Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin

III.—§ 1. After Bopp and Grimm.

Bopp and Grimm exercised an enormous influence on linguistic thought and linguistic research in Germany and other countries. Long even before their death we see a host of successors following in the main the lines laid down in their work, and thus directly and indirectly they determined the development of this science for a long time. Through their efforts so much new light had been shed on a number of linguistic phenomena that these took a quite different aspect from that which they had presented to the previous generation; most of what had been written about etymology and kindred subjects in the eighteenth century seemed to the new school utterly antiquated, mere fanciful vagaries of incompetent blunderers, whereas now scholars had found firm ground on which to raise a magnificent structure of solid science. This feeling was especially due to the undoubted recognition of one great family of languages to which the vast majority of European languages, as well as some of the most important Asiatic languages, belonged: here we had one firmly established fact of the greatest magnitude, which at once put an end to all the earlier whimsical attempts to connect Latin and Greek words with Hebrew roots. As for the name of that family of languages, Rask hesitated between different names, ‘European,’ ‘Sarmatic’ and finally ‘Japhetic’ (as a counterpart of the Semitic and the Hamitic languages); Bopp at first had no comprehensive name, and on the title-page of his Vergl. grammatik contents himself with enumerating the chief languages described, but in the work itself he says that he prefers the name ‘Indo-European,’ which has also found wide acceptance, though more in France, England and Skandinavia than in Germany. Humboldt for a long while said ‘Sanskritic,’ but later he adopted ‘Indo-Germanic,’ and this has been the generally recognized name used in Germany, in spite of Bopp’s protest who said that ‘Indo-klassisch’ would be more to the point; ‘Indo-Keltic’ has also been proposed as designating the family through its two extreme members to the East and West. But all these compound names are clumsy without being completely pertinent, and it seems therefore much better to use the short and convenient term ‘the Aryan languages’: Aryan being the oldest name by which any members of the family designated themselves (in India and Persia).[10]

Thanks to the labours of Bopp and Grimm and their co-workers and followers, we see also a change in the status of the study of languages. Formerly this was chiefly a handmaiden to philology—but as this word is often in English used in a sense unknown to other languages and really objectionable, namely as a synonym of (comparative) study of languages, it will be necessary first to say a few words about the terminology of our science. In this book I shall use the word ‘philology’ in its continental sense, which is often rendered in English by the vague word ‘scholarship,’ meaning thereby the study of the specific culture of one nation; thus we speak of Latin philology, Greek philology, Icelandic philology, etc. The word ‘linguist,’ on the other hand, is not infrequently used in the sense of one who has merely a practical knowledge of some foreign language; but I think I am in accordance with a growing number of scholars in England and America if I call such a man a ‘practical linguist’ and apply the word ‘linguist’ by itself to the scientific student of language (or of languages); ‘linguistics’ then becomes a shorter and more convenient name for what is also called the science of language (or of languages).

Now that the reader understands the sense in which I take these two terms, I may go on to say that the beginning of the nineteenth century witnessed a growing differentiation between philology and linguistics in consequence of the new method introduced by comparative and by historical grammar; it was nothing less than a completely new way of looking at the facts of language and trying to trace their origin. While to the philologist the Greek or Latin language, etc., was only a means to an end, to the linguist it was an end in itself. The former saw in it a valuable, and in fact an indispensable, means of gaining a first-hand knowledge of the literature which was his chief concern, but the linguist cared not for the literature as such, but studied languages for their own sake, and might even turn to languages destitute of literature because they were able to throw some light on the life of language in general or on forms in related languages. The philologist as such would not think of studying the Gothic of Wulfila, as a knowledge of that language gives access only to a translation of parts of the Bible, the ideas of which can be studied much better elsewhere; but to the linguist Gothic was extremely valuable. The differentiation, of course, is not an absolute one; besides being linguists in the new sense, Rask was an Icelandic philologist, Bopp a Sanskrit philologist, and Grimm a German philologist; but the tendency towards the emancipation of linguistics was very strong in them, and some of their pupils were pure linguists and did no work in philology.

In breaking away from philology and claiming for linguistics the rank of a new and independent science, the partisans of the new doctrine were apt to think that not only had they discovered a new method, but that the object of their study was different from that of the philologists, even when they were both concerned with language. While the philologist looked upon language as part of the culture of some nation, the linguist looked upon it as a natural object; and when in the beginning of the nineteenth century philosophers began to divide all sciences into the two sharply separated classes of mental and natural sciences (geistes- und naturwissenschaften), linguists would often reckon their science among the latter. There was in this a certain amount of pride or boastfulness, for on account of the rapid rise and splendid achievements of the natural sciences at that time, it began to be a matter of common belief that they were superior to, and were possessed of a more scientific method than, the other class—the same view that finds an expression in the ordinary English usage, according to which ‘science’ means natural science and the other domains of human knowledge are termed the ‘arts’ or the ‘humanities.’

