LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE.*

PROFEssOM Miller has acted wisely in giving to these lectures, originally delivered before the Royal Institution, a more complete and permanent form. Wholly apart from their scientific merit they form a book such as in this age of mere writing it is a luxury to read, a book in which there is not a word without a distinct and obvious meaning, or a sentence which does not directly tend to further the object of its author. It is a specimen of thoroughly masculine literature, intended to increase the knowledge of its readers, and not merely to show off the mastery of a writer over words. Not that the style is objectionable. M. Muller thinks it necessary to apologize for his "imperfect knowledge" of the language, but many English- men would be delighted if they could write it only half as well. The professor who in easy English can discuss the right of the verb "to shunt" to be considered a word instead of a slang term, has little need to make apologies for his vocabulary. If his theories are only half as accurate as the words in which they are explained, M. Muller will have added much to the English knowledge of philology.

In commenting on productions such as these, the true function of the reviewer is not, we think, to criticize. That can only be done effectually by scholars who bring to the task a learning as minute and as varied as that of the professor himself, men whom it would not be easy to find in Europe. The ordinary scholar who questions

whether be the true Chinese equivalent for the Latin domi, or the English "at home," or whether the Turkish be really the best example of a language "with a transparent structure," when M. Miller has affirmed those two facts, simply wastes his pains. The function of the critic in such cases is to define clearly the precise theory the author intends to substitute for older or more accepted beliefs, and the degree to which his theory is demonstrated by his own illustrations. Thus M. Muller evidently considers that a belief in the growth of language as opposed to the manufacture of language lies at the very root of all sound philological science. Language, he argues, is a physical, not an historical science. It is a product of • Lectures on the Science eV Language. By Max Mtiller, M.A. Longman and Co.

nature, and, like any other, admits of no historical change, but only of growth and decay. Man can no more, says M. Muller, add words to language at his own pleasure, than he can change the circulation of his blood.

" We know that Protagoras, an ancient Greek philosopher, after laying down some laws on gender, actually began to correct the text of Homer, because it did not agree with his rides. But here, as in every other instance, the attempt proved unavailing. Try to alter the smallest rule of English, and you will find that it is physically impossible. There is apparently a very small difference be- tween much and very, but you can hardly ever put one in the place of the other. You can say, am very happy,' but not am much happy, though you may say, 4 1 am most happy. On the contrary, ,you can say I am much

misunderstood,' but not am very misunderstood."

The change may be made, but it must be the effect of time and cir- cumstance, and is effected probably in spite of grammarians and academies. The modes of change may be summed up as in nature, in growth and decay, or, to employ the author's own terminology, dialectical regeneration and phonetic decay. Dialectical regeneration is the process by which the numerous dialects employed by near neighbours grow into a perfect or written tongue. Dialects, it must be observed, according to M. Muller, are by no means always corruptions of the literary tongue, but rather its feeders, flowing in parallel streams from the same source as itself, and the result not of the degradation of an original tongue, but of the variety into which any race without a fixed standard is almost certain to fall.

"Gabriel Sagan!, who was sent as a missionary to the Hurons in 1626 and published Ins Grand Voyage du Pays des Hurons' at Paris, in 1631, states that among these North American tribes hardly one village speaks the same lan- guage as another; nay, that two families of the same village do not speak exactly the same language. And he adds, what Is important, that their language is changing every day, and is already so much changed that the ancient Huron

language is almost entirely different from the present

"Though we cannot fully enter, at present, on the problem of the origin of language, yet this we can clearly see, that, whatever the origin of language was, its first tendency must have been towards an unbounded variety. To this there was, however, a natural check, which prepared from the very beginning the growth of national and literary languages. The language of the father-became the language of a family ; the language of a family that of a clan. In one and the same clan different families would preserve among themselves their own familiar forms and expressions. They would add new words, some so fanciful and quaint as to be hardly intelligible to other members of the same clan. Such expressions would naturally be suppressed, as we suppress provincial peculiarities and pet words of our own, at large assemblies where all clansmen meet and are expected to take part in general discussions. But they would be cherished all the more round the fire of each tent, in proportion as the general dialect of the clan as- solfiTeerdvil:ntlir gercf,:;,alslcielPtlirdesr. and soldiers. wwooutIsipartgar; othwenh dialects

hold words ; and the rising generation would not be long without a more racy phraseology of their own. Even we, in this literary age, and at a distance of thousands of years from those early fathers of language, do not speak at home as we speak in public. The same circumstances which give rise to the formal language of a clan, as distinguished from the dialects of families, produce, on a larger scale, the languages of a confederation of clans, of nascent colonies of rising nationalities. B. efore there is a national language, there have always been hundreds of dialects in districts, towns, villages, clans, and families ; and though the progress of civilization and centralization tends to reduce their number and to soften their features, it has not as yet annihilated them, even in our own time."

