Linguistics

“ Scientific methods applied to linguistic research have separated the abstract entities from the concrete: the soul of a word no longer is confused with its form in sound or with its graphic sign; the spirit of a tongue is not confounded with its sustentacular principles. Many difficulties have been cleared away, which formerly obscured the unities of the concrete and the abstract phenomena of linguistics. Modern methods have enabled some of the more intelligent of our specialists to discuss, with a semblance of reason, such things as values, realities, entities, and identities. ”

“ Not only are corollary subjects forced to yield important illuminations, but subjects which at first glance seem foreign to linguistics, also bring forth light.
Physiology, physics, psychology, history, ethics, anthropology, phonetics, politics, war, geography, archeology, ethnology, etc., are called on, each in turn, to contribute some useful information bearing on linguistics. Studies are going forward in audition, phonation, and in the formation of acoustic, muscular, and conceptual images. Even the human anatomy is playing its rôle. ”

“ The General Linguistics division and individual languages with sufficient scholarship now have sections for bibliographies and general studies, phonetics and phonology, grammar, lexis, semantics and pragmatics, stylistics, metrics and versification, translation, script and orthography, psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, sociolinguistics and dialectology, historical and comparative linguistics, mathematical and computational linguistics, and onomastics. ”

“ WHILE the present century has witnessed a truly wonderful advance in the study of languages, it has not yet yielded equal results for the science of language. Comparative philology has thus far borne off the palm over linguistics. The classifications of human speech, the historical development and divarication of languages, the processes of phonetic change, are understood to a degree of which our fathers had no conception ”

“ Our knowledge of linguistic processes is sufficiently wide to show that lexicographic borrowing may proceed to such an extent, that the substance of a language may be materially changed. As long, however, as the inner form remains unchanged, our judgment is determined, not by the provenience of the vocabulary, but by that of the form. ”

“ V. Dialectal and Popular Words.
Whether words may, by conscious effort, be preserved in colloquial usage is an unsolved question, though perhaps our Society may help to solve it; there is, however, another and more certain benefit which its members, or at any rate such of them as are writers, may confer upon the language. There are many excellent words spoken in uneducated speech and dialect all about us, which would be valuable additions to our standard vocabulary if they could be given currency in it. ”

“ It is thus that it has become “scientific” to analyze language as itself a commanding element in man’s life. The history of word-roots, their modification under the influences of changes wrought in the vocal organs by habit or by climate, the laws of phonetic change to which they are obedient, and their persistence under all disguises of dialect, as if they13 were full of a self-originated life, a self-directed energy of influence, is united with the study of grammatical forms in the construction of scientific conceptions of the evolution and uses of human speech. ”

“ If the most eminent speakers are not to direct our practice, where shall we look for a guide? The answer is extremely easy; the rules of the language itself, and the general practice of the nation, constitute propriety in speaking. If we examin the structure of any language, we shall find a certain principle of analogy running through the whole. We shall find in English that similar combinations of letters have usually the same pronunciation; and that words, having the same terminating syllable, generally have the accent at the same distance from that termination. ”

“ This continual process is called the evolution of language. Slang is a strong element in the process.
As the servant of man, language has acquired a large part of his moral possessions as well as a stewardship of the most precious of his material property. Slowly through many centuries, language has assumed this power and made these acquisitions. The study of language must include, therefore, something more than orthographic change, grammatic loss, and historic speculation. It must deal with the phenomena of the mind, and it must approach them through the field of human interest. ”

“ Surely the mental habit of people who express their thoughts in so very different a manner, the one rapid, the other slow, the one plain, the other embarrassed, the one trailing, the other striding, cannot be essentially the same. The English language, strange compound as it is, with its want of inflections, and with all the difficulties which this want of inflections brings upon it, has yet made itself capable of being, in good hands, a business-instrument as ready, direct, and clear, as French or Latin. ”

“ And, in all these respects, the study of language need fear a comparison with no one of the physical sciences. Its field is the speech of all mankind, cultivated or savage; the thousands of existing dialects, with all their recorded predecessors; the countless multitudes of details furnished by these, each significant of a fact in human history, external or internal. The wealth of languages is like the wealth of species in the whole animal kingdom. ”

“ But, you all know that the manifestations of speech vary from people to people. Each of these manifestations—the languages, as we call them—constitutes one of the most essential characters of the different human groups. You all know a German, a Spaniard, an Englishman, by his language. But this is not the limit of the scientific importance of this character. Unhappily, I cannot here enter into details. I shall only attempt to show you, in a few words, how the study of language throws light on the history of human groups, even in the case of those who have lost all historic data. ”

“ Causes producing dialects; causes maintaining, producing, or extending homogeneity of speech. Illustrations: history of the German language; of the Latin; of the English. The English language in America. We have, in the last two lectures, occupied ourselves with tracing out and illustrating by typical examples the chief processes of that incessant change, that linguistic growth, which marks a language as living, as undergoing, in the minds and mouths of a community, constant adaptation to their needs, constant adjustment to their preferences and caprices. ”

“ From this state of grammatical numbness, languages recover by a secondary formation, which grows up slowly and imperceptibly at first in the speech of the people; till at last the reviving spirit rises upwards, and sweeps away, like the waters in spring, the frozen surface of an effete government, priesthood, literature, and grammar. ”

