The philosophy of language

Part II. Glossology

OR,

THE HISTORICAL RELATIONS OF LANGUAGES.

COMPREHENDING

1. The Etymology, or derivation, of particular words.

2. The different modes of their Construction in different languages.

3. The comparative similarities and dissimilarities of words and construction

in those languages.

4. The theoretical origin of languages in one or more sources.

5. The possibility and probability of forming from the existing languages, or

otherwise, an Universal Language.

Sik JOHN STODDART, Kxt., LL.D.

ENCYCLOPEDIA METROPOLITAN:

System of Unihexml l^nolnletjge

OX A METHODICAL PLAX

PKOJECTED BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

SECOND EDITION, EEVISED.

LONDON: PUBLISHED BY JOHN JOSEPH GEIFFIN AND CO,

53 BAKER-STREET, PORTMAN SQUARE ',

AND EICHAED GRIFFIN AND CO., GLASGOW. 1849.

5 ~ ;

CL^

LONDON : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET.

UX-

THE

COMPREHENDING

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR,

OR THE PURE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE;

AND

GLOSSOLOGY,

OR THE HISTORICAL RELATIONS OF LANGUAGES.

By Sir JOHN STODDART, Knt., LL.D.

SECOND EDITION, REVISED BY THE AUTHOR, AND EDITED BY

WILLIAM HAZLITT, Esq.,

BAKKISTEE-AT-LA'W.

PREFACE,

The present work was originally composed for the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, a publication which was designed to have been produced under the editorial care of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge. That accomplished scholar, distinguished poet, and profound metaphysician, was unfortunately prevented by ill health, and other adverse circumstances, from carrying the intended editorship into effect. He, however, not only devised the comprehensive plan which was described in the Prospectus of the Encyclopaedia, but furnished the original materials for a general introduction, which his friend, my uncle, Sir John Stoddart, undertook, at the desire of the proprietors, to arrange for publication, in the form in which it eventually appeared.

My uncle was led, from this circumstance, to draw up an article on Grammar, which, though hastily executed, in the intervals of a laborious profession, was deemed by Mr. Coleridge not unworthy to occupy a place in the Encyclopaedia. The subject was one which had attracted the author's attention at a very early period. He was educated at the school in the Close of Salisbury, an institution attached to the Cathedral, and of which a Minor Canon, Dr. Skinner, was Master, and the Rev. E. Coleridge (an elder brother of the poet), Under Master. Grammar was then taught on the ancient plan of the once

VI PREFACE.

famous William Lilly, whose Propria qua? maribus and As in prcesenti English boys were, for centuries, compelled to repeat by rote, without the slightest suspicion that they involved anything like a rational principle. Fortunately, however, for my uncle, his godfather, Mr. Benson Earle, was a sound classical scholar, and had been a ward of the celebrated James Harris, the author of Hermes. This book Mr. Earle put into the hands of his godson, then about fourteen years of age, and the young student, on opening it, 'felt as if his mental eye had been couched, discovering with surprise that the lessons which had appeared to him, of all his scholastic tasks, the driest and most unmeaning, involved many profound speculations of intellectual philosophy. Of course he was not yet in a capacity to judge of the correctness of all Mr. Harris's theories; but he saw enough to convince him that Hermes contained much of that acute investigation, perspicuous explication, and elegance of method for which it had been celebrated by Dr. Lowth. His classical pursuits at Christchurch, Oxford, of which college he was elected a Student, somewhat moderated, though they did not wholly extinguish, his estimation of Mr. Harris's work ; and the perusal of Hickes's Thesaurus, in the Bodleian Library, showed him that the northern languages afforded a new field for grammatical research. On his subsequent arrival in London, to follow the study of the law, he found the literary circles of the day much occupied with Mr. Home Tooke's Diversions of Purley, a work which promised great results from the cultivation of Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, and Old English etymologies. Falling into company with Mr. Porson, he consulted him on its merits. The Professor said, that, on the first appearance of Mr. Tooke's Letter to Dunning, he had been struck with the originality of its views; but though the Diversions of Purley (of which only the first volume had then appeared)

