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of Languages. § 6. Reconstruction. § 7. Curtius, Madvig and Specialists. § 8. Max Müller and Whitney.

      III.—§ 1. After Bopp and Grimm.

      Bopp and Grimm exercised an enormous influence on linguistic thought and linguistic research in Germany and other countries. Long even before their death we see a host of successors following in the main the lines laid down in their work, and thus directly and indirectly they determined the development of this science for a long time. Through their efforts so much new light had been shed on a number of linguistic phenomena that these took a quite different aspect from that which they had presented to the previous generation; most of what had been written about etymology and kindred subjects in the eighteenth century seemed to the new school utterly antiquated, mere fanciful vagaries of incompetent blunderers, whereas now scholars had found firm ground on which to raise a magnificent structure of solid science. This feeling was especially due to the undoubted recognition of one great family of languages to which the vast majority of European languages, as well as some of the most important Asiatic languages, belonged: here we had one firmly established fact of the greatest magnitude, which at once put an end to all the earlier whimsical attempts to connect Latin and Greek words with Hebrew roots. As for the name of that family of languages, Rask hesitated between different names, ‘European,’ ‘Sarmatic’ and finally ‘Japhetic’ (as a counterpart of the Semitic and the Hamitic languages); Bopp at first had no comprehensive name, and on the title-page of his Vergl. grammatik contents himself with enumerating the chief languages described, but in the work itself he says that he prefers the name ‘Indo-European,’ which has also found wide acceptance, though more in France, England and Skandinavia than in Germany. Humboldt for a long while said ‘Sanskritic,’ but later he adopted ‘Indo-Germanic,’ and this has been the generally recognized name used in Germany, in spite of Bopp’s protest who said that ‘Indo-klassisch’ would be more to the point; ‘Indo-Keltic’ has also been proposed as designating the family through its two extreme members to the East and West. But all these compound names are clumsy without being completely pertinent, and it seems therefore much better to use the short and convenient term ‘the Aryan languages’: Aryan being the oldest name by which any members of the family designated themselves (in India and Persia).[10]

      Thanks to the labours of Bopp and Grimm and their co-workers and followers, we see also a change in the status of the study of languages. Formerly this was chiefly a handmaiden to philology—but as this word is often in English used in a sense unknown to other languages and really objectionable, namely as a synonym of (comparative) study of languages, it will be necessary first to say a few words about the terminology of our science. In this book I shall use the word ‘philology’ in its continental sense, which is often rendered in English by the vague word ‘scholarship,’ meaning thereby the study of the specific culture of one nation; thus we speak of Latin philology, Greek philology, Icelandic philology, etc. The word ‘linguist,’ on the other hand, is not infrequently used in the sense of one who has merely a practical knowledge of some foreign language; but I think I am in accordance with a growing number of scholars in England and America if I call such a man a ‘practical linguist’ and apply the word ‘linguist’ by itself to the scientific student of language (or of languages); ‘linguistics’ then becomes a shorter and more convenient name for what is also called the science of language (or of languages).

      Now that the reader understands the sense in which I take these two terms, I may go on to say that the beginning of the nineteenth century witnessed a growing differentiation between philology and linguistics in consequence of the new method introduced by comparative and by historical grammar; it was nothing less than a completely new way of looking at the facts of language and trying to trace their origin. While to the philologist the Greek or Latin language, etc., was only a means to an end, to the linguist it was an end in itself. The former saw in it a valuable, and in fact an indispensable, means of gaining a first-hand knowledge of the literature which was his chief concern, but the linguist cared not for the literature as such, but studied languages for their own sake, and might even turn to languages destitute of literature because they were able to throw some light on the life of language in general or on forms in related languages. The philologist as such would not think of studying the Gothic of Wulfila, as a knowledge of that language gives access only to a translation of parts of the Bible, the ideas of which can be studied much better elsewhere; but to the linguist Gothic was extremely valuable. The differentiation, of course, is not an absolute one; besides being linguists in the new sense, Rask was an Icelandic philologist, Bopp a Sanskrit philologist, and Grimm a German philologist; but the tendency towards the emancipation of linguistics was very strong in them, and some of their pupils were pure linguists and did no work in philology.

      In breaking away from philology and claiming for linguistics the rank of a new and independent science, the partisans of the new doctrine were apt to think that not only had they discovered a new method, but that the object of their study was different from that of the philologists, even when they were both concerned with language. While the philologist looked upon language as part of the culture of some nation, the linguist looked upon it as a natural object; and when in the beginning of the nineteenth century philosophers began to divide all sciences into the two sharply separated classes of mental and natural sciences (geistes- und naturwissenschaften), linguists would often reckon their science among the latter. There was in this a certain amount of pride or boastfulness, for on account of the rapid rise and splendid achievements of the natural sciences at that time, it began to be a matter of common belief that they were superior to, and were possessed of a more scientific method than, the other class—the same view that finds an expression in the ordinary English usage, according to which ‘science’ means natural science and the other domains of human knowledge are termed the ‘arts’ or the ‘humanities.’

      We see the new point of view in occasional utterances of the pioneers of linguistic science. Rask expressly says that “Language is a natural object and its study resembles natural history” (SA 2. 502); but when he repeats the same sentence (in Retskrivningslære, 8) it appears that he is thinking of language as opposed to the more artificial writing, and the contrast is not between mental and natural science, but between art and nature, between what can and what cannot be consciously modified by man—it is really a different question.

      Bopp, in his review of Grimm (1827, reprinted Vocalismus, 1836, p. 1), says: “Languages are to be considered organic natural bodies, which are formed according to fixed laws, develop as possessing an inner principle of life, and gradually die out because they do not understand themselves any longer [!], and therefore cast off or mutilate their members or forms, which were at first significant, but gradually have become more of an extrinsic mass. … It is not possible to determine how long languages may preserve their full vigour of life and of procreation,” etc. This is highly figurative language which should not be taken at its face value; but expressions like these, and the constant use of such words as ‘organic’ and ‘inorganic’ in speaking of formations in languages, and ‘organism’ of the whole language, would tend to widen the gulf between the philological and the linguistic point of view. Bopp himself never consistently followed the naturalistic way of looking at language, but in § 4 of this chapter we shall see that Schleicher was not afraid of going to extremes and building up a consistent natural science of language.

      The cleavage between philology and linguistics did not take place without arousing warm feeling. Classical scholars disliked the intrusion of Sanskrit everywhere; they did not know that language and did not see the use of it. They resented the way in which the new science wanted to reconstruct Latin and Greek grammar and to substitute new explanations for those which had always been accepted. Those Sanskritists chatted of guna and vrddhi and other barbaric terms, and even ventured to talk of a locative case in Latin, as if the number of cases had not been settled once for all long ago![11]

      Classicists were no doubt perfectly right when they reproached comparativists for their neglect of syntax, which to them was the most important part of grammar; they were also in some measure right when they maintained that linguists to a great extent contented themselves with a superficial knowledge of the languages compared, which they studied more in grammars and glossaries than in living texts, and sometimes they would even exult when they found

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