Lectures on Language As Particularly Connected with English Grammar.

LECTURE III.

WRIT­TEN AND SPO­KEN LAN­GUAGE.

Prin­ci­ples nev­er al­ter.--They should be known.--Gram­mar a most im­por­tant branch of sci­ence.--Spo­ken and writ­ten Lan­guage.--Idea of a thing.--How ex­pressed.--An ex­am­ple.--Pic­ture writ­ing.--An anec­dote.--Ideas ex­pressed by ac­tions.--Prin­ci­ples of spo­ken and writ­ten Lan­guage.--Ap­ply uni­ver­sal­ly.--Two ex­am­ples.--En­glish lan­guage.--For­eign words.--Words in sci­ence.--New words.--How formed.

We now come to take a near­er view of lan­guage as gen­er­al­ly un­der­stood by gram­mar. But we shall have no oc­ca­sion to de­part from the prin­ci­ples al­ready ad­vanced, for there is ex­ist­ing in prac­tice noth­ing which may not be ac­count­ed for in the­ory; as there can be no ef­fect with­out an ef­fi­cient cause to pro­duce it.

We may, how­ev­er, long re­main ig­no­rant of the true ex­pla­na­tion of the prin­ci­ples in­volved; but the fault is ours, and not in the things them­selves. The earth moved with as much grandeur and pre­ci­sion around its ax­is and in its or­bit be­fore the days of Gallileo Gallilei, when philoso­phers be­lieved it flat and sta­tion­ary, as it has done since. So the great prin­ci­ples on which de­pends the ex­is­tence and use of all lan­guage are per­ma­nent, and may be cor­rect­ly em­ployed by those who have nev­er ex­am­ined them; but this does not prove that to be ig­no­rant is bet­ter than to be wise. We may have tak­en food all our days with­out know­ing much of the pro­cess by which it is con­vert­ed in­to nour­ish­ment and in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to our bod­ies, with­out ev­er hav­ing heard of de­lu­ti­tion chymi­fi­ca­tion, chyli­fi­ca­tion, or even di­ges­tion, as a whole; but this is far from con­vinc­ing me that the knowl­edge of these things is unim­por­tant, or that ig­no­rance of them is not the cause of much dis­ease and suf­fer­ing among mankind. And it is, or should be, the busi­ness of the phys­iol­ogist to ex­plain these things, and show the great prac­ti­cal ben­efit re­sult­ing from a gen­er­al knowl­edge of them. So the gram­mar­ian should act as a sort of phys­iol­ogist of lan­guage. He should an­alyze all its parts and show how it is framed to­geth­er to con­sti­tute a per­fect whole.

In­stead of ex­act­ing of you a blind sub­mis­sion to a set of tech­ni­cal ex­pres­sions, and ar­bi­trary rules, I most ur­gent­ly ex­hort you to con­tin­ue, with un­remit­ting as­siduity, your in­quiries in­to the rea­son and pro­pri­ety of the po­si­tions which may be tak­en. It is the busi­ness of phi­los­ophy, not to med­dle with things to di­rect how they should be, but to ac­count for them and their prop­er­ties and re­la­tions as they are. So it is the busi­ness of gram­mar to ex­plain lan­guage as it ex­ists in use, and ex­hib­it the rea­son why it is used thus, and what prin­ci­ples must be ob­served to em­ploy it cor­rect­ly in speak­ing and writ­ing. This method is adopt­ed to car­ry out the prin­ci­ples al­ready es­tab­lished, and show their adap­ta­tion to the wants of the com­mu­ni­ty, and how they may be cor­rect­ly and suc­cess­ful­ly em­ployed. Gram­mar con­sid­ered in this light forms a de­part­ment in the sci­ence of the mind by no means unim­por­tant. And it can not fail to be deeply in­ter­est­ing to all who would em­ploy it in the busi­ness, so­cial, lit­er­ary, moral, or re­li­gious con­cerns of life. Those who have thoughts to com­mu­ni­cate, or de­sire an ac­quain­tance with the minds of oth­ers, can not be in­dif­fer­ent to the means on which such in­ter­course de­pends. I am con­vinced, there­fore, that you will give me your most pro­found at­ten­tion as I pur­sue the sub­ject of the present lec­ture some­what in de­tail. And I hope you will not con­sid­er me te­dious or un­nec­es­sar­ily pro­lix in my re­marks.

