Chapter VIII: Preface (8)

As agriculture was the principal labor in that early state of society when we must suppose most of our Aryan words to have been formed and applied to their definite meanings, we may well understand how a word which originally meant this special kind of labor, was afterwards used to signify labor in general. The general tendency in the growth of words and their meanings is from the special to the more general: thus _gubernare_, which originally meant to steer a ship, took the general sense of governing. _To equip_, which originally was to furnish a ship (French _équiper_ and _esquif_, from _schifo_, ship), came to mean furnishing in general. Now in modern German, _arbeit_ means simply _labor_; _arbeitsam_ means industrious. In Gothic, too, _arbaiþs_ is only used to express labor and trouble in general. But in Old Norse, _erfidhi_ means chiefly _ploughing_, and afterwards labor in general; and the same word in Anglo-Saxon, _earfodh_ or _earfedhe_, is labor. Of course we might equally suppose that, as laborer, from meaning one who labors in general, came to take the special sense of an agricultural laborer, so _arbeit_, from meaning work in general, came to be applied, in Old Norse, to the work of ploughing. But as the root of _erfidhi_ seems to be _ar_, our first explanation is the more plausible. Besides, the simple _ar_ in Old Norse means ploughing and labor, and the Old High-German _art_ has likewise the sense of ploughing.(258)

Ἄρουρα and _arvum_, a field, would certainly have to be referred to the root _ar_, to plough. And as ploughing was not only one of the earliest kinds of labor, but also one of the most primitive arts, I have no doubt that the Latin _ars_, _artis_, and our own word _art_, meant originally the art of all arts, first taught to mortals by the goddess of all wisdom, the art of cultivating the land. In Old High-German _arunti_, in Anglo-Saxon _ærend_, mean simply work; but they too must originally have meant the special work of agriculture; and in the English _errand_, and _errand-boy_, the same word is still in existence.

But _ar_ did not only mean to plough, or to cut open the land; it was transferred at a very early time to the ploughing of the sea, or rowing. Thus Shakspeare says:—

“Make the sea serve them; which they _ear_ and wound
With keels.”

In a similar manner, we find that Sanskrit derives from _ar_ the substantive _aritra_, not in the sense of a plough, but in the sense of a rudder. In Anglo-Saxon we find the simple form _âr_, the English _oar_, as it were the plough-share of the water. The Greek also had used the root _ar_ in the sense of rowing; for ἐρέτης(259) in Greek is a rower, and their word τρι-ήρ-ης, meant originally a ship with three oars, or with three rows of oars,(260) a trireme.

This comparison of ploughing and rowing is of frequent occurrence in ancient languages. The English word _plough_, the Slavonic _ploug_, has been identified with the Sanskrit _plava_,(261) a ship, and with the Greek _ploion_, ship. As the Aryans spoke of a ship ploughing the sea, they also spoke of a plough sailing across the field; and thus it was that the same names were applied to both.(262) In English dialects, _plough_ or _plow_ is still used in the general sense of waggon or conveyance.(263)

We might follow the offshoots of this root _ar_ still further, but the number of words which we have examined in various languages will suffice to show what is meant by a predicative root. In all these words _ar_ is the radical element, all the rest is merely formative. The root _ar_ is called a predicative root, because in whatever composition it enters, it predicates one and the same conception, whether of the plough, or the rudder, or the ox, or the field. Even in such a word as _artistic_, the predicative power of the root _ar_ may still be perceived, though, of course, as it were by means of a powerful telescope only. The Brahmans who called themselves _ârya_ in India, were no more aware of the real origin of this name and its connection with agricultural labor, than the artist who now speaks of _his art_ as a divine inspiration suspects that the word which he uses was originally applicable only to so primitive an art as that of ploughing.

We shall now examine another family of words, in order to see by what process the radical elements of words were first discovered.

Let us take the word _respectable_. It is a word of Latin not of Saxon, origin, as we see by the termination _able_. In _respectabilis_ we easily distinguish the verb _respectare_ and the termination _bilis_. We then separate the prefix _re_, which leaves _spectare_, and we trace _spectare_ as a participial formation back to the Latin verb _spicere_ or _specere_, meaning to see, to look. In _specere_, again, we distinguish between the changeable termination _ere_ and the unchangeable remnant _spec_, which we call the root. This root we expect to find in Sanskrit and the other Aryan languages; and so we do. In Sanskrit the more usual form is _paś_, to see, without the _s_; but _spaś_ also is found in _spaśa_, a spy, in _spashṭa_ (in _vi-spashṭa_), clear, manifest, and in the Vedic _spaś_, a guardian. In the Teutonic family we find _spëhôn_ in Old High-German meaning to look, to spy, to contemplate; and _spëha_, the English spy.(264) In Greek, the root _spek_ has been changed into _skep_, which exists in _skeptomai_, I look, I examine; from whence _skeptikos_, an examiner or inquirer, in theological language, a sceptic; and _episkopos_, an overseer, a bishop. Let us now examine the various ramifications of this root. Beginning with _respectable_, we found that it originally meant a person who deserves _respect_, _respect_ meaning _looking back_. We pass by common objects or persons without noticing them, whereas we turn back to look again at those which deserve our admiration, our regard, our respect. This was the original meaning of _respect_ and _respectable_, nor need we be surprised at this if we consider that _noble_, _nobilis_ in Latin, conveyed originally no more than the idea of a person that deserves to be known; for _nobilis_ stands for _gnobilis_, just as _nomen_ stands for _gnomen_, or _natus_ for _gnatus_.

“With respect to” has now become almost a mere preposition. For if we say, “With respect to this point I have no more to say,” this is the same as “I have no more to say on this point.”

