Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

Supposing we take such a word as “uncostliness.” Obviously here the “un” the “li” and the “ness” are derivative appendages, demonstrative elements, suffixes and affixes, or whatever else we care to call modifying constants which the speakers of a language are in the habit of adding to their root-words, for the sake of ringing upon those words whatever changes of meaning occasion may require. These modifying constants, of course, have all had a history, which often admits of being traced. Thus, for instance, in the above illustration, we know that the “li” is an abbreviation of what used to be pronounced as “like;” the “ness,” however, being older than the English language; while the “un” dates back still further. The word “cost,” then, is here the root, as far as English is concerned—though it can be followed (through the Latin con-sta) to an Aryan root, signifying “stand.”

These modifying constants, moreover, are not restricted to suffixes, infixes, and affixes attached to roots, so as to constitute single (or compound) words: they also occur as themselves separate words, which admit of being built into the structure of sentences as pronouns, adverbs, prepositions, &c. And they may occur likewise as so-called “auxiliary verbs,” in the case of some languages, while in the case of others their functions are served by grammatical “inflection” of the words themselves. Thus, according to the “genius” of a language, its roots are made to lend themselves to significant treatment in different ways, or according to different methods. But in all cases the roots are present, and serve as what may be termed the back-bone of a language: the demonstrative elements, in whatever form they appear, are merely what I have termed modifying constants.

From this general fact we may be prepared to expect, on the theory of evolution, that in all languages the roots should be the oldest elements; those elements which serve only the function of “demonstrating” the particular meaning which is to be assigned to the roots on particular occasions, we should expect to have been of later growth. For they serve only the function of giving specific meanings to the general meanings already present in the roots; and, therefore, in the absence of the roots would themselves present no meaning at all. Consequently, as I have said, we should antecedently expect to find that the roots are the earliest discoverable (though not on this account necessarily the most primitive) elements of all languages. And this, as a general rule, is what we do find. In tracing back the family tree of any group of languages, different demonstrative elements are found on different branches, though all these branches proceed from (i.e. are found to contain) the same roots. Of course these roots may be variously modified, both as to sound and the groups of words to which in the different branches they have given origin; but such divergent evolution merely tends to corroborate the proof of a common descent among all the branches concerned.[147]

I have said that all philologists now agree in accepting the doctrine of evolution as applied to languages in general; while there is no such universal agreement touching the precise method or history of evolution in the case of particular languages. I will, therefore, first give a brief statement of the main facts of language-structure, and afterwards render an equally short account of the different views which are entertained upon the question of language-development. Or, to borrow terms from another science, I will first deal with the morphology of the main divisions of the language-kingdom, and then proceed to consider the question of their phylogeny.

More than a thousand languages exist as “living” languages, no one of which is intelligible to the speakers of another. These separate languages, however, are obviously divisible into families—all the members of each family being more or less closely allied, while members of different families do not present any such evidence of genetic affinity. The test of genetic affinity is resemblance in structure, grammar, and roots. Judged by this test, the thousand or more living languages are classified by Professor Friedrich Müller under “about one hundred families.”[148] Therefore, again to borrow biological terms, we may say that there are about one thousand existing “species” of language, which fall into about one hundred “genera”—all the species in each genus being undoubtedly connected by the ties of genetic affinity.

But besides these species and genera of language, there are what may be termed “orders”—or much larger divisions, each comprising many of the genera. By philologists these orders are usually called “groups,” and whether or not there is any genetic relation among them is still an unsettled question. From the very earliest days of true linguistic research, three of these groups have been recognized, and called respectively, (1) the Isolating, (2) the Agglutinative, and (3) the Inflectional. I will first explain the meaning which these names are intended to bear, and then proceed to consider the results of more recent research upon the question of their phylogeny.

