CHAPTER IV

END OF NINETEENTH CENTURY

§ 1. Achievements about 1870. § 2. New Discoveries. § 3. Phonetic Laws and Analogy. § 4. General Tendencies.

IV.--§ 1. Achievements about 1870.

In works of this period one frequently meets with expressions of pride and joy in the wonderful results that had been achieved in comparative linguistics in the course of a few decades. Thus Max Müller writes: “All this becomes clear and intelligible by the light of Comparative Grammar; anomalies vanish, exceptions prove the rule, and we perceive more plainly every day how in language, as elsewhere, the conflict between the freedom claimed by each individual and the resistance offered by the community at large establishes in the end a reign of law most wonderful, yet perfectly rational and intelligible”; and again: “There is nothing accidental, nothing irregular, nothing without a purpose and meaning in any part of Greek or Latin grammar. No one who has once discovered this hidden life of language, no one who has once found out that what seemed to be merely anomalous and whimsical in language is but, as it were, a petrification of thought, of deep, curious, poetical, philosophical thought, will ever rest again till he has descended as far as he can descend into the ancient shafts of human speech,” etc. (Ch 41 f.). Whitney says: “The difference between the old haphazard style of etymologizing and the modern scientific method lies in this: that the latter, while allowing everything to be theoretically possible, accepts nothing as actual which is not proved by sufficient evidence; it brings to bear upon each individual case a wide circle of related facts; it imposes upon the student the necessity of extended comparison and cautious deduction; it makes him careful to inform himself as thoroughly as circumstances allow respecting the history of every word he deals with” (L 386). And Benfey, in his _Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft_ (1869, see pp. 562 f. and 596), arrives at the conclusion that the investigation of Aryan languages has already attained a very great degree of certainty, and that the reconstruction of Primitive Aryan, both in grammar and vocabulary, must be considered as in the main settled in such a way that only some details are still doubtful; thus, it is certain that the first person singular ended in _-mi_, and that this is a phonetic reduction of the pronoun _ma_, and that the word for ‘horse’ was _akva_. This feeling of pride is certainly in a great measure justified if we compare the achievements of linguistic science at that date with the etymologies of the eighteenth century; it must also be acknowledged that 90 per cent. of the etymologies in the best-known Aryan languages which must be recognized as established beyond any reasonable doubt had already been discovered before 1870, while later investigations have only added a small number that may be considered firmly established, together with a great many more or less doubtful collocations. But, on the other hand, in the light of later research, we can now see that much of what was then considered firm as a rock did not deserve the implicit trust then placed in it.

IV.--§ 2. New Discoveries.

This is true in the first place with regard to the phonetic structure ascribed to Proto-Aryan. A series of brilliant discoveries made about the year 1880 profoundly modified the views of scholars about the consonantal and still more about the vocalic system of our family of languages. This is particularly true of the so-called palatal law.[15] So long as it was taken for granted that Sanskrit had in all essential points preserved the ancient sound system, while Greek and the other languages represented younger stages, no one could explain why Sanskrit in some cases had the palatals _c_ and _j_ (sounds approximately like the initial sounds of E. _chicken_ and _joy_) where the other languages have the velar sounds _k_ and _g_. It was now recognized that so far from the distribution of the two classes of sounds in Sanskrit being arbitrary, it followed strict rules, though these were not to be seen from Sanskrit itself. Where Sanskrit _a_ following the consonant corresponded to Greek or Latin _o_, Sanskrit had velar _k_ or _g_; where, on the other hand, it corresponded to Greek or Latin _e_, Sanskrit had palatal _c_ or _j_. Thus we have, for instance, _c_ in Sansk. _ca_, ‘and’ = Greek _te_, Lat. _que_, but _k_ in _kakša_ = Lat. _coxa_; the difference between the two consonants in a perfect like _cakara_, ‘have done,’ is dependent on the same vowel alternation as that of Greek _léloipa_; _c_ in the verb _pacati_, ‘cooks,’ as against _k_ in the substantive _pakas_, ‘cooking,’ corresponds to the vowels in Greek _légei_ as against _lógos_, etc. All this shows that Sanskrit itself must once have had the vowels _e_ and _o_ instead of _a_; before the front vowel _e_ the consonant has then been fronted or palatalized, as _ch_ in E. _chicken_ is due to the following front vowel, while _k_ has been preserved before _o_ in _cock_. Sanskrit is thus shown to be in some important respects less conservative than Greek, a truth which was destined profoundly to modify many theories concerning the whole family of languages. As Curtius said, with some resentment of the change in view then taking place, “Sanskrit, once the oracle of the rising science and trusted blindly, is now put on one side; instead of the traditional _ex oriente lux_ the saying is now _in oriente tenebræ_” (K 97).