The language thus formed is sabject, even during its formation, to a process of decay. Originally, every word must have been intended to express an idea, and when a duplex idea was required, the words were simply joined. Thus in Chinese the man who wants to say "twenty," says eel-shi, that is, two-ten, and though the greater lan- guages employ only a single word, it is not an arbitrary one, but a junction of two words, which has been subjected to a process of pho- netic decay. Thus the words for "twenty" are in Sanscrit vinsati, in Greek eikati, and in Latin viginti. The Sanscrit is merely dvi (two) decayed to vi, joined to dwell (a decade) decayed to soli, while the Greek and Latin are corruptions of the Sanscrit. "Twenty," on the other hand, is merely a plural of "ten," formed, however, in a way the professor does not specify. A better illustration is perhaps found in the French adverb ; this is formed by the addition of the Latin word mule (with a mind) to the adjective. In process of time the two became one word, the final e dropped off, the meaning of the separate word was forgotten, and the Frenchman now says "the hammer falls losirdement, little suspecting he ascribes to a piece of iron g heavy mind." And an even more perfect instance is given incidentally in a later portion of the work. The French future, unlike most tenses of the language, differs entirely from the Latin, givinglaimerai for amaho. Whence the termination? Was it invented onpurpose ? It is in fact the junction of the word "have" to the infinitive, and stoodprigi- nallylaimer-ai, I have to love, or as it was actually written in Pro- vencal, airier vos ai, I have to love you. There is scarcely a limit to the change phonetic decay may affect in the surface of a language.

"Such is the virulence of this phonetic change, that it will sometimes eat away the whole body of a word, and leave nothing behind but decayed fragments.

i

Thus, sister, which n Sanskrit is svasar, appears in Pehlvi and in Ossetian as cho. Daughter, which in Sanskrit is duhitar, has dwindled down in Bohemian to dci (pronounced tid). Who would believe that tear and larme are derived from the same source ; that the French mime contains the Latin semetipsissimus ; that in aujourd'hui we have the Latin word dies twice? Who would recognize the Latin word pater in the Armenian Aar Yet we make no difficulty about identifying pere and paler; and as several initial h's in Armenian correspond to an original p Chet=pes, pe,dis ; king =vivre ; hour =sri.3 p), it follows that hayr is pater."

The immense value of this theory consists, we think, in this : If language be absolutely a natural product, subject only to growth and decay, its changes must always follow some distinct law, which we may 'byresearch discover, and in part have discovered, while if it be subject, as so many believe, to mere human will or caprice, investi- gation becomes useless, for as we ascend we shall come across words made of nothing, and with no reason whatever for their existence. In-

Aped, the fact that we can trace almost all words back to monosyllabic mots is in itself strong evidence that no arbitrary or external inter- fference has ever affected the natural development of language. The fact, for example, that the English word "mother" can be traced .back, as it certainly can, to the very_ foundation of human society, is in itself a proof that no race of all those which intervene between, say, the first Aryan emigration and the Londoners of to-day ever in- vented a word for "mother." The root decayed, or became modified, or received additions, but was never supplanted or rivalled by any new and original word. The theory, however, may be too broadly stated. Some positively new words may have been added ; as, for example, when a race on the march named an animal it had never -before seen. It might employ a phrase, compounded of words in existence, or it might introduce a new word altogether which would probably be an imitative sound, like our own word "hissing." It might be questioned, too, whether a race never has actually made a new language, and we should like to see that assertion tested with reference to the argot of the criminal classes of France. The test, as applied -to a -tongue absolutely similar in origin, the Gordo°, er camp slang of India, resolved its components into well-known words of two or three languages, and the negro dialect, in which we have seen a -printed Bible, LS a perfect example of phonetic .corruption; but it as not quite certain that many words used in argot, or thieves' Latin, were not deliberately invented for purposes of concealment. It is no argument to say this is not a language ; it is just as much a ;language as Marhatta, -though the thieves are not at the top yet, and Ao, in spite of Sir Bulwer Lyttou's amiable efforts, cannot stamp -their dialect into literature. The mass of words, however, must fol- low the law, and M. Midler gives a most humorous, and at the same time complete, illustration of the fact in an account of the discoveries which would inevitably follow from a scientific analysis of the words :used by African slaves to address their masters. The extract is Almost -too long, but the illustration is too admirable to be condensed. II. Midler supposes the descendants of slaves enfranchised, and settled in Africa, where they still retain their ancient dialect. Among the words are "Year" and " Yestn": " Let us consider now what the student of language would have to do, if such 'forms as yes'r and yes'm were, for the first time, brought under his notice. e would first have to trace them back historically, as far as possible, to their more original types, and if he discovered their connexion with yes sir and yes erea'n, he would point out bow such contractions were most likely to spring up in a vulgar dialect. After having traced back the year and yearn of the free African negroes to the idiom of their former American masters, the etymo- logist would next inquire how such phrases as yes sir and yes madam came to be used on the American continent.

