Willem Sijbrand Logeman

“ The process of utterance must have been long and tedious before anything worthy to be called a language could come into existence. A language cannot be produced until individuals belonging to the same linguistic community have begun to store up in memory the product of their original creations. When they can draw upon their memory at will, and can count upon reproducing the same sound-groups to represent the same ideas, and can likewise count upon these sound-groups being understood in the same sense, then, and not till then, can we speak of language in any true sense. ”

“ It would seem as though the art of writing and spelling, which presupposes some analysis of the sound of words, proved that the speaker, if capable of spelling and writing, must have at least some notion of those elements. But very little consideration will suffice to prove the contrary. In the first place, strictly speaking, it is absolutely impossible to denote in writing all the various elements of sound which combine to form any word or sentence. A word, however correctly and grammatically spelt, does not consist merely of those sounds which we symbolise in our writing. ”

“ It is, however, not true that all the offspring of Analogy is thus exposed to the struggle for existence. Where new ideas are to be expressed, Analogy guides us in our choice of terms, and even where the idea is not strictly new, but no term for it exists in the vocabulary or in the memory of a community, or even in that of the majority of such community, the new form will be adopted with little reluctance; nay, often without being felt as a new creation at all. In this way the language is always being enriched by new forms created on the analogy of existing ones. ”

“ But though neither the stage, an educated class, nor any given locality has availed to vindicate for itself the right of establishing a standard, it is an incontrovertible fact that, within certain limits and to a certain extent, an American standard of English does exist. There is a great number of words, of word usages, of pronunciations, of phrases, and of syntactical constructions, which have, though not recognised in English usage, a universal and well-accepted currency among the best writers and speakers of America, and rise entirely above all suspicion of provincialism. ”

“ In the first place, they operate in most instances without the consciousness of the individual. There are, indeed, a few cases in which we may say that conscious intention on the part of the individual is operative, as where a botanist coins a name for some new variety, and forces it upon all the scientific men of his circle. But it must be repeated that changes are for the most part involuntary and unconscious. It is of the essence of the life of language to unconsciously select the forms and sounds which may best serve for conveying the meaning present in the speaker’s mind. ”

“ The meaning of the words, again, must adapt itself to the standard of culture attained from time to time by each nation. New words must be created for new objects and new relations and kindred, though novel meanings must become attached to the old words—as in the case of steel pen, properly, ‘a steel feather.’ And again, a quantity of unobserved changes are constantly passing on language which are hardly remarked as such, and are the immediate result of a change in the whole culture of a nation. ”

“ The distinction between noun and verb might seem, at first sight, to be well marked both by the diversity of forms which characterise these separate parts of speech, and by the diversity of functions which they severally fulfil. But in English, we are at once met by the fact that we have numerous verbs which are identical in form with nouns, and in many cases are actually nouns employed as verbs; as, to lord it, to walk, to dog, to run: while we constantly see the process going on before our eyes, of the transference of a noun into the category of verbs; as, to chair a man, to table a motion. ”

“ But when we say that ‘a language has altered,’ we use the term in a wider sense, and include the case when one generation is found to use a new pronunciation in place of one current at a former time; when, in fact, it would be strictly correct to say that an old pronunciation has died out, and that the new one—created instead—differs more or less from that which was its model.
A child, in learning to speak, attempts to imitate the sound it hears; and, as long as the resulting imitation sounds sufficiently correct, any small peculiarity of pronunciation is generally overlooked. ”

“ It would, no doubt, be going too far to assert that the usual division of words in our written language is wholly fanciful and unnatural. But it is nevertheless true that the division is not made in speaking, nor is it always equally present in our consciousness while we are uttering our thoughts. The less educated the speaker—in other words, the less he has been taught to bring reflection into play—the less active and operative is this consciousness. ”