The new views held in regard to Aryan vowels also resulted in a thorough revision of the theory of apophony (ablaut). The great mass of Aryan vowel alternations were shown to form a vast and singularly consistent system, the main features of which may be gathered from the following tabulation of a few select Greek examples, arranged into three columns, each representing one ‘grade’:

I II III

(1) pétomai pótē eptómai (s)ékhō (s)ókhos éskhon

(2) leípō léloipa élipon

(3) peúthomai -- eputhómēn

(4) dérkomai dédorka édrakon

(5) teínō (*tenjo) tónos tatós

It is outside our scope to show how this scheme gives us a natural clue to the vowels in such verbs as E. I _ride_, II _rode_, III _ridden_ (2), G. I _werde_, II _ward_, III _geworden_ (4), or I _binde_, II _band_, III _gebunden_ (5). It will be seen from the Greek examples that grade I is throughout characterized by the vowel _e_ and grade II by the vowel _o_; as for grade III, the vowel of I and II has entirely disappeared in (1), where there is no vowel between the two consonants, and in (2) and (3), where the element found after _e_ and _o_ and forming a diphthong with these has now become a full (syllabic) vowel _i_ and _u_ by itself. In (4) Sanskrit has in grade III a syllabic _r_ (_adrçam_ = Gr. _édrakon_), while Greek has _ra_, or in some instances _ar_, and Gothonic has _ur_ or _or_ according to the vowel of the following syllable. It was this fact that suggested to Brugmann his theory that in (5) Greek _a_, Lat. _in_, Goth. _un_ in the third grade originated in syllabic _ṇ_, and that _tatós_ thus stood for *_tṇtós_; he similarly explained Gr. _déka_, Lat. _decem_, Gothic _taihun_, E. _ten_ from *_dekṃ_ with syllabic _m_. I do not believe that his theory is entirely correct; but so much is certain, that in all instances grade III is characterized by a reduction of the vowel that appears in the two other grades as _e_ and _o_, and there can be no doubt that this reduction is due to want of stress. This being so, it becomes impossible to consider _lip_ the original root-form, which in _leip_ and _loip_ has been extended, and the new theory of apophony thus disposes of the old theory, based on the Indian grammarians’ view that the shortest form was the root-form, which was then raised through ‘guna’ and ‘vrddhi.’ This now is reversed, and the fuller form is shown to be the oldest, which in some cases was shortened according to a process paralleled in many living languages. Bopp was right in his rejection of Grimm’s theory of an inner, significatory reason for apophony, as apophony is now shown to have been due to a mechanical cause, though a different one from that suggested by Bopp (see above, p. 53); and Grimm was also wrong in another respect, because apophony is found from the first in noun-formations as well as in verbs, where Grimm believed it to have been instituted to indicate tense differences, with which it had originally nothing to do. Apophony even appears in other syllables than the root syllable; the new view thus quite naturally paved the way for skepticism with regard to the old doctrine that Aryan roots were necessarily monosyllabic; and scholars soon began to admit dissyllabic ‘bases’ in place of the old roots; instead of _lip_, the earliest accessible form thus came to be something like _leipo_ or _leipe_. In this way the new vowel system had far-reaching consequences and made linguists look upon many problems in a new light. It should be noted, however, that the mechanical explanation of apophony from difference in accent applies only to grade III, in contradistinction to grades I and II; the reason of the alternation between the _e_ of I and the _o_ of II is by no means clear.

