Now, it is a consequence of advancing civilization that passion, or, at least, the expression of passion, is moderated, and we must therefore conclude that the speech of uncivilized and primitive men was more passionately agitated than ours, more like music or song. This conclusion is borne out by what we hear about the speech of many savages in our own days. European travellers very often record their impression of the speech of different tribes in expressions like these: “pronouncing whatever they spoke in a very singing manner,” “the singing tone of voice, in common conversation, was frequent,” “the speech is very much modulated and resembles singing,” “highly artificial and musical,” etc.
These facts and considerations all point to the conclusion that there once was a time when all speech was song, or rather when these two actions were not yet differentiated; but perhaps this inference cannot be established inductively at the present stage of linguistic science with the same amount of certainty as the statements I am now going to make as to the nature of primitive speech.
As we have seen above (Ch. XVII § [7]), a great many of the changes going on regularly from century to century, as well as some of the sudden changes which take place now and then in the history of each language, result in the shortening of words. This is seen everywhere and at all times, and in consequence of this universal tendency we find that the ancient languages of our family, Sanskrit, Zend, etc., abound in very long words; the further back we go, the greater the number of sesquipedalia. We have seen also how the current theory, according to which every language started with monosyllabic roots, fails at every point to account for actual facts and breaks down before the established truths of linguistic history. Just as the history of religion does not pass from the belief in one god to the belief in many gods, but inversely from polytheism towards monotheism, so language proceeds from original polysyllabism towards monosyllabism: if the development of language took the same course in prehistoric as in historic times, we see, by projecting the teaching of history on a larger scale back into the darkest ages, that early words must have been to present ones what the plesiosaurus and gigantosaurus are to present-day reptiles. The outcome of this phonetic section is, therefore, that we must imagine primitive language as consisting (chiefly at least) of very long words, full of difficult sounds, and sung rather than spoken.
XXI.—§ 5. Grammar.
Can anything be stated about the grammar of primitive languages? Yes, I think so, if we continue backwards into the past the lines of evolution resulting from the investigations of previous chapters of this volume. Ancient languages have more forms than modern ones; forms originally kept distinct are in course of time confused, either phonetically or analogically, alike in substantives, adjectives and verbs.
A characteristic feature of the structure of languages in their early stages is that each form of a word (whether verb or noun) contains in itself several minor modifications which, in the later stages, are expressed separately (if at all), that is, by means of auxiliary verbs or prepositions. Such a word as Latin cantavisset unites in one inseparable whole the equivalents of six ideas: (1) ‘sing,’ (2) pluperfect, (3) that indefinite modification of the verbal idea which we term subjunctive, (4) active, (5) third person, and (6) singular. The tendency of later stages is towards expressing such modifications analytically; but if we accept the terms ‘synthesis’ and ‘analysis’ for ancient and recent stages, we must first realize that there exist many gradations of both: in no single language do we find either synthesis or analysis carried out with absolute purity and consistency. Everywhere we find a more or less. Latin is synthetic in comparison with French, French analytic in comparison with Latin; but if we were able to see the direct ancestor of Latin, say two thousand years before the earliest inscriptions, we should no doubt find a language so synthetic that in comparison with it Cicero’s would have to be termed highly analytic.
Secondly, we must not from the term ‘synthesis,’ which etymologically means ‘composition’ or ‘putting together,’ draw the conclusion that synthetic forms, such as we find, for instance, in Latin, consist of originally independent elements put together and thus in their turn presuppose a previous stage of analysis. Whoever does not share the usual opinion that all flexional forms have originated through coalescence of separate words, but sees as we have seen (in Ch. [XIX]) also the reverse process of inseparable portions of words gaining greater and greater independence, will perhaps do well to look out for a better and less ambiguous word than synthesis to describe the character of primitive speech. What in the later stages of languages is analyzed or dissolved, in the earlier stages was unanalyzable or indissoluble; ‘entangled’ or ‘complicated’ would therefore be better renderings of our impression of the first state of things.
XXI.—§ 6. Units.