Again, as in looking back we single out a person, the adjective _respective_, and the adverb _respectively_, are used almost in the same sense as special, or singly.

The English _respite_ is the Norman modification of _respectus_, the French _répit_. _Répit_ meant originally looking back, reviewing the whole evidence. A criminal received so many days _ad respectum_, to re-examine the case. Afterwards it was said that the prisoner had received a respit, that is to say, had obtained a re-examination; and at last a verb was formed, and it was said that a person had been respited.

As _specere_, to see, with the preposition _re_, came to mean respect, so with the preposition _de_, down, it forms the Latin _despicere_, meaning to look down, the English _despise_. The French _dépit_ (Old French _despit_) means no longer contempt, though it is the Latin _despectus_, but rather _anger_, _vexation_. _Se dépiter_ is to be vexed, to fret. “_En dépit de lui_” is originally “angry with him,” then “in spite of him;” and the English _spite_, _in spite of_, _spiteful_, are mere abbreviations of _despite_, _in despite of_, _despiteful_, and have nothing whatever to do with the spitting of cats.

As _de_ means down from above, so _sub_ means up from below, and this added to _specere_, to look, gives us _suspicere_, _suspicari_, to look up, in the sense of to suspect.(265) From it _suspicion_, _suspicious_; and likewise the French _soupçon_, even in such phrases as “there is a soupçon of chicory in this coffee,” meaning just a touch, just the smallest atom of chicory.

As _circum_ means round about, so _circumspect_ means, of course, cautious, careful.

With _in_, meaning into, _specere_ forms _inspicere_, to inspect; hence _inspector_, _inspection_.

With _ad_, towards, _specere_ becomes _adspicere_, to look at a thing. Hence _adspectus_, the aspect, the look or appearance of things.

So with _pro_, forward, _specere_ became _prospicere_; and gave rise to such words as _prospectus_, as it were a look out, _prospective_, &c. With _con_, with, _spicere_ forms _conspicere_, to see together, _conspectus_, _conspicuous_. We saw before in _respectable_, that a new word _spectare_ is formed from the participle of _spicere_. This, with the preposition _ex_, out, gives us the Latin _expectare_, the English _to expect_, to look out; with its derivatives.

_Auspicious_ is another word which contains our root as the second of its component elements. The Latin _auspicium_ stands for _avispicium_, and meant the looking out for certain birds which were considered to be of good or bad omen to the success of any public or private act. Hence _auspicious_, in the sense of lucky. _Haru-spex_ was the name given to a person who foretold the future from the inspection of the entrails of animals.

Again, from _specere_, _speculum_ was formed, in the sense of looking-glass, or any other means of looking at oneself; and from it _speculari_, the English _to speculate_, _speculative_, &c.

But there are many more offshoots of this one root. Thus, the Latin _speculum_, looking-glass, became _specchio_ in Italian; and the same word, though in a roundabout way, came into French as the adjective _espiègle_, waggish. The origin of this French word is curious. There exists in German a famous cycle of stories, mostly tricks, played by a half-historical, half-mythical character of the name of _Eulenspiegel_, or _Owl-glass_. These stories were translated into French, and the hero was known at first by the name of _Ulespiègle_, which name, contracted afterwards into _Espiègle_, became a general name for every wag.

As the French borrowed not only from Latin, but likewise from the Teutonic languages, we meet there side by side with the derivatives of the Latin _specere_, the old High-German, _spëhôn_, slightly disguised as _épier_, to spy, the Italian _spiare_. The German word for a spy was _spëha_, and this appears in old French as _espie_, in modern French as _espion_.

One of the most prolific branches of the same root is the Latin _species_. Whether we take _species_ in the sense of a perennial succession of similar individuals in continual generations (_Jussieu_), or look upon it as existing only as a category of thought (_Agassiz_), _species_ was intended originally as the literal translation of the Greek _eidos_ as opposed to _genos_, or _genus_. The Greeks classified things originally according to _kind_ and _form_, and though these terms were afterwards technically defined by Aristotle, their etymological meaning is in reality the most appropriate. Things may be classified either because they are of the same _genus_ or _kind_, that is to say, because they had the same origin; this gives us a genealogical classification: or they can be classified because they have the same appearance, _eidos_, or _form_, without claiming for them a common origin; and this gives us a morphological classification. It was, however, in the Aristotelian, and not in its etymological sense, that the Greek _eidos_ was rendered in Latin by _species_, meaning the subdivision of a genus, the class of a family. Hence the French _espèce_, a kind; the English _special_, in the sense of particular as opposed to general. There is little of the root _spaś_, to see, left in a _special train_, or a _special messenger_; yet the connection, though not apparent, can be restored with perfect certainty. We frequently hear the expression _to specify_. A man specifies his grievances. What does it mean? The mediæval Latin _specificus_ is a literal translation of the Greek _eidopoios_. This means what makes or constitutes an _eidos_ or species. Now, in classification, what constitutes a species is that particular quality which, superadded to other qualities, shared in common by all the members of a genus, distinguishes one class from all other classes. Thus the specific character which distinguishes man from all other animals, is reason or language. Specific, therefore, assumed the sense of _distinguishing_ or _distinct_, and the verb _to specify_ conveyed the meaning of enumerating distinctly, or one by one. I finish with the French _épicier_, a respectable grocer, but originally a man who sold drugs. The different kinds of drugs which the apothecary had to sell, were spoken of, with a certain learned air, as _species_, not as drugs in general, but as peculiar drugs and special medicines. Hence the chymist or apothecary is still called _Speziale_ in Italian, his shop _spezieria_.(266) In French _species_, which regularly became _espèce_, assumed a new form to express drugs, namely _épices_; the English _spices_, the German _spezereien_. Hence the famous _pain d’épices_, gingerbread nuts, and _épicier_, a grocer. If you try for a moment to trace _spicy_, or _a well-spiced_ article, back to the simple root _specere_, to look, you will understand that marvellous power of language which out of a few simple elements has created a variety of names hardly surpassed by the unbounded variety of nature herself.(267)

I say “out of a few simple elements,” for the number of what we call full predicative roots, such as _ar_, to plough, or _spaś_, to look, is indeed small.