“ It is as useful, nay, as indispensable to the poet that he should have a store of words with similar meanings which he may employ for the purposes of his artificial style, as it is for the ordinary speaker or writer to have a distinct shade of meaning attached to each of the synonyms which he employs. And as poetry makes greater demands upon the taste and powers of an author than prose, we find that the language of poetry preserves archaic forms and words which in prose have been practically obsolete. ”

“ Seeing that the unit of language is the sentence, and not the word—in other words, that we think in sentences,—it is natural that the change in meaning should affect, not merely the separate words, but also entire sentences. These sentences may receive a meaning which is at the outset merely ‘occasional,’ but which by repetition may become ‘usual’—a meaning not implied by the combination of words as we hear it for the first time. Take, for instance, such phrases as A plot is on foot; The business has come to a head; He has come to the front; I have a man in my eye ”

“ If we now proceed to consider the causes of change in language, we must remember that there is always in language a certain amount of freedom left to the individual, which is quite independent of ordinary linguistic development. As each speaker must have certain psychical peculiarities, so must he express himself differently from every other speaker; and if the sound-producing organs of any given speaker have any peculiarities, he will exhibit corresponding peculiarities in the sounds which he utters by their agency. ”

“ A sentence like ‘Heads up!’ expresses a demand or wish, but it might equally convey an assertion. We can say perfectly well, ‘They entered, heads up,’ or ‘erect;’ and we hear quite commonly, Heads up! meaning, ‘Hold your heads up!’ And indeed such sentences of demand, or imperative sentences, would naturally be the first to present themselves to primitive mankind, whose utterances, like those of children nowadays, would naturally take the shape of requests that their immediate needs might be satisfied. ”

“ But a little consideration will suffice to show that, at all stages in the history of language, there must have existed a certain necessity for new creations to express new ideas; and we have a right to assume that in later times, as civilisation grew more complex, the degree in which new creations were necessary remained a considerable one.
The essence of original creation consists in the fact that a group of sounds is connected with a group of ideas, without the intervening link of any association already existing between a similar, related sound-group, and a similar, related idea. ”

“ If, after using ‘the Church’ in a definite sense, I employ a phrase like ‘that Church’ or ‘that Church of which I spoke,’ it is clear that this word ‘that,’ whose function was originally merely to express a perception, serves in its new function to call attention to the individualisation of the signification and to render it intelligible to the hearer.
In the third place, anything is capable of being represented and understood as concrete, when the speaker and the hearer are so similarly circumstanced that the same thoughts naturally rise into the consciousness of both at once. ”

“ There is no à priori reason why a large group of individuals, who at any given moment speak what may be considered to be one and the same language, should not alter their usage all in the same manner. Yet, if we remember that each individual has his own peculiarities, and that, while each acquires his speech by imitating others, such imitation is never perfect, we shall readily understand that language must change from generation to generation, even were other causes not present to promote such changes ”

“ Language is a careful housewife, who is constantly endeavouring to keep nothing on hand but what she can use, and carefully to retrench the superfluous. We must, of course, never suppose that any body of speakers combine to admit a word into the common language which they employ, and that then, finding that the word or form has its meaning already expressed in their language and is therefore unnecessary, they proceed to discard it. ”

“ But we must remember that no alphabet, however perfect, can assume to be a correct picture of language. Language consists of a continuous series of sounds, never broken, but consecutive. Just as no amount of drops of water separately considered could give the picture of a river, so no amount of symbols, however minute, could give the real picture of a sentence. A sentence, nay, a single word, is a continuous whole; the symbols whereby we represent it can represent only the chief parts, and represent them as disconnected. ”

“ If it be actually the fact that any considerable body of men, whose usage, be it through respect for their culture, their intelligence, or their position, or for any other reason, commands the deference of the great mass of American speakers and writers, follows so loyally the English standard as to regard as bad in language all that is peculiarly American, then it is the fact that there is no such thing as an American standard in language. ”