We see the new point of view in occasional utterances of the pioneers of linguistic science. Rask expressly says that “Language is a natural object and its study resembles natural history” (SA 2. 502); but when he repeats the same sentence (in Retskrivningslære, 8) it appears that he is thinking of language as opposed to the more artificial writing, and the contrast is not between mental and natural science, but between art and nature, between what can and what cannot be consciously modified by man—it is really a different question.

Bopp, in his review of Grimm (1827, reprinted Vocalismus, 1836, p. 1), says: “Languages are to be considered organic natural bodies, which are formed according to fixed laws, develop as possessing an inner principle of life, and gradually die out because they do not understand themselves any longer [!], and therefore cast off or mutilate their members or forms, which were at first significant, but gradually have become more of an extrinsic mass.... It is not possible to determine how long languages may preserve their full vigour of life and of procreation,” etc. This is highly figurative language which should not be taken at its face value; but expressions like these, and the constant use of such words as ‘organic’ and ‘inorganic’ in speaking of formations in languages, and ‘organism’ of the whole language, would tend to widen the gulf between the philological and the linguistic point of view. Bopp himself never consistently followed the naturalistic way of looking at language, but in § 4 of this chapter we shall see that Schleicher was not afraid of going to extremes and building up a consistent natural science of language.

The cleavage between philology and linguistics did not take place without arousing warm feeling. Classical scholars disliked the intrusion of Sanskrit everywhere; they did not know that language and did not see the use of it. They resented the way in which the new science wanted to reconstruct Latin and Greek grammar and to substitute new explanations for those which had always been accepted. Those Sanskritists chatted of guna and vrddhi and other barbaric terms, and even ventured to talk of a locative case in Latin, as if the number of cases had not been settled once for all long ago![11]

Classicists were no doubt perfectly right when they reproached comparativists for their neglect of syntax, which to them was the most important part of grammar; they were also in some measure right when they maintained that linguists to a great extent contented themselves with a superficial knowledge of the languages compared, which they studied more in grammars and glossaries than in living texts, and sometimes they would even exult when they found proof of this in solecisms in Bopp’s Latin translations from Sanskrit, and even on the title-page of Glossarium Sanscritum a Franzisco Bopp. Classical scholars also looked askance at the growing interest in the changes of sounds, or, as it was then usual to say, of letters. But when they were apt here to quote the scriptural phrase about the letter that killeth, while the spirit giveth life, they overlooked the fact that Nature has rendered it impossible for anyone to penetrate to the mind of anyone else except through its outer manifestations, and that it is consequently impossible to get at the spirit of a language except through its sounds: phonology must therefore form the necessary basis and prerequisite of the scientific study of any group of languages. Still, it cannot be denied that sometimes comparative phonology was treated in such a mechanical way as partly to dehumanize the study of language.

When we look back at this period in the history of linguistics, there are certain tendencies and characteristics that cannot fail to catch our attention. First we must mention the prominence given to Sanskrit, which was thought to be the unavoidable requirement of every comparative linguist. In explaining anything in any of the cognate languages the etymologist always turned first to Sanskrit words and Sanskrit forms. This standpoint is found even much later, for instance in Max Müller’s Inaugural Address (1868, Ch. 19): “Sanskrit certainly forms the only sound foundation of Comparative Philology, and it will always remain the only safe guide through all its intricacies. A comparative philologist without a knowledge of Sanskrit is like an astronomer without a knowledge of mathematics.” A linguist of a later generation may be excused for agreeing rather with Ellis, who says (Transact. Philol. Soc., 1873-4, 21): “Almost in our own days came the discovery of Sanskrit, and philology proper began—but, alas! at the wrong end. Now, here I run great danger of being misunderstood. Although for a scientific sifting of the nature of language I presume to think that beginning at Sanskrit was unfortunate, yet I freely admit that, had that language not been brought into Europe ... our knowledge of language would have been in a poor condition indeed.... We are under the greatest obligations to those distinguished men who have undertaken to unravel its secrets and to show its connexion with the languages of Europe. Yet I must repeat that for the pure science of language, to begin with Sanskrit was as much beginning at the wrong end as it would have been to commence zoology with palæontology—the relations of life with the bones of the dead.”

Next, Bopp and his nearest successors were chiefly occupied with finding likenesses between the languages treated and discovering things that united them. This was quite natural in the first stage of the new science, but sometimes led to one-sidedness, the characteristic individuality of each language being lost sight of, while forms from many countries and many times were mixed up in a hotch-potch. Rask, on account of his whole mental equipment, was less liable to this danger than most of his contemporaries; but Pott was evidently right when he warned his fellow-students that their comparative linguistics should be supplemented by separative linguistics (Zählmethode, 229), as it has been to a great extent in recent years.

