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Table of Contents

The growth of

language.

We have looked upon man fashioning the first implements and weapons and houses which were ever made; we now turn aside and ask what were the first of those immaterial instruments, those ‘aëriform, mystic’ legacies which were handed down and gradually improved from the time of the earliest inhabitants of our globe? Foremost among these, long anterior to the ‘metallurgic and other manufacturing skill,’ comes language. With us, in whose minds thought and speech are so bound together as to be almost inseparable, the idea that language is an instrument which through long ages has been slowly improved to its present perfection, seems difficult of credit. We think of early man having the same ideas and expressing them as readily as we do now; but this he could not really have done. Not, indeed, that we have any reason to believe that there was a time when man had no language at all; but it seems certain that long ages were necessary before this instrument could be wrought to the fineness in which we find it, and to which, in all the languages with which we are likely to become acquainted, we are accustomed. A rude iron knife or spear-head seems a simple and natural thing to make. But we know that before it could be made iron had to be discovered, and the art of extracting iron from the ore; and, as a matter of fact, we know that thousands of years passed before the iron spear-head was a possibility; thousands of years spent in slowly improving the weapons of stone, and passing on from them to the weapons of bronze. So, too, with language; simple as it seems at first sight to fit the word on to the idea, and early as we ourselves learn this art, a little thought about what language is will show us how much we owe to the ages which have gone before.

The two main

classes of words

‘significant’

and ‘insignificant.’

To understand fully the department of study called the science of language considerable linguistic knowledge is necessary. But to grasp many of the general principles of this science, and many of the most important facts which it teaches, we do not need any such wide knowledge. In fact, a little thoughtful examination of any single tongue (his own, whichever it may be) would teach a person many things which without thought he would be inclined to pass over as matters of course or matters of no consequence. In truth, in this science of language what we need, even before we need a very wide array of facts, is what is called the scientific method in dealing with the facts which we possess. But, again, this which we call the scientific method is really represented by two qualities which have less pretentious names—observation and common sense.

Let us begin then by, so to say, challenging our own language, our English as we find it to-day, and see what hints we can gain from it of the formation of language as a whole and of its origin. An ounce of information gained in this wise, by examination and the use of our own common sense, is worth a much greater bulk of knowledge gained second-hand from books, and merely remembered as facts divorced from their causes.

Take any sentence, and place that, so to say, under a microscope, or under the dissecting-knife—take the opening sentence of this chapter, for example.

“We have looked upon man fashioning the first implements and weapons and houses that were ever made.”

Let us look at these few words alone.

The first thing we have to notice about this sentence, and any other sentence almost that we could anywhere find, is that the words which compose it fall into two distinct classes, the classes of what I will call meaning and meaningless, or significant and in-significant words. In the first class fall the words we, looked, man, fashioning, implements, weapons, houses, made. These I call ‘meaning’ or ‘significant’ words, because, if we isolate each one and utter it alone, it will call up some image to the mind—we, weapons, fashioning, houses, made, and so forth: the image may be pretty clear or it may be (in the case of the verbs it is) somewhat hazy. But in every case some image or some idea does rise before the mind when any of these words is pronounced. Have and were I exclude for the moment from either class. The words of the second class, then, from the sentence chosen are—upon, the, and, ever. Of the first three, at any rate, there can be no difficulty as to why they are classed as the meaningless or insignificant words of the sentence. Isolated from the words of the first class, upon, the, or and can by no means possibly call up any image or suggest any idea to the mind.

