132

(;HAP'r En lo°l v E

81. J •

. • a. KEMP (ed.)

Lo d . , John W 11" •

non, 1972 3 a JS S Grammar if I

1941. ' 30-1. Further deta'J' 0 tne English language

1 sin VORLAI' '

The close 00 .' ' 1975. and FUNKE,

tifi ., nnectlOn se . ,

. c empl1'lcism and " . en m this period betw '

elg. hteenth the formal stud f I een Engltsh scien-

. century in rh . yo anguage i id

scientist J P' . t. e linguistic" e. IS. eVI ent in the

L . rlestley (. rntercst sh b

ondon 176 ( 1733-]:804) Th di own y the natural

natural p' hil I page vi: 'Gramma; . e fbu iments of English grammflr

8 losophy') . may e co d '

2. L. MURRAY E ' . rnpare to a treatise of

8 'b' ,ngf,shg

. 3. 1 id. r ,rammar (thirty £

84. FlRT~ ~p 127,137. - ourthedition), York 1821 54-6

( , ersonality and I ' , ,

8 1950),44; N. CHOM anguage in societ j S' ,

5. CADET 18 8 SKY, Svntactic st. y, ociological review 42

86 ,9 ' IC structures Th H

8 . Kur<ENHEIM 196 ' e ague, 1957. 79·

, 7. LANCELOT 'd. 2., 49,

88 an ARN

. . • LANCELOI' AULD, 1660 '

89. ibid., 93- ~nd ARNAULD, 1660' ~3-5 I.

90 4, SCALIGER D ,3·

• LANCELOT an ' e causis lin

91. De interp d. ARNAULD, 1660 88 guae Latinae, 137, 220.

retattone. ' . -90.

92, LANCEL01' and rz; iWetaphyst'ca

93. cp. CHOM ARNAULD, 1660 1017 a 29·

id A SKY, Current.' : I IS·

., spects oj the the lSSues m linguistic the

94. ~p~ 173-4. below, ory of syntax, Cambr~;r' The Hague, 1964;

. APlH and M ge, Mass., 1965. cp.

95. LANCEtOT .d· SWADESH Nootk

6 an AR ,a text Ph

9 • J.ANCELOT and A;ADLfJ, 1660, 68' ~Hs, iladelphia, 1939 235-43

97. L. HJELMSU:v p' . A~L)), 1660. 147' OMSRY, Current issue~ 15-'16'

468. ' rtnczpes de r' '. ' .

98 g amrnaire . .

. L. BLO . ' generale C h

9 OMFIEL)) L ' open agen J 928 15

9. FIRTH 'A ,anguage L ' "

, synop , .ondon

(Special vol SIS of linguisti h' 1935, 20.

100. CHOMS umeofthePh'j. c,teory', Stud' . ,

101. N. 11£ KY: Current issue lhologlcal SOciety)' Oles m linguistic analysis

, ADZEE, Gr, ' s, C apters ". xford, I ~. -

necess . ammazre" I and 5' id A 9;}7,21 2.

I, aires dll,[angag generate OIL exp : ~., spects, 117-18.

angues P' e POUT S . • osiuon m;

Stuttg;rt ~f1S, 17~7 (repri.nt::,r -. f?ndement ~a;~o;mee des elements The H'. ' 974), IX-xi' n • with lntrod . etude de toutes les

ague I ' . E. BART uctlon by

102. BEAUZEE 0 ' ?75. LE'l"I',. Beallzee'· . B. E. BARTLETT,

des et(e~ d~' cu., volume I' S grammaire generale.

d termin6J' ' 403: ' Lea

es erres tnde. . .' au lieu qu noms et res p

1'03, ibid I' termmes' e les adjectifs . ronoms expriment

.• vo urne 2.6 ' et Ies verbes exnri

104. {'ADLEY , 1 o. er es exprirnent

VAU • 1976, 161-2'

. GELAS R ' LANCEL

• ema7qrtes sur 1 l .OT and "'RN aangUe7an~·' AULD. 1660

J' yOISe Pa . ' 75-83; c.

, rrs, 1670.

Six

The eve of 'modern times

Both in general hi '.. - . - . . .

R . lstoryand in the history of partlcular subjects the

enaissance is' tifi bl

B t h J~S 1 a y regarded as the beginning of the modern age.

ut tne early h

world t - . nmeteent century saw a yet sharper turn towards the

<han 0 which we are now accustomed. Even In spite of the .-apld

.'0 • gle~ during the .present century, it requires less effort of the hls• nca imaginati

I .. nation to study the life and work of nineteenth-century

peop c thrall h hei .' .' .

d .. g t err own lives and rn their O\Vn contex.t. Among the

rno ern ti . . .

ind na Ion states of Europe, Germ,ny and Italy ,cmeved the"

, ilcpendent existe. nce during this century., and the patterns of industrial

'CLV izati d

11£. on 'pre, . over and uanMn<med the predominantly ag,lcultucal

~ that had characterized Europe since antiquity.

ntellcctually, too, the nineteenth century saw the emergence of

modern conditions. New universities were founded in Europe and America, and the interplay of European and American scholarship, now so vital a force in education. only began seriously in this century. Popular education spread ever wider and the goal of univcrsalliteracy Was for the first time made a practical proposition for governments. Learned societies and periodicals associated with them had already n:ade their appearance, but many of those best known today in university libraries began publication in the nineteenth century, and improved communications made the exchange of articles and the systematic reviewing of books the dominant feature of academic life to which we

ate now accustomed.

