Lecture VI. Comparative Grammar.
The genealogical classification of the Aryan languages was founded, as we saw, on a close comparison of the grammatical characteristics of each; and it is the object of such works as Bopp's “Comparative Grammar” to show that the grammatical articulation of Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Roman, Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic, was produced once and for all; and that the apparent differences in the terminations of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, must be explained by laws of phonetic decay, peculiar to each dialect, which modified the original common Aryan type, and changed it into so many national languages. It might seem, therefore, as if the object of comparative grammar was attained as soon as the exact genealogical relationship of languages had been settled; and those who only look to the higher problems of the science of language have not hesitated to declare that “there is no painsworthy difficulty nor dispute about declension, number, case, and gender of nouns.” But although it is certainly true that comparative grammar is only a means, and that it has well nigh taught us all that it has to teach,—at least in the Aryan family of speech,—it is to be hoped that, in the science of language, it will always retain that prominent place which it has obtained through the labors of Bopp, [pg 215] Grimm, Pott, Benfey, Curtius, Kuhn, and others. Besides, comparative grammar has more to do than simply to compare. It would be easy enough to place side by side the paradigms of declension and conjugation in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and the other Aryan dialects, and to mark both their coincidences and their differences. But after we have done this, and after we have explained the phonetic laws which cause the primitive Aryan type to assume that national variety which we admire in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, new problems arise of a more interesting nature. We know that grammatical terminations, as they are now called, were originally independent words, and had their own purpose and meaning. Is it possible, after comparative grammar has established the original forms of the Aryan terminations, to trace them back to independent words, and to discover their original purpose and meaning? You will remember that this was the point from which we started. We wanted to know why the termination d in I loved should change a present into a past act. We saw that before answering this question we had to discover the most original form of this termination by tracing it from English to Gothic, and afterwards, if necessary, from Gothic to Sanskrit. We now return to our original question, namely, What is language that a mere formal change, such as that of I love into I loved, should produce so very material a difference?
Let us clearly see what we mean if we make a distinction between the radical and formal elements of a language; and by formal elements I mean not only the terminations of declension and conjugation, but all derivative elements; all, in fact, that is not radical. Our view on the origin of language must chiefly depend on [pg 216] the view which we take of these formal, as opposed to the radical, elements of speech. Those who consider that language is a conventional production, base their arguments principally on these formal elements. The inflections of words, they maintain, are the best proof that language was made by mutual agreement. They look upon them as mere letters or syllables without any meaning by themselves; and if they were asked why the mere addition of a d changes I love into I loved, or why the addition of the syllable rai gave to j'aime, I love, the power of a future, j'aimerai, they would answer, that it was so because, at a very early time in the history of the world, certain persons, or families, or clans, agreed that it should be so.
This view was opposed by another which represents language as an organic and almost a living being, and explains its formal elements as produced by a principle of growth inherent in its very nature. “Languages,”[204] it is maintained, “are formed by a process, not of crystalline accretion, but of germinal development. Every essential part of language existed as completely (although only implicitly) in the primitive germ, as the petals of a flower exist in the bud before the mingled influences of the sun and the air caused it to unfold.” This view was first propounded by Frederick Schlegel,[205] [pg 217] and it is still held by many with whom poetical phraseology takes the place of sound and severe reasoning.
The science of language adopts neither of these views. As to imagining a congress for settling the proper exponents of such relations as nominative, genitive, singular, plural, active, and passive, it stands to reason that if such abstruse problems could have been discussed in a language void of inflections, there was no inducement for agreeing on a more perfect means of communication. And as to imagining language, that is to say nouns and verbs, endowed with an inward principle of growth, all we can say is, that such a conception is really inconceivable. Language may be conceived as a production, but it cannot be conceived as a substance that could itself produce. But the science of language has nothing to do with mere theories, whether conceivable or not. It collects facts, and its only object is to account for these facts, as far as possible. Instead of looking on inflections in general either as conventional signs or natural excrescences, it takes each termination by itself, establishes its most primitive form by means of comparison, and then treats that primitive syllable as it would treat [pg 218] any other part of language,—namely, as something which was originally intended to convey a meaning. Whether we are still able to discover the original intention of every part of language is quite a different question, and it should be admitted at once that many grammatical forms, after they have been restored to their most primitive type, are still without an explanation. But with every year new discoveries are made by means of careful inductive reasoning. We become more familiar every day with the secret ways of language, and there is no reason to doubt that in the end grammatical analysis will be as successful as chemical analysis. Grammar, though sometimes very bewildering to us in its later stages, is originally a much less formidable undertaking than is commonly supposed. What is grammar after all but declension and conjugation? Originally declension could not have been anything but the composition of a noun with some other word expressive of number and case. How the number was expressed, we saw in a former lecture; and the same process led to the formation of cases.