In the Isolating forms of language every word stands by itself, without being capable of inflectional change for purposes of grammatical construction, and without admitting of much assistance for such purposes from demonstrative elements, or modifying constants. Languages of this kind are often called Monosyllabic, from the fact that the isolated words usually occur in the form of single syllables. They have also been called Radical, from the resemblance which their monosyllabic and isolated words present to the primitive roots of languages of other types—roots which, as already indicated, have been unearthed by the labours of the comparative philologist. Thus, upon the whole, the best idea of an isolating language may be gained by comparing it with the “nursery-language” of our own children, who naturally express themselves, when first beginning to speak, by using monosyllabic and isolated words, which further resemble the languages in question by not clearly distinguishing between what we understand as “parts of speech.” For in isolating tongues such variations of grammatical meaning as the words are capable of conveying are mainly produced, either by differences of intonation, or by changing the positions which words occupy in a sentence. Of course these expedients obtain more or less in languages of both the other types; but in the isolating group they have been wrought up into a much greater variety and nicety of usage, so as to become fairly good substitutes for modifying constants on the one hand, and inflectional change on the other. Nevertheless, although inflectional change is wholly absent, modifying constants in the form of auxiliary words are not so. In Chinese, for example, there are what the native grammarians call “full words,” and “empty words.” The full words are the monosyllabic terms, which, when standing by themselves, present meanings of such vague generality as to include, for instance, a ball, round, to make round, in a circle: that is to say, the full words when standing alone do not belong to any one part of speech more than to another. Moreover, one such word may present many totally different meanings, such as to be, truly, he, the letter, thus. In order, therefore, to notify the particular meaning which a full word is intended to convey, the empty words are used as aids supplementary to the devices of intonation and syntax. It is probable that all these empty words were once themselves full words, the meanings of which gradually became obscured, until they acquired a purely arbitrary use for the purpose of defining the sense in which other words were to be understood—just as our word “like,” in its degenerated form of “ly,” is now employed to give adjectives the force of adverbs; although, of course, there is the difference that in isolating tongues the empty or defining words are not fused into the full ones, but themselves remain isolated. In the opinion of many philologists, however, “the use of accessory words, in order to impart the required precision to the principal terms, is the path that leads from monosyllabic to the agglutinative state.”[149]

This Agglutinative, or, as it is sometimes called, Agglomerative state belongs to languages of the second order. Here the words which serve the purpose of modifying constants, or marks of relationship, become fusible with the words which they serve to modify or define, so as to constitute single though polysyllabic compounds, as in the above example, “un-cost-li-ness.” I have already remarked that by long usage many of these modifying constants have had their own original meanings as independent words so completely obscured as to baffle the researches of philologists.

If all our words had been formed on the type of this example un-cost-li-ness, English would have been an agglutinative language. But, as a matter of fact, English, like the rest of the group to which it mainly belongs, has adopted the device of inflecting many of its words (or, rather, has inherited this device from some of its progenitors), and thus belongs to the third order of languages which I have mentioned, namely, the Inflective. Languages of this type are also often termed Transpositive, because the words now admit of being shifted about as to their relative positions in a sentence, without the meaning being thereby affected. That is to say, relations between words are now marked much less by syntax, and much more by individual change. In languages of this kind the principle of agglutination has been so perfected that the original composition is more or less obscured, and the resulting words therefore admit of being themselves twisted into a variety of shapes significant of finer grades of meaning, in the way of declension, conjugation, &c. Or, to state the case as it has been stated by some philologists, in agglutinative tongues the welded elements are not sufficiently welded to admit of flexion: they are too loosely joined together, or still too independent one of another. But when the union has grown more intimate, the structure allows of more artistic treatment at the hands of language-makers: the “amalgamation” of elements having become complete, the resulting alloy can be manipulated in a variety of ways without involving its disintegration. Moreover, this principle of inflection may extend from the component parts to the root itself; not only suffixes and prefixes, but even the word which these modify, may undergo inflectional change. So that, upon the whole, the best general idea of these various types of language-structure may perhaps be given by the following formulæ, which I take from Hovelacque.[150]