A root is necessarily monosyllabic. Roots consisting of more than one syllable can always be proved to be derivative roots, and even among monosyllabic roots it is necessary to distinguish between primitive, secondary, and tertiary roots.

A. Primitive roots are those which consist—

(1) of one vowel; for instance, _i_, to go;

(2) of one vowel and one consonant; for instance, _ad_, to eat;

(3) of one consonant and one vowel; for instance, _dâ_, to give.

B. Secondary roots are those which consist—

(1) of one consonant, vowel, and consonant; for instance, _tud_,
to strike.

In these roots either the first or the last consonant is modificatory.

C. Tertiary roots are those which consist—

(1) of consonant, consonant, and vowel; for instance, _plu_, to
flow;

(2) of vowel, consonant, and consonant; for instance, _ard_, to
hurt;

(3) of consonant, consonant, vowel, and consonant; for instance,
_spaś_, to see;

(4) of consonant, consonant, vowel, consonant, and consonant; for
instance, _spand_, to tremble.

The primary roots are the most important in the early history of language; but their predicative power being generally of too indefinite a character to answer the purposes of advancing thought, they were soon encroached upon and almost supplanted by secondary and tertiary radicals.

In the secondary roots we can frequently observe that one of the consonants, in the Aryan languages, generally the final, is liable to modification. The root retains its general meaning, which is slightly modified and determined by the changes of the final consonants. Thus, besides _tud_ (_tudati_), we have in Sanskrit _tup_ (_topati_, _tupati_, and _tumpati_), meaning to strike; Greek, _typ-tō_. We meet likewise with _tubh_ (_tubhnâti_, _tubhyati_, _tobhate_), to strike; and, according to Sanskrit grammarians, with _tuph_ (_tophati_, _tuphati_, _tumphati_). Then there is a root _tuj_ (_tunjati_, _tojati_), to strike, to excite; another root, _tur_ (_tutorti_), to which the same meaning is ascribed; another, _tûr_ (_tûryate_), to hurt. Then there is the further derivative _turv_ (_tûrvati_), to strike, to conquer; there is _tuh_ (_tohati_), to pain, to vex; and there is _tuś_ (_tośate_), to which Sanskrit grammarians attribute the sense of striking.

Although we may call all these verbal bases roots, they stand to the first class in about the same relation as the triliteral Semitic roots to the more primitive biliteral.(268)

In the third class we shall find that one of the two consonants is always a semivowel, nasal, or sibilant, these being more variable than the other consonants; and we can almost always point to one consonant as of later origin, and added to a biconsonantal root in order to render its meaning more special. Thus we have, besides _spaś_, the root _paś_, and even this root has been traced back by Pott to a more primitive _aś_. Thus _vand_, again, is a mere strengthening of the root _vad_, like _mand_ of _mad_, like _yu-na-j_ and _yu-n-j_ of _yuj_. The root _yuj_, to join, and _yudh_, to fight, both point back to a root _yu_, to mingle, and this simple root has been preserved in Sanskrit. We may well understand that a root, having the general meaning of mingling or being together, should be employed to express both the friendly joining of hands and the engaging in hostile combat; but we may equally understand that language, in its progress to clearness and definiteness, should have desired a distinction between these two meanings, and should gladly have availed herself of the two derivatives, _yuj_ and _yudh_, to mark this distinction.

Sanskrit grammarians have reduced the whole growth of their language to 1706 roots,(269) that is to say, they have admitted so many radicals in order to derive from them, according to their system of grammatical derivation, all nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, prepositions, adverbs, and conjunctions, which occur in Sanskrit. According to our explanation of a root, however, this number of 1706 would have to be reduced considerably, and though a few new roots would likewise have to be added which Sanskrit grammarians failed to discover, yet the number of primitive sounds, expressive of definite meanings, requisite for the etymological analysis of the whole Sanskrit dictionary would not amount to even one third of that number. Hebrew has been reduced to about 500 roots,(270) and I doubt whether we want a larger number for Sanskrit. This shows a wise spirit of economy on the part of primitive language, for the possibility of forming new roots for every new impression was almost unlimited. Even if we put the number of letters only at twenty-four, the possible number of biliteral and triliteral roots would amount together to 14,400; whereas Chinese, though abstaining from composition and derivation, and therefore requiring a larger number of radicals than any other language, was satisfied with about 450. With these 450 sounds raised to 1263 by various accents and intonations, the Chinese have produced a dictionary of from 40,000 to 50,000 words.(271)

