Lecture VII. The Constituent Elements Of Language.
Our analysis of some of the nominal and verbal formations in the Aryan or Indo-European family of speech has taught us that, however mysterious and complicated these grammatical forms appear at first sight, they are in reality the result of a very simple process. It seems at first almost hopeless to ask such questions as why the addition of a mere d should change love present into love past, or why the termination ai in French, if added to aimer, should convey the idea of love to come. But, once placed under the microscope of comparative grammar, these and all other grammatical forms assume a very different and much more intelligible aspect. We saw how what we now call terminations were originally independent words. After coalescing with the words which they were intended to modify, they were gradually reduced to mere syllables and letters, unmeaning in themselves, yet manifesting their former power and independence by the modification which they continue to produce in the meaning of the words to which they are appended. The true nature of grammatical terminations was first pointed out by a philosopher, who, however wild some of his speculations may be, had certainly caught many a glimpse of the real life and growth of language, I [pg 251] mean Horne Tooke. This is what he writes of terminations:[254]—
“For though I think I have good reasons to believe that all terminations may likewise be traced to their respective origin; and that, however artificial they may now appear to us, they were not originally the effect of premeditated and deliberate art, but separate words by length of time corrupted and coalescing with the words of which they are now considered as the terminations. Yet this was less likely to be suspected by others. And if it had been suspected, they would have had much further to travel to their journey's end, and through a road much more embarrassed; as the corruption in those languages is of much longer standing than in ours, and more complex.”
Horne Tooke, however, though he saw rightly what road should be followed to track the origin of grammatical terminations, was himself without the means to reach his journey's end. Most of his explanations are quite untenable, and it is curious to observe in reading his book, the Diversions of Purley, how a man of a clear, sharp, and powerful mind, and reasoning according to sound and correct principles, may yet, owing to his defective knowledge of facts, arrive at conclusions directly opposed to truth.
When we have once seen how grammatical terminations are to be traced back in the beginning to independent words, we have learnt at the same time that the component elements of language, which remain in our crucible at the end of a complete grammatical analysis, are of two kinds, namely, Roots predicative and Roots demonstrative.
We call root or radical, whatever, in the words of any language or family of languages, cannot be reduced to a simpler or more original form. It may be well to illustrate this by a few examples. But, instead of taking a number of words in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, and tracing them back to their common centre, it will be more instructive if we begin with a root which has been discovered, and follow it through its wanderings from language to language. I take the root AR, to which I alluded in our last Lecture as the source of the word Arya, and we shall thus, while examining its ramification, learn at the same time why that name was chosen by the agricultural nomads, the ancestors of the Aryan race.
This root AR[255] means to plough, to open the soil. From it we have the Latin ar-are, the Greek ar-oun, the Irish ar, the Lithuanian ar-ti, the Russian ora-ti, the Gothic ar-jan, the Anglo-Saxon er-jan, the modern English to ear. Shakespeare says (Richard II. iii. 2), “to ear the land that has some hope to grow.”
From this we have the name of the plough, or the instrument of earing: in Latin, ara-trum; in Greek, aro-tron; in Bohemian, oradto; in Lithuanian, arklas; in Cornish, aradar; in Welsh, arad;[256] in Old Norse, ardhr. In Old Norse, however, ardhr, meaning originally the plough, came to mean earnings or wealth; the plough being, in early times, the most essential possession of the peasant. In the same manner the Latin [pg 253] name for money, pecunia, was derived from pecus, cattle; the word fee, which is now restricted to the payment made to a doctor or lawyer, was in Old English feh, and in Anglo-Saxon feoh, meaning cattle and wealth; for feoh, and Gothic faihu, are really the same word as the Latin pecus, the modern German vieh.
The act of ploughing is called aratio in Latin; arosis in Greek: and I believe that arôma, in the sense of perfume, had the same origin; for what is sweeter or more aromatic than the smell of a ploughed field? In Genesis, xxviii. 27, Jacob says “the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord has blessed.”
A more primitive formation of the root ar seems to be the Greek era, earth, the Sanskrit irâ, the Old High-German ëro, the Gaelic ire, irionn. It meant originally the ploughed land, afterwards earth in general. Even the word earth, the Gothic airtha,[257] the Anglo-Saxon eorthe, must have been taken originally in the sense of ploughed or cultivated land. The derivative ar-mentum, formed like ju-mentum, would naturally have been applied to any animal fit for ploughing and other labor in the field, whether ox or horse.