Still another feature of the linguistic science of those days is the almost exclusive occupation of the student with dead languages. It was quite natural that the earliest comparativists should first give their attention to the oldest stages of the languages compared, since these alone enabled them to prove the essential kinship between the different members of the great Aryan family. In Grimm’s grammar nearly all the space is taken up with Gothic, Old High German, Old Norse, etc., and comparatively little is said about recent developments of the same languages. In Bopp’s comparative grammar classical Greek and Latin are, of course, treated carefully, but Modern Greek and the Romanic languages are not mentioned (thus also in Schleicher’s Compendium and in Brugmann’s Grammar), such later developments being left to specialists who were more or less considered to be outside the sphere of Comparative Linguistics and even of the science of language in general, though it would have been a much more correct view to include them in both, and though much more could really be learnt of the life of language from these studies than from comparisons made in the spirit of Bopp.

The earlier stages of different languages, which were compared by linguists, were, of course, accessible only through the medium of writing; we have seen that the early linguists spoke constantly of letters and not of sounds. But this vitiated their whole outlook on languages. These were scarcely ever studied at first-hand, and neither in Bopp nor in Grimm nor in Pott or Benfey do we find such first-hand observations of living spoken languages as play a great rôle in the writings of Rask and impart an atmosphere of soundness to his whole manner of looking at languages. If languages were called natural objects, they were not yet studied as such or by truly naturalistic methods.

When living dialects were studied, the interest constantly centred round the archaic traits in them; every survival of an old form, every trace of old sounds that had been dropped in the standard speech, was greeted with enthusiasm, and the significance of these old characteristics greatly exaggerated, the general impression being that popular dialects were always much more conservative than the speech of educated people. It was reserved for a much later time to prove that this view is completely erroneous, and that popular dialects, in spite of many archaic details, are on the whole further developed than the various standard languages with their stronger tradition and literary reminiscences.

III.—§ 2. K. M. Rapp.

It was from this archæological point of view only that Grimm encouraged the study of dialects, but he expressly advised students not to carry the research too far in the direction of discriminating minutiæ of sounds, because these had little bearing on the history of language as he understood it. In this connexion we may mention an episode in the history of early linguistics that is symptomatic. K. M. Rapp brought out his Versuch einer Physiologie der Sprache nebst historischer Entwickelung der abendländischen Idiome nach physiologischen Grundsätzen in four volumes (1836, 1839, 1840, 1841). A physiological examination into the nature and classification of speech sounds was to serve only as the basis of the historical part, the grandiose plan of which was to find out how Greek, Latin and Gothic sounded, and then to pursue the destinies of these sound systems through the Middle Ages (Byzantine Greek, Old Provençal, Old French, Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Old High German) to the present time (Modern Greek, Italian, Spanish, etc., down to Low and High German, with different dialects). To carry out this plan Rapp was equipped with no small knowledge of the earlier stages of these languages and a not contemptible first-hand observation of living languages. He relates how from his childhood he had a “morbidly sharpened ear for all acoustic impressions”; he had early observed the difference between dialectal and educated speech and taken an interest in foreign languages, such as French, Italian and English. He visited Denmark, and there made the acquaintance of and became the pupil of Rask; he often speaks of him and his works in terms of the greatest admiration. After his return he took up the study of Jacob Grimm; but though he speaks always very warmly about the other parts of Grimm’s work, Grimm’s phonology disappointed him. “Grimm’s theory of letters I devoured with a ravenous appetite for all the new things I had to learn from it, but also with heartburning on account of the equally numerous things that warred against the whole of my previous research with regard to the nature of speech sounds; fascinated though I was by what I read, it thus made me incredibly miserable.” He set to his great task with enthusiasm, led by the conviction that “the historical material gives here only one side of the truth, and that the living language in all its branches that have never been committed to writing forms the other and equally important side which is still far from being satisfactorily investigated.” It is easy to understand that Rapp came into conflict with Grimm’s Buchstabenlehre, that had been based exclusively on written forms, and Rapp was not afraid of expressing his unorthodox views in what he himself terms “a violent and arrogating tone.” No wonder, therefore, that his book fell into disgrace with the leaders of linguistics in Germany, who noticed its errors and mistakes, which were indeed numerous and conspicuous, rather than the new and sane ideas it contained. Rapp’s work is extraordinarily little known; in Raumer’s Geschichte der germanischen Philologie and similar works it is not even mentioned, and when I disinterred it from undeserved oblivion in my Fonetik (1897, p. 35; cf. Die neueren Sprachen, vol. xiii, 1904) it was utterly unknown to the German phoneticians of my acquaintance. Yet not only are its phonetic observations[12] deserving of praise, but still more its whole plan, based as it is on a thorough comprehension of the mutual relations of sounds and writing, which led Rapp to use phonetic transcription throughout, even in connected specimens both of living and dead languages; that this is really the only way in which it is possible to obtain a comprehensive and living understanding of the sound-system of any language (as well as to get a clear perception of the extent of one’s own ignorance of it!) has not yet been generally recognized. The science of language would have made swifter and steadier progress if Grimm and his successors had been able to assimilate the main thoughts of Rapp.

