Introduction to the study of the history of language

by Herbert A. Strong; Willem Sijbrand Logeman; Benjamin Ide Wheeler

Correlation in the ideas, coupled with correlation of their contents, especially if accompanied by similarity of sound, makes the association most inevitable; and the closer the correlation, or the greater the similarity, the stronger will be the tie which binds the members of the group.

It is necessary to the more exact classification of these groups, that we should first obtain a clear conception of the difference between what we may call the material contents of a word, on the one hand, and the formal or modal contents, on the other.

For this purpose, let us look at the two words father (singular) and fathers (plural). Both these words indicate a person or persons who stand in a certain and well-defined blood-relationship to some other person or persons. This meaning, common to both, we call their material contents. But the one form is used to indicate one such individual; the other, to indicate any number more than one. This, the unity or singularity of the one, the plurality of the other, makes up the formal or modal contents of each. This modal part of the contents, in most of the languages of the Indo-European stock, is left without separate expression in the singular: in the plural, however, it is generally expressed or indicated by some change in form; this change being, in most cases, made by the addition of some termination—in the example we have chosen, by the addition of s.

Before passing to another example, it is well to point out that the modal contents of a so-called “singular-form” by no means invariably imply unity; nor, again, is the plural always, as in the case cited, formed from the singular. In such a sentence as A father loves his child, the idea expressed relates, or may relate, to more than a single father; in fact, it may be taken as a statement made correctly or incorrectly of all fathers universally; and, with regard to the second point mentioned, Welsh, among other languages, has many words in which the plural is expressed by the shorter collective form, and the single individual is indicated by a derivative, e.g. adar, birds; aderyn, a bird: plant, children; plentyn, a child: gwair, hay; gweiryn, a blade of hay, etc.[20]

We can now come back to our point, and fix our attention on two such words as (I) speak and speech.

Both these words evoke the thought of some well-known and familiar activity called into play by our vocal organs. This constitutes the material contents of both alike. The former, however, conveys the idea that the action is being performed at the time the word is uttered; the other is the name of the result or product of that action. This, the modal part of their contents, is left unexpressed; or, to speak more accurately, we cannot divide the words so as to be able to say that one part serves to express the material contents, and another the modal,—a division which we could make in the case of fathers, and which we might make in, e.g., speak, speaking; speech, speeches; book, books, booklet; etc.

It will now be clear that, among associations based on correlation or on similarity of IDEA, this similarity may exist between the material contents of the words grouped together, or between their modal contents. We therefore are now in a position to distinguish between MATTER-GROUPS and MODAL-GROUPS.

To sum up, there exist association-groups based on— 1. Similarity in sound only. 2. ” ” meaning only. 3. ” ” both sound and meaning. These two latter classes (nos. 2 and 3) are subdivided, as to the part of the meaning in which they agree, into (a) matter-groups and (b) modal-groups.

Instances of all these are numerous, and will readily suggest themselves; a few may suffice to illustrate further what has already been said.

If we were to set down in a vertical column the complete conjugation of some verb—say, of to walk,—and, parallel to this, with equal completeness and in the same order, the conjugation of the verbs to write, to go, and to be, we should then have in our vertical columns four matter-groups. Taken horizontally, the separate tenses would form so many modal-groups, each divisible into smaller groups of singulars as against plurals, or of first persons as against second and third persons, etc. We should then, at the same time, have illustrated the fact that in many cases similarity of contents is accompanied by, or perhaps we should say expressed by, similarity in sound, and that it often happens that similar change of modal contents is accompanied by similar change in form or in termination.