That this simplification is progressive, i.e. beneficial, was overlooked by the older generation of linguistic thinkers, because they saw a kosmos, a beautiful and well-arranged world, in the old languages, and missed in the modern ones several things that they had been accustomed to regard with veneration. To some extent they were right: every language, when studied in the right spirit, presents so many beautiful points in its systematic structure that it may be called a ‘kosmos.’ But it is not in every way a kosmos; like everything human, it presents fine and less fine features, and a comparative valuation, such as the one here attempted, should take both into consideration. There is undoubtedly an exquisite beauty in the old Greek language, and the ancient Hellenes, with their artistic temperament, knew how to turn that beauty to the best account in their literary productions; but there is no less beauty in many modern languages—though its appraisement is a matter of taste, and as such evades scientific inquiry. But the æsthetic point of view is not the decisive one: language is of the utmost importance to the whole practical and spiritual life of mankind, and therefore has to be estimated by such tests as those applied above; if that is done, we cannot be blind to the fact that modern languages as wholes are more practical than ancient ones, and that the latter present so many more anomalies and irregularities than our present-day languages that we may feel inclined, if not to apply to them Shakespeare’s line, “Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,” yet to think that the development has been from something nearer chaos to something nearer kosmos.
[CHAPTER XIX]
ORIGIN OF GRAMMATICAL ELEMENTS
§ 1. The Old Theory. § 2. Roots. § 3. Structure of Chinese. § 4. History of Chinese. § 5. Recent Investigations. § 6. Roots Again. § 7. The Agglutination Theory. § 8. Coalescence. § 9. Flexional Endings. § 10. Validity of the Theory. § 11. Irregularity Original. § 12. Coalescence Theory dropped. § 13. Secretion. § 14. Extension of Suffixes. § 15. Tainting of Suffixes. § 16. The Classifying Instinct. § 17. Character of Suffixes. § 18. Brugmann’s Theory of Gender. § 19. Final Considerations.
XIX.—§ 1. The Old Theory.
What has been given in the last two chapters to clear up the problem “Decay or progress?” has been based, as will readily be noticed, exclusively on easily controllable facts of linguistic history. So far, then, it has been very smooth sailing. But now we must venture out into the open sea of prehistoric speculations. Our voyage will be the safer if we never lose sight of land and have a reliable compass tested in known waters.
In our historical survey of linguistic science we have already seen that the prevalent theory concerning the prehistoric development of our speech is this: an originally isolating language, consisting of nothing but formless roots, passed through an agglutinating stage, in which formal elements had been developed, although these and the roots were mutually independent, to the third and highest stage found in flexional languages, in which formal elements penetrated the roots and made inseparable unities with them. We shall now examine the basis of this theory.
In the beginning was the root. This is “the result of strict and careful induction from the facts recorded in the dialects of the different members of the family” (Whitney L 260). “The firm foundation of the theory of roots lies in its logical necessity as an inference from the doctrine of the historical growth of grammatical apparatus” (Whitney G 200). “An instrumentality cannot but have had rude and simple beginnings, such as, in language, the so-called roots ... such imperfect hints of expression as we call roots” (Whitney, Views of L. 338). These are really three different statements: induction from the facts, a logical inference from the doctrine about grammatical apparatus (i.e. the usually accepted doctrine, but on what is that built up except on the root theory?), and the a priori argument that an ‘instrumentality’ must have simple beginnings. Even granted that these three arguments given at different times, each of them in turn as the sole argument, must be taken as supplementing each other, the three-legged stool on which the root theory is thus made to sit is a very shaky one, for none of the three legs is very solid, as we shall soon have occasion to see.
XIX.—§ 2. Roots.
In the beginning was the root—but what was it like? Bopp took over the conception of root from the Indian grammarians, and like them was convinced that roots were all monosyllabic, and that view was accepted by his followers. These latter at times attributed other phonetic qualities to these roots, e.g. that they always had a short vowel (Curtius C 22). I quote from a very recent treatise (Wood, “Indo-European Root-formation,” Journal of Germ. Philol. 1. 291): “I range myself with those who believe that IE. roots were monosyllabic ... these roots began, for the most part, with a vowel. The vowels certainly were the first utterances,[89] and though we cannot make the beginning of IE. speech coeval with that of human speech, we may at least assume that language, at that time, was in a very primitive state.”