It is clear, however, that in addition to these predicative roots, we want another class of radical elements to enable us to account for the full growth of language. With the 400 or 500 predicative roots at her disposal, language would not have been at a loss to coin names for all things that come under our cognizance. Language is a thrifty housewife. Consider the variety of ideas that were expressed by the one root _spaś_, and you will see that with 500 such roots she might form a dictionary sufficient to satisfy the wants, however extravagant, of her husband—the human mind. If each root yielded fifty derivatives, we should have 25,000 words. Now, we are told, on good authority, by a country clergyman, that some of the laborers in his parish had not 300 words in their vocabulary.(272) The vocabulary of the ancient sages of Egypt, at least as far as it is known to us from the hieroglyphic inscriptions, amounts to about 685 words.(273) The _libretto_ of an Italian opera seldom displays a greater variety of words.(274) A well-educated person in England, who has been at a public school and at the university, who reads his Bible, his Shakespeare, the “Times,” and all the books of Mudie’s Library, seldom uses more than about 3000 or 4000 words in actual conversation. Accurate thinkers and close reasoners, who avoid vague and general expressions, and wait till they find the word that exactly fits their meaning, employ a larger stock; and eloquent speakers may rise to a command of 10,000. Shakespeare, who displayed a greater variety of expression than probably any writer in any language, produced all his plays with about 15,000 words. Milton’s works are built up with 8000; and the Old Testament says all that it has to say with 5,642 words.(275)

Five hundred roots, therefore, considering their fertility and pliancy, was more than was wanted for the dictionary of our primitive ancestors. And yet they wanted something more. If they had a root expressive of light and splendor, that root might have formed the predicate in the names of sun, and moon, and stars, and heaven, day, morning, dawn, spring, gladness, joy, beauty, majesty, love, friend, gold, riches, &c. But if they wanted to express _here_ and _there_, _who_, _what_, _this_, _that_, _thou_, _he_, they would have found it impossible to find any predicative root that could be applied to this purpose. Attempts have indeed been made to trace these words back to predicative roots; but if we are told that the demonstrative root _ta_, this or there, may be derived from a predicative root _tan_, to extend, we find that even in our modern languages, the demonstrative pronouns and particles are of too primitive and independent a nature to allow of so artificial an interpretation. The sound _ta_ or _sa_, for this or there, is as involuntary, as natural, as independent an expression as any of the predicative roots, and although some of these demonstrative, or pronominal, or local roots, for all these names have been applied to them, may be traced back to a predicative source, we must admit a small class of independent radicals, not predicative in the usual sense of the word, but simply pointing, simply expressive of existence under certain more or less definite, local or temporal prescriptions.

It will be best to give one illustration at least of a pronominal root and its influence in the formation of words.

In some languages, and particularly in Chinese, a predicative root may by itself be used as a noun, or a verb, or an adjective or adverb. Thus the Chinese sound _ta_ means, without any change of form, great, greatness, and to be great.(276) If _ta_ stands before a substantive, it has the meaning of an adjective. Thus _ta jin_ means a great man. If _ta_ stands after a substantive, it is a predicate, or, as we should say, a verb. Thus _jin ta_ (or jin ta ye) would mean the man is great.(277) Or again,

ģin ngŏ, li pŭ ngŏ, would mean, man bad, law not bad.

Here we see that there is no outward distinction whatever between a root and a word, and that a noun is distinguished from a verb merely by its collocation in a sentence.

In other languages, however, and particularly in the Aryan languages, no predicative root can by itself form a word. Thus in Latin there is a root _luc_, to shine. In order to have a substantive, such as light, it was necessary to add a pronominal or demonstrative root, this forming the general subject of which the meaning contained in the root is to be predicated. Thus by the addition of the pronominal element _s_ we have the Latin noun, _luc-s_, the light, or literally, shining-there. Let us add a personal pronoun, and we have the verb _luc-e-s_, shining-thou, thou shinest. Let us add other pronominal derivatives, and we get the adjectives, _lucidus_, _luculentus_, &c.

It would be a totally mistaken view, however, were we to suppose that all derivative elements, all that remains of a word after the predicative root has been removed, must be traced back to pronominal roots. We have only to look at some of our own modern derivatives in order to be convinced that many of them were originally predicative, that they entered into composition with the principal predicative root, and then dwindled down to mere suffixes. Thus _scape_ in _landscape_, and the more modern _ship_ in _hardship_ are both derived from the same root which we have in Gothic,(278) _skapa_, _skôp_, _skôpum_, to create; in Anglo-Saxon, _scape_, _scôp_, _scôpon_. It is the same as the German derivative, _schaft_, in _Gesellschaft_, &c. So again _dom_ in _wisdom_ or _christendom_ is derived from the same root which we have in _to do_. It is the same as the German _thum_ in _Christenthum_, the Anglo-Saxon _dôm_ in _cyning-dom_, _Königthum_. Sometimes it may seem doubtful whether a derivative element was originally merely demonstrative or predicative. Thus the termination of the comparative in Sanskrit is _tara_, the Greek _teros_. This might, at first sight, be taken for a demonstrative element, but it is in reality the root _tar_, which means _to go beyond_, which we have likewise in the Latin _trans_. This _trans_ in its French form _très_ is prefixed to adjectives in order to express a higher or transcendent degree, and the same root was well adapted to form the comparative in the ancient Aryan tongues. This root must likewise be admitted in one of the terminations of the locative which is _tra_ in Sanskrit; for instance from _ta_, a demonstrative root, we form _ta-tra_, there, originally this way; we form _anyatra_, in another way; the same as in Latin we say _ali-ter_, from _aliud_; compounds no more surprising than the French _autrement_ (see p. 55) and the English _otherwise_.

Most of the terminations of declension and conjugation are demonstrative roots, and the _s_, for instance, of the third person singular, he loves, can be proved to have been originally the demonstrative pronoun of the third person. It was originally not _s_ but _t_. This will require some explanation. The termination of the third person singular of the present is _ti_ in Sanskrit. Thus _dâ_, to give, becomes _dadâti_, he gives; _dhâ_, to place, _dadhâti_, he places.