PEEFACE. VTL

certainly contained some new and curious matter, lie did not perceive that it effected much toward the development of the principle set forth in the early pamphlet. This opinion confirmed my uncle in his resolution to investigate the subject for himself. Having chosen the Ecclesiastical and Admiralty Courts for the future scene of his professional exertions, he had some time before him for miscellaneous study ; and as he had devoted part of his leisure at Oxford to the Bodleian Library, he employed much more in London among the Anglo-Saxon and Old English manuscripts of the British Museum ; until he was called to the Bar in Doctors' Commons, from which period he was for several years too much occupied, first with his professional duties and subsequently with political discussions, to do more towards Philology than add an occasional article to the large mass of notes which he had previously collected. Several of these articles, however, threw no small light on the legal institutions, as well of England as of other countries. For instance, he traced the word cavere from its use in the Twelve Tables, the earliest monument of Eoman Legislation, to the Mediaeval cautio, the Italian cauzione, the Spanish caugion, the French cautionnement, the Scotch cautioner, the English caveat, and writ cautione admittenda, and numerous other legal terms, ancient and modern, derived from the same source. So he found the vades publicus (a security first given at Eome, as Livy, Book iii. cap. 13, tells us, 460 years before the Christian era) to agree in origin with the Italian vas, vadari, vadimonium ; the Mediaeval vadium-mortuum, gadiator, contragagiamentum; the Italian gaggio, gaggio-morto, ingaggiare ; the French gage, gages, engager ; the Scotch wad, wadset, wadsetter ; the English wed, wedding, wedlock, gage, mortgage, engagement, wages, wager, wager of law, wager of battle, &c. &c. Again, in the Italian subastatore (an auctioneer), he

VUl PEEFACE.

recognized the Prasco, to whose " most bitter voice " (as Cicero says) the goods of the great Pompey were subjected sub hastd. Many other such investigations kept alive, amidst the more serious occupations of the law, Iris regard for the study of language ; and it was under these circumstances that he was applied to for that treatise on Grammar which appeared in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana. A few years afterwards he was raised to the high station of Chief Justice of Malta; the arduous duties of which, office absorbed, for many years, nearly the whole of his time. At length, in 1839, he was relieved from that important charge, and left to close a long life in the otium cum dignitate which he still enjoys.

For the last ten years he has not been an inattentive observer of the very valuable accessions which, this branch of literature has received, not only on the Continent but in our own country. Many ages elapsed before Philology ventured beyond the classic circle of the Greek and Eoman tongues. The languages of modern Europe were long thought unworthy of the grammarian's attention ; and when they were first subjected to rules, it was in the vain endeavour to make them march only in the Greek or Roman step. Some zealous Divines put in a claim for the supremacy of Hebrew, which they essayed to prove was the language of our first parents ; but this theory made little impression on the scholastic systems then or since in use. CoXRAD Gesner had the merit of first extending philological speculation very far beyond the classical or judaical bounds. In 1555 appeared his Mithridates, a treatise in Latin, " De differentiis linguarum turn veterum turn quae hodie apud diversas nationes in toto orbe terrarum in usu sunt.'" His notices of various languages, however, were, as might be expected from the then limited knowledge of the different countries, very slight, and led to little that was con-

PREFACE. IX

elusive in point of principle. Nor can anything be more gratifying, in this branch of study, than to observe the vast progress which had been made between the Mitliridates of Gesner, in the 16th century, and the Mitliridates of Adelung, in the 19th. In the 16th century, too, GOROPIUS Becakus perceived, though indistinctly, that affinity between the Indian and Teutonic languages, which has, in our day, been so clearly made out by Grimm, Bopp, Schlegel, Eichhoff, &c, and recently in our own country by the very learned Dr. Bosworth, in his Origin of the English, German, and Scandinavian Languages and Nations.

