THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

PART I

HISTORICAL ELEMENTS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL RELATIONS OF LANGUAGE.

DEFINITION OF LANGUAGE.

§ 1. LANGUAGE, from the Latin word lingua, the tongue, through the French word langage, speech, is the utterance of articulate sounds of the human voice for expressing the thoughts and emotions of the human mind. These articulate sounds are, to the hearer, signs of what is in the mind of the speaker. This is the primary meaning of the term language.

In a secondary sense, the term is applied to certain external bodily signs of the internal movements of the mind. These, sometimes called natural signs, are:

1. Modifications of the features of the face, as when a frown expresses anger.

2. Variations of the limbs, or gestures of the body, as when the upraised clinched fist expresses a threat.

3. Modulations of the voice, as when a groan expresses pain. These three classes of signs, however, constituting what Cicero calls sermo corporis, though uttered and understood by all men, furnish a mode of communication but little above what brutes enjoy. In the use of them, much, indeed, was accomplished by the ancient pantomimists, as likewise much has been done by actors, and, recently, by the teachers of deaf mutes. But how entirely inadequate are they, even in their most improved mode of use, to answer the ends to which speech is subservient!

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On the other hand, in the articulate sounds of the human voice are materials, furnished by nature, for forming a collection of signs fit to express the most subtile and delicate thoughts and emotions of the human mind. Brutes, indeed, utter certain sounds indicating their feelings, but these are merely vocal, not articulate; they are not divided by consonants, as those of man are, and are the same in every division of the globe. This distinctive characteristic of human speech is alluded to in the Homeric phrase, Il., B. i., 250, μεрóпwv ȧv0рúπwv, "articulatespeaking, or speech-dividing men."

Of written language we shall speak hereafter. See § 179.

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.

§ 2. As to the origin of language, three opinions have been maintained:

1. That language was the pure gift of God, conveyed in vocal sounds to the listening ear, as from a teacher to a pupil.

2. That it was the invention of man, contrived for the purpose of communication.

3. That it was neither the pure gift of God, nor an invention of man, but the spontaneous result of his organization, just as reason is.

The argument for this last opinion is physiological. It is derived from the structure of the organs of speech, and from the adaptation of the soul to every part of the body, to the tongue as well as to the hand. In thus creating the soul to act in and through the body, the Deity conferred on man, from the first, not only the power of thought, but also, as related to it, that of speech, so that language is the necessary result of the constitution of man, and human speech and human nature are inseparable. Thus in his very constitution endowed by his Creator with the gift of speech, the first father of our race was qualified, from the first, to bestow names on the animals, which his Creator "brought before him to see what names he would give them." These animals received their names immediately from man, not immediately from God; and, inasmuch as speech is but the image of the mind, we may believe that, impressed by some prominent attribute in each animal, he gave a name imaging his impression.

According to this view, language is not the result of compact on the part of many, nor of inventive contrivance on the part of some individual, nor of an audible communication from the Deity, as from a teacher to a pupil, but is a natural phenomenon of the race, produced by an inward necessity. It is an emanation from the common soul of man, through the organs of the body, in obedience to laws as necessary as the laws of any other mental operation.

Whether language was thus developed, as from a germ or preexisting type, within the soul, or, according to the first opinion, was a pure gift supernaturally bestowed upon man at some period subsequent to his creation, are questions that have not been settled to the entire satisfaction of every competent inquirer. That, according to the second opinion, it was the invention of man, contrived for the purpose of mutual communication, is incredible. On the contrary, the declaration of William von Humboldt we can readily admit as the true view. "According to my fullest conviction, speech must be regarded as naturally inherent in man, for it is altogether inexplicable as a work of his understanding in its simple consciousness. We are none the better for allowing thousands and thousands of years for its invention. There could be no invention of language unless its type already existed in the human understanding. Man is man only by means of speech; but, in order to invent speech, he must be already man."

We can, at least, safely assert that language is natural to man, inasmuch as he is capable of articulate sounds fitted to express thoughts and emotions, and has thoughts and emotions to be expressed, and his social nature prompts him to express them.

THE GROWTH OF LANGUAGE.

§ 3. Language ever grows with the growth of thought. Thus the father of our race, even when he was " alone," was endowed with the faculty of speech as he was with that of reason, and he used it in giving names to the animals that came before him, as the expression of his thoughts. And when, in accordance with the wants of his social nature, a help-meet was created for him, we can readily believe that his language would grow in its vocabulary and its constructions with the growth of

thought and emotion, in his communications to one gifted like himself. In the words of Cicero, it is the nature of man not only quærere socium sibi, sed velle tum docere, tum discere, tum audire, tum dicere.

Whatever was the origin of language, it is not to be supposed that the vocabulary possessed by the first generations was more extensive than was necessary to express the simple ideas which they wished to communicate. In the progress of society, as new ideas were originated, new words would be invented, just as words are now invented when they are needed to express new ideas.

That, from the first, a connection may exist between the objective word and the subjective idea, though we do not understand the nature of that connection, is just as evident as that there is a connection between the body and the soul, though the nature of this connection is not understood. Indeed, we know that there is a natural connection in the case of those words, namely, onomatopoetic, which in pronunciation imitate the sounds which they indicate, the sounds being, in such cases, an echo to the sense; and we can infer some such a connection as to large classes of other words. In the growth of language in the ordinary course of nature, the "only mode in which the voice could be made effective in raising the thought of a certain animal in the mind of a person ignorant of our language, would be to imitate the sound of the animal in question. There is a story of an English gentleman who, being desirous of knowing the nature of the meat on his plate at a Chinese entertainment, turned round to the native servant behind him, pointing to the dish with an inquiring quack, quack? The Chinaman replied, bow-wow. Thus the two parties were mutually intelligible, though they did not understand a word of each other's language." In this way we can account for the existence of many words, like the roaring of a lion, the mewing of a cat, the clucking of hens. Upon the same principle we can account for such words as to sob, to sigh; to tramp, to ring; to dash, to drum; to rattle, to bubble; and a great many words where the resemblance between the sign and the thing signified is

more remote.

Thus language, in its successive stages, is not made, but