THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

PART I.

HISTORICAL ELEMENTS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL RELATIONS OF LANGUAGE.

DEFINITION OF LANGUAGE.

§ 1. LANGUAGE, from the Latin word lingua, the tongue, through the French word langage, speech, is the utterance of articulate sounds of the human voice for expressing the thoughts and emotions of the human mind. These articulate sounds are, to the hearer, signs of what is in the mind of the speaker. This is the primary meaning of the term language.

In a secondary sense, the term is applied to certain external bodily signs of the internal movements of the mind. These, sometimes called natural signs, are:

1. Modifications of the features of the face, as when a frown expresses anger.

2. Variations of the limbs, or gestures of the body, as when the upraised clinched fist expresses a threat.

3. Modulations of the voice, as when a groan expresses pain. Of written language we shall speak hereafter. See § 124. See English Grammar, § 1.

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.

§ 2. As to the origin of language, three opinions have been maintained:

1. That language was the pure gift of God, conveyed in vocal sounds to the listening ear, as from a teacher to a pupil.

What is the derivation of the word language? What is the primary meaning of the term? What is the secondary meaning of the term? Will you mention the three classes of signs which constitute language in the secondary sense? Mention the three opinions with respect to the origin of language.

2. That it was the invention of man, contrived for the purpose of communication.

3. That it was neither the pure gift of God, nor an invention of man, but the spontaneous result of his organization, just as reason is.

According to the last view, language is not the result of compact on the part of many, nor of inventive contrivance on the part of some individual, nor of an audible communication from the Deity, as from a teacher to a pupil, but is a natural phenomenon of the race, produced by an inward necessity. It is an emanation from the common soul of man, through the organs of the body, in obedience to laws as necessary as the laws of any other mental operation.

We can, at least, safely assert that language is natural to man, inasmuch as he is capable of articulate sounds fitted to express thoughts and emotions, and has thoughts and emotions to be expressed, and his social nature prompts him to express them.

THE GROWTH OF LANGUAGE.

§ 3. Language ever grows with the growth of thought in the human race.

Thus the father of our race, even when he was "alone," was endowed with the faculty of speech as he was with that of reason, and he used it in giving names to the animals that came before him, as the expression of his thoughts. And when, in accordance with the wants of his social nature, a help-meet was created for him, we can readily believe that his language, in his communications to one gifted like himself, would grow in its vocabulary and its constructions with the growth of thought and emotion.

Whatever was the origin of language, it is not to be supposed that the vocabulary possessed by the first generations was more extensive than was necessary to express the simple ideas which they wished to communicate. In the progress of society, as new ideas were originated, new words would be invented, just as words are now invented when they are needed to express new ideas.

Thus language, in its successive stages, is not made, but grows. As new ideas germinate in a fertile mind, they often come forth in new forms of expression, which sometimes become permanent portions of the language. Foreign terms are imported. New terms are applied to new inventions in art or new discoveries in science. An old term applied to a single object is transitively applied to other objects. A language thus grows by grafts from without and by germs from within.

This law of growth in the English language is more strikingly seen in some epochs than in others; as, for instance, in the time of Chaucer, when the language became rich in expressions of sensible objects and

Is language stationary or progressive? Explain the growth of language as connected with the growth of thought. Do new ideas naturally give rise to new forms of expression? Give illustrations of the law of growth in the English language.

simple feelings; as in the age of Shakspeare, when the " imagination bodied forth the form of things unknown;" as in the time of Locke, when the language was more fully developed as an instrument of reason; as in our own times, when it grows with the rapid growth of knowledge in the domains of natural science, mental philosophy, and the arts. See English Grammar, § 3.

THE BIRTH-PLACE OF LANGUAGE.

§ 4. The birth-place of language is the birth-place of . the human race.

Sir Humphry Davy surmised that this locality must be somewhere near the tropics, in a genial climate. Sir William Jones fixed upon Persia or Iran. Adelung has concluded in favor of a contiguous locality, viz., the regions of the Indus, the borders of Cashmere and Thibet.

THE PRIMITIVE LANGUAGE.

§ 5. Linguists formerly sought to discover the primitive language as earnestly as alchemists sought for the philosopher's stone, and as vainly.

The claims of several different languages to this pre-eminence were advocated by different writers, but the Hebrew was generally the favored one. If all languages descended from a common parent, according to the current doctrine of the present time, then the question, which of them is the primitive language, can be dismissed as unworthy of investigation.

