very beginning of its traditional life, is liable; the only growth
is internal, by that multiplication and adaptation and improvement
of meanings which is equally an inseparable part of all
language-history. This may include the reduction of certain
elements to the value of auxiliaries, particles, form-words, such
as play an important part in analytical tongues like English, and
are perhaps also instanced in prehistoric Indo-European speech
by the class of pronominal roots. Phrases take the place of
compounds and of inflexions, and the same element may have
an auxiliary value in certain connexions while retaining its full
force in others, like, for instance, our own have. It is not easy
to define the distinction between such phrase-collocations and
the beginnings of agglutination, yet the distinction itself is
in general clearly enough to be drawn (like that in French
between donnerai and ai donné) when the whole habit of the
language is well understood.
Such languages, constituting the small minority of human tongues, are wont to be called “isolating,” i.e. using each element by itself, in its integral form. All besides are “agglutinative,” or more or less compounded into words containing a formal part, an indicator of class-value Here the differences, in kind and degree, are very great; the variety ranges from a scantiness hardly superior to Chinese isolation up to an intricacy compared with which Indo-European structure is hardly fuller than Chinese Some brief characterization of the various families of language in this respect will be given farther on, in connexion with their classification. The attempt is also made to classify the great mass of agglutinating tongues under different heads: those are ranked as simply “agglutinative” in which there is a general conservation of the separate identity of root or stem on the one hand, and of formative element, suffix or prefix, on the other, while the name “inflictive,” used in a higher and pregnant sense, is given to those that admit a superior fusion and integration of the two parts, to the disguise and loss of separate identity, and, yet more, with the development of an internal change as auxiliary to or as substitute for the original agglutination. But there is no term in linguistic science so uncertain of meaning, so arbitrary of application, so dependent on the idiosyncrasy of its user, as the term “inflictive.” Any language ought to have the right to be called infective that has inflexion: that is, that not merely distinguishes parts of speech and roots and stems formally from one another, but also conjugates its verbs and declines its nouns; and the name is sometimes so used If, again, it be strictly limited to signify the possession of inner flexion of roots and stems (as if simply agglutinated forms could be called “exflective”), it marks only a difference of degree of agglutination, and should be carefully used as so doing. As describing the fundamental and predominant character of language-structure, it belongs to only one family of languages, the Semitic, where most of the work of grammatical distinction is done by internal changes of vowel, the origin of which thus far eludes all attempts at explanation. By perhaps the majority of students of language it is, as a generally descriptive title, restricted to that family and one other, the Indo-European or Indo-Germanic, but such a classification is not to be approved, for, in respect to this characteristic, Indo-European speech ranks not with Semitic but with the great body of agglutinative tongues. To few of these can the name be altogether denied, since there is hardly a body of related dialects in existence that does not exhibit some items of “inflective” structure; the Aryan is only the one among them that has most to show. Outside the Semitic, at any rate, one should not speak of infective and non-infective languages, but only of languages more inflictive and less infective.
To account for the great and striking differences of structure among human languages is beyond the power of the linguistic student, and will doubtless always continue so. We are not likely to be able even to demonstrate a correlation of capacities, saying that a race which has done this and that in other departments of human activity Value of Structure. might have been expected to form such and such a language. Every tongue represents the general outcome of the capacity of a race as exerted in this particular direction, under the influence of historical circumstances which we can have no hope of tracing. There are striking apparent anomalies to be noted. The Chinese and the Egyptians have shown themselves to be among the most gifted races the earth has known, but the Chinese tongue is of unsurpassed jejuneness, and the Egyptian, in point of structure, little better, while among the wild tribes of Africa and America we find tongues of every grade, up to a high one, or to the highest. This shows clearly enough that mental power is not measured by language-structure. But any other linguistic test would prove equally insufficient. On the whole, the value and rank of a language are determined by what its users have made it do. The reflex action of its speech on the mind and culture of a people is a theme of high interest, but of extreme difficulty, and apt to lead its investigators away into empty declamation, taking everything together, its amount, as is shown by the instances already referred to, is but small. The question is simply one of the facilitation of work by the use of one set of tools rather than another; and a poor tool in skilful hands can do vastly better work than the best tool in unskilful hand seven as the ancient Egyptians, without steel or steam, turned out products which, both for colossal grandeur and for exquisite finish, are the despair of modern engineers and artists. In such a history of development as that of human speech a fortunate turn may lead to results of unforeseen value; the earlier steps determine the later in a degree quite beyond their own intrinsic importance. Everything in language depends upon habit and analogy; and the formation of habit is a slow process, while the habit once formed exercises a constraining as well as a guiding influence. Hence the persist ency of language-structure: when a certain sum and kind of expression is produced, and made to answer the purposes of expression, it remains the same by inertia; a shift of direction becomes of extreme difficulty. No other reason can at present be given why in historical time there has been no marked development out of one grade of structure into another; but the fact no more shakes the linguistic scholar's belief in the growth of structure than the absence of new animal species Worked out under his eyes shakes the confidence of the believer in animal development. The modifying causes and their modes of action are clearly seen, and there is no limit to the results of their action except what is imposed by circumstances.
It is in vain to attempt to use dates in language-history, to say when this or that step in development was taken, and how long a period it cost, especially now that the changed views as to the antiquity of man are making it probable that only a small part of the whole history is brought within the reach even of our deductions from the most ancient recorded dialects. At any rate, for aught that we Unity of Origin of Speech. know or have reason to believe, all existing dialects are equally old, every one alike has the whole immeasurable past of language-life behind it, has reached its present condition by advance along its own line of growth and change from the first beginnings of human expression. Many of these separate lines we clearly see to converge and unite, as we follow them back into the past; but whether they all ultimately converge to one point is a question quite beyond our power to answer. If in this immensity of time many languages have won so little, if everywhere language growth has been so slow, then we can only differ as to whether it is reasonably certain, or probable, or only possible, that there should have been a considerable first period of human existence without traditional speech, and a yet more considerable one before the fixation of so much as should leave abiding traces in its descendants, and that meanwhile the race should have multiplied and scattered into independent communities. And the mere possibility is enough to exclude all dogmatic assertion of the unity of origin of human speech, even assuming unity of origin of the human race For to prove that identity by the still existing facts of language is utterly out of the question;