In linguistics many of the scholars whose work was done in the nine-

teenth century are known to students well before they consciously delve into the history of the subject. Grimm, Whitney, Meyer-Lubke,

134 CHAPTER SIX

MODERN TIMES THE EVE OF

. . rica1linguistics must be trace~

The progress of comparative and histo during the nineteenth cent~ry •

in its most significant theoretical as.pects serious Sanskrit study l.nto

but the results of the introduCUon?f n of its historical. re~atio~shl~s~ Europe ,· .. hich followed th. e demonst,~attt~o Modern descriptive Imhgulsh

' , h' t ical Iinguis cs. 'ndi ven t DUg'

were 110t confined to IS on ith ancient In ra, e

n h ffects of contact WI., mediately.

tics shows equa y tee" . took place much less irn ld f Indian

in this case the full re~hz.atlOn. had opened up the fie 0 eference

Roman Catholic missionanes b) The first known r I'

. (p 104 a ove . wh the Ita Ian

languages in earlier centuries f ~he s'ixteenth century, w ~~. I of the

to Sanskrit came at the end 0 India reporting admmng ~etween Filippo Sassetti wrote home from 'umber of resemblances, d be-

d inting out a n e notice

lingua Sanscruta, an pOlO b ntly likenesses wer G an B.

I li 'rds Su seque b the erma

Sanskrit and ta Ian" 0' • n languages y' f these

tween Sanskrit an. d some EuraPCea d'oux 2 ,. but little came 0

h Pere ceur ,

Schulze and the Frene man than

' , ' found nature

observations, ly of a more pro it came pro-

Jones's discovery was not Son krit by Europeans, but IE tern and

nts on ans . Near as

previous pronouncerne wakening interest In N oleonic wars

pitiously on. the. eve of anfaE opean, scholars, The aPleon deliber-

' h part 0 ur cy Napo

Indian studies on te 'his suprema d the Near

' ible and during , Egypt an

were partly respollS1, I ical work 10 hi with the

F h arehaeo ogi h ho1ars Ip

ately encouraged renc .. of Frenc. sc

' . I ng aSSOClatlOn ,

East inauguratmg a 0 h 1>lediterranean. . d into Sansknt

' 1 ages of t e IV., ,initiate . 1 . 1

non-European, angu . Schlegel was vV von Schlege •

The German scholar F., v.on '8 3' his brother A. .' . sity of Bon. n

. Pans 10 1 0, .' the Unlve£ ld

studies while he was in . f Sanskrit in . " . ate if I cou

Professor ° ' self fortun 'J

who in 1819 became I uld count my di in Germany.

' wo . tu les f

(founded in 1818), wrote: bli hing Sansknt. s I the expansion 0

. -ards est a IS, hi object. n . d of

do something tov ar h chieved IS 'f Sanskrit an

1 pport cas chairs a der

With governmenta su , after the war de to them un ,

. 'prussia, , trnents rna 'as

university education In . P and appOlfl rved for a lime

. - ., were set ub Idt whose ,

histoncal linguistics n Hum 0, fPrussla.

the influence of Wilhelm ~o n in the Kingdom 0 blished early in. the minister for public,instr;;:'ar in English w;:tro~s were. m.ade Into

The first Sanskrit gr d from 1'800 tra~ l"terature of Ind13. . .

nineteenth centur.y, !mf, h classical S. anskrit I ns had a twofold eit.e ct ;

ges or t e 'by Europea d the first

European langua of sansknts of Europe forme. ,.

The linguistic study k 'twith language. d historical linguistics,

. f Sans n aratrve an

the companson 0 • growth of comp

. I stematlC

stage m t ie sy

, r - pIes of nine-

Max l\1i.iller, Brugmann, and Sweet are Just a lew exam . ,

ibl f r shapIng their teenth-century scholars who were partly responsi e 0

. ", '11· ht in present-day

branches of Imgulstlcs In the broad patterns stt taug .

textbooks. .. t of

If any singl!e year can, albeit artificially, be taken to mark the star.

f I· " . 't I' the year 1786, Just

the contemporary world 0 mguisnc SCIence, 1 S . '. d

over a decade before the turn of the century. 1786 has been decIarlel

h have I ., d I fi st of the four rea v

by a contemporary sc alar to . ave inmate the r ,',', .:

" . d I t of linguistics

significant 'breakthroughs' In the modem eve opmen , ..

