CHAPTER XIX

ORIGIN OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS

§ 1. The Old Theory. § 2. Roots. § 3. Structure of Chinese. § 4. History of Chinese. § 5. Recent Investigations. § 6. Roots Again. § 7. The Agglutination Theory. § 8. Coalescence. § 9. Flexional Endings. § 10. Validity of the Theory. § 11. Irregularity Original. § 12. Coalescence Theory dropped. § 13. Secretion. § 14. Extension of Suffixes. § 15. Tainting of Suffixes. § 16. The Classifying Instinct. § 17. Character of Suffixes. § 18. Brugmann’s Theory of Gender. § 19. Final Considerations.

XIX.--§ 1. The Old Theory.

What has been given in the last two chapters to clear up the problem “Decay or progress?” has been based, as will readily be noticed, exclusively on easily controllable facts of linguistic history. So far, then, it has been very smooth sailing. But now we must venture out into the open sea of prehistoric speculations. Our voyage will be the safer if we never lose sight of land and have a reliable compass tested in known waters.

In our historical survey of linguistic science we have already seen that the prevalent theory concerning the prehistoric development of our speech is this: an originally isolating language, consisting of nothing but formless roots, passed through an agglutinating stage, in which formal elements had been developed, although these and the roots were mutually independent, to the third and highest stage found in flexional languages, in which formal elements penetrated the roots and made inseparable unities with them. We shall now examine the basis of this theory.

In the beginning was the root. This is “the result of strict and careful induction from the facts recorded in the dialects of the different members of the family” (Whitney L 260). “The firm foundation of the theory of roots lies in its logical necessity as an inference from the doctrine of the historical growth of grammatical apparatus” (Whitney G 200). “An instrumentality cannot but have had rude and simple beginnings, such as, in language, the so-called roots ... such imperfect hints of expression as we call roots” (Whitney, _Views of L._ 338). These are really three different statements: induction from the facts, a logical inference from the doctrine about grammatical apparatus (i.e. the usually accepted doctrine, but on what is that built up except on the root theory?), and the _a priori_ argument that an ‘instrumentality’ must have simple beginnings. Even granted that these three arguments given at different times, each of them in turn as the sole argument, must be taken as supplementing each other, the three-legged stool on which the root theory is thus made to sit is a very shaky one, for none of the three legs is very solid, as we shall soon have occasion to see.

XIX.--§ 2. Roots.

In the beginning was the root--but what was it like? Bopp took over the conception of root from the Indian grammarians, and like them was convinced that roots were all monosyllabic, and that view was accepted by his followers. These latter at times attributed other phonetic qualities to these roots, e.g. that they always had a short vowel (Curtius C 22). I quote from a very recent treatise (Wood, “Indo-European Root-formation,” _Journal of Germ. Philol._ 1. 291): “I range myself with those who believe that IE. roots were monosyllabic ... these roots began, for the most part, with a vowel. The vowels certainly were the first utterances,[89] and though we cannot make the beginning of IE. speech coeval with that of human speech, we may at least assume that language, at that time, was in a very primitive state.”

The number of these roots was not very great (Curtius, l.c.; Wood 294). This seems a natural enough conclusion when we picture the earliest speech as the most meagre thing possible.

These few short monosyllabic roots were real words--this is a necessary assumption if we are to imagine a root stage as a real language, and it is often expressly stated; Curtius, for instance, insists that roots are real and independent words (C 22, K 132); cf. also Whitney, who says that the root _VAK_ “had also once an independent status, that it was a word” (L 255). We shall see afterwards that there is another possible conception of what a ‘root’ is; but let us here grant that it is a real word. The question whether a language is possible which contains nothing but such root words was always answered affirmatively by a reference to Chinese--and it will therefore be well here to give a short sketch of the chief structural features of that language.

XIX.--§ 3. Structure of Chinese.

Each word consists of one syllable, neither more nor less. Each of these monosyllables has one of four or five distinct musical tones (not indicated here). The parts of speech are not distinguished: _ta_ means, according to circumstances, great, much, magnitude, enlarge. Grammatical relations, such as number, person, tense, case, etc., are not expressed by endings and similar expedients; the word in itself is invariable. If a substantive is to be taken as plural, this as a rule must be gathered from the context; and it is only when there is any danger of misunderstanding, or when the notion of plurality is to be emphasized, that separate words are added, e.g. _ki_ ‘some,’ _šu_ ‘number.’ The most important part of Chinese grammar is that dealing with word order: _ta kuok_ means ‘great state(s),’ but _kuok ta_ ‘the state is great,’ or, if placed before some other word which can serve as a verb, ‘the greatness (size) of the state’; _tsï niu_ ‘boys and girls,’ but _niu tsï_ ‘girl (female child),’ etc. Besides words properly so called, or as Chinese grammarians call them ‘full words,’ there are several ‘empty words’ serving for grammatical purposes, often in a wonderfully clever and ingenious way. Thus _či_ has besides other functions that of indicating a genitive relation more distinctly than would be indicated by the mere position of the words; _min_ (people) _lik_ (power) is of itself sufficient to signify ‘the power of the people,’ but the same notion is expressed more explicitly by _min či lik_. The same expedient is used to indicate different sorts of connexion: if _či_ is placed after the subject of a sentence it makes it a genitive, thereby changing the sentence into a kind of subordinate clause: _wang pao min_ = ‘the king protects the people’; but if you say _wang či pao min yeu_ (is like) _fu_ (father) _či pao tsï_, the whole may be rendered, by means of the English verbal noun, ‘the king’s protecting the people is like the father’s protecting his child.’ Further, it is possible to change a whole sentence into a genitive; for instance, _wang pao min či tao_ (manner) _k’o_ (can) _kien_ (see, be seen), ‘the manner in which the king protects (the manner of the king’s protecting) his people is to be seen’; and in yet other positions _či_ can be used to join a word-group consisting of a subject and verb, or of verb and object, as an adjunct (attribute) to a noun; we have participles to express the same modification of the idea: _wang pao či min_ ‘the people protected by the king’; _pao min či wang_ ‘a king protecting the people.’ Observe here the ingenious method of distinguishing the active and passive voices by strictly adhering to the natural order and placing the subject before and the object after the verb. If we put _i_ before, and _ku_ after, a single word, it means ‘on account of, because of’ (cf. E. for ...’s sake); if we place a whole sentence between these ‘brackets,’ as we might term them, they are a sort of conjunction, and must be translated ‘because.’[90]

XIX.--§ 4. History of Chinese.

These few examples will give some faint idea of the Chinese language, and--if the whole older generation of scholars is to be trusted--at the same time of the primeval structure of our own language in the root-stage. But is it absolutely certain that Chinese has retained its structure unchanged from the very first period? By no means. As early as 1861, R. Lepsius, from a comparison of Chinese and Tibetan, had derived the conviction that “the monosyllabic character of Chinese is not original, but is a lapse (!) from an earlier polysyllabic structure.” J. Edkins, while still believing that the structure of Chinese represents “the speech first used in the world’s grey morning” (_The Evolution of the Chinese Language_, 1888), was one of the foremost to examine the evidence offered by the language itself for the determination of its earlier pronunciation. This, of course, is a much more complicated problem in Chinese than in our alphabetically written languages; for a Chinese character, standing for a complete word, may remain unchanged while the pronunciation is changed indefinitely. But by means of dialectal pronunciations in our own day, of remarks in old Chinese dictionaries, of transcriptions of Sanskrit words made by Chinese Buddhists, of rimes in ancient poetry, of phonetic or partly phonetic elements in the word-characters, etc., it has been possible to demonstrate that Chinese pronunciation has changed considerably, and that the direction of change has been, here as elsewhere, towards shorter and easier word-forms. Above all, consonant groups have been simplified.

