Prepositions and conjunctions are more clearly distinguishable in such languages, as, e.g., German, where the flection of noun and adjective, or the absence of flection, shows whether the word is used as the one or the other. In English, this test has disappeared. But even in highly inflected tongues this test is not applicable in cases where a preposition is used before an indeclinable word or combination of words. And that such difference could not arise before the flection had arisen, is self-evident.
CHAPTER XXI.
LANGUAGE AND WRITING.
We have now to consider the question of the relation of writing to language; how far it has influenced it, and continues to influence it; and for what reasons it seems an inadequate representation of language. The first thing necessary for us to remember is that, though writing is the only means whereby the speech of the past has been preserved for us, yet it is equally true that, before we can consider writing at all, we have to convert it into spoken language, and to affix sounds to the symbols of language which have descended to us from the past. All such translation of symbols affixed to language in the past must necessarily be imperfect; we can only arrive approximately, for instance, at a satisfactory conjecture of the actual sounds of the English language as spoken by Shakespeare; and the data for determining such questions must always be more or less incomplete.
The written representation of language must, however, always be an interesting object of study to the philologist—partly because it has been the vehicle of the sounds of language, and partly because it is an important factor in the development of language itself.
Writing appeals, in the first place, to a much larger community than speaking. A single page of written matter may appeal to thousands more easily than the most eloquent sermon or address. Nay, writing may in this way appeal to the whole of a linguistic community, causing those of the present time to exert their influence on generations yet unborn.
Writing which consistently and regularly represents the spoken language must be more effective in perpetuating that language than writing which does not so represent it. Theoretically, we assume that written languages fall into one or other of these classes, and we classify them as languages spelt phonetically and spelt non-phonetically, or, as some prefer to express it, historically.
But we must remember that no alphabet, however perfect, can assume to be a correct picture of language. Language consists of a continuous series of sounds, never broken, but consecutive. Just as no amount of drops of water separately considered could give the picture of a river, so no amount of symbols, however minute, could give the real picture of a sentence. A sentence, nay, a single word, is a continuous whole; the symbols whereby we represent it can represent only the chief parts, and represent them as disconnected. The transitions, the links remain unindicated, and so do such important factors as quantity, accent, and tone.
Further, the alphabets in use are, even the best of them, imperfect. It is plain that, when the members of a particular linguistic community, like, e.g., the Germans or the Portuguese, seek to make their alphabet a consistent picture of the sounds of speech, they aim merely at representing the sounds of their own language. A scientific alphabet should aim at representing all possible sounds, and not merely those needed in an alphabet of a particular linguistic community.
Even in the case of the best-spelt languages, i.e. the languages in which the principle of one sound standing for one sign, and one sign for one single sound obtains, we shall find that these aim only at satisfying the ordinary practical needs of the language. They make as few distinctions as is consistent with ordinary clearness and consistency. For instance, they deem it unnecessary to denote the difference of sounds arising from the position of a letter in a syllable, a word, or an accent, provided only that a similarity of position produces habitually similar results. A certain degree of consistency is thus attained without a superfluity of symbols. In Modern High German, for instance, the hard s sound in lust, brust, etc., has the same symbol to represent it as that which elsewhere represents the soft s sound: but no ambiguity arises from this, because s, when followed by t, unless the group st is initial, is always hard; thus the s in reist is pronounced as in lust. Similarly, final s is habitually pronounced hard or unvoiced; as, hass, glas, eis.