III.—§ 3. J. H. Bredsdorff.

Another (and still earlier) work that was overlooked at the time was the little pamphlet Om Aarsagerne til Sprogenes Forandringer (1821) by the Dane J. H. Bredsdorff. Bopp and Grimm never really asked themselves the fundamental question, How is it that language changes: what are the driving forces that lead in course of time to such far-reaching differences as those we find between Sanskrit and Latin, or between Latin and French? Now, this is exactly the question that Bredsdorff treats in his masterly pamphlet. Like Rapp, he was a very good phonetician; but in the pamphlet that concerns us here he speaks not only of phonetic but of other linguistic changes as well. These he refers to the following causes, which he illustrates with well-chosen examples: (1) Mishearing and misunderstanding; (2) misrecollection; (3) imperfection of organs; (4) indolence: to this he inclines to refer nine-tenths of all those changes in the pronunciation of a language that are not due to foreign influences; (5) tendency towards analogy: here he gives instances from the speech of children and explains by analogy such phenomena as the extension of s to all genitives, etc.; (6) the desire to be distinct; (7) the need of expressing new ideas. He recognizes that there are changes that cannot be brought under any of these explanations, e.g. the Gothonic sound shift (cf. above, p. 43 note), and he emphasizes the many ways in which foreign nations or foreign languages may influence a language. Bredsdorff’s explanations may not always be correct; but what constitutes the deep originality of his little book is the way in which linguistic changes are always regarded in terms of human activity, chiefly of a psychological character. Here he was head and shoulders above his contemporaries; in fact, most of Bredsdorff’s ideas, such as the power of analogy, were the same that sixty years later had to fight so hard to be recognized by the leading linguists of that time.[13]

III.—§ 4. August Schleicher.

In Rapp, and even more in Bredsdorff, we get a whiff of the scientific atmosphere of a much later time; but most of the linguists of the twenties and following decades (among whom A. F. Pott deserves to be specially named) moved in essentially the same grooves as Bopp and Grimm, and it will not be necessary here to deal in detail with their work.

August Schleicher (1821-68) in many ways marks the culmination of the first period of Comparative Linguistics, as well as the transition to a new period with different aims and, partially at any rate, a new method. His intimate knowledge of many languages, his great power of combination, his clear-cut and always lucid exposition—all this made him a natural leader, and made his books for many years the standard handbooks of linguistic science. Unlike Bopp and Grimm, he was exclusively a linguist, or, as he called it himself, ‘glottiker,’ and never tired of claiming for the science of linguistics (‘glottik’), as opposed to philology, the rank of a separate natural science. Schleicher specialized in Slavonic and Lithuanian; he studied the latter language in its own home and took down a great many songs and tales from the mouths of the peasants; he was for some years a professor in the University of Prague, and there acquired a conversational knowledge of Czech; he spoke Russian, too, and thus in contradistinction to Bopp and Grimm had a first-hand knowledge of more than one foreign language; his interest in living speech is also manifested in his specimens of the dialect of his native town, Volkstümliches aus Sonneberg. When he was a child his father very severely insisted on the constant and correct use of the educated language at home; but the boy, perhaps all the more on account of the paternal prohibition, was deeply attracted to the popular dialect he heard from his playfellows and to the fascinating folklore of the old townspeople, which he was later to take down and put into print. In the preface he says that the acquisition of foreign tongues is rendered considerably easier through the habit of speaking two dialects from childhood.

What makes Schleicher particularly important for the purposes of this volume is the fact that in a long series of publications he put forth not only details of his science, but original and comprehensive views on the fundamental questions of linguistic theory, and that these had great influence on the linguistic philosophy of the following decades. He was, perhaps, the most consistent as well as one of the clearest of linguistic thinkers, and his views therefore deserve to be examined in detail and with the greatest care.

Apart from languages, Schleicher was deeply interested both in philosophy and in natural science, especially botany. From these he fetched many of the weapons of his armoury, and they coloured the whole of his theory of language. In his student days at Tübingen he became an enthusiastic adherent of the philosophy of Hegel, and not even the Darwinian sympathies and views of which he became a champion towards the end of his career made him abandon the doctrines of his youth. As for science, he says that naturalists make us understand that in science nothing is of value except facts established through strictly objective observation and the conclusions based on such facts—this is a lesson that he thinks many of his colleagues would do well to take to heart. There can be no doubt that Schleicher in his practice followed a much more rigorous and sober method than his predecessors, and that his Compendium in that respect stands far above Bopp’s Grammar. In his general reasonings on the nature of language, on the other hand, Schleicher did not always follow the strict principles of sober criticism, being, as we shall now see, too dependent on Hegelian philosophy, and also on certain dogmatic views that he had inherited from previous German linguists, from Schlegel downwards.