I will not be par­tic­ular in my re­marks up­on the changes of spo­ken and writ­ten lan­guage, al­tho that top­ic of it­self, in the dif­fer­ent sounds and signs em­ployed in dif­fer­ent ages and by dif­fer­ent na­tions to ex­press the same idea, would form a most in­ter­est­ing theme for sev­er­al lec­tures. But that work must be re­served for a fu­ture oc­ca­sion. You are all ac­quaint­ed with the signs, writ­ten and spo­ken, which are em­ployed in our lan­guage as ve­hi­cles (some of them like om­nibusses) of thought to car­ry ideas from one mind to an­oth­er. Some of you doubt­less are ac­quaint­ed with the ap­pli­ca­tion of this fact in oth­er lan­guages. In oth­er words, you know how to sound the name of a thing, how to de­scribe its prop­er­ties as far as you un­der­stand them, and its at­ti­tudes or changes. This you can do by vo­cal sounds, or writ­ten, or print­ed signs.

On the oth­er hand, you can re­ceive a sim­ilar im­pres­sion by hear­ing the de­scrip­tion of an­oth­er, or by see­ing it writ­ten or print­ed. But here you will bear in mind the fact that the word, spo­ken or writ­ten, is but the sign of the idea de­rived from the thing sig­ni­fied. For ex­am­ple: Here is an ap­ple. I do not now speak of its com­po­si­tion, the skin, the pulp, &c.; nor of its qual­ities, whether sour, or sweet, or bit­ter, good or bad, great or small, long or short, round or flat, red, or white, or yel­low. I speak of a sin­gle thing--an ap­ple. Here it is, present be­fore you. Look at it. It is now re­moved. You do not see it. Your minds are oc­cu­pied with some­thing else, in look­ing at that or­gan, or this rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Solomon's tem­ple, or, per­haps, lin­ger­ing in melan­choly re­view of your old sys­tems of gram­mar thro which you plod­ded at a te­dious rate, goad­ed on by the stim­ulus of the fer­ule, or the fear of be­ing called ig­no­rant. From that un­hap­py rever­ie I re­cal your minds, by say­ing _ap­ple_. An ap­ple? where? There is none in sight. No; but you have dis­tinct rec­ol­lec­tions of a sin­gle ob­ject I just now held be­fore you. You see it, men­tal­ly, and were you painters you might paint its like­ness. What has brought this ob­ject so vivid­ly be­fore you? The sin­gle sound _ap­ple_. This sound has called up the idea pro­duced in your mind on look­ing at this ob­ject which I now again present be­fore you. Here is the thing rep­re­sent­ed--the ap­ple. Again I lay it aside, and com­mence a con­ver­sa­tion with you on the va­ri­eties of ap­ples, the form, col­or, fla­vor, man­ner of pro­duc­tion, their dif­fer­ence from oth­er fruit, where found, when, and by whom. Here! look again. What do you see? A-​P-​P-​L-​E--_Ap­ple_. What is that? The rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the idea pro­duced in the mind by a cer­tain ob­ject you saw a lit­tle while ago. Here then you have the spo­ken and writ­ten signs of this sin­gle ob­ject I now again present to your vi­sion. This idea may al­so be called up by the sense of feel­ing, smelling, or tast­ing, un­der cer­tain re­stric­tions. Here you would be no more li­able to be mis­tak­en than by see­ing. We can in­deed imag­ine things which would feel, and smell, and taste, and look some like an ap­ple, but it falls to the lot of more ab­struse rea­son­ers to make their sup­po­si­tions, and then ac­count for them--to imag­ine things, and then treat of them as re­al­ities. We are con­tent with the knowl­edge of things as they do ex­ist, and think there is lit­tle dan­ger of mis­tak­ing a pota­to for an ap­ple, or a squash for a pear. Tho in the dark we may lay hold of the French­man's _pomme de terre_--ap­ple of the earth, the first bite will sat­is­fy us of our mis­take if we are not too meta­phys­ical.

The same idea may be called up in your minds by a pic­ture of the ap­ple pre­sent­ed to your sight. On this ground the pic­ture writ­ing of the an­cients may be ac­count­ed for; and af­ter that, the hi­ero­glyph­ics of Egypt and oth­er coun­tries, which was but a step from pic­ture writ­ing to­wards the use of the al­pha­bet. But these signs or ve­hi­cles for the con­veyance or trans­mis­sion of their thoughts, com­pared with the present per­fect state of lan­guage, were as auk­ward and un­com­ly as the car­riages em­ployed for the con­veyance of their bod­ies were com­pared with those now in use. They were like ox carts drawn by mules, com­pared with the most splen­did barouch­es drawn by el­egant dap­ple-​greys.

