent in language, extend
their influence irresistibly. Languages arrested in that stage would cling
with equal tenacity to the system of agglutination. A Chinese can hardly
understand how language is possible, unless every syllable is
significative; a Turanian despises every idiom in which each word does not
display distinctly its radical and significative element; whereas, we who
are accustomed to the use of inflectional languages, are proud of the very
grammar which a Chinese and Turanian would treat with contempt.
The fact, therefore, that languages, if once settled, do not change their
grammatical constitution, is no argument against our theory, that every
inflectional language was once agglutinative, and every agglutinative
language was once monosyllabic. I call it a theory, but it is more than a
theory, for it is the only possible way in which the realities of Sanskrit
or any other inflectional language can be explained. As far as the formal
part of language is concerned, we cannot resist the conclusion that what
is now _inflectional_ was formerly _agglutinative_, and what is now
_agglutinative_ was at first _radical_. The great stream of language
rolled on in numberless dialects, and changed its grammatical coloring as
it passed from time to time through new deposits of thought. The different
channels which left the main current and became stationary and stagnant,
or, if you like, literary and traditional, retained forever that coloring
which the main current displayed at the stage of their separation. If we
call the radical stage _white_, the agglutinative _red_, and the
inflectional _blue_, then we may well understand why the white channels
should show hardly a drop of red or blue, or why the red channels should
hardly betray a shadow of blue; and we shall be prepared to find what we
do find, namely, white tints in the red, and white and red tints in the
blue channels of speech.
You will have perceived that in what I have said I only argue for the
possibility, not for the necessity, of a common origin of language.
I look upon the problem of the common origin of language, which I have
shown to be quite independent of the problem of the common origin of
mankind, as a question which ought to be kept open as long as possible. It
is not, I believe, a problem quite as hopeless as that of the plurality of
worlds, on which so much has been written of late, but it should be
treated very much in the same manner. As it is impossible to demonstrate
by the evidence of the senses that the planets are inhabited, the only way
to prove that they are, is to prove that it is impossible that they should
not be. Thus on the other hand, in order to prove that the planets are not
inhabited, you must prove that it is impossible that they should be. As
soon as the one or the other has been proved, the question will be set at
rest: till then it must remain an open question, whatever our own
predilections on the subject may be.
I do not take quite as desponding a view of the problem of the common
origin of language, but I insist on this, that we ought not to allow this
problem to be in any way prejudged. Now it has been the tendency of the
most distinguished writers on comparative philology to take it almost for
granted, that after the discovery of the two families of language, the
Aryan and Semitic, and after the establishment of the close ties of
relationship which unite the members of each, it would be impossible to
admit any longer a common origin of language. It was natural, after the
criteria by which the unity of the Aryan as well as the Semitic dialects
can be proved had been so successfully defined, that the absence of
similar coincidences between any Semitic and Aryan language, or between
these and any other branch of speech, should have led to a belief that no
connection was admissible between them. A Linnæan botanist, who has his
definite marks by which to recognize an Anemone, would reject with equal
confidence any connection between the species Anemone and other flowers
which have since been classed under the same head though deficient in the
Linnæan marks of the Anemone.
But there are surely different degrees of affinity in languages as well as
in all other productions of nature, and the different families of speech,
though they cannot show the same signs of relationship by which their
members are held together, need not of necessity have been perfect
strangers to each other from the beginning.
Now I confess that when I found the argument used over and over again,
that it is impossible any longer to speak of a common origin of language,
because comparative philology had proved that there existed various
families of language, I felt that this was not true, that at all events it
was an exaggeration.
The problem, if properly viewed, bears the following aspect:—“_If you wish
to assert that language had various beginnings, you must prove it
impossible that language could have had a common origin._”
No such impossibility has ever been established with regard to a common
origin of the Aryan and Semitic dialects; while on the contrary the
analysis of the grammatical forms in either family has removed many
difficulties, and made it at least intelligible how, with materials
identical or very similar, two individuals, or two families, or two
nations, could in the course of time have produced languages so different
in form as Hebrew and Sanskrit.
