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

by C. F. Keary

The five stages
in the formation
of language.

And now to recapitulate. We have in tracing the growth of language discovered first of all two stages whereby the material of the language was formed: the class of what we have called the meaning or significant words came into being, and out of this was formed the second class of so-called meaningless or auxiliary words. These two stages were in the main passed through before any known language came into existence; for there is no known language which does not contain words of both these classes; albeit the second stage is likewise a process which is still going on, as in the examples chosen, where even and just pass from being adjectives into even and just the adverbs, and the French substantives pas and point take a like change of meaning.

These first two stages passed, there follow three other stages which go to the formation of the grammar of a language: first the stage of merely coupling words together, so as to form fresh words—the monosyllabic state; then the stage in which one part of the additional word has lost its meaning while the root-word remains unchanged—the stage called the agglutinative condition of language; and, finally the stage in which the added portion has become to some extent absorbed into the root-word—which last stage is the inflected condition of a language.

When we have come to this inflexional state, the history of the growth of language comes to an end. It happens indeed, sometimes, that a language which has arrived at the inflected stage may in time come to drop nearly all its inflexions. This has been the case with English and French. Both are descended from languages which had elaborate grammars—the Saxon and the Latin; but both, through an admixture with foreign tongues and from other causes, have come to drop almost all their grammatical forms. We show our grammar only in a few changes in our ordinary verbs—the second and third persons singular, thou goest, he goes; the past tense and the past participle, use, used; buy, bought, etc.; in further variations in our auxiliary verb ‘to be;’ by changes in our pronouns, I, me, ye, you, who, whom, etc.; and by the ‘ ’s’ and ‘s’ of the possessive case and of the plural, and the comparison of adjectives. The French preserve their grammar to some extent in their pronouns, their adjectives, the plurals of their nouns, and in their verbs. Instances such as these are cases of decay, and do not find any place in the history of the growth of language.

We now pass on to examine where the growth of language has been fully achieved, where it has remained only stunted and imperfect.

CHAPTER IV.
FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE.

We have now traced the different stages through which language may pass in attaining to its most perfect form, the inflected stage. There were the two stages in which what we may call the bones of the language were formed, the acquisition of those words which, like pen, ink and paper, when standing alone bring a definite idea into the mind, and, next, the acquisition of those other words which, like to, for, and, produce no idea in the mind when taken alone. We saw that while the first class of words may have been acquired with any imaginable rapidity, the second class could only have gradually come into use as one by one they fell out of the rank of the ‘significant’ class.

Again, after this skeleton of language has been got together, there were, we saw, three other stages which went to make up the grammar of a language: the radical stage, in which all the words of the language can be cut up into roots which are generally monosyllables, each of which has a meaning as a separate word; the agglutinative stage, when the root, i.e. the part of the word which expresses the essential idea, remains always distinct from any added portion; and, thirdly, the inflected stage, when in many cases the root and the addition to the root have become so interwoven as to be no longer distinguishable.

Of course, really to understand what these three conditions are like, the reader would have to be acquainted with some language in each of the three; but it is sufficient if we get clearly into our heads that there are these stages of language-growth, and that, further, each one of all the languages of the world may be said to be in one of the three. Our opportunities of tracing the history of languages being so limited, we have no recorded instance of a language passing out of one stage into another; but when we examine into these states they so clearly wear the appearance of stages that there seems every reason to believe that a monosyllabic language might in time develop into an agglutinative, and again from that stage into an inflexional, language, if nothing stopped its growth.

Arrest in the
growth of
language.