This is true; but it is also true that the traditional grammar has still a
great hold on the mind of the student.
Metaphysics are even more troublesome than the figments of grammar, because
they wear the appearance of philosophy and there is no test to which they
can be subjected. They are useful in so far as they give us an insight
into the history of the human mind and the modes of thought which have
existed in former ages; or in so far as they furnish wider conceptions of
the different branches of knowledge and of their relation to one another.
But they are worse than useless when they outrun experience and abstract
the mind from the observation of facts, only to envelope it in a mist of
words. Some philologers, like Schleicher, have been greatly influenced by
the philosophy of Hegel; nearly all of them to a certain extent have fallen
under the dominion of physical science. Even Kant himself thought that the
first principles of philosophy could be elicited from the analysis of the
proposition, in this respect falling short of Plato. Westphal holds that
there are three stages of language: (1) in which things were characterized
independently, (2) in which they were regarded in relation to human
thought, and (3) in relation to one another. But are not such distinctions
an anachronism? for they imply a growth of abstract ideas which never
existed in early times. Language cannot be explained by Metaphysics; for
it is prior to them and much more nearly allied to sense. It is not likely
that the meaning of the cases is ultimately resolvable into relations of
space and time. Nor can we suppose the conception of cause and effect or
of the finite and infinite or of the same and other to be latent in
language at a time when in their abstract form they had never entered into
the mind of man...If the science of Comparative Philology had possessed
'enough of Metaphysics to get rid of Metaphysics,' it would have made far
greater progress.
(4) Our knowledge of language is almost confined to languages which are
fully developed. They are of several patterns; and these become altered by
admixture in various degrees,--they may only borrow a few words from one
another and retain their life comparatively unaltered, or they may meet in
a struggle for existence until one of the two is overpowered and retires
from the field. They attain the full rights and dignity of language when
they acquire the use of writing and have a literature of their own; they
pass into dialects and grow out of them, in proportion as men are isolated
or united by locality or occupation. The common language sometimes reacts
upon the dialects and imparts to them also a literary character. The laws
of language can be best discerned in the great crises of language,
especially in the transitions from ancient to modern forms of them, whether
in Europe or Asia. Such changes are the silent notes of the world's
history; they mark periods of unknown length in which war and conquest were
running riot over whole continents, times of suffering too great to be
endured by the human race, in which the masters became subjects and the
subject races masters, in which driven by necessity or impelled by some
instinct, tribes or nations left their original homes and but slowly found
a resting-place. Language would be the greatest of all historical
monuments, if it could only tell us the history of itself.
(5) There are many ways in which we may approach this study. The simplest
of all is to observe our own use of language in conversation or in writing,
how we put words together, how we construct and connect sentences, what are
the rules of accent and rhythm in verse or prose, the formation and
composition of words, the laws of euphony and sound, the affinities of
letters, the mistakes to which we are ourselves most liable of spelling or
pronunciation. We may compare with our own language some other, even when
we have only a slight knowledge of it, such as French or German. Even a
little Latin will enable us to appreciate the grand difference between
ancient and modern European languages. In the child learning to speak we
may note the inherent strength of language, which like 'a mountain river'
is always forcing its way out. We may witness the delight in imitation and
repetition, and some of the laws by which sounds pass into one another. We
may learn something also from the falterings of old age, the searching for
words, and the confusion of them with one another, the forgetfulness of
proper names (more commonly than of other words because they are more
isolated), aphasia, and the like. There are philological lessons also to
be gathered from nicknames, from provincialisms, from the slang of great
cities, from the argot of Paris (that language of suffering and crime, so
pathetically described by Victor Hugo), from the imperfect articulation of
the deaf and dumb, from the jabbering of animals, from the analysis of
sounds in relation to the organs of speech. The phonograph affords a
visible evidence of the nature and divisions of sound; we may be truly said
to know what we can manufacture. Artificial languages, such as that of
Bishop Wilkins, are chiefly useful in showing what language is not. The
study of any foreign language may be made also a study of Comparative
Philology. There are several points, such as the nature of irregular
verbs, of indeclinable parts of speech, the influence of euphony, the decay
or loss of inflections, the elements of syntax, which may be examined as
well in the history of our own language as of any other. A few well-
selected questions may lead the student at once into the heart of the
mystery: such as, Why are the pronouns and the verb of existence generally
more irregular than any other parts of speech? Why is the number of words
so small in which the sound is an echo of the sense? Why does the meaning
of words depart so widely from their etymology? Why do substantives often
differ in meaning from the verbs to which they are related, adverbs from
adjectives? Why do words differing in origin coalesce in the same sound
though retaining their differences of meaning? Why are some verbs
impersonal? Why are there only so many parts of speech, and on what
principle are they divided? These are a few crucial questions which give
us an insight from different points of view into the true nature of
language.
(6) Thus far we have been endeavouring to strip off from language the false
appearances in which grammar and philology, or the love of system
generally, have clothed it. We have also sought to indicate the sources of
our knowledge of it and the spirit in which we should approach it, we may
now proceed to consider some of the principles or natural laws which have
created or modified it.
i. The first and simplest of all the principles of language, common also
to the animals, is imitation. The lion roars, the wolf howls in the
solitude of the forest: they are answered by similar cries heard from a
distance. The bird, too, mimics the voice of man and makes answer to him.