To these, as well as to the ingenious speculations ol Drs. Jamieson, Latham, and Pritchard, Messrs. Johnes, Welsford, and others, my uncle has paid much attention, and has from time to time availed himself of their learned labours, in correcting and extending his own views, as well of the philosophy as of the history of language. "When, therefore, Messrs. Griffin, in the prosecution of their energetic purpose to reproduce, in an improved shape, both as to matter and form, the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, of which they had become the proprietors, invited my uncle to revise his Treatise on Grammar, desirous of doing full justice to the subject, he resolved not simply on correcting the Treatise as originally printed, and inserting such notes as had since occurred to him, but on entirely reconstructing the work, and dividing the purely Scientific part from the Historical. This, therefore, he did; but as he felt that, at his advanced age, the labour of editing the whole would be more than he could prudently undertake, he devolved that task on me; placing at my disposal all the materials which, in a long course of years, he had collected, and giving me every facility for the fulfilment of my humble share in the work.

X PREFACE.

From what lias been said, it is seen that the Treatise on the Philosophy of Language, now presented to the public, amounts, in manner, certainly, and, to a large extent, in matter, to a new work, bringing up our knowledge on this most important subject to the present day.

WILLIAM HAZLITT,

Chelsea, Nov., 1849.

Introduction

1. Iisr attempting to treat of any subject philosophically, it is advisable Method, first to define the term or terms employed to designate that subject, and then to explain the pliilosophical method of treating it which the author intends to pursue.

2. The word " Language," which comes immediately to us from Language. the French word langage, originates in the Latin lingua, " the tongue ;" and therefore anciently signified only the use of the tongue

in speech. A just analogy, however, has extended its meaning to all intentional modes of communicating the movements of the mind : thus we use the expressions, " articulate language," " written language," "the language of gesture," &c. ; for man is formed as well internally, as externally, for the communication of thoughts and feelings. He is urged to it by the necessity of receiving, and by the desire of imparting, whatever is useful or pleasant. His wants and wishes cannot be satisfied by individual power : his joys and sorrows cannot be limited to individual emotion. The fountains of his wisdom and of his love spontaneously flow to fertilize the neighbouring soil, and to augment the distant ocean.

3. But the thoughts and feelings of man, which belong to his mental and spiritual nature, can only be communicated by means of corporeal acts and objects — by gestures, sounds, characters more or less expressive and permanent, instruments not merely useful, as signs, for this particular purpose, but many times pleasing in themselves, or rendered so, by the long-continued operation of habit. These, reason, the peculiar gift to man of his Creator, enables him to select, to combine, to arrange ; and the result is a language.

4. Speech, the language of articulate sounds, is the most wonderful, Speech, the most delightful of the arts which adorn and elevate our being.

It is also the rnpsLperfect* y<Jt enables us, as it were, to express things beyond the reach of expression, the infinite range of existence, the exquisite fineness of emotion, the intricate subtleties of thought. Of such effect are those shadows of the soul, those living sounds, which

INTRODUCTION.

Words, how elective.

Speech, its diversities.

Method of study.

we call words ! Compared with them, how poor are all other monuments of human power, or perseverance, or skill, or genius ! They render the mere clown an artist ; nations immortal ; orators, poets, philosophers, divine !

5. Yet it is not to be supposed that spoken language, " with all appliances and means to boot," can always fully convey to others the conceptions or emotions of the speaker ; and much less that it always does so. Joys beyond expression, and griefs too sad to vent themselves in words, are of every day's occurrence. On the other hand, there are persons, who habitually wrap up their thoughts in the language of mystery, equivocation, or falsehood, for the very purpose, or at least with the constant result, of misleading their hearers : and there are words and phrases susceptible of so many different interpretations, that nothing but an attentive comparison of them with the whole context, or with all the concomitant circumstances, can enable any one to comprehend their full force and effect. Dugald Stewart has well observed that, in consulting Johnson's Dictionary, the reader may meet with a multitude of words with five, six, or more significations attached to each of them, and after all the pains that the lexicographer has taken, may perhaps find no one of the definitions applicable to the passage which he has in view ; and yet when he considers the whole passage together he may have no difficulty whatever in comprehending the intended sense of the particular word. This proves that the powerful effects of speech are not owing to the mere signification of separate Words, but to the activity of the Mind in seizing on the relations which they bear to each other, and in giving scope to the thoughts and feelings they are meant to excite.

