lectures on the science of language 8

lectures on the science of language 8

Let us now look again at what is commonly called the history, but what

ought to be called, the natural growth, of language, and we shall easily

see that it consists chiefly in the play of the two principles which we

have just examined, _phonetic decay_ and _dialectical regeneration_ or

_growth_. Let us take the six Romance languages. It is usual to call these

the daughters of Latin. I do not object to the names of parent and

daughter as applied to languages; only we must not allow such apparently

clear and simple terms to cover obscure and vague conceptions. Now if we

call Italian the daughter of Latin, we do not mean to ascribe to Italian a

new vital principle. Not a single radical element was newly created for

the formation of Italian. Italian is Latin in a new form. Italian is

modern Latin, or Latin ancient Italian. The names _mother_ and _daughter_

only mark different periods in the growth of a language substantially the

same. To speak of Latin dying in giving birth to her offspring is again

pure mythology, and it would be easy to prove that Latin was a living

language long after Italian had learnt to run alone. Only let us clearly

see what we mean by Latin. The classical Latin is one out of many dialects

spoken by the Aryan inhabitants of Italy. It was the dialect of Latium, in

Latium the dialect of Rome, at Rome the dialect of the patricians. It was

fixed by Livius Andronicus, Ennius, Nævius, Cato, and Lucretius, polished

by the Scipios, Hortensius, and Cicero. It was the language of a

restricted class, of a political party, of a literary set. Before their

time, the language of Rome must have changed and fluctuated considerably.

Polybius tells us (iii. 22), that the best-informed Romans could not make

out without difficulty the language of the ancient treaties between Rome

and Carthage. Horace admits (Ep. ii. 1, 86), that he could not understand

the old Salian poems, and he hints that no one else could. Quintilian (i.

6, 40) says that the Salian priests could hardly understand their sacred

hymns. If the plebeians had obtained the upperhand over the patricians,

Latin would have been very different from what it is in Cicero, and we

know that even Cicero, having been brought up at Arpinum, had to give up

some of his provincial peculiarities, such as the dropping of the final

_s_, when he began to mix in fashionable society, and had to write for his

new patrician friends.(49) After having been established as the language

of legislation, religion, literature, and general civilization, the

classical Latin dialect became stationary and stagnant. It could not grow,

because it was not allowed to change or to deviate from its classical

correctness. It was haunted by its own ghost. Literary dialects, or what

are commonly called classical languages, pay for their temporary greatness

by inevitable decay. They are like stagnant lakes at the side of great

rivers. They form reservoirs of what was once living and running speech,

but they are no longer carried on by the main current. At times it may

seem as if the whole stream of language was absorbed by these lakes, and

we can hardly trace the small rivulets which run on in the main bed. But

if lower down, that is to say, later in history, we meet again with a new

body of stationary language, forming or formed, we may be sure that its

tributaries were those very rivulets which for a time were almost lost

from our sight. Or it may be more accurate to compare a classical or

literary idiom with the frozen surface of a river, brilliant and smooth,

but stiff and cold. It is mostly by political commotions that this surface

of the more polite and cultivated speech is broken and carried away by the

waters rising underneath. It is during times when the higher classes are

either crushed in religious and social struggles, or mix again with the

lower classes to repel foreign invasion; when literary occupations are

discouraged, palaces burnt, monasteries pillaged, and seats of learning

destroyed,—it is then that the popular, or, as they are called, the vulgar

dialects, which had formed a kind of undercurrent, rise beneath the

crystal surface of the literary language, and sweep away, like the waters

in spring, the cumbrous formations of a by-gone age. In more peaceful

times, a new and popular literature springs up in a language which _seems_

to have been formed by conquests or revolutions, but which, in reality,

had been growing up long before, and was only brought out, ready made, by

historical events. From this point of view we can see that no literary

language can ever be said to have been the mother of another language. As

soon as a language loses its unbounded capability of change, its

carelessness about what it throws away, and its readiness in always

supplying instantaneously the wants of mind and heart, its natural life is

changed into a merely artificial existence. It may still live on for a

long time, but while it seems to be the leading shoot, it is in reality

but a broken and withering branch, slowly falling from the stock from

which it sprang. The sources of Italian are not to be found in the

classical literature of Rome, but in the popular dialects of Italy.