The Introductions to Schleicher’s two first volumes are entirely Hegelian, though with a characteristic difference, for in the first he says that the changes to be seen in the realm of languages are decidedly historical and in no way resemble the changes that we may observe in nature, for “however manifold these may be, they never show anything but a circular course that repeats itself continually” (Hegel), while in language, as in everything mental, we may see new things that have never existed before. One generation of animals or plants is like another; the skill of animals has no history, as human art has; language is specifically human and mental: its development is therefore analogous to history, for in both we see a continual progress to new phases. In Schleicher’s second volume, however, this view is expressly rejected in its main part, because Schleicher now wants to emphasize the natural character of language: it is true, he now says, that language shows a ‘werden’ which may be termed history in the wider sense of this word, but which is found in its purest form in nature; for instance, in the growing of a plant. Language belongs to the natural sphere, not to the sphere of free mental activity, and this must be our starting-point if we would discover the method of linguistic science (ii. 21).

It would, of course, be possible to say that the method of linguistic science is that of natural science, and yet to maintain that the object of linguistics is different from that of natural science, but Schleicher more and more tends to identify the two, and when he was attacked for saying, in his pamphlet on the Darwinian theory, that languages were material things, real natural objects, he wrote in defence Ueber die bedeutung der sprache für die naturgeschichte des menschen, which is highly characteristic as the culminating point of the materialistic way of looking at languages. The activity, he says, of any organ, e.g. one of the organs of digestion, or the brain or muscles, is dependent on the constitution of that organ. The different ways in which different species, nay even different individuals, walk are evidently conditioned by the structure of the limbs; the activity or function of the organ is, as it were, nothing but an aspect of the organ itself, even if it is not always possible by means of the knife or microscope of the scientist to demonstrate the material cause of the phenomenon. What is true of the manner of walking is true of language as well; for language is nothing but the result, perceptible through the ear, of the action of a complex of material substances in the structure of the brain and of the organs of speech, with their nerves, bones, muscles, etc. Anatomists, however, have not yet been able to demonstrate differences in the structures of these organs corresponding to differences of nationality—to discriminate, that is, the organs of a Frenchman (quâ Frenchman) from those of a German (quâ German). Accordingly, as the chemist can only arrive at the elements which compose the sun by examining the light which it emits, while the source of that light remains inaccessible to him, so must we be content to study the nature of languages, not in their material antecedents but in their audible manifestations. It makes no great difference, however, for “the two things stand to each other as cause and effect, as substance and phenomenon: a philosopher [i.e. a Hegelian] would say that they are identical.”

Now I, for one, fail to understand how this can be what Schleicher believes it to be, “a refutation of the objection that language is nothing but a consequence of the activity of these organs.” The sun exists independently of the human observer; but there could be no such thing as language if there was not besides the speaker a listener who might become a speaker in his turn. Schleicher speaks continually in his pamphlet as if structural differences in the brain and organs of speech were the real language, and as if it were only for want of an adequate method of examining this hidden structure that we had to content ourselves with studying language in its outward manifestation as audible speech. But this is certainly on the face of it preposterous, and scarcely needs any serious refutation. If the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the proof of a language must be in the hearing and understanding; but in order to be heard words must first be spoken, and in these two activities (that of producing and that of perceiving sounds) the real essence of language must consist, and these two activities are the primary (or why not the exclusive?) object of the science of language.

Schleicher goes on to meet another objection that may be made to his view of the ‘substantiality of language,’ namely, that drawn from the power of learning other languages. Schleicher doubts the possibility of learning another language to perfection; he would admit this only in the case of a man who exchanged his mother-tongue for another in his earliest youth; “but then he becomes by that very fact a different being from what he was: brain and organs of speech develop in another direction.” If Mr. So-and-So is said to speak and write German, English and French equally well, Schleicher first inclines to doubt the fact; and then, granting that the same individual may “be at the same time a German, a Frenchman and an Englishman,” he asks us to remember that all these three languages belong to the same family and may, from a broader point of view, be termed species of the same language; but he denies the possibility of anyone’s being equally at home in Chinese and German, or in Arabic and Hottentot, etc., because these languages are totally different in their innermost essence. (But what of bilingual children in Finland, speaking Swedish and Finnish, or in Greenland, speaking Danish and Eskimo, or in Java, speaking Dutch and Malay?) Schleicher has to admit that our organs are to some extent flexible and capable of acquiring activities that they had not at first; but one definite function is and remains nevertheless the only natural one, and thus “the possibility of a man’s acquiring foreign languages more or less perfectly is no objection to our seeing the material basis of language in the structure of the brain and organs of speech.”