As agriculture was the principal labor in that early state of society when we must suppose most of our Aryan words to have been formed and applied to their definite meanings, we may well understand how a word which originally meant this special kind of labor, was [pg 254] afterwards used to signify labor in general. The general tendency in the growth of words and their meanings is from the special to the more general: thus gubernare, which originally meant to steer a ship, took the general sense of governing. To equip, which originally was to furnish a ship (French équiper and esquif, from schifo, ship), came to mean furnishing in general. Now in modern German, arbeit means simply labor; arbeitsam means industrious. In Gothic, too, arbaiþs is only used to express labor and trouble in general. But in Old Norse, erfidhi means chiefly ploughing, and afterwards labor in general; and the same word in Anglo-Saxon, earfodh or earfedhe, is labor. Of course we might equally suppose that, as laborer, from meaning one who labors in general, came to take the special sense of an agricultural laborer, so arbeit, from meaning work in general, came to be applied, in Old Norse, to the work of ploughing. But as the root of erfidhi seems to be ar, our first explanation is the more plausible. Besides, the simple ar in Old Norse means ploughing and labor, and the Old High-German art has likewise the sense of ploughing.[258]
Ἄρουρα and arvum, a field, would certainly have to be referred to the root ar, to plough. And as ploughing was not only one of the earliest kinds of labor, but also one of the most primitive arts, I have no doubt that the Latin ars, artis, and our own word art, meant originally the art of all arts, first taught to mortals by [pg 255] the goddess of all wisdom, the art of cultivating the land. In Old High-German arunti, in Anglo-Saxon ærend, mean simply work; but they too must originally have meant the special work of agriculture; and in the English errand, and errand-boy, the same word is still in existence.
But ar did not only mean to plough, or to cut open the land; it was transferred at a very early time to the ploughing of the sea, or rowing. Thus Shakspeare says:—
“Make the sea serve them; which they ear and wound
With keels.”
In a similar manner, we find that Sanskrit derives from ar the substantive aritra, not in the sense of a plough, but in the sense of a rudder. In Anglo-Saxon we find the simple form âr, the English oar, as it were the plough-share of the water. The Greek also had used the root ar in the sense of rowing; for ἐρέτης[259] in Greek is a rower, and their word τρι-ήρ-ης, meant originally a ship with three oars, or with three rows of oars,[260] a trireme.
This comparison of ploughing and rowing is of frequent occurrence in ancient languages. The English word plough, the Slavonic ploug, has been identified with the Sanskrit plava,[261] a ship, and with the Greek ploion, ship. As the Aryans spoke of a ship ploughing the sea, they also spoke of a plough sailing across the field; and thus it was that the same names were [pg 256] applied to both.[262] In English dialects, plough or plow is still used in the general sense of waggon or conveyance.[263]
We might follow the offshoots of this root ar still further, but the number of words which we have examined in various languages will suffice to show what is meant by a predicative root. In all these words ar is the radical element, all the rest is merely formative. The root ar is called a predicative root, because in whatever composition it enters, it predicates one and the same conception, whether of the plough, or the rudder, or the ox, or the field. Even in such a word as artistic, the predicative power of the root ar may still be perceived, though, of course, as it were by means of a powerful telescope only. The Brahmans who called themselves ârya in India, were no more aware of the real origin of this name and its connection with agricultural labor, than the artist who now speaks of his art as a divine inspiration suspects that the word which he uses was originally applicable only to so primitive an art as that of ploughing.
We shall now examine another family of words, in order to see by what process the radical elements of words were first discovered.
