Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin

by Otto Jespersen

In what Grimm says about the development of language it is easy to trace the influence of Humboldt’s ideas, though they are worked out with great originality. He discerns three stages, the last two alone being accessible to us through historical documents. In the first period we have the creation and growing of roots and words, in the second the flourishing of a perfect flexion, and in the third a tendency to thoughts, which leads to the giving up of flexion as not yet (?) satisfactory. They may be compared to leaf, blossom and fruit, “the beauty of human speech did not bloom in its beginning, but in its middle period; its ripest fruits will not be gathered till some time in the future.” He thus sums up his theory of the three stages: “Language in its earliest form was melodious, but diffuse and straggling; in its middle form it was full of intense poetical vigour; in our own days it seeks to remedy the diminution of beauty by the harmony of the whole, and is more effective though it has inferior means.” In most places Grimm still speaks of the downward course of linguistic development; all the oldest languages of our family “show a rich, pleasant and admirable perfection of form, in which all material and spiritual elements have vividly interpenetrated each other,” while in the later developments of the same languages the inner power and subtlety of flexion has generally been given up and destroyed, though partly replaced by external means and auxiliary words. On the whole, then, the history of language discloses a descent from a period of perfection to a less perfect condition. This is the point of view that we meet with in nearly all linguists; but there is a new note when Grimm begins vaguely and dimly to see that the loss of flexional forms is sometimes compensated by other things that may be equally valuable or even more valuable; and he even, without elaborate arguments, contradicts his own main contention when he says that “human language is retrogressive only apparently and in particular points, but looked upon as a whole it is progressive, and its intrinsic force is continually increasing.” He instances the English language, which by sheer making havoc of all old phonetic laws and by the loss of all flexions has acquired a great force and power, such as is found perhaps in no other human language. Its wonderfully happy structure resulted from the marriage of the two noblest languages of Europe; therefore it was a fit vehicle for the greatest poet of modern times, and may justly claim the right to be called a world’s language; like the English people, it seems destined to reign in future even more than now in all parts of the earth. This enthusiastic panegyric forms a striking contrast to what the next great German scholar with whom we have to deal, Schleicher, says about the same language, which to him shows only “how rapidly the language of a nation important both in history and literature can decline” (II. 231).

[CHAPTER III]
MIDDLE OF NINETEENTH CENTURY

§ 1. After Bopp and Grimm. § 2. K. M. Rapp. § 3. J. H. Bredsdorff. § 4. August Schleicher. § 5. Classification of Languages. § 6. Reconstruction. § 7. Curtius, Madvig and Specialists. § 8. Max Müller and Whitney.

III.—§ 1. After Bopp and Grimm.

Bopp and Grimm exercised an enormous influence on linguistic thought and linguistic research in Germany and other countries. Long even before their death we see a host of successors following in the main the lines laid down in their work, and thus directly and indirectly they determined the development of this science for a long time. Through their efforts so much new light had been shed on a number of linguistic phenomena that these took a quite different aspect from that which they had presented to the previous generation; most of what had been written about etymology and kindred subjects in the eighteenth century seemed to the new school utterly antiquated, mere fanciful vagaries of incompetent blunderers, whereas now scholars had found firm ground on which to raise a magnificent structure of solid science. This feeling was especially due to the undoubted recognition of one great family of languages to which the vast majority of European languages, as well as some of the most important Asiatic languages, belonged: here we had one firmly established fact of the greatest magnitude, which at once put an end to all the earlier whimsical attempts to connect Latin and Greek words with Hebrew roots. As for the name of that family of languages, Rask hesitated between different names, ‘European,’ ‘Sarmatic’ and finally ‘Japhetic’ (as a counterpart of the Semitic and the Hamitic languages); Bopp at first had no comprehensive name, and on the title-page of his Vergl. grammatik contents himself with enumerating the chief languages described, but in the work itself he says that he prefers the name ‘Indo-European,’ which has also found wide acceptance, though more in France, England and Skandinavia than in Germany. Humboldt for a long while said ‘Sanskritic,’ but later he adopted ‘Indo-Germanic,’ and this has been the generally recognized name used in Germany, in spite of Bopp’s protest who said that ‘Indo-klassisch’ would be more to the point; ‘Indo-Keltic’ has also been proposed as designating the family through its two extreme members to the East and West. But all these compound names are clumsy without being completely pertinent, and it seems therefore much better to use the short and convenient term ‘the Aryan languages’: Aryan being the oldest name by which any members of the family designated themselves (in India and Persia).[10]

Thanks to the labours of Bopp and Grimm and their co-workers and followers, we see also a change in the status of the study of languages. Formerly this was chiefly a handmaiden to philology—but as this word is often in English used in a sense unknown to other languages and really objectionable, namely as a synonym of (comparative) study of languages, it will be necessary first to say a few words about the terminology of our science. In this book I shall use the word ‘philology’ in its continental sense, which is often rendered in English by the vague word ‘scholarship,’ meaning thereby the study of the specific culture of one nation; thus we speak of Latin philology, Greek philology, Icelandic philology, etc. The word ‘linguist,’ on the other hand, is not infrequently used in the sense of one who has merely a practical knowledge of some foreign language; but I think I am in accordance with a growing number of scholars in England and America if I call such a man a ‘practical linguist’ and apply the word ‘linguist’ by itself to the scientific student of language (or of languages); ‘linguistics’ then becomes a shorter and more convenient name for what is also called the science of language (or of languages).

Now that the reader understands the sense in which I take these two terms, I may go on to say that the beginning of the nineteenth century witnessed a growing differentiation between philology and linguistics in consequence of the new method introduced by comparative and by historical grammar; it was nothing less than a completely new way of looking at the facts of language and trying to trace their origin. While to the philologist the Greek or Latin language, etc., was only a means to an end, to the linguist it was an end in itself. The former saw in it a valuable, and in fact an indispensable, means of gaining a first-hand knowledge of the literature which was his chief concern, but the linguist cared not for the literature as such, but studied languages for their own sake, and might even turn to languages destitute of literature because they were able to throw some light on the life of language in general or on forms in related languages. The philologist as such would not think of studying the Gothic of Wulfila, as a knowledge of that language gives access only to a translation of parts of the Bible, the ideas of which can be studied much better elsewhere; but to the linguist Gothic was extremely valuable. The differentiation, of course, is not an absolute one; besides being linguists in the new sense, Rask was an Icelandic philologist, Bopp a Sanskrit philologist, and Grimm a German philologist; but the tendency towards the emancipation of linguistics was very strong in them, and some of their pupils were pure linguists and did no work in philology.

In breaking away from philology and claiming for linguistics the rank of a new and independent science, the partisans of the new doctrine were apt to think that not only had they discovered a new method, but that the object of their study was different from that of the philologists, even when they were both concerned with language. While the philologist looked upon language as part of the culture of some nation, the linguist looked upon it as a natural object; and when in the beginning of the nineteenth century philosophers began to divide all sciences into the two sharply separated classes of mental and natural sciences (geistes- und naturwissenschaften), linguists would often reckon their science among the latter. There was in this a certain amount of pride or boastfulness, for on account of the rapid rise and splendid achievements of the natural sciences at that time, it began to be a matter of common belief that they were superior to, and were possessed of a more scientific method than, the other class—the same view that finds an expression in the ordinary English usage, according to which ‘science’ means natural science and the other domains of human knowledge are termed the ‘arts’ or the ‘humanities.’