Even if we admit that Schleicher is so far right that in nearly all (or all?) cases of bilingualism one language comes more naturally than the other, he certainly exaggerates the difference, which is always one of degree; and at any rate his final conclusion is wrong, for we might with the same amount of justice say that a man who has first learned to play the piano has acquired the structure of brain and fingers peculiar to a pianist, and that it is then unnatural for him also to learn to play the violin, because that would imply a different structure of these organs. In all these cases we have to do with a definite proficiency or skill, which can only be obtained by constant practice, though of course one man may be better predisposed by nature for it than another; but then it is also the fact that people who speak no foreign language attain to very different degrees of proficiency in the use of their mother-tongue. It cannot be said too emphatically that we have here a fundamental question, and that Schleicher’s view can never lead to a true conception of what language is, or to a real insight into its changes and historical development.

Schleicher goes on to say that the classification of mankind into races should not be based on the formation of the skull or on the character of the hair, or any such external criteria, as they are by no means constant, but rather on language, because this is a thoroughly constant criterion. This alone would give a perfectly natural system, one, for instance, in which all Turks would be classed together, while otherwise the Osmanli Turk belongs to the ‘Caucasian’ race and the so-called Tataric Turks to the ‘Mongolian’ race; on the other hand, the Magyar and the Basque are not physically to be distinguished from the Indo-European, though their languages are widely dissimilar. According to Schleicher, therefore, the natural system of languages is also the natural system of mankind, for language is closely connected with the whole higher life of men, which is therefore taken into consideration in and with their language. In this book I am not concerned with the ethnographical division of mankind into races, and I therefore must content myself with saying that the very examples adduced by Schleicher seem to me to militate against his theory that a division of mankind based on language is the natural one: are we to reckon the Basque’s son, who speaks nothing but French (or Spanish) as belonging to a different race from his father? And does not Schleicher contradict himself when on p. 16 he writes that language is “ein völlig constantes merkmal,” and p. 20 that it is “in fortwährender veränderung begriffen”? So far as I see, Schleicher never expressly says that he thinks that the physical structure conditioning the structure of a man’s language is hereditary, though some of his expressions point that way, and that may be what he means by the expression ‘constant.’ In other places (Darw. 25, Bed. 24) he allows external conditions of life to exercise some influence on the character of a language, as when languages of neighbouring peoples are similar (Aryans and Semites, for example, are the only nations possessing flexional languages). On such points, however, he gives only a few hints and suggestions.

III.—§ 5. Classification of Languages.

In the question of the classification of languages Schleicher introduces a deductive element from his strong preoccupation with Hegelian ideas. Hegel everywhere moves in trilogies; Schleicher therefore must have three classes, and consequently has to tack together two of Pott’s four classes (agglutinating and incorporating); then he is able philosophically to deduce the tripartition. For language consists in meaning (bedeutung; matter, contents, root) and relation (beziehung; form), tertium non datur. As it would be a sheer impossibility for a language to express form only, we obtain three classes:

I. Here meaning is the only thing indicated by sound; relation is merely suggested by word-position: isolating languages.

II. Both meaning and relation are expressed by sound, but the formal elements are visibly tacked on to the root, which is itself invariable: agglutinating languages.

III. The elements of meaning and of relation are fused together or absorbed into a higher unity, the root being susceptible of inward modification as well as of affixes to denote form: flexional languages.

Schleicher employs quasi-mathematical formulas to illustrate these three classes: if we denote a root by R, a prefix by p and a suffix by s, and finally use a raised x to denote an inner modification, we see that in the isolated languages we have nothing but R (a sentence may be represented by R R R R ...), a word in the second class has the formula R s or p R or p R s, but in the third class we may have p R^x s (or R^x s).

Now, according to Schleicher the three classes of languages are not only found simultaneously in the tongues of our own day, but they represent three stages of linguistic development; “to the nebeneinander of the system corresponds the nacheinander of history.” Beyond the flexional stage no language can attain; the symbolic denotation of relation by flexion is the highest accomplishment of language; speech has here effectually realized its object, which is to give a faithful phonetic image of thought. But before a language can become flexional it must have passed through an isolating and an agglutinating period. Is this theory borne out by historical facts? Can we trace back any of the existing flexional languages to agglutination and isolation? Schleicher himself answers this question in the negative: the earliest Latin was of as good a flexional type as are the modern Romanic languages. This would seem a sort of contradiction in terms; but the orthodox Hegelian is ready with an answer to any objection; he has the word of his master that History cannot begin till the human spirit becomes “conscious of its own freedom,” and this consciousness is only possible after the complete development of language. The formation of Language and History are accordingly successive stages of human activity. Moreover, as history and historiography, i.e. literature, come into existence simultaneously, Schleicher is enabled to express the same idea in a way that “is only seemingly paradoxical,” namely, that the development of language is brought to a conclusion as soon as literature makes its appearance; this is a crisis after which language remains fixed; language has now become a means, instead of being the aim, of intellectual activity. We never meet with any language that is developing or that has become more perfect; in historical times all languages move only downhill; linguistic history means decay of languages as such, subjugated as they are through the gradual evolution of the mind to greater freedom.