6. Again, the dialects, or systems of speech adopted by various races of men, in different ages and countries, have been, in many respects, strikingly distinguishable. We may remark the copious Arabic, the high-sounding Spanish, the broad Dutch r the voluble French, the soft Italian : we may trace minute gradations from the monosyllables of the Chinese, to the long paragraph words of the Sanscrit ; or we may rise, still more gradually, in the scale of expression, from the barbarous muttering of a poor Esquimaux in his solitary canoe, to the thunders of Athenian eloquence, and those delightful strains of our own Shakspeare, which are " musical as is Apollo's lute," and " a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets." Nor is this all : a thousand collateral circumstances tend still further to diversify the numerous spoken languages of the world. Not only does time produce gradual progress, or sudden change in their forms ; but their effect is endlessly modified by combination with other arts of expression, with looks and actions, with sights and sounds.

7. In this labyrinth of interesting observations, what objects have we to pursue ; what clue to guide us ? Shall we be content to learn one or two dialects by rote ; to burthen the memory without exercising the understanding ? Or, if we would rise above this, to a know-

INTRODUCTION. 3

ledge of their construction, must we draw our general principles from the minute comparison of those numberless particulars, which the longest life would be too short even to contemplate, and which the united wisdom of ages has never attempted to arrange ? The very statement of these questions is a sufficient solution of them. They indicate at once the necessity of assuming some comprehensive principles as the rule and basis of our farther inquiries. These first elements of our reasoning must afterwards be followed oat into all their concrete forms. The history of language must verify the science; but the science must precede.

8. Obvious as is the distinction between science and history, be- The science tween a principle and an event ; yet several writers on language, hfctor/of especially within the last seventy or eighty years, and particularly in lan ^ ua s e - England, have strangely confounded these two modes of knowledge. Whether there be two parts of speech, or twenty, or any other number,

and how they are to be distinguished from each other, are questions of science : whether a given word in one language be derived from another given word in the same or a different language, or whether both be derived from a common source, and through what transitions and changes of sound or meaning they have respectively passed, are questions of history. The method which I propose to pursue, is to treat of the former topics first, and afterwards of the latter; but in like manner as it would not be easy to acquire a knowledge of Geometry (at least in its early stages) without the aid of diagrams, so there might be some difficulty in making the first principles of the science of Language intelligible, without occasional reference to examples drawn from particular languages.

9. The science of Language has for some centuries been usually Grammar, known by the name of Grammar, a word which, like the word Language, we have borrowed from the French ; but which (like the

word Language also) is far removed from its original source. The Greek word ypcupu), " I write," is connected with many Teutonic words, signifying to cut into, or engrave; and was, no doubt, first applied to engraving on stone. Signs or letters, hieroglypliical, symbolical, or alphabetical, so engraved, were, according to a common analogy in the Greek tongue, called ypa^xara, " things engraved," and that term being afterwards extended to letters written, as well as engraved, a knowledge of reading and writing letters in general was called ypa/i/xa-tfc}), " the grammatical art." In the course of time, teachers of reading and writing, in any one language, found it necessary to lay down rules for reading and writing it well, which rules were deemed the Grammatice, or Grammar, of that Language ; and these again were found to result from certain common principles, which constitute the science of Universal Grammar, and of which I intend to speak in the first part of the following treatise. The rules which form the Grammar of a particular language, in so far as they differ from those of any other, are owing to accidental and temporary