In 1894 I ventured to offer my mite to these investigations by suggesting an explanation of one phenomenon of pronunciation in present-day Chinese. I refer to the change sometimes wrought in the meaning of a word by the adoption of a different tone. Thus _wang_ with one tone is ‘king,’ with another ‘to become king’; _lao_ with one is ‘work,’ with another ‘pay the work’; _tsung_ with one tone means ‘follow,’ with another ‘follower,’ and with a third ‘footsteps’; _tshi_ with one tone is ‘wife,’ with another ‘marry’; _haò_ is ‘good,’ and _haó_ is ‘love.’ Nay, meanings so different as ‘acquire’ and ‘give’ (_sheu_) or ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ (_mai_) are only distinguished by the tones. Edkins and V. Henry (_Le Muséon_, Louvain, 1882, i. 435) have attempted to explain this from gestures; but this is palpably wrong. In the Danish dialect spoken in Sundeved, in southernmost Jutland, two tones are distinguished, one high and one low (see articles by N. Andersen and myself in _Dania_, vol. iv.). Now, these tones often serve to keep words or forms of words apart that but for the tone, exactly as in Chinese, would be perfect homophones. Thus _na_ with the low tone is ‘fool,’ but with the high tone it is either the plural ‘fools’ or else a verb ‘to cheat, hoax’; _ri_ ‘ride’ is imperative or infinitive according to the tone in which it is uttered; _jem_ in the low tone is ‘home’ and in the high ‘at home’; and so on in a great many words. There is no need, however, in this language to resort to gestures to explain these tonic differences: the low tone is found in words originally monosyllabic (compare standard Danish _nar_, _rid_, _hjem_), and the high tone in words originally dissyllabic (compare Danish _narre_, _ride_, _hjemme_). The tones belonging formerly to two syllables are now condensed on one syllable. Although, of course, Chinese tones cannot in every respect be paralleled with Scandinavian ones, we may provisionally conjecture that the above-mentioned pairs of Chinese words were formerly distinguished by derivative syllables or flexional endings (see below, p. 373) which have now disappeared without leaving any traces behind them except in the tones. This hypothesis is perhaps rendered more probable by what seems to be an established fact--that one of the tones has arisen through the dropping of final stopped consonants (_p_, _t_, _k_).

However this may be, the death-blow was given to the dogma of the primitiveness of Chinese speech by Ernst Kuhn’s lecture _Ueber Herkunft und Sprache der Transgangetischen Völker_ (Munich, 1883). He compares Chinese with the surrounding languages of Tibet, Burmah and Siam, which are certainly related to Chinese and have essentially the same structure; they are isolating, have no flexion, and word order is their chief grammatical instrument. But the laws of word order prove to be different in these several languages, and Kuhn draws the incontrovertible conclusion that it is impossible that any one of these laws of word position should have been the original one; for that would imply that the other nations have changed it without the least reason and at a risk of terrible confusion. The only likely explanation is that these differences are the outcome of a former state of greater freedom. But if the ancestral speech had a free word order, to be at all intelligible it must have been possessed of other grammatical appliances than are now found in the derived tongues; in other words, it must have indicated the relations of words to each other by something like our derivatives or flexions.

To the result thus established by Kuhn, that Chinese cannot have had a fixed word order from the beginning, we seem also to be led if we ask the question, Is primitive man likely to have arranged his words in this way? A Chinese sentence, according to Gabelentz (Spr 426), is arranged with the same logical precision as the direction on an English envelope, where the most specific word is placed first, and each subsequent word is like a box comprising all that precedes--only that a Chinaman would reverse the order, beginning with the most general word and then in due order specializing. Now, is it probable that primitive man, that unkempt, savage being, who did not yet deserve the proud generic name of _homo sapiens_, but would be better termed, if not _homo insipiens_, at best _homo incipiens_--is it probable that this _urmensch_, who was little better than an _unmensch_, should have been able at once to arrange his words, or, what amounts to the same thing, his thoughts, in such a perfect order? I incline to believe rather that logical, orderly thinking and speaking have only been attained by mankind after a long and troublesome struggle, and that the grammatical expedient of a fixed word order has come to Chinese as to European languages through a gradual development in which other, less logical and more material grammatical appliances have in course of time been given up.

We have thus arrived at a conception of Chinese which is _toto cælo_ removed from the view formerly current. The Chinese language can no longer be adduced in support of the hypothesis that our Aryan languages, or all human languages, started at first as a grammarless speech consisting of monosyllabic root-words.

XIX.--§ 5. Recent Investigations.

I have reprinted the above sketch of Chinese, with a few very insignificant verbal changes, as I wrote it about thirty years ago, because I think that the main reasoning is just as valid now as then, and because everything I have since then read about this interesting language has only confirmed the opinion I ventured to express after what was certainly a very insufficient study. Chinese pronunciation, including its tones, may now be studied in two excellent books, dealing with two different dialects--Daniel Jones and Kwing Tong Woo, _A Cantonese Phonetic Reader_, London, 1912, and Bernhard Karlgren, _A Mandarin Phonetic Reader in the Pekinese Dialect_, Upsala, Leipzig and Paris, 1917 (Archives d’Études Orientales, vol. 13). Karlgren is also the author of _Études sur la Phonologie Chinoise_ (ib. vol. 15, 1915-19), in which he deals with the history of Chinese sounds and the reconstruction of the old pronunciation in a thoroughly scholarly manner on the basis of an intimate knowledge of spoken and written Chinese, and in _Ordet och pennan i mittens rike_ (Stockholm, 1918), he has given a masterly popular sketch of the structure of the Chinese language and its system of writing.

Of the greatest importance for our purposes is the same scholar’s recent brilliant discovery of a real case distinction in the oldest Chinese. In classical Chinese there are four pronouns of the first person (I, we) which have always been considered as absolutely synonymous. But Karlgren shows that the two of them which occur as the usual forms in Confucius’s conversations are so far from being used indiscriminately that one is nearly always a nominative and the other an objective case; the exceptions are not numerous and are easily explained. The present Mandarin pronunciation of the first is [u], of the second either [uo] or [ŋo]. But if we go back to the sixth century of our era we are able with certainty to say that the pronunciation of the former was [ŋuo], and of the latter [ŋa]. This, then, constitutes a real declension. Now, in the second person Karlgren is also able to point out a distinction of two pronouns, though not quite so clearly marked as in the first person, the objective showing here a greater tendency to encroach on the nominative (Karlgren here ingeniously adduces the parallel from our languages that the first person has retained the suppletive system _ego: me_, while the second uses the same stem _tu: te_). The oldest Chinese thus has the following case flexion:

1st Per. 2nd Per. Nom. ŋuo nźiwo Obj. ŋa nźia

(See “Le Proto-chinois, langue flexionnelle,” _Journal Asiatique_, 1920, 205 ff.).[91]

XIX.--§ 6. Roots Again.

To return to roots. The influence of Indian grammar on European linguists with regard to the theory of roots extended also to the meanings assigned to roots, which were all of them of verbal character, and nearly always highly general or abstract, such as ‘breathe, move, be sharp or quick, blow, go,’ etc. The impossibility of imagining anybody expressing himself by means of a language consisting exclusively of such abstracts embarrassed people much less than one would expect: Chinese, of course, has plenty of words for concrete objects.

The usual assumption was that there was one definite root period in which all the roots were created, and after which this form of activity ceased. But Whitney demurred to this (M 36), saying that E. _preach_ and _cost_ may be considered new roots, though ultimately coming from Lat. _præ-dicare_ and _con-stare_: these old compounds are felt as units, “reducing to the semblance of roots elements that are really derivative or compound.” As Whitney goes no further than to establish the _semblance_ of new roots, he might be taken as an adherent rather than as an opponent of the theory he objects to. But, as a matter of fact, new words _are_ created in modern languages, and if they form the basis of derived words, we may really speak of new roots (_pun--punning_, _punster_; _fun--funny_; etc.). Why not say that we have a French root _roul_ in _rouler_, _roulement_, _roulage_, _roulier_, _rouleau_, _roulette_, _roulis_? This only becomes unjustifiable if we think that the establishment of this root gives us the ultimate explanation of these words; for then the linguistic historian steps in with the objection that the words have been formed, not from a root, but from a real word, which is not even in itself a primary word, but a derivative, Lat. _rotula_, a diminutive of _rota_ ‘wheel.’ (I take this example from Bréal M 407). To the popular instinct _sorrow_ and _sorry_ are undoubtedly related to one another, and we may say that they contain a root _sorr-_; but a thousand years ago they had nothing to do with one another, and belonged to different roots: OE. _sorg_ ‘care’ and _sārig_ ‘wounded, afflicted.’ If all traces of Latin and Greek were lost, a linguist would have no more scruples about connecting _scene_ with _see_ than most illiterate Englishmen have now. Who will vouch that many Aryan roots may not have originated at various times through similar processes as these new roots _preach_, _cost_, _roul_, _sorr_, _see_?

The proper definition of a root seems to be: what is common to a certain number of words felt by the popular instinct of the speakers as etymologically belonging together. In this sense we may of course speak of roots at any stage of any language, and not only at a hypothetical initial stage. In some cases these roots may be used as separate words (E. _preach_, _fun_, etc., Fr. _roul_ = what is spelt _roule_, _roules_, _roulent_); in other cases this is impossible (Lat. _am_ in _amo_, _amor_, _amicus_; E. _sorr_); in many cases because the common element cannot, for phonetic reasons, be easily pronounced, as when E. _drink, drank, drunk_ or _sit, sat, seat, set_ are naturally felt to belong together, though it is impossible to state the root except in some formula like _dr.nk_, _s.t_, where the dot stands for some vowel. Similar considerations may be adduced with regard to the consonants if we want to establish what is felt to be common in _give_ and _gift_ (_gi_ + labiodental spirant) or in _speak_ and _speech_, etc.; but this need not detain us here.