“ Language, as a rule, employs no more material than is necessary to make the hearer or reader understand the meaning intended to be conveyed by the speaker or writer. This statement must be taken merely generally, for it admits of many exceptions. But, as a rule, language, like a careful housewife, husbands its resources, and tends rather to economy than to lavishness in their employment. Everywhere in language we meet with forms of expression which contain just so much as is needed to make the employer of language understood, and no more. ”

“ A SENTENCE must be looked upon as the first creation of language. The SENTENCE is THE SYMBOL WHEREBY THE SPEAKER DENOTES THAT TWO OR MORE CONCEPTIONS HAVE COMBINED IN HIS MIND; and is, at the same time, the means of calling up the same combination in the mind of the hearer. Any group of words which accomplishes this is a sentence, and consequently A SENTENCE NEED NOT NECESSARILY CONTAIN A FINITE VERB, as is sometimes alleged. In Latin, and in the Slavonic languages, the word answering to is is very commonly suppressed ”

“ And this is easy to understand, seeing that the young generation generally learns to read and write from written records, and that it is obviously easier to accept a form of orthography made ready to our hand than to invent a system of orthography which shall be applicable to other dialects besides one’s own.
When the artificial language has once become the fashion, then, and not till then, will the employment of dialect seem a mark of want of culture. There are many countries still in which the most educated persons are not ashamed to speak in their natural dialect. ”

“ The language of the community in which the child grows up is the parent of his speech. Now, it is evident that in the animal world the influence of descent, powerful factor though it be, is still limited, inasmuch as the direct effect of the parent’s influence ceases at a fixed point. In language, on the other hand, the influence of the linguistic parent is permanently at work: strongest during infancy, it diminishes in force indeed, but never entirely ceases to make itself felt. ”

“ In what has been said hitherto, we have mainly considered the form in which language appears; but neither in this nor in its syntax must we suppose that the first creations with which language began were operated upon by any such influences as analogy. We must suppose them to have been entire conceptions, condensed sentences, as when we cry out Fire! Thieves! They are really, it will be seen, predicates; and an impression unspoken but felt by the speaker forms their subject. The impressions made by noises and sounds would be those that would naturally strike first upon man’s consciousness ”

“ When a word passes beyond the limits of its usual signification, it is liable to be misunderstood, unless, indeed, some impulse be present to serve as a sign-post to the sense in which it is intended to be used. We are naturally inclined to use a word in its ordinary meaning and in no other, unless, indeed, we are reminded by something that its ordinary sense is impossible. ”

“ Frequency of use in the case of any particular word may assist its phonetic development and increase its impulse in that particular line, and its rate of speed on the road to phonetic decay:—this is as yet, however, a point of dispute among philologists, and a question which claims attention from all students of language. But there can be no doubt that the more frequent the occurrence of any particular form in ordinary speech, the more capacity it must gain for resisting the levelling tendencies, the absorbing influence of other more numerous but less common groups. ”

“ In the case of sound-change, we must notice that the rise of the new sound is simultaneous with the disappearance of the old one. In the case of change of signification, it is possible for the old meaning to be maintained by the side of the new one; as when we speak of ‘the House,’ meaning the House of Parliament, we do not exclude the original and proper meaning of the word, but we merely narrow and define its signification. ”

“ Every time that we consciously or unconsciously form words ‘by analogy,’ our habit of doing so is strengthened, and our confidence in the results is increased; and the more we enter upon domains of thought where we are comparative strangers, the more confidently and the more consciously do we proceed ‘to make our own words.’ In this process of word-making, we follow certain models; in fact, we derive one form from others which exist in our own vocabulary. ”

“ A child fixes the meaning of a word by hasty and imperfect generalisations; and not by means of descriptive or exhaustive definitions. The simple and unreflecting mind of childhood identifies objects on very imperfect grounds, and stays not to consider whether there be any basis for such identification or not.13 And thus it is that, from the very first steps in the process of acquiring language, the child employs the same word to define several objects, and these not objects which really resemble each other, but which have the appearance in any degree of doing so. ”