Let us take the word respectable. It is a word of Latin not of Saxon, origin, as we see by the termination [pg 257] able. In respectabilis we easily distinguish the verb respectare and the termination bilis. We then separate the prefix re, which leaves spectare, and we trace spectare as a participial formation back to the Latin verb spicere or specere, meaning to see, to look. In specere, again, we distinguish between the changeable termination ere and the unchangeable remnant spec, which we call the root. This root we expect to find in Sanskrit and the other Aryan languages; and so we do. In Sanskrit the more usual form is paś, to see, without the s; but spaś also is found in spaśa, a spy, in spashṭa (in vi-spashṭa), clear, manifest, and in the Vedic spaś, a guardian. In the Teutonic family we find spëhôn in Old High-German meaning to look, to spy, to contemplate; and spëha, the English spy.[264] In Greek, the root spek has been changed into skep, which exists in skeptomai, I look, I examine; from whence skeptikos, an examiner or inquirer, in theological language, a sceptic; and episkopos, an overseer, a bishop. Let us now examine the various ramifications of this root. Beginning with respectable, we found that it originally meant a person who deserves respect, respect meaning looking back. We pass by common objects or persons without noticing them, whereas we turn back to look again at those which deserve our admiration, our regard, our respect. This was the original meaning of respect and respectable, nor need we be surprised at this if we consider that noble, nobilis in Latin, conveyed originally no more than the idea of a person that deserves to be known; for nobilis stands for gnobilis, just as nomen stands for gnomen, or natus for gnatus.
“With respect to” has now become almost a mere preposition. For if we say, “With respect to this point I have no more to say,” this is the same as “I have no more to say on this point.”
Again, as in looking back we single out a person, the adjective respective, and the adverb respectively, are used almost in the same sense as special, or singly.
The English respite is the Norman modification of respectus, the French répit. Répit meant originally looking back, reviewing the whole evidence. A criminal received so many days ad respectum, to re-examine the case. Afterwards it was said that the prisoner had received a respit, that is to say, had obtained a re-examination; and at last a verb was formed, and it was said that a person had been respited.
As specere, to see, with the preposition re, came to mean respect, so with the preposition de, down, it forms the Latin despicere, meaning to look down, the English despise. The French dépit (Old French despit) means no longer contempt, though it is the Latin despectus, but rather anger, vexation. Se dépiter is to be vexed, to fret. “En dépit de lui” is originally “angry with him,” then “in spite of him;” and the English spite, in spite of, spiteful, are mere abbreviations of despite, in despite of, despiteful, and have nothing whatever to do with the spitting of cats.
As de means down from above, so sub means up from below, and this added to specere, to look, gives us suspicere, suspicari, to look up, in the sense of to suspect.[265] From it suspicion, suspicious; and likewise the French [pg 259] soupçon, even in such phrases as “there is a soupçon of chicory in this coffee,” meaning just a touch, just the smallest atom of chicory.
As circum means round about, so circumspect means, of course, cautious, careful.
With in, meaning into, specere forms inspicere, to inspect; hence inspector, inspection.
With ad, towards, specere becomes adspicere, to look at a thing. Hence adspectus, the aspect, the look or appearance of things.
So with pro, forward, specere became prospicere; and gave rise to such words as prospectus, as it were a look out, prospective, &c. With con, with, spicere forms conspicere, to see together, conspectus, conspicuous. We saw before in respectable, that a new word spectare is formed from the participle of spicere. This, with the preposition ex, out, gives us the Latin expectare, the English to expect, to look out; with its derivatives.
Auspicious is another word which contains our root as the second of its component elements. The Latin auspicium stands for avispicium, and meant the looking out for certain birds which were considered to be of good or bad omen to the success of any public or private act. Hence auspicious, in the sense of lucky. Haru-spex was the name given to a person who foretold the future from the inspection of the entrails of animals.
Again, from specere, speculum was formed, in the sense of looking-glass, or any other means of looking at oneself; and from it speculari, the English to speculate, speculative, &c.
But there are many more offshoots of this one root. Thus, the Latin speculum, looking-glass, became specchio [pg 260] in Italian; and the same word, though in a roundabout way, came into French as the adjective espiègle, waggish. The origin of this French word is curious. There exists in German a famous cycle of stories, mostly tricks, played by a half-historical, half-mythical character of the name of Eulenspiegel, or Owl-glass. These stories were translated into French, and the hero was known at first by the name of Ulespiègle, which name, contracted afterwards into Espiègle, became a general name for every wag.
As the French borrowed not only from Latin, but likewise from the Teutonic languages, we meet there side by side with the derivatives of the Latin specere, the old High-German, spëhôn, slightly disguised as épier, to spy, the Italian spiare. The German word for a spy was spëha, and this appears in old French as espie, in modern French as espion.
