Part 2 (1/2)

There will still be the progress of phonetic corruption, but no longer the restoring influence of dialectic regeneration The language which the Norwegian refugees brought to Iceland has remained almost the same for seven centuries, whereas on its native soil, and surrounded by local dialects, it has grown into two distinct languages, the Swedish and Danish In the eleventh century, the languages of Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland are supposed(50) to have been identical, nor can we appeal to foreign conquest, or to the adn with native blood, in order to account for the changes which the language underwent in Sweden and Denmark, but not in Iceland(51)

We can hardly form an idea of the unbounded resources of dialects When literary languages have stereotyped one general terh each with its own special shade of ht are evolved in the progress of society, dialects will readily supply the required names from the store of their so-called superfluous words There are not only local and provincial, but also class dialects There is a dialect of shepherds, of sportsmen, of soldiers, of farmers I suppose there are few persons here present who could tell the exact , cannon, pastern, coronet, are speaks of the young of all sorts of animals, fareneral a term

”The idiom of nomads,” as Grimm says, ”contains an abundant wealth of manifold expressions for sword and weapons, and for the different stages in the life of their cattle In a e these expressions become burthenso, calving, falling, and killing of almost every anihts in calling the gait and ame by different names The eye of these shepherds, who live in the free air, sees further, their ear hears ained that living truth and variety?”

Thus Juliana Berners, lady prioress of the nunnery of Sopwell in the fifteenth century, the reputed author of the book of St Albans, informs us that we must not use naregacyon of people, a hoost of e of yomen, and a bevy of ladies; we must speak of a herde of dere, swannys, cranys, or wrenys, a sege of herons or bytourys, a hte of doves, a claterynge of choughes, a pryde of lyons, a slewthe of beeres, a gagle of geys, a skulke of foxes, a sculle of frerys, a pontificality of prestys, a boht of monkes, and a superfluyte of nonnes,” and so of other huame for the table, the aniose reryd, chekyn frusshed, a cony unlaced, a crane dysplayed, a curlewe unioynted, a quayle wynggyd, a swanne lyfte, a laured, a samon chynyd, a hadoke sydyd, a sole loynyd, and a breme splayed”(52)

What, however, I wanted particularly to point out in this lecture is this, that neither of the causes which produce the growth, or, according to others, constitute the history of language, is under the control of e is not the result of overned by definite laws, as we shall see e corammar But these laere not made byof their existence

In the growth of the es out of Latin, we can perceive not only a general tendency to simplification, not only a natural disposition to avoid the exertion which the pronunciation of certain consonants, and still roups of consonants, entails on the speaker: but we can see distinct laws for each of the Romance dialects, which enable us to say, that in French the Latin _patrerow into the modern _pere_ The final _m_ is always dropped in the Roet _patre_ instead of _patrem_ Now, a Latin _t_ between tels in such words as _pater_ is invariably suppressed in French This is a law, and by means of it we can discover at once that _catena_ must become _chaine_; _fata_, a later feminine representation of the old neuter _fatum_, _fee_; _pratum_ a meadow, _pre_ From _pratum_ we derive _prataria_, which in French becolish _fairy_ Thus every Latin participle in _atus_, like _amatus_, loved, ed _patre_(pronounced _pa-tere_) into _paere_, or _pere_; it changed _es take place gradually but irresistibly, and, what is most important, they are completely beyond the reach or control of the free will of ain is still h a poet ly and intentionally invent a neord, its acceptance depends on circumstances which defy individual interference

There are soht seem to be mainly attributable to the caprice of the speaker Granted, for instance, that the loss of the Latin terminations was the natural result of a n of the French genitive _du_ is a natural corruption of the Latin _de illo_,-yet the choice of _de_, instead of any other word, to express the genitive, the choice of _illo_, instead of any other pronoun, to express the article, ent in the forle individual could deliberately have set to work in order to abolish the old Latin genitive, and to replace it by the periphrastic compound _de illo_ It was necessary that the inconvenience of having no distinct or distinguishable sign of the genitive should have been felt by the people who spoke a vulgar Latin dialect It was necessary that the same people should have used the preposition _de_ in such a ether (for instance, _una de multis_, in Horace, _ie_, one out of ain, that the same people should have felt the want of an article, and should have used _illo_ in nuinal pronominal power

