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

by A. H. Sayce

But, as elsewhere in nature, so, too, in the domain of language, species passes gradually and insensibly into species, class into class. The types remain clear and strongly-marked, but the dividing lines between them are hard to draw. Around each type is grouped a large assemblage of languages which stand at a perpetually widening distance from it; on the one side the furthest member of the group almost loses itself in the outlying member of another, while the most distant member on the other side can with difficulty be distinguished from the most distant member of a third group. Isolating Chinese presents the phænomena of agglutination and even of inflection; the agglutinative Finnic dialects approach so nearly to inflection that attempts have been made to include them in the Aryan family; and English is in many respects highly agglutinative and even polysynthetic, while the French je vous donne is almost as good an instance of incorporation as could be given from Basque itself. But with all this gradual approximation the several types of language still remain fixed and distinct. The Chinese in its main features, in its bone and muscle, so to say, continues true to its isolating type, just as Finnic continues true to its agglutinative type, or French to its inflectional one. The greater or less departure of a language from its primitive type is due to several causes. First of all, race in language may become mixed just as much as race in physiology. Contact between two languages produces not only mixture in their vocabularies, but a mutual influence upon their phonology, and even grammar as well. This is a point to which we shall have to return hereafter. Few languages any more than races in the physiological sense can have remained quite isolated during the long course of their history or been preserved from contact with languages of an alien class. Then, secondly, with all their differences the minds of most men are cast in the same mould. Thought is one, as a philosopher has said, though the forms under which it shows itself are infinitely various. Unity underlies diversity, and this unity finds its expression in the tendency of all languages to break away from their types and assume common forms. It is true that a language cannot wholly break away from its type without becoming another language, and so ceasing to exist; it is true, also, that such a psychological change as would be implied by the occurrence is almost inconceivable, and is certainly contrary to historical experience; but nevertheless languages belonging to two different types may gradually approach one another during the long ages of their development, and the difficulty experienced by the student in deciding to which type they belong may testify to the similarity of the intellectual outfit of all mankind. Here, at any rate, we can discover a common origin, a common descent for the manifold branches of the human family.

Schlegel’s attempt to divide languages morphologically has already been described. He distinguished them primarily as inorganic and organic, the first class including languages “with grammatical structure,” like the Chinese, and languages with affixes, and the second class, including the synthetic or ancient and analytic or modern dialects of the inflectional tongues. Pott, following Wilhelm von Humboldt, established the division which with various modifications is still upheld by most linguistic students. According to this the languages of the world fall into four groups, the polysynthetic (such as the Eskimaux or the Mexican), the isolating (like the Chinese), the agglutinative (like the Turkish), and the inflectional (like Sanskrit). The first group he terms transnormal, the second two intra-normal, and the third alone normal. Bopp falls back upon Schlegel’s classification, making but three kinds of speech, the isolating with monosyllabic roots but “without organism, without grammar;” the languages capable of composition, of which the Indo-European form the highest type; and the Semitic languages which denote the relations of grammar by internal vowel-change. Schleicher, like Max Müller, discards the first or polysynthetic class of Humboldt and Pott, while Max Müller acutely seeks historical support for the threefold division by referring the isolating languages to races which have not risen above family-life, the agglutinative to nomad tribes, and the inflectional to peoples who have arrived at the conception of the state.

All these divisions, so far as they are founded in fact, are really based, not on the word, but on the sentence, and only have a meaning if we explain them as representing the different forms under which the sentence has been conceived by the various races of mankind. To speak of Chinese being “without grammar,” as Bopp does, or to describe the larger number of languages as inorganic or other than normal, like Schlegel and Pott, is simply self-contradictory. Every morphological classification of language must be founded on grammar—that is, on the relations of the several parts of the sentence to one another; and the very existence of a class implies that it has a grammar and an organic life. We shall never have a satisfactory starting-point for our classification unless we put both word and root out of sight, and confine ourselves to the sentence or proposition, and the ways in which the sentence may be expressed. The reason why languages differ morphologically is that the thought which they embody assumes different forms.