In my view, then, the root is something real and important, though not always tangible. And as its form is not always easy to state or pronounce, so must its meaning, as a rule, be somewhat vague and indeterminate, for what is common to several ideas must of course be more general and abstract than either of the more special ideas thus connected; it is also natural that it will often be necessary to state the signification of a root in terms of verbal ideas, for these are more general and abstract than nominal ideas. But roots thus conceived belong to any and all periods, and we must cease to speak of the earliest period of human speech as ‘the root period.’

XIX.--§ 7. The Agglutination Theory.

According to the received theory (see above, § 1) some of the roots became gradually attached to other roots and lost their independence, so as to become finally formatives fused with the root. This theory, generally called the agglutination theory, contains a good deal of truth; but we can only accept it with three important provisos, namely, first, that there has never been one definite period in which those languages which are now flexional were wholly agglutinative, the process of fusion being liable to occur at any time; second, that the component parts which become formatives are not at first roots, but real words; and third, that this process is not the only one by which formatives may develop: it may be called the rectilinear process, but by the side of that we have also more circuitous courses, which are no less important in the life of languages for being less obvious.

In the process of coalescence or integration there are many possible stages, which may be denominated figuratively by such expressions as that two words are placed together (that is--in non-figurative language--pronounced after one another), tied together, knit together, glued together (‘agglutinated’), soldered together, welded together, fused together or amalgamated. What is really the most important part of the process is the degree in which one of the components loses its independence, phonetically and semantically.

As ‘agglutination’ is thus only one intermediate stage in a continuous process, it would be better to have another name for the whole theory of the origin of formatives than ‘the agglutination theory,’ and I propose therefore to use the term ‘coalescence theory.’ The usual name also fixes the attention too exclusively on the so-called agglutinative languages, and if we take the formatives of such a language as Turkish, as in _sev-mek_ ‘to love,’ _sev-il-mek_ ‘to be loved,’ _sev-dir-mek_ ‘to cause to love,’ _sev-dir-il-mek_ ‘to be made to love,’ _sev-ish-mek_ ‘to love one another,’ _sev-ish-dir-il-mek_ ‘to be made to love one another’--who will vouch that these formatives were all of them originally independent words? Those who are most competent to have an opinion on the matter seem nowadays inclined to doubt it and to reject much of what was current in the description of these languages given by the earlier scholars; see, especially, the interesting final chapter of V. Grønbech, _Forstudier til tyrkisk lydhistorie_ (København, 1902).

XIX.--§ 8. Coalescence.

The various degrees of coalescence, and the coexistence at the same linguistic period of these various degrees, may be illustrated by the old example, English _un-tru-th-ful-ly_, and by German _un-be-stimm-bar-keit_. Let us look a little at each of these formatives. The only one that can still be used as an independent word is _ful_(l). From the collocation in ‘I have my hand full of peas’ the transition is easy to ‘a handful of peas,’ where the accentual subordination of _full_ to _hand_ paves the way for the combination becoming one word instead of two: this is not accomplished till it becomes possible to put the plural sign at the end (_handfuls_, thus also _basketfuls_ and others), while in less familiar combinations the _s_ is still placed in the middle (_bucketsful_, two _donkeysful_ of children, see MEG ii. 2. 42). In these substantives _-ful_ keeps its full vowel [u]. But in adjectival compounds, such as _peaceful_, _awful_, there is a colloquial pronunciation with obscured or omitted vowel [-fəl, -fl], in which the phonetic connexion with the full word is thus weakened; the semantic connexion, too, is loosened when it becomes possible to form such words as _dreadful_, _bashful_, in which it is not possible to use the definition ‘full of ...’ Here, then, the transition from a word to a derivative suffix is complete.

English _-hood_, _-head_ in _childhood_, _maidenhead_ also is originally an independent word, found in OE. and ME. in the form _had_, meaning ‘state, condition,’ Gothic _haidus_. In German it has two forms, _-heit_, as in _freiheit_, and _-keit_, whose _k_ was at first the final sound of the adjective in _ewigkeit_, MHG. _ewecheit_, but was later felt as part of the suffix and then transferred to cases in which the stem had no _k_, as in _tapferkeit_, _ehrbarkeit_.

The suffix _-ly_ is from _lik_, which was a substantive meaning ‘form, appearance, body’ (‘a dead body’ in Dan. _lig_, E. _lich_ in _lichgate_); _manlik_ thus is ‘having the form or appearance of a man’; the adjective _like_ originally was _ge-lic_ ‘having the same appearance with’ (as in Lat. _con-form-is_). In compounds _-lik_ was shortened into _-ly_: in some cases we still have competing forms like _gentlemanlike_ and _gentlemanly_. The ending was, and is still, used extensively in adjectives; if it is now also used to turn adjectives into adverbs, as in _truthful-ly_, _luxurious-ly_, this is a consequence of the two OE. forms, adj. _-lic_ and adv. _-lice_, having phonetically fallen together.

It may perhaps be doubtful whether the G. suffix _-bar_ (OHG. _-bari_, OE. _bære_) was ever really an independent word, but its connexion with the verb _beran_, E. _bear_, cannot be doubted: _fruchtbar_ is what bears fruit (cf. OE. _æppelbære_ ‘bearing apples’), but the connexion was later loosened, and such adjectives as _ehrbar_, _kostbar_, _offenbar_ have little or nothing left of the original meaning of the suffix. The two prefixes in our examples, _un-_ and _be-_, are differentiated forms of the old negative _ne_ and the preposition _by_, and the only affix in our two long words which is thus left unexplained is _-th_, which makes _true_ into _truth_ and is found also in _length_, _health_, etc.

XIX.--§ 9. Flexional Endings.

There can be no doubt, therefore, that some at any rate of our suffixes and prefixes go back to independent words which have been more or less weakened to become derivative formatives. But does the same hold good with those endings which we are accustomed to term flexional endings? The answer certainly must be in the affirmative with regard to _some_ endings.

Thus the Scandinavian passive originates in a coalescence of the active verb and the pronoun _sik_: Old Norse _(þeir) finna sik_ (‘they find themselves’ or ‘each other’), gradually becomes one word _(þeir) finnask_, later _finnast_, _finnaz_, Swedish _(de) finnas_, Dan. _(de) findes_ ‘they are found.’ In Old Icelandic the pronoun is still to some extent felt as such, though formally an indistinguishable part of the verb; thus combinations like the following are very frequent: _Bolli kvaz þessu ráða vilja_ = _kvað sik vilja_; “Bolli dixit se velle: B. said that he would have his own way” (Laxd. 55). In Danish a distinction can sometimes be made between a reflexive and a purely passive employment: _de slås_ with a short vowel is ‘they fight (one another),’ but with a long vowel ‘they are beaten.’ A similar coalescence is taking place in Russian, where _sja_ ‘himself’ (myself, etc.) dwindles down to a suffixed _s_: _kazalos_ ‘it showed itself, turned out.’

A similar case is the Romanic future: It. _finiro_, Sp. _finire_, Fr. _finirai_, from _finire habeo_ (_finir ho_, etc.), originally ‘I have to finish.’ Before the coalescence was complete, it was possible to insert a pronoun, Old Sp. _cantar-te-hé_ ‘I shall sing to you.’

A third case in point is the suffixed definite article, if we are allowed to consider that as a kind of flexion: Old Norse _mannenn_ (_manninn_) accusative ‘the man,’ _landet_ (_landit_) ‘the land’; Dan. _manden_, _landet_, from _mann_, _land_ + the demonstrative pronoun _enn_, neuter _et_. Rumanian _domnul_ ‘the lord,’ from Lat. _dominu(m) illu(m)_, is another example.

XIX.--§ 10. Validity of the Theory.

Now, does this kind of explanation admit of universal application--in other words, were all our derivative affixes and flexional endings originally independent words before they were ‘glued’ to or fused with the main word? This has been the prevalent, one might almost say the orthodox, view of all the leading linguists, who may be mustered in formidable array in defence of the agglutination theory.[92]

Against the universality of this origin for formatives I adduced in my former work (1894, p. 66 f., cf. _Kasus_, 1891, p. 36) four reasons, which I shall here restate in a different order and in a fuller form.

(1) Nothing can be proved with regard to the ultimate genesis of flexion in general from the adduced examples, for in all of them the elements were already fully flexional before the coalescence (cf. ON. _finnask_, _fannsk_; It. _finirò_, _finirai_, _finira_; ON. _maðrenn_, _mannenn_, _mansens_, etc.). What they show, then, is really nothing but the growth of new flexional formations on an old flexional soil, and it might be imagined that the fusion would not have taken place, or not so completely, if the minds of the speakers had not been already prepared to accept formations of this character. I do not, however, attach much importance to this argument, and turn to those that are more cogent.