But still greater light was thrown on the formative and metamorphic
process of language by the study of other dialects unconnected with
Sanskrit or Hebrew, and exhibiting before our eyes the growth of those
grammatical forms (grammatical in the widest sense of the word) which in
the Aryan and Semitic families we know only as formed, not as forming; as
decaying, not as living; as traditional, not as understood and
intentional: I mean the Turanian languages. The traces by which these
languages attest their original relationship are much fainter than in the
Semitic and Aryan families, but they are so of necessity. In the Aryan and
Semitic families, the agglutinative process, by which alone grammatical
forms can be obtained, has been arrested at some time, and this could only
have been through religious or political influences. By the same power
through which an advancing civilization absorbs the manifold dialects in
which every spoken idiom naturally represents itself, the first political
or religious centralization must necessarily have put a check on the
exuberance of an agglutinative speech. Out of many possible forms one
became popular, fixed, and technical for each word, for each grammatical
category; and by means of poetry, law, and religion, a literary or
political language was produced to which thenceforth nothing had to be
added; which in a short time, after becoming unintelligible in its formal
elements, was liable to phonetic corruption only, but incapable of
internal resuscitation. It is necessary to admit a primitive concentration
of this kind for the Aryan and Semitic families, for it is thus only that
we can account for coincidences between Sanskrit and Greek terminations,
which were formed neither from Greek nor from Sanskrit materials, but
which are still identically the same in both. It is in this sense that I
call these languages political or state languages, and it has been truly
said that languages belonging to these families must be able to prove
their relationship by sharing in common not only what is regular and
intelligible, but what is anomalous, unintelligible, and dead.
If no such concentration takes place, languages, though formed of the same
materials and originally identical, must necessarily diverge in what we
may call dialects, but in a very different sense from the dialects such as
we find in the later periods of political languages. The process of
agglutination will continue in each clan, and forms becoming
unintelligible will be easily replaced by new and more intelligible
compounds. If the cases are formed by postpositions, new postpositions can
be used as soon as the old ones become obsolete. If the conjugation is
formed by pronouns, new pronouns can be used if the old ones are no longer
sufficiently distinct.
Let us ask then, what coincidences we are likely to find in agglutinative
dialects which have become separated, and which gradually approach to a
more settled state? It seems to me that we can only expect to find in them
such coincidences as Castrén and Schott have succeeded in discovering in
the Finnic, Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Samoyedic languages; and such
as Hodgson, Caldwell, Logan, and myself have pointed out in the Tamulic,
Gangetic, Lohitic, Taïc, and Malaïc languages. They must refer chiefly to
the radical materials of language, or to those parts of speech which it is
most difficult to reproduce, I mean pronouns, numerals, and prepositions.
These languages will hardly ever agree in what is anomalous or inorganic,
because their organism repels continually what begins to be formal and
unintelligible. It is astonishing rather, that any words of a conventional
meaning should have been discovered as the common property of the Turanian
languages, than that most of their words and forms should be peculiar to
each. These coincidences must, however, be accounted for by those who deny
the common origin of the Turanian languages; they must be accounted for,
either as the result of accident, or of an imitative instinct which led
the human mind everywhere to the same onomatopoëtic formations. This has
never been done, and it will require great efforts to achieve it.
To myself the study of the Turanian family was interesting particularly
because it offered an opportunity of learning how far languages, supposed
to be of a common origin, might diverge and become dissimilar by the
unrestrained operation of dialectic regeneration.
In a letter which I addressed to my friend, the late Baron Bunsen, and
which was published by him in his “Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal
History”(310) (vol. i. pp. 263-521), it had been my object to trace, as
far as I was able, the principles which guided the formation of
agglutinative languages, and to show how far languages may become
dissimilar in their grammar and dictionary, and yet allow us to treat them
as cognate dialects. In answer to the assertion that it was impossible, I
tried, in the fourth, fifth, and sixth sections of that Essay, to show
_how_ it was possible, that, starting from a common ground, languages as
different as Mandshu and Finnish, Malay and Siamese, should have arrived
at their present state, and might still be treated as cognate tongues. And
as I look upon this process of agglutination as the only intelligible
means by which language can acquire a grammatical organization, and clear
the barrier which has arrested the growth of the Chinese idiom, I felt
justified in applying the principles derived from the formation of the
Turanian languages to the Aryan and Semitic families. They also must have
passed through an agglutinative stage, and it is during that period alone
that we can account for the gradual divergence and individualization of
what we afterwards call the Aryan and Semitic forms of speech. If we can
account for the different appearance of Mandshu and Finnish, we can also
account for the distance between Hebrew and Sanskrit. It is true that we
do not know the Aryan speech during its agglutinative period, but we can
infer what it was when we see languages like Finnish and Turkish
approaching more and more to an Aryan type. Such has been the advance
which Turkish has made towards inflectional forms, that Professor Ewald
claims for it the title of a synthetic language, a title which he gives to
the Aryan and Semitic dialects after they have left the agglutinative
stage, and entered into a process of phonetic corruption and dissolution.
“Many of its component parts,” he says, “though they were no doubt
originally, as in every language, independent words, have been reduced to
mere vowels, or have been lost altogether, so that we must infer their
former presence by the changes which they have wrought in the body of the
word. _Göz_ means eye, and _gör_, to see; _ish_, deed, and _ir_, to do;
_îtsh_, the interior, _gîr_, to enter.”(311) Nay, he goes so far as to
admit some formal elements which Turkish shares in common with the Aryan
family, and which therefore could only date from a period when both were
still in their agglutinative infancy. For instance, _di_, as exponent of a
past action; _ta_, as the sign of the past participle of the passive;
_lu_, as a suffix to form adjectives, &c.(312) This is more than I should
venture to assert.