In Greek this _ti_ is changed into _si_; just as the Sanskrit _tvam_, the Latin _tu_, thou, appears in Greek as _sy_. Thus Greek _didōsi_ corresponds to Sanskrit _dadâti_; _tithēsi_ to _dadhâti_. In the course of time, however, every Greek _s_ between two vowels, in a termination, was elided. Thus _genos_ does not form the genitive _genesos_, like the Latin _genus_, _genesis_ or _generis_, but _geneos_ = _genous_. The dative is not _genesi_ (the Latin _generi_), but _geneï_ = _genei_. In the same manner all the regular verbs have _ei_ for the termination of the third person singular. But this _ei_ stands for _esi_. Thus _typtei_ stands for _typtesi_, and this for _typteti_.

The Latin drops the final _i_, and instead of _ti_ has _t_. Thus we get _amat_, _dicit_.

Now there is a law to which I alluded before, which is called Grimm’s Law. According to it every tenuis in Latin is in Gothic represented by its corresponding aspirate. Hence, instead of _t_, we should expect in Gothic _th_; and so we find indeed in Gothic _habaiþ_, instead of Latin _habet_. This aspirate likewise appears in Anglo-Saxon, where _he loves_ is _lufað_. It is preserved in the Biblical _he loveth_, and it is only in modern English that it gradually sank to _s_. In the _s_ of _he loves_, therefore, we have a demonstrative root, added to the predicative root _love_, and this _s_ is originally the same as the Sanskrit _ti_. This _ti_ again must be traced back to the demonstrative root _ta_, this or there; which exists in the Sanskrit demonstrative pronoun _tad_, the Greek _to_, the Gothic _thata_, the English _that_; and which in Latin we can trace in _talis_, _tantus_, _tunc_, _tam_, and even in _tamen_, an old locative in _men_. We have thus seen that what we call the third person singular of the present is in reality a simple compound of a predicative root with a demonstrative root. It is a compound like any other, only that the second part is not predicative, but simply demonstrative. As in pay-master we predicate pay of master, meaning a person whose office it is to pay, so in _dadâ-ti_, _give-he_, the ancient framers of language simply predicated giving of some third person, and this synthetic proposition, _give-he_, is the same as what we now call the third person singular in the indicative mood, of the present tense, in the active voice.(279)

We have necessarily confined ourselves in our analysis of language to that family of languages to which our own tongue, and those with which we are best acquainted, belong; but what applies to Sanskrit and the Aryan family applies to the whole realm of human speech. Every language, without a single exception, that has as yet been cast into the crucible of comparative grammar, has been found to contain these two substantial elements, predicative and demonstrative roots. In the Semitic family these two constituent elements are even more palpable than in Sanskrit and Greek. Even before the discovery of Sanskrit, and the rise of comparative philology, Semitic scholars had successfully traced back the whole dictionary of Hebrew and Arabic to a small number of roots, and as every root in these languages consists of three consonants, the Semitic languages have sometimes been called by the name of triliteral.

To a still higher degree the constituent elements are, as it were, on the very surface in the Turanian family of speech. It is one of the characteristic features of that family, that, whatever the number of prefixes and suffixes, the root must always stand out in full relief, and must never be allowed to suffer by its contact with derivative elements.

There is one language, the Chinese, in which no analysis of any kind is required for the discovery of its component parts. It is a language in which no coalescence of roots has taken place: every word is a root, and every root is a word. It is, in fact, the most primitive stage in which we can imagine human language to have existed. It is language _comme il faut_; it is what we should naturally have expected all languages to be.

There are, no doubt, numerous dialects in Asia, Africa, America, and Polynesia, which have not yet been dissected by the knife of the grammarian; but we may be satisfied at least with this negative evidence, that, as yet, no language which has passed through the ordeal of grammatical analysis has ever disclosed any but these two constituent elements.

The problem, therefore, of the origin of language, which seemed so perplexing and mysterious to the ancient philosophers, assumes a much simpler aspect with us. We have learnt what language is made of; we have found that everything in language, except the roots, is intelligible, and can be accounted for. There is nothing to surprise us in the combination of the predicative and demonstrative roots which led to the building up of all the languages with which we are acquainted, from Chinese to English. It is not only conceivable, as Professor Pott remarks, “that the formation of the Sanskrit language, as it is handed down to us, may have been preceded by a state of the greatest simplicity and entire absence of inflections, such as is exhibited to the present day by the Chinese and other monosyllabic languages.” It is absolutely impossible that it should have been otherwise. After we have seen that all languages must have started from this Chinese or monosyllabic stage, the only portion of the problem of the origin of language that remains to be solved is this: How can we account for the origin of those predicative and demonstrative roots which form the constituent elements of all human speech, and which have hitherto resisted all attempts at further analysis? This problem will form the subject of our two next Lectures.

LECTURE VIII. MORPHOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION.

We finished in our last Lecture our analysis of language, and we arrived at the result that _predicative_ and _demonstrative_ roots are the sole constituent elements of human speech.

We now turn back in order to discover how many possible forms of language may be produced by the free combination of these constituent elements; and we shall then endeavor to find out whether each of these possible forms has its real counterpart in some or other of the dialects of mankind. We are attempting in fact to carry out a _morphological classification_ of speech, which is based entirely on the form or manner in which roots are put together, and therefore quite independent of the genealogical classification which, according to its very nature, is based on the formations of language handed down ready made from generation to generation.

Before, however, we enter on this, the principal subject of our present Lecture, we have still to examine, as briefly as possible, a second family of speech, which, like the Aryan, is established on the strictest principles of genealogical classification, namely, the _Semitic_.

