Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

These two representative quotations may serve to show how accentuated is the difference of teaching with regard to this particular group of languages. As a mere matter of classification, of course, the question would not be of any importance for us; but as the question of classification involves one of phylogeny, the matter does acquire considerable interest in relation to our subject.

Turning, then, from the classification of language-types to their phylogeny, no one disputes that what I have called the sub-order Incorporating is genetically connected with the order Agglutinative; or that the sub-order Analytic is similarly connected with the order Inflectional. Indeed, these sub-orders are merely branches of these two respective trunks. The question before us, therefore, reduces itself to the relations between the three orders inter se, and also between the polysynthetic type and Order II. I will deal with these two cases separately.

On the one hand it is argued that the isolating, monosyllabic, or “nursery” type of speech must be regarded as the most primitive—in fact, that it presents to actual observation the continued “survival” of that embryonic or “radical” stage of development out of which all the subsequent growths of language have arisen. Again, the proved fact of agglutination is seen to represent a long course of development, wherein words previously isolated were run together into compounds for the purpose of securing that higher differentiation of language-growth which we know as parts of speech. Similarly, the inflectional stage is taken to have been a further elaboration of the agglutinative, in the manner already explained; while, lastly, the use of auxiliary words in analytic tongues is regarded as the final consummation of language-growth.

The theory thus briefly sketched is still maintained by many philologists; and, indeed, in some of its parts is not a theory at all, but a matter of demonstrable fact. Thus, it is manifestly impossible that the phenomena of agglutination can be presented before there are elements to agglutinate: these elements, therefore, must have preceded that process of fusion wherein the “genius” of agglutinated speech consists. Similarly, of course, agglutination must have preceded the inflection of already agglutinated words; while the use of auxiliaries can be proved to have been historically subsequent to inflection. Nevertheless, other philologists have shown good ground for questioning our right to regard these facts as justifying so universal a theory as that the law of language-growth is always to be found in these particular lines, or that all languages of one type must have passed through the lower phase, or phases, before reaching that in which they now appear. The most recent argument on this side of the question is by Professor Sayce, whom, therefore, I will quote.

“We are apt to assume that inflectional languages are more highly advanced than agglutinative ones, and agglutinative languages than isolating ones, and hence that isolation is the lowest stage of the three, at the top of which stands flection. But what we really mean when we say that one language is more advanced than another, is that it is better adapted to express thought, and that the thought to be expressed is itself better. Now, it is a grave question whether from this point of view the three classes of language can really be set the one against the other.”[153]

He then proceeds to argue that isolating languages have an advantage over all other forms in “the attainment of terseness and vividness;” that “the agglutinative languages are in advance of the inflectional in one important point, that, namely, of analyzing the sentence into its component parts, and distinguishing the relations of grammar one from another.... In fact, when we examine closely the principle upon which flection rests, we shall find that it implies an inferior logical faculty to that implied by agglutination.”[154]

Elsewhere he says, “As for the primeval root-language, we have no proof that it ever existed, and to confound it with a modern isolating language is simply erroneous. Equally unproved is the belief that isolating languages develop into agglutinative, and agglutinative into inflectional. At all events, the continued existence of isolating tongues like the Chinese, or of agglutinative like the Magyar and Turkish, shows that the development is not a necessary one.”[155]

I could quote other passages to the same effect; but the above are sufficient to show that we must not unreservedly accept the earlier doctrines previously sketched. There is, indeed, no question about the fact of language-growth as regards particular languages; the question here is as to the evolution of language-types one from another. And I have given prominence to this question in order to make the following remarks upon it.

When we are told that “the continued existence of isolating tongues like the Chinese, or of agglutinative tongues like the Magyar and Turkish, shows that the development is not a necessary one,” we of course at once perceive the unquestionable truth of the statement. But the fact is without relevance to the only question in debate. The continued existence of the Protozoa unquestionably proves that their development into the Metazoa is not necessary; but this fact raises no presumption at all against the doctrine that all the Metazoa have been evolved from the Protozoa.

Similarly, when we are told that “what we really mean when we say that one language is more advanced than another, is that it is better adapted to express thought,” we are again being shunted from the question. The question is whether one type of language-structure develops into another: not whether, when developed, it is “more advanced” than another in the sense of being “better adapted to express thought.” This it may or may not be; but in either case the question of its efficiency as a language has no necessary connection with the question of its development as a language. For it may very well be that from the same origin two or more lines of development may occur in different directions. It is doubtless perfectly true, as Professor Sayce says, that modern Chinese is a higher product of evolution than ancient Chinese along the line of isolating condensation; but this is no proof that the agglutinative languages did not start from an isolating type, and thereafter proceed on a different line of development in accordance with their different “genius,” or method of growth. Naturalists entertain no doubt that two different types of morphological structure, b and [Greek: b], are both descended from a common parent form B, even though b has “advanced” in one line of change and [Greek: b] in another, so that both are now equally efficient from a morphological point of view. Why, then, should a philologist dispute genetic relationship in what appears to be a precisely analogous case, on the sole ground that b is, to his thinking, no less psychologically efficient a language than [Greek: b]?