English did not spring from the Anglo-Saxon of Wessex only, but from the

dialects spoken in every part of Great Britain, distinguished by local

peculiarities, and modified at different times by the influence of Latin,

Danish, Norman, French, and other foreign elements. Some of the local

dialects of English, as spoken at the present day, are of great importance

for a critical study of English, and a French prince, now living in this

country, deserves great credit for collecting what can still be saved of

English dialects. Hindustani is not the daughter of Sanskrit, as we find

it in the Vedas, or in the later literature of the Brahmans: it is a

branch of the living speech of India, springing from the same stem from

which Sanskrit sprang, when it first assumed its literary independence.

 

While thus endeavoring to place the character of dialects, as the feeders

of language, in a clear light, I may appear to some of my hearers to have

exaggerated their importance. No doubt, if my object had been different, I

might easily have shown that, without literary cultivation, language would

never have acquired that settled character which is essential for the

communication of thought; that it would never have fulfilled its highest

purpose, but have remained the mere jargon of shy troglodytes. But as the

importance of literary languages is not likely to be overlooked, whereas

the importance of dialects, as far as they sustain the growth of language,

had never been pointed out, I thought it better to dwell on the advantages

which literary languages derive from dialects, rather than on the benefits

which dialects owe to literary languages. Besides, our chief object to-day

was to explain the growth of language, and for that purpose it is

impossible to exaggerate the importance of the constant undergrowth of

dialects. Remove a language from its native soil, tear it away from the

dialects which are its feeders, and you arrest at once its natural growth.

There will still be the progress of phonetic corruption, but no longer the

restoring influence of dialectic regeneration. The language which the

Norwegian refugees brought to Iceland has remained almost the same for

seven centuries, whereas on its native soil, and surrounded by local

dialects, it has grown into two distinct languages, the Swedish and

Danish. In the eleventh century, the languages of Sweden, Denmark, and

Iceland are supposed(50) to have been identical, nor can we appeal to

foreign conquest, or to the admixture of foreign with native blood, in

order to account for the changes which the language underwent in Sweden

and Denmark, but not in Iceland.(51)

 

We can hardly form an idea of the unbounded resources of dialects. When

literary languages have stereotyped one general term, their dialects will

supply fifty, though each with its own special shade of meaning. If new

combinations of thought are evolved in the progress of society, dialects

will readily supply the required names from the store of their so-called

superfluous words. There are not only local and provincial, but also class

dialects. There is a dialect of shepherds, of sportsmen, of soldiers, of

farmers. I suppose there are few persons here present who could tell the

exact meaning of a horse’s poll, crest, withers, dock, hamstring, cannon,

pastern, coronet, arm, jowl, and muzzle. Where the literary language

speaks of the young of all sorts of animals, farmers, shepherds, and

sportsmen would be ashamed to use so general a term.

 

“The idiom of nomads,” as Grimm says, “contains an abundant wealth of

manifold __EXPRESSION__s for sword and weapons, and for the different stages

in the life of their cattle. In a more highly cultivated language these

__EXPRESSION__s become burthensome and superfluous. But, in a peasant’s mouth,

the bearing, calving, falling, and killing of almost every animal has its

own peculiar term, as the sportsman delights in calling the gait and

members of game by different names. The eye of these shepherds, who live

in the free air, sees further, their ear hears more sharply,—why should

their speech not have gained that living truth and variety?”

