Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin - Otto Jespersen

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and thus passed from a purely descriptive to an explanatory science.

      The chief innovation of the beginning of the nineteenth century was the historical point of view. On the whole, it must be said that it was reserved for that century to apply the notion of history to other things than wars and the vicissitudes of dynasties, and thus to discover the idea of development or evolution as pervading the whole universe. This brought about a vast change in the science of language, as in other sciences. Instead of looking at such a language as Latin as one fixed point, and instead of aiming at fixing another language, such as French, in one classical form, the new science viewed both as being in constant flux, as growing, as moving, as continually changing. It cried aloud like Heraclitus “Pánta reî,” and like Galileo “Eppur si muove.” And lo! the better this historical point of view was applied, the more secrets languages seemed to unveil, and the more light seemed also to be thrown on objects outside the proper sphere of language, such as ethnology and the early history of mankind at large and of particular countries.

      It is often said that it was the discovery of Sanskrit that was the real turning-point in the history of linguistics, and there is some truth in this assertion, though we shall see on the one hand that Sanskrit was not in itself enough to give to those who studied it the true insight into the essence of language and linguistic science, and on the other hand that real genius enabled at least one man to grasp essential truths about the relationships and development of languages even without a knowledge of Sanskrit. Still, it must be said that the first acquaintance with this language gave a mighty impulse to linguistic studies and exerted a lasting influence on the way in which most European languages were viewed by scholars, and it will therefore be necessary here briefly to sketch the history of these studies. India was very little known in Europe till the mighty struggle between the French and the English for the mastery of its wealth excited a wide interest also in its ancient culture. It was but natural that on this intellectual domain, too, the French and the English should at first be rivals and that we should find both nations represented in the pioneers of Sanskrit scholarship. The French Jesuit missionary Cœurdoux as early as 1767 sent to the French Institut a memoir in which he called attention to the similarity of many Sanskrit words with Latin, and even compared the flexion of the present indicative and subjunctive of Sanskrit asmi, ‘I am,’ with the corresponding forms of Latin grammar. Unfortunately, however, his work was not printed till forty years later, when the same discovery had been announced independently by others. The next scholar to be mentioned in this connexion is Sir William Jones, who in 1796 uttered the following memorable words, which have often been quoted in books on the history of linguistics: “The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined than either; yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic … had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.” Sir W. Jones, however, did nothing to carry out in detail the comparison thus inaugurated, and it was reserved for younger men to follow up the clue he had given.

      II.—§ 2. Friedrich von Schlegel.

      One of the books that exercised a great influence on the development of linguistic science in the beginning of the nineteenth century was Friedrich von Schlegel’s Ueber die sprache und weisheit der Indier (1808). Schlegel had studied Sanskrit for some years in Paris, and in his romantic enthusiasm he hoped that the study of the old Indian books would bring about a revolution in European thought similar to that produced in the Renaissance through the revival of the study of Greek. We are here concerned exclusively with his linguistic theories, but to his mind they were inseparable from Indian religion and philosophy, or rather religious and philosophic poetry. He is struck by the similarity between Sanskrit and the best-known European languages, and gives quite a number of words from Sanskrit found with scarcely any change in German, Greek and Latin. He repudiates the idea that these similarities might be accidental or due to borrowings on the side of the Indians, saying expressly that the proof of original relationship between these languages, as well as of the greater age of Sanskrit, lies in the far-reaching correspondences in the whole grammatical structure of these as opposed to many other languages. In this connexion it is noticeable that he is the first to speak of ‘comparative grammar’ (p. 28), but, like Moses, he only looks into this promised land without entering it. Indeed, his method of comparison precludes him from being the founder of the new science, for he says himself (p. 6) that he will refrain from stating any rules for change or substitution of letters (sounds), and require complete identity of the words used as proofs of the descent of languages. He adds that in other cases, “where intermediate stages are historically demonstrable, we may derive giorno from dies, and when Spanish so often has h for Latin f, or Latin p very often becomes f in the German form of the same word, and c not rarely becomes h [by the way, an interesting foreshadowing of one part of the discovery of the Germanic sound-shifting], then this may be the foundation of analogical conclusions with regard to other less evident instances.” If he had followed up this idea by establishing similar ‘sound-laws,’ as we now say, between Sanskrit and other languages, he would have been many years ahead of his time; as it is, his comparisons are those of a dilettante, and he sometimes falls into the pitfalls of accidental similarities while overlooking the real correspondences. He is also led astray by the idea of a particularly close relationship between Persian and German, an idea which at that time was widely spread[2]—we find it in Jenisch and even in Bopp’s first book.

      Schlegel is not afraid of surveying the whole world of human languages; he divides them into two classes, one comprising Sanskrit and its congeners, and the second all other languages. In the former he finds organic growth of the roots as shown by their capability of inner change or, as he terms it, ‘flexion,’ while in the latter class everything is effected by the addition of affixes (prefixes and suffixes). In Greek he admits that it would be possible to believe in the possibility of the grammatical endings (bildungssylben) having arisen from particles and auxiliary words amalgamated into the word itself, but in Sanskrit even the last semblance of this possibility disappears, and it becomes necessary to confess that the structure of the language is formed in a thoroughly organic way through flexion, i.e. inner changes and modifications of the radical sound, and not composed merely mechanically by the addition of words and particles. He admits, however, that affixes in some other languages have brought about something that resembles real flexion. On the whole he finds that the movement of grammatical art and perfection (der gang der bloss grammatischen kunst und ausbildung, p. 56) goes in opposite directions in the two species of languages. In the organic languages, which represent the highest state, the beauty and art of their structure is apt to be lost through indolence; and German as well as Romanic and modern Indian languages show this degeneracy when compared with the earlier forms of the same languages. In the affix languages, on the other hand, we see that the beginnings are completely artless, but the ‘art’ in them grows more and more perfect the more the affixes are fused with the main word.

      As to the question of the ultimate origin of language, Schlegel thinks that the diversity of linguistic structure points to different beginnings. While some languages, such as Manchu, are so interwoven with onomatopœia that imitation of natural sounds must have played the greatest rôle in their formation, this is by no means the case in other languages, and the perfection of the oldest organic or flexional languages, such as Sanskrit, shows that they cannot be derived from merely animal sounds; indeed, they form an additional proof, if any such were needed, that men did not everywhere start from a brutish state, but that the clearest and intensest reason existed from the very first beginning. On all these points Schlegel’s ideas foreshadow views that are found in later works; and it is probable that his fame as a writer outside the philological field gave to his linguistic speculations a notoriety which his often loose and superficial reasonings would not otherwise have acquired for them.

      Schlegel’s bipartition of the languages of the world carries in it the germ of a tripartition. On the lowest

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