Darwin and Modern Science (1909)
Edited by A.C. Seward
XXVI. EVOLUTION AND THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE.
By P. GILES, M.A., LL.D. (Aberdeen),
Reader in Comparative Philology in the University of Cambridge.
n no study has the historical method had a more salutary influence than in
the Science of Language. Even the earliest records show that the meaning
of the names of persons, places, and common objects was then, as it has
always been since, a matter of interest to mankind. And in every age the
common man has regarded himself as competent without special training to
explain by inspection (if one may use a mathematical phrase) the meaning of
any words that attracted his attention. Out of this amateur etymologising
has sprung a great amount of false history, a kind of historical mythology
invented to explain familiar names. A single example will illustrate the
tendency. According to the local legend the ancestor of the Earl of
Erroll--a husbandman who stayed the flight of his countrymen in the battle
of Luncarty and won the victory over the Danes by the help of the yoke of
his oxen--exhausted with the fray uttered the exclamation "Hoch heigh!"
The grateful king about to ennoble the victorious ploughman at once
replied:
"Hoch heigh! said ye
And Hay shall ye be."
The Norman origin of the name Hay is well-known, and the battle of Luncarty
long preceded the appearance of Normans in Scotland, but the legend
nevertheless persists.
Though the earliest European treatise on philological questions which is
now extant--the "Cratylus" of Plato,--as might be expected from its
authorship, contains some acute thinking and some shrewd guesses, yet the
work as a whole is infantine in its handling of language, and it has been
doubted whether Plato was more than half serious in some of the suggestions
which he puts forward. (For an account of the "Cratylus" with references
to other literature see Sandys' "History of Classical Scholarship", I. page
92 ff., Cambridge, 1903.) In the hands of the Romans things were worse
even than they had been in the hands of Plato and his Greek successors.
The lack of success on the part of Varro and later Roman writers may have
been partly due to the fact that, from the etymological point of view,
Latin is a much more difficult language than Greek; it is by no means so
closely connected with Greek as the ancients imagined, and they had no
knowledge of the Celtic languages from which, on some sides at least, much
greater light on the history of the Latin language might have been
obtained. Roman civilisation was a late development compared with Greek,
and its records dating earlier than 300 B.C.--a period when the best of
Greek literature was already in existence--are very few and scanty. Varro
it is true was much more of an antiquary than Plato, but his extant works
seem to show that he was rather a "dungeon of learning" than an original
thinker.
A scientific knowledge of language can be obtained only by comparison of
different languages of the same family and the contrasting of their
characteristics with those of another family or other families. It never
occurred to the Greeks that any foreign language was worthy of serious
study. Herodotus and other travellers and antiquaries indeed picked up
individual words from various languages, either as being necessary in
communication with the inhabitants of the countries where they sojourned,
or because of some point which interested them personally. Plato and
others noticed the similarity of some Phrygian words to Greek, but no
systematic comparison seems ever to have been instituted.
In the Middle Ages the treatment of language was in a sense more
historical. The Middle Ages started with the hypothesis, derived from the
book of Genesis, that in the early world all men were of one language and
of one speech. Though on the same authority they believed that the plain
of Shinar has seen that confusion of tongues whence sprang all the
languages upon earth, they seem to have considered that the words of each
separate language were nevertheless derived from this original tongue. And
as Hebrew was the language of the Chosen People, it was naturally assumed
that this original tongue was Hebrew. Hence we find Dante declaring in his
treatise on the Vulgar Tongue (Dante "de Vulgari Eloquio", I. 4.) that the
first word man uttered in Paradise must have been "El," the Hebrew name of
his Maker, while as a result of the fall of Adam, the first utterance of
every child now born into this world of sin and misery is "heu," Alas!
After the splendidly engraved bronze plates containing, as we now know,
ritual regulations for certain cults, were discovered in 1444 at the town
of Gubbio, in Umbria, they were declared, by some authorities, to be
written in excellent Hebrew. The study of them has been the fascination
and the despair of many a philologist. Thanks to the devoted labours of
numerous scholars, mainly in the last sixty years, the general drift of
these inscriptions is now known. They are the only important records of
the ancient Umbrian language, which was related closely to that of the
Samnites and, though not so closely, to that of the Romans on the other
side of the Apennines. Yet less than twenty years ago a book was published
in Germany, which boasts itself the home of Comparative Philology, wherein
the German origin of the Umbrian language was no less solemnly demonstrated
than had been its Celtic origin by Sir William Betham in 1842.