The Semitic family is divided into three branches, the _Aramaic_, the _Hebraic_, and the _Arabic_.(280)

The _Aramaic_ occupies the north, including Syria, Mesopotamia, and part of the ancient kingdoms of Babylonia and Assyria. It is known to us chiefly in two dialects, the _Syriac_ and _Chaldee_. The former name is given to the language which has been preserved to us in a translation of the Bible (the Peshito(281)) ascribed to the second century, and in the rich Christian literature dating from the fourth. It is still spoken, though in a very corrupt form, by the Nestorians of Kurdistan, near the lakes of Van and Urmia, and by some Christian tribes in Mesopotamia; and an attempt has been made by the American missionaries,(282) stationed at Urmia, to restore this dialect to some grammatical correctness by publishing translations and a grammar of what they call the Neo-Syriac language.

The name of _Chaldee_ has been given to the language adopted by the Jews during the Babylonian captivity. Though the Jews always retained a knowledge of their sacred language, they soon began to adopt the dialect of their conquerors, not for conversation only, but also for literary composition.(283) The book of Ezra contains fragments in Chaldee, contemporaneous with the cuneiform inscriptions of Darius and Xerxes, and several of the apocryphal books, though preserved to us in Greek only, were most likely composed originally in Chaldee, and not in Hebrew. The so-called _Targums_(284) again, or translations and paraphrases of the Old Testament, written during the centuries immediately preceding and following the Christian era,(285) give us another specimen of the Aramaic, or the language of Babylonia, as transplanted to Palestine. This Aramaic was the dialect spoken by Christ and his disciples. The few authentic words preserved in the New Testament as spoken by our Lord in His own language, such as _Talitha kumi_, _Ephphatha_, _Abba_, are not in Hebrew, but in the Chaldee, or Aramaic, as then spoken by the Jews.(286)

After the destruction of Jerusalem the literature of the Jews continued to be written in the same dialect. The Talmud(287) of Jerusalem of the fourth, and that of Babylon of the fifth, century exhibit the Aramean, as spoken by the educated Jews settled in these two localities, though greatly depraved and spoiled by an admixture of strange elements. This language remained the literary idiom of the Jews to the tenth century. The _Masora_,(288) and the traditional commentary of the Old Testament, was written in it about that time. Soon after the Jews adopted Arabic as their literary language, and retained it to the thirteenth century. They then returned to a kind of modernized Hebrew, which they still continue to employ for learned discussions.

It is curious that the Aramaic branch of the Semitic family, though originally the language of the great kingdoms of Babylon and Nineveh, should have been preserved to us only in the literature of the Jews, and of the Christians of Syria. There must have been a Babylonian literature, for the wisdom of the Chaldeans had acquired a reputation which could hardly have been sustained without a literature. Abraham must have spoken Aramaic before he emigrated to Canaan. Laban spoke the same dialect, and the name which he gave to the heap of stones that was to be a witness between him and Jacob, (Jegar-sahadutha) is Syriac, whereas Galeed, the name by which Jacob called it, is Hebrew.(289) If we are ever to recover a knowledge of that ancient Babylonian literature, it must be from the cuneiform inscriptions lately brought home from Babylon and Nineveh. They are clearly written in a Semitic language. About this there can be no longer any doubt. And though the progress in deciphering them has been slow, and slower than was at one time expected, yet there is no reason to despair. In a letter, dated April, 1853, Sir Henry Rawlinson wrote:—

“On the clay tablets which we have found at Nineveh, and which now are to be counted by thousands, there are explanatory treatises on almost every subject under the sun: the art of writing, grammars, and dictionaries, notation, weights and measures, divisions of time, chronology, astronomy, geography, history, mythology, geology, botany, &c. In fact we have now at our disposal a perfect cyclopædia of Assyrian science.” Considering what has been achieved in deciphering one class of cuneiform inscriptions, the Persian, there is no reason to doubt that the whole of that cyclopædia will some day be read with the same ease with which we read the mountain records of Darius.

There is, however, another miserable remnant of what was once the literature of the Chaldeans or Babylonians, namely, the “Book of Adam,” and similar works preserved by the _Mendaïtes_ or _Nasoreans_, a curious sect settled near Bassora. Though the composition of these works is as late as the tenth century after Christ, it has been supposed that under a modern crust of wild and senseless hallucinations, they contain some grains of genuine ancient Babylonian thought. These _Mendaïtes_ have in fact been identified with the _Nabateans_, who are mentioned as late as the tenth century(290) of our era, as a race purely pagan, and distinct from Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans. In Arabic the name Nabatean(291) is used for Babylonians,—nay, all the people of Aramaic origin, settled in the earliest times between the Euphrates and Tigris are referred to by that name.(292) It is supposed that the Nabateans, who are mentioned about the beginning of the Christian era as a race distinguished for their astronomical and general scientific knowledge, were the ancestors of the mediæval Nabateans, and the descendants of the ancient Babylonians and Chaldeans. You may have lately seen in some literary journals an account of a work called “The Nabatean Agriculture.” It exists only in an Arabic translation by Ibn-Wahshiyyah, the Chaldean,(293) who lived about 900 years after Christ, but the original, which was written by Kuthami in Aramean, has lately been referred to the beginning of the thirteenth century B. C. The evidence is not yet fully before us, but from what is known it seems more likely that this work was the compilation of a Nabatean, who lived about the fourth century after Christ;(294) and though it contains ancient traditions, which may go back to the days of the great Babylonian monarchs, these traditions can hardly be taken as a fair representation of the ancient civilization of the Aramean race.