The investigations leading to the discovery of the palatal law and the new theory of apophony were only a part of the immense labour of a number of able linguists in the ’seventies and ’eighties, which cleared up many obscure points in Aryan phonology and morphology. One of the most famous discoveries was that of the Dane Karl Verner, that a whole series of consonant alternations in the old Gothonic languages was dependent on accent, and (more remarkable still) on the primeval accent, preserved in its oldest form in Sanskrit only, and differing from that of modern Gothonic languages in resting in some instances on the ending and in others on the root. When it was realized that the fact that German has _t_ in _vater_, but _d_ in _bruder_, was due to a different accentuation of the two words three or four thousand years ago, or that the difference between _s_ and _r_ in E. _was_ and _were_ was connected with the fact that perfect singulars in Sanskrit are stressed on the root, but plurals on the ending, this served not only to heighten respect for the linguistic science that was able to demonstrate such truths, but also to increase the feeling that the world of sounds was subject to strict laws comparable to those of natural science.

IV.--§ 3. Phonetic Laws and Analogy.

The ‘blind’ operation of phonetic laws became the chief tenet of a new school of ‘young-grammarians’ or ‘junggrammatiker’ (Brugmann, Delbrück, Osthoff, Paul and others), who somewhat noisily flourished their advance upon earlier linguists and justly roused the anger not only of their own teachers, including Curtius, but also of fellow-students like Johannes Schmidt and Collitz. For some years a fierce discussion took place on the principles of linguistic science, in which young-grammarians tried to prove deductively the truth of their favourite thesis that “Sound-laws admit of no exceptions” (first, it seems, enounced by Leskien). Osthoff wrongly maintained that sound changes belonged to physiology and analogical change to psychology; but though that distribution of the two kinds of change to two different domains was untenable, the distinction in itself was important and proved a valuable, though perhaps sometimes too easy instrument in the hands of the historical grammarian. It was quite natural that those who insisted on undeviating phonetic laws should turn their attention to those cases in which forms appeared that did not conform to these laws, and try to explain them; and thus they inevitably were led to recognize the immense importance of analogical formations in the economy of all languages. Such formations had long been known, but little attention had been paid to them, and they were generally termed ‘false analogies’ and looked upon as corruptions or inorganic formations found only or chiefly in a degenerate age, in which the true meaning and composition of the old forms was no longer understood. Men like Curtius were scandalized at the younger school explaining so many even of the noble forms of ancient Greek as due to this upstart force of analogy. His opponents contended that the name of ‘false analogy’ was wrong and misleading: the analogy in itself was perfect and was handled with unerring instinct in each case. They likewise pointed out that analogical formations, so far from being perversions of a late age, really represented one of the vital principles of language, without which it could never have come into existence.

One of the first to take the new point of view and to explain it clearly was Hermann Paul. I quote from an early article (as translated by Sweet, CP 112) the following passages, which really struck a new note in linguistic theory:

“There is one simple fact which should never be left out of sight, namely, that even in the parent Indogermanic language, long before its split-up, there were no longer any roots, stems, and suffixes, but only ready-made _words_, which were employed without the slightest thought of their composite nature. And it is only of such ready-made words that the store is composed from which everyone draws when he speaks. He has no stock of stems and terminations at his disposal from which he could construct the form required for each separate occasion. Not that he must necessarily have heard and learnt by heart every form he uses. This would, in fact, be impossible. He is, on the contrary, able of himself to form cases of nouns, tenses of verbs, etc., which he has either never heard or else not noticed specially; but, as there is no combining of stem and suffix, this can only be done on the pattern of the other ready-made combinations which he has learnt from his fellows. These latter are first learnt one by one, and then gradually associated into groups which correspond to the grammatical categories, but are never clearly conceived as such without special training. This grouping not only greatly aids the memory, but also makes it possible to produce other combinations. And this is what we call _analogy_.”

