Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

CHAPTER XIII.

ROOTS OF LANGUAGE.

In the last chapter my treatment of the classification and phylogeny of languages may have led the general reader to feel that philologists display extraordinary differences of opinion with regard to certain first principles of their science. I may, therefore, begin the present chapter by reminding such a reader that I have hitherto been concerned more with the differences of opinion than with the agreements. If one takes a general view of the progress of philological science since philology—almost in our own generation—first became a science, I think he must feel much more impressed by the amount of certainty which has been attained than by the amount of uncertainty which still remains. And the uncertainty which does remain is due rather to a backwardness of study than to differences of interpretation. When more is known about the structure and mutual relations of the polysynthetic tongues, it is probable that a better agreement will be arrived at touching the relation of their common type to that of isolating tongues on the one hand, and agglutinating on the other. But, be this as it may, even as matters stand at present, I think we have more reason to be surprised at the certainty which already attaches to the principles of philology, than at the uncertainty which occasionally arises in their applications to the comparatively unstudied branches of linguistic growth.

Furthermore, important as these still unsettled questions are from a purely philological point of view, they are not of any great moment from that of the evolutionist, as I have already observed. For, so long as it is universally agreed that all the language-groups have been products of a gradual development, it is, comparatively speaking, immaterial whether the groups all stand to one another in a relation of serial descent, or whether some of them stand to others in a relation of collateral descent. That is to say, the evolutionist is under no obligation to espouse either the monotypic or the polytypic theory of the origin of language. Therefore, it will make no material difference to the following discussion whether the reader feels disposed to follow the doctrine, that all languages must have originated in such monosyllabic isolations as we now meet with in a radical form of speech like the Chinese; that they all originated in such polysynthetic incapsulations as we now find in the numberless dialects of the American Indians; or, lastly, and as I myself think much more probably, that both these, and possibly other types of language-structure, are all equally primitive. Be these things as they may, my discussion will not be overshadowed by their uncertainty. For this uncertainty has reference only to the origin of the existing language-types as independent or genetically allied: it in no way affects the certainty of their subsequent evolution. Much as philologists may still differ upon the mutual relations of these several language-types, they all agree that “von der ersten Entstehung der Sprachwurzeln an bis zur Bildung der volkommenen Flexionssprachen, wie des Sanskrit, Griechischen, oder Deutschen, ist Alles in der Entwicklung der Sprache verständlich.... Sobald nur die Wurzeln als die fertigen Bausteine der Sprache einmal da sind, lässt sich Schritt für Schritt das Wachsthum des Sprachgebäudes verfolgen.”[165]

Therefore, having now said all that seems necessary to say on the question of language-types, I will pass on to consider the information that we possess on the subject of language-roots.

First, let us consider the number of roots out of which languages are developed—or, rather, let me say, the number of elementary constituents into which the researches of philologists have been able to reduce those languages which have been most closely studied. Of course the probability—nay, the certainty—is that the actual number of roots must in all cases be considerably less than philologists are now able to prove.

Chinese is composed of about five hundred separate words, each being a monosyllable. In actual use, these five hundred root-words are multiplied to over fifteen hundred by significant variety of intonation; but the entire structure of this still living language is made up of five hundred monosyllabic words. In the opinion of most philologists we have here a survival of the root stage of language; but in the opinion of some we have the remnants of erosion, or “phonetic decay.”[166] This difference of opinion, however, is not a matter of importance to us; and therefore I will not discuss it, further than to say that on account of it I will not hereafter draw upon the Chinese language for illustrations of “radical” utterance, except in so far as philologists of all schools would allow as legitimate.[167]

Hebrew has been reduced to about the same number of roots as Chinese—Renan stating it in round numbers at five hundred.[168] But without doubt this number would admit of being considerably reduced, if inquiries were sufficiently extended to the whole Semitic family.