(2) The number of actual forms proved beyond a doubt to have originated through coalescence is comparatively small. It is true that not a few derivative syllables were originally independent; still, if we compare them with the number of those for which no such origin has been proved or even proposed, we find that the proportion is very small indeed. In the list of English suffixes enumerated in Sweet’s _Grammar_, only eleven can be traced back to independent words, while 74 are not thus explicable. Anyone going through the countless suffixes enumerated in the second volume of Brugmann’s _Vergleichende Grammatik_ will, I think, be struck with the impossibility of any great number of them being traced back to words in the same way as _hood_, etc., above: their forms and, still more, their vague spheres of meaning, and on the whole their manner of application, distinctly speak against such an origin.

As to real flexional endings traceable to words, their number is even comparatively smaller than that of derivative suffixes; the three or four instances named above are everywhere appealed to, but are there so many more than these? And are they numerous enough to justify so general an assertion? My impression is that the basis for the induction is very far from sufficient.

(3) This argument is strengthened when we are able to point out instances in which, as a matter of fact, flexional endings have arisen in a way that is totally opposed to the agglutinative, which then must renounce all claims to be the _only_ possible way for a language to arrive at flexional formatives. See below (§ 13) on Secretion.

(4) Assuming the theory to be true, we should expect much greater regularity, both in formal (morphological) and in semantic (syntactic) respect than we actually find in the old Aryan languages; for if one definite element was added to signify one definite modification of the idea, we see no reason why it should not have been added to all words in the same way. As a matter of fact, the Romanic future, the Scandinavian passive voice and definite article present much greater regularity than is found in the flexion of nouns and verbs in old Aryan.

XIX.--§ 11. Irregularity Original.

It will be objected that the irregularity which we find in these old languages is of later growth, and that, in fact, flexion, as Schuchardt says, is “anomal gewordene agglutination.” Whitney said that “each suffix has its distinct meaning and office, and is applied in a whole class of analogous words” (L. 254), and in reading Schleicher’s _Compendium_ one gains the impression that the old Aryan sounds and forms were like a regiment of well-trained soldiers marching along in the best military style, while all irregularities were the result of later decay in each language separately. But the trend of the whole scientific development of the last fifty years has been in the direction of demonstrating more and more irregularity in the original forms: where formerly only one ending was assumed for the same case, etc., now several are assumed. (See, e.g., Walde in Streitberg’s _Gesch._, 2. 194, Thumb, ib. 2. 69.) And as with the forms, so also with the meanings and applications of the forms. Madvig as early as 1857 (p. 27. Kl 202) had seen that the signification of the grammatical forms must originally have been extremely vague and fluctuating, but most scholars went on imagining that each case, each tense, each mood had originally stood for something quite settled and definite, until gradually the progress of linguistics made away with that conception point by point. In place of the belief that the original Aryan verb had a definite system of tense forms, it is now generally assumed that different ‘aspects’ (‘aktionsarten’), somewhat like those of Slav verbs, were indicated, and that the notion of ‘time’ differences was only afterwards developed out of the notion of aspect: but if we compare the divisions and definitions of these aspects given by various scholars, we see how essentially vague this notion is; instead of being a model system of nice logical distinctions, the original condition must rather have been one in which such notions as duration, completion, result, beginning, repetition were indistinctly found as germs, from which such ideas as perfect and imperfect, past and present, were finally evolved with greater and greater clearness.

Similar remarks apply to moods. All attempts at finding out, deductively or inductively, the fundamental notion (grundbegriff) attached to such a mood as the subjunctive have failed: it is impossible to establish one original, sharply circumscribed sphere of usage, from which all the various, partly conflicting, usages in the actually existing languages can be derived. The usual theory is that there existed one true subjunctive, characterized by long thematic vowels _-ē-_, _-ā-_, _-ō-_, and distinct from that an optative, characterized by a formative _-iē-_: _-ī-_,[93] and that these two were fused in Latin. But, as Oertel and Morris have shown in their valuable article “An Examination of the Theories regarding the Nature and Origin of Indo-European Inflection” (_Harvard Studies in Classical Philol._ XVI, 1905) it is probably safer to assume for the Indo-European period substantial identity of meaning in the modal formatives _iē_: _ī_ and the long thematic vowels _-ē-_, _-ā-_, _-ō-_, which were then continued undifferentiated in Latin, while on the one hand the Germanic branch has practically discarded the forms with long thematic vowel and confined itself to the _i_ suffix, and on the other hand two branches, Greek and Indo-Iranic, have availed themselves of the formal difference and separated a ‘subjunctive’ and an ‘optative’ mood.

XIX.--§ 12. Coalescence Theory dropped.

In the historical part I have already mentioned some instances of coalescence explanations of Aryan forms which have been abandoned by most scholars, such as the theory that the _r_ of the Latin passive is a disguised _se_, which would agree very well with the Scandinavian passive, but falls to the ground when one remembers that corresponding forms are found in Keltic, where the transition from _s_ to _r_ is otherwise unknown: these forms are now believed to be related to some _r_ forms found in Sanskrit, but there not possessed of any passive signification, this latter being thus a comparatively late acquisition of Keltic and Italic: these two branches turning an existing, non-meaning consonant to excellent use in their flexional system and generalizing it in the new application.[94]

The explanation of the ‘weak’ Gothonic preterit from a coalescence of _did_ (_loved_ = _love did_) was long one of the strongholds of the agglutination theory, Bopp’s original collocation of these forms with other forms which could not be thus explained (see above 51) having passed into oblivion. Now we have Collitz’s comprehensive book _Das schwache Präteritum_, 1912, in which the formative consonant is shown to have been Aryan _t_, and the close correspondence not only with the passive participle, but also with the verbal nouns in _-ti_ is duly emphasized.

The impossibility of explaining the Latin perfect in _-vi_ from composition with _fui_ has been demonstrated by Merguet (see Walde in Streitberg’s _Gesch._, 2. 220). Instead of this rectilinear explanation, scholars now incline to assume an intricate play of various analogical influences starting from a pre-ethnic perfect in _w_ in isolated instances.

Many have explained the case ending _-s_ as a coalesced demonstrative pronoun _sa_ or, as it is now given, _so_; the difficulty that the same _s_ denotes now the nominative and now the genitive was got over by Curtius (C 12) by the assumption that _sa_ was added at two distinct periods, and that each period made a different use of the addition, though Curtius does not tell us how one or the other function could be evolved from such a pronoun. The latest attempt at explanation, which reaches me as I am writing this chapter, is by Hermann Möller (KZ 49. 219): according to him the common Aryan and Semitic nominative ended in _o_ and the genitive in _e_, but to this was added in the masculine, and more rarely in the feminine, the pronoun _s_ as a definite article, so that the primitive form corresponding to Lat. _lupus_ meant ‘the wolf’ and _lupu_ ‘(a) wolf’; later the _s_-less form was given up, and _lupus_ came to be used for both ‘the wolf’ and ‘wolf’ (similarly presumably in the genitive, if we translate the presumed original forms into Latin _lupis_ ‘the wolf’s’ and _lupi_ ‘(a) wolf’s,’ later _lupi_ in both functions). In Semitic, inversely, an element _m_, corresponding to the Aryan accusative ending, was added as an _in_definite article, the _m_-less form thus becoming definite, but in the oldest Babylonian-Assyrian the distinction has been given up, and the form in _m_ is (like the Latin form in _s_) used both definitely and indefinitely. Ingenious as these constructions are, the whole theory seems to me highly artificial, and it is difficult to imagine that both Aryans and Semites, after having evolved such a valuable distinction as that between ‘the wolf’ and ‘a wolf,’ expressed by simple means, should have wilfully given it up--to evolve it again in a later period.[95] Fortunately one is allowed to confess one’s ignorance of the origin of the case endings _s_ and _m_, but if I were on pain of death to choose between Möller’s hypothesis and the suggestion thrown out by Humboldt (Versch 129), that the light (high-pitched) _s_ symbolized the living (personal) and active (the subject), and the dark (low-pitched) _m_ the lifeless (neutral) and passive (the object), I should certainly prefer the latter explanation.