“It is, therefore, clear that, while speaking, everyone is incessantly producing analogical forms. _Reproduction by memory_ and _new-formation by means of association_ are its two indispensable factors. It is a mistake to assume a language as given in grammar and dictionary, that is, the whole body of possible words and forms, as something concrete, and to forget that it is nothing but an abstraction devoid of reality, and that _the actual language exists only in the individual_, from whom it cannot be separated even in scientific investigation, if we will understand its nature and development. To comprehend the existence of each separate spoken form, we must not ask ‘Is it current in the language?’ or ‘Is it conformable to the laws of the language as deduced by the grammarians?’ but ‘Has he who has just employed it previously had it in his memory, or has he formed it himself for the first time, and, if so, according to what analogy?’ When, for instance, anyone employs the plural _milben_ in German, it may be that he has learnt it from others, or else that he has only heard the singular _milbe_, but knows that such words as _lerche_, _schwalbe_, etc., form their plural _lerchen_, etc., so that the association _milbe_-_milben_ is unconsciously suggested to him. He may also have heard the plural _milben_, but remembers it so imperfectly that he would forget it entirely were it not associated in his mind with a series of similar forms which help him to recall it. It is, therefore, often difficult to determine the share memory and creative fancy have had in each separate case.”

Linguists thus set about it seriously to think of language in terms of speaking individuals, who have learnt their mother-tongue in the ordinary way, and who now employ it in their daily intercourse with other men and women, without in each separate case knowing what they owe to others and what they have to create on the spur of the moment. Just as Sokrates fetched philosophy down from the skies, so also now linguists fetched words and forms down from vocabularies and grammars and placed them where their natural home is, in the minds and on the lips of ordinary men who are neither lexicographers nor grammarians, but who nevertheless master their language with sufficient ease and correctness for all ordinary purposes. Linguists now were confronted with some general problems which had not greatly troubled their predecessors (with the solitary exception of Bredsdorff, whose work was entirely overlooked), namely, What are the causes of changes in language? How are they brought about, and how should they be classified? Many articles on these questions appeared in linguistic periodicals about the year 1880, but the profoundest and fullest treatment was found in a masterly book by H. Paul, _Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte_, the first edition of which (1880) exercised a very considerable influence on linguistic thought, while the subsequent editions were constantly enlarged and improved so as to contain a wealth of carefully sifted material to illustrate the various processes of linguistic change. It should also be noted that Paul paid more and more attention to syntax, and that this part of grammar, which had been neglected by Bopp and Schleicher and their contemporaries, was about this time taken up by some of the leading linguists, who showed that the comparative and historical method was capable of throwing a flood of light on syntax no less than on morphology (Delbrück, Ziemer).

IV.--§ 4. General Tendencies.

