Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/441

Rh concerned it is a root, about which cluster a whole body of forms and derivatives, if we could follow its history no farther it would be to us an ultimate root, as much so as bind or sing or mean. But we can follow it up, to the Latin compound con-sta, a root sta, with a prefixed formative element con. Then sta, which in slightly varied forms we find in a whole body of related tongues called “ Indo-European, ” having in them all the same significance “ stand, ” is an Indo-European root, and to us an ultimate one, because we can follow its history no farther, but there always remains the possibility that it is as far from being actually original as is the English root cost: that is to say, it is not within our power ever to get back to the really primitive elements of speech and to demonstrate their character by positive evidence. The reason for accepting a primitive root-stage of language is in great part theoretical. because nothing else is reconcilable with any acceptable view of the origin of language The law of the simplicity of beginnings is an absolute one for everything of the nature of an institution, for every gradually developed product of the exercise of human faculties. That an original speech-sign should be of double character, one part of it meaning this and another part that, or one part radical and the other formative, is as inconceivable as that the first instruments should have had handles, or the first shelters a front room and a back one. But this theoretical reason finds all the historical support which it needs in the fact that, through all the observable periods of language-history we see formative elements coming from words originally independent, and not from anything else Thus, in the example just taken, the -li- of costliness is a suffix of so recent growth that its whole history is distinctly traceable, it is simply our adjective like, worn down in both form and meaning to a subordinate value in combination with certain words to which it was appended, and then added freely as a suffix to any word from which it was desired to make a derivative adjective-or, later but more often, a derivative adverb. The ness is much older (though only Germanic), and its history obscurer, it contains. in fact, two parts, neither of them of demonstrable origin, but there are equivalent later suffixes, as ship in hardship and dom in wisdom, whose derivation from independent words (shape, doom) is beyond question. The un- of uncostliness is still more ancient (being Indo-European), and its probably pronominal origin hardly available as an illustration; but the comparatively modern prefix be-, of become, belic, &c. comes from the independent preposition by, by the same process as -ly or -li- from like. And the con which has contributed its part to the making of the quasi-root cost is also in origin identical with the Latin preposition cum, “with” By all the known facts of later language-growth we are driven to the opinion that every formative element goes back to some previously existing independent word; and hence that in analysing our present words we are retracing the steps of an earlier synthesis, or following up the history of our formed words toward the unformed roots out of which they have grown the doctrine of the historical growth of language-structure leads by a logical necessity to that of a root-stage in the history of all language, the only means of avoiding the latter is the assumption of a miraculous element in the former.

Of what phonetic form were the earliest traditional speech signs is, so far as essentials are concerned, to be inferred with reasonable certainty. They were doubtless articulate: that is to say, composed of alternating consonant and vowel sounds, like our present speech, and they probably contained a part of the same sounds which we

now use All human language is of this character; there are no sounds in any tongue which are not learned and reproduced as easily by children of one race as of another; all dialects admit a like phonetic analysis, and are representable by alphabetic signs, and the leading sounds, consonant and vowel, are even practically the same in all, though every dialect has its own (for the most part, readily definable and imitable) niceties of their pronunciation, while certain sounds are rare, or even met with only in a single group of languages or in a single language Articulate sounds are such as are capable of being combined with others into that succession of distinct yet connect able syllables which is the characteristic of human speech-utterance. The name “articulate” belongs to this utterance, as distinguished from inarticulate human sounds and cries and from the sounds made by the lower animals. The word itself is Latin, by translation from the Greek, and, though very widely misunderstood, and even deliberately misapplied in some languages to designate all sound, of whatever kind, uttered by any living creature, is a most happily chosen and truly descriptive term. It signifies “jointed,” or broken up into successive parts, like a limb or stem, the joints are the syllables, and the syllabic structure is mainly effected by the alternation of closer or consonant sounds with opener or vowel sounds. The simplest syllabic combination (as the facts of language show) is that of a single consonant with a following vowel, and there are languages even now existing which reject any other. Hence there is much plausibility in the view that the first speech-signs will have had this phonetic form and been monosyllabic, or dis syllabic only by repetition (reduplication) of one syllable, such as the speech of very young children shows to have a peculiar ease and naturalness. The point, however, is one of only secondary importance, and may be left to the further progress of phonetic study to settle, if it can, the root-theory, at any rate, is not bound to any definite form or extent of root, but only denies that there can have been any grammatical structure in language except by development in connexion with experience in the use of language. What particular sounds, and how many, made up the first spoken alphabet is also a matter of conjecture merely; they are likely to have been the closest consonants and the openest vowels, medial utterances being of later development.

As regards their significant value, the first language-signs must have denoted those physical acts and qualities which are directly apprehensible by the senses, both because these alone are directly signifiable, and because it was only they that untrained human beings had the power to deal with or the occasion to use. Such signs

would then be applied to more intellectual uses as fast as there was occasion for it. The whole history of language, down to our own day, is full of examples of the reduction of physical terms and phrases to the expression of non-physical conceptions and relations; we can hardly write a line without giving illustrations of this kind of linguistic growth So pervading is it, that we never regard ourselves as having read the history of any intellectual or moral term till we have traced it back to a physical origin. And we are still all the time drawing figurative comparisons between material and moral things and processes, and calling the latter by the names of the former. There has never been any difficulty in providing for new knowledge and more refined thought by putting to new uses the earlier and grosser materials of speech.

As a matter of course, whatever we now signify by our simple expressions for simple acts, wants, and the like, was 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 we 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 purposes, so that when they are combined they fit together, as parts composing a whole, and the desired meaning is made clear. Inflexions, too, lend their aid, or else auxiliary words of various kinds answering the same purpose-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 conceive a state of things where none of these distinctions were established, where one speech-sign was like another, calling up a conception in its indefinite entirety, and leaving the circumstances of the case to limit its application.