Hirt (GDS 37) also thinks that the _s_ found in Aryan cases is an originally independent word, only he thinks that this _se_, _so_ was not originally a demonstrative pronoun, but the particle, which with the extension _i_ is found in Gothic _sai_ ‘ecce,’ and as it can thus be compared with the particle _c_ in Lat. _hic_, it is clear that it might be added in all cases--and as a matter of fact Hirt finds it in six different cases in the singular and in all cases in the plural except the genitive. Hirt makes no attempt at explaining how these various case-forms have come to acquire the signification (function) with which we find them in the oldest documents; “the _s_ element had nothing to do with the denotation of any case, number or gender, and only after it had been added to some cases and not to others could it come to be distinctive of cases” (p. 39). In other words, his explanation explains just nothing at all. The same is true with regard to the ‘particles’ _om_ or _em_, _e_, _o_, _i_, which he thinks were added in other cases, and when he ends (p. 42) by saying that “this must be sufficient to give a glimpse of the way in which Aryan flexion originated,” the only thing we have really seen is the haphazard way in which this flexion is formed, and the impossibility at present of arriving at a fully satisfactory explanation of these things. I should especially demur to the two suppositions underlying Hirt’s theory that Aryan had at one period a completely flexionless structure, and that the same sound when occurring in various cases must have had the same origin: it seems much more probable to me that the _s_ of the nominative and the _s_ of the genitive were not at first identical.[96]

That item of the coalescence theory which probably appealed most to the fancy of scholars and laymen alike was the explanation of the personal endings in the verbs from the personal pronouns: we have an _m_ in the first person of the _mi_-verbs (_esmi_) and in the pronoun _me_, etc., and we have a _t_ in the third person (_esti_) and in a third-person pronoun or demonstrative (_to_); it is, therefore, quite natural to think that _esmi_ is simply the root _es_ ‘to be’ + the pronoun _mi_ ‘I,’ and _esti_ _es_ + the other pronoun, and to extend this view to the other persons. And yet not even this has been allowed to stand unchallenged by later disrespectful linguists, headed by A. H. Sayce (Techmer’s _Zeitschr. f. allg. Sprwiss._ i. 22) and Hirt. As a matter of fact, the theory is based exclusively on the above-mentioned correspondence in the first and third persons singular, while the dual and plural endings do not at all agree with the corresponding personal pronouns and the endings of the second person can only be compared with the pronoun through the employment of phonological tricks unworthy of a scientific linguist. Even in the first person the correspondence is not complete, for besides _-mi_ we have other endings: _-m_, which cannot be very well considered a shortened _-mi_ (and which agrees, as Sayce remarks, much more closely with the accusative ending of nouns), _-o_ and _-a_, neither of which can be explained from any known pronoun. There is thus nothing for it except to say, as Brugmann does (KG § 770): “The origin of the personal endings is not clear”; cf. also Misteli 47: “The relations between personal endings and the independent personal pronouns must be much more evident to justify this view.... The Aryan language offers direct evidence against the assumption that a sentence has been thus drawn together, because it uses in the verbal forms of the first and third person sg. pronominal stems which are otherwise employed only as objects, and, moreover, would here place the subject after the predicate, though in sentences it observes the opposite order.” Meillet expresses himself very categorically (_Bulletin de la Soc. de Ling._ 1911, 143): “Scarcely any linguist who has studied Aryan languages would venture to affirm that *_-mi_ of the type Gr. _fēmi_ is an old personal pronoun.”

The impression left on us by all these cases is that many of the earlier explanations by agglutination have proved unsatisfactory, and that linguists are nowadays inclined either to leave the forms entirely unexplained or else to admit less rectilinear developments, in which we see the speakers of the old languages groping tentatively after means of expression and finding them only by devious and circuitous courses. It is, of course, difficult to classify such explanations, and the agglutination or coalescence theory has to be supplemented by various other kinds of explanation; but I think one of these, which has not received its legitimate share of attention, is important and distinctive enough to have its own name, and I propose to term it the ‘secretion’ theory.

XIX.--§ 13. Secretion.

By secretion I understand the phenomenon that one integral portion of a word comes to acquire a grammatical signification which it had not at first, and is then felt as something added to the word itself. Secretion thus is a consequence of a ‘metanalysis’ (above, Ch. X § 2); it shows its full force when the element thus secreted comes to be added to other words not originally possessing this element.

A clear instance is offered in the history of some English possessive pronouns. In Old English _min_ and _þin_ the _n_ is kept throughout as part and parcel of the words themselves, the other cases having such forms as _mine_, _minum_, _minre_, exactly as in German _mein_, _meine_, _meinem_, _meiner_, etc. But in Middle English the endings were gradually dropped, and _min_ and _þin_ for a short time became the only forms. Soon, however, _n_ was dropped before substantives beginning with a consonant, but was retained in other positions (_my_ father--_mine_ uncle, it is _mine_); then the former form was transferred also to those cases in which the pronoun was used (as an adjunct) before words beginning with vowels (_my_ father, _my_ uncle--it is _mine_). The distinction between _my_ and _mine_, _thy_ and _thine_, which was originally a purely phonetic one, exactly like that between _a_ and _an_ (_a_ father, _an_ uncle), gradually acquired a functional value, and now serves to distinguish an adjunct from a principal (or, to use the terms of some grammars, a conjoint from an absolute form); _my_ came to be looked upon as the proper form, while the _n_ of _mine_ was felt as an ending serving to indicate the function as a principal word. That this is really the instinctive feeling of the people is shown by the fact that in dialectal and vulgar speech the same _n_ is added to _his_, _her_, _your_ and _their_, to form the new pronouns _hisn_, _hern_, _yourn_, _theirn_: “He that prigs what isn’t hisn, when he’s cotch’d, is sent to prison. She that prigs what isn’t hern, At the treadmill takes a turn.”

Another instance of secretion is _-en_ as a plural ending in E. _oxen_, G. _ochsen_, etc. Here originally _n_ belonged to the word in all cases and all numbers, just as much as the preceding _s_; _ox_ was an _n_ stem in the same way as, for instance, Lat. (homo), homi_n_em, homi_n_is, etc., or Gr. kuō_n_, ku_n_a, ku_n_os, etc., are _n_ stems. In Gothic _n_ is found in most of the cases of similar _n_ stems. In OE. the nom. is _oxa_, the other cases in the sg. _oxan_, pl. _oxan_ (_oxen_), _oxnum_, _oxena_, but in ME. the _n_-less form is found throughout the singular (gen. analogically _oxes_), and the plural only kept _-n_. Thus also a great many other words, e.g. (I give the plural forms) _apen_, _haren_, _sterren_ (stars), _tungen_, _siden_, _eyen_, which all of them belonged to the _n_ declension in OE. When _-en_ had thus become established as a plural sign, it was added analogically to words which were not originally _n_ stems, e.g. ME. _caren_, _synnen_, _treen_ (OE. _cara_, _synna_, _treow_), and this ending even seemed for some time destined to be the most usual plural ending in the South of England, until it was finally supplanted by _-s_, which had been the prevalent ending in the North; _eyen_, _foen_, _shoen_ were for a time in competition with _eyes_, _foes_, _shoes_, and now _-n_ is only found in _oxen_ (and _children_). In German to-day things are very much as they were in Southern ME.: _-en_ is kept extensively in the old _n_ stems and is added to some words which had formerly other endings, e.g. _hirten_, _soldaten_, _thaten_. The result is that now plurality is indicated by an ending which had formerly no such function (which, indeed, had no function at all); for if we look upon the actual language, _oxen_ (G. _ochsen_) is = _ox_ (_ochs_) singular + the plural ending _-en_; only we must not on any account imagine that the form was originally thus welded together (agglutinated)--and if in G. _soldaten_ we may speak of _-en_ being glued on to _soldat_, this ending is not, and has never been, an independent word, but is an originally insignificative part secreted by other words.

A closely similar case is the plural ending _-er_. The consonant originally was _s_, as seen, for instance, in the Gr. and Lat. nom. _genos_, _genus_, gen. Gr. _gene(s)os_, _genous_, Lat. _generis_ for older _genesis_. In Gothonic languages _s_, in accordance with a regular sound shift in this case, became _r_ (through _z_) whenever it was retained, but in the nom. sg. it was dropped, and thus we have in OE. sg. _lamb_, _lambe_, _lambes_, but in the pl. _lambru_, _lambrum_, _lambra_. In English only few words show traces of this flexion, thus OE. _cild_, pl. _cildru_, ME. _child_, _childer_, whence, with an added _-en_, our modern _children_. But in German the class had much more vitality, and we have not only words belonging to it of old, like _lamm_, pl. _lämmer_, _rind_, _rinder_, but also gradually more and more words which originally belonged to other classes, but adopted this ending after it had become a real sign of the plural number, thus _wörter_, _bücher_.

There is one trait that should be noticed as highly characteristic of these instances of secretion, that is, that the occurrence of the endings originating in this way seems from the first regulated by the purest accident, seen from the point of view of the speakers: they are found in some words, but not in others, whereas the endings treated of under the heading Coalescence are added much more uniformly to the whole of the vocabulary. But as a similarly irregular or arbitrary distribution is met with in the case of nearly all flexional endings in the oldest stages of languages belonging to our family of speech, the probability is that most of those endings which it is impossible for us to trace back to their first beginnings have originated through secretion or similar processes, rather than through coalescence of independent words or roots.

