Thus by comparing the languages of the Aryan family we discover the phonetic law that an English th must always represent t in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, unless the action of other determinate laws interfere, and by comparing different groups of languages together, we find that the dual number everywhere preceded the plural. There are still many tongues in which the plural is formed by reduplication, tongues, that is, where duality, the repetition of the idea, is or has been the only conception of plurality yet reached; and others in which the number “three” is denoted by words like prica, “many” (in the dialect of the Puris of South America,) expressive of vague indefiniteness, and an inability to form a clear idea of anything beyond “two.” Indeed, in our own Aryan family of speech there was a time when one, and two, or that which was “divided” (δύω, δίς, διὰ, &c.) from one, were the only numerals known, and it required a fresh effort of thought to attain and conceive of a new numeral, which was accordingly named tri, tres, three, or that which is “beyond” (trans, through, Sansk., tar-â-mi, “I pass beyond”).
The laws of speech may be either primary or empirical. Empirical laws are those generalizations made from the survey of a limited number of phænomena, the reason of which we do not know. All we know is that given one particular fact, another particular fact follows, or that wherever we meet with a particular class of phænomena the same generalization is sure to hold good. Thus in astronomy, Kepler’s discovery that the planets move in an ellipse may be termed an empirical law, and the same may be said of the phonetic law mentioned above which obliges us to compare an English th with the Greek and Latin t. Primary laws are those higher and more comprehensive laws or generalizations which embrace the empirical laws and give the reason of them. Such a primary law is gravitation, such, too, probably is the law of natural selection. In the science of language examples of these primary laws would be the law that all language is based on roots, or the law of economy in the use of speech. The determination of the primary laws of language leads us very nearly into the charmed land of metaphysic; as the physicist with his doctrine of force is transported out of the region of pure experiment and observation, and brought face to face with metaphysical problems, so is the scientific student of language with his doctrine of roots. Hence that part of the science of language which stands in the most direct relation with the old philosophy of speech, which would investigate such subjects as the origin of gender and case, or determine the priority of thought or language, has sometimes been called linguistic metaphysics.
When once the laws of language have been laid down we are able to apply them to our facts (that is, words and sentences), to whatever period these belong. The science of language, like all other sciences, rests upon the postulate of uniformity. So long as the conditions remain the same, the laws of the science will act with undeviating regularity. It does not matter whether the words we are dealing with are still living and spoken, or have been dead and obsolete for thousands of years; if we can show that they fall under the action of a particular law, we can apply that law to them in either case with equal certainty. When once we have ascertained that an English d represents a Sanskrit t, only those Sanskrit words which contain a t must be compared with English words of Teutonic origin which have a d in the corresponding place, whatever their antiquity may be. A knowledge that an English d answers to a Sanskrit and Latin t, and an English h to a Sanskrit and Latin c (k or ś) shows that the English hundred has the same origin as the Latin centum, and the Sanskrit śatam, and that, consequently, our linguistic ancestors were able to count as far as one hundred before they separated from each other, the one to conquer India, the other to occupy Europe. Words, in fact, are like the fossils of the rocks; they embody the thought and knowledge of the society that first coined and used them, and if we can find out their primitive meaning by the aid of the comparative method, we shall know the character of the society that produced them, and the degree of civilization it had attained. The palæontologist can reconstruct the animal life of the past ages of the globe with no greater ease than the comparative philologist can reconstruct the life of bygone and forgotten communities. If the fragment of a fossil bone can tell us the history of an extinct world, so, too, can the fragment of a word reveal to us the struggles of ancient societies, and ideas and beliefs that have long since perished.
But the laws of a science must be verified before they can be accepted as such. However brilliant or ingenious a hypothesis may be, it remains a hypothesis, more or less probable, until it has been verified by experiment and observation. It is to history, to psychology, and to physiology that the science of language has to look for the verification of its laws. In the phonautograph of König, or the phonograph of Edison, we can discover the very forms assumed by the waves of air set in motion by each sound we utter; and the first lessons of psychology confirm the conclusion of glottology, that the concrete precedes the abstract. Sometimes it is not so much the law, the generalization itself, that can best be verified; but the application of it to the phænomena of speech. Thus, a sound application of the laws of language makes it clear that the words possessed in common by Spanish and Arabic are not due to a common ancestry, but to contact between the two tongues, and the history of the Moorish conquest of Spain confirms the conclusion.
But we may ask, What is meant precisely by that comparison of words and sentences on which the laws of language are said to rest? A word, a sentence, a grammatical form, consists of two elements, one, the articulate utterance, the other, the signification or thought which the utterance symbolizes. Sound and sense are the two factors which make up speech, and it is, therefore, in respect of both sound and sense that our comparisons have to be made. Comparative philology divides itself into phonology and sematology, to which, perhaps, we may also add morphology. Phonology is the science of sounds, sematology the science of meanings, and morphology the science of grammatical forms. But inasmuch as grammatical forms are but a combination of the relations of the sentence (or rather of the meaning those relations convey to the mind) and of the phonetic sounds by which they are expressed, morphology may be strictly included partly under phonology, partly under sematology. We must never forget that the study of sounds is intended to be the vestibule through which we approach the thought within. The phonological investigations we carry on, the phonological laws we formulate, are the outworks by which we may storm the fortress of the inward signification. They enable us to trace to a common source words that have flowed through diverse regions, or to discover the origin of some strangely-changed form of grammar, but the value they possess is the value that belonged to the magic ring of the Nibelungs: it gives access to the treasure, but is not the treasure itself. Phonology is not commensurate with comparative philology, as seems sometimes to be thought. It forms but one side of the science, the instrument by which we discover the true force and meaning of sentences and words.