"Finding nothing analogous in the dialects of the aboriginal inhabitants of America, he would be led, by a mere comparison of words, to the languages of Europe, and here again first to the language of England. Even if no historical documents had been preserved, the documents of language would show that the -white masters, whose language the ancestors of the free Africans adopted during their servitude, came originally from England, and, within certain limits, it would even be possible to fix the time when the English language was first transplanted to America. That language must must have passed at least the age of Chaucer before it migrated to the New World. For Chaucer has two affirmative particles, yea and yes, and he distinguishes between the two. He uses yes only in answer to negative questions. For instance, in answer to ' Does he not go ?' he would :say, yes. In all other cases Chaucer uses yea. To a question, Does he go?' lie would answer yea. He observes the same distinction between no and nay, the 'former being used after negative, the latter after all other questions. This dis- tinction became obsolete soon after Sir Thomas More, and it must have become -obsolete before phrases such as yes sir and yes madam could have assumed their ;stereotyped character. "But there is still more historical information to be gained from these phrases. The word yes is Anglo-Saxon,the same as the Germania, and it therefore reveals -the fact that the white masters of the American slaves who crossed the Atlantic after the time of Chaucer, had crossed the-Channel at an earlier period after leaving the continental fatherland of the Angles and Saxons. The words sir and madam tell us still more. They are Norman words, and they could only have been imposed on the Anglo-Saxons of Britain by Norman conquerors. They tell us more than this. For these Normans or Northmen spoke originally A Teutonic -dialect, closely allied to Anglo-Saxon, and in that dialect words such as sir and 4madarn could never have sprung up. We may conclude therefore that, previous to the Norman conquest, the Teutonic Northmen must have made a sufficiently long ,striy in one of the Semen provinces, to forget their own and -adopt -the language .ef the Romanprovincials."

Thejaw thus established, Professor Midler proceeds to its applies- .tion, the first object of which is to ascertain the original roots from *which all words -by the slow process of phonetic decay have been ually derived. It is probable that these roots are very few. deed, the words persons use are very-much fewer than we generally

e. It has been ascertained that some labourers in an English .pains bad only 300 words. A well-informed Englishman seldom dimploys more than 4000, and Shakespeare, with all -his copious variety of expression, only 15,000; Milton's works contain -8000; And the Old Testament only .5642; while the entire English language does not contain more than 60,000. The roots, -therefore, may -well be few, more especially as the -highest possible number, arithmetically speaking,of biliteral and triliteral words, is may 14,500. We are -not surprised, therefore, to find in Hebrew only 500 predicative roots, :in Chinese 450, ,and in Sanscrit, even on the bad system of the pundits, who ,conaider many words radical which -are not roots at All, only 1706. In addition to these are the demonstrative roots, tali& also are :few. So few roots-seem scarcelyoapable of expansion into the glorious fulness of tongues like the Greek, German, and English, but the Chinese have expanded their 450 -roots into a language of 60,000 words, while -the existence of synonyms ,among .the roots allows of a wide variety of derivations. Thus one race, who derive their language from the Latin, style a brother, fries, and Another, hensano, but they are both from the same tongue, the Spaniards having adopted hermits° maims) to express a blood re- lation, because the more usual word fray (frater) had been adopted to express ecclesiastical kinship. The nations who derive directly from the Sanscrit are at this moment changing their ordinary word for brother, bhaie, into sohodora, literally "uterine," because the elder word -is employed in so many metaphorical senses as te be too indefinite. Then the roots may be simply joined, as in the Chinese or monosyllabic languages, or joined while one member loses its independence, or joined so that both disappear as in the Euro- pean tongues. The third form admits of what seems to the uure- fleeting observer radical change "The French age, for instance, has lost its whole material body, andis nothing bat termination. Age in old French was eage and edage. .Edage is a corruption of the Latin cetatieurn ; adaticam is a derivative of isles; (etas an abbreviation of auitaa; cevitas is derived from avant, and in arum, ce only is the radical or pre- dicative element, the Sanskrit ay in ay-us, life, which contains the germ from which these various words derive their life and meaning. From rayon the Re. mans derived reviternas, contracted into mternue, so that age and eternity limy from the same source. What trace of a or rsaion, or even resifts and alas, re- mains in age."

