Introduction to the science of language, Volume 1 (of 2)

by A. H. Sayce

While the Epicureans were speculating on the origin of speech, the grammarians of Alexandria were busying themselves with the elaboration of what the French would call a grammaire raisonnée. “Alexandria,” says Dr. Jolly, “was the birthplace of classical philology, a study which has directly raised itself upon the ruins of the old Hellenic culture and spiritual originality.” The intense mental activity and productiveness of Athens had made way for the frigid pedantry and artificial mannerisms of commentators and court-poets; the free national life and small rival states of Greece had been replaced by a semi-oriental despotism and a cosmopolitan centralization; and unable themselves to emulate the great creations of the classic age, the literary coterie of the Alexandrine Museum could do no more than admire and edit them. The very dialect in which the Attic tragedians and historians had composed and written had become strange and foreign, while the language of the Homeric Poems, which it must be remembered were to the Greeks what the Bible is to us, seemed as obscure and obsolete to the Alexandrine, as the tongue of Layamon or Piers Plowman does to the ordinary Englishman. If we add to this the existence of numerous and discordant copies of Homer, we have abundant reason for the growth of that large army of commentators, grammarians, and lexicographers which characterized the schools of Alexandria and laid the foundations of literary criticism. A minute investigation of the grammatical facts of the Greek language was rendered necessary, and a comparison of the older and later forms of the language as well as of its dialects grounded this investigation upon a comparatively secure basis. The metaphysical turn, however, given to the first linguistic inquiries still overshadowed the whole study, and the absurd and misleading “science of etymology” remained to the last the evil genius of Greek philology. The old dispute as to the origin of words now assumed a new form, mainly through the influence of the Stoic and Epicurean systems of philosophy, and the schools of Alexandria were divided into the two contending factions of Analogists and Anomalists. The first, among whom was counted the famous Homeric critic Aristarchus, found in language a strict law of analogy between concept and word, which was wholly denied by the others. It was round this question that Greek philology ranged itself from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D., and out of the controversy it occasioned was formed that Greek grammar which created the scholars of the last four hundred years, and is still so widely taught in our own country. Thus Aristarchus, for instance, in his anxiety to smooth away every irregularity and remove all exceptions to the rules he had formulated, determined that the genitive and dative of Ζεύς should no longer be Διός or Ζῆνος, but Ζεός, and Ζεΐ, and the endeavours of his opponents to upset this piece of pedantry led to the discovery of other similar exceptions to the general rule, and to the complete settlement of this portion of the grammar. Krates of Mallos, the head of the Pergamenian school, stands forward as the chief rival of Aristarchus on the opposite side. In his hands “anomaly” was made the leading principle of language, and general rules of any sort flatly denied, except in so far as they were consecrated by custom. The purism of his opponents, who wished to correct everything which contravened the grammatical laws they had laid down, was thus met by an unqualified defence of the rights of usage—“quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi.” Our own schoolmasters who have introduced an l into could (coud), the past tense of can, because should from shall has one, or have prefixed a w to whole, the twin-brother of hale (Greek καλός), because of the analogy of wheel and which, are the fitting successors of the Alexandrine Analogists, and it was unfortunate for both that they had no Aristophanes to transfer them to cloudland, and ridicule them in the light of common sense.

Krates, however, has better claims upon our attention than as leader of the Anomalists. To him we owe the first formal Greek grammar and collection of the grammatical facts obtained by the labours of the Alexandrine critics. That a formal grammar, which implies an enunciation of general rules as well as of the exceptions to them, should have been the work of an Anomalist rather than of an Analogist, may at first sight seem surprising; but we must recollect that the Anomalist did not deny the existence of general rules altogether, but only their universal and unqualified applicability; while the Analogist who sought to produce an artificial uniformity in language instead of accepting the facts of speech as they are, was totally unfitted for composing a practical grammar.[6]