The reader of the above survey of previous classifications will easily see that in the matter itself Schleicher adds very little of his own. Even the expressions, which are here given throughout in Schleicher’s own words, are in some cases recognizable as identical with, or closely similar to, those of earlier scholars.

He made one coherent system out of ideas of classification and development already found in others. What is new is the philosophical substructure of Hegelian origin, and there can be no doubt that Schleicher imagined that by this addition he contributed very much towards giving stability and durability to the whole system. And yet this proved to be the least stable and durable part of the structure, and as a matter of fact the Hegelian reasoning is not repeated by a single one of those who give their adherence to the classification. Nor can it be said to carry conviction, and undoubtedly it has seemed to most linguists at the same time too rigid and too unreal to have any importance.

But apart from the philosophical argument the classification proved very successful in the particular shape it had found in Schleicher. Its adoption into two such widely read works as Max Müller’s and Whitney’s Lectures on the Science of Language contributed very much to the popularity of the system, though the former’s attempt at ascribing to the tripartition a sociological importance by saying that juxtaposition (isolation) is characteristic of the ‘family stage,’ agglutination of ‘the nomadic stage’ and amalgamation (flexion) of the ‘political stage’ of human society was hardly taken seriously by anybody.

The chief reasons for the popularity of this classification are not far to seek. It is easy of handling and appeals to the natural fondness for clear-cut formulas through its specious appearance of regularity and rationality. Besides, it flatters widespread prejudices in so far as it places the two groups of languages highest that are spoken by those nations which have culturally and religiously exercised the deepest influence on the civilization of the world, Aryans and Semites. Therefore also Pott’s view, according to which the incorporating or ‘polysynthetic’ American languages possess the same characteristics that distinguish flexion as against agglutination, only in a still higher degree, is generally tacitly discarded, for obviously it would not do to place some languages of American Indians higher than Sanskrit or Greek. But when these are looked upon as the very flower of linguistic development it is quite natural to regard the modern languages of Western Europe as degenerate corruptions of the ancient more highly flexional languages; this is in perfect keeping with the prevalent admiration for classical antiquity and with the belief in a far past golden age. Arguments such as these may not have been consciously in the minds of the framers of the ordinary classification, but there can be no doubt that they have been unconsciously working in favour of the system, though very little thought seems to be required to show the fallacy of the assumption that high civilization has any intrinsic and necessary connexion with the grammatical construction of the language spoken by the race or nation concerned. No language of modern Europe presents the flexional type in a purer shape than Lithuanian, where we find preserved nearly the same grammatical system as in old Sanskrit, yet no one would assert that the culture of Lithuanian peasants is higher than that of Shakespeare, whose language has lost an enormous amount of the old flexions. Culture and language must be appraised separately, each on its own merits and independently of the other.

From a purely linguistic point of view there are many objections to the usual classification, and it will be well here to bring them together, though this will mean an interruption of the historical survey which is the main object of these chapters.

First let us look upon the tripartition as purporting a comprehensive classification of languages as existing side by side without any regard to historic development (the nebeneinander of Schleicher). Here it does not seem to be an ideal manner of classifying a great many objects to establish three classes of such different dimensions that the first comprises only Chinese and some other related languages of the Far East, and the third only two families of languages, while the second includes hundreds of unrelated languages of the most heterogeneous character. It seems certain that the languages of Class I represent one definite type of linguistic structure, and it may be that Aryan and Semitic should be classed together on account of the similarity of their structure, though this is by no means quite certain and has been denied (by Bopp, and in recent times by Porzezinski); but what is indubitable is that the ‘agglutinating’ class is made to comprehend languages of the most diverse type, even if we follow Pott and exclude from this class all incorporating languages. Finnish is always mentioned as a typically agglutinative language, yet there we meet with such declensional forms as nominative vesi ‘water,’ toinen ‘second,’ partitive vettä, toista, genitive veden, toisen, and such verbal forms as sido-n ‘I bind,’ sido-t ‘thou bindest,’ sito-o ‘he binds,’ and the three corresponding persons in the plural, sido-mme, sido-tte, sito-vat. Here we are far from having one unchangeable root to which endings have been glued, for the root itself undergoes changes before the endings. In Kiyombe (Congo) the perfect of verbs is in many cases formed by means of a vowel change that is a complete parallel to the apophony in English drink, drank, thus vanga ‘do,’ perfect venge, twala ‘bring,’ perfect twele or twede, etc. (Anthropos, ii. p. 761). Examples like these show that flexion, in whatever way we may define this term, is not the prerogative of the Aryans and Semites, but may be found in other nations as well. ‘Agglutination’ is either too vague a term to be used in classification, or else, if it is taken strictly according to the usual definition, it is too definite to comprise many of the languages which are ordinarily reckoned to belong to the second class.