The second branch of the Semitic family is the _Hebraic_, chiefly represented by the ancient language of Palestine, where Hebrew was spoken and written from the days of Moses to the times of Nehemiah and the Maccabees, though of course with considerable modifications, and with a strong admixture of Aramean forms, particularly since the Babylonian captivity, and the rise of a powerful civilization in the neighboring country of Syria. The ancient language of Phœnicia, to judge from inscriptions, was most closely allied to Hebrew, and the language of the Carthaginians too must be referred to the same branch.

Hebrew was first encroached upon by Aramaic dialects, through the political ascendency of Babylon, and still more of Syria; and was at last swept away by Arabic, which, since the conquest of Palestine and Syria in the year 636, has monopolized nearly the whole area formerly occupied by the two older branches of the Semitic stock, the Aramaic and Hebrew.

This third, or Arabic, branch sprang from the Arabian peninsula, where it is still spoken by a compact mass of aboriginal inhabitants. Its most ancient documents are the _Himyaritic_ inscriptions. In very early times this Arabic branch was transplanted to Africa, where, south of Egypt and Nubia, on the coast opposite Yemen, an ancient Semitic dialect has maintained itself to the present day. This is the _Ethiopic_ or _Abyssinian_, or, as it is called by the people themselves, the _Gees_ language. Though no longer spoken in its purity by the people of Habesh, it is still preserved in their sacred writings, translations of the Bible, and similar works, which date from the third and fourth centuries. The modern language of Abyssinia is called _Amharic_.

The earliest literary documents of Arabic go back beyond Mohammed. They are called _Moallakat_, literally, suspended poems, because they are said to have been thus publicly exhibited at Mecca. They are old popular poems, descriptive of desert life. With Mohammed Arabic became the language of a victorious religion, and established its sway over Asia, Africa, and Europe.

These three branches, the Aramaic, the Hebraic, and Arabic, are so closely related to each other, that it was impossible not to recognize their common origin. Every root in these languages, as far back as we know them, must consist of three consonants, and numerous words are derived from these roots by a simple change of vowels, leaving the consonantal skeleton as much as possible intact. It is impossible to mistake a Semitic language; and what is most important—it is impossible to imagine an Aryan language derived from a Semitic, or a Semitic from an Aryan language. The grammatical framework is totally distinct in these two families of speech. This does not exclude, however, the possibility that both are diverging streams of the same source; and the comparisons that have been instituted between the Semitic roots, reduced to their simplest form, and the roots of the Aryan languages, have made it more than probable that the material elements with which they both started were originally the same.

Other languages which are supposed to belong to the Semitic family are the _Berber_ dialects of Northern Africa, spoken on the coast from Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean before the invasion of the Arabs, and now pushed back towards the interior. Some other African languages, too, such as the _Haussa_ and _Galla_, have been classed as Semitic; and the language of Egypt, from the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions to the Coptic, which ceased to be spoken after the seventeenth century, has equally been referred to this class. The Semitic character of these dialects, however, is much less clearly defined, and the exact degree of relationship in which they stand to the Semitic languages, properly so-called, has still to be determined.

Strictly speaking the Aryan and Semitic are the only _families_ of speech which fully deserve that title. They both presuppose the existence of a finished system of grammar, previous to the first divergence of their dialects. Their history is from the beginning a history of decay rather than of growth, and hence the unmistakable family-likeness which pervades every one even of their latest descendants. The language of the Sepoy and that of the English soldier are, strictly speaking, one and the same language. They are both built up of materials which were definitely shaped before the Teutonic and Indic branches separated. No new root has been added to either since their first separation; and the grammatical forms which are of more modern growth in English or Hindustání, are, if closely examined, new combinations only of elements which existed from the beginning in all the Aryan dialects. In the termination of the English _he is_, and in the inaudible termination of the French _il est_, we recognize the result of an act performed before the first separation of the Aryan family, the combination of the predicative root _as_ with the demonstrative root _ti_; an act performed once for all, and continuing to be felt to the present day.

It was the custom of Nebuchadnezzar to have his name stamped on every brick that was used during his reign in erecting his colossal palaces. Those palaces fell to ruins, but from the ruins the ancient materials were carried away for building new cities; and on examining the bricks in the walls of the modern city of Baghdad on the borders of the Tigris, Sir Henry Rawlinson discovered on each the clear traces of that royal signature. It is the same if we examine the structure of modern languages. They too were built up with the materials taken from the ruins of the ancient languages, and every word, if properly examined, displays the visible stamp impressed upon it from the first by the founders of the Aryan and the Semitic empires of speech.

The relationship of languages, however, is not always so close. Languages may diverge before their grammatical system has become fixed and hardened; and in that case they cannot be expected to show the same marked features of a common descent as, for instance, the Neo-Latin dialects, French, Italian, and Spanish. They may have much in common, but they will likewise display an after-growth in words and grammatical forms peculiar to each dialect. With regard to words we see that even languages so intimately related to each other as the six Romance dialects, diverged in some of the commonest expressions. Instead of the Latin _frater_, the French _frère_, we find in Spanish _hermano_. There was a very good reason for this change. The Latin word _frater_, changed into _fray_ and _frayle_, had been applied to express a brother or a friar. It was felt inconvenient that the same word should express two ideas which it was sometimes necessary to distinguish, and therefore, by a kind of natural elimination, _frater_ was given up as the name of brother in Spanish, and replaced from the dialectical stores of Latin, by _germanus_. In the same manner the Latin word for shepherd, _pastor_, was so constantly applied to the shepherd of the people or the clergyman, _le pasteur_, that a new word was wanted for the real shepherd. Thus _berbicarius_ from _berbex_ or _vervex_, a wether, was used instead of _pastor_, and changed into the French _berger_. Instead of the Spanish _enfermo_, ill, we find in French _malade_, in Italian _malato_. Languages so intimately related as Greek and Latin have fixed on different expressions for son, daughter, brother, woman, man, sky, earth, moon, hand, mouth, tree, bird, &c.(295) That is to say, out of a large number of synonymes which were supplied by the numerous dialects of the Aryan family, the Greeks perpetuated one, the Romans another. It is clear that when the working of this principle of natural selection is allowed to extend more widely, languages, though proceeding from the same source, may in time acquire a totally different nomenclature for the commonest objects. The number of real synonymes is frequently exaggerated, and if we are told that in Icelandic there are 120 names for island, or in Arabic 500 names for lion,(296) and 1,000 names for sword,(297) many of these are no doubt purely poetical. But even where there are in a language only four or five names for the same objects, it is clear that four languages might be derived from it, each in appearance quite distinct from the rest.