It is good that the study of language should be historical, but the first
requisite is that the history should be sound. How little had been learnt
of the true history of language a century ago may be seen from a little
book by Stephen Weston first published in 1802 and several times reprinted,
where accidental assonance is considered sufficient to establish
connection. Is there not a word "bad" in English and a word "bad" in
Persian which mean the same thing? Clearly therefore Persian and English
must be connected. The conclusion is true, but it is drawn from erroneous
premises. As stated, this identity has no more value than the similar
assonance between the English "cover" and the Hebrew "kophar", where the
history of "cover" as coming through French from a Latin "co-operire" was
even in 1802 well-known to many. To this day, in spite of recent elaborate
attempts (Most recently in H. Moller's "Semitisch und Indogermanisch",
Erster Teil, Kopenhagen, 1907.) to establish connection between the Indo-
Germanic and the Semitic families of languages, there is no satisfactory
evidence of such relation between these families. This is not to deny the
possibility of such a connection at a very early period; it is merely to
say that through the lapse of long ages all trustworthy record of such
relationship, if it ever existed, has been, so far as present knowledge
extends, obliterated.
But while Stephen Weston was publishing, with much public approval, his
collection of amusing similarities between languages--similarities which
proved nothing--the key to the historical study of at least one family of
languages had already been found by a learned Englishman in a distant land.
In 1783 Sir William Jones had been sent out as a judge in the supreme court
of judicature in Bengal. While still a young man at Oxford he was noted as
a linguist; his reputation as a Persian scholar had preceded him to the
East. In the intervals of his professional duties he made a careful study
of the language which was held sacred by the natives of the country in
which he was living. He was mainly instrumental in establishing a society
for the investigation of language and related subjects. He was himself the
first president of the society, and in the "third anniversary discourse"
delivered on February 2, 1786, he made the following observations: "The
Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure;
more perfect than the GREEK, more copious than the LATIN, and more
exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger
affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than
could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no
philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have
sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists: there is
a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the
Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a very different idiom, had
the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to
the same family, if this was the place for discussing any question
concerning the antiquities of Persia." ("Asiatic Researches", I. page 422,
"Works of Sir W. Jones", I. page 26, London, 1799.)
No such epoch-making discovery was probably ever announced with less
flourish of trumpets. Though Sir William Jones lived for eight years more
and delivered other anniversary discourses, he added nothing of importance
to this utterance. He had neither the time nor the health that was needed
for the prosecution of so arduous an undertaking.
But the good seed did not fall upon stony ground. The news was speedily
conveyed to Europe. By a happy chance, the sudden renewal of war between
France and England in 1803 gave Friedrich Schlegel the opportunity of
learning Sanscrit from Alexander Hamilton, an Englishman who, like many
others, was confined in Paris during the long struggle with Napoleon. The
influence of Schlegel was not altogether for good in the history of this
research, but he was inspiring. Not upon him but upon Franz Bopp, a
struggling German student who spent some time in Paris and London a dozen
years later, fell the mantle of Sir William Jones. In Bopp's Comparative
Grammar of the Indo-Germanic languages which appeared in 1833, three-
quarters of a century ago, the foundations of Comparative Philology were
laid. Since that day the literature of the subject has grown till it is
almost, if not altogether, beyond the power of any single man to cope with
it. But long as the discourse may be, it is but the elaboration of the
text that Sir William Jones supplied.
With the publication of Bopp's Comparative Grammar the historical study of
language was put upon a stable footing. Needless to say much remained to
be done, much still remains to be done. More than once there has been
danger of the study following erroneous paths. Its terminology and its
point of view have in some degree changed. But nothing can shake the truth
of the statement that the Indo-Germanic languages constitute in themselves
a family sprung from the same source, marked by the same characteristics,
and differentiated from all other languages by formation, by vocabulary,
and by syntax. The historical method was applied to language long before
it reached biology. Nearly a quarter of a century before Charles Darwin
was born, Sir William Jones had made the first suggestion of a comparative
study of languages. Bopp's Comparative Grammar began to be published nine
years before the first draft of Darwin's treatise on the Origin of Species
was put on paper in 1842.
It is not therefore on the history of Comparative Philology in general that
the ideas of Darwin have had most influence. Unfortunately, as Jowett has
said in the introduction to his translation of Plato's "Republic", most men
live in a corner. The specialisation of knowledge has many advantages, but
it has also disadvantages, none worse perhaps than that it tends to narrow
the specialist's horizon and to make it more difficult for one worker to
follow the advances that are being made by workers in other departments.
