Lectures on The Science of Language Part 9

But there are many more offshoots of this one root. Thus, the Latin _speculum_, looking-gla.s.s, became _specchio_ in Italian; and the same word, though in a roundabout way, came into French as the adjective _espiegle_, waggish. The origin of this French word is curious. There exists in German a famous cycle of stories, mostly tricks, played by a half-historical, half-mythical character of the name of _Eulenspiegel_, or _Owl-gla.s.s_. These stories were translated into French, and the hero was known at first by the name of _Ulespiegle_, which name, contracted afterwards into _Espiegle_, became a general name for every wag.

As the French borrowed not only from Latin, but likewise from the Teutonic languages, we meet there side by side with the derivatives of the Latin _specere_, the old High-German, _spehon_, slightly disguised as _epier_, to spy, the Italian _spiare_. The German word for a spy was _speha_, and this appears in old French as _espie_, in modern French as _espion_.

One of the most prolific branches of the same root is the Latin _species_.

Whether we take _species_ in the sense of a perennial succession of similar individuals in continual generations (_Jussieu_), or look upon it as existing only as a category of thought (_Aga.s.siz_), _species_ was intended originally as the literal translation of the Greek _eidos_ as opposed to _genos_, or _genus_. The Greeks cla.s.sified things originally according to _kind_ and _form_, and though these terms were afterwards technically defined by Aristotle, their etymological meaning is in reality the most appropriate. Things may be cla.s.sified either because they are of the same _genus_ or _kind_, that is to say, because they had the same origin; this gives us a genealogical cla.s.sification: or they can be cla.s.sified because they have the same appearance, _eidos_, or _form_, without claiming for them a common origin; and this gives us a morphological cla.s.sification. It was, however, in the Aristotelian, and not in its etymological sense, that the Greek _eidos_ was rendered in Latin by _species_, meaning the subdivision of a genus, the cla.s.s of a family. Hence the French _espece_, a kind; the English _special_, in the sense of particular as opposed to general. There is little of the root _spas_, to see, left in a _special train_, or a _special messenger_; yet the connection, though not apparent, can be restored with perfect certainty. We frequently hear the expression _to specify_. A man specifies his grievances. What does it mean? The mediaeval Latin _specificus_ is a literal translation of the Greek _eidopoios_. This means what makes or const.i.tutes an _eidos_ or species. Now, in cla.s.sification, what const.i.tutes a species is that particular quality which, superadded to other qualities, shared in common by all the members of a genus, distinguishes one cla.s.s from all other cla.s.ses. Thus the specific character which distinguishes man from all other animals, is reason or language. Specific, therefore, a.s.sumed the sense of _distinguishing_ or _distinct_, and the verb _to specify_ conveyed the meaning of enumerating distinctly, or one by one. I finish with the French _epicier_, a respectable grocer, but originally a man who sold drugs. The different kinds of drugs which the apothecary had to sell, were spoken of, with a certain learned air, as _species_, not as drugs in general, but as peculiar drugs and special medicines. Hence the chymist or apothecary is still called _Speziale_ in Italian, his shop _spezieria_.(266) In French _species_, which regularly became _espece_, a.s.sumed a new form to express drugs, namely _epices_; the English _spices_, the German _spezereien_.

Hence the famous _pain d'epices_, gingerbread nuts, and _epicier_, a grocer. If you try for a moment to trace _spicy_, or _a well-spiced_ article, back to the simple root _specere_, to look, you will understand that marvellous power of language which out of a few simple elements has created a variety of names hardly surpa.s.sed by the unbounded variety of nature herself.(267)

I say "out of a few simple elements," for the number of what we call full predicative roots, such as _ar_, to plough, or _spas_, to look, is indeed small.

A root is necessarily monosyllabic. Roots consisting of more than one syllable can always be proved to be derivative roots, and even among monosyllabic roots it is necessary to distinguish between primitive, secondary, and tertiary roots.