A sim­ilar mode would be adopt­ed now by those un­ac­quaint­ed with al­pha­bet­ical writ­ing. It was so with the mer­chant who could not write. He sold his neigh­bor a grind­stone, on trust. Lest he should for­get it--lest the _idea_ of it should be oblit­er­at­ed from the mind--he, in the ab­sence of his clerk, took his book and a pen and drew out a _round pic­ture_ to rep­re­sent it. Some months af­ter, he dunned his neigh­bor for his pay for a cheese. “I have bought no cheese of you,” was the re­ply. Yes, you have, for I have it charged. “You must be mis­tak­en, for I nev­er bought a cheese. We al­ways make our own.” How then should I have one charged to you? “I can­not tell. I have nev­er had any thing here on cred­it ex­cept a grind­stone.” Ah! that's it, that's it, on­ly I for­got to make a hole through it!"

Ideas may al­so be ex­changed by ac­tions. This is the first and strongest lan­guage of na­ture. It may be em­ployed, when words have failed, in the most ef­fec­tu­al man­ner. The an­gry man, choked with rage, un­able to speak, tells the vi­olent pas­sions, burn­ing in his bo­som, in a lan­guage which can not be mis­tak­en. The ac­tions of a friend are a sur­er test of friend­ship than all the honied words he may ut­ter. Ac­tions speak loud­er than words. The first im­pres­sions of ma­ter­nal af­fec­tion are pro­duced in the in­fant mind by the sooth­ing at­ten­tions of the moth­er. In the same way we may un­der­stand the lan­guage of the deaf and dumb. Cer­tain mo­tions ex­press cer­tain ideas. These be­ing du­ly ar­ranged and con­formed to our al­pha­bet­ic signs, and well un­der­stood, the pupil may be­come ac­quaint­ed with book knowl­edge as well as we. They go by sight and not by sound. A dif­fer­ent method is adopt­ed with the blind. Let­ters with them are so ar­ranged that they can _feel_ them. The signs thus felt cor­re­spond with the sounds they hear. Here they must stop. They can­not see to de­scribe. Those who are so un­for­tu­nate as to be blind and deaf, can have but a faint knowl­edge of lan­guage, or the ideas of oth­ers.

On sim­ilar prin­ci­ples we may ex­plain the pan­tomime plays some­times per­formed, where the most en­ter­tain­ing scenes of love and mur­der are rep­re­sent­ed, but not a word spo­ken.

Three things are al­ways to be born in mind in the use and study of all lan­guage: 1st, the thing sig­ni­fied; 2d, the idea of the thing; and 3d, the word or sign cho­sen to rep­re­sent it.

_Things_ ex­ist.

Think­ing be­ings con­ceive _ideas of things_.

Those who em­ploy lan­guage adopt _sounds or signs to con­vey those ideas_ to oth­ers.

On these ob­vi­ous prin­ci­ples rest the whole su­per­struc­ture of all lan­guage, spo­ken or writ­ten. Ob­jects are pre­sent­ed to the mind, im­pres­sions are there made, which, re­tained, con­sti­tute the idea, and, by agree­ment, cer­tain words are em­ployed as the fu­ture signs or rep­re­sen­ta­tions of those ideas. If we saw an ob­ject in ear­ly life and knew its _name_, the men­tion of that name will re­cal afresh the idea which had long lain dor­mant in the mem­ory, (if I may so speak,) and we can con­verse about it as cor­rect­ly as when we first saw it.

These prin­ci­ples, I have said, hold good in all lan­guages. Proof of this may not im­prop­er­ly be of­fered here, pro­vid­ed it be not too pro­lix. I will en­deav­or to be brief.

