Lectures on The Science of Language 32

Lectures on The Science of Language 32

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.

 

Other languages which are supposed to belong to the Semitic family are the

_Berber_ dialects of Northern Africa, spoken on the coast from Egypt to

the Atlantic Ocean before the invasion of the Arabs, and now pushed back

towards the interior. Some other African languages, too, such as the

_Haussa_ and _Galla_, have been classed as Semitic; and the language of

Egypt, from the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions to the Coptic, which

ceased to be spoken after the seventeenth century, has equally been

referred to this class. The Semitic character of these dialects, however,

is much less clearly defined, and the exact degree of relationship in

which they stand to the Semitic languages, properly so-called, has still

to be determined.

 

Strictly speaking the Aryan and Semitic are the only _families_ of speech

which fully deserve that title. They both presuppose the existence of a

finished system of grammar, previous to the first divergence of their

dialects. Their history is from the beginning a history of decay rather

than of growth, and hence the unmistakable family-likeness which pervades

every one even of their latest descendants. The language of the Sepoy and

that of the English soldier are, strictly speaking, one and the same

language. They are both built up of materials which were definitely shaped

before the Teutonic and Indic branches separated. No new root has been

added to either since their first separation; and the grammatical forms

which are of more modern growth in English or Hindustání, are, if closely

examined, new combinations only of elements which existed from the

beginning in all the Aryan dialects. In the termination of the English _he

is_, and in the inaudible termination of the French _il est_, we recognize

the result of an act performed before the first separation of the Aryan

family, the combination of the predicative root _as_ with the

demonstrative root _ti_; an act performed once for all, and continuing to

be felt to the present day.

 

It was the custom of Nebuchadnezzar to have his name stamped on every

brick that was used during his reign in erecting his colossal palaces.

Those palaces fell to ruins, but from the ruins the ancient materials were

carried away for building new cities; and on examining the bricks in the

walls of the modern city of Baghdad on the borders of the Tigris, Sir

Henry Rawlinson discovered on each the clear traces of that royal

signature. It is the same if we examine the structure of modern languages.

They too were built up with the materials taken from the ruins of the

ancient languages, and every word, if properly examined, displays the

visible stamp impressed upon it from the first by the founders of the

Aryan and the Semitic empires of speech.

 

The relationship of languages, however, is not always so close. Languages

may diverge before their grammatical system has become fixed and hardened;

and in that case they cannot be expected to show the same marked features

of a common descent as, for instance, the Neo-Latin dialects, French,

Italian, and Spanish. They may have much in common, but they will likewise

display an after-growth in words and grammatical forms peculiar to each

dialect. With regard to words we see that even languages so intimately

related to each other as the six Romance dialects, diverged in some of the

commonest __EXPRESSION__s. Instead of the Latin _frater_, the French _frère_,

we find in Spanish _hermano_. There was a very good reason for this

change. The Latin word _frater_, changed into _fray_ and _frayle_, had

been applied to express a brother or a friar. It was felt inconvenient

that the same word should express two ideas which it was sometimes

necessary to distinguish, and therefore, by a kind of natural elimination,

_frater_ was given up as the name of brother in Spanish, and replaced from

the dialectical stores of Latin, by _germanus_. In the same manner the

Latin word for shepherd, _pastor_, was so constantly applied to the

shepherd of the people or the clergyman, _le pasteur_, that a new word was

wanted for the real shepherd. Thus _berbicarius_ from _berbex_ or

_vervex_, a wether, was used instead of _pastor_, and changed into the

French _berger_. Instead of the Spanish _enfermo_, ill, we find in French

_malade_, in Italian _malato_. Languages so intimately related as Greek

and Latin have fixed on different __EXPRESSION__s for son, daughter, brother,

woman, man, sky, earth, moon, hand, mouth, tree, bird, &c.(295) That is to

say, out of a large number of synonymes which were supplied by the

numerous dialects of the Aryan family, the Greeks perpetuated one, the

Romans another. It is clear that when the working of this principle of

natural selection is allowed to extend more widely, languages, though

proceeding from the same source, may in time acquire a totally different

nomenclature for the commonest objects. The number of real synonymes is

frequently exaggerated, and if we are told that in Icelandic there are 120

names for island, or in Arabic 500 names for lion,(296) and 1,000 names

for sword,(297) many of these are no doubt purely poetical. But even where

there are in a language only four or five names for the same objects, it

is clear that four languages might be derived from it, each in appearance

quite distinct from the rest.

 

The same applies to grammar. When the Romance languages, for instance,

formed their new future by placing the auxiliary verb _habere_, to have,

after the infinitive, it was quite open to any one of them to fix upon

some other expedient for expressing the future. The French might have

chosen _je vais dire_ or _je dirvais_ (I wade to say) instead of _je

dirai_, and in this case the future in French would have been totally

distinct from the future in Italian. If such changes are possible in

literary languages of such long standing as French and Italian, we must be

prepared for a great deal more in languages which, as I said, diverged

before any definite settlement had taken place either in their grammar or

their dictionary. If we were to expect in them the definite criteria of a

genealogical relationship which unites the members of the Aryan and

Semitic families of speech, we should necessarily be disappointed. Such

criteria could not possibly exist in these languages. But there are

criteria for determining even these more distant degrees of relationship

in the vast realm of speech; and they are sufficient at least to arrest

the hasty conclusions of those who would deny the possibility of a common

origin of any languages more removed from each other than French and

Italian, Sanskrit and Greek, Hebrew and Arabic. You will see this more

clearly after we have examined the principles of what I call the

_morphological classification_ of human speech.

 

As all languages, so far as we can judge at present, can be reduced in the

end to roots, predicative and demonstrative, it is clear that, according

to the manner in which roots are put together, we may expect to find three

kinds of languages, or three stages in the gradual formation of speech.

 

1. Roots may be used as words, each root preserving its full independence.

 

2. Two roots may be joined together to form words, and in these compounds

one root may lose its independence.

 

3. Two roots may be joined together to form words, and in these compounds

both roots may lose their independence.

 

What applies to two roots, applies to three or four or more. The principle

is the same, though it would lead to a more varied subdivision.

 

The first stage, in which each root preserves its independence, and in

which there is no formal distinction between a root and a word, I call the

_Radical Stage_. This stage is best represented by ancient Chinese.

Languages belonging to this first or Radical Stage, have sometimes been

called _Monosyllabic_ or _Isolating_. The second stage, in which two or

more roots coalesce to form a word, the one retaining its radical

independence, the other sinking down to a mere termination, I call the

_Terminational Stage_. This stage is best represented by the Turanian

family of speech, and the languages belonging to it have generally been

called _agglutinative_, from _gluten_, glue. The third stage, in which

roots coalesce so that neither the one nor the other retains its

substantive independence, I call the _Inflectional Stage_. This stage is

best represented by the Aryan and Semitic families, and the languages

belonging to it have sometimes been distinguished by the name of _organic_

or _amalgamating_.