While linguists in the ’eighties were taking up, as we have seen, a great many questions of vast general importance that had not been treated by the older generation, on the other hand they were losing interest in some of the problems that had occupied their predecessors. This was the case with the question of the ultimate origin of grammatical endings. So late as 1869 Benfey included among Bopp’s ‘brilliant discoveries’ his theory that the _s_ of the aorist and of the future was derived from the verb _as_, ‘to be,’ and that the endings of the Latin imperfect _-bam_ and future _-bo_ were from the synonymous verb _fu_ = Sanskrit _bhu_ (Gesch 377), and the next year Raumer reckons the same theories among Bopp’s ‘most important discoveries.’ But soon after this we see that speculations of this kind somehow go out of fashion. One of the last books to indulge in them to any extent is Scherer’s once famous _Zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache_ (2nd ed., 1878), in the eighth chapter of which the writer disports himself among primitive roots, endings, prepositions and pronouns, which he identifies and differentiates with such extreme boldness and confidence in his own wild fancies that a sober-minded man of the twentieth century cannot but feel dazed and giddy. The ablest linguists of the new school simply left these theories aside: no new explanations of the same description were advanced, and the old ones were not substantiated by the ascertained phenomena of living languages. So much was found in these of the most absorbing interest that scholars ceased to care for what might lie behind Proto-Aryan; some even went so far as to deprecate in strong expressions any attempts at what they termed ‘glottogonic’ theories. To these matter-of-fact linguists all speculations as to the ultimate origin of language were futile and nebulous, a verdict which might be in no small degree justified by much of what had been written on the subject by quasi-philosophers and quasi-linguists. The aversion to these questions was shown as early as 1866, when La Société de Linguistique was founded in Paris. Section 2 of the statutes of the Society expressly states that “La Société n’admet aucune communication concernant, soit l’origine du langage, soit la création d’une langue universelle”--both of them questions which, as they _can_ be treated in a scientific spirit, should not be left exclusively to dilettanti.

The last forty years have witnessed an extraordinary activity on the part of scholars in investigating all domains of the Aryan languages in the light of the new general views and by the aid of the methods that have now become common property. Phonological investigations have no doubt had the lion’s share and have to a great extent been signalized by that real insight into physiological phonetics which had been wanting in earlier linguists; but very much excellent work has also been done in morphology, syntax and semantics; and in all these domains much has been gained by considering words not as mere isolated units, but as parts of sentences, or, better, of connected speech. In phonetics more and more attention has been paid to sentence phonetics and ‘sandhi phenomena’; the heightened interest in everything concerning ‘accent’ (stress and pitch) has also led to investigations of sentence-stress and sentence-melody; the intimate connexion between forms and their use or function in the sentence, in other words their syntax, has been more and more recognized; and finally, if semantics (the study of the significations of words) has become a real science instead of being a curiosity shop of isolated specimens, this has only been rendered possible through seeing words as connected with other words to form complete utterances. But this change of attitude could not have been brought about unless linguists had studied texts in the different languages to a far greater extent than had been done in previous periods; thus, naturally, the antagonism formerly often felt between the linguistic and the purely philological study of the same language has tended to disappear, and many scholars have produced work both in their particular branch of linguistics and in the corresponding philology. There can be no doubt that this development has been profitable to both domains of scientific activity.

Another beneficial change is the new attitude taken with regard to the study of living speech. The science of linguistics had long stood in the sign of Cancer and had been constantly looking backwards--to its own great loss. Now, with the greater stress laid on phonetics and on the psychology of language, the necessity of observing the phenomena of actual everyday speech was more clearly perceived. Among pioneers in this respect I must specially mention Henry Sweet; now there is a steadily growing interest in living speech as the necessary foundation of all general theorizing. And with interest comes knowledge.

It is outside the purpose of this volume to give the history of linguistic study during the last forty years in the same way as I have attempted to give it for the period before 1880, and I must therefore content myself with a few brief remarks on general tendencies. I even withstand the temptation to try and characterize the two greatest works on general linguistics that have appeared during this period, those by Georg v. d. Gabelentz and Wilhelm Wundt: important and in many ways excellent as they are, they have not exercised the same influence on contemporary linguistic research as some of their predecessors. Personally I owe incomparably much more to the former than to the latter, who is much less of a linguist than of a psychologist and whose pages seem to me often richer in words than in fertilizing ideas. As for the rest, I can give only a bare alphabetical list of some of the writers who during this period have dealt with the more general problems of linguistic change or linguistic theory, and must not attempt any appreciation of their works: Bally, Baudouin de Courtenay, Bloomfield, Bréal, Delbrück, van Ginneken, Hale, Henry, Hirt, Axel Kock, Meillet, Meringer, Noreen, Oertel, Pedersen, Sandfeld (Jensen), de Saussure, Schuchardt, Sechehaye, Streitberg, Sturtevant, Sütterlin, Sweet, Uhlenbeck, Vossler, Wechssler. In the following parts of my work there will be many opportunities of mentioning their views, especially when I disagree with them, for I am afraid it will be impossible always to indicate what I owe to their suggestions.