In an open area of suf­fi­cient di­men­sions is con­gre­gat­ed a del­ega­tion from ev­ery lan­guage un­der heav­en. All are so ar­ranged as to face a com­mon cen­ter. A white horse is led in­to that spot and all look at the liv­ing an­imal which stands be­fore them. The same im­pres­sion must be made on all minds so far as a sin­gle an­imal is con­cerned. But as the whole is made up of parts, so their minds will soon di­verge from a sin­gle idea, and one will think of his size, com­pared with oth­er hors­es; an­oth­er of his form; an­oth­er of his col­or. Some will think of his no­ble ap­pear­ance, oth­ers of his abil­ity to trav­el, or (in jock­ey phrase) his _speed_. The far­ri­er will look for his blem­ish­es, to see if he is _sound_, and the jock­ey at his teeth, to _guess_ at his _age_. The anatomist will, in thought, dis­sect him in­to parts and see ev­ery bone, sinew, car­ti­lage, blood ves­sel, his stom­ach, lungs, liv­er, heart, en­trails; ev­ery part will be laid open; and while the thought­less urchin sees a sin­gle ob­ject--a white horse--oth­ers will, at a sin­gle glance, read vol­umes of in­struc­tion. Oh! the im­por­tance of knowl­edge! how lit­tle is it re­gard­ed! What funds of in­struc­tion might be gath­ered from the lessons ev­ery where pre­sent­ed to the mind!

One im­pres­sion would be made on all minds in ref­er­ence to the sin­gle tan­gi­ble ob­ject be­fore them; no mat­ter how learned or ig­no­rant. There stands an an­imal ob­vi­ous to all. Let him be re­moved out of sight, and a very ex­act pic­ture of him sus­pend­ed in his place. All again agree. Here then is the proof of our first gen­er­al prin­ci­ple, viz. all lan­guage de­pends on the fixed and un­vary­ing laws of na­ture.

Let the pic­ture be re­moved and a man step forth and pro­nounce the word, _ip­pos_. The Greek starts up and says, “Yes, it is so.” The rest do not com­pre­hend him. He then writes out dis­tinct­ly, [Greek: IP­POS]. They are in the dark as to the mean­ing. They know not whether a horse, a man, or a goose is named. All the Greeks, how­ev­er, un­der­stand the mean­ing the same as when the horse or pic­ture was be­fore them, for they had _agreed_ that _ip­pos_ should rep­re­sent the _idea_ of that an­imal.

Forth steps an­oth­er, and pro­nounces the word _cheval_. Ev­ery French­man is aroused: Oui, mon­sieur? Yes, sir. Com­prenez vous? Do you un­der­stand? he says to the rest. But they are dumb. He then writes C-​H-​E-​V-​A-​L. All are as ig­no­rant as be­fore, save the French­men who had agreed that _cheval_ should be the name for horse.

Next go your­self, think­ing all will un­der­stand you, and say, _horse_; but, lo! none un­ac­quaint­ed with your lan­guage are the wis­er for the sound you ut­ter, or the sign you sus­pend­ed be­fore them; save, per­haps, a lit­tle old Sax­on, who, at first looks de­ceived by the sim­ilar­ity of sound, but, see­ing the sign, is as de­mure as ev­er, for he omits the _e_, and pro­nounces it short­er than we do, more like a york­shire man. But why are you not un­der­stood? Be­cause oth­ers have not en­tered in­to an _agree­ment_ with you that _h-​o-​r-​s-​e_, spo­ken or writ­ten, shall rep­re­sent that an­imal.

Take an­oth­er ex­am­ple. Place the liv­ing an­imal called man be­fore them. Less trou­ble will be found in this case than in the for­mer, for there is a near­er agree­ment than be­fore in re­gard to the signs which shall be em­ployed to ex­press the idea. This word oc­curs with very lit­tle vari­ation in the mod­ern lan­guages, de­rived un­doubt­ed­ly from the Teu­ton­ic, with a lit­tle change in the spelling, as Sax­on _mann_ or _mon_, Goth­ic _man­na_, Ger­man, Dan­ish, Dutch, Swedish and Ice­landic like ours. In the south of Eu­rope, how­ev­er, this word varies as well as oth­ers.

