Mental Evolution in Man: Origin of Human Faculty

by George John Romanes

Similarly as regards the genitive case. This, also, is of an attributive quality, and, therefore, like the now independent adjective, originally had no independent existence. When the force of the genitive had to be conveyed, it was conveyed by this same device of apposition. And, lastly, the same device was resorted to for purposes of predication. Or, to quote these important facts from responsible sources, Professor Sayce says:—“Even the genitive case, necessary as it appears to us to be, once had no existence, as indeed it still has none in groups of languages like the Taic or the Malay. Instead of the genitive, we here have two nouns placed in apposition to one another, two individuals, as it were, set side by side without any effort being made to determine their exact relations beyond the mere fact that one precedes the other, and is therefore thought of first.... Now, this apposition of two nouns, which still serves the purpose of the genitive in many languages, might be regarded as attributive or as predicative. If predicative, then the two contrasted nouns formed a complete sentence, ‘Cup gold,’ for instance, being equivalent to ‘The cup is gold.’ If attributive, then one of the two nouns took the place of an adjective, ‘gold cup’ being nothing more than ‘a golden cup.’”[238] Then, after giving examples from different languages of the artificial contrivances whereby in course of time these three grammatical differentiations originated (namely, by conventional changes of position between the words apposed, in some cases the form of predication being A B, and that of attribution or possession B A, while in other languages the reverse order has obtained), Professor Sayce goes on to say:—“These primitive contrivances for distinguishing between the predicate, the attribute, and the genitive, when the three ideas had in the course of ages been evolved by the mind of the speaker, gradually gave way to the later and more refined machinery of suffixes, auxiliaries, and the like.”[239]

For the sake of putting this point beyond the reach of question, I will quote another and independent authority to the same general effect.

“It is a curious fact hitherto overlooked by grammarians and logicians, that the definition of a noun applies strictly only to the nominative case. The oblique cases are really attribute-words, and the inflection is practically nothing but a device for turning a noun into an adjective or adverb. This is perfectly clear as regards the genitive, and, indeed there is historical evidence to show that the genitive in Aryan languages was originally identical with an adjective ending; ‘man’s life’ and ‘human life’ being expressed in the same way. It is also clear that ‘noctem’ in ‘flet noctem’ is a pure adverb of time. It is not so easy to see that the accusative in such sentences as ‘He beats the boy’ is also a sort of adverb, because the connection between verb and object is so intimate as almost to form one simple idea, as in the case of noun-composition. But it is clear that if ‘boy’ in the compound ‘boy-beating’ is an attribute-word, it can very well be so also when ‘beating’ is thrown into the verbal form without any change of meaning.”[240]

Lastly, upon this point Professor Max Müller says, while speaking of Aryan adjectives:—“These were not used for the first time when people said ‘The sun is bright,’ but when they predicated the quality of brightness, or the act of shooting out light, and said, as it were, ‘Brightness-here.’ Adjectives, in fact, were formed, at first, exactly like substantives, and many of them could be used in both characters. There are languages in which adjectives are not distinguished from substantives. But though outwardly alike, they are conceived as different from substantives the moment they are used in a sentence for the purpose of predicating or of qualifying a substantive.”[241]

So much, then, for substantives and adjectives: it cannot be said that there is any evidence of historical priority of the one over the other; but rather that so soon as the denotative meanings of substantives became fixed, they admitted of having imparted to them the meanings of adjectives, genitives, and predicates, by the simple expedient of apposition—an expedient which, as we have seen in earlier chapters, is rendered inevitable by the laws of association and “the logic of events:” it is an expedient that must have been furnished to the mind, and therefore need never have been intentionally devised by it.