A. Primitive roots are those which consist-

(1) of one vowel; for instance, _i_, to go;

(2) of one vowel and one consonant; for instance, _ad_, to eat;

(3) of one consonant and one vowel; for instance, _da_, to give.

B. Secondary roots are those which consist-

(1) of one consonant, vowel, and consonant; for instance, _tud_, to strike.

In these roots either the first or the last consonant is modificatory.

C. Tertiary roots are those which consist-

(1) of consonant, consonant, and vowel; for instance, _plu_, to flow;

(2) of vowel, consonant, and consonant; for instance, _ard_, to hurt;

(3) of consonant, consonant, vowel, and consonant; for instance, _spas_, to see;

(4) of consonant, consonant, vowel, consonant, and consonant; for instance, _spand_, to tremble.

The primary roots are the most important in the early history of language; but their predicative power being generally of too indefinite a character to answer the purposes of advancing thought, they were soon encroached upon and almost supplanted by secondary and tertiary radicals.

In the secondary roots we can frequently observe that one of the consonants, in the Aryan languages, generally the final, is liable to modification. The root retains its general meaning, which is slightly modified and determined by the changes of the final consonants. Thus, besides _tud_ (_tudati_), we have in Sanskrit _tup_ (_topati_, _tupati_, and _tumpati_), meaning to strike; Greek, _typ-to_. We meet likewise with _tubh_ (_tubhnati_, _tubhyati_, _tobhate_), to strike; and, according to Sanskrit grammarians, with _tuph_ (_tophati_, _tuphati_, _tumphati_). Then there is a root _tuj_ (_tunjati_, _tojati_), to strike, to excite; another root, _tur_ (_tutorti_), to which the same meaning is ascribed; another, _tur_ (_turyate_), to hurt. Then there is the further derivative _turv_ (_turvati_), to strike, to conquer; there is _tuh_ (_tohati_), to pain, to vex; and there is _tus_ (_tosate_), to which Sanskrit grammarians attribute the sense of striking.

Although we may call all these verbal bases roots, they stand to the first cla.s.s in about the same relation as the triliteral Semitic roots to the more primitive biliteral.(268)

In the third cla.s.s we shall find that one of the two consonants is always a semivowel, nasal, or sibilant, these being more variable than the other consonants; and we can almost always point to one consonant as of later origin, and added to a biconsonantal root in order to render its meaning more special. Thus we have, besides _spas_, the root _pas_, and even this root has been traced back by Pott to a more primitive _as_. Thus _vand_, again, is a mere strengthening of the root _vad_, like _mand_ of _mad_, like _yu-na-j_ and _yu-n-j_ of _yuj_. The root _yuj_, to join, and _yudh_, to fight, both point back to a root _yu_, to mingle, and this simple root has been preserved in Sanskrit. We may well understand that a root, having the general meaning of mingling or being together, should be employed to express both the friendly joining of hands and the engaging in hostile combat; but we may equally understand that language, in its progress to clearness and definiteness, should have desired a distinction between these two meanings, and should gladly have availed herself of the two derivatives, _yuj_ and _yudh_, to mark this distinction.

Sanskrit grammarians have reduced the whole growth of their language to 1706 roots,(269) that is to say, they have admitted so many radicals in order to derive from them, according to their system of grammatical derivation, all nouns, verbs, adjectives, p.r.o.nouns, prepositions, adverbs, and conjunctions, which occur in Sanskrit. According to our explanation of a root, however, this number of 1706 would have to be reduced considerably, and though a few new roots would likewise have to be added which Sanskrit grammarians failed to discover, yet the number of primitive sounds, expressive of definite meanings, requisite for the etymological a.n.a.lysis of the whole Sanskrit dictionary would not amount to even one third of that number. Hebrew has been reduced to about 500 roots,(270) and I doubt whether we want a larger number for Sanskrit. This shows a wise spirit of economy on the part of primitive language, for the possibility of forming new roots for every new impression was almost unlimited. Even if we put the number of letters only at twenty-four, the possible number of biliteral and triliteral roots would amount together to 14,400; whereas Chinese, though abstaining from composition and derivation, and therefore requiring a larger number of radicals than any other language, was satisfied with about 450. With these 450 sounds raised to 1263 by various accents and intonations, the Chinese have produced a dictionary of from 40,000 to 50,000 words.(271)