But are the old forms really less dissoluble than their modern equivalents? This is repeatedly denied even by recent writers, on whom my words in Progress, p. 117, cannot have made much impression, if they have read them at all; and it will therefore be necessary to take up this cardinal point. Let me begin with quoting what others have said. “Historically considered, the Latin amat is really two words, as much as its English representative, the final t being originally a pronoun signifying ‘he,’ ‘she’ or ‘it,’ and it is only reasons of practical convenience that prevent us from writing am at or ama t as two and heloves as one word.... The really essential difference between amat and he loves is that in the former the pronominal element is expressed by a suffix, in the latter by a prefix” (Sweet PS 274, 1899). “It is purely accidental that the Latin form is not written am-av-it. To the unsophisticated Frenchman il a aimé is neither less nor more one unit than amavit to a Roman.... When the locution il a aimé sprang up, each element of it was still to some extent felt separately; but after it had become a fixed formula the elements were fused together into one whole. As a matter of fact, uneducated French people have not the least idea whether it is one or three words they speak” (Sütterlin WGS 11, 1902). “In some modern languages the personal pronoun is, just as in archaic Greek, beginning to be amalgamated with verbs so as to become a mere termination (sic: désinence; prefix must be what is meant): Fr. j’don’, tu-don’, il-don’ (je donne, tu donnes, il donne) and E. i-giv’, we giv’, you-giv’, they-giv’, correspond exactly to Gr. dido-mi, dido-si, dido-ti, only that the personal particle is in a different place” (Dauzat V 155, 1910). “If French were a savage language not yet reduced to writing, a travelling linguist, hearing the present tense of the verb aimer pronounced by the natives, would transcribe it in the following way: jèm, tu èm, ilèm, nouzémon, vouzémé, ilzèm. He would be struck particularly with the agglutination of the pronominal subject and the verb, and would never feel tempted to draw up a paradigm without pronouns: aime, aimes, aime, aimons, etc., in which traditional spelling makes us believe.... He would even, through a comparison of ilèm and ilzèm, be led to establish a tendency to incorporation, as the only sign of the plural is a z infixed in the verbal complex” (Bally LV 43, 1913).
In these utterances two questions are really mixed together, that of the origin of Aryan flexional forms and that of the actual status of some forms in various languages. As to the former question, we have seen (p. [383]) how very uncertain it is that amat and didosi, etc., contain pronouns. As to the latter question, it is quite true that we should not let the usual spelling be decisive when it is asked whether we have one or two or three words; but all these writers strangely overlook the really important criteria which we possess in this matter. Bally’s traveller could only have arrived at his result by listening to grammar lessons in which the three persons of the verb were rattled off one after the other, for if he had taken his forms from actual conversation he would have come across numerous instances in which the forms occurred without pronouns, first in the imperative, aime, aimons, aimez, then in collocations like celui qui aime, ceux qui aiment, in which there is no infix to denote the plural; in le mari aime, les maris aiment, and innumerable similar groups there is neither pronoun nor infix. If he were at first inclined to take ilaaimé as one word, he would on further acquaintance with the language discover that the elements were often separated: il n’a pas aimé, il nous a toujours aimés, etc. Similarly with the English forms adduced: I never give, you always give. This is the crucial point: the French and English combinations are two (three) words because the elements are not always placed together; Lat. amat, amavit, are each of them only one word because they can never be divided, and in the same way we never find anything placed between am and o in the first person, amo. These forms are as inseparable as E. loves, but E. heloves is separable because both he and loves can stand alone, and can also, in certain combinations, though now rarely, be transposed: loves he. Some writers would compare French combinations like il te le disait with verbal forms in certain Amerindian languages, in which subject and direct and indirect object are alike ‘incorporated’ in a ‘polysynthetic’ verbal form; it is quite true that these French pronominal forms can never be used by themselves, but only in conjunction with a verb; still, the French pronouns are more independent of each other than the elements of some other more primitive languages. In the first place, this is shown by the possibility of varying the pronunciation: il te le disait may be either [itlədizɛ] or [itəldizɛ] or even more solemnly [iltələdizɛ]; secondly, by the regularity of these joined pronominal forms, for they are always the same, whatever the verb may be; and lastly, by their changing places in certain cases: te le disait-il? dis-le-lui, etc.