XIX.--§ 14. Extension of Suffixes.

A special subdivision of secretion comprises those cases in which a suffix takes over some sound or sounds from words to which it was added. Clear instances are found in French, where in consequence of the mutescence of a final consonant some suffixes to the popular instinct must seem to begin with a consonant, though originally this did not belong to the suffix. Thus _laitier_, at first formed from _lait_ + _ier_, now came to be apprehended as = _lai(t)_ + _tier_, and _cabaretier_ as _cabare(t)_ + _tier_, and the new suffix was then used to form such new words as _bijoutier_, _ferblantier_, _cafetier_ and others. In the same way we have _tabatière_, where we should expect _tabaquière_, and the predilection for the extended form of the suffix is evidently strengthened by the syllable division in frequent formations like _ren-tier_, _por-tier_, _por-tière_, _charpen-tier_. In old Gothonic we have similar extensions of suffixes, when instead of _-ing_ we get _-ling_, starting from words like OHG. _ediling_ from _edili_, ON. _vesling_ from _vesall_, OE. _lytling_ from _lytel_, etc. Consequently we have in English quite a number of words with the extended ending: _duckling_, _gosling_, _hireling_, _underling_, etc. In Gothic some words formed with _-assus_, such as _þiudin-assus_ ‘kingdom,’ were apprehended as formed with _-nassus_, and in all the related languages the suffix is only known with the initial _n_; thus in E. _-ness_: _hardness_, _happiness_, _eagerness_, etc.; G. _-keit_ with its _k_ from adjectives in _-ic_ has already been mentioned (376). From _criticism_, _Scotticism_, we have _witti-cism_, and Milton has _witticaster_ on the analogy of _criticaster_, where the suffix of course is _-aster_, as in _poetaster_. Instead of _-ist_ we also find in some cases _-nist_: _tobacconist_, _lutenist_ (cf. _botan-ist_, _mechan-ist_).

To form a new word it is often sufficient that some existing word is felt in a vague way to be made up of something + an ending, the latter being subsequently added on to another word. In Fr. _mérovingien_ the _v_ of course is legitimate, as the adjective is derived from Mérovée, Merowig, but this word was made the starting-point for the word designating the succeeding dynasty: _carlovingien_, where _v_ is simply taken over as part of the suffix; nowadays historians try to be more ‘correct’ and prefer the adjective _carolingien_, which was unknown to Littré. _Oligarchy_ is _olig_ + _archy_, but for the opposite notion the word _poligarchy_ or _polygarchy_ was framed from _poly_ and the last two syllables of _oli-garchy_, and though now scholars have made _polyarchy_ the usual form, the word with the intrusive _g_ was the common form two hundred years ago in English, and corresponding forms are found in French, Spanish and other languages. _Judgmatical_ is made on the pattern of _dogmatical_, though there the stem is _dogmat-_. In jocular German _schwachmatikus_ ‘valetudinarian,’ we have the same suffix with a different colouring, taken from _rheumatikus_ (thus also Dan. _svagmatiker_). Swift does not hesitate to speak of a _sextumvirate_, which suggests _triumvirate_ better than _sexvirate_ would have done; and Bernard Shaw once writes “his equipage (or autopage)”--evidently starting from the popular, but erroneous, belief that _equipage_ is derived from Lat. _equus_ and then dividing the word _equi_ + _page_. Cf. _Scillonian_ from _Scilly_ on account of _Devonian_ as if this were _Dev_ + _onian_ instead of _Devon_ + _ian_.

XIX.--§ 15. Tainting of Suffixes.

It will be seen that in some of these instances the suffix has appropriated to itself not only part of the sound of the stem, but also part of its signification. This is seen very clearly in the case of _chandelier_, in French formed from _chandelle_ ‘candle’ with the suffix _-ier_, of rather vague signification, ‘anything connected with, or having to do with’; in English the word is used for a hanging branched frame to hold a number of lights; consequently a similar apparatus for gas-burners was denominated _gaselier_ (_gasalier_, _gasolier_), and with the introduction of electricity the formation has even been extended to _electrolier_. _Vegetarian_ is from the stem _veget-_ with added _-ari-an_, which ending has no special connexion with the notion of eating or food, but recently we have seen the new words _fruitarian_ and _nutarian_, meaning one whose food consists (exclusively or chiefly) in fruits and nuts. Cf. _solemncholy_, which according to Payne is in use in Alabama, framed evidently on _melancholy_, analyzed in a way not approved by Greek scholars. The whole ending of _septentrionalis_ (from the name of the constellation _Septem triones_, the seven oxen) is used to form the opposite: _meridi-onalis_.

A similar case of ‘tainting’ is found in recent English. The NED, in the article on the suffix _-eer_, remarks that “in many of the words so formed there is a more or less contemptuous implication,” but does not explain this, and has not remarked that it is found only in words ending in _-teer_ (from words in _-t_). I think this contemptuous implication starts from _garreteer_ and _crotcheteer_ (perhaps also _pamphleteer_ and _privateer_); after these were formed the disparaging words _sonneteer_, _pulpiteer_. During the war (1916, I think) the additional word _profiteer_[97] came into use, but did not find its way into the dictionaries till 1919 (Cassell’s). And only the other day I read in an American publication a new word of the same calibre: “Against _patrioteering_, against fraud and violence ... Mr. Mencken has always nobly and bravely contended.”

XIX.--§ 16. The Classifying Instinct.

Man is a classifying animal: in one sense it may be said that the whole process of speaking is nothing but distributing phenomena, of which no two are alike in every respect, into different classes on the strength of perceived similarities and dissimilarities. In the name-giving process we witness the same ineradicable and very useful tendency to see likenesses and to express similarity in the phenomena through similarity in name. Professor Hempl told me that one of his little daughters, when they had a black kitten which was called _Nig_ (short for Nigger), immediately christened a gray kitten _Grig_ and a brown one _Brownig_. Here we see the genesis of a suffix through a natural process, which has little in common with the gradual weakening of an originally independent word, as in _-hood_ and the other instances mentioned above. In children’s speech similar instances are not unfrequent (cf. Ch. VII § 5); Meringer L 148 mentions a child of 1.7 who had the following forms: _augn_, _ogn_, _agn_, for ‘augen, ohren, haare.’ How many words formed or transformed in the same way must we require in order to speak of a suffix? Shall we recognize one in Romanic _leve_, _greve_ (cf. Fr. _grief_), which took the place of _leve_, _grave_? Here, as Schuchardt aptly remarks, it was not only the opposite signification, but also the fact that the words were frequently uttered shortly after one another, that made one word influence the other.

The classifying instinct often manifests itself in bringing words together in form which have something in common as regards signification. In this way we have smaller classes and larger classes, and sometimes it is impossible for us to say in what way the likeness in form has come about: we can only state the fact that at a given time the words in question have a more or less close resemblance. But in other cases it is easy to see which word of the group has influenced the others or some other. In the examples I am about to give, I have been more concerned to bring together words that exhibit the classifying tendency than to try to find out the impetus which directed the formation of the several groups.