The immediate cause, however, of the grammar in question was really the tardy comparison of Greek with a foreign tongue, the Latin, and the need of a Greek grammar felt by the citizens of Rome. Appius Claudius Cæcus (censor in B.C. 312) had already written upon grammar,[7] and Spurius Carvilius, a writing-master (B.C. 234), had regulated the Latin alphabet, substituting the indispensable g for the useless z, and when Krates came to Rome in 159 B.C., as the Ambassador of Attalus, the King of Pergamos, he found a ready audience for his ἀκροάσεις, or “lectures” upon the study of Greek. Almost all that the Romans knew of literary culture and civilization came from the Greeks; their native literature was coarse and insignificant, and their language uncultivated and inflexible. Education at Rome, therefore, meant education upon Greek models and in the Greek language. Boys learned Greek before they learned Latin, and the Greek words with which the plays of Plautus are strewn, as well as their Alexandrine origin, show pretty plainly that a familiarity with the language of Greece was not confined to the literary salon of a Scipio, or the houses of a wealthy aristocracy. Livius Andronicus, the father of Latin literature, was a Greek professor (272 B.C.), and his translation of the “Odyssey” into Latin was doubtless for the use of his pupils;[8] the first history of Rome, that of Fabius Pictor (in 200 B.C.), was written in Greek; and even a popular tribune like Tiberius Gracchus published the Greek speech he had made at Rhodes. In fact, a knowledge of Greek was necessary not only for acquiring the barest amount of culture and education, but even for a proper acquaintance with the Latin language itself. Partly through its stiff and cumbrous immobility, partly through the want of originality in its speakers, Latin literature and Latin oratory were alike impossible without the genial and fructifying influence of the Greek. With Greek teachers and Greek models, a native literature came into existence, and the language was artificially trained to become a suitable instrument for communication between the more polished nations of the ancient world and their Roman masters. It is true that classical Latin was really more or less of a hothouse exotic, interesting therefore rather to the student of literature than to the student of linguistic science; but the attempt to rear and nurture it, to keep it unpolluted by the spoken dialects of Rome or the provinces, and to confine it within the rules and metres of a foreign rhythm made it the seedplot of grammatical questions and philological investigations. The study of grammar was of practical importance to the practical Roman; he applied himself to it with all the energy of his nature, and treated the whole subject in a practical rather than a philosophical way. Julius Cæsar, the type and impersonation of the Roman spirit, found time to compose a work, “De Analogiâ,” and invent the term ablative, amid the distractions of political life, and even Cato with all his dogged conservatism, learnt Greek in his old age in order that he might be able to teach it to his son. The zeal with which the deepest problems of grammar were discussed seems strange to us of to-day, but upon the settlement of these problems depended the possibility of making Latin the vehicle of law and oratory, and preventing the Roman world from becoming Greek.

The first school grammar ever written in Europe was the Greek grammar of Dionysius Thrax, a pupil of Aristarchus, which he published at Rome in the time of Pompey. The grammar is still in existence,[9] and its opening sentence, in which grammar is defined as “a practical acquaintance” with the language of literary men, and divided into six parts—accentuation and phonology, explanation of figurative expressions, definition, etymology, general rules of flection, and critical canons[10]—has formed the starting-point of the innumerable school-grammars which have since seen the light. It has also been the cause of much of that absurd etymologizing which the Romans received from the Greeks and handed on to the lexicographers of modern Europe. Not content with transcribing the grotesque etymologies of their Greek teachers, the Latin writers strove to emulate them by still more grotesque etymologies of their own. Lucius Ælius Stilo, of Lanuvium, about 100 B.C. first gave a course of lectures on Latin literature and rhetoric, and one of his pupils, Marcus Terentius Varro, wrote five books, “De Linguâ Latinâ,” which he dedicated to his friend Cicero. The “science” of Latin etymology was now founded, and a fruitful field opened to future explorers. Every word had to be provided with a derivation, and on the received principles of etymology this was no difficult task. By the law of antiphrasis, bellum is made the neuter of bellus, “because there is nothing beautiful in war;” and parcus is so named because the niggard “spares (parcere) nobody.” It has been left to the vagaries of a later day to excel the Romans in this part of their labours. The lawyers tell us that parliament is derived from parler, “to speak,” mentem, “one’s mind;” Junius[11] that the soul is “the well of life” from the Greek ζάω, “to live,” and the Teutonic wala, “well,” while merry comes from μυρίζειν, because the ancients anointed themselves at feasts; and a book entitled “Ereuna,” published as late as the year of grace 1875, would raise the envy of a Latin etymologist. When we find Jupiter (Diespiter) gravely derived in it from the “Celtic” oyo-meir, “infinite,” and peitir, “a thunderbolt;” Nemesis discovered to be the “Celtic” neam-aire, “pitiless,” and manna man-neam, “food of heaven”—we may trace the last results of that unhappy disease of “popular etymologizing” which it is the work of comparative philology to cure.[12]