“ A new language, says the proverb, is a new sense; but a multiplicity of dialects means, for the possessors of the main language, an enlargement of the pleasures of the linguistic sense without the fatigue of learning a totally new grammar and vocabulary. ”

“ And as I cannot suppose words to represent external things, I have said "A Word is one or more syllables spoken or written as the sign of some idea." But of what ideas are the words of our language significant? Are we to say, "Of all ideas;" and to recognize as an English word every syllable, or combination of syllables, to which we know a meaning is attached? No. For this, in the first place, would confound one language with an other; and destroy a distinction which must ever be practically recognized, till all men shall again speak one language. ”

“ For it ought to be remembered, that over any fugitive colloquial dialect, which has never been fixed by visible signs, grammar has no control; and that the speaking which the art or science of grammar teaches, is exclusively that which has reference to a knowledge of letters. It is the certain tendency of writing, to improve speech. And in proportion as books are multiplied, and the knowledge of written language is diffused, local dialects, which are beneath the dignity of grammar, will always be found to grow fewer, and their differences less. ”

“ As the languages of the world, as the forms of speech mutually unintelligible, are counted by the hundred, and the dialects by the thousand, the field is a large one—one supplying much exercise, work, and labour. But the applications of the results obtained are wide also; for, as long as any form of mental philosophy remains susceptible of improvement, as long as its improved form remains undiffused, so long will a knowledge of the structure of language in general, a knowledge of comparative philology, a knowledge of general grammar (for we may choose our term) , have its use and application. ”

“ Yet of [pg 117] the real nature, and natural growth of language, it teaches us nothing.
What then do we know of language after we have learnt the grammar of Greek or Sanskrit, or after we have transferred the network of classical grammar to our own tongue?
We know certain forms of language which correspond to certain forms of thought. We know that the subject must assume the form of the nominative, the object that of the accusative. We know that the more remote object may be put in the dative, and that the predicate, in its most general form, may be rendered by the genitive. ”

“ The linguist, as we have already seen, is frequently or usually unable to discover the exact meaning of the word in the original language, and hence is uncertain as to the degree of development of any art or technique. ”

“ What may now sound to us like a perverted sense is often historically correct, for whereas learned influences, the introduction of foreign words—which makes for further specialization and differentiation of meaning—and the general march of civilization affecting manners, customs, and habits of thought, all tend to divert the normal course of language, the dialects have meanwhile kept the noiseless tenor of their way unmolested. ”

“ ON THE DIFFERENTIATION OF LANGUAGE.
The most elementary study of Comparative Philology teaches us that from a language which, in all essentials, may be considered one uniform tongue, there have frequently sprung several others; and that these, in their turn, have parted into new dialects or distinct languages. This process has been usually compared to that which we see operative in the growth and development of organic nature; and the relationship between various languages has often been expressed by the terms applicable to the human family. ”

“ His linguistic philosophy also, his view of words as inventions, of each language as an aggregation of these inventions, a national institution, and of the science of language as a branch of human history, made it a matter of course that he should regard language as a field for improvements, like other inventions and institutions. ”

“ But whatever necessity there may be for a great variety of modes and tenses in dialects, constructed upon arbitrary principles, it does not appear that any more than one is needful for a natural language, or that the modes of conjugating verbs or any other, are in fact expressible by human speech any otherwise than by the whole form or order of inflection and things. ”

“ The continuity and similarity of the course of linguistic history in all its stages, and the competency of linguistic correspondences, wherever we find them, to prove unity of origin and community of tradition, are truths which we need to bear in mind as we proceed with our inquiries into language. ”

“ Thus, while language in general may be classed as a natural phenomenon, a particular tongue must be regarded as an acquired means to an end—an artifice of conventionality—one, therefore which is subordinate to the purposes of society—one that is superior but helpful to the individual ”

“ The material and subject of linguistic science is language, in its entirety; all the accessible forms of human speech, in their infinite variety, whether still living in the minds and mouths of men, or preserved only in written documents, or carved on the scantier but more imperishable records of brass and stone. It has a field and scope limited to no age, and to no portion of mankind. ”

“ The three principal elements of English—viz. Saxon, French, and Latin—have, each, and all, had some influence on the formation of our words; and this will account for the various forms of our spelling. A word, [121] when introduced into a language, is at first spelled in accordance with the genius of the nation from which it comes. By degrees, and generally by slow degrees, it is moulded into a new form by the genius and instinct of the language in which it is at length naturalised; still, however, retaining sufficient of its original form to indicate its source and etymology. ”

“ In their power of taking up foreign words into healthy circulation and making them truly their own, languages differ much from one another, and the same language from itself at different periods of its life. ”

“ Each neglects more or less some characteristic of language as a whole for the characteristics of the tongue as a part. Specialists also seem to overlook the fact that there are traits of language no longer subject to the will ”

“ We have seen what English is, of what stuff it is made, how it came by its present compositeness of substance; how it became strong, and full, and flexible, and fervent; let us now look a little into its structure, i. e., the way in which it is put together, in doing which we shall see by comparison how it differs from other languages. This matter of structure, the formation of the sentence, is the distinctive trait of a language. Mere words are not the essential difference between languages. ”