It is clear, however, that in addition to these predicative roots, we want another cla.s.s of radical elements to enable us to account for the full growth of language. With the 400 or 500 predicative roots at her disposal, language would not have been at a loss to coin names for all things that come under our cognizance. Language is a thrifty housewife. Consider the variety of ideas that were expressed by the one root _spas_, and you will see that with 500 such roots she might form a dictionary sufficient to satisfy the wants, however extravagant, of her husband-the human mind. If each root yielded fifty derivatives, we should have 25,000 words. Now, we are told, on good authority, by a country clergyman, that some of the laborers in his parish had not 300 words in their vocabulary.(272) The vocabulary of the ancient sages of Egypt, at least as far as it is known to us from the hieroglyphic inscriptions, amounts to about 685 words.(273) The _libretto_ of an Italian opera seldom displays a greater variety of words.(274) A well-educated person in England, who has been at a public school and at the university, who reads his Bible, his Shakespeare, the "Times," and all the books of Mudie's Library, seldom uses more than about 3000 or 4000 words in actual conversation. Accurate thinkers and close reasoners, who avoid vague and general expressions, and wait till they find the word that exactly fits their meaning, employ a larger stock; and eloquent speakers may rise to a command of 10,000. Shakespeare, who displayed a greater variety of expression than probably any writer in any language, produced all his plays with about 15,000 words. Milton's works are built up with 8000; and the Old Testament says all that it has to say with 5,642 words.(275)

Five hundred roots, therefore, considering their fertility and pliancy, was more than was wanted for the dictionary of our primitive ancestors.

And yet they wanted something more. If they had a root expressive of light and splendor, that root might have formed the predicate in the names of sun, and moon, and stars, and heaven, day, morning, dawn, spring, gladness, joy, beauty, majesty, love, friend, gold, riches, &c. But if they wanted to express _here_ and _there_, _who_, _what_, _this_, _that_, _thou_, _he_, they would have found it impossible to find any predicative root that could be applied to this purpose. Attempts have indeed been made to trace these words back to predicative roots; but if we are told that the demonstrative root _ta_, this or there, may be derived from a predicative root _tan_, to extend, we find that even in our modern languages, the demonstrative p.r.o.nouns and particles are of too primitive and independent a nature to allow of so artificial an interpretation. The sound _ta_ or _sa_, for this or there, is as involuntary, as natural, as independent an expression as any of the predicative roots, and although some of these demonstrative, or p.r.o.nominal, or local roots, for all these names have been applied to them, may be traced back to a predicative source, we must admit a small cla.s.s of independent radicals, not predicative in the usual sense of the word, but simply pointing, simply expressive of existence under certain more or less definite, local or temporal prescriptions.

It will be best to give one ill.u.s.tration at least of a p.r.o.nominal root and its influence in the formation of words.

In some languages, and particularly in Chinese, a predicative root may by itself be used as a noun, or a verb, or an adjective or adverb. Thus the Chinese sound _ta_ means, without any change of form, great, greatness, and to be great.(276) If _ta_ stands before a substantive, it has the meaning of an adjective. Thus _ta jin_ means a great man. If _ta_ stands after a substantive, it is a predicate, or, as we should say, a verb. Thus _jin ta_ (or jin ta ye) would mean the man is great.(277) Or again,

gin ngo, li pu ngo, would mean, man bad, law not bad.

Here we see that there is no outward distinction whatever between a root and a word, and that a noun is distinguished from a verb merely by its collocation in a sentence.

