“If a child says up, that up is to his mind, noun, verb, adjective, all in one. It means, I want to get up on my mother’s lap.”
What has Professor Whitney to say on the same subject?
“It is thus that, even at present, children begin to talk; a radical word or two means in their mouths a whole sentence; up signifies ‘Take me up into your lap.’”
Enough of this, if not too much. Perhaps a thousand years hence, if any of our books survive so long, the question whether my lectures were written by myself, or by an American scholar settled in Germany, may exercise the critical acumen of the philologists of the future.
LECTURES PRINTED IN ENGLAND ALSO.
But I see there is one more charge of carelessness brought against me, and as I promised to answer every one, I must at least mention it.
“He has not even observed that my Lectures are printed and published in England, and not only in America.”
Why I ought to have observed this, I do not understand. Would it have served as an advertisement? Should I have said that the author resided in Canada to secure his book against the imminent danger of piracy in England? Or does Professor Whitney suspect here too, one of those sinister influences which he thought had interfered with the sale of his books in England? However, whatever sin of omission I have committed, I am quite willing to apologize, in order to proceed to graver matters.
THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE AS ONE OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES.
I stand charged next not only with having read Professor Whitney’s writings in too cursory a manner, but with actually having misrepresented his views on the question, so often discussed of late, whether the Science of Language should be reckoned one of the historical or one of the physical sciences. Let us look at the facts:—