In OE. we have some names of animals in _-gga_: _frogga_, _stagga_, _docga_, _wicga_, now _frog_, _stag_, _dog_, _wig_. _Savour_ and _flavour_ go together, the latter (OFr. _flaur_) having its _v_ from the former. _Groin_, I suppose, has its diphthong from _loin_; the older form was _grine_, _grynd(e)_. _Claw_, _paw_ (earlier _powe_, OFr. _pol_). _Rim_, _brim_. _Hook_, _nook_. _Gruff_, _rough_ (_tough_, _bluff_, _huff_--_miff_, _tiff_, _whiff_). _Fleer_, _leer_, _jeer_. _Twig_, _sprig_. _Munch_, _crunch_ (_lunch_). _Without uttering or muttering a word._ _The trees were lopped and topped._ In old Gothonic the word for ‘eye’ has got its vowel from the word for ‘ear,’ with which it was frequently collocated: _augo(n)_, _auso(n)_, but in the modern languages the two words have again been separated in their phonetic development. In French I suspect that popular instinct will class the words _air_, _terre_, _mer_ together as names of what used to be termed the ‘elements,’ in spite of the different spelling and origin of the sounds. In Russian _kogot’_ ‘griffe’ (claw), _nogot’_ ‘ongle’ (fingernail), and _lokot’_ ‘coude’ (elbow), three names of parts of the body, go together in flexion and accent (Boyer et Speranski, _Manuel de la l. russe_ 33). So do in Latin _culex_ ‘gnat’ and _pulex_ ‘flea.’ _Atrox_, _ferox_. A great many examples have been collected by M. Bloomfield, “On Adaptation of Suffixes in Congeneric Classes of Substantives” (_Am. Journal of Philol._ XII, 1891), from which I take a few. A considerable number of designations of parts of the body were formed with heteroclitic declension as _r-n_ stems (cf. above, XVIII § 2): ‘liver,’ Gr. _hēpar_, _hēpatos_, ‘udder,’ Gr. _outhar_, _outhatos_, ‘thigh,’ Lat. _femur_, _feminis_, further Aryan names for blood, wing, viscera, excrement, etc. Other designations of parts of the body were partly assimilated to this class, having also _n_ stems in the oblique cases, though their nominative was formed in a different way. Words for ‘right’ and ‘left’ frequently influence one another and adopt the same ending, and so do opposites generally: Bloomfield explains the _t_ in the Gothonic word corresponding to E. _white_, where from Sanskr. we should expect _th_, _çveta_, as due to the word for ‘black’; Goth. _hweits_, _swarts_, ON. _hvítr_, _svartr_, etc. A great many names of birds and other animals appear with the same ending, Gr. _glaux_ ‘owl,’ _kokkux_ ‘cuckoo,’ _korax_ ‘crow,’ _ortux_ ‘quail,’ _aix_ ‘goat,’ _alopex_ ‘fox,’ _bombux_ ‘silkworm,’ _lunx_ ‘lynx’ and many others, also some plant-names. Names for winter, summer, day, evening, etc., also to a great extent form groups. In a subsequent article (in IF vi. 66 ff.) Bloomfield pursues the same line of thought and explains likenesses in various words of related signification, in direct opposition to the current explanation through added root-determinatives, as due to blendings (cf. above, Ch. XVII § 6). In Latin the inchoative value of the verbs in _-esco_ is due to the accidentally inherent continuous character of a few verbs of the class: _adolesco_, _senesco_, _cresco_; but the same suffix is also found in the oldest words for ‘asking, wishing, searching,’ retained in E. _ask_, _wish_, G. _forschen_, which thus become a small group linked together by form and meaning alike.

XIX.--§ 17. Character of Suffixes.

There seems undoubtedly to be something accidental or haphazard in most of these transferences of sounds from one word to another through which groups of phonetically and semantically similar words are created; the process works unsystematically, or rather, it consists in spasmodic efforts at regularizing something which is from the start utterly unsystematic. But where conditions are favourable, i.e. where the notional connexion is patent and the phonetic element is such that it can easily be added to many words, the group will tend constantly to grow larger within the natural boundaries given by the common resemblance in signification.

I have no doubt that the vast majority of our formatives, such as suffixes and flexional endings, have arisen in this way through transference of some part, which at first was unmeaning in itself, from one word to another in which it had originally no business, and then to another and another, taking as it were a certain colouring from the words in which it is found, and gradually acquiring a more or less independent signification or function of its own. In long words, such as were probably frequent in primitive speech, and which were to the minds of the speakers as unanalyzable as _marmalade_ or _crocodile_ is to Englishmen nowadays, it would be perhaps most natural to keep the beginning unchanged and to modify the final syllable or syllables to bring about conformity with some word with which it was associated; hence the prevalence of suffixes in our languages, hence also the less systematic character of these suffixes as compared with the prefixes, most of which have originated in independent words, such as adverbs. What is from the merely phonetic point of view the ‘same’ suffix, in different languages may have the greatest variety of meaning, sometimes no discernible meaning at all, and it is in many cases utterly impossible to find out why in one particular language it can be used with one stem and not with another. Anyone going through the collections in Brugmann’s great _Grammar_ will be struck with this purely accidental character of the use of most of the suffixes--a fact which would be simply unthinkable if each of them had originally one definite, well-determined signification, but which is easy to account for on the hypothesis here adopted. And then many of them are not added to ready-made words or ‘roots,’ but form one indivisible whole with the initial part of the word; cf., for instance, the suffix _-le_ in English _squabble_, _struggle_, _wriggle_, _babble_, _mumble_, _bustle_, etc.

XIX.--§ 18. Brugmann’s Theory of Gender.

As I have said, man is a classifying animal, and in his language tends to express outwardly class distinctions which he feels more or less vaguely. One of the most important of these class divisions, and at the same time one of the most difficult to explain, is that of the three ‘genders’ in our Aryan languages. If we are to believe Brugmann, we have here a case of what I have in this work termed secretion. In his well-known paper, “Das Nominalgeschlecht in den indogermanischen Sprachen” (in Techmer’s _Zs. f. allgem. Sprachwissensch._ 4. 100 ff., cf. also his reply to Roethe’s criticism, PBB 15. 522) he puts the question: How did it come about that the old Aryans attached a definite gender (or sex, geschlecht) to words meaning foot, head, house, town, Gr. _pous_, for instance, being masculine, _kephalē_ feminine, _oikos_ masculine, and _polis_ feminine? The generally accepted explanation, according to which the imagination of mankind looked upon lifeless things as living beings, is, Brugmann says, unsatisfactory; the masculine and feminine of grammatical gender are merely unmeaning forms and have nothing to do with the ideas of masculinity and femininity; for even where there exists a natural difference of sex, language often employs only one gender. So in German we have _der hase_, _die maus_, and _der weibliche hase_ is not felt to be self-contradictory. Again, in the history of languages we often find words which change their gender exclusively on account of their form. Thus, in German, many words in _-e_, such as _traube_, _niere_, _wade_, which were formerly masculine, have now become feminine, because the great majority of substantives in _-e_ are feminine (_erde_, _ehre_, _farbe_, etc.). Nothing accordingly hinders us from supposing that grammatical gender originally had nothing at all to do with natural sex. The question, therefore, according to Brugmann, is essentially reduced to this: How did it come to pass that the suffix _-a_ was used to designate female beings? At first it had no connexion with femininity, witness Lat. _aqua_ ‘water’ and hundreds of other words; but among the old words with that ending there happened to be some denoting females: _mama_ ‘mother’ and _gena_ ‘woman’ (compare E. _quean_, _queen_). Now, in the history of some suffixes we see that, without any regard to their original etymological signification, they may adopt something of the radical meaning of the words to which they are added, and transfer that meaning to new formations. In this way _mama_ and _gena_ became the starting-point for analogical formations, as if the idea of female was denoted by the ending, and new words were formed, e.g. Lat. _dea_ ‘goddess’ from _deus_ ‘god,’ _equa_ ‘mare’ from _equus_ ‘horse,’ etc. The suffix _-iē-_ or _-ī-_ probably came to denote feminine sex by a similar process, possibly from Skr. _strī_ ‘woman,’ which may have given a fem. *_wḷqī_ ‘she-wolf’ to *_wḷqos_ ‘wolf.’ The above is a summary of Brugmann’s reasoning; it may interest the reader to know that a closely similar point of view had, several years previously, been taken by a far-seeing scholar in respect to a totally different language, namely Hottentot, where, according to Bleek, CG 2. 118-22, 292-9, a class division which had originally nothing to do with sex has been employed to distinguish natural sex. I transcribe a few of Bleek’s remarks: “The apparent sex-denoting character which the classification of the nouns now has in the Hottentot language was evidently imparted to it after a division of the nouns into classes[98] had taken place. It probably arose, in the first instance, from the possibly accidental circumstance that the nouns indicating (respectively) man and woman were formed with different derivative suffixes, and consequently belonged to different classes (or genders) of nouns, and that these suffixes thus began to indicate the distinction of sex in nouns where it could be distinguished” (p. 122). “To assume, for example, that the suffix of the m. sg. (_-p_) had originally the meaning of ‘man,’ or the fem. sg. (_-s_) that of ‘woman,’ would in no way explain the peculiar division of the nouns into classes as we find it in Hottentot, and would be opposed to all that is probable regarding the etymology of these suffixes, and also to the fact that so many nouns are included in the sex-denoting classes to which the distinction of sex can only be applied by a great effort.... If the word for ‘man’ were formed with one suffix (_-p_), and the word indicating ‘woman’ (be it accidentally or not) by another (_-s_), then other nouns would be formed with the same suffixes, in analogy with these, until the majority of the nouns of each sex were formed with certain suffixes which would thus assume a sex-denoting character” (p. 298).