Man tells to man the secret place in which he is hiding himself; he
remembers and repeats the sound which he has heard. The love of imitation
becomes a passion and an instinct to him. Primitive men learnt to speak
from one another, like a child from its mother or nurse. They learnt of
course a rudimentary, half-articulate language, the cry or song or speech
which was the expression of what we now call human thoughts and feelings.
We may still remark how much greater and more natural the exercise of the
power is in the use of language than in any other process or action of the
human mind.
ii. Imitation provided the first material of language: but it was
'without form and void.' During how many years or hundreds or thousands of
years the imitative or half-articulate stage continued there is no
possibility of determining. But we may reasonably conjecture that there
was a time when the vocal utterance of man was intermediate between what we
now call language and the cry of a bird or animal. Speech before language
was a rudis indigestaque materies, not yet distributed into words and
sentences, in which the cry of fear or joy mingled with more definite
sounds recognized by custom as the expressions of things or events. It was
the principle of analogy which introduced into this 'indigesta moles' order
and measure. It was Anaxagoras' omou panta chremata, eita nous elthon
diekosmese: the light of reason lighted up all things and at once began to
arrange them. In every sentence, in every word and every termination of a
word, this power of forming relations to one another was contained. There
was a proportion of sound to sound, of meaning to meaning, of meaning to
sound. The cases and numbers of nouns, the persons, tenses, numbers of
verbs, were generally on the same or nearly the same pattern and had the
same meaning. The sounds by which they were expressed were rough-hewn at
first; after a while they grew more refined--the natural laws of euphony
began to affect them. The rules of syntax are likewise based upon analogy.
Time has an analogy with space, arithmetic with geometry. Not only in
musical notes, but in the quantity, quality, accent, rhythm of human
speech, trivial or serious, there is a law of proportion. As in things of
beauty, as in all nature, in the composition as well as in the motion of
all things, there is a similarity of relations by which they are held
together.
It would be a mistake to suppose that the analogies of language are always
uniform: there may be often a choice between several, and sometimes one
and sometimes another will prevail. In Greek there are three declensions
of nouns; the forms of cases in one of them may intrude upon another.
Similarly verbs in -omega and -mu iota interchange forms of tenses, and the
completed paradigm of the verb is often made up of both. The same nouns
may be partly declinable and partly indeclinable, and in some of their
cases may have fallen out of use. Here are rules with exceptions; they are
not however really exceptions, but contain in themselves indications of
other rules. Many of these interruptions or variations of analogy occur in
pronouns or in the verb of existence of which the forms were too common and
therefore too deeply imbedded in language entirely to drop out. The same
verbs in the same meaning may sometimes take one case, sometimes another.
The participle may also have the character of an adjective, the adverb
either of an adjective or of a preposition. These exceptions are as
regular as the rules, but the causes of them are seldom known to us.
Language, like the animal and vegetable worlds, is everywhere intersected
by the lines of analogy. Like number from which it seems to be derived,
the principle of analogy opens the eyes of men to discern the similarities
and differences of things, and their relations to one another. At first
these are such as lie on the surface only; after a time they are seen by
men to reach farther down into the nature of things. Gradually in language
they arrange themselves into a sort of imperfect system; groups of personal
and case endings are placed side by side. The fertility of language
produces many more than are wanted; and the superfluous ones are utilized
by the assignment to them of new meanings. The vacuity and the superfluity
are thus partially compensated by each other. It must be remembered that
in all the languages which have a literature, certainly in Sanskrit, Greek,
Latin, we are not at the beginning but almost at the end of the linguistic
process; we have reached a time when the verb and the noun are nearly
perfected, though in no language did they completely perfect themselves,
because for some unknown reason the motive powers of languages seem to have
ceased when they were on the eve of completion: they became fixed or
crystallized in an imperfect form either from the influence of writing and
literature, or because no further differentiation of them was required for
the intelligibility of language. So not without admixture and confusion
and displacement and contamination of sounds and the meanings of words, a
lower stage of language passes into a higher. Thus far we can see and no
further. When we ask the reason why this principle of analogy prevails in
all the vast domain of language, there is no answer to the question; or no
other answer but this, that there are innumerable ways in which, like
number, analogy permeates, not only language, but the whole world, both
visible and intellectual. We know from experience that it does not (a)
arise from any conscious act of reflection that the accusative of a Latin
noun in 'us' should end in 'um;' nor (b) from any necessity of being
understood,--much less articulation would suffice for this; nor (c) from
greater convenience or expressiveness of particular sounds. Such notions
were certainly far enough away from the mind of primitive man. We may
speak of a latent instinct, of a survival of the fittest, easiest, most
euphonic, most economical of breath, in the case of one of two competing
sounds; but these expressions do not add anything to our knowledge. We may
try to grasp the infinity of language either under the figure of a
limitless plain divided into countries and districts by natural boundaries,
or of a vast river eternally flowing whose origin is concealed from us; we
may apprehend partially the laws by which speech is regulated: but we do
not know, and we seem as if we should never know, any more than in the
parallel case of the origin of species, how vocal sounds received life and
grew, and in the form of languages came to be distributed over the earth.
iii. Next in order to analogy in the formation of language or even prior
to it comes the principle of onomatopea, which is itself a kind of analogy
or similarity of sound and meaning. In by far the greater number of words
it has become disguised and has disappeared; but in no stage of language is
it entirely lost. It belongs chiefly to early language, in which words