In other languages, however, and particularly in the Aryan languages, no predicative root can by itself form a word. Thus in Latin there is a root _luc_, to shine. In order to have a substantive, such as light, it was necessary to add a p.r.o.nominal or demonstrative root, this forming the general subject of which the meaning contained in the root is to be predicated. Thus by the addition of the p.r.o.nominal element _s_ we have the Latin noun, _luc-s_, the light, or literally, shining-there. Let us add a personal p.r.o.noun, and we have the verb _luc-e-s_, shining-thou, thou shinest. Let us add other p.r.o.nominal derivatives, and we get the adjectives, _lucidus_, _luculentus_, &c.

It would be a totally mistaken view, however, were we to suppose that all derivative elements, all that remains of a word after the predicative root has been removed, must be traced back to p.r.o.nominal roots. We have only to look at some of our own modern derivatives in order to be convinced that many of them were originally predicative, that they entered into composition with the princ.i.p.al predicative root, and then dwindled down to mere suffixes. Thus _scape_ in _landscape_, and the more modern _ship_ in _hardship_ are both derived from the same root which we have in Gothic,(278) _skapa_, _skop_, _skopum_, to create; in Anglo-Saxon, _scape_, _scop_, _scopon_. It is the same as the German derivative, _schaft_, in _Gesellschaft_, &c. So again _dom_ in _wisdom_ or _christendom_ is derived from the same root which we have in _to do_. It is the same as the German _thum_ in _Christenthum_, the Anglo-Saxon _dom_ in _cyning-dom_, _Konigthum_. Sometimes it may seem doubtful whether a derivative element was originally merely demonstrative or predicative.

Thus the termination of the comparative in Sanskrit is _tara_, the Greek _teros_. This might, at first sight, be taken for a demonstrative element, but it is in reality the root _tar_, which means _to go beyond_, which we have likewise in the Latin _trans_. This _trans_ in its French form _tres_ is prefixed to adjectives in order to express a higher or transcendent degree, and the same root was well adapted to form the comparative in the ancient Aryan tongues. This root must likewise be admitted in one of the terminations of the locative which is _tra_ in Sanskrit; for instance from _ta_, a demonstrative root, we form _ta-tra_, there, originally this way; we form _anyatra_, in another way; the same as in Latin we say _ali-ter_, from _aliud_; compounds no more surprising than the French _autrement_ (see p. 55) and the English _otherwise_.

Most of the terminations of declension and conjugation are demonstrative roots, and the _s_, for instance, of the third person singular, he loves, can be proved to have been originally the demonstrative p.r.o.noun of the third person. It was originally not _s_ but _t_. This will require some explanation. The termination of the third person singular of the present is _ti_ in Sanskrit. Thus _da_, to give, becomes _dadati_, he gives; _dha_, to place, _dadhati_, he places.

In Greek this _ti_ is changed into _si_; just as the Sanskrit _tvam_, the Latin _tu_, thou, appears in Greek as _sy_. Thus Greek _didosi_ corresponds to Sanskrit _dadati_; _t.i.thesi_ to _dadhati_. In the course of time, however, every Greek _s_ between two vowels, in a termination, was elided. Thus _genos_ does not form the genitive _genesos_, like the Latin _genus_, _genesis_ or _generis_, but _geneos_ = _genous_. The dative is not _genesi_ (the Latin _generi_), but _gene_ = _genei_. In the same manner all the regular verbs have _ei_ for the termination of the third person singular. But this _ei_ stands for _esi_. Thus _typtei_ stands for _typtesi_, and this for _typteti_.

The Latin drops the final _i_, and instead of _ti_ has _t_. Thus we get _amat_, _dicit_.

Now there is a law to which I alluded before, which is called Grimm's Law.

According to it every tenuis in Latin is in Gothic represented by its corresponding aspirate. Hence, instead of _t_, we should expect in Gothic _th_; and so we find indeed in Gothic _habai_, instead of Latin _habet_.