Now, if you take any implement whose manufacture the world has ever seen, unless it be of the most primitive description imaginable, you will find it really devisable into two parts, upon much the same principle that we have here resolved our typical sentence into two primary divisions; it will consist of the essential part, the part which by itself would be useful, and the unessential adjunct which is designed to assist the usefulness of the other portion, but which is useless by itself—or if not useless by itself, it is useless for the purposes for which the implement we are concerned with is made. All handles meant to assist in the use of an implement, be it a stone axe or a most elaborate modern weapon, form such an adjunct to the essential part. Such useful and by comparison useless parts are the blade and the handle of a knife, the barrel and the stock of a gun, the carrying portion of the wheelbarrow and the wheel, the share—the shearing or cutting portion of a plough—and the wooden framework; and so forth. There is no need to multiply examples. Nor, I think, is there any need to insist further how strictly analogous the two classes of words here distinguished are to the two parts of any other implement invented by man. It goes almost of course that the essential portion of any implement is the portion which was invented first, that knife-blades were invented before knife-handles, barrows before barrow-wheels, etc. Wherefore it seems to follow of course that, of the two classes of words whereof language consists—whereof all languages consist—the meaning and the meaningless words, the first were the earliest invented or discovered. This is the same as saying that language once consisted altogether of words which had a definite meaning attaching to them even when uttered by themselves, and consequently that the words of the second class grew, so to say, out of the words of the first class.

These are the conclusions which a mere examination of a single language, our own, under the guidance of observation and common sense, would force upon us; always supposing our language to be a representative one. And these conclusions are strengthened when we come to look a little into the history of words, so far as we can trace it.

So far back, therefore, we may go in the history of language to a time when all the words which men used were words which by themselves evoked distinct ideas. Relegating these words, as far as we can, into the classes which grammarians have invented for the different parts of speech, we see that the significant words are all, as a rule, either nouns (or pro-nouns), adjectives, or verbs; that the insignificant words are, as a rule, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions—what, in fact, are called particles, fragments of speech. I say, as a rule, for both divisions. The pronouns and the auxiliary verbs, for example, are very difficult to classify; and it depends rather on their use in each individual sentence, to which division they are to be relegated.

Origin of

speech undiscoverable.

But though we have now learnt to distinguish the words which by themselves convey definite ideas, and those others whose meaning depends upon the first class, we are as far as ever from understanding how words, whether of one kind or the other, come to have the significance which they have for us. Book—no sooner have we pronounced the word than an idea more or less distinct comes into our mind. The thought and the sound seem inseparable, and we cannot remember the time when they were not so. Yet the connection between the thought and the sound is not necessary. In fact, a sound which generally comes connected with one idea may—if we are engaged at the time upon a language not our own—enter our minds, bringing with it an idea quite unconnected with the first. Share and chère, plea and plie, feel and viel (German), are examples in point; and the same thing is shown by the numerous sounds in our language which have two or more quite distinct meanings, as for example—ware and were, and (with most people) where too. Rite and right and wright are pronounced precisely alike; therefore there can be no reason why one sound should convey one idea more than another. In other words, the idea and the sound have an arbitrary, not a natural connection. We have been taught to make the sound ‘book’ for the idea book, but had we been brought up by French parents the sound ‘livre’ would have seemed the natural one to make.

So that this wondrous faculty of speech has, like those other faculties of which Carlyle speaks, been handed down on impalpable vehicles of sound through the ages. Never, perhaps, since the time of our first parents has one person from among the countless millions who have been born had to invent for himself a way of expressing his thoughts in words. This is alone a strange thing enough. Impossible as it is to imagine ourselves without speech, we may ask the question—What should we do if we were ever left in such a predicament? Should we have any guide in fitting the sound on to the idea? Share and chère, feel and viel—among these unconnected notions is there any reason why we should wed our speech to one rather than another? Clearly there is no reason. Yet in the case which we imagined of a number of rational beings who had to invent a language for the first time, if they are ever to come to an understanding at all there must be some common impulse which makes more than one choose the same sound for a particular idea. How, for instance, we may ask, was it with our first parents? They have passed on to all their descendants for ever the idea of conveying thought by sound, and all the great changes which have since come into the languages of the world have been gradual and, so to say, natural. But this first invention of the idea of speech is of quite another character.

