Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin - Otto Jespersen

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own country’s medieval literature and its folklore, and thus was one of the spiritual ancestors of Grimm. He sees the close connexion that exists between language and primitive poetry, or that kind of spontaneous singing that characterizes the childhood or youth of mankind, and which is totally distinct from the artificial poetry of later ages. But to him each language is not only the instrument of literature, but itself literature and poetry. A nation speaks its soul in the words it uses. Herder admires his own mother-tongue, which to him is perhaps inferior to Greek, but superior to its neighbours. The combinations of consonants give it a certain measured pace; it does not rush forward, but walks with the firm carriage of a German. The nice gradation of vowels mitigates the force of the consonants, and the numerous spirants make the German speech pleasant and endearing. Its syllables are rich and firm, its phrases are stately, and its idiomatic expressions are emphatic and serious. Still in some ways the present German language is degenerate if compared with that of Luther, and still more with that of the Suabian Emperors, and much therefore remains to be done in the way of disinterring and revivifying the powerful expressions now lost. Through ideas like these Herder not only exercised a strong influence on Goethe and the Romanticists, but also gave impulses to the linguistic studies of the following generation, and caused many younger men to turn from the well-worn classics to fields of research previously neglected.

      I.—§ 4. Jenisch.

      Where questions of correct language or of the best usage are dealt with, or where different languages are compared with regard to their efficiency or beauty, as is done very often, though more often in dilettante conversation or in casual remarks in literary works than in scientific linguistic disquisitions, it is no far cry to the question, What would an ideal language be like? But such is the matter-of-factness of modern scientific thought, that probably no scientific Academy in our own days would think of doing what the Berlin Academy did in 1794 when it offered a prize for the best essay on the ideal of a perfect language and a comparison of the best-known languages of Europe as tested by the standard of such an ideal. A Berlin pastor, D. Jenisch, won the prize, and in 1796 brought out his book under the title Philosophisch-kritische vergleichung und würdigung von vierzehn ältern und neuern sprachen Europens—a book which is even now well worth reading, the more so because its subject has been all but completely neglected in the hundred and twenty years that have since intervened. In the Introduction the author has the following passage, which might be taken as the motto of Wilhelm v. Humboldt, Steinthal, Finck and Byrne, who do not, however, seem to have been inspired by Jenisch: “In language the whole intellectual and moral essence of a man is to some extent revealed. ‘Speak, and you are’ is rightly said by the Oriental. The language of the natural man is savage and rude, that of the cultured man is elegant and polished. As the Greek was subtle in thought and sensuously refined in feeling—as the Roman was serious and practical rather than speculative—as the Frenchman is popular and sociable—as the Briton is profound and the German philosophic—so are also the languages of each of these nations.”

      Jenisch then goes on to say that language as the organ for communicating our ideas and feelings accomplishes its end if it represents idea and feeling according to the actual want or need of the mind at the given moment. We have to examine in each case the following essential qualities of the languages compared, (1) richness, (2) energy or emphasis, (3) clearness, and (4) euphony. Under the head of richness we are concerned not only with the number of words, first for material objects, then for spiritual and abstract notions, but also with the ease with which new words can be formed (lexikalische bildsamkeit). The energy of a language is shown in its lexicon and in its grammar (simplicity of grammatical structure, absence of articles, etc.), but also in “the characteristic energy of the nation and its original writers.” Clearness and definiteness in the same way are shown in vocabulary and grammar, especially in a regular and natural syntax. Euphony, finally, depends not only on the selection of consonants and vowels utilized in the language, but on their harmonious combination, the general impression of the language being more important than any details capable of being analysed.

      These, then, are the criteria by which Greek and Latin and a number of living languages are compared and judged. The author displays great learning and a sound practical knowledge of many languages, and his remarks on the advantages and shortcomings of these are on the whole judicious, though often perhaps too much stress is laid on the literary merits of great writers, which have really no intrinsic connexion with the value of a language as such. It depends to a great extent on accidental circumstances whether a language has been or has not been used in elevated literature, and its merits should be estimated, so far as this is possible, independently of the perfection of its literature. Jenisch’s prejudice in that respect is shown, for instance, when he says (p. 36) that the endeavours of Hickes are entirely futile, when he tries to make out regular declensions and conjugations in the barbarous language of Wulfila’s translation of the Bible. But otherwise Jenisch is singularly free from prejudices, as shown by a great number of passages in which other languages are praised at the expense of his own. Thus, on p. 396, he declares German to be the most repellent contrast to that most supple modern language, French, on account of its unnatural word-order, its eternally trailing article, its want of participial constructions, and its interminable auxiliaries (as in ‘ich werde geliebt werden, ich würde geliebt worden sein,’ etc.), with the frequent separation of these auxiliaries from the main verb through extraneous intermediate words, all of which gives to German something incredibly awkward, which to the reader appears as lengthy and diffuse and to the writer as inconvenient and intractable. It is not often that we find an author appraising his own language with such severe impartiality, and I have given the passage also to show what kind of problems confront the man who wishes to compare the relative value of languages as wholes. Jenisch’s view here forms a striking contrast to Herder’s appreciation of their common mother-tongue.

      Jenisch’s book does not seem to have been widely read by nineteenth-century scholars, who took up totally different problems. Those few who read it were perhaps inclined to say with S. Lefmann (see his book on Franz Bopp, Nachtrag, 1897, p. xi) that it is difficult to decide which was the greater fool, the one who put this problem or the one who tried to answer it. This attitude, however, towards problems of valuation in the matter of languages is neither just nor wise, though it is perhaps easy to see how students of comparative grammar were by the very nature of their study led to look down upon those who compared languages from the point of view of æsthetic or literary merits. Anyhow, it seems to me no small merit to have been the first to treat such problems as these, which are generally answered in an off-hand way according to a loose general judgement, so as to put them on a scientific footing by examining in detail what it is that makes us more or less instinctively prefer one language, or one turn or expression in a language, and thus lay the foundation of that inductive æsthetic theory of language which has still to be developed in a truly scientific spirit.

       BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY

       Table of Contents

      § 1. Introduction. Sanskrit. § 2. Friedrich von Schlegel. § 3. Rasmus Rask. § 4. Jacob Grimm. § 5. The Sound Shift. § 6. Franz Bopp. § 7. Bopp continued. § 8. Wilhelm von Humboldt. § 9. Grimm once more.

      II.—§ 1. Introduction. Sanskrit.

      The nineteenth century witnessed an enormous growth and development of the science of language, which in some respects came to present features totally unknown to previous centuries. The horizon was widened; more and more languages were described, studied and examined, many of them for their own sake, as they had no important literature. Everywhere a deeper insight was gained into the structures even of such languages as had been for centuries objects of study; a more comprehensive and more incisive classification of languages was obtained with a deeper understanding of their mutual relationships, and at the same time linguistic forms were not only described and analysed, but also explained, their genesis being traced as far back as historical evidence allowed, if not sometimes further. Instead of contenting itself with stating when and where a form existed and how it looked and was employed, linguistic science now

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