Lectures on The Science of Language 25

Lectures on The Science of Language 25

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