The same applies to grammar. When the Romance languages, for instance, formed their new future by placing the auxiliary verb _habere_, to have, after the infinitive, it was quite open to any one of them to fix upon some other expedient for expressing the future. The French might have chosen _je vais dire_ or _je dirvais_ (I wade to say) instead of _je dirai_, and in this case the future in French would have been totally distinct from the future in Italian. If such changes are possible in literary languages of such long standing as French and Italian, we must be prepared for a great deal more in languages which, as I said, diverged before any definite settlement had taken place either in their grammar or their dictionary. If we were to expect in them the definite criteria of a genealogical relationship which unites the members of the Aryan and Semitic families of speech, we should necessarily be disappointed. Such criteria could not possibly exist in these languages. But there are criteria for determining even these more distant degrees of relationship in the vast realm of speech; and they are sufficient at least to arrest the hasty conclusions of those who would deny the possibility of a common origin of any languages more removed from each other than French and Italian, Sanskrit and Greek, Hebrew and Arabic. You will see this more clearly after we have examined the principles of what I call the _morphological classification_ of human speech.

As all languages, so far as we can judge at present, can be reduced in the end to roots, predicative and demonstrative, it is clear that, according to the manner in which roots are put together, we may expect to find three kinds of languages, or three stages in the gradual formation of speech.

1. Roots may be used as words, each root preserving its full independence.

2. Two roots may be joined together to form words, and in these compounds one root may lose its independence.

3. Two roots may be joined together to form words, and in these compounds both roots may lose their independence.

What applies to two roots, applies to three or four or more. The principle is the same, though it would lead to a more varied subdivision.

The first stage, in which each root preserves its independence, and in which there is no formal distinction between a root and a word, I call the _Radical Stage_. This stage is best represented by ancient Chinese. Languages belonging to this first or Radical Stage, have sometimes been called _Monosyllabic_ or _Isolating_. The second stage, in which two or more roots coalesce to form a word, the one retaining its radical independence, the other sinking down to a mere termination, I call the _Terminational Stage_. This stage is best represented by the Turanian family of speech, and the languages belonging to it have generally been called _agglutinative_, from _gluten_, glue. The third stage, in which roots coalesce so that neither the one nor the other retains its substantive independence, I call the _Inflectional Stage_. This stage is best represented by the Aryan and Semitic families, and the languages belonging to it have sometimes been distinguished by the name of _organic_ or _amalgamating_.

The first stage excludes phonetic corruption altogether.

The second stage excludes phonetic corruption in the principal root, but allows it in the secondary or determinative elements.

The third stage allows phonetic corruption both in the principal root and in the terminations.

A few instances will make this classification clearer.

In the first stage, which is represented by Chinese, every word is a root, and has its own substantial meaning. Thus, where we say in Latin _baculo_, with a stick, we say in Chinese _ỳ ćáng_.(298) Here _ỳ_ might be taken for a mere preposition, like the English _with_. But in Chinese this _ỳ_ is a root; it is the same word which, if used as a verb, would mean “to employ.” Therefore in Chinese _ỳ ćáng_ means literally “employ stick.” Or again, where we say in English _at home_, or in Latin _domi_, the Chinese say _ŭŏ-li, ŭŏ_ meaning _house_, and _li_ originally _inside_.(299) The name for _day_ in Chinese is _ģi-tse_, which means originally _son of the sun_.(300)

There is in Chinese, as we saw before, no formal distinction between a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, a preposition. The same root, according to its position in a sentence, may be employed to convey the meaning of great, greatness, greatly, and to be great. Everything in fact depends in Chinese on the proper collocation of words in a sentence. Thus _ngò tà ni_ means “I beat thee;” but _ni tà ngò_ would mean “Thou beatest me.” Thus _ngŏ ģin_ means “a bad man;” _ģin ngŏ_ would mean “the man is bad.”

As long as every word, or part of a word, is felt to express its own radical meaning, a language belongs to the first or radical stage. As soon as such words as _tse_ in _ģi-tse_, day, _li_ in _ŭŏ-li_, at home, or _ỳ_ in _ỳ-ćáng_, with the stick, lose their etymological meaning and become mere signs of derivation or of case, language enters into the second or _Terminational_ stage.

By far the largest number of languages belong to this stage. The whole of what is called the _Turanian_ family of speech consists of Terminational or Agglutinative languages, and this Turanian family comprises in reality all languages spoken in Asia and Europe, and not included under the Aryan and Semitic families, with the exception of Chinese and its cognate dialects. In the great continent of the Old World the Semitic and Aryan languages occupy only what may be called the four western peninsulas, namely, India with Persia, Arabia, Asia Minor, and Europe; and we have reason to suppose that even these countries were held by Turanian tribes previous to the arrival of the Aryan and Semitic nations.