The introduction of Greek grammar into Rome, however, was attended by another evil than the propagation of a false system of etymology. The technical terms of Greek grammar were in many cases misunderstood, and, accordingly, mistranslated. Thus, in the province of phonology, the mutes were divided into the ψιλά (k, t, p), and their corresponding “rough” or aspirated sounds (δασέα), the soft g, d, and b being placed between the ψιλά and δασέα, and consequently named μέσα, or “middle.” The Romans rendered μέσα by mediæ, and δασέα by aspiratæ, but ψιλά they mistranslated tenues, and the mistranslation still causes confusion in modern treatises on pronunciation. Similarly, genitivus, the “genitive” or case of “origin,” is a blundering misrepresentation of the Greek γενική, or case of “the genus,” a wholly different conception; and accusativus, “the accusative,” or case “of accusing,” perpetuates the mistake which saw in the Greek αἰτιατική a derivative from αἰτιάομαι, to “blame,” instead of αἰτία, “an object;” while the Greek ἀπαρέμφατος signifies “without a secondary meaning” of tense or person, and not “the indefinite” or “indetermining” as the Latin infinitivus would imply. We still suffer from the errors made in transferring to Rome the grammatical terminology of Alexandria.

The Romans continued to take an interest in questions of grammar and of etymology down to the last. It is true that they confined their inquiries to their own and the Greek language; the descent they claimed from Æneas and the Trojans inspired them with no desire to investigate the dialects of Asia, and even the Etruscan language and literature which lingered on almost to the Christian era at their own doors, were left unregarded by the leading philologists of Rome. In language, as in everything else, the provincial had to adapt himself to the prejudices of his conqueror. Never before or since has the principle of centralization been carried out with greater logical precision. Even Cæsar who found time to discuss grammatical questions in the midst of his campaigns in Gaul, never troubled himself to examine the language of his Gallic adversaries, or to compare the grammatical forms they used with those of Latin.

Passing by the Emperor Claudius, who endeavoured to reform the Roman alphabet, and actually introduced three new letters, we come to Apollonius Dyskolus and his son Herodian, two eminent Alexandrine grammarians of the second century. We possess part of the “Syntax” of the former, who specially devoted himself to this branch of the subject, and expressed himself so briefly and technically (like the grammarians of ancient India) as to gain the name of Dyskolos, “the Difficult.” His son Herodian continued the labours of his father, and in the works of these Græco-Roman grammarians we see the long controversy between the Analogists and the Anomalists finally settled. Analogy is recognized as the principle that underlies language; but in actual speech exceptions occur to every rule, and break through the hard-and-fast lines of artificial pedantry. The Greek and Latin school-grammars of our boyhood are the heritage that has come down to us from this old dispute and its final settlement. Dr. Jolly remarks with justice[13] that the radical fault of these grammatical labours was the confusion between thinking and speaking, between logic and grammar—a confusion which intruded the empirical terminology of formal logic into grammar, and was only dissipated when an investigation of the languages of the East introduced the comparative method into the treatment of speech, and showed that to interpret aright the phænomena of Greek and Latin we must study them in the light of other tongues.