Brugmann’s view on Aryan gender has not been unchallenged. The weakest points in his arguments are, of course, that there are so few old naturally feminine words in _-a_ and _-i_ to take as starting-points for such a thoroughgoing modification of the grammatical system, and that Brugmann was unable to give any striking explanation of the concord of adjectives and pronouns with words that had not these endings, but which were nevertheless treated as masculines and feminines respectively. It would lead us too far here to give any minute account of the discussion which arose on these points;[99] one of the most valuable contributions seems to me Jacobi’s suggestion (_Compositum u. Nebensatz_, 1897, 115 ff.) that the origin of grammatical gender is not to be sought in the noun, but in the pronoun (he finds a parallel in the Dravidian languages)--but even he does not find a fully satisfactory explanation, and the Aryan gender distinction reaches back to so remote an antiquity, thousands of years before any literary tradition, that we shall most probably never be able to fathom all its mysteries. Of late years less attention has been given to the problem of the feminine, which presented itself to Brugmann, than to the distinction between two classes, one of which was characterized by the use of a nominative in _-s_, which is now looked upon as a ‘transitive-active’ case, and the other by no ending or by an ending _-m_, which is the same as was used as the accusative in the first class (an ‘intransitive-passive’ case), and an attempt has been made to see in the distinction something analogous to the division found in Algonkin languages between a class of ‘living’ and another of ‘lifeless’ things--though these two terms are not to be taken in the strictly scientific sense, for primitive men do not reason in the same way as we do, but ascribe or deny ‘life’ to things according to criteria which we have great difficulty in apprehending. This would mean a twofold division into one class comprising the historical masculines and feminines, and another comprising the neuters.

As to the feminine, we saw two old endings characterizing that gender, _a_ and _i_. With regard to the latter, I venture to throw out the suggestion that it is connected with diminutive suffixes containing that vowel in various languages: on the whole, the sound [i] has a natural affinity with the notion of small, slight, insignificant and weak (see Ch. XX § 8). In some African languages we find two classes, one comprising men and big things, and the other women and small things (Meinhof, _Die Sprachen der Hamiten_ 23), and there is nothing unnatural in the supposition that similar views may have obtained with our ancestors. This would naturally account for Skr. _vṛk-ī_ ‘she-wolf’ (orig. little wolf, ‘wolfy’) from Skr. _vṛkas_, _napt-ī_, Lat. _neptis_, G. _nichte_, Skr. _dēv-ī_, ‘goddess,’ etc. But the feminine _-a_ is to me just as enigmatic as, say, the _d_ of the old ablative.

XIX.--§ 19. Final Considerations.

The ending _-a_ serves to denote not only female beings, but also abstracts, and if in later usage it is also applied to males, as in Latin _nauta_ ‘sailor,’ _auriga_ ‘charioteer,’ this is only a derived use of the abstracts denoting an activity, sailoring, driving, etc., just as G. _die wache_, besides the activity of watching, comes to mean the man on guard, or as _justice_ (Sp. _el justicia_) comes to mean ‘judge.’ The original sense of _Antonius collega fuit Ciceronis_ was ‘A. was the co-election of C.’ (Osthoff, _Verbum in d. Nominal-compos._, 1878, 263 ff., Delbrück, _Synt. Forsch._ 4. 6).

The same _-a_ is finally used as the plural ending of most neuters, but, as is now universally admitted (see especially Johannes Schmidt, _Die Pluralbildungen der indogerm. Neutra_, 1889), the ending here was originally neither neuter nor plural, but, on the contrary, feminine and singular. The forms in _-a_ are properly collective formations like those found, for instance, in Lat. _opera_, gen. _operæ_, ‘work,’ comp. _opus_ ‘(a piece of) work’; Lat. _terra_ ‘earth,’ comp. Oscan _terum_ ‘plot of ground’; _pugna_ ‘boxing, fight,’ comp. _pugnus_ ‘fist.’ This explains among other things the peculiar syntactic phenomenon, which is found regularly in Greek and sporadically in Sanskrit and other languages, that a neuter plural subject takes the verb in the singular. Greek _toxa_ is often used in speaking of a single bow; and the Latin poetic use of _guttura_, _colla_, _ora_, where only one person’s throat, neck or face is meant, points similarly to a period of the past when these words did not denote the plural. We can now see the reason of this _-a_ being in some cases also the plural sign of masculine substantives: Lat. _loca_ from _locus_, _joca_ from _jocus_, etc.; Gr. _sita_ from _sitos_. Joh. Schmidt refers to similar plural formations in Arabic; and as we have seen (Ch. XIX § 9), the Bantu plural prefixes had probably a similar origin. And we are thus constantly reminded that languages must often make the most curious _détours_ to arrive at a grammatical expression for things which appear to us so self-evident as the difference between he and she, or that between one and more than one. Expressive simplicity in linguistic structure is not a primitive, but a derived quality.

FOOTNOTES:

[89] Why so? Did sheep and cows also begin with vowels only, adding _b_ and _m_ afterwards to make up their _bah_ and _moo_?

[90] The examples taken from Gabelentz’s _Grammar_ and an article in Techmer’s _Internat. Zeitschrift_ I.

[91] I must also mention A. Conrady, _Eine indochinesische Causativ-denominativ-bildung_ (Leipzig, 1896), in which Lepsius’s theory is carried a great step further and it is demonstrated with very great learning that many of the tone relations (a well as modifications of initial sounds) of Chinese and kindred languages find their explanation in the previous existence of prefixes which are now extinct, but which can still be pointed out in Tibetan. Though I ought, therefore, to have spoken of prefixes instead of ‘flexional endings’ above, p. 371, the essence of the contention that prehistoric Chinese must have had a polysyllabic and non-isolating structure is thus borne out by the researches of competent specialists in this field.

[92] Madvig Kl 170, Max Müller L 1. 271, Whitney OLS 1. 283, G 124, Paul P 1st ed. 181, repeated in the following editions, see 4th, 1909, 350 and 347, 349; Brugmann VG 1889, 2. 1 (but in 2nd ed. this has been struck out in favour of hopeless skepticism), Schuchardt, _Anlass d. Volapüks_ 11, Gabelentz Spr 189, Tegnér SM 53, Sweet, _New Engl. Gr._ § 559, Storm, _Engl. Phil._ 673, Rozwadowski, _Wortbildung u. Wortbed._, Uhlenbeck, _Karakt. d. bask. Gramm._ 24, Sütterlin WGS 1902, 122, Porzezinski, Spr 1910, 229.

[93] Two explanations of this formative element were given by the old school: according to Schleicher C § 290, it was the root _ja_ of the relative pronoun; according to Curtius and others it was the root _i_ ‘to go,’ Greek _fer-o-i-mi_ being analyzed as ‘I go to bear,’ whence, by an easy (?) transition, ‘I should like to bear,’ etc.

[94] Cf. Sommer, Lat. 528, and on Armenian and Tokharian _r_ forms MSL 18. 10 ff. and Feist KI 455. But it must not be overlooked that H. Pedersen (KZ 40. 166 ff.) has revived and strengthened the old theory that _r_ in Italic and Keltic is an original _se_.

[95] If _s_ was a definite article, why should it be used only with some stems and not with others? Why should neuters never require a definite article?

[96] While it is difficult to see the relation between a demonstrative pronoun or a deictic particle and genitival function, it would be easy enough to understand the latter if we started from a possessive pronoun (ejus, suus), and, curiously enough, we find this very sound _s_ used as a sign for the genitive in two independent languages, starting from that notion. In Indo-Portuguese we have _gobernadors casa_ ‘governor’s house,’ from _gobernador su casa_ (above, Ch. XI § 12, p. 213), and in the South-African ‘Taal’ the usual expression for the genitive is by means of _syn_, which is generally shortened into _se_ (_s_) and glued enclitically to the substantive, even to feminines and plurals: _Marie-se boek_ ‘Maria’s book,’ _di gowweneur se hond_ ‘the governor’s dog’ (H. Meyer, _Die Sprache der Buren_, 1901, p. 40, where also the confusion with the adjective ending _-s_, in Dutch spelt _-sch_, is mentioned. For the construction compare G. _dem vater sein hut_ and others from various languages; cf. the appendix on E. _Bill Stumps his mark_ in ChE 182 f.).

[97] Cf. Lloyd George’s speech at Dundee (_The Times_, July 6, 1917): “The Government will not permit the burdens of the country to be increased by what is called ‘profiteering.’ Although I have been criticized for using that word, I believe on the whole it is a rather good one. It is _profit-eer-ing_ as distinguished from _profit-ing_. Profiting is fair recompense for services rendered, either in production or distribution; profiteering is an extravagant recompense given for services rendered. I believe that unfair in peace. In war it is an outrage.”

[98] Bleek is here thinking of classes like those of the Bantu languages, which have nothing to do with sex.

[99] For bibliography and criticism see Wheeler in _Journ. of Germ. Philol._ 2. 528 ff., and especially Josselin de Jong in _Tijdschr. v. Ned. Taal- en Letterk._ 29. 21 ff., and the same writer’s thesis _De Waardeeringsonderscheiding van levend en levenloos in het Indogermaansch vergel. m. hetzelfde verschijnsel in Algonkin-talen_ (Leiden, 1913). Cf. also Hirt GDS 45 ff.