Our lan­guage is de­rived more di­rect­ly from the old Sax­on than from any oth­er, but has a great sim­ilar­ity to the French and Latin, and a kind of cousin-​ger­man to all the lan­guages of Eu­rope, an­cient and mod­ern. Ours, in­deed, is a com­pound from most oth­er lan­guages, re­tain­ing some of their beau­ties and many of their de­fects. We can boast lit­tle dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter of our own. As Eng­land was pos­sessed by dif­fer­ent na­tions at dif­fer­ent pe­ri­ods, so dif­fer­ent di­alects were in­tro­duced, and we can trace our lan­guage to as many sources, Ger­man, Dan­ish, Sax­on, French, and Ro­man, which were the dif­fer­ent na­tions amal­ga­mat­ed in­to the British em­pire. We re­tain lit­tle of the re­al old en­glish--few words which may not be traced to a for­eign ex­trac­tion. Dif­fer­ent peo­ple set­tling in a coun­try would of course car­ry their ideas and man­ner of ex­press­ing them; and from the whole com­pound a gen­er­al agree­ment would, in pro­cess of time, take place, and a uni­form lan­guage be es­tab­lished. Such is the ori­gin and con­di­tion of our lan­guage, as well as ev­ery oth­er mod­ern tongue of which we have any knowl­edge.

There is one prac­tice of which our sa­vans are guilty, at which I do most se­ri­ous­ly de­mur--the ex­trav­agant in­tro­duc­tion of ex­ot­ic words in­to our vo­cab­ulary, ap­par­ent­ly for no oth­er ob­ject than to swell the size of a dic­tio­nary, and boast of hav­ing found out and de­fined thou­sands of words more than any body else. A ma­nia seems to have seized our lex­icog­ra­phers, so that they have for­sak­en the good old style of “plain­ness of speech,” and are flour­ish­ing and bran­dish­ing about in a cloud of ver­biage as though the whole end of in­struc­tion was to teach lo­quaci­ty. And some of our pop­ular writ­ers and speak­ers have caught the in­fec­tion, and flour­ish in bor­rowed gar­ments, priz­ing them­selves most high­ly when they use words and phras­es which no body can un­der­stand.

I will not con­tend that in the ad­vance­ment of the arts and sci­ences it may not be prop­er to in­tro­duce for­eign terms as the mean of con­vey­ing a knowl­edge of those im­prove­ments to oth­ers. It is bet­ter than to coin new words, inas­much as they are gen­er­al­ly adopt­ed by all mod­ern na­tions. In this way all lan­guages are ap­prox­imat­ing to­geth­er; and when the light of truth, sci­ence, and re­li­gion, has ful­ly shone on all the na­tions, we may hope one lan­guage will be spo­ken, and the promise be ful­filled, that God has “turned un­to the peo­ple a pure lan­guage, that they may call up­on the name of the Lord, to serve him with one con­sent.”

New ideas are formed like new in­ven­tions. Es­tab­lished prin­ci­ples are em­ployed in a new com­bi­na­tion, so as to pro­duce a new man­ifes­ta­tion. Words are cho­sen as near­ly al­lied to for­mer ideas as pos­si­ble, to ex­press or rep­re­sent this new com­bi­na­tion. Thus, Ful­ton ap­plied steam pow­er to nav­iga­tion. A new idea was pro­duced. A boat was seen pass­ing along the wa­ters with­out the aid of wind or tide. In­stead of coin­ing a new word to ex­press the whole, a word which no­body would un­der­stand, two old ones were com­bined, and “_steam­boat_” be­came the sign to rep­re­sent the idea of the thing be­held. So with rail-​road, cot­ton-​mill, and gun-​pow­der. In the same way we may ac­count for most words em­ployed in sci­ence, al­though in that case we are more de­pen­dant on for­eign lan­guages, in as much as a large por­tion of our knowl­edge is de­rived from them. But we may ac­count for them on the same prin­ci­ple as above. _Phrenol­ogy_ is a com­pound of two greek words, and means the sci­ence or knowl­edge of the mind. So of ge­ol­ogy, min­er­al­ogy, &c. But when im­prove­ments are made by those who speak the en­glish, words in our own lan­guage are em­ployed and used not on­ly by our­selves, but al­so by those na­tions who prof­it by our in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

I trust I have now said enough on the gen­er­al prin­ci­ples of lan­guage as ap­plied to things. In the next lec­ture I will come down to a sort of bird's eye view of gram­mar. But my soul ab­hors ar­bi­trary rules so de­vout­ly, I can make no promis­es how long I will con­tin­ue in close com­mu­nion with set forms of speech. I love to wan­der too well to re­main con­fined to one spot, nar­rowed up in the lim­its fixed by oth­ers. Free­dom is the em­pire of the mind; it ab­jures all fet­ters, all slav­ery. It kneels at the al­tar of virtue and wor­ships at the shrine of truth. No ob­sta­cles should be thrown in the way of its progress. No lim­its should be set to it but those of the Almighty.