One of the most prolific branches of the same root is the Latin species. Whether we take species in the sense of a perennial succession of similar individuals in continual generations (Jussieu), or look upon it as existing only as a category of thought (Agassiz), species was intended originally as the literal translation of the Greek eidos as opposed to genos, or genus. The Greeks classified things originally according to kind and form, and though these terms were afterwards technically defined by Aristotle, their etymological meaning is in reality the most appropriate. Things may be classified either because they are of the same genus or kind, that is to say, because they had the same origin; this gives us a genealogical classification: or they can be classified because they have the same appearance, eidos, or form, without claiming for them a common origin; and this gives us a morphological [pg 261] classification. It was, however, in the Aristotelian, and not in its etymological sense, that the Greek eidos was rendered in Latin by species, meaning the subdivision of a genus, the class of a family. Hence the French espèce, a kind; the English special, in the sense of particular as opposed to general. There is little of the root spaś, to see, left in a special train, or a special messenger; yet the connection, though not apparent, can be restored with perfect certainty. We frequently hear the expression to specify. A man specifies his grievances. What does it mean? The mediæval Latin specificus is a literal translation of the Greek eidopoios. This means what makes or constitutes an eidos or species. Now, in classification, what constitutes a species is that particular quality which, superadded to other qualities, shared in common by all the members of a genus, distinguishes one class from all other classes. Thus the specific character which distinguishes man from all other animals, is reason or language. Specific, therefore, assumed the sense of distinguishing or distinct, and the verb to specify conveyed the meaning of enumerating distinctly, or one by one. I finish with the French épicier, a respectable grocer, but originally a man who sold drugs. The different kinds of drugs which the apothecary had to sell, were spoken of, with a certain learned air, as species, not as drugs in general, but as peculiar drugs and special medicines. Hence the chymist or apothecary is still called Speziale in Italian, his shop spezieria.[266] In French species, which regularly became espèce, assumed a new form to express drugs, namely épices; the English spices, the German spezereien. [pg 262] Hence the famous pain d'épices, gingerbread nuts, and épicier, a grocer. If you try for a moment to trace spicy, or a well-spiced article, back to the simple root specere, to look, you will understand that marvellous power of language which out of a few simple elements has created a variety of names hardly surpassed by the unbounded variety of nature herself.[267]
I say “out of a few simple elements,” for the number of what we call full predicative roots, such as ar, to plough, or spaś, to look, is indeed small.
A root is necessarily monosyllabic. Roots consisting of more than one syllable can always be proved to be derivative roots, and even among monosyllabic roots it is necessary to distinguish between primitive, secondary, and tertiary roots.
A. Primitive roots are those which consist—
(1) of one vowel; for instance, i, to go;
(2) of one vowel and one consonant; for instance, ad, to eat;
(3) of one consonant and one vowel; for instance, dâ, to give.
B. Secondary roots are those which consist—
(1) of one consonant, vowel, and consonant; for instance, tud, to strike.
In these roots either the first or the last consonant is modificatory.
C. Tertiary roots are those which consist—
(1) of consonant, consonant, and vowel; for instance, plu, to flow;
(2) of vowel, consonant, and consonant; for instance, ard, to hurt;
(3) of consonant, consonant, vowel, and consonant; for instance, spaś, to see;
(4) of consonant, consonant, vowel, consonant, and consonant; for instance, spand, to tremble.
The primary roots are the most important in the early history of language; but their predicative power being generally of too indefinite a character to answer the purposes of advancing thought, they were soon encroached upon and almost supplanted by secondary and tertiary radicals.
In the secondary roots we can frequently observe that one of the consonants, in the Aryan languages, generally the final, is liable to modification. The root retains its general meaning, which is slightly modified and determined by the changes of the final consonants. Thus, besides tud (tudati), we have in Sanskrit tup (topati, tupati, and tumpati), meaning to strike; Greek, typ-tō. We meet likewise with tubh (tubhnâti, tubhyati, tobhate), to strike; and, according to Sanskrit grammarians, with tuph (tophati, tuphati, tumphati). Then there is a root tuj (tunjati, tojati), to strike, to excite; another root, tur (tutorti), to which the same meaning is ascribed; another, tûr (tûryate), to hurt. Then there is the further derivative turv (tûrvati), to strike, to conquer; there is tuh (tohati), to pain, to vex; and there is tuś (tośate), to which Sanskrit grammarians attribute the sense of striking.