b2

4 INTRODUCTION.

circumstances, the investigation of which belongs rather to the history than to the science of Language. Universal Grammar, on the contrary, disregarding that which is peculiar to the speech of this or that individual, tribe, nation, or race, considers only what is common to man in all ages and countries, both as to the arrangement of his thoughts and feelings, with a view to their communication to others, and also as to the bodily organs, or instruments, with which the Almighty has furnished him, for the purpose of such communication. Glossology. 10. The History of Language, in all its various bearings, may be not improperly designated by the term Glossology, which I prefer to Glottology, a word recently employed by some continental writers ; first, because the former sounds to English ears less harsh ; and, secondly, because it suits better with several words which we already possess, such as Gloss, Glosser, Glossator, Glossographer, Glossography, all derived from the common Greek word yXwcrara. (Attice, ykwrra), the Tongue. Glossology, then, will form the subject of my second treatise, comprehending, —

1. The Etymology, or derivation, of particular words.

2. The different modes of their Construction in different lan-

guages.

3. The comparative similarities and dissimilarities of words and

construction in those languages.

4. The theoretical origin of languages in one or more sources.

5. The possibility and probability of forming from the existing

languages, or otherwise, an Universal Language.

UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR,

Chapter I

PKELIMLNARY VIEW OF THOSE FACULTIES OF THE INTELLECT AND WILL ON WHICH THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE DEPENDS.

11. In order to study Universal Grammar with effect, it is necessary to take a preliminary view of those faculties of the intellect and will on which the science of language depends.

12. In the mind of man the consciousness of simple existence is the Conscioussource and necessary condition of all other powers ; as in language, ness * the expression of that consciousness by the verb to be, is at the root of

all connected expression.

13. But we are conscious of different states of existence, in some of which we act, and in others we are acted upon : and thus in language, a verb is a word which signifies to do, or to suffer, as well as to be. No language, indeed, ever was, or ever could be, formed without such verbs ; but the case is different with regard to theories of language, and systems of Grammar. These may be, and have been constructed, on the hypothesis, that the mind of man is a mere passive recipient of mechanical impressions ; a something which may be impelled like a foot-ball, but which cannot give to itself, or to anything else, the slightest impulse beyond that which it has first received. On such a question as this, the only appeal lies to the common sense and daily experience of mankind ; and the result of that experience is clearly attested by all languages, living and dead — a species of evidence which is the less to be resisted, because it is not the result of any common agreement. Every language in the world has grown up from the necessities of those who have used it, and not from intention ; from accident, and not from theory; and yet there is among them an universal acquiescence in certain fundamental principles : these principles, then, are indisputably founded on the common constitution of the human mind.

14. The mind is, no doubt, passive in some respects. If I open Sensations my eye to the light, I cannot choose but see ; if a sound strikes my Amotions, ear, I cannot help hearing. These, and many like states of existence, derived from the bodily organs, are called sensations ; there are other states, in which we are more or less passive, derived from the mind,

and commonly called emotions. When we come to analyse these latter, we shall easily discover that we are not so entirely passive in their reception, as is often supposed: nevertheless, as we in both cases " suffer," that is to say, are acted upon by external causes, we

6 FACULTIES OF THE MIND [ CHAP - T -

Feeling, may not improperly include sensation and emotion as modes of the passive principle, under the common name of feeling. The states of sensation, which are agreeable to our nature, we properly call pleasure, those of an opposite kind we call pain ; and the same names are naturally transferred to those emotions of the mind which seem analogous to the respective sensations of the body. Thus the feeling of guilt is called painful, and that of joy pleasant. The pleasurable sensations and emotions, and their real or supposed causes, are all called by the common name of good, and their opposites by that of evil. The expression of feeling is what constitutes in language the passive verb.