In the second chapter (pp. 122-132) the languages of the world have been classed as (1) polysynthetic, (2) isolating, (3) incorporating, (4) agglutinative, (5) inflectional, and (6) analytic, and reason shown from the structure of the sentence why such a classification should be made. Steinthal was the first to make the sentence rather than the word the basis of morphological arrangement, and to point out that where we are dealing with grammar and structure, we must have at least two words standing in grammatical relation to each other. Steinthal’s system is very elaborate. He begins with the division of language into formless and formal, a division, however, of very questionable accuracy. It seems to take us back to the scheme of Schlegel, and to forget that where languages are distinguished from one another by the forms they assume, we cannot describe any of them as having no form at all. The form of speech, indeed, is the mode in which the mind views the connection between the several parts of a proposition, so that wherever we have a proposition, wherever, in fact, we have language, there must be form. Steinthal, however, goes on to divide his formless languages into “juxta-positive” and “compositive,” the Taic languages belonging to the first, and the Polynesian, Ural-Altaic, and American belonging to the second. The formal languages are similarly divided into “juxta-positive” and “compositive,” Chinese coming under the head of the one and Old Egyptian, Semitic, and Aryan coming under that of the other.

Humboldt did better than Steinthal in using the terms “imperfect” and “perfect,” instead of “formless” and “formal.” Like Steinthal, he classed Chinese along with the inflectional languages of Europe, rather than with Burman and the other isolating idioms of the far East. This seems most unnatural, since—so far as outward form is concerned—little difference can be made between isolating Chinese and isolating Burman. It is true that the order in which the parts of the sentence follow one another is more or less free in Chinese, while it is fixed in Burman, but this is a difference essentially unlike that between inflectional Aryan with its suffixes and inflectional Semitic with its internal vowel-change. Besides, both Aryan and Semitic are included in the same class. But both Humboldt and Steinthal found themselves in a difficulty. Starting with the assumption that all language follows a regular course of development, ascending from the isolating stage to the inflectional, they had further to assume that this development was but a reflection of the general development of the mind, and that the passage from one stage of speech to the other was marked by a passage to a higher intelligence and a higher form of civilization. How, then, could it be possible that the Chinese nation, which seems to have originated a considerable civilization, should show no signs of that civilization in its language, the mirror and reflection of the spirit of man? How could it be that the language spoken by the primitive Aryans, when they were still simple shepherds on the Hindu-Kush, before they had learnt the elements of writing and culture from their Semitic neighbours, was so much in advance of that of a race to whom belonged the hard task of initiating a civilization? The only escape from the difficulty was to deny that Chinese should be classed with Burman, in spite of appearances, and so to throw the whole system of classification into confusion.

For that system depends upon the mode in which the grammatical relations of the sentence are expressed, and so long as the mode is the same, the order followed by the several parts of the sentence matters but little. The order of words, in fact, is constantly liable to change, and the simple fact that the definite article is postfixed in Scandinavian, Albanian, Bulgarian, and Wallachian, while it is prefixed in those other members of the Aryan family which possess one, shows how impossible it is to ground any important conclusions upon it. The same language varies from age to age in the position it assigns to the words it uses. The modern moreover, for example, appears as overmore in the Paston letters, and the Coptic, once a postfix language, has now become a prefix one. As we shall see presently, the order assumed by the parts of the sentence depends in great measure upon the development of grammatical forms.

Humboldt and Steinthal, nevertheless, are quite right in believing that there is a distinction between Chinese and Burman, but the distinction is that between a decrepit and civilized language on the one hand and a fresh and uncultivated language on the other. Chinese civilization is immensely old, and the language which enshrines it is immensely old also; but we must be on our guard against supposing that the antiquity of Chinese is proved by its isolating character. Chinese is no example of arrested growth, no fossilized relic of an earlier condition of speech. Were it so, Chinese civilization, and the originality and progress it implies, would be inexplicable. When we compare classical Chinese with Burman or Siamese, or even with the less cultivated dialects of the Chinese empire itself, we find the progress and development we should expect; but it is progress and development within the limits of “isolation.” All the possibilities of the isolating sentence have been worked out; and if these possibilities are not so numerous or so adequate as in the case of an agglutinative or inflectional sentence, the fault is due to the original conception of the sentence with which the Chinese started, not to fossilization or arrested growth. The Mandarin dialect of China has been affected by phonetic decay to an enormous extent; numerous sounds have perished, and words once dissimilar have become identical in pronunciation. By the help of the ancient rhymes, of the cognate dialects, and of a scientific examination of the written characters, Dr. Edkins has been able to restore the pronunciation of Chinese as it was two thousand and more years ago, and the evidences thus obtained of the wear and tear of the speech are most striking. Dak, “the flute,” for instance, has become yo; zhet, “the tongue,” is now she and the table of correspondent sounds given in the foot-note will show how great has been the changes undergone by the outward form of the cultivated language.[236] Side by side with this decay of sounds went a corresponding grammatical development. Tones were introduced to distinguish words that had come to be pronounced alike, and the different parts of the sentence were marked out by “empty words,” used like our “of” or “if” in a purely symbolical and grammatical sense. It is probable that the spread of education and the extensive employment of ideographic writing had much to do with the phonetic decay that attacked the language. Ambiguities in conversation could always be remedied by an appeal to written symbols. At all events, it is curious that Accadian was almost equally affected by phonetic decay; and Accadian not only possessed a similarly ideographic system of writing, but was spoken in a country where education was similarly widespread, and clay—the ordinary writing material—was always at hand.