Although we may call all these verbal bases roots, they stand to the first class in about the same relation as the triliteral Semitic roots to the more primitive biliteral.[268]
In the third class we shall find that one of the two consonants is always a semivowel, nasal, or sibilant, these being more variable than the other consonants; and we can almost always point to one consonant as of later origin, and added to a biconsonantal root in order to render its meaning more special. Thus we have, besides spaś, the root paś, and even this root has been traced back by Pott to a more primitive aś. Thus vand, again, is a mere strengthening of the root vad, like mand of mad, like yu-na-j and yu-n-j of yuj. The root yuj, to join, and yudh, to fight, both point back to a root yu, to mingle, and this simple root has been preserved in Sanskrit. We may well understand that a root, having the general meaning of mingling or being together, should be employed to express both the friendly joining of hands and the engaging in hostile combat; but we may equally understand that language, in its progress to clearness and definiteness, should have desired a distinction between these two meanings, and should gladly have availed herself of the two derivatives, yuj and yudh, to mark this distinction.
Sanskrit grammarians have reduced the whole growth of their language to 1706 roots,[269] that is to say, they have admitted so many radicals in order to derive from them, according to their system of grammatical derivation, all nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, prepositions, adverbs, and conjunctions, which [pg 265] occur in Sanskrit. According to our explanation of a root, however, this number of 1706 would have to be reduced considerably, and though a few new roots would likewise have to be added which Sanskrit grammarians failed to discover, yet the number of primitive sounds, expressive of definite meanings, requisite for the etymological analysis of the whole Sanskrit dictionary would not amount to even one third of that number. Hebrew has been reduced to about 500 roots,[270] and I doubt whether we want a larger number for Sanskrit. This shows a wise spirit of economy on the part of primitive language, for the possibility of forming new roots for every new impression was almost unlimited. Even if we put the number of letters only at twenty-four, the possible number of biliteral and triliteral roots would amount together to 14,400; whereas Chinese, though abstaining from composition and derivation, and therefore requiring a larger number of radicals than any other language, was satisfied with about 450. With these 450 sounds raised to 1263 by various accents and intonations, the Chinese have produced a dictionary of from 40,000 to 50,000 words.[271]
It is clear, however, that in addition to these predicative roots, we want another class of radical elements to enable us to account for the full growth of language. With the 400 or 500 predicative roots at her disposal, language would not have been at a loss to coin names for all things that come under our cognizance. Language is a thrifty housewife. Consider the variety of ideas that were expressed by the one root spaś, and you will see that with 500 such roots she might form a dictionary sufficient to satisfy the wants, however extravagant, of her husband—the human mind. If each root yielded fifty derivatives, we should have 25,000 words. Now, we are told, on good authority, by a country clergyman, that some of the laborers in his parish had not 300 words in their vocabulary.[272] The vocabulary of the ancient sages of Egypt, at least as far as it is known to us from the hieroglyphic inscriptions, amounts to about 685 words.[273] The libretto of an Italian opera seldom displays a greater variety of words.[274] A well-educated person in England, who has [pg 267] been at a public school and at the university, who reads his Bible, his Shakespeare, the “Times,” and all the books of Mudie's Library, seldom uses more than about 3000 or 4000 words in actual conversation. Accurate thinkers and close reasoners, who avoid vague and general expressions, and wait till they find the word that exactly fits their meaning, employ a larger stock; and eloquent speakers may rise to a command of 10,000. Shakespeare, who displayed a greater variety of expression than probably any writer in any language, produced all his plays with about 15,000 words. Milton's works are built up with 8000; and the Old Testament says all that it has to say with 5,642 words.[275]
Five hundred roots, therefore, considering their fertility and pliancy, was more than was wanted for the dictionary of our primitive ancestors. And yet they wanted something more. If they had a root expressive of light and splendor, that root might have formed the predicate in the names of sun, and moon, and stars, and heaven, day, morning, dawn, spring, gladness, joy, beauty, majesty, love, friend, gold, riches, &c. But if they wanted to express here and there, who, what, this, that, thou, he, they would have found it impossible to find any predicative root that could be applied to this purpose. Attempts have indeed been made to trace these words back to predicative roots; but if we are told that the demonstrative root ta, this or there, may be derived from a predicative root tan, to extend, we find that even in our modern languages, the demonstrative pronouns and particles are of too primitive and independent a nature to allow of so artificial an interpretation. The sound ta or sa, for this or there, is as involuntary, as natural, as independent an expression as any [pg 268] of the predicative roots, and although some of these demonstrative, or pronominal, or local roots, for all these names have been applied to them, may be traced back to a predicative source, we must admit a small class of independent radicals, not predicative in the usual sense of the word, but simply pointing, simply expressive of existence under certain more or less definite, local or temporal prescriptions.