Thus the root AA, which signifies to plough, is the root of the Latin ar-are, the Greek arouff, the Lithuanian ar-ti, the Russian ora-ti, the Anglo-Saxon er-ran' and the Shakspearean English to ear. Thence come all the wordsfor plough and ploughing, earth, and a host of more remote words. 46611, labour, meant once to labour at the plough, and all the words beginning with art refer to the first of all arts, agriculture, and its first operation, ploughing. Then, as rowin&, by a natural simile, was.called ploughing the water, as it still -is in poetry, ar is the root of the Sanscrit ariira (rudder), *Amy, a rower, rpt-rp-ris, a trireme, and the English " oar." So, too, the names of many races, markedly of the great Aryan race, are derived from this same biliteral. Take another example, the -root spas, to look. This root is the foundation of specere, to see, and its deriva- tives, such as -" speculum," a thing to look in, a looking-glass, and "speculative ;" while with the preposition re, it creates the -whole family of words so invaluable in -England, of which "respectable" is the bead; it is also the foundation, through the .Greek, of-" sceptic' and its derivatives, "episcopate," and many more. With de as a preposition, it expresses 0to look down on" in -fifty forms, and so with every other preposition ; the same root covering, in fact, mean- ings which extend from the bishop who " oversees ' to the spy who simply "looks."

The mass of human languages being thus traced back to a few roots, it remains to ascertain how these roots arose, and thus arrive at the origin of human speech. The Professor, after discussing the theories that the first roots were imitative sounds, which he contemptu- ously calls the bow-wow theory, and its rival, that they were intellec- tions, which he -denominates the pooh-pooh theory, both of which are admirably answered, states his own. It is briefly this : The dis- tinction between a man and a mogey is this:: man's intellect can generalise, and a monkey's cannot. The first roots therefore were the words by whiclv man expressed his general ideas. He employed a word as a phonetic type, thus naming himself "man," f. e. he who thinks, homo, which comes from a root meaning dust, or nada, he who dies.

"Analyse any word you like, and you will End that it expresses a general idea peculiar to the individual to which the name belongs. What is the meaning of moon ?—the measurer. What is the meaning of sun 2—the begetter. What is the meaning of earth 2—the ploughed. The old name given to animals, such as cows and sheep, was Aria; the I.atilipectis, which illean?3fecriciii Animal itself is a later name, and derived from anima, seal. :This anima again meant originally blowing or breathing, like spirit from spirare, and was derived from a root, an, to blow, which gives us anila, wind, in Sanskrit, and anew's, wind, in Greek. Ghost, the German geist, is based on the same conception. It is connected with gust, with yeast, and even with the hissing and boiling geysers of Iceland. Soul is the Gothic saivala, and this is clearly related to another Gothic word, sales, which means the sea. The sea was milled saivs from a root or-sir, the Greek seio, to shake; it meant the tossed-about water, in contradistinc- tion to stagnant or running water. The soul being saivala, we see that it was originally conceived by the Teutonic nations as .a sea within, heaving up and down with every breath, and reflecting heaven and earth on the mirror of the deep.'

The theory we have thus imperfectly rendered, may be upset er rendered useless by new facts, .but meanwhile it explains ,mat ,of the known phenomena, and supplies therefore a most :Important addition to our machinery for investigating the truth.