 

Thus Juliana Berners, lady prioress of the nunnery of Sopwell in the

fifteenth century, the reputed author of the book of St. Albans, informs

us that we must not use names of multitudes promiscuously, but we are to

say, “a congregacyon of people, a hoost of men, a felyshyppynge of yomen,

and a bevy of ladies; we must speak of a herde of dere, swannys, cranys,

or wrenys, a sege of herons or bytourys, a muster of pecockes, a watche of

nyghtyngales, a flyghte of doves, a claterynge of choughes, a pryde of

lyons, a slewthe of beeres, a gagle of geys, a skulke of foxes, a sculle

of frerys, a pontificality of prestys, a bomynable syght of monkes, and a

superfluyte of nonnes,” and so of other human and brute assemblages. In

like manner, in dividing game for the table, the animals were not carved,

but “a dere was broken, a gose reryd, chekyn frusshed, a cony unlaced, a

crane dysplayed, a curlewe unioynted, a quayle wynggyd, a swanne lyfte, a

lambe sholdered, a heron dysmembryd, a pecocke dysfygured, a samon chynyd,

a hadoke sydyd, a sole loynyd, and a breme splayed.”(52)

 

What, however, I wanted particularly to point out in this lecture is this,

that neither of the causes which produce the growth, or, according to

others, constitute the history of language, is under the control of man.

The phonetic decay of language is not the result of mere accident; it is

governed by definite laws, as we shall see when we come to consider the

principles of comparative grammar. But these laws were not made by man; on

the contrary, man had to obey them without knowing of their existence.

 

In the growth of the modern Romance languages out of Latin, we can

perceive not only a general tendency to simplification, not only a natural

disposition to avoid the exertion which the pronunciation of certain

consonants, and still more, of groups of consonants, entails on the

speaker: but we can see distinct laws for each of the Romance dialects,

which enable us to say, that in French the Latin _patrem_ would naturally

grow into the modern _père_. The final _m_ is always dropped in the

Romance dialects, and it was dropped even in Latin. Thus we get _patre_

instead of _patrem_. Now, a Latin _t_ between two vowels in such words as

_pater_ is invariably suppressed in French. This is a law, and by means of

it we can discover at once that _catena_ must become _chaine_; _fata_, a

later feminine representation of the old neuter _fatum_, _fée_; _pratum_ a

meadow, _pré_. From _pratum_ we derive _prataria_, which in French becomes

_prairie_; from _fatum_, _fataria_, the English _fairy_. Thus every Latin

participle in _atus_, like _amatus_, loved, must end in French in _é_. The

same law then changed _patre_(pronounced _pa-tere_) into _paere_, or

_père_; it changed _matrem_ into _mère_, _fratrem_ into _frère_. These

changes take place gradually but irresistibly, and, what is most

important, they are completely beyond the reach or control of the free

will of man.

 

Dialectical growth again is still more beyond the control of individuals.

For although a poet may knowingly and intentionally invent a new word, its

acceptance depends on circumstances which defy individual interference.

There are some changes in the grammar which at first sight might seem to

be mainly attributable to the caprice of the speaker. Granted, for

instance, that the loss of the Latin terminations was the natural result

of a more careless pronunciation; granted that the modern sign of the

French genitive _du_ is a natural corruption of the Latin _de illo_,—yet

the choice of _de_, instead of any other word, to express the genitive,

the choice of _illo_, instead of any other pronoun, to express the

article, might seem to prove that man acted as a free agent in the

formation of language. But it is not so. No single individual could

deliberately have set to work in order to abolish the old Latin genitive,

and to replace it by the periphrastic compound _de illo_. It was necessary

that the inconvenience of having no distinct or distinguishable sign of

the genitive should have been felt by the people who spoke a vulgar Latin

dialect. It was necessary that the same people should have used the

preposition _de_ in such a manner as to lose sight of its original local

meaning altogether (for instance, _una de multis_, in Horace, _i.e._, one

out of many). It was necessary, again, that the same people should have

felt the want of an article, and should have used _illo_ in numerous

__EXPRESSION__s, where it seemed to have lost its original pronominal power.

It was necessary that all these conditions should be given, before one

individual and after him another, and after him hundreds and thousands and

millions, could use _de illo_ as the exponent of the genitive; and change it into the Italian _dello_, _del_, and the French _du_.