It will be best to give one illustration at least of a pronominal root and its influence in the formation of words.
In some languages, and particularly in Chinese, a predicative root may by itself be used as a noun, or a verb, or an adjective or adverb. Thus the Chinese sound ta means, without any change of form, great, greatness, and to be great.[276] If ta stands before a substantive, it has the meaning of an adjective. Thus ta jin means a great man. If ta stands after a substantive, it is a predicate, or, as we should say, a verb. Thus jin ta (or jin ta ye) would mean the man is great.[277] Or again,
ģin ngŏ, li pŭ ngŏ,
would mean, man bad, law not bad.
Here we see that there is no outward distinction whatever between a root and a word, and that a noun is distinguished from a verb merely by its collocation in a sentence.
In other languages, however, and particularly in the [pg 269] Aryan languages, no predicative root can by itself form a word. Thus in Latin there is a root luc, to shine. In order to have a substantive, such as light, it was necessary to add a pronominal or demonstrative root, this forming the general subject of which the meaning contained in the root is to be predicated. Thus by the addition of the pronominal element s we have the Latin noun, luc-s, the light, or literally, shining-there. Let us add a personal pronoun, and we have the verb luc-e-s, shining-thou, thou shinest. Let us add other pronominal derivatives, and we get the adjectives, lucidus, luculentus, &c.
It would be a totally mistaken view, however, were we to suppose that all derivative elements, all that remains of a word after the predicative root has been removed, must be traced back to pronominal roots. We have only to look at some of our own modern derivatives in order to be convinced that many of them were originally predicative, that they entered into composition with the principal predicative root, and then dwindled down to mere suffixes. Thus scape in landscape, and the more modern ship in hardship are both derived from the same root which we have in Gothic,[278] skapa, skôp, skôpum, to create; in Anglo-Saxon, scape, scôp, scôpon. It is the same as the German derivative, schaft, in Gesellschaft, &c. So again dom in wisdom or christendom is derived from the same root which we have in to do. It is the same as the German thum in Christenthum, the Anglo-Saxon dôm in cyning-dom, Königthum. Sometimes it may seem doubtful whether a derivative element was originally merely demonstrative or predicative. Thus the termination of the comparative in [pg 270] Sanskrit is tara, the Greek teros. This might, at first sight, be taken for a demonstrative element, but it is in reality the root tar, which means to go beyond, which we have likewise in the Latin trans. This trans in its French form très is prefixed to adjectives in order to express a higher or transcendent degree, and the same root was well adapted to form the comparative in the ancient Aryan tongues. This root must likewise be admitted in one of the terminations of the locative which is tra in Sanskrit; for instance from ta, a demonstrative root, we form ta-tra, there, originally this way; we form anyatra, in another way; the same as in Latin we say ali-ter, from aliud; compounds no more surprising than the French autrement (see p. 55) and the English otherwise.
Most of the terminations of declension and conjugation are demonstrative roots, and the s, for instance, of the third person singular, he loves, can be proved to have been originally the demonstrative pronoun of the third person. It was originally not s but t. This will require some explanation. The termination of the third person singular of the present is ti in Sanskrit. Thus dâ, to give, becomes dadâti, he gives; dhâ, to place, dadhâti, he places.