Taking this view of the gradual formation of language by agglutination, as
opposed to intussusception, it is hardly necessary to say that, if I speak
of a Turanian family of speech, I use the word family in a different sense
from that which it has with regard to the Aryan and Semitic languages. In
my Letter on the Turanian languages, which has been the subject of such
fierce attacks from those who believe in different beginnings of language
and mankind, I had explained this repeatedly, and I had preferred the term
of _group_ for the Turanian languages, in order to express as clearly as
possible that the relation between Turkish and Mandshu, between Tamil and
Finnish, was a different one, not in degree only, but in kind, from that
between Sanskrit and Greek. “These Turanian languages,” I said (p. 216),
“cannot be considered as standing to each other in the same relation as
Hebrew and Arabic, Sanskrit and Greek.” “They are radii diverging from a
common centre, not children of a common parent.” And still they are not so
widely distant as Hebrew and Sanskrit, because none of them has entered
into that new phase of growth or decay (p. 218) through which the Semitic
and Aryan languages passed after they had been settled, individualized,
and nationalized.
The real object of my Essay was therefore a defensive one. It was to show
how rash it was to speak of different independent beginnings in the
history of human speech, before a single argument had been brought forward
to establish the necessity of such an admission. The impossibility of a
common origin of language has never been proved, but, in order to remove
what were considered difficulties affecting the theory of a common origin,
I felt it my duty to show practically, and by the very history of the
Turanian languages, how such a theory was possible, or as I say in one
instance only, probable. I endeavored to show how even the most distant
members of the Turanian family, the one spoken in the north, the other in
the south of Asia, the _Finnic_ and the _Tamulic_, have preserved in their
grammatical organization traces of a former unity; and, if my opponents
admit that I have proved the ante-Brahmanic or Tamulic inhabitants of
India to belong to the Turanian family, they can hardly have been aware
that if this, the most extreme point of my argument be conceded,
everything else is involved, and must follow by necessity.
Yet I did not call the last chapter of my Essay, “On the Necessity of a
common origin of Language,” but “On the Possibility;” and, in answer to
the opinions advanced by the opposite party, I summed up my defence in
these two paragraphs:—
I.
“Nothing necessitates the admission of different independent
beginnings for the _material_ elements of the Turanian, Semitic,
and Aryan branches of speech;—nay, it is possible even now to
point out radicals which, under various changes and disguises,
have been current in these three branches ever since their first
separation.”
II.
“Nothing necessitates the admission of different beginnings for
the formal elements of the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches
of speech;—and though it is impossible to derive the Aryan system
of grammar from the Semitic, or the Semitic from the Aryan, we can
perfectly understand how, either through individual influences, or
by the wear and tear of speech in its own continuous working, the
different systems of grammar of Asia and Europe may have been
produced.”
It will be seen, from the very wording of these two paragraphs, that my
object was to deny the necessity of independent beginnings, and to assert
the possibility of a common origin of language. I have been accused of
having been biassed in my researches by an implicit belief in the common
origin of mankind. I do not deny that I hold this belief, and, if it
wanted confirmation, that confirmation has been supplied by Darwin’s book
“On the Origin of Species.”(313) But I defy my adversaries to point out
one single passage where I have mixed up scientific with theological
arguments. Only if I am told that no “quiet observer would ever have
conceived the idea of deriving all mankind from one pair, unless the
Mosaic records had taught it,” I must be allowed to say in reply, that
this idea on the contrary is so natural, so consistent with all human laws
of reasoning, that, as far as I know, there has been no nation on earth
which, if it possessed any traditions on the origin of mankind, did not
derive the human race from one pair, if not from one person. The author of
the Mosaic records, therefore, though stripped, before the tribunal of
Physical Science, of his claims as an inspired writer, may at least claim
the modest title of a quiet observer, and if his conception of the
physical unity of the human race can be proved to be an error, it is an
error which he shares in common with other quiet observers, such as
Humboldt, Bunsen, Prichard, and Owen.(314)
The only question which remains to be answered is this, Was it one and the
same volume of water which supplied all the lateral channels of speech?
or, to drop all metaphor, are the roots which were joined together
according to the radical, the terminational, and inflectional systems,
identically the same? The only way to answer, or at least to dispose of,
this question is to consider the nature and origin of roots; and we shall
then have reached the extreme limits to which inductive reasoning can
carry us in our researches into the mysteries of human speech.
LECTURE IX. THE THEORETICAL STAGE, AND THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.