In the case of adjectives, we may see the same process in mobile, movable: and in German, in ernstlich and ernsthaft which were once used convertibly, but are now differentiated.
Sometimes a word originally of a different meaning encroaches on the domain of another word, and gradually arrogates the latter’s meaning to itself. Thus, in French, the meaning of en, the form taken in French for the Latin in, has been encroached upon by the preposition à, and by the adverb dans (O.Fr. denz = de intus), and dans has completely ousted the prepositional meaning of dedans. Molière could still write dedans ma poche = ‘in my pocket.’ Böse, in German, is now almost restricted to the sense of ‘morally bad’ by the encroachments of schlecht (originally ‘smooth,’ ‘straight’) English slight. The English word sick, once the general word for ill, has been restricted in meaning by the encroachments of the latter word.
Sometimes a newly formed word encroaches on the domain of meaning covered by a word in existence, as to utilise on to use; serviceable upon useful; gentlemanly upon genteel and gentle; magnificence on munificence:[143] mainly is encroached upon by chiefly, pursuer by persecutor and prosecutor: and sometimes it practically ousts it from its previous meaning, as in the case of methodist, naturalist, purist, etc.
The above examples may serve to show us some of the main factors in the differentiation of meaning, and with how little conscious design on the part of the speakers they were carried out.
CHAPTER XV.
CATEGORIES: PSYCHOLOGICAL AND GRAMMATICAL.
The divisions into which grammarians have distributed words, such as gender, number, and, in the case of verbs, voice and tense, are based upon the function which each word discharges in the sentence. Now, these functional differences rest ultimately upon psychological categories: that is to say, upon differences which depend upon the view taken by our mind of the natural grouping and classification of ideas. In other words, the divisions formed by grammarians depend ultimately upon the classification of the relations in which the ideas suggested by words stand to each other, as it appears to our imagination. Grammatical classification was, in fact, originally nothing but an attempt to express and group the order and connection of ideas as they were conceived of by the human mind. Immediately that this influence of imagination has made itself felt in the usage of language, it becomes a grammatical factor: and the groups which it forms become grammatical categories. But the action of the psychological category does not cease when it has thus produced the grammatical; and the difference between the two kinds is that, whereas the grammatical categories become, so to speak, stereotyped and fixed, those created by the imagination are ever changing; just as the human mind itself is ever changing its ideas. Besides this, changes in sound-groups are always occurring, and are constantly operating to prevent the grammatical categories coinciding with the psychological. Then, as a tendency makes itself felt to bring about a coincidence of the two categories, the grammatical category suffers a displacement, whence arise what we are accustomed to call grammatical irregularities. A consideration of the way in which these irregularities arise may help us to understand the origin of the grammatical categories, to which we now proceed.
Gender.
The foundation of grammatical gender is the natural distinction between the sexes in mankind and animals. Fancy may endow other objects or qualities with sex; but sex, whether fanciful or real, has no proper connection with grammar. The truth of this may be well seen from the English language, in which we have in most cases discarded the use of grammatical gender. In order, therefore, to study the conditions of gender, we have to turn to languages more highly inflected than English.
The test whereby we now recognise the grammatical gender of a substantive is the concord existing between the substantive and its attribute and predicate, or between it and a pronoun representing it—Domus nigra est, ‘The house is black;’ Domus quam vidi, ‘The house which I saw;’ It is the moon; I ken her horn (Burns); etc. The rise, therefore, of grammatical gender is closely connected with the appearance of a variable adjective and pronoun. One theory to explain this is, that the difference in form, before it yet marked the gender, had become attached to a particular stem-ending: as if, e.g., all stems ending in n- admitted the ending -us—as bonus, ‘good,’—and all those in g- the ending -ra—as nigra, ‘black;’—and that the ending may have been an independent word which, while yet independent, had acquired a reference to a male or female.[144] Gender appears in English, in the first place, as an artificial and often arbitrary personification, as when the sun and moon are spoken of as he and she respectively, under the influence of the ideas attaching to Sol and Luna: Phœbus and Diana, etc.: and, again, as an expression of interest in objects or animals, it frequently occurs in the language of the people and of children; though it sometimes enters into the language of common life, as when a dog is referred to as he and a cat as she, in cases where sex is not spoken of. (See Storm, die lebende Sprache, p. 418.)