64. Rapidity of Linguistic Change
The rate of change in language is circumscribed by the principles of linguistic causality that have been discussed, but it remains an obscure subject in detail. The opinion often held that unwritten languages necessarily alter faster than written ones, or that those of savages are less stable than the tongues of civilized men, is mainly a naïve reflection of our sense of superiority. It contravenes the principles just referred to and is not supported by evidence. Occasional stories that a primitive tribe after a generation or two was found speaking an almost made-over language are unconscious fabrications due to preconception and supported by hasty acquaintance, faulty records, misunderstanding, or perhaps change of inhabitants. Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, has probably changed less in four hundred years than Spanish; Quechua, that of the Incas, no more. English has apparently altered more than any of the three in the same period. Dozens of native tongues, some of them from wholly rude peoples, were written down in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Spanish and other priests, and in most instances the grammars and dictionaries prove to be usable to-day.
Cultural alteration would appear to work toward speech change chiefly in certain ways. New things need new names; new acts mean new thoughts and new ideas require new words. These may be imported; or they may be made out of elements already in the language; or old words may undergo a shift of meaning. In any event, the change is mainly on the side of vocabulary. The sounds of a language are generally much less affected; its plan of structure least of all. The introduction of a new religion or development of a new form of government among a people need not be accompanied by changes in the grammar of their speech, and usually are not, as abundant historical examples prove.
While the causes of grammatical innovation are far from clear, contact with alien tongues is certainly a factor in some degree. An isolated off-shoot of a linguistic group is generally more specialized, and therefore presumably more altered, than the main body of dialects of the family. The reason is that the latter, maintaining abundant reciprocal contact, tend to steady one another, or if they swerve, to do so in the same direction. The speakers of the branch that is geographically detached, however, come to know quite different grammars so far as they learn languages other than their native one, and such knowledge seems to act as an unconscious stimulus toward the growth of new forms and uses. It is not that grammatical concepts are often imitated outright or grammatical elements borrowed. Acquaintance with a language of different type seems rather to act as a ferment which sets new processes going.
It is in the nature of the case that direct specific evidence of changes of this character is hard to secure. But comparison of related languages or dialects with reference to their location frequently shows that the dialects which are geographically situated among strange languages are the most differentiated. This holds of Abyssinian in the Semitic family, of Brahui in Dravidian, of Singhalese in the Indic branch of Indo-European, of Hopi and Tübatulabal in Shoshonean, of Arapaho and Blackfoot in Algonkin, of Huastec in Mayan.
But it is also likely that languages differ among each other in their susceptibility to change, and that the same language differs in successive periods of its history. It is rather to be anticipated that a language may be in a phase now of rapid and then of retarded metabolism, so to speak; that at one stage its tendency may be toward breaking down and absorption, at another toward a more rigid setting of its forms. Similarly, there is reason to believe that languages of certain types of structure are inherently more plastic than others. At any rate, actual differences in rate of change are known. The Indo-European languages, for instance, have perhaps without exception altered more in the three thousand years of historic record than the Semitic ones. And so in native America, while contemporary documentary record is of course wanting, the degree of differentiation within the two stocks suggests strongly that Athabascan is more tenaciously conservative than Siouan.
There are also notable differences in the readiness to borrow words ready-made. English is distinctly more hospitable in this regard than German, which tends rather to express a new concept by a new formation of old elements. The South American languages appear to have borrowed more words from one another than those of North America. In this matter the type of language is probably of some influence, yet on the whole cultural factors perhaps predominate. The direction and degree of cultural absorption seem to determine the absorption of words to a considerable measure. Here writing is certainly potent. The Latin and French element in English, the Sanskrit and Arabic element in the Malaysian languages, were brought in to a large extent by writing, and would evidently have remained much smaller if the historic contacts had been wholly oral. This is perhaps the most important way in which writing exerts influence on the development of spoken language; an influence which in other respects is usually overestimated.
CHAPTER VI
THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION
[65.] Fossils of the body and of the mind.—[66.] Stone and metals.—[67.] The Old and the New Stone Ages.—[68.] The Eolithic Age.—[69.] The Palæolithic Age: duration, climate, animals.—[70.] Subdivisions of the Palæolithic.—[71.] Human racial types in the Palæolithic.—[72.] Palæolithic flint implements.—[73.] Other materials: bone and horn.—[74.] Dress.—[75.] Harpoons and weapons.—[76.] Wooden implements.—[77.] Fire.—[78.] Houses.—[79.] Religion.—[80.] Palæolithic art.—[81.] Summary of advance in the Palæolithic.