As the instrument of linguistic science, however, phonology is of the highest importance. In fact the modern science of language is wholly based upon it, and that which distinguishes comparative philology from the abortive attempts of former centuries is its scientific investigation into the laws of articulate utterance and of phonetic change. Here, and almost here only, we can as yet trace the nature and working of the laws of speech. It is only because we know that an English h and d must answer to a Sanskrit k (ś) and t that we are able to assert that the primitive Aryan community had attained the conception of “one hundred.” Sematology is still in a far more backward state; its laws are still a subject of investigation, and the differences of opinion that exist as to some of the great questions of linguistic science show only too plainly how much in this department of it still remains to be done. But the relative position of phonology and sematology is, after all, but natural. Phonology deals with the outward and physical, that which, can be weighed and measured, and imitated by mechanical contrivances; sematology belongs to the inward and the spiritual—to that realm of thought, in short, which can only be examined in so far as it makes itself accessible to the inspection of the senses, and submits itself to the action of physical laws. Thought seems infinite, manifold, and free, determining and determined by itself. Like the wind, it “bloweth where it listeth;” we hear “the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.” All the capriciousness and complex mobility of the individual appears to belong to it; we may formulate the laws of thinking, but not of the forms which that thinking takes. The vocal organs, on the other hand, through which thought becomes realized in speech, are subject to all the conditions of the material world. The utterance of each articulate sound and its relations to another are conditioned and defined by the physical constitution of man, by the circumstances in which he finds himself, and by measurable laws of sound. The outward form of language, the flesh-garment, as it were, in which thought clothes itself, falls entirely into the domain of physiology and acoustics. Here we can observe and experimentalize, can weigh and measure, can even reproduce artificially for ourselves. Every consonant and vowel can be accurately determined, the machinery and effort needed to produce them precisely known, the variations they are capable of exactly ascertained. But when we turn to the informing thought, to that inner essence which gives life and reality to each modulation of articulate sound, all appears different. What wonder that the science of significations should be so far behind the science of sounds?
Let us not forget, however, that thought, in so far as it finds its expression in language, is not so infinitely free and capricious as we might at first sight suppose. The very fact of its finding expression in language, that is, of being embodied in articulate sounds, implies restraint and submission to conditions. Thought is thus, as it were, arrested and crystallized; it is only gradually and in consequence of ascertainable causes that the signification attached to a particular sound or group of sounds comes to be changed. That these sounds should symbolize certain ideas is, after all, a matter of convention; it follows from the tacit agreement, not indeed of isolated individuals, but of individuals as forming a society. Changes, therefore, in the signification of words and sentences can only result from causes which affect the whole society, and as such causes necessarily work slowly and by degrees, significant change can accordingly be brought under the action of general laws. But these laws can only be established by the help of phonology: until we know what words and forms the laws of phonology will allow us to compare together and refer to a common origin, we cannot begin to discuss the genesis and history of the significations they bear. No doubt structure, that is, the conception of the sentence formed by a language, and the order in which the several parts of a sentence are arranged, is a very important element in the classification of languages; still it is only one element, and unless phonology prove that the roots and derivatives of two idioms are related, no amount of structural similarity will justify us in deriving them from the same stock.