The tradition handed down by Herodian was taken up by Ælius Donatus in the fourth century, and Priscian in the sixth; the former the author of the Latin grammar which dominated the schools of the Middle Ages; the latter of eighteen books on grammar, the most extensive work of the kind we have received from classical antiquity. Priscian flourished at Constantinople during the short revival of the Roman Empire and glory that marked the reign of Justinian; and one of the most noticeable things in his writings is his comparison of Latin with Greek, especially the Æolic dialect. In this he followed Tyrannio or Diokles, the manumitted slave of Cicero’s wife and the author of a treatise “On the Derivation of the Latin Language from the Greek.” Donatus and Priscian were the philological lights of Europe for more than a thousand years, and such lights were little better than darkness. Once, and once only, was an attempt made to break down their monopoly and to introduce oriental learning into Western education. Pope Clement V., at the Council of Vienne in 1311, exhorted the four great Universities of Europe—Paris, Bologna, Salamanca, and Oxford—to establish two Chairs of Hebrew, two of Arabic, and two of Chaldee, in order that their students might be able to dispute successfully with Jews and Mohammedans. About the same time Dante, in his treatise “De Vulgari Eloquentiâ,” compared the dialects of Italy, and selected one which he calls “Illustrious, Cardinal and Courtly,” spoken wherever education and refinement were to be found, and sprung from the brilliant Sicilian court of Frederick II.[14]—a dialect destined to become the language of the “Divina Commedia” and the nursing-mother of the languages and literatures of modern Europe. But elsewhere the “Doctrinale puerorum” of the priest Alexander de Villa Dei, or Villedieu, of Paris, written in leonine verses, was the sole grammar taught and learnt; and the Latin dictionary of Giovanni de Balbis, of Genoa, was the only guide to Latin literature. No wonder that Roger Bacon, in his “Opus Majus,”[15] has to lay down that Greek, Hebrew, and Latin are three separate and independent languages, which must be learned and treated separately and independently, and that “those words only which are derived from Greek and Hebrew ought to be interpreted by those tongues, since those which are purely Latin cannot be explained except by Latin words.” “For,” he goes on to say, “Latin pure and simple is quite different from every other language, and therefore cannot be interpreted from any other.” The most approved scholars and etymologists of his day amused themselves by deriving amen from the Latin a, “without,” and the Greek mene (? μείων), “defect,” parascene (parasceve) from the Latin parare and cæna, and cælum from the hybrid case-helios, or “house of the sun” (!), much in the same way that Jacobus de Voragine, the genial author of the “Legenda Aurea,”[16] derives Clemens from “cleos, quod est gloria, et mens, quasi gloriosa mens;” and says of the name Cæcilia, “quasi cæli lilia, vel cæcis via, vel a cælo et lya: vel Cæcilia quasi cæcitate carens; vel dicitur a cælo et leos quod est populus.”

But even the older Humanists were not much better. They knelt before the spirit of classical antiquity with a worship at once child-like and unreasoning. Their object was to write and speak Latin correctly—that is to say, in accordance with the usage of certain literary men of Rome, not to discover the grounds on which this usage rested. Switheim declares that it matters as little to know why this or that verb governs a case, as it does to know why bin, the Latin sum, “governs the nominative, ich, ego.” “We can say that the verb governs the nominative, because it was once so agreed among the grammarians of antiquity that the verb should govern the nominative ante se. If it had been agreed among the ancients that the object of the verb should be in the accusative, the verb would govern the accusative.” The grammatical term “to govern” was, by the way, a legacy bequeathed by the schoolmen; and a very mischievous legacy it was. Priscian does not yet know it, though it is found in Consentius. Unreasoning and unreasonable, however, as the Humanists were in their treatment of grammar, they were outdone by the orthodox who found in the “errors” of the Vulgate—such as Da mihi bibere—direct proofs of Divine inspiration, and the power of the Holy Spirit to override the usual rules of grammar. Johannes de Gallandia, for instance, states boldly:—“Pagina divina non vult se subdere legi Grammatices, nec vult illius arte regi.” So, again, Smaragdus writes in reference to the rule laid down by Donatus, that scalæ, scopæ, quadrigæ must be used in the plural: “We shall not follow him because we know that the Holy Spirit has always (namely, in the Vulgate) employed these words in the singular.”[17]