Thus the locative is formed in various ways in Chinese:[206] one is by adding such words as ćung, the middle, or néi, inside. Thus, kûŏ-ćung, in the empire; i sûí ćung, within a year. The instrumental is formed by the preposition ẏ, which preposition is an old root, meaning to use. Thus ẏ ting, with a stick, where in Latin we should use the ablative, in Greek the dative. Now, however complicated the declensions, regular and irregular, may be in Greek and Latin, we may be certain that originally they were formed by this simple method of composition.
There was originally in all the Aryan languages a case expressive of locality, which grammarians call the locative. In Sanskrit every substantive has its locative, as well as its genitive, dative, and accusative. Thus, heart in Sanskrit is hṛid; in the heart, is hṛidi. Here, therefore, the termination of the locative is simply short i. This short i is a demonstrative root, and in all probability the same root which in Latin produced the preposition in. The Sanskrit hṛidi represents, therefore, an original compound, as it were, heart-within, which gradually became settled as one of the recognized cases of nouns ending in consonants. If we look to Chinese,[207] we find that the locative is expressed there in the same manner, but with a greater freedom in the choice of the words expressive of locality. “In the empire,” is expressed by kûŏ ćung; “within a year,” is expressed by ĭ sûí ćung. Instead of ćung, however, we might have employed other terms also, such as, for instance, néi, inside. It might be said that the formation of so primitive a case as the locative offers little difficulty, but that this process of composition fails to account for the origin of the more abstract cases, the accusative, the dative, and genitive. If we derive our notions of the cases from philosophical grammar, it is true, no doubt, that it would be difficult to convey by a simple composition the abstract relations supposed to be expressed by the terminations of the genitive, dative, and accusative. But remember that these are only general categories under which philosophers and grammarians endeavored to arrange the facts of language. The people with whom language grew up knew nothing of datives and accusatives. Everything that is abstract [pg 220] in language was originally concrete. If people wanted to say the King of Rome, they meant really the King at Rome, and they would readily have used what I have just described as the locative; whereas the more abstract idea of the genitive would never enter into their system of thought. But more than this, it can be proved that the locative has actually taken, in some cases, the place of the genitive. In Latin, for instance, the old genitive of nouns in a was as. This we find still in pater familiâs, instead of pater familiæ. The Umbrian and Oscan dialects retained the s throughout as the sign of the genitive after nouns in a. The æ of the genitive was originally ai, that is to say, the old locative in i. “King of Rome,” if rendered by Rex Romæ, meant really “King at Rome.” And here you will see how grammar, which ought to be the most logical of all sciences, is frequently the most illogical. A boy is taught at school, that if he wants to say “I am staying at Rome,” he must use the genitive to express the locative. How a logician or grammarian can so twist and turn the meaning of the genitive as to make it express rest in a place, is not for us to inquire; but, if he succeeded, his pupil would at once use the genitive of Carthage (Carthaginis) or of Athens (Athenarum) for the same purpose, and he would then have to be told that these genitives could not be used in the same manner as the genitive of nouns in a. How all this is achieved by what is called philosophical grammar, we know not; but comparative grammar at once removes all difficulty. It is only in the first declension that the locative has supplanted the genitive, whereas Carthaginis and Athenarum, being real genitives, could never be employed to express a locative. [pg 221] A special case, such as the locative, may be generalized into the more general genitive, but not vice versâ.
You see thus by one instance how what grammarians call a genitive was formed by the same process of composition which we can watch in Chinese, and which we can prove to have taken place in the original language of the Aryans. And the same applies to the dative. If a boy is told that the dative expresses a relation of one object to another, less direct than that of the accusative, he may well wonder how such a flying arch could ever have been built up with the scanty materials which language has at her disposal; but he will be still more surprised if, after having realized this grammatical abstraction, he is told that in Greek, in order to convey the very definite idea of being in a place, he has to use after certain nouns the termination of the dative. “I am staying at Salamis,” must be expressed by the dative Salamînĭ. If you ask why? Comparative grammar again can alone give an answer. The termination of the Greek dative in i, was originally the termination of the locative. The locative may well convey the meaning of the dative, but the faded features of the dative can never express the fresh distinctness of the locative. The dative Salamînĭ was first a locative. “I live at Salamis,” never conveyed the meaning, “I live to Salamis.” On the contrary, the dative, in such phrases as “I give it to the father,” was originally a locative; and after expressing at first the palpable relation of “I give it unto the father,” or “I place it on or in the father,” it gradually assumed the more general, the less local, less colored aspect which logicians and grammarians ascribe to their datives.[208]