Typology

“ 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. ”

“ 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 accident that one of the words was used and not the other on a particular occasion or in a particular social circle, will be sufficient to produce so strong an association between the word and some specialty of circumstances, that mankind abandon the use of it in any other case, and the specialty becomes part of its signification. The tide of custom first drifts the word on the shore of a particular meaning, then retires and leaves it there. ”

“ It does not explain the value of words, nor their proper use, and adds little to our vocabulary, though an abundance of words is indispensable to correct speaking and writing. It teaches neither pronunciation nor accent, nor the orthography of the variable parts of words, nor their diverse meanings, nor the difference of signification between words improperly called synonyms, nor the propriety of figurative language, nor any of those delicacies of expression which constitute the genius of a language, and characterize a clear, elegant, and correct style. ”

“ Thus, by a change of form in the words employed, we have from house a plural houses; and in like manner men from man. We give also a particular form to a noun in order to mark its value as indicating the possessor of anything: thus man’s, men’s, from man and men; and, in most pronouns, we make a change of form to signify the objective relation as distinguished from that of subject: thus, me, us, him, her, them, whom, as compared with I, we, he, she, they, who. ”

“ When the etymology is thus adjusted, the analogy of our language is next to be considered; when we have discovered whence our words are derived, we are to examine by what rules they are governed, and how they are inflected through their various terminations. ”

“ These changes, by which words in ordinary use become more and more generalized, and less and less expressive, take place in a still greater degree with the words which express the complicated phenomena of mind and society. Historians, travelers, and in general those who speak or write concerning moral and social phenomena with which they are not familiarly acquainted, are the great agents in this modification of language. The vocabulary of all except unusually instructed as well as thinking persons, is, on such subjects, eminently scanty. ”

“ If any man were to ask me, which would be supposed to be a perfect style, or language, I would answer, that in which a man speaking to five hundred people, of all common and various capacities, idiots or lunatics excepted, should be understood by them all in the same manner with one another, and in the same sense which the speaker intended to be understood—this would certainly be a most perfect style. ”

“ Attend minutely to your style, whatever language you speak or write in; seek for the best words, and think of the best turns. Whenever you doubt of the propriety or elegance of any word, search the dictionary or some good author for it, or inquire of somebody, who is master of that language; and, in a little time, propriety and elegance of diction will become so habitual to you, that they will cost you no more trouble. ”

“ Let us next notice that the recognition of likeness and unlikeness, which underlies classification, and out of which continued classification evolves the idea of complete likeness—let us next notice that it also underlies the process of naming, and by consequence language. For all language consists, at the beginning, of symbols which are as like to the things symbolised as it is practicable to make them. The language of signs is a means of conveying ideas by mimicking the actions or peculiarities of the things referred to. ”

“ We express in language, by means of verbs, adjectives, and equivalent expressions, what, as to their qualities, things are, what they do, and in what relation they stand. But in addition to such expressions, by which we qualify, describe, compare, and distinguish the various objects that we observe and think about, we have certain other expressions by means of which we assert that given objects are, or are real, rather than are not, or are unreal. Now, in technical phrase, we shall hereafter call the expressions of the latter type the ontological vocabulary of our language. ”

“ At the time and under the circumstances, then, when each term acquired its given significance, the possession of certain other resources of expression, combined with certain usages of speech and habits of thought, and influenced by external circumstances, caused men's choice to fall upon it rather than upon any other combination of sounds. Thus every word has its etymology or derivation, and to trace out its etymology is to follow up and exhibit its transfers of meaning and changes of form, as far back and as completely as the nature of the case allows. ”

“ Hence it will be manifest that an analysis, completely embracing numerous specimens of nouns of the First Class, virtually embraces also numerous specimens of words of the Four other Classes, which, together with the First, compose the principal elements of Human Language. ”

“ If we meet in different tongues with words which are clearly the same word, notwithstanding differences of form and meaning which they may exhibit, we cannot help concluding that they are common representatives of a single original, once formed and adopted by a single community, and that from this they have come down by the ordinary and still subsisting processes of linguistic tradition, which always and everywhere involve liability to alteration in outer shape and inner content. ”

“ It is the manifest form that is never twice the same, for this form, which we call linguistic morphology, is nothing more nor less than a collective art of thought, an art denuded of the irrelevancies of individual sentiment. ”

“ Humbler people yielded through fear of offence; and the practice extended, in time, to all ranks of society: so that at present the customary mode of familiar as well as complimentary address, is altogether plural; both the verb and the pronoun being used in that form. [237] This practice, which confounds one of the most important distinctions of the language, affords a striking instance of the power of fashion. It has made propriety itself seem improper. But shall it be allowed, in the present state of things, to confound our conjugations and overturn our grammar? ”