In Greek this ti is changed into si; just as the Sanskrit tvam, the Latin tu, thou, appears in Greek as sy. Thus Greek didōsi corresponds to Sanskrit dadâti; tithēsi to dadhâti. In the course of time, however, every Greek s between two vowels, in a termination, was elided. Thus genos does not form the genitive genesos, like the Latin genus, genesis or generis, but geneos = genous. The dative is not genesi (the Latin generi), but geneï = genei. In the same manner all the [pg 271] regular verbs have ei for the termination of the third person singular. But this ei stands for esi. Thus typtei stands for typtesi, and this for typteti.
The Latin drops the final i, and instead of ti has t. Thus we get amat, dicit.
Now there is a law to which I alluded before, which is called Grimm's Law. According to it every tenuis in Latin is in Gothic represented by its corresponding aspirate. Hence, instead of t, we should expect in Gothic th; and so we find indeed in Gothic habaiþ, instead of Latin habet. This aspirate likewise appears in Anglo-Saxon, where he loves is lufað. It is preserved in the Biblical he loveth, and it is only in modern English that it gradually sank to s. In the s of he loves, therefore, we have a demonstrative root, added to the predicative root love, and this s is originally the same as the Sanskrit ti. This ti again must be traced back to the demonstrative root ta, this or there; which exists in the Sanskrit demonstrative pronoun tad, the Greek to, the Gothic thata, the English that; and which in Latin we can trace in talis, tantus, tunc, tam, and even in tamen, an old locative in men. We have thus seen that what we call the third person singular of the present is in reality a simple compound of a predicative root with a demonstrative root. It is a compound like any other, only that the second part is not predicative, but simply demonstrative. As in pay-master we predicate pay of master, meaning a person whose office it is to pay, so in dadâ-ti, give-he, the ancient framers of language simply predicated giving of some third person, and this synthetic proposition, give-he, is the same as what we now call the third person singular in the [pg 272] indicative mood, of the present tense, in the active voice.[279]
We have necessarily confined ourselves in our analysis of language to that family of languages to which our own tongue, and those with which we are best acquainted, belong; but what applies to Sanskrit and the Aryan family applies to the whole realm of human speech. Every language, without a single exception, that has as yet been cast into the crucible of comparative grammar, has been found to contain these two substantial elements, predicative and demonstrative roots. In the Semitic family these two constituent elements are even more palpable than in Sanskrit and Greek. Even before the discovery of Sanskrit, and the rise of comparative philology, Semitic scholars had successfully traced back the whole dictionary of Hebrew and Arabic to a small number of roots, and as every root in these languages consists of three consonants, the Semitic languages have sometimes been called by the name of triliteral.
To a still higher degree the constituent elements are, as it were, on the very surface in the Turanian family of speech. It is one of the characteristic features of that family, that, whatever the number of prefixes and suffixes, the root must always stand out in full relief, and must never be allowed to suffer by its contact with derivative elements.
There is one language, the Chinese, in which no analysis of any kind is required for the discovery of its component parts. It is a language in which no coalescence [pg 273] of roots has taken place: every word is a root, and every root is a word. It is, in fact, the most primitive stage in which we can imagine human language to have existed. It is language comme il faut; it is what we should naturally have expected all languages to be.
There are, no doubt, numerous dialects in Asia, Africa, America, and Polynesia, which have not yet been dissected by the knife of the grammarian; but we may be satisfied at least with this negative evidence, that, as yet, no language which has passed through the ordeal of grammatical analysis has ever disclosed any but these two constituent elements.
The problem, therefore, of the origin of language, which seemed so perplexing and mysterious to the ancient philosophers, assumes a much simpler aspect with us. We have learnt what language is made of; we have found that everything in language, except the roots, is intelligible, and can be accounted for. There is nothing to surprise us in the combination of the predicative and demonstrative roots which led to the building up of all the languages with which we are acquainted, from Chinese to English. It is not only conceivable, as Professor Pott remarks, “that the formation of the Sanskrit language, as it is handed down to us, may have been preceded by a state of the greatest simplicity and entire absence of inflections, such as is exhibited to the present day by the Chinese and other monosyllabic languages.” It is absolutely impossible that it should have been otherwise. After we have seen that all languages must have started from this Chinese or monosyllabic stage, the only portion of the problem of the origin of language that remains to [pg 274] be solved is this: How can we account for the origin of those predicative and demonstrative roots which form the constituent elements of all human speech, and which have hitherto resisted all attempts at further analysis? This problem will form the subject of our two next Lectures.