Here we are brought to the threshold of that impenetrable mystery ‘the beginning of things,’ and here we must pause. We recognize this faculty of speech as a thing mysterious, unaccountable, belonging to that supernatural being, man. There must, one would think, have been and must be in us a something which causes our mouth to echo the thought of the heart; and originally this echo must have been spontaneous and natural, the same for all alike. Now it is a mere matter of tradition and instruction, the sound we use for the idea; but at first the two must have had some subtle necessary connection, or how could one of our first parents have known or guessed what the other wished to say? Just as every metal has its peculiar ring, it is as though each impression on the mind rang out its peculiar word from the tongue.[17] Or was it like the faint tremulous sound which glasses give when music is played near? The outward object or the inward thought called out a sort of mimicry, a distant echo—not like, but yet born of the other—on the lips. These earliest sounds may perhaps still sometimes be detected. In the sound flo or flu, which in an immense number of languages stands connected with the idea of flowing and of rivers, do we not recognize some attempt to catch the smooth yet rushing sound of water? And again, in the sound gra or gri, which is largely associated with the notion of grinding, cutting, or scraping,[18] there is surely something of this in the guttural harshness of the letters, which make the tongue grate, as it were, against the roof of the mouth.

It does not, however, seem probable that the earliest words were mere imitations of the sounds produced by the objects they designed to express, such as are some of the words of child-language whereby dogs are called bow-wows and lambs are called baas. Nor need we wonder at this, when we note the principles upon which other sorts of language—expressive actions, for instance—are conceived and used. If we intend to express the idea of motion by an expressive gesture, we do not make any copy of the mode of that motion. We say ‘Go,’ and we dart out our hand, half to show that the person we are addressing is to go in the direction which we point out, or that he is to keep away from us; half, again, to give the idea of his movement by the rapidity of our own. But if we wanted to convey this last idea by mere imitation we should move our legs rapidly and not our arms.

It might be thought that the study of the gesture-language which has been used by men, especially the gesture-language of deaf-mutes, who have no other, would give us the best insight into the origin of language among mankind. But in reality the results of such a study are not very satisfactory; and for this reason, that the deaf-mute has in every case been in contact with one or more persons who possessed speech, and whose ideas were therefore entirely formed by the possession and the inheritance of language. This inherited language they translate into signs for the benefit of the deaf-mute, while the latter is still a baby and incapable of inventing language; wherefore it, in its turn, inherits a language almost as much as its parent has done, though it is a language of gesture and not of spoken words.[19] It is a fact, however, that deaf-mutes who cannot hear the sounds they make, do nevertheless articulate certain sounds which they constantly associate with the same ideas. These seem to bring us very near the language-making faculty of man. Lists of these sounds have been made, but they are not such that we can draw any conclusions touching the natural or universal association of sound and sense.

Growth of

the ‘insignificant’

words out

of the ‘significant.’

The origin of human speech and the mode of its first operation are therefore undiscoverable. We can place no measure to the rapidity with which the first created man may have obtained his stock of words of our first class; as Adam is described naming each one of the animals among whom he lived. All these beginnings lie beyond the ken of linguistic science. But even when he was furnished as fully as we choose to suppose with a class of words which had a meaning of their own, there was still the second class whose invention must have followed upon the invention of the first. The adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, particles,—the words which meant to, and, at, but, when,—these we have already seen must as a whole have come into use later than the other class of words.

This, then, we may fairly call the second stage in the growth of language, the making of these auxiliary words to enforce the meaning of the first class of words. And at the first moment it might seem impossible to imagine how these words could ever have come into existence. Given a certain word-making faculty, we can understand how mankind got sounds to express such ideas as man, head, hard, red. But how he could ever have acquired sounds to express such vague notions as at, by, and, it is much less easy to conceive. A closer observation, however, even of our own language, and a wider knowledge of languages generally, lead to the conclusion that all the words of the second class, the auxiliary words, sprang from words of the first class; that every insignificant word has grown out of a word which had its own significance; that, for instance, with, by, and, have descended from roots (now lost) which, if placed alone, would have conveyed as much idea to the mind as pen, ink, or paper does to us.