The affiliation of languages is one thing, their parentage another. Now the older linguists, when they found certain words to be the same in two languages, concluded that one must be the parent of the other, when, in fact, they were only sister languages, moving along side by side from a common source, developing themselves under the influence of various causes found in nature and society. Instead of endeavoring to discover whether the Hebrew, or the Dutch, or some other was the primitive language, Grotius seems to have adopted the true view, namely, that the primitive language is not extant any where in a pure state, but that its remains exist in all languages. Which of the languages is nearest to the primitive language is an open question worthy of examination.

On the supposition that all languages have a common origin, we should expect that words of prime necessity, being brought into use before the dispersion of mankind, would still, if any, be found existing in the several languages; and such is the fact. Thus, words used as numerals and personal pronouns, and those used to express the nearest and dearest relations, like father, mother, brother, sister, extensively resemble each other. See § 13.

Where is the birth-place of language? Give the opinion of Sir HUMPHRY Davy, and of Sir WILLIAM JONES, and of ADELUNG. What do you say concerning the search for the primitive language? In what condition does the primitive language exist?

THE VALUE OF LANGUAGE.

§ 6. The gift of reason to the human race derives its great value from the gift of speech. Each is a complement of the other. Each would be nearly valueless without the other.

Speech is the deliverer of the imprisoned soul. It brings it into communion with another soul, so that the two become one. It leads the thoughts and the emotions into light and liberty. Words reaching from the speaker's tongue to the listening ear are the links of that electric chain upon which thought flies from mind to mind, and feeling from heart to heart, through the greater or the smaller circles of human society.

THE PERMANENT VALUE OF LANGUAGE.

§ 7. The gift of speech to the human race derives its permanent value from letters; or, to use equivalent terms, spoken language derives its permanent value from written language.

The voice flies from the lips to mingle with the winds, to be lost without an echo to the thought which it conveyed. Written down, it may continue sounding on, as from a trumpet-tongue, through all time, speaking still to the common heart of man like Homer, or to the conscience like Paul.

IMPERFECTION OF LANGUAGE.

§ 8. While language has power to express the fine emotions and the subtile thoughts of the human mind with wonderful exactness, still it must be admitted that it is imperfect as a sign of thought.

It is imperfect because the thing signified by a term in a proposition either does not exist at all in the mind of the hearer, or because it exists under different relations from what it does in the mind of the speaker. In other words, language is imperfect because the term in a proposition, if it has any meaning in the mind of the speaker, has a different one from what it has in the mind of the hearer.

But while men differ in the meaning which they attach to certain classes of terms and of constructions, they also, when they have carefully studied a language, largely agree; so largely, that they can make their agreement the sure basis of reasoning and of action on important subjects.

What do you say of the value of language as related to reason? From what is the permanent value of language derived? State your author's views of the imperfection of language, and in what respects it is imperfect.

DECAY OF LANGUAGE.

§ 9. As languages grow, so they decay. As old modes of thought give place to new ones, so the forms in which those modes are expressed give place to new forms.

Thus the language grows and decays at the same time, just as in nature, out of the decay of vegetation, other forms of vegetable life spring up. Out of the decay and death of the Latin sprang the Romanic languages. Out of the decay and death of the Anglo-Saxon sprang the English. Out of the decay and death of the old Slavonic sprang the Russian. In the progress of a nation from the employment of hunting to that of the shepherd and then to that of commerce, there is, at each step, a death of some words and the birth of new ones. The same law obtains in the change from one form of government or of religion to that of another; as, for instance, a change from kingly government in England to that of a republican government in the United States.

THE DEATH OF LANGUAGE.

§ 10. As languages have a life, which, like the life of an individual, may be written, so they die, and are numbered only with the things that were.

They may, indeed, still exist in manuscript or on the printed page, but not on the lips of men. They may be embalmed in the hearts and memories of students, but they know no resurrection into the voices of the people. This is true of the Sanscrit, of the Greek, of the Latin, of the Anglo-Saxon. These are dead languages.

THE ORIGINAL UNITY OF LANGUAGE.

§ 11. The original unity of language is indicated, 1. By the supposed unity of the human race, of which there is satisfactory evidence.

2. By the declaration in Genesis, that the whole earth was "of one language and one speech."

3. By the analogies and affinities among the different languages, pointing to a common origin.

Affinities among languages may be seen either in their similarity of construction, in which case the proof is grammatical, or in the similarity of words themselves, in which case the proof is lexical. Only the latter kind of proof can be here adduced, as sufficiently satisfactory and more convenient. When, for instance, in Sanscrit we find nama, and in Latin nomen, both meaning name; nasa in the one, nasus in the oth

Describe the decay of languages. Describe the death of languages. What are the three arguments to prove the original unity of language? Give instances of the affinities of languages.