Phonology, then, is the key and mainstay of modern linguistic science; it guarantees the correctness of the results already obtained, and is the indispensable preliminary to future researches. As will be shown in a later chapter, our knowledge of sounds and their laws is now tolerably complete. So, too, is the application of this knowledge to certain groups of language. The phonological laws of the Aryan family, for instance, are pretty well ascertained; we know what sounds in one member of the family answer to other sounds in another member, and what particular changes of sound are permissible within each of the several members themselves. It follows from the physical formation of the organs of speech that the various sounds capable of being articulated are limited in number. Prince Lucien Bonaparte has enumerated as many as 385, though some of these are not to be met with in any known language or dialect.[82] The number of different sounds occurring in any single language is not large among European languages; for instance, Modern Greek, Spanish, and Illyrian have but five vowel-sounds, while Gaelic, which has the largest number, possesses twenty-one, Portuguese and English following next with nineteen a-piece. So far as consonantal sounds are concerned the number tends to diminish with the culture and age of a language, and the evidence of facts is against identifying the hypothetical alphabet to which the sounds of the various Aryan dialects can be reduced with the actual alphabet of the parent Aryan speech. The physical formation of our vocal organs, due to climate, food, habit, and inherited aptitudes, obliges us to pronounce in a particular way. There are sounds, for instance, which birds and animals can make, but we cannot; while nothing is harder than to catch and reproduce the exact pronunciation of a foreign tongue. The Polynesian turns David into Raviri, Samuel into Hemara, London into Ranana, and Frederick into Waratariki, and the word steel has been adopted in the Sandwich Islands in the shape of tila. It has been said that a foreigner can never speak another language so perfectly as to conceal all traces of his origin, and though this is going too far, it is quite certain that there are languages the pronunciation of which can never be thoroughly acquired after the age when growth has ended and the organs of speech have ceased to be plastic. There are numerous sounds which particular races or individuals are unable to imitate successfully; and those who have watched the attempt of children to learn their mother-tongue know how slowly some special sound is often acquired, and how in some cases it is never acquired at all. The sound which one person will pronounce as r will be pronounced l by another. Thus, the Chinese change every l into r, and the nearest approach they can make to the pronunciation of Christ is Ki-li-sse-t(ŭ). The Japanese, on the other hand, cannot manage l, and in their mouths accordingly idolatry becomes idoratry. The native children of Bengal, quick as they are in other respects, seldom pronounce rightly those English words which begin with a sibilant and a mute when a consonant precedes them, ten stamps, for instance, being made into ten-y-stamps, and this string into this-y-string. The same sound which is pronounced without difficulty in certain combinations may be a hopeless puzzle in others, and the English tourist who mispronounces Boulogne and Cologne, will yet ask for an onion and talk of a barrier. No individual, it would seem, pronounces all his sounds exactly like his neighbours, and even the same individual will vary his pronunciation of the same word in the course of a few seconds. Variations of pronunciation, in fact, are like the variations we observe in plants and animals, and if any variation becomes marked and is rendered popular and general from some cause or other, it brings about an alteration in the form of words. Such alterations resemble new species in natural history, and we may compare the different species of pigeons or dogs with the differences of pronunciations given by different dialects to what was originally the same sound. Changes in the pronunciation of words are constantly going on, causing a language to alter its form and appearance or to branch out into dialects. As these changes are determined by circumstances and physical necessities, and not by the arbitrary will of the individual, the laws they follow can be discovered and laid down. The laws once known, we can tell what words and sounds in different dialects, or in the different periods of the same dialect, may be compared together and referred to a common source, supposing, that is, that the significations they bear allow us to ascribe the identity of their phonetic elements to anything more than coincidence. The laws of phonology enable us to assert that the Greek καλός, and the English hale or (w)hole, may be traced back to a common origin so far as their outward crust and garment—the phonetic sounds of which they are composed—is concerned; it then remains for sematology to decide whether the ideas of “beauty” and “soundness” can be connected together. Distinctions between sounds must be studied in spoken languages, and we must not forget that it is always very difficult to discover what was the exact sound attached to a word no longer spoken, but preserved only in the custody of writing.
Different tribes and races vary much as to the sounds which they find it easy or hard to pronounce and imitate. A sound which has been changed into a certain other sound in one language, may have been preserved or changed into quite a different sound in another language. In our Aryan group the palatals were originally gutturals; in Malayan, on the contrary, dentals. Because our Teutonic forefathers turned k into h, we must not conclude that such a change was possible all over the world, and that wherever we come across an h we are at liberty to assume an earlier k. Indeed, there is clear evidence that in some languages h may become k. The phonetic laws which hold good of one group of languages, or of one member of a group, do not necessarily hold good of another.
In comparing languages we have first to compare their grammars, not their vocabularies. The reason of this is obvious. It is in the sentence, not in the isolated word, that languages agree or differ, and grammar deals with the relations that the several parts of the sentence bear to one another. Single words may accidentally resemble each other in both sound and sense, and yet belong to languages which have nothing in common. In the Quichua, or dialect of the Incas, three words—inti, “sun;” munay, “love;” and veypul, “great”—resemble the Sanskrit indra, manyu, and vipula,[83] but this is the only likeness that can be detected between the two tongues. So, too, the Mandshu shun, “the sun,” coincides in sound and meaning with the English word, like the Mandshu sengi and Latin sanguis, “blood,” or the North American Indian potómac and the Greek πόταμος, “river.” Such accidental coincidences turn up all the world over. The number of articulate sounds used in actual speech is, after all, not so very large, nor also the number of different ideas needed by primitive man; and when we bear in mind the probable onomatopœic origin of the greater part of our vocabulary, it is not wonderful that these coincidences should occur. Indeed, the wonder would be if they did not. But a coincidence of this sort is one of the surest evidences we can have that the words which seem to resemble one another have no connection whatsoever. As Professor Max Müller has said, “sound etymology has nothing to do with sound.” Language is continually changing; and as the phonetic and significant changes in it are occasioned by outward conditions and circumstances which vary from age to age and from country to country, they must necessarily take a different direction in the mouths of different speakers. The very fact that the English call and the Greek καλέω have almost every letter in common, ought to have raised a presumption against their identity, even before the law was known that an English c answers to a Greek γ, and a Greek κ to an English h, and that, consequently, the true Greek representative of call is γήρυω, and the true English representative of καλέω is hail.