Turning next to the case of verbs, or the class of words upon which more especially devolves the office of predication, it is the opinion of some philologists that these arose through the apposition of substantives with the genitives of pronouns.[242] And there can be no doubt that in many actually existing languages the functions of predication are still discharged in this way, without the existence of any verbs at all, as we shall see later on. But, on the other hand, it is shown that a great many Aryan substantives were formed by joining pronominal elements to previously existing verbal roots, in a manner so strongly suggestive of pointing-gestures, that it is difficult to doubt the highly primitive source of the construction. For example “digging-he” = labourer, “digging-it” = spade, “digging-here” = labour, “digging-there” = hole,[243] &c. Or again, “‘The hole is dark’ would have been expressed originally (in Aryan) by ‘digging-it,’ ‘hiding here,’ or, ‘hiding-somewhere.’ ‘Hiding-here’ might afterwards be used in the sense of a hiding-place. But when it was used as a mere qualifying predicate in a sentence in which there was but one subject, it assumed at once the character of an adjective.”[244]

To me it appears evident that there is truth in both these views, which, therefore, are in no way contradictory to one another. We have evidence that many substantives were of later origin than many verbs, and vice versâ; but this does not show which of these two parts of speech preceded the other as a whole. Nor does it appear that we are likely to obtain any definite evidence upon the point. On psychological grounds, and from the analogy furnished by children, we might be prepared to think it most probable that substantives preceded verbs; and this view is no doubt corroborated by the remarkable paucity of verbs in certain savage languages of low development. But as a matter of pure philology “we cannot derive either the verb from the noun, or the noun from the verb.”[245] This writer goes on to say, “they are co-existent creations, belonging to the same epoch and impulse of speech.” But whether or not this inference represents the truth is a matter of no importance for us. With or without verbs, primitive man would have been able to predicate—in the one case after the manner of children who have just begun to learn the use of them, and in the other case after the manner of those savages recently mentioned, who throw upon their nouns, in conjunction with pronouns, the office of verbs.

Seeing that my psychological opponents have laid so much stress upon the substantive verb as this is used by the Romance languages in formal predication, I will here devote a paragraph to its special consideration from a philological point of view. It will be remembered that I have already pointed out the fallacy which these opponents have followed in confounding the substantive verb, as thus used, with the copula—it being a mere accident of the Romance languages that the two are phonetically identified. Nevertheless, even after this fallacy has been pointed out to them, my opponents may seek to take refuge in the substantive verb itself: forced to acknowledge that it has nothing especially to do with predication, they may still endeavour to represent that elsewhere, or in itself, it represents a high order of conceptual thought. This, of course, I allow; and if, as my opponents assume, the substantive verb belonged to early, not to say primitive modes of speech, I should further allow that it raises a formidable difficulty in the otherwise even path of evolutionary explanation. But, as a matter of fact, these writers are no less mistaken about the primitive nature of the substantive verb itself, than they are upon the function which it accidentally discharges in copulation.[246] In order to prove this, or to show that the substantive verb is really very far from primitive, I will furnish a few extracts from the writings of philological authorities upon the subject.

“Whatever our a priori estimate of the power of the verb-substantive may be, its origin is traced by philology to very humble and material sources. The Hebrew verbs חחמוה (houa) or הוה (haia) may very probably be derived from an onomatopœia of respiration. The verb kama, which has the same sense, means primitively ‘to stand out,’ and the verb koum, ‘to stand,’ passes into the sense of ‘being.’ In Sanskrit, as-mi (from which all the verbs-substantives in the Indo-European languages are derived, as [Greek: eimi], sum, am; Zend ahmi; Lithuanic, esmi, Icelandic, em, &c.) is, properly speaking, no verbal root, but ‘a formation on the demonstrative pronoun sa, the idea meant to be conveyed being simply that of local presence.’ And of the two other roots used for the same purpose, namely, bhu ([Greek: phuô], fui, &c.) and sthâ (stare, &c.), the first is probably an imitation of breathing, and the second notoriously a physical verb, meaning ‘to stand up.’ May we not, then, ask with Bunsen, ‘What is to be in all languages but the spiritualization of walking or standing or eating?’”[247]