Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/283

 objects, but designate actions, motions, phenomenal conditions, is a truth resting on authority that overrides all preconceived theories and subjective opinions. How far and why it is accordant with what a sound theory, founded on our general knowledge of human nature and human speech, would teach, and is therefore entitled to be accepted as a satisfactory explanation of the way in which men began to talk, we shall inquire in the lecture devoted to such subjects.

Thus is it, also, as regards the division of the roots into two classes, pronominal and verbal: this division is so clearly read in the facts of language that its acceptance cannot be resisted. Some are loth to admit it, and strive to find a higher unity in which it shall disappear, the two classes falling together into one; or to show how the pronominal may be relics of verbal roots, worn down by linguistic usage to such brief form and unsubstantial significance; but their efforts must at least be accounted altogether unsuccessful hitherto, and it is very questionable whether they are called for, or likely ever to meet with success. As regards the purposes of our present inquiry, the double classification is certainly primitive and absolute; back to the very earliest period of which linguistic analysis gives us any knowledge, roots verbal and roots pronominal are to be recognized as of wholly independent substance, character, and office.

But, it may very properly be asked, how do we know that the roots which we have set up, and the others like them, are really ultimate and original? why may they not be the results of yet more ancient processes of linguistic change—like love and lie, and so many others, which have been repeatedly cited, and shown to have taken in our language the place of earlier complicated forms, such as lagamasi and laganti? how should they be proved different from our word count, for example, which we treat like an original root, expanding it by means of suffixes into various forms—as he counts, they counted, counting, counter, countable—while yet it is only a modern derivative from a Latin compound verb containing a preposition, namely computare, 'to think together, combine in thought,' got through the medium of the