We are apt to assume that inflectional languages are more highly advanced than agglutinative ones, and agglutinative languages than isolating ones, and hence that isolation is the lowest stage of the three, at the top of which stands flection. But what we really mean when we say that one language is more advanced than another, is that it is better adapted to express thought, and that the thought to be expressed is itself better. Now, it is a grave question whether from this point of view the three classes of language can really be set the one against the other. So long as thought is expressed clearly and intelligibly, it does not much matter how it is expressed—how, that is, the relations of the sentence or proposition are denoted. When we begin to contrast the morphology of two classes of speech, there is a tendency to import our prejudices into the question, and to assume that the grammatical forms to which we have been accustomed are necessarily superior to those which appear strange to us. The masterpieces of Greek, or Latin, or Sanskrit literature have produced the impression that the languages which embody them must surpass all others as instruments of thought. But such an impression may, after all, be an incorrect one. English literature stands on quite as high a level as the literature of the classical tongues. The English language is quite as good an instrument of thought as Sanskrit or Greek, and yet English can hardly be said to be inflectional in the way that Sanskrit and Greek are. If we turn to China we shall find the Chinaman preferring his own classics to anything produced by the West, and regarding his own language as the best possible instrument of thought. Preferences of this kind can as little be referred to an absolute standard as preferences in the matter of personal beauty. The European, for instance, has a wholly different ideal of beauty from the Negro, and the Negro from the Mongol. If the excellence of a language is to be decided by the number and variety of its grammatical forms, the palm will be borne off rather by the Eskimaux or the Cheroki than by the dialects of Greece and Rome; if by the attainment of terseness and vividness, Chinese will come to the front; if by clearness and perspicacity, English will dispute the prize with the agglutinative languages. Indeed, the agglutinative languages are in advance of the inflectional in one important point, that, namely, of analyzing the sentence into its component parts, and distinguishing the relations of grammar one from another. It has been remarked[237] that “were the development theory true, the inflectional would have developed into the agglutinative, and not the converse.” Thought is obscured, not assisted, by the existence of different terminations to express the same grammatical relation, or of the same termination to express different grammatical relations; and yet this is an anomaly and source of confusion which continually meets us in the inflectional tongues. The ascription of gender to inanimate objects is worthy only of a savage and unreasoning age, and where the signs of gender have lost all reference to their original import, as in modern German, they become merely a relic and survival of barbarism. In fact, when we examine closely the principle upon which flection rests, we shall find that it implies an inferior logical faculty to that implied by agglutination. In a flectional language the relations of the sentence are denoted by particular suffixes or internal vowel-changes, which group themselves, as it were, round the principal thought contained in the sentence. In other words, every subordinate thought should be denoted by a flection. Such a principle, however, cannot be worked. Amabit, it is true, means “he will love;” but in order to express “he must love,” language has to break through its flectional principle and denote the idea, not by flection, but by independent words—necesse est ut amet, or illi amandum est. But this is not the only mode in which the principle of flection is violated by the necessities of developed speech. When sentences come to be brought into relation with one another, the subordinate sentence ought to be pointed out by flectional means. This is done in some cases, as in the Greek use of the inflected article with the infinitive. Generally, however, the subordination is left to be marked by independent words, such as the conjunctions, by the very means, in fact, adopted by Chinese and other isolating languages in accordance with their fundamental principle. In fact, the principle of flection cannot be logically carried out beyond the narrow circle of those simple sentences which sufficed for the needs and intelligence of primitive man, and the progress of thought in modern Europe has been marked by a corresponding revolt from the trammels of flection. It is only dialects like those of Slavs and Lithuanians which still cling to an elaborate system of flection. English has fitted itself to become a universal language by struggling to assimilate its condition to that of Chinese. Even the polysynthetic languages of America can, with a certain show of reason, claim a higher place for themselves than inflectional speech. If the object of language is to express thought, it is obvious that that thought should be expressed as a whole, as in a picture; and this is just what is done by a polysynthetic sentence. Our own language, when it forms such compound epithets as “The Employers’ Liability for Injury Bill,” or German when it interpolates a whole sentence between the article and its substantive, virtually adopt the principle of polysynthetism. Polysynthetism, however, is only to be preferred when we wish to represent our thought as a single whole, to bring it before the mind of another just as it presents itself to our own mind. The best test we really have of a growth in intelligence and reasoning power is an increasing clearness and analysis of thought. The polysynthetic languages are essentially the languages of races whose logical faculties are backward, or who have not yet left behind them the “jelly-fish” stage of development.[238] Division of labour, differentiated organization, analysis of thought and its expression—all these are the signs of advancing civilization.