In the history of linguistic science we have seen in one period a tendency to certain large syntheses (the classification of languages into isolating, agglutinative and flexional, and the corresponding theory of three periods with its corollary touching the origin of flexional endings), and we have seen how these syntheses were later discredited, though never actually disproved, linguists contenting themselves with detailed comparisons and explanations of single words, forms or sounds without troubling about their ultimate origin or about the evolutionary tendencies of the whole system or structure of language. The question may therefore be raised, were Bopp and Schleicher wrong in attempting these large syntheses? It would appear from the expressions of some modern linguists that they thought that any such comprehensive generalization or any glottogonic theory were in itself of evil. But this can never be admitted. Science, of its very nature, aims at larger and larger generalizations, more and more comprehensive formulas, so as finally to bring about that “unification of knowledge” of which Herbert Spencer speaks. It was therefore quite right of the early linguists to propound those great questions; and their failure to solve them in a way that could satisfy the stricter demands of a later generation should not be charged too heavily against them. It was also quite right of the moderns to reject their premature solutions (though this was often done without any adequate examination), but it was decidedly wrong to put the questions out of court altogether.[16] These great questions have to be put over and over again, till a complete solution is found; and the refusal to face these difficulties has produced a certain barrenness in modern linguistics, which must strike any impartial observer, however much he admits the fertility of the science in detailed investigations. Breadth of vision is not conspicuous in modern linguistics, and to my mind this lack is chiefly due to the fact that linguists have neglected all problems connected with a valuation of language. What is the criterion by which one word or one form should be preferred to another? (most linguists refuse to deal with such questions of preference or of correctness of speech). Are the changes that we see gradually taking place in languages to be considered as on the whole beneficial or the opposite? (most linguists pooh-pooh such questions). Would it be possible to construct an international language by which persons in different countries could easily communicate with one another? (most linguists down to the present day have looked upon all who favour such ideas as visionaries and Utopians). It is my firm conviction that such questions as these admit of really scientific treatment and should be submitted to serious discussion. But before tackling those of them which fall within the plan of this work, it will be well to deal with some fundamental facts of what is popularly called the ‘life’ of language, and first of all with the manner in which a child acquires its mother-tongue. For as language exists only in individuals and means some specific activities of human beings which are not inborn, but have to be learnt by each of them separately from his fellow-beings, it is important to examine somewhat in detail how this interaction of the individual and of the surrounding society is brought about. This, then, will occupy us in Book II.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Who was the discoverer of the palatal law? This has been hotly discussed, and as the law was in so far anticipated by other discoveries of the ’seventies as to be “in the air,” it is perhaps futile to try to fix the paternity on any single man. However, it seems now perfectly clear that Vilhelm Thomsen was the first to mention it in his lectures (1875), but unfortunately the full and able paper in which he intended to lay it before the world was delayed for a couple of years and then kept in his drawers when he heard that Johannes Schmidt was preparing a paper on the same subject: it was printed in 1920 in the second volume of his _Samlede Afhandlinger_ (from the original manuscript). Esaias Tegnér had found the law independently and had printed five sheets of a book _De ariska språkens palataler_, which he withdrew when he found that Collitz and de Saussure had expressed similar views. Karl Verner, too, had independently arrived at the same results; see his _Afhandlinger og Breve_, 109 ff., 305.

[16] “Es ist besser, bei solchen versuchen zu irren als gar nicht darüber nachzudenken,” Curtius, K 145.

_BOOK II_

THE CHILD