Lectures on The Science of Language 24

Lectures on The Science of Language 24

After this clan broke up, the ancestors of the Indians and Zoroastrians

must have remained together for some time in their migrations or new

settlements; and I believe that it was the reform of Zoroaster which

produced at last the split between the worshippers of the Vedic gods and

the worshippers of Ormuzd. Whether, besides this division into a southern

and northern branch, it is possible by the same test (the community of

particular words and forms), to discover the successive periods when the

Germans separated from the Slaves, the Celts from the Italians, or the

Italians from the Greeks, seems more than doubtful. The attempts made by

different scholars have led to different and by no means satisfactory

results;(203) and it seems best, for the present, to trace each of the

northern classes back to its own dialect, and to account for the more

special coincidences between such languages as, for instance, the Slavonic

and Teutonic, by admitting that the ancestors of these races preserved

from the beginning certain dialectical peculiarities which existed before,

as well as after, the separation of the Aryan family.

 

 

 

 

 

LECTURE VI. COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR.

 

 

The genealogical classification of the Aryan languages was founded, as we

saw, on a close comparison of the grammatical characteristics of each; and

it is the object of such works as Bopp’s “Comparative Grammar” to show

that the grammatical articulation of Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Roman, Celtic,

Teutonic, and Slavonic, was produced once and for all; and that the

apparent differences in the terminations of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin,

must be explained by laws of phonetic decay, peculiar to each dialect,

which modified the original common Aryan type, and changed it into so many

national languages. It might seem, therefore, as if the object of

comparative grammar was attained as soon as the exact genealogical

relationship of languages had been settled; and those who only look to the

higher problems of the science of language have not hesitated to declare

that “there is no painsworthy difficulty nor dispute about declension,

number, case, and gender of nouns.” But although it is certainly true that

comparative grammar is only a means, and that it has well nigh taught us

all that it has to teach,—at least in the Aryan family of speech,—it is to

be hoped that, in the science of language, it will always retain that

prominent place which it has obtained through the labors of Bopp, Grimm,

Pott, Benfey, Curtius, Kuhn, and others. Besides, comparative grammar has

more to do than simply to compare. It would be easy enough to place side

by side the paradigms of declension and conjugation in Sanskrit, Greek,

Latin, and the other Aryan dialects, and to mark both their coincidences

and their differences. But after we have done this, and after we have

explained the phonetic laws which cause the primitive Aryan type to assume

that national variety which we admire in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, new

problems arise of a more interesting nature. We know that grammatical

terminations, as they are now called, were originally independent words,

and had their own purpose and meaning. Is it possible, after comparative

grammar has established the original forms of the Aryan terminations, to

trace them back to independent words, and to discover their original

purpose and meaning? You will remember that this was the point from which

we started. We wanted to know why the termination _d_ in _I loved_ should

change a present into a past act. We saw that before answering this

question we had to discover the most original form of this termination by

tracing it from English to Gothic, and afterwards, if necessary, from

Gothic to Sanskrit. We now return to our original question, namely, What

is language that a mere formal change, such as that of _I love_ into _I

loved_, should produce so very material a difference?

 

Let us clearly see what we mean if we make a distinction between the

radical and formal elements of a language; and by formal elements I mean

not only the terminations of declension and conjugation, but all

derivative elements; all, in fact, that is not radical. Our view on the

origin of language must chiefly depend on the view which we take of these

formal, as opposed to the radical, elements of speech. Those who consider

that language is a conventional production, base their arguments

principally on these formal elements. The inflections of words, they

maintain, are the best proof that language was made by mutual agreement.

They look upon them as mere letters or syllables without any meaning by

themselves; and if they were asked why the mere addition of a _d_ changes

_I love_ into _I loved_, or why the addition of the syllable _rai_ gave to

_j’aime_, I love, the power of a future, _j’aimerai_, they would answer,

that it was so because, at a very early time in the history of the world,

certain persons, or families, or clans, agreed that it should be so.

 

This view was opposed by another which represents language as an organic

and almost a living being, and explains its formal elements as produced by

a principle of growth inherent in its very nature. “Languages,”(204) it is

maintained, “are formed by a process, not of crystalline accretion, but of

germinal development. Every essential part of language existed as

completely (although only implicitly) in the primitive germ, as the petals

of a flower exist in the bud before the mingled influences of the sun and

the air caused it to unfold.” This view was first propounded by Frederick

Schlegel,(205) and it is still held by many with whom poetical phraseology

takes the place of sound and severe reasoning.

 

The science of language adopts neither of these views. As to imagining a

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