The whole picture is imaged in the mind before we break it up into its several parts. So, too, the sentence which embodied a thought was conceived as a whole before it was separated into its elements. Gestures were the first makeshift for grammar; they determined the relations of each particular utterance. Then these utterances came to be compared together, and those that agreed were put on one side, and those that disagreed on another. By slow degrees the relations of grammar were thus evolved; gestures became more and more unnecessary, until at last in the most highly cultivated languages, such as modern English, they have disappeared almost entirely or been banished from educated speech. But this primitive monad, this undifferentiated sentence-word, developed very variously in the mouths of different speakers. In one case a number of antecedent circumstances combined to produce a certain conception of the outer world and the relation of things to each other and to the mind, altogether unlike the conception which grew up in other cases. Here the Chinaman regarded the elements of the sentence as co-ordinate and equal, setting part against part, and member against member, and leaving the relations between them to be supplied by the mind. There the Mongol drew a hard and fast distinction between the principal and the subordinate, between the nucleus of the proposition and the ideas dependent on it, but he took care to express each by a corresponding word and to place these words in the exact relation demanded by the thought. Elsewhere, again, the Hindu merged the subordinate in the principal, expressing the relations of the several parts of the sentence by modifications of the individual words or imitating the original form of speech by a long and elaborate compound. But in all cases the developed sentence of the later period would seem to have been evolved out of the primitive undifferentiated one according to the genius of the speakers and the mode in which they conceived the relations of ideas. The American tongues alone preserved a semblance of the form once assumed by all speech, and in the compounds of the inflected idioms we may also trace a reflection of the earliest utterances of man. What these were may still be gathered from the grammar of the Eskimaux, even though there is as great a gap between this and the primæval sentence-words of his forefathers as there is between the social condition of the Eskimaux and the social condition of his first ancestors. A cultured language like the Mexican shows the highest development attainable by the polysynthetic form of speech; here words may be isolated and separated from the sentence by means of the affix tl. Sotsitl, for instance, is “flowers,” ni-sotsi-temoa, “I look for flowers.” All over the world, indeed, wherever we come across a savage race, or an individual who has been unaffected by the civilization surrounding him, we find the primitive inability to separate the particular from the universal by isolating the individual word, and extracting it, as it were, from the ideas habitually associated with it. Thus the Hottentot cannot use a noun without a pronominal suffix indicating not only gender and case but also person as well, except as a predicate;[239] in several of the South American dialects the words which denote “head,” “body,” “eye,” or other parts of the person, cannot be named without personal relation being denoted by a prefixed possessive pronoun or denied by a negative or privative prefix,[240] and in Mr. Wallace’s vocabularies from the river Uapes this inability extends to other words. A Kurd of the Zaza tribe who furnished Dr. Sandwith with a list of words belonging to his dialect, was so little “able to conceive a hand or father, except so far as they were related to himself, or something else, and so essentially concrete rather than abstract were his notions, that he combined the pronoun with the substantive whenever he had a part of the human body or a degree of consanguinity to name,” saying sèrè-min, “my head,” and pie-min, “my father.” Dr. Latham, from whom this fact is quoted, goes on to refer to a similar amalgamation noticed by him in the languages of the Louisiade and mentioned in the appendix to Macgillivray’s “Voyage of the Rattlesnake,” as well as in the ordinary Gipsy dialect spoken in England.[241]