No longer is it possible as in earlier days for an intellectual prophet to
survey from a Pisgah height all the Promised Land. And the case of
linguistic research has been specially hard. This study has, if the
metaphor may be allowed, a very extended frontier. On one side it touches
the domain of literature, on other sides it is conterminous with history,
with ethnology and anthropology, with physiology in so far as language is
the production of the brain and tissues of a living being, with physics in
questions of pitch and stress accent, with mental science in so far as the
principles of similarity, contrast, and contiguity affect the forms and the
meanings of words through association of ideas. The territory of
linguistic study is immense, and it has much to supply which might be
useful to the neighbours who border on that territory. But they have not
regarded her even with that interest which is called benevolent because it
is not actively maleficent. As Horne Tooke remarked a century ago, Locke
had found a whole philosophy in language. What have the philosophers done
for language since? The disciples of Kant and of Wilhelm von Humboldt
supplied her plentifully with the sour grapes of metaphysics; otherwise her
neighbours have left her severely alone save for an occasional "Ausflug,"
on which it was clear they had sadly lost their bearings. Some articles in
Psychological Journals, Wundt's great work on "Volkerpsychologie" (Erster
Band: "Die Sprache", Leipzig, 1900. New edition, 1904. This work has
been fertile in producing both opponents and supporters. Delbruck,
"Grundfragen der Sprachforschung", Strassburg, 1901, with a rejoinder by
Wundt, "Sprachgeschichte" and "Sprachpsychologie", Leipzig, 1901; L.
Sutterlin, "Das Wesen der Sprachgebilde", Heidelberg, 1902; von
Rozwadowski, "Wortbildung und Wortbedeutung", Heidelberg, 1904; O.
Dittrich, "Grundzuge der Sprachpsychologie", Halle, 1904, Ch. A. Sechehaye,
"Programme et methodes de la linguistique theorique", Paris, 1908.), and
Mauthner's brilliantly written "Beitrage zu einer Kritik der Sprache" (In
three parts: (i) "Sprache und Psychologie, (ii) "Zur Sprachwissenschaft",
both Stuttgart 1901, (iii) "Zur Grammatic und Logik" (with index to all
three volumes), Stuttgart and Berlin, 1902.) give some reason to hope that,
on one side at least, the future may be better than the past.
Where Charles Darwin's special studies came in contact with the Science of
Language was over the problem of the origin and development of language.
It is curious to observe that, where so many fields of linguistic research
have still to be reclaimed--many as yet can hardly be said to be mapped
out,--the least accessible field of all--that of the Origin of Language--
has never wanted assiduous tillers. Unfortunately it is a field beyond
most others where it may be said that
"Wilding oats and luckless darnel grow."
If Comparative Philology is to work to purpose here, it must be on results
derived from careful study of individual languages and groups of languages.
But as yet the group which Sir William Jones first mapped out and which
Bopp organised is the only one where much has been achieved. Investigation
of the Semitic group, in some respects of no less moment in the history of
civilisation and religion, where perhaps the labour of comparison is not so
difficult, as the languages differ less among themselves, has for some
reason strangely lagged behind. Some years ago in the "American Journal of
Philology" Paul Haupt pointed out that if advance was to be made, it must
be made according to the principles which had guided the investigation of
the Indo-Germanic languages to success, and at last a Comparative Grammar
of an elaborate kind is in progress also for the Semitic languages.
(Brockelmann, "Vergleichende Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen", Berlin,
1907 ff. Brockelmann and Zimmern had earlier produced two small hand-
books. The only large work was William Wright's "Lectures on the
Comparative Grammar of the Semitic Languages", Cambridge, 1890.) For the
great group which includes Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish and many languages
of northern Asia, a beginning, but only a beginning has been made. It may
be presumed from the great discoveries which are in progress in Turkestan
that presently much more will be achieved in this field. But for a certain
utterance to be given by Comparative Philology on the question of the
origin of language it is necessary that not merely for these languages but
also for those in other quarters of the globe, the facts should be
collected, sifted and tabulated. England rules an empire which contains a
greater variety of languages by far than were ever held under one sway
before. The Government of India is engaged in producing, under the
editorship of Dr Grierson, a linguistic survey of India, a remarkable
undertaking and, so far as it has gone, a remarkable achievement. Is it
too much to ask that, with the support of the self-governing colonies, a
similar survey should be undertaken for the whole of the British Empire?
Notwithstanding the great number of books that have been written on the
origin of language in the last three and twenty centuries, the results of
the investigation which can be described as certain are very meagre. The
question originally raised was whether language came into being thesei or
phusei, by convention or by nature. The first alternative, in its baldest
form at least, has passed from out the field of controversy. No one now
claims that names were given to living things or objects or activities by
formal agreement among the members of an early community, or that the first
father of mankind passed in review every living thing and gave it its name.
Even if the record of Adam's action were to be taken literally there would
still remain the question, whence had he this power? Did he develop it
himself or was it a miraculous gift with which he was endowed at his
creation? If the latter, then as Wundt says ("Volkerpsychologie", I. 2,
page 585.), "the miracle of language is subsumed in the miracle of
creation." If Adam developed language of himself, we are carried over to
the alternative origin of phusei. On this hypothesis we must assume that
the natural growth which modern theories of development regard as the
painful progress of multitudinous generations was contracted into the
experience of a single individual.