It was necessary that all these conditions should be given, before one individual and after him another, and after him hundreds and thousands and enitive; and change it into the Italian _dello_, _del_, and the French _du_

The attee are perfectly bootless; and we shall probably hear no ularities It is very likely, however, that the gradual disappearance of irregular declensions and conjugations is due, in literary as well as in illiterate languages, to the dialect of children

The language of children is ular than our own I have heard children say _badder_ and _baddest_, instead of _worse_ and _worst_

Children will say, _I gaed_, _I cooraht to be, which in the course of centuries has eliular forular If _sumus_ is _we are_, and _sunt_, _they are_, the second person, _you are_, ought to have been, at least according to the strict logic of children, _sutis_ This, no doubt, sounds very barbarous to a classical ear accustomed to _estis_

And we see how French, for instance, has strictly preserved the Latin forms in _nous sommes_, _vous etes_, _ils sont_ But in Spanish we find _somos_, _sois_, _son_; and this _sois_ stands for _sutis_ We find si in the Italian _siaular verbs such as _crediamo_, _credete_, _credono_ The second person, _sei_, instead of _es_, is likewise infantine grammar So are the Wallachian _suntein to the third person plural _sunt_, they are

And what shall we say of such erund derived on principles of strict justice from an infinitive _essere_, like _credendo_ from _credere_!

However, we need not be surprised, for we find silo-Saxon, the third person plural, _sind_, has by a false analogy been transferred to the first and second persons; and instead of the lish,

in Old in Gothic

Norse

we are er-um sijum(53) you are we find er-udh sijuth they are er-u sind

Dialectically we hear _I be_, instead of _I aain the upper hand, wesuch forms as _I says_, _I knows_

These various influences and conditions under which language grows and changes, are like the waves and winds which carry deposits to the bottorow, and at last appear on the surface of the earth as a stratuible in all its corowth, nor regulated by invariable laws of nature; yet, on the other hand, by no means the result of mere accident, or the production of lawless and uncontrolled agencies We cannot be careful enough in the use of our words Strictly speaking, neither _history_ nor _growth_ is applicable to the changes of the shi+fting surface of the earth _History_ applies to the actions of free agents; _growth_ to the natural unfolding of organic beings We speak, however, of the growth of the crust of the earth, and we knoe rowth as applied to a tree, that we have a right to speak of the growth of language If that modification which takes place in tiiven eleents, and can in the end be recognized as the result of natural agencies, rowth; and if so defined, we rowth of the crust of the earth; the sae, and will justify us in ree from the pale of the historical to that of the physical sciences

There is another objection which we have to consider, and the consideration of which will again help us to understand reat periods in the growth of the earth which have been established by geological research are brought to their close, or very nearly so, e discover the first vestiges of human life, and when the history of ins The periods in the growth of language, on the contrary, begin and run parallel with the history of e may not be merely a work of art, it would, nevertheless, be ie without an historical knowledge of the tiht to know, it is said, whether a language which is to be analyzed under theup wild, a wild tribes, without a literature, oral or written, in poetry or in prose; or whether it has received the cultivation of poets, priests, and orators, and retained the iain, it is only from the annals of political history that we can learn whether one language has co this contact has lasted, which of the two nations stood higher in civilization, which was the conquering and which the conquered, which of the two established the laws, the religion, and the arts of the country, and which produced the greatest nuogues All these questions are of a purely historical character, and the science which has to borrow so ht well be considered an anomaly in the sphere of the physical sciences