“ Here let me be permitted to remind the reader, that the positions, which I controvert, are contained in the sentences—‘a selection of the REAL language of men’;—‘the language of these men’ (i. e. men in low and rustic life) ‘I propose to myself to imitate, and, as far as is possible, to adopt the very language of men.’ ‘Between the language of prose and that of metrical composition, there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference.’ It is against these exclusively that my opposition is directed. ”

“ The introduction of culture and knowledge, of art and science, may bring in a vocabulary of expressions for the knowledge communicated, the conceptions taught or prompted; but it cannot touch the most intimate fund of speech, the words significant of those ideas without whose designation no spoken tongue would be worthy of the name. ”

“ The speech of each person is, as it were, an individual of a species, with its general inherited conformity to the specific type, but also with its individual peculiarities, its tendency to variation and the formation of a new species. The dialects, languages, groups, families, stocks, set up by the linguistic student, correspond with the varieties, species, genera, and so on, of the zoölogist. ”

“ Nor does it appear to be less so, to imagine dumb men, without inspiration, capable of fixing upon arbitrary signs of language, or advancing in knowledge, or at least, of forming so perfect a system, without being previously taught the use of letters and characters, the elements and principles of languages; more especially such of the sounds and figures, as were not to be met with in any other parts of nature, and the unintuitive, vicious, privative, and negative parts both of knowledge and language, which depend on the hieroglyfic, sacred, or secret characters. ”

“ But the successive points of this differentiation, which creates grammatical forms, and parts of discourse, are under an objective form the history of the development of intelligence, inasmuch as it abstracts, generalises, analyses, and tends towards an ever-growing precision. The completely developed languages—and we are speaking only of such—bear throughout the print of the unconscious labor that has fashioned them for centuries: they are a petrified psychology. ”

“ Thus also, in all departments of structure, old forms are lost, and (much more sparingly) new forms are made, new parts of speech are developed, new auxiliaries and other form-words are originated; a language exchanges its prevalently synthetic for a prevalently analytic character. Most easily of all, a vocabulary is altered, by the bringing in of new material, with more or less loss of old. ”

“ But a structural value is to be seen also even in the vocabulary of a language—in the way in which, for the purposes of material as well as formal expression, the objects of thought are viewed and classified and selected: how, for example, the colors are distinguished and named, or the kingdoms and classes and genera of natural existences, or the parts and qualities of man, or numbers and their combinations ”

“ So it is only by our ability to analyze roots—the compound constituents of Language—into the prime elements which have, except rarely, no distinctive and individual embodiment in it, that we can hope to gain a clear comprehension of the nature of Language itself, or of its most primitive concrete or composite foundations. ”

“ Why do words differing in origin coalesce in the same sound though retaining their differences of meaning? Why are some verbs impersonal? Why are there only so many parts of speech, and on what principle are they divided? These are a few crucial questions which give us an insight from different points of view into the true nature of language.
(6) Thus far we have been endeavouring to strip off from language the false appearances in which grammar and philology, or the love of system generally, have clothed it. ”

“ Having thus indicated the mode of distinguishing the person, number, relation, and gender—or what is deemed its technical equivalent, the mutation words undergo, not to mark the distinctions of sex, but the presence or absence of vitality, I shall now advert to the inflections which the pronouns take for tense, or rather, to form the auxiliary verbs, have, had, shall, will, may, &c. A very curious and important principle, and one, which clearly demonstrates that no part of speech has escaped the transforming genius of the language. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The English language illustrates this tendency to simplify and shorten words. the application of a single formula of evolution to all varieties of human speech. That the demands of so vast a civilization should have produced so scanty a vocabulary needs some other explanation than a supposed entire dependence on its primitive resources alone. ”

“ A custom of this sort, it is plain, may easily be a potent agent of change in language, for, where it prevails to any considerable extent, many words must constantly become obsolete and new ones spring up. ”

“ Another domain of mental life furnishes equally striking instances. The universal knowledge of the art of producing fire by friction, the boiling of food, the knowledge of the drill, illustrate the universality of certain inventions. Still other phenomena of this class are furnished by certain elementary features of grammatical structure, like the use of expressions for the three persons of the pronoun,—namely, the speaker, the person addressed, and the person spoken of,—or the frequent distinction of singularity and plurality. ”

“ As by the cultivation of various sciences, a language is amplified, it will be more furnished with words deflected from their original sense; the geometrician will talk of a "courtier's zenith, or the eccentrick virtue of a wild hero;" and the physician of "sanguine expectations and phlegmatick delays." Copiousness of speech will give opportunities to capricious choice, by which some words will be preferred, and others degraded; vicissitudes of fashion will enforce the use of new, or extend the signification of known terms. ”