But even if the origin of language is admitted to be NATURAL there may
still be much variety of signification attached to the word: NATURE, like
most words which are used by philosophers, has accumulated many meanings,
and as research into the natural world proceeds, is accumulating more.
Forty years ago an animated controversy raged among the supporters of the
theories which were named for short the bow-wow, the pooh-pooh and the
ding-dong theories of the origin of language. The third, which was the
least tenacious of life, was made known to the English-speaking world by
the late Professor Max Muller who, however, when questioned, repudiated it
as his own belief. ("Science of Thought", London, 1887, page 211.) It was
taken by him from Heyse's lectures on language which were published
posthumously by Steinthal. Put shortly the theory is that "everything
which is struck, rings. Each substance has its peculiar ring. We can tell
the more or less perfect structure of metals by their vibrations, by the
answer which they give. Gold rings differently from tin, wood rings
differently from stone; and different sounds are produced according to the
nature of each percussion. It may be the same with man, the most highly
organised of nature's work." (Max Muller as above, translating from
Heyse.) Max Muller's repudiation of this theory was, however, not very
whole-hearted for he proceeds later in the same argument: "Heyse's theory,
which I neither adopted nor rejected, but which, as will be seen, is by no
means incompatible with that which for many years has been gaining on me,
and which of late has been so clearly formulated by Professor Noire, has
been assailed with ridicule and torn to pieces, often by persons who did
not even suspect how much truth was hidden behind its paradoxical
appearance. We are still very far from being able to identify roots with
nervous vibrations, but if it should appear hereafter that sensuous
vibrations supply at least the raw material of roots, it is quite possible
that the theory, proposed by Oken and Heyse, will retain its place in the
history of the various attempts at solving the problem of the origin of
language, when other theories, which in our own days were received with
popular applause, will be completely forgotten." ("Science of Thought",
page 212.)
Like a good deal else that has been written on the origin of language, this
statement perhaps is not likely to be altogether clear to the plain man,
who may feel that even the "raw material of roots" is some distance removed
from nervous vibrations, though obviously without the existence of afferent
and efferent nerves articulate speech would be impossible. But Heyse's
theory undoubtedly was that every thought or idea which occurred to the
mind of man for the first time had its own special phonetic expression, and
that this responsive faculty, when its object was thus fulfilled, became
extinct. Apart from the philosophical question whether the mind acts
without external stimulus, into which it is not necessary to enter here, it
is clear that this theory can neither be proved nor disproved, because it
postulates that this faculty existed only when language first began, and
later altogether disappeared. As we have already seen, it is impossible
for us to know what happened at the first beginnings of language, because
we have no information from any period even approximately so remote; nor
are we likely to attain it. Even in their earliest stages the great
families of language which possess a history extending over many centuries
--the Indo-Germanic and the Semitic--have very little in common. With the
exception of Chinese, the languages which are apparently of a simpler or
more primitive formation have either a history which, compared with that of
the families mentioned, is very short, or, as in the case of the vast
majority, have no history beyond the time extending only over a few years
or, at most, a few centuries when they have been observed by competent
scholars of European origin. But, if we may judge by the history of
geology and other studies, it is well to be cautious in assuming for the
first stages of development forces which do not operate in the later,
unless we have direct evidence of their existence.
It is unnecessary here to enter into a prolonged discussion of the other
views christened by Max Muller, not without energetic protest from their
supporters, the bow-wow and pooh-pooh theories of language. Suffice it to
say that the former recognises as a source of language the imitation of the
sounds made by animals, the fall of bodies into water or on to solid
substances and the like, while the latter, also called the interjectional
theory, looks to the natural ejaculations produced by particular forms of
effort for the first beginnings of speech. It would be futile to deny that
some words in most languages come from imitation, and that others, probably
fewer in number, can be traced to ejaculations. But if either of these
sources alone or both in combination gave rise to primitive speech, it
clearly must have been a simple form of language and very limited in
amount. There is no reason to think that it was otherwise. Presumably in
its earliest stages language only indicated the most elementary ideas,
demands for food or the gratification of other appetites, indications of
danger, useful animals and plants. Some of these, such as animals or
indications of danger, could often be easily represented by imitative
sounds: the need for food and the like could be indicated by gesture and
natural cries. Both sources are verae causae; to them Noire, supported by
Max Muller, has added another which has sometimes been called the Yo-heave-
ho theory. Noire contends that the real crux in the early stages of
language is for primitive man to make other primitive men understand what
he means. The vocal signs which commend themselves to one may not have
occurred to another, and may therefore be unintelligible. It may be
admitted that this difficulty exists, but it is not insuperable. The old
story of the European in China who, sitting down to a meal and being
doubtful what the meat in the dish might be, addressed an interrogative
Quack-quack? to the waiter and was promptly answered by Bow-wow,
illustrates a simple situation where mutual understanding was easy. But
obviously many situations would be more complex than this, and to grapple
with them Noire has introduced his theory of communal action. "It was
common effort directed to a common object, it was the most primitive
(uralteste) labour of our ancestors, from which sprang language and the
life of reason." (Noire "Der Ursprung der Sprache", page 331, Mainz,
1877.) As illustrations of such common effort he cites battle cries, the
rescue of a ship running on shore (a situation not likely to occur very
early in the history of man), and others. Like Max Muller he holds that
language is the utterance and the organ of thought for mankind, the one
characteristic which separates man from the brute. "In common action the
word was first produced; for long it was inseparably connected with action;
through long-continued connection it gradually became the firm,
intelligible symbol of action, and then in its development indicated also
things of the external world in so far as the action affected them and
finally the sound began to enter into a connexion with them also." (Op.
cit. page 339.) In so far as this theory recognises language as a social
institution it is undoubtedly correct. Darwin some years before Noire had
pointed to the same social origin of language in the fourth chapter of his
work on "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals". "Naturalists
have remarked, I believe with truth, that social animals, from habitually
using their vocal organs as a means of intercommunication, use them on
other occasions much more freely than other animals...The principle, also,
of association, which is so widely extended in its power, has likewise
played its part. Hence it allows that the voice, from having been employed
as a serviceable aid under certain conditions, inducing pleasure, pain,
rage, etc., is commonly used whenever the same sensations or emotions are
excited, under quite different conditions, or in a lesser degree." ("The
Expression of the Emotions", page 84 (Popular Edition, 1904).
Darwin's own views on language which are set forth most fully in "The
Descent of Man" (page 131 ff. (Popular Edition, 1906).) are characterised
by great modesty and caution. He did not profess to be a philologist and
the facts are naturally taken from the best known works of the day (1871).
In the notes added to the second edition he remarks on Max Muller's denial
of thought without words, "what a strange definition must here be given to
the word thought!" (Op. cit. page 135, footnote 63.) He naturally finds
the origin of language in "the imitation and modification of various
natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive
cries aided by signs and gestures (op. cit. page 132.)...As the voice was
used more and more, the vocal organs would have been strengthened and
perfected through the principle of the inherited effects of use; and this
would have reacted on the power of speech." (Op. cit. page 133.) On man's
own instinctive cries, he has more to say in "The Expression of the
Emotions". (Page 93 (Popular Edition, 1904) and elsewhere.) These remarks
have been utilised by Prof. Jespersen of Copenhagen in propounding an
ingenious theory of his own to the effect that speech develops out of
singing. ("Progress in Language", page 361, London, 1894.)
For many years and in many books Max Muller argued against Darwin's views
on evolution on the one ground that thought is impossible without speech;
consequently as speech is confined to the human race, there is a gulf which
cannot be bridged between man and all other creatures. (Some interesting
comments on the theory will be found in a lecture on "Thought and Language"
in Samuel Butler's "Essays on Life, Art and Science", London, 1908.) On
the title-page of his "Science of Thought" he put the two sentences "No
Reason without Language: No Language without Reason." It may be readily
admitted that the second dictum is true, that no language properly so-
called can exist without reason. Various birds can learn to repeat words
or sentences used by their masters or mistresses. In most cases probably
the birds do not attach their proper meaning to the words they have learnt;
they repeat them in season and out of season, sometimes apparently for
their own amusement, generally in the expectation, raised by past
experience, of being rewarded for their proficiency. But even here it is
difficult to prove a universal negative, and most possessors of such pets
would repudiate indignantly the statement that the bird did not understand
what was said to it, and would also contend that in many cases the words
which it used were employed in their ordinary meaning. The first dictum
seems to be inconsistent with fact. The case of deaf mutes, such as Laura
Bridgeman, who became well educated, or the still more extraordinary case
of Helen Keller, deaf, dumb, and blind, who in spite of these disadvantages
has learnt not only to reason but to reason better than the average of
persons possessed of all their senses, goes to show that language and
reason are not necessarily always in combination. Reason is but the
conscious adaptation of means to ends, and so defined is a faculty which
cannot be denied to many of the lower animals. In these days when so many
books on Animal Intelligence are issued from the press, it seems
unnecessary to labour the point. Yet none of these animals, except by
parrot-imitation, makes use of speech, because man alone possesses in a
sufficient degree of development the centres of nervous energy which are
required for the working of articulation in speech. On this subject much
investigation was carried on during the last years of Darwin's life and
much more in the period since his death. As early as 1861 Broca, following
up observations made by earlier French writers, located the centre of
articulate speech in the third left frontal convolution of the brain. In
1876 he more definitely fixed the organ of speech in "the posterior two-
fifths of the third frontal convolution" (Macnamara, "Human Speech", page
197, London, 1908.), both sides and not merely the left being concerned in
speech production. Owing however to the greater use by most human beings
of the right side of the body, the left side of the brain, which is the
motor centre for the right side of the body, is more highly developed than
its right side, which moves the left side of the body. The investigations
of Professors Ferrier, Sherrington and Grunbaum have still more precisely
defined the relations between brain areas and certain groups of muscles.
One form of aphasia is the result of injury to or disease in the third
frontal convolution because the motor centre is no longer equal to the task
of setting the necessary muscles in motion. In the brain of idiots who are
unable to speak, the centre for speech is not developed. (Op. cit. page
226.) In the anthropoid apes the brain is similarly defective, though it
has been demonstrated by Professors Cunningham and Marchand "that there is
a tendency, especially in the gorilla's brain, for the third frontal
convolution to assume the human form...But if they possessed a centre for
speech, those parts of the hemispheres of their brains which form the
mechanism by which intelligence is elaborated are so ill-developed, as
compared with the rest of their bodies, that we can not conceive, even with
more perfect frontal convolutions, that these animals could formulate ideas
expressible in intelligent speech." (Op. cit. page 223.)
While Max Muller's theory is Shelley's
"He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the universe" ("Prometheus Unbound" II. 4.),
it seems more probable that the development was just the opposite--that the
development of new activities originated new thoughts which required new
symbols to express them, symbols which may at first have been, even to a
greater extent than with some of the lower races at present, sign language
as much as articulation. When once the faculty of articulation was
developed, which, though we cannot trace the process, was probably a very
gradual growth, there is no reason to suppose that words developed in any
other way then they do at present. An erroneous notion of the development
of language has become widely spread through the adoption of the
metaphorical term "roots" for the irreducible elements of human speech.
Men never talked in roots; they talked in words. Many words of kindred
meaning have a part in common, and a root is nothing but that common part
stripped of all additions. In some cases it is obvious that one word is
derived from another by the addition of a fresh element; in other cases it
is impossible to say which of two kindred words is the more primitive. A
root is merely a convenient term for an abstraction. The simplest word may
be called a root, but it is nevertheless a word. How are new words added
to a language in the present day? Some communities, like the Germans,
prefer to construct new words for new ideas out of the old material
existing in the language; others, like the English, prefer to go to the
ancient languages of Greece and Rome for terms to express new ideas. The
same chemical element is described in the two languages as sour stuff
(Sauerstoff) and as oxygen. Both terms mean the same thing etymologically
as well as in fact. On behalf of the German method, it may be contended
that the new idea is more closely attached to already existing ideas, by
being expressed in elements of the language which are intelligible even to
the meanest capacity. For the English practice it may be argued that, if
we coin a new word which means one thing, and one thing only, the idea
which it expresses is more clearly defined than if it were expressed in
popularly intelligible elements like "sour stuff." If the etymological
value of words were always present in the minds of their users, "oxygen"
would undoubtedly have an advantage over "sour stuff" as a technical term.
But the tendency in language is to put two words of this kind which express
but one idea under a single accent, and when this has taken place, no one
but the student of language any longer observes what the elements really
mean. When the ordinary man talks of a "blackbird" it is certainly not
present to his consciousness that he is talking of a black bird, unless for
some reason conversation has been dwelling upon the colour rather than
other characteristics of the species.
But, it may be said, words like "oxygen" are introduced by learned men, and
do not represent the action of the man in the street, who, after all, is
the author of most additions to the stock of human language. We may go
back therefore some four centuries to a period, when scientific study was
only in its infancy, and see what process was followed. With the discovery
of America new products never seen before reached Europe, and these
required names. Three of the most characteristic were tobacco, the potato,
and the turkey. How did these come to be so named? The first people to
import these products into Europe were naturally the Spanish discoverers.
The first of these words--tobacco--appears in forms which differ only
slightly in the languages of all civilised countries: Spanish tabaco,
Italian tabacco, French tabac, Dutch and German tabak, Swedish tobak, etc.
The word in the native dialect of Hayti is said to have been tabaco, but to
have meant not the plant (According to William Barclay, "Nepenthes, or the
Virtue of Tobacco", Edinburgh, 1614, "the countrey which God hath honoured
and blessed with this happie and holy herbe doth call it in their native
language 'Petum'.") but the pipe in which it was smoked. It thus
illustrates a frequent feature of borrowing--that the word is not borrowed
in its proper signification, but in some sense closely allied thereto,
which a foreigner, understanding the language with difficulty, might
readily mistake for the real meaning. Thus the Hindu practice of burning a
wife upon the funeral pyre of her husband is called in English "suttee",
this word being in fact but the phonetic spelling of the Sanskrit "sati",
"a virtuous woman," and passing into its English meaning because formerly
the practice of self-immolation by a wife was regarded as the highest
virtue.
The name of the potato exhibits greater variety. The English name was
borrowed from the Spanish "patata", which was itself borrowed from a native
word for the "yam" in the dialect of Hayti. The potato appeared early in
Italy, for the mariners of Genoa actively followed the footsteps of their
countryman Columbus in exploring America. In Italian generally the form
"patata" has survived. The tubers, however, also suggested a resemblance
to truffles, so that the Italian word "tartufolo", a diminutive of the
Italian modification of the Latin "terrae tuber" was applied to them. In
the language of the Rhaetian Alps this word appears as "tartufel". From
there it seems to have passed into Germany where potatoes were not
cultivated extensively till the eighteenth century, and "tartufel" has in
later times through some popular etymology been metamorphosed into
"Kartoffel". In France the shape of the tubers suggested the name of
earth-apple (pomme de terre), a name also adopted in Dutch (aard-appel),
while dialectically in German a form "Grumbire" appears, which is a
corruption of "Grund-birne", "ground pear". (Kluge "Etymologisches
Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache" (Strassburg), s.v. "Kartoffel".) Here
half the languages have adopted the original American word for an allied
plant, while others have adopted a name originating in some more or less
fanciful resemblance discovered in the tubers; the Germans alone in Western
Europe, failing to see any meaning in their borrowed name, have modified it
almost beyond recognition. To this English supplies an exact parallel in
"parsnep" which, though representing the Latin "pastinaca" through the Old
French "pastenaque", was first assimilated in the last syllable to the
"nep" of "turnep" ("pasneppe" in Elizabethan English), and later had an "r"
introduced into the first syllable, apparently on the analogy of "parsley".
The turkey on the other hand seems never to be found with its original
American name. In England, as the name implies, the turkey cock was
regarded as having come from the land of the Turks. The bird no doubt
spread over Europe from the Italian seaports. The mistake, therefore, was
not unnatural, seeing that these towns conducted a great trade with the
Levant, while the fact that America when first discovered was identified
with India helped to increase the confusion. Thus in French the "coq
d'Inde" was abbreviated to "d'Inde" much as "turkey cock" was to "turkey";
the next stage was to identify "dinde" as a feminine word and create a new
"dindon" on the analogy of "chapon" as the masculine. In Italian the name
"gallo d'India" besides survives, while in German the name "Truthahn" seems
to be derived onomatopoetically from the bird's cry, though a dialectic
"Calecutischer Hahn" specifies erroneously an origin for the bird from the
Indian Calicut. In the Spanish "pavo", on the other hand, there is a
curious confusion with the peacock. Thus in these names for objects of
common knowledge, the introduction of which into Europe can be dated with
tolerable definiteness, we see evinced the methods by which in remoter ages
objects were named. The words were borrowed from the community whence came
the new object, or the real or fancied resemblance to some known object
gave the name, or again popular etymology might convert the unknown term
into something that at least approached in sound a well-known word.
"The Origin of Species" had not
long been published when the parallelism of
development in natural species and in languages struck investigators. At
the time, one of the foremost German philologists was August Schleicher,
Professor at Jena. He was himself keenly interested in the natural
sciences, and amongst his colleagues was Ernst Haeckel, the protagonist in
Germany of the Darwinian theory. How the new ideas struck Schleicher may
be seen from the following sentences by his colleague Haeckel. "Speech is
a physiological function of the human organism, and has been developed
simultaneously with its organs, the larynx and tongue, and with the
functions of the brain. Hence it will be quite natural to find in the
evolution and classification of languages the same features as in the
evolution and classification of organic species. The various groups of
languages that are distinguished in philology as primitive, fundamental,
parent, and daughter languages, dialects, etc., correspond entirely in
their development to the different categories which we classify in zoology
and botany as stems, classes, orders, families, genera, species and
varieties. The relation of these groups, partly coordinate and partly
subordinate, in the general scheme is just the same in both cases; and the
evolution follows the same lines in both." (Haeckel, "The Evolution of
Man", page 485, London, 1905. This represents Schleicher's own words: Was
die Naturforscher als Gattung bezeichnen wurden, heisst bei den Glottikern
Sprachstamm, auch Sprachsippe; naher verwandte Gattungen bezeichnen sie
wohl auch als Sprachfamilien einer Sippe oder eines Sprachstammes...Die
Arten einer Gattung nennen wir Sprachen eines Stammes; die Unterarten einer
Art sind bei uns die Dialekte oder Mundarten einer Sprache; den Varietaten
und Spielarten entsprechen die Untermundarten oder Nebenmundarten und
endlich den einzelnen Individuen die Sprechweise der einzelnen die Sprachen
redenden Menschen. "Die Darwinische Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaft",
Weimar, 1863, page 12 f. Darwin makes a more cautious statement about the
classification of languages in "The Origin of Species", page 578, (Popular
Edition, 1900).) These views were set forth in an open letter addressed to
Haeckel in 1863 by Schleicher entitled, "The Darwinian theory and the
science of language". Unfortunately Schleicher's views went a good deal
farther than is indicated in the extract given above. He appended to the
pamphlet a genealogical tree of the Indo-Germanic languages which, though
to a large extent confirmed by later research, by the dichotomy of each
branch into two other branches, led the unwary reader to suppose their
phylogeny (to use Professor Haeckel's term) was more regular than our
evidence warrants.
Without qualification Schleicher declared languages to be "natural
organisms which originated unconditioned by the human will, developed
according to definite laws, grow old and die; they also are characterised
by that series of phenomena which we designate by the term 'Life.'
Consequently Glottic, the science of language, is a natural science; its
method is in general the same as that of the other natural sciences."
("Die Darwinische Theorie", page 6 f.) In accordance with this view he
declared (op. cit. page 23.) that the root in language might be compared
with the simple cell in physiology, the linguistic simple cell or root
being as yet not differentiated into special organs for the function of
noun, verb, etc.
In this probably all recent philologists admit that Schleicher went too
far. One of the most fertile theories in the modern science of language
originated with him, and was further developed by his pupil, August Leskien
("Die Declination im Slavisch-litanischen und Germanischen", Leipzig, 1876;
Osthoff and Brugmann, "Morphologische Untersuchungen", I. (Introduction),
1878. The general principles of this school were formulated (1880) in a
fuller form in H. Paul's "Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte", Halle (3rd
edition, 1898). Paul and Wundt (in his "Volkerpsychologie") deal largely
with the same matter, but begin their investigations from different points
of view, Paul being a philologist with leanings to philosophy and Wundt a
philosopher interested in language.), and by Leskien's colleagues and
friends, Brugmann and Osthoff. This was the principle that phonetic laws
have no exceptions. Under the influence of this generalisation much
greater precision in etymology was insisted upon, and a new and remarkably
active period in the study of language began. Stated broadly in the
fashion given above the principle is not true. A more accurate statement
would be that an original sound is represented in a given dialect at a
given time and in a given environment only in one way; provided that the
development of the original sound into its representation in the given
dialect has not been influenced by the working of analogy.
It is this proviso that is most important for the characterisation of the
science of language. As I have said elsewhere, it is at this point that
this science parts company with the natural sciences. "If the chemist
compounds two pure simple elements, there can be but one result, and no
power of the chemist can prevent it. But the minds of men do act upon the
sounds which they produce. The result is that, when this happens, the
phonetic law which would have acted in the case is stopped, and this
particular form enters on the same course of development as other forms to
which it does not belong." (P. Giles, "Short Manual of Comparative
Philology", 2nd edition, page 57, London, 1901.)
Schleicher was wrong in defining a language to be an organism in the sense
in which a living being is an organism. Regarded physiologically, language
is a function or potentiality of certain human organs; regarded from the
point of view of the community it is of the nature of an institution.
(This view of language is worked out at some length by Prof. W.D. Whitney
in an article in the "Contemporary Review" for 1875, page 713 ff. This
article forms part of a controversy with Max Muller, which is partly
concerned with Darwin's views on language. He criticises Schleicher's
views severely in his "Oriental and Linguistic Studies", page 298 ff., New
York, 1873. In this volume will be found criticisms of various other views
mentioned in this essay.) More than most influences it conduces to the
binding together of the elements that form a state. That geographical or
other causes may effectively counteract the influence of identity of
language is obvious. One need only read the history of ancient Greece, or
observe the existing political separation of Germany and Austria, of Great
Britain and the United States of America. But however analogous to an
organism, language is not an organism. In a less degree Schleicher, by
defining languages as such, committed the same mistake which Bluntschli
made regarding the State, and which led him to declare that the State is by
nature masculine and the Church feminine. (Bluntschli, "Theory of the
State", page 24, Second English Edition, Oxford, 1892.) The views of
Schleicher were to some extent injurious to the proper methods of
linguistic study. But this misfortune was much more than fully compensated
by the inspiration which his ideas, collected and modified by his
disciples, had upon the science. In spite of the difference which the
psychological element represented by analogy makes between the science of
language and the natural sciences, we are entitled to say of it as
Schleicher said of Darwin's theory of the origin of species, "it depends
upon observation, and is essentially an attempt at a history of
development."
Other questions there are in connection with language and evolution which
require investigation--the survival of one amongst several competing words
(e.g. why German keeps only as a high poetic word "ross", which is
identical in origin with the English work-a-day "horse", and replaces it by
"pferd", whose congener the English "palfrey" is almost confined to poetry
and romance), the persistence of evolution till it becomes revolution in
languages like English or Persian which have practically ceased to be
inflectional languages, and many other problems. Into these Darwin did not
enter, and they require a fuller investigation than is possible within the
limits of the present paper.
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