WiU - 15. As I have called the passive principle, feeling; so I call the

active principle will, or volition. It is this principle, which may truly be called the life of the human mind ; it is this, which forms and fashions the mind ; it is this, which impels and governs the man. The conscious being, in his active state, has a power : he says, I do this or that : and hence arises the active verb. Hence also arises the pronoun : for the very idea of an act involves the idea of a cause ; and it has been clearly enough shown by different writers, that if the idea of a cause did not exist within the mind, it could never be suggested from without. 16. The will, in its growth, becomes a moral energy; that is, it impels us to good, as good, and consequently to the greater good rather than to the less. To choose the greater good is to do right, to choose the less good is to do wrong. Let philosophers argue, as they please, on liberty and necessity ; let them reconcile, as they can, those high doctrines

Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute ;

still the individual, from the first dawnings of reason, distinguishes right from wrong, and knows that he is a cause of the one, or of the other ; and feels that the power which he exercises as a cause, is a talent for which he is responsible. Thus is formed Conscience, the light and guide of life. I have not now to discuss at length the nature and effects of this precious faculty : other and fitter occasions may be found for that investigation ; but I cannot avoid noticing, that as the ideas of right and wrong are seated not merely in the mind, but in the first and elementary rudiments of the mind, it is a dangerous and fatal error to represent them as contrivances of language, to say that " Right is no other than the past participle of the Latin verb r eg ere," and that " Wrong is merely the past tense of the verb to wring" This is part of the history of words : it is no part of their philosophy. Reason. 17. Neither will nor feeling has in itself any limit. The stream of conscious being is continuous ; it exists alike amid the roar of cannon, and in the soft breathing of the vernal air : in the deep, protracted meditation of a Newton, and in the brief glimpse that is caught of

The snow that falls upon the river,

A moment white, then lost for ever.

Chap. I.j On Which Language Depends. 7

What is it, then, that reduces the chaos of will and feeling first into distinguishable elements, and then into individual masses ? It is the forming and shaping power within us. It is the divine faculty, " looking before and after," to which in its perfection we give the name of reason. Reason holds, as it were, the balance between the passive and active powers of the mind. It is fed and nourished by the impressions of the one : it grows and moves by the energy of the other. It has several stages or degrees, of which the first is Conception.

18. By conception, I mean that faculty which enables the mind to Conception, apprehend one portion of existence, separately from all others. In other words, the first act, or exercise of the reasoning power is to conceive one object, or thing, as one. Hence arises in language the noun ; for " the noun is the name of a thing." Here it is that many modern writers on Grammar have erred. They seem to have considered no such power in the mind to be necessary, and no such act to be performed. They seem to have supposed that things, or objects, affected the mind as such, by their own power ; and that the mind was quite passive in this respect. When we come to examine this fundamental part of their system, we find the greatest possible confusion of terms. According to one, the first elements of thought are ideas, another calls them objects, a third sensations, and so forth. If you ask what is meant by these respective terms, you are still more bewildered. ' ' An idea," says one, " is that which the mind is applied about whilst thinking." A most vague and insignificant expression, then, it must surely be; and yet it has been justly observed, that " vague and insignificant forms of speech and abuse of language have so long passed for mysteries of science ; and hard and misapplied words, with little or no meaning, have by prescription such a right to be mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance and hinderance of true knowledge." All this is eminently true of the abuse and misapplication of the word idea, which had a perfectly distinct and specific meaning, until it was in an evil hour made " to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks," or " whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can be employed about in thinking."

19. Some of these ideas, it has been said, are simple, and some complex. In the former the mind is passive, in the latter there is an act of the mind combining several simple ideas into one complex one ; but this distinction has been altogether denied, in more recent times ; and we have been tcld, that " it is as improper to speak of a complex idea, as it would be to call a constellation a complex star." Be these ideas, however, simple or complex ; be they ideas of sensation, or ideas of reflection ; ideas of mode, of substance, or of relation, the great difficulty is to understand in every case how each idea exists as one; how it is bounded, limited, and set out in the mind; and this, I say,