' , , . II k n Sir W illiarn

up to the present day. In this year, as IS now we . nown,

. I d" d hi f mous paper to

JOnes a J'udge in the Dritish court III n ia, rea IS a d

' , , bl" h d beyon

the Royal Asiatic Society in Calcutta, wherein heesta IS e. dl

' , " kri hi', lla guage of In ia,

doubt the hlstoncal kinship of Sans nt, te c assica n ,

with Latin, Greek, and the Germanic1anguages. . ..h 11

Jones's statement, though quoted in so many books already, s ou t

b b"· he ci ta e of the time were

e set out here, ecause Its effects In t e Clrcums nc s . .

so profound and far-reaching: 'The Sanskrit language, whatever m~" be its antiquity, is ofa wonderful structure; more perfect than the ~ree , more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than eltheri yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots 0

h been pro-

verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly ave eel ,

duced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examme the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, without believing them to have spr~ng from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. There IS a similar reagan, though not quite So forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic had the same origin with the Sanskrit,' r

What is vital about this event is not that it marked an absolute beginning to historical linguistics. Historical questions had been tackled before, and with SOme individual successes and insights; indeed, a special relationship between Sanskrit and some European languages, ancient and modern, had been surmised before Sir William Jones, Bu~ hi.therto observations in these areas of linguistics had been in .the main Isolated and fragmentary. Historicill significance characterizes events that c'l.n ,be seen to be linked in an enduring causal chain, whereby later partICipants start from the positions taken up by their predecessors. SUch a state of affairs is observed in the development of grammatical theo.ry and grammatical analysis in ancient Greece, and the same is true of the COurse of historical linguistics during the century following Jones's statement, during which it constituted the major branch of linguistic studies,

135

136 CHAPTER SIX

an d, additionally, in Sanskrit writings Europeans now came into CO?~'

. , , , f I' isti cholarship In

with the mdependently d'''''Ioped tr.d,aoo 0 mgm, IC s :

India Whose merits were acknowledged at once and whose Influence on

' ,

several branches of European linguistics was deep and lastmg,

Lingui'tics m Inwa goes back further than in western Em'ope,. and has boon maintained by a continuity of native scholarship ever since, It attained its claSSical period e"Iy in its histo,y, and by the tune

" h d 'zed definite

EU'opeans b",,,,,, aW"e of It, rnd". "hola" a recogru d

"hools and distinct doctrin", together with acknowledged texts an Sour ces followed by succession, of commentaries and exegesrs, .

Indian linguistics was not itself historical in orientation, though Its roots lay in the changes languages undergo in the Course of time, But the topics <ove"d by mod"n d"<riptive linguistics: semantics grammar,

h I " 'h' h I dian tradi-

p ono ogy, and Phon",,,, Were all tre.ted at Iengt rn teo. ,

ti d " h ' . '. f Indian theory

ion; an 10 P onetlcs and in certain aspects 0 grammar, ,.

and practice Was definitely in advance of anything achieved in Europe or elsewhere before contact had been made with Indian work, The Stimulation afforded by Sanskritic linguistic scholarship carried by Buddbi" monk, into China has olr"dy been noticed (pp. ro~, above), European SCholars realized immediately that they had encountered a m", of Iingui"ic ~te>atu" in India of the gr"test importance ~d stemming hom an independent ,ou''', even though their interpretation

and full'PPteciation of it was in part holting and deI.yed. .

So fat" We <an tell, the onginaI inspiration for Iinguisties in India was the ncod tim was felt to pre""e ce ",in rituol and religious orally t"''''mitted tex ts COming f'om the Vedic pedod (c. '20O-TOOO ~.c.), the oldest 1mown stag< of S,",skrit Iite"ture. from the effects of trrne. The P""tv.tion without 01"'''.00 of Iingu;,tic matenol handed down tIll'ough the gcn",,"on, by 0,," '~'ion is an rutificiol process, an

'ttempt to hah What is everywhere .he n"u,," OUtcome of Iinguistic con.inuity. Cruu,g" in p,onunci"ion, gramm", and Word meanings ~ere observed in the ""t of the I""guoge, and the diolee",1 divergences in the 'pe~ of d,ffe"nt or", "'ay have made eVen more 'pparent the 'pee ra 1 P",,"on of the VeQie t"'ts, and. in a "'ann er simiI", to the con. trasts between liellenistic Greek "''''d 1 __ , I l' G k made

. . ....... c1l;l,'SSlca Iterary ree,

neces sar y an oppa .... a of Phonetic, 1:>'''''''''''i,,1 and se m.ntic interpre-

tatlOl}, ,

SUch Was the stimulus but the res po f: b d these

'di .:1- d' nse went ar eyon.

unme ate nceu:;' an as am 'od, , 't:.

' ,.." . ern "'nter observes, < a scrennnc

cunosay,OOUpled WIth keen aUdition and an a" h d J I d

. e'lectlVc metr 0 oogy, e