Now, in answer to this, it cannot be denied that a the physical sciences none is so intimately connected with the history of e But a siree, can be shown to exist between other branches of physical research and the history of y, for instance, it is of some importance to knohat particular period of history, in what country, and for what purposes certain aniy, a science, we , quite distinct froe, it would be difficult to account for the Caucasian staary, or on the Tatar race in Turkey, unless we knew frorations and settleolic and Tataric tribes in Europe A botanist, again, co several specimens of rye, would find it difficult to account for their respective peculiarities, unless he knew that in some parts of the world this plant has been cultivated for centuries, whereas in other regions, as, for instance, in Mount Caucasus, it is still allowed to groild Plants have their own countries, like races, and the presence of the cucue and cherry in Italy, the potatoe in England, and the vine at the Cape, can be fully explained by the historian only The uage and the history of e froht be shown, that, if strictly defined, the science of language can declare itself coe of England, we ought, no doubt, to know so of the political history of the British Isles, in order to understand the present state of that language Its history begins with the early Britons, who spoke a Celtic dialect; it carries us on to the Saxon conquest, to the Danish invasions, to the Norman conquest: and we see how each of these political events contributed to the forland may be said to have been in succession Celtic, Saxon, Norlish language, we enter on totally different ground The English language was never Celtic, the Celtic never grew into Saxon, nor the Saxon into Norlish The history of the Celtic language runs on to the present day It matters not whether it be spoken by all the inhabitants of the British Isles, or only by a se, as long as it is spoken by anybody, lives and has its substantive existence The last old woman that spoke Cornish, and to whose memory it is now intended to raise a e of Cornwall A Celt lish blood may be mixed; and who could tell at the present day the exact proportion of Celtic and Saxon blood in the population of England? But languages are never e spoken in the British Islands be called, whether English or British or Saxon; to the student of language English is Teutonic, and nothing but Teutonic The physiologist may protest, and point out that in lish language, is of a Celtic type; the genealogist lish fae must follow his oay Historical information as to an early substratum of Celtic inhabitants in Britain, as to Saxon, Danish, and Norh every record were burned, and every skull hboy, would reveal its own history, if analyzed according to the rules of coralish is Teutonic, that like Dutch and Friesian it belongs to the Low-Gerh-German, Gothic, and Scandinavian branches, constitute the Teutonic class; that this Teutonic class, together with the Celtic, Slavonic, the hellenic, Italic, Iranic, and Indic classes constitute the great Indo-European or Aryan falish dictionary the student of the science of language can detect, by his own tests, Celtic, Norle drop of foreign blood has entered into the organic systerae, is as pure and unlish as spoken in the British Isles, as it hen spoken on the shores of the Gerles, Saxons, and Juts of the continent

In thus considering and refuting the objections which have been, or e into the circle of the physical sciences, we have arrived at some results which it may be useful to recapitulate before we proceed further We saw that whereas philology treats language only as a e as the object of scientific inquiry It is not the study of one language, but of many, and in the end of all, which fore of Horeater interest, in the scientific treatment of human speech, than the dialect of the Hottentots

We saw, secondly, that after the first practical acquisition and careful analysis of the facts and fore, the next and most important step is the classification of all the varieties of human speech, and that only after this has been accoreat questions which underlie all physical research, the questions as to the what, the whence, and the why of language

We saw, thirdly, that there is a distinction bethat is called history and growth We detere, and perceived hoas independent of the caprice of overned by laws that could be discovered by careful observation, and be traced back in the end to higher lahich govern the organs both of hu that the science of language was more intimately connected than any other physical science hat is called the political history of ht well dispense with this auxiliary, and that languages can be analyzed and classified on their own evidence particularly on the strength of their grammatical articulation, without any reference to the individuals, families, clans, tribes, nations, or races by whom they are or have been spoken

In the course of these considerations, we had to lay doo axioress of our investigations The first declares graround of classification in all languages which have produced a definite grammatical articulation; the second denies the possibility of a e