This, I say, we should guess even from an examination of our own language alone. For the process is still going on. Take the word even, as used in the sentence which we have just written: ‘Even from an examination.’ Here even is an adverb, quite meaningless when used alone, at least as an adverb; but if we see it alone it becomes another word, an adjective, a meaning word, bringing before us the idea of two things hanging level. ‘Even from’ is nonsense as an idea with nothing to follow it, but ‘even weights’ is a perfectly clear and definite notion, and each of the separate words even and weights give us clear and definite notions too. It is the same with just, which is both adverb and adjective. ‘Just as’ brings no thought into the mind, but ‘just man’ and just and man, separately or together, do. While or whilst are meaningless; but, ‘a while,’ or ‘to while’—to loiter—are full of meaning. In each case the meaningless word came from the meaning word, and was first used as a sort of metaphor, and then the metaphorical part was lost sight of. Ago is a meaningless word by itself, but it is really only a changed form of the obsolete word agone, which was an old past participle of the verb ‘to go.’

And we might find many instances of words in the same process of transformation in other languages. The English word not is meaningless, and just as much so are the French pas and point in the sense of not; but in the sense of footstep, or point, they have meaning enough. Originally Il ne veut pas meant, metaphorically, ‘He does not wish a step of your wishes,’ ‘He does not go a footstep with you in your wish;’ Il ne veut point, ‘He does not go a point with you in your wish.’ Nowadays all this metaphorical meaning is gone, except to the eye of the grammarian. People recognize that Il ne veut point is rather stronger than Il ne veut pas, but it never occurs to them to ask why.

There are so many of these curious examples that one is tempted to go on choosing instances; but we confine ourselves to one more. Our word yes is a word which by itself is quite incapable of calling up a picture in our minds, but the word is or ‘it is,’ though the idea it conveys is very abstract, and, so to say, intangible—as compared, for instance, with such verbs as move, beat—nevertheless belongs to the ‘significant’ class. Now, it happens that the Latin language used the word est ‘it is’ where we should now use the word ‘yes;’ and it still further happens that our yes[20] is probably the same as the German es, and was used in the same sense of it is as well. Instead of the meaningless word ‘yes’ the Romans used the word est ‘it is,’ and our own ancestors expressed the same idea by saying ‘it.’ Still more. It is well known that French is in the main a descendant from the Latin, not the Latin of Rome, but the corrupter Latin which was spoken in Gaul. Now these Latin-speaking Gauls did not, for some reason, say est, ‘it is,’ for yes, as the Romans did; but they used a pronoun, either ille, ‘he,’ or hoc, ‘this.’ When, therefore, a Gaul desired to say ‘yes,’ he nodded, and said he or else this, meaning ‘He is so,’ or ‘This is so.’ As it happens the Gauls of the north said ille, and those of the south said hoc, and these words gradually got corrupted into two meaningless words, oui and oc. It is well known that the people in the south of France were especially distinguished by using the word oc instead of oui for ‘yes,’ so that their ‘dialect’ got to be called the langue d’oc, and this word Languedoc gave the name to a province of France. Long before that time, however, we may be sure, both the people of the langue d’oil, or langue d’oui, and those of the langue d’oc had forgotten that their words for ‘yes’ had originally meant ‘he’ and ‘this.’

We can, from the instances above given, form a pretty good guess at the way in which the auxiliary or meaningless class of sounds came into use in any language. Each of these must once have had a distinct significance by itself, then (getting meanwhile a little changed in form probably) it gradually lost the separate meaning and became only a particle of speech, only an adjunct to other words. In another way, we may say that before man spoke of ‘on the rock’ or ‘under the rock’ he must have used some expression like ‘head of rock,’ or more literally ‘head rock’ and ‘foot rock;’ and that as time went on, new words coming into use for head and foot, these earlier ones dropped down to be mere adjuncts, and men forgot that they had ever been anything else. Just so no ordinary Frenchman knows that his oui and il are both sprung from the same Latin ille; nor does the ordinary Englishman recognize that ago is a past participle of ‘go;’ nor again, to take a new instance, does, perhaps, the ordinary German recognize that his gewiss, ‘certainly,’ is merely an abbreviation of the past participle gewissen, ‘known.’

We have now followed the growth of language through