Lectures on The Science of Language 42

Lectures on The Science of Language 42

What, then, are these roots? In our modern languages roots can only be

discovered by scientific analysis, and, even as far back as Sanskrit, we

may say that no root was ever used as a noun or as a verb. But originally

roots were thus used, and in Chinese we have fortunately preserved to us a

representative of that primitive radical stage which, like the granite,

underlies all other strata of human speech. The Aryan root _DÂ_, to give,

appears in Sanskrit _dâ-nam_, _donum_, gift, as a substantive; in _do_,

Sanskrit _dadâmi_, Greek _di-dō-mi_, I give, as a verb; but the root DÂ

can never be used by itself. In Chinese, on the contrary, the root TA, as

such, is used in the sense of a noun, greatness; of a verb, to be great;

of an adverb, greatly or much. Roots therefore are not, as is commonly

maintained, merely scientific abstractions, but they were used originally

as real words. What we want to find out is this, What inward mental phase

is it that corresponds to these roots, as the germs of human speech?

 

Two theories have been started to solve this problem, which, for

shortness’ sake, I shall call the _Bow-wow theory_ and the _Pooh-pooh

theory_.(327)

 

According to the first, roots are imitations of sounds, according to the

second, they are involuntary interjections. The first theory was very

popular among the philosophers of the eighteenth century, and, as it is

still held by many distinguished scholars and philosophers, we must

examine it more carefully. It is supposed then that man, being as yet

mute, heard the voices of birds and dogs and cows, the thunder of the

clouds, the roaring of the sea, the rustling of the forest, the murmurs of

the brook, and the whisper of the breeze. He tried to imitate these

sounds, and finding his mimicking cries useful as signs of the objects

from which they proceeded, he followed up the idea and elaborated

language. This view was most ably defended by Herder.(328) “Man,” he says,

“shows conscious reflection when his soul acts so freely that it may

separate, in the ocean of sensations which rush into it through the

senses, one single wave, arrest it, regard it, being conscious all the

time of regarding this one single wave. Man proves his conscious

reflection when, out of the dream of images that float past his senses, he

can gather himself up and wake for a moment, dwelling intently on one

image, fixing it with a bright and tranquil glance, and discovering for

himself those signs by which he knows that _this_ is _this_ image and no

other. Man proves his conscious reflection when he not only perceives

vividly and distinctly all the features of an object, but is able to

separate and recognize one or more of them as its distinguishing

features.” For instance, “Man sees a lamb. He does not see it like the

ravenous wolf. He is not disturbed by any uncontrollable instinct. He

wants to know it, but he is neither drawn towards it nor repelled from it

by his senses. The lamb stands before him, as represented by his senses,

white, soft, woolly. The conscious and reflecting soul of man looks for a

distinguishing mark;—the lamb bleats!—the mark is found. The bleating

which made the strongest impression, which stood apart from all other

impressions of sight or touch, remains in the soul. The lamb

returns—white, soft, woolly. The soul sees, touches, reflects, looks for a

mark. The lamb bleats, and now the soul has recognized it. ‘Ah, thou art

the bleating animal,’ the soul says within herself; and the sound of

bleating, perceived as the distinguishing mark of the lamb, becomes the

name of the lamb. It was the comprehended mark, the word. And what is the

whole of our language but a collection of such words?”

 

Our answer is, that though there are names in every language formed by

mere imitation of sound, yet these constitute a very small proportion of

our dictionary. They are the playthings, not the tools, of language, and

any attempt to reduce the most common and necessary words to imitative

roots ends in complete failure. Herder himself, after having most

strenuously defended this theory of Onomatopoieia, as it is called, and

having gained a prize which the Berlin Academy had offered for the best

essay on the origin of language, renounced it openly towards the latter

years of his life, and threw himself in despair into the arms of those who

looked upon languages as miraculously revealed. We cannot deny the

possibility that _a_ language might have been formed on the principle of

imitation; all we say is, that as yet no language has been discovered that

was so formed. An Englishman in China,(329) seeing a dish placed before

him about which he felt suspicious, and wishing to know whether it was a

duck, said, with an interrogative accent,

 

_Quack quack?_

 

He received the clear and straightforward answer,

 

_Bow-wow!_

 

This, no doubt, was as good as the most eloquent conversation on the same

subject between an Englishman and a French waiter. But I doubt whether it

deserves the name of language. We do not speak of a _bow-wow_, but of a

dog. We speak of a cow, not of a _moo_. Of a lamb, not of a _baa_. It is

the same in more ancient languages, such as Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. If

this principle of Onomatopoieia is applicable anywhere, it would be in the

formation of the names of animals. Yet we listen in vain for any

similarity between goose and cackling, hen and clucking, duck and

quacking, sparrow and chirping, dove and cooing, hog and grunting, cat and

mewing, between dog and barking, yelping, snarling, or growling.

 

There are of course some names, such as _cuckoo_, which are clearly formed

by an imitation of sound. But words of this kind are, like artificial

flowers, without a root. They are sterile, and are unfit to express

anything beyond the one object which they imitate. If you remember the

variety of derivatives that could be formed from the root _spac_, to see,

you will at once perceive the difference between the fabrication of such a

word as _cuckoo_, and the true natural growth of words.