This aspirate likewise appears in Anglo-Saxon, where _he loves_ is _lufa_. It is preserved in the Biblical _he loveth_, and it is only in modern English that it gradually sank to _s_. In the _s_ of _he loves_, therefore, we have a demonstrative root, added to the predicative root _love_, and this _s_ is originally the same as the Sanskrit _ti_. This _ti_ again must be traced back to the demonstrative root _ta_, this or there; which exists in the Sanskrit demonstrative p.r.o.noun _tad_, the Greek _to_, the Gothic _thata_, the English _that_; and which in Latin we can trace in _talis_, _tantus_, _tunc_, _tam_, and even in _tamen_, an old locative in _men_. We have thus seen that what we call the third person singular of the present is in reality a simple compound of a predicative root with a demonstrative root. It is a compound like any other, only that the second part is not predicative, but simply demonstrative. As in pay-master we predicate pay of master, meaning a person whose office it is to pay, so in _dada-ti_, _give-he_, the ancient framers of language simply predicated giving of some third person, and this synthetic proposition, _give-he_, is the same as what we now call the third person singular in the indicative mood, of the present tense, in the active voice.(279)

We have necessarily confined ourselves in our a.n.a.lysis of language to that family of languages to which our own tongue, and those with which we are best acquainted, belong; but what applies to Sanskrit and the Aryan family applies to the whole realm of human speech. Every language, without a single exception, that has as yet been cast into the crucible of comparative grammar, has been found to contain these two substantial elements, predicative and demonstrative roots. In the Semitic family these two const.i.tuent elements are even more palpable than in Sanskrit and Greek. Even before the discovery of Sanskrit, and the rise of comparative philology, Semitic scholars had successfully traced back the whole dictionary of Hebrew and Arabic to a small number of roots, and as every root in these languages consists of three consonants, the Semitic languages have sometimes been called by the name of triliteral.

To a still higher degree the const.i.tuent elements are, as it were, on the very surface in the Turanian family of speech. It is one of the characteristic features of that family, that, whatever the number of prefixes and suffixes, the root must always stand out in full relief, and must never be allowed to suffer by its contact with derivative elements.

There is one language, the Chinese, in which no a.n.a.lysis of any kind is required for the discovery of its component parts. It is a language in which no coalescence of roots has taken place: every word is a root, and every root is a word. It is, in fact, the most primitive stage in which we can imagine human language to have existed. It is language _comme il faut_; it is what we should naturally have expected all languages to be.

There are, no doubt, numerous dialects in Asia, Africa, America, and Polynesia, which have not yet been dissected by the knife of the grammarian; but we may be satisfied at least with this negative evidence, that, as yet, no language which has pa.s.sed through the ordeal of grammatical a.n.a.lysis has ever disclosed any but these two const.i.tuent elements.

The problem, therefore, of the origin of language, which seemed so perplexing and mysterious to the ancient philosophers, a.s.sumes a much simpler aspect with us. We have learnt what language is made of; we have found that everything in language, except the roots, is intelligible, and can be accounted for. There is nothing to surprise us in the combination of the predicative and demonstrative roots which led to the building up of all the languages with which we are acquainted, from Chinese to English.

It is not only conceivable, as Professor Pott remarks, "that the formation of the Sanskrit language, as it is handed down to us, may have been preceded by a state of the greatest simplicity and entire absence of inflections, such as is exhibited to the present day by the Chinese and other monosyllabic languages." It is absolutely impossible that it should have been otherwise. After we have seen that all languages must have started from this Chinese or monosyllabic stage, the only portion of the problem of the origin of language that remains to be solved is this: How can we account for the origin of those predicative and demonstrative roots which form the const.i.tuent elements of all human speech, and which have hitherto resisted all attempts at further a.n.a.lysis? This problem will form the subject of our two next Lectures.

LECTURE VIII. MORPHOLOGICAL CLa.s.sIFICATION.

We finished in our last Lecture our a.n.a.lysis of language, and we arrived at the result that _predicative_ and _demonstrative_ roots are the sole const.i.tuent elements of human speech.