Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/807

PHILOLOGY 771 Avas intended to be signified through the first speech-signs by the users of them. But to us, with our elaborated apparatus of speech, the sentence, composed of subject and predicate, with a verb or special predicative word to signify the predication, is established as the norm of expression, and we regard everything else as an abbreviated sentence, or as involving a virtual sentence. With a view to this, AVC must have " parts of speech " : that is, words held apart in office from one another, each usable for such and such a purpose and no other, and answering a due variety of pur poses, so that Avhen they are combined they fit together, as parts composing a Avhole, and the desired meaning is made clear. Inflexions, too, lend their aid ; or else auxiliary words of various kinds answering the same pur pose namely, of determining the relations of the members of the sentence. But all our success in understanding the earliest stages of language depends upon our power to con ceive a state of things where none of these distinctions Avere established, where one speech-sign Avas like another, calling up a conception in its indefinite entirety, and leav ing the circumstances of the case to limit its application. Such a language is far below ours in explicitness ; but it would suffice for a great deal of successful communication ; indeed (as Avill be shown farther on), there are many lan guages even HOAV in existence which are little better off. So a look of approval or disgust, a gesture of beckoning or repulsion, a grunt of assent or inquiry, is as signifi cant as a sentence, means a sentence, is translatable into a sentence, and hence may even in a certain way be called a sentence ; and in the same way, but only so, the original roots of language may be said to have been sentences. In point of fact, betAveen the holophrastic gesture or uttered sign and the sentence Avhich AVC can now substitute for it for example, between the sign of beckoning and the equivalent sentence, "I AA ant you to come here" lies the Avhole history of development of inflective speech. Develop- What has been this history of development, hoAv the ment of first scanty and formless signs have been changed into the language, i mmense variety and fulness of existing speech, it is of course impossible to point out in detail, or by demonstra tion of facts, because nearly the Avhole process is hidden in the darkness of an impenetrable past. The only way to cast any light upon it is by careful induction from the change and growth which are seen to have been going on in the recent periods for which we have recorded evidence, or which are going on at the present time. Of some groups of related languages Ave can read the life for three or four thousand years back, and by comparison can infer it much farther ; and the knowledge thus Avon is what Ave have to apply to the explanation of periods and languages otherAvise unknown. Nothing has a right to be admitted as a factor in language-growth of Avhich the action is not demonstrable in recorded language. Our own family of languages is the one of Avhose development most is knoAvn, by observation and Avell-Avarranted inference ; and it may be Avell here to sketch the most important features of its history, by way of general illustration. in Aryan Apparently the earliest class -distinction traceable in speech. Aryan speech is that of pronominal roots, or signs of posi tion, from the more general mass of roots. It is not a formal distinction, marked by a structural difference, but, so far as can be seen, is founded only on the assignment by usage ef certain elements to certain offices. Formal distinction began Avith combination, the addition of one element to another, their fusion into a single Avord, and the reduction of the one part to a subordinate value, as sign of a certain modification of meaning of the other. Thus, doubtless by endings of pronominal origin, Avere made the first verb-forms, or Avords used only Avhen predi cation Avas intended (since that is all that makes a A erb), conveying at first a distinction of persons only, then of persons and numbers, while the further distinctions of tense and mode were by degrees added. To the nouns, which became nouns by the setting up of the separate and special class of verbs, were added in like manner distinctions of case, of number, and of gender. With the separation of noun and verb, and the establishment of their respective inflexion, the creative work of language- making is virtually done ; the rest is a matter of differ entiation of uses. For the noun (noun substantive) and the adjective (noun adjective) become two parts of speech only by a gradually deepened separation of use ; there i.s no original or formal distinction between them ; the pro nouns merely add the noun-inflexion to a special set of stems ; adverbs are a part of the same formation as noun- cases; prepositions are adverbs with a specialized construc tion, of secondary growth ; conjunctions are the product.; of a like specialization ; articles, where found at all, are merely weakened demonstratives and numerals. To the process of form -making, as exhibited in this history, belong two parts : the one external, consisting in the addition of one existing element of speech to another and their combination into a single word ; the other internal, consisting in the adaptation of the compound to its special use and involving the subordination of one element to the other. Both parts appear also abundantly in other departments of language-change, and throughout the whole history of our languages ; nothing has to be assumed for the earliest formations which is not plainly illustrated in the latest. For example, the last important addition to the formative apparatus of English is the common adverb -making suffix -ly, coming, as already pointed out, from the independent adjective like. There was nothing at first to distinguish a compound like godly (godlike) from one like storm-tossed, save that the former was more adaptable than the other to wider uses ; resem blance is an idea easily generalized into appurtenance and the like, and the conversion of godlike to godly is a simple result of the processes of phonetic change described farther on. The extension of the same element to combination with adjectives instead of nouns, and its conversion to adverb- making value, is a much more striking case of adaptation, and is nearly limited to English, among the Germanic languages that have turned like into a suffix. A similar striking case, of combination and adaptation, is seen in the Romanic adverb-making suffix mente or ment, coming from the Latin ablative mente, " with mind." So, to make a Romanic future like donnerai, " I shall give," there was needed in the first place the pre-existing elements donner, "to give," and ai, "I have," and their combination; but this is only a part ; the other indispensable part is the gradual adaptation of a phrase meaning "I have [some thing before me] for giving " to the expression of simple futurity, "donabo." So far as the adaptation is concerned, the case is quite parallel to that offai donne, "I have given," ifec. (equivalent phrases or combinations are found in many languages), where the expression of possession of something that is acted on has been in like manner modified into the expression of past action. Parallel in both combination and adaptation is the past tense loved, from love-did, while we have again the same adaptation without combination in the equivalent phrase did love. That these are examples of the process by which the whole inflective structure of Aryan language was built up admits of no reasonable question. Our belief that it is so rests upon the solid foundation that we can demonstrate no other process, and that this one is sufficient. It is true that we can prove such an origin for our formative elements in only a small minority of instances ; but this is just Avhat was to be expected, considering what we know