Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/808

PHILOLOGY of the disguising processes of language-growth. No one would guess in the mere y of ably (for able-ly] the presence of the adjective like, any more than in the altered final of sent and the shortened vowel of led the effect of a did once added to send and lead. The true history of these forms can be shown, because there happen to be other facts left in existence to show it ; where such facts are not within reach, we are left to infer by analogy from the known to the unknown. The validity of our inference can only be shaken by showing that there are forms incapable of having been made in this way, or that there are and have been other ways of making forms. Of the former there is evidently but small chance ; if a noun-form meaning " with mind " can become the means of conversion of all the adjectives of a language into adverbs, and a verb meaning "have" (and, yet earlier, "seize") of signifying both future and past time, there is obviously nothing that is impossible of attainment by such means. As regards the latter, no one appears to have even attempted to demonstrate the genesis of formative elements in any other way during the historical periods of language ; it is simply assumed that the early methods of language-making will have been something different from and superior in spon taneity and fruitfulness to the later ones ; that certain forms, or forms at certain periods, were made out-and-out, as forms ; that signs of formal distinction somehow exuded from roots and stems ; that original words were many- membered, and that a formative value settled in some member of them and the like. Such doctrines are purely fanciful, and so opposed to the teachings both of observa tion and of sound theory that the epithet absurd is hardly too strong to apply to them. If the later races, of developed intelligence, and trained in the methods of a fuller expression, can only win a new form by a long and gradual process of combination and adaptation, why should the earlier and comparatively untrained generations have been able to do any better? The advantage ought to be, All if anywhere, on our side. The progress of language in formal every department, accompanying and representing the elements ac | vance o f the race, on the whole, in the art of speaking once material. as * n other arts, is from the grosser to the more refined, from the physical to the moral and intellectual, from the material to the formal. The conversion of compounds into forms, by the reduction of one of their elements to forma tive value, is simply a part of the general process which also creates auxiliaries and form-words and connectives, all the vocabulary of mind, and all the figurative phraseology that gives life and vigour to our speech. If a copula, expressive of the grammatical relation of predication, could be won only by attenuation of the meaning of verbs signifying "grow," "breathe," "stand," and the like; if our auxiliaries of tense and mode all go traceably back to words of physical meaning (as have to "seize," may to "be great or strong," shall to "be under penalty," and so on) ; if of comes from the comparatively physical off, and for from " be/ore, forward " ; if relative pronouns are special ized demonstratives and interrogatives ; if right means etymologically "straight," and ivrong means "twisted"; if spirit is " blowing," and intellect a "picking out among," and understanding a "getting beneath," and development an " unfolding " ; if an event takes place or conies to pass, and then drops out of mind and is forgotten (opposite of gotten} then it is of no avail to object to the grossness of any of the processes by which, in earlier language or in later, the expression of formal relations is won. The mental sense of the relation expressed is entirely superior to and independent of the means of its expression. He who, to express the plural of man, says what is equivalent to man-man or heap-man (devices which are met with in not a few languages) has just as good a sense of plurality as he who says men or homines ; that sense is no more degraded in him by the coarseness of the phrase he uses to signify it than is our own sense of eventuality and of pastness by the undisguised coarseness of take plwe and have been. In short, it is to be laid down with the utmost distinctness and confidence, as a law of language-growth, that there is nothing formal anywhere in language which was not once material ; that the formal is made out of the material, by processes which began in the earliest history of language and are still in action. We have dropped here the restriction to our own or Laws of Aryan language with which we began, because it is evident c i;ill ge that what is true of this family of speech, one of the most "" , , highly organized that exist, may also be true of the rest- must be true of them, unless some valid evidence be found to the . contrary. The unity of human nature makes human speech alike in the character of its beginnings and in the general features of its after-history. Everywhere among men, a certain store of expression, body of tradi tional signs of thought, being given, as used by a certain community, it is capable of increase on certain accordant lines, and only on them. In some languages, and under peculiar circumstances, borrowing is a great means of increase ; but it is the most external and least organically important of all. Out-and-out invention (which, so far as we can see, must be of the kind called by us onomato- poetic) is found to play only a very insignificant part in the historical periods of language, clearly because there are other and easier modes of gaining new expression for what needs to be expressed. In the course of phonetic change, a word sometimes varies into two (or more) forms, and makes so many words, which are differently turned to account. Everything beyond this must be the product of combination ; there is no other way, so far as concerns the externals of speech. Then, partly as accompanying and aiding this external growth, partly as separate from and supplementing it, there is in all language an internal growth, making no appearance in -the audible part of speech, consisting in multiplication of meanings, their modification in the way of precision or comprehension or correctness, the restriction of words to certain uses, and so on. Along with these, too, a constant change of phonetic form constitutes an inseparable part of the life of language. Speech is no more stable with respect to the sounds of which it is composed than with respect to its grammatical forms, its vocabulary, or the body of concep tions signified by it. Even nearly related languages differ as much in their spoken alphabets and the combinations of sounds they admit, and in their uttered forms of words historically the same, as in any other part ; and the same is true of local dialects, and of class dialects within the same community. Phonetic change has nothing whatever to do with change of meaning ; the two are the product of wholly independent tendencies. Sometimes, indeed, they chance to coincide, as in the distinction of minute "small," and minute "moment" ; but it is only by chance, as the spoken accordance of second in its two meanings ("next" and "sixtieth of a minute") shows; words that maintain their identity of value most obstinately, like the numerals, are liable to vary indefinitely in form (so four, fidvor, quatuor, recrcra/a-es, &c., from an original katwar ; five, quinque, Trevre, coir, &c., from penka while, on the other hand, two and three show as striking an accordance of form as of meaning through all the same languages) ; what is far the most common is that the Avord becomes very unlike its former self in both respects, like priest from the Greek Trpfo-fivrepos (presbyter), literally " older man." Human convenience is, to be sure, the governing motive in both changes ; but it is convenience of two different kinds : the one mental, depending on the fact