We must return to the roots or primitive terms, whatever may be their nature. Two distinct categories are generally admitted: pronominal or demonstrative roots, verbal or predicative roots.
The first form a small group that properly indicate rather the relative position of the speaker, than any concrete quality. They are equivalent to here, there, this, that, etc. They are few in number, and very simple in their phonetic relations: a vowel or vowel followed by a consonant. Many linguists refuse to admit them as roots, and think they have dropped from the second class by attenuation of meaning.[58] Possibly they are a survival of gesture language.
The second (verbal or predicative) is the only class that interests us. These have swarmed in abundance. They indicate qualities or actions; that is the important point. The first words denominated attributes or modes of being; they were adjectives, at least in the measure in which a fixed and rigid terminology can be applied to states in process of forming. Primitive man was everywhere struck with the qualities of things, ergo words were all originally appellative. They expressed one of the numerous characteristics of each object; they translated a spontaneous and natural abstraction: another proof of the precocious and indispensable nature of this operation. From its earliest developments intelligence has tended to simplify, to substitute the part for the whole. The unconscious choice of one attribute among many others depends on various causes; doubtless on its predominance, but above all on the interest it has for man. “A people,” remarks Renan, “have usually many words for what most interests them.” Thus, in Hebrew, we find 25 synonyms for the observance of the law; 14 for faith in God; 11 for rain, etc. In Arabic, the lion has 500 names, the serpent 200, money more than 80; the camel has 5,744, the sword 1,000 as befits a warrior race. The Lapp whose language is so poor, has more than 30 words to designate the reindeer, an animal indispensable to his life.[59] These so-called synonyms each denominate a particular aspect of things; they witness to the abundance of primitive abstractions.
This apparent wealth soon becomes an embarrassment and an encumbrance. Instead of 100 distinct terms, one generic substantive, plus one or two epithets, would suffice. But the substantive was not born of the deliberate desire to obviate this inconvenience. It is a specialisation, a limitation of the primitive meaning. Little by little the adjective lost its qualificative value, to become the name of one of the objects qualified. Thus in Sanskrit dêva (shining) finally signified the god; sourya (the dazzling) became the sun; akva (rapid) the name of a horse, etc. This metamorphosis of adjective into substantive by a specialisation of the general sense occurs even in our actual languages; as, e. g., when we say in French un brilliant (diamond); le volant (of a machine); un bon (of bread, counting-house, bank, etc.). What is only an accident now was originally a constant process.[60] Thus the substantive was derived from the primitive adjective; or rather, within the primitive organism, adjective-substantive, a division has been produced, and two grammatical functions constituted.
Many other remarks could be made on the determination of the substantive by inflexions, declensions, the mark of the gender (masculine, feminine, neuter); I shall confine myself to what concerns number, since we are proposing to consider numeration under all its aspects. Nothing appears more natural and clear-cut than the distinction between one and several; as soon as we exceed pure unity, the mother of numbers, plurality appears to us to be homogeneous in all its degrees. It has not been so from the beginning. This is proved by the existence of the dual in an enormous number of languages: Aryan, Semitic, Turanian, Hottentot, Australian, etc. One, two, were counted with precision; the rest was vague. According to Sayce, the word “three” in Aryan language at first signified “what goes beyond.” It has been supposed that the dual was at first applied to the paired parts of the body: the eyes, the arms, the legs. Intellectual progress caused it to fall into disuse.
At the close of the period of first formation which we have been considering, the sentence was only a defaced organism reproduced by one of the following forms: (1) that; (2) that shining; (3) that sun, that shining.[61] The verb is still absent.
With it we enter on the period of secondary formation. It was long held to be an indisputable dogma that the verb is the word par excellence (verbum), the necessary and exclusive instrument of an affirmation. Yet there are many inferior idioms which dispense with it, and express affirmation by crude, roundabout processes, with no precision,—most frequently by a juxtaposition: snow white = the snow is white; drink me wine = I drink (or shall drink) wine, etc. Plenty of examples can be found in special works.
In fact, the Indo-European verb is, by origin, an adjective (or substantive) modified by a pronoun: Bharâmi = carrier-me, I carry. It is to be regretted that we cannot follow the details of this marvellous construction,—the result of unconscious and collective labor that has made of the verb a supple instrument, suited for all expressions, by the invention of moods, voices, and tenses. We may note that, as regards tenses, the distinction between the three parts of duration (which seems to us so simple) appears to have been established very slowly. Doubtless it can be asserted that it existed, actually, in the mind of primitive man, but that the imperfection of his verbal instrument failed in translating it. However this may be, it is a moot point whether the verb, at the outset, expressed past or present. It seems at first to have translated a vague conception of duration, of continuity in action; it was at first “durative,” a past which still continues, a past-present. The adjective notion contained in the verb, indefinitely as to time, only became precise by little and little. The distinction between the moments of duration did not occur by the same process in all languages, and in some, highly developed, otherwise like the Semitic languages, it remained very imperfect.[62]
The main point was to show how the adjective-substantive, modified by the adjunction of pronominal elements, constituted another linguistic organ, and losing its original mark little by little, became the verb with its multiple functions. The qualificatory character fundamental to it makes of it an instrument proper to express all degrees of abstraction and generalisation from the highest to the lowest, to run up the scale of lower, medium, and higher abstractions. Ex., to drink, eat, sleep, strike;—higher, to love, pray, instruct, etc.; higher still, to act, exist, etc. The supreme degree of abstraction, i. e., the moment at which the verb is most empty of all concrete sense, is found in the auxiliaries of the modern analytical languages. These, says Max Müller, occupy the same place among the verbs, as abstract nouns among the substantives. They date from a later epoch, and all had originally a more material and more expressive character. Our auxiliary verbs had to traverse a long series of vicissitudes, before they reached the desiccated, lifeless form that makes them so appropriate to the demands of our abstract prose. Habere, which is now employed in all Roman languages to express simply a past time, at first signified “to hold fast,” “to retain.”
The author continues, retracing the history of several other auxiliary verbs. Among them all there is one that merits particular mention on account of its divagations: this is the verb être, verb par excellence, verb substantive, unique; direct or understood expression of the existence that is everywhere present. The monopoly of affirmation, and even the privilege of an immaterial origin have been attributed to it.[63] In the first place, it is not met with under any form in certain languages which supplement its absence by divers processes. In the second, it is far from being primitive; it is derived, according to the idioms, from multiple and sufficiently discordant elements: to breathe, live, grow (Max Müller); to breathe, grow, remain, stand upright (stare) (Whitney).