The Dawn of History: An Introduction to Pre-Historic Study

by C. F. Keary

To understand fully the department of study called the science of language considerable linguistic knowledge is necessary. But to grasp many of the general principles of this science, and many of the most important facts which it teaches, we do not need any such wide knowledge. In fact, a little thoughtful examination of any single tongue (his own, whichever it may be) would teach a person many things which without thought he would be inclined to pass over as matters of course or matters of no consequence. In truth, in this science of language what we need, even before we need a very wide array of facts, is what is called the scientific method in dealing with the facts which we possess. But, again, this which we call the scientific method is really represented by two qualities which have less pretentious names—observation and common sense.

Let us begin then by, so to say, challenging our own language, our English as we find it to-day, and see what hints we can gain from it of the formation of language as a whole and of its origin. An ounce of information gained in this wise, by examination and the use of our own common sense, is worth a much greater bulk of knowledge gained second-hand from books, and merely remembered as facts divorced from their causes.

Take any sentence, and place that, so to say, under a microscope, or under the dissecting-knife—take the opening sentence of this chapter, for example.

“We have looked upon man fashioning the first implements and weapons and houses that were ever made.”

Let us look at these few words alone.

The first thing we have to notice about this sentence, and any other sentence almost that we could anywhere find, is that the words which compose it fall into two distinct classes, the classes of what I will call meaning and meaningless, or significant and in-significant words. In the first class fall the words we, looked, man, fashioning, implements, weapons, houses, made. These I call ‘meaning’ or ‘significant’ words, because, if we isolate each one and utter it alone, it will call up some image to the mind—we, weapons, fashioning, houses, made, and so forth: the image may be pretty clear or it may be (in the case of the verbs it is) somewhat hazy. But in every case some image or some idea does rise before the mind when any of these words is pronounced. Have and were I exclude for the moment from either class. The words of the second class, then, from the sentence chosen are—upon, the, and, ever. Of the first three, at any rate, there can be no difficulty as to why they are classed as the meaningless or insignificant words of the sentence. Isolated from the words of the first class, upon, the, or and can by no means possibly call up any image or suggest any idea to the mind.

Now, if you take any implement whose manufacture the world has ever seen, unless it be of the most primitive description imaginable, you will find it really devisable into two parts, upon much the same principle that we have here resolved our typical sentence into two primary divisions; it will consist of the essential part, the part which by itself would be useful, and the unessential adjunct which is designed to assist the usefulness of the other portion, but which is useless by itself—or if not useless by itself, it is useless for the purposes for which the implement we are concerned with is made. All handles meant to assist in the use of an implement, be it a stone axe or a most elaborate modern weapon, form such an adjunct to the essential part. Such useful and by comparison useless parts are the blade and the handle of a knife, the barrel and the stock of a gun, the carrying portion of the wheelbarrow and the wheel, the share—the shearing or cutting portion of a plough—and the wooden framework; and so forth. There is no need to multiply examples. Nor, I think, is there any need to insist further how strictly analogous the two classes of words here distinguished are to the two parts of any other implement invented by man. It goes almost of course that the essential portion of any implement is the portion which was invented first, that knife-blades were invented before knife-handles, barrows before barrow-wheels, etc. Wherefore it seems to follow of course that, of the two classes of words whereof language consists—whereof all languages consist—the meaning and the meaningless words, the first were the earliest invented or discovered. This is the same as saying that language once consisted altogether of words which had a definite meaning attaching to them even when uttered by themselves, and consequently that the words of the second class grew, so to say, out of the words of the first class.

These are the conclusions which a mere examination of a single language, our own, under the guidance of observation and common sense, would force upon us; always supposing our language to be a representative one. And these conclusions are strengthened when we come to look a little into the history of words, so far as we can trace it.

So far back, therefore, we may go in the history of language to a time when all the words which men used were words which by themselves evoked distinct ideas. Relegating these words, as far as we can, into the classes which grammarians have invented for the different parts of speech, we see that the significant words are all, as a rule, either nouns (or pro-nouns), adjectives, or verbs; that the insignificant words are, as a rule, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions—what, in fact, are called particles, fragments of speech. I say, as a rule, for both divisions. The pronouns and the auxiliary verbs, for example, are very difficult to classify; and it depends rather on their use in each individual sentence, to which division they are to be relegated.

Origin of
speech undiscoverable.