 

Let us compare two words such as _cuckoo_ and _raven_. _Cuckoo_ in English

is clearly a mere imitation of the cry of that bird, even more so than the

corresponding terms in Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin. In these languages the

imitative element has received the support of a derivative suffix; we have

_kokila_ in Sanskrit, and _kokkyx_ in Greek, _cuculus_ in Latin.(330)

_Cuckoo_ is, in fact, a modern word, which has taken the place of the

Anglo-Saxon _geac_, the German _Gauch_, and, being purely onomatopoëtic,

it is of course not liable to the changes of Grimm’s Law. As the word

_cuckoo_ predicates nothing but the sound of a particular bird, it could

never be applied for expressing any general quality in which other animals

might share; and the only derivatives to which it might give rise are

words expressive of a metaphorical likeness with the bird. The same

applies to _cock_, the Sanskrit _kukkuṭa_. Here, too, Grimm’s Law does not

apply, for both words were intended to convey merely the cackling sound of

the bird; and, as this intention continued to be felt, phonetic change was

less likely to set in. The Sanskrit _kukkuṭa_ is not derived from any

root, it simply repeats the cry of the bird, and the only derivatives to

which it gives rise are metaphorical __EXPRESSION__s, such as the French

_coquet_, originally strutting about like a cock; _coquetterie_; _cocart_,

conceited; _cocarde_, a cockade; _coquelicot_, originally a cock’s comb,

then the wild red poppy, likewise so called from its similarity with a

cock’s comb.

 

Let us now examine the word _raven_. It might seem at first, as if this

also was merely onomatopoëtic. Some people imagine they perceive a kind of

similarity between the word _raven_ and the cry of that bird. This seems

still more so if we compare the Anglo-Saxon _hrafn_, the German _Rabe_,

Old High-German _hraban_. The Sanskrit _kârava_ also, the Latin _corvus_,

and the Greek _korōnē_, all are supposed to show some similarity with the

unmelodious sound of _Maître Corbeau_. But as soon as we analyze the word

we find that it is of a different structure from _cuckoo_ or _cock_. It is

derived from a root which has a general predicative power. The root _ru_

or _kru_ is not a mere imitation of the cry of the raven; it embraces many

cries, from the harshest to the softest, and it might have been applied to

the nightingale as well as to the raven. In Sanskrit this root exists as

_ru_, a verb which is applied to the murmuring sound of rivers as well as

to the barking of dogs and the mooing of cows. From it are derived

numerous words in Sanskrit. In Latin we find _raucus_, hoarse; _rumor_, a

whisper; in German _rûnen_, to speak low, and _runa_, mystery. The Latin

_lamentum_ stands for an original _ravimentum_ or _cravimentum_. This root

_ru_ has several secondary forms, such as the Sanskrit _rud_, to cry; the

Latin _rug_ in _rugire_, to howl; the Greek _kru_ or _klu_, in _klaiō_,

_klausomai_; the Sanskrit _kruś_, to shout; the Gothic _hrukjan_, to crow,

and _hropjan_, to cry; the German _rufen_. Even the common Aryan word for

hearing is closely allied to this root. It is _śru_ in Sanskrit, _klyō_ in

Greek, _cluo_ in Latin; and before it took the recognized meaning of

hearing, it meant to sound, to ring. When a noise was to be heard in a far

distance, the man who first perceived it might well have said I ring, for

his ears were sounding and ringing; and the same verb, if once used as a

transitive, expressed exactly what we mean by I hear a noise.

 

You will have perceived thus that the process which led to the formation

of the word _kârava_ in Sanskrit is quite distinct from that which

produced _cuckoo_. _Kârava_(331) means a shouter, a caller, a crier. It

might have been applied to many birds; but it became the traditional and

recognized name for the crow. Cuckoo could never mean anything but the

cuckoo, and while a word like _raven_ has ever so many relations from a

_rumor_ down to _a row_, cuckoo stands by itself like a stick in a living

hedge.

 

It is curious to observe how apt we are to deceive ourselves when we once

adopt this system of Onomatopoieia. Who does not imagine that he hears in

the word “thunder” an imitation of the rolling and rumbling noise which

the old Germans ascribed to their God Thor playing at nine-pins? Yet

_thunder_ is clearly the same word as the Latin _tonitru_. The root is

_tan_, to stretch. From this root _tan_, we have in Greek _tonos_, our

tone, _tone_ being produced by the stretching and vibrating of cords. In

Sanskrit the sound thunder is expressed by the same root _tan_, but in the

derivatives _tanyu_, _tanyatu_, and _tanayitnu_, thundering, we perceive

no trace of the rumbling noise which we imagined we perceived in the Latin

_tonitru_ and the English _thunder_. The very same root _tan_, to stretch,

yields some derivatives which are anything but rough and noisy. The

English _tender_, the French _tendre_, the Latin _tener_, are derived from

it. Like _tenuis_, the Sanskrit _tanu_, the English _thin_, _tener_ meant

originally what was extended over a larger surface, then _thin_, then

_delicate_. The relationship betwixt _tender_, _thin_, and _thunder_ would

be hard to establish if the original conception of thunder had really been

its rumbling noise.

 

Who does not imagine that he hears something sweet in the French _sucre_,

_sucré_? Yet sugar came from India, and it is there called _śarkhara_,

which is anything but sweet sounding. This _śarkhara_ is the same word as

_sugar_; it was called in Latin _saccharum_, and we still speak of

_saccharine_ juice, which is sugar juice.