It will be seen, also, that those writers who aim at giving descriptions of a variety of human tongues, or of them all, do not content themselves with the usual three classes, but have a greater number. This began with Steinthal, who in various works tried to classify languages partly from geographical, partly from structural points of view, without, however, arriving at any definite or consistent system. Friedrich Müller, in his great Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft, really gives up the psychological or structural division of languages, distributing the more than hundred different languages that he describes among twelve races of mankind, characterized chiefly by external criteria that have nothing to do with language. Misteli establishes six main types: I. Incorporating. II. Root-isolating. III. Stem-isolating. IV. Affixing (Anreihende). V. Agglutinating. VI. Flexional. These he also distributes so as to form four classes: (1) languages with sentence-words: I; (2) languages with no words: II, III and IV; (3) languages with apparent words: V; and (4) languages with real words: VI. But the latter division had better be left alone; it turns on the intricate question “What constitutes a word?” and ultimately depends on the usual depreciation of ‘inferior races’ and corresponding exaltation of our own race, which is alone reputed capable of possessing ‘real words.’ I do not see why we should not recognize that the vocables of Greenlandic, Malay, Kafir or Finnish are just as ‘real’ words as any in Hebrew or Latin.

Our final result, then, is that the tripartition is insufficient and inadequate to serve as a comprehensive classification of languages actually existing. Nor shall we wonder at this if we see the way in which the theory began historically in an obiter dictum of Fr. v. Schlegel at a time when the inner structure of only a few languages had been properly studied, and if we consider the lack of clearness and definiteness inherent in such notions as agglutination and flexion, which are nevertheless made the corner-stones of the whole system. We therefore must go back to the wise saying of Humboldt quoted on p. 59, that the structural diversities of languages are too great for us to classify them comprehensively.

In a subsequent part of this work I shall deal with the tripartition as representing three successive stages in the development of such languages as our own (the nacheinander of Schleicher), and try to show that Schleicher’s view is not borne out by the facts of linguistic history, which give us a totally different picture of development.

From both points of view, then, I think that the classification here considered deserves to be shelved among the hasty generalizations in which the history of every branch of science is unfortunately so rich.

III.—§ 6. Reconstruction.

Probably Schleicher’s most original and important contribution to linguistics was his reconstruction of the Proto-Aryan language, die indogermanische ursprache. The possibility of inferentially constructing this parent language, which to Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, etc., was what Latin was to Italian, Spanish, French, etc., was early in his thoughts (see quotations illustrating the gradual growth of the idea in Oertel, p. 39 f.), but it was not till the first edition of his Compendium that he carried it out in detail, giving there for each separate chapter (vowels, consonants, roots, stem-formation, declension, conjugation) first the Proto-Aryan forms and then those actually found in the different languages, from which the former were inferred. This arrangement has the advantage that the reader everywhere sees the historical evolution in the natural order, beginning with the oldest and then proceeding to the later stages, just as the Romanic scholar begins with Latin and then takes in successive stages Old French, Modern French, etc. But in the case of Proto-Aryan this procedure is apt to deceive the student and make him take these primitive forms as something certain, whose existence reposes on just as good evidence as the forms found in Sanskrit literature or in German or English as spoken in our own days. When he finds some forms given first and used to explain some others, there is some danger of his forgetting that the forms given first have a quite different status to the others, and that their only raison d’être is the desire of a modern linguist to explain existing forms in related languages which present certain similarities as originating from a common original form, which he does not find in his texts and has, therefore, to reconstruct. But apart from this there can be no doubt that the reconstruction of older forms (and the ingenious device, due to Schleicher, of denoting such forms by means of a preposed asterisk to distinguish them from forms actually found) has been in many ways beneficial to historical grammar. Only it may be questioned whether Schleicher did not go too far when he wished to base the whole grammar of all the Aryan languages on such reconstructions, instead of using them now and then to explain single facts.

Schleicher even ventured (and in this he seems to have had no follower) to construct an entire little fable in primitive Aryan: see “Eine fabel in indogermanischer ursprache,” Beiträge zur vergl. sprachforschung, 5. 206 (1868). In the introductory remarks he complains of the difficulty of such attempts, chiefly because of the almost complete lack of particles capable of being inferred from the existing languages, but he seems to have entertained no doubt about the phonetic and grammatical forms of the words he employed. As the fable is not now commonly known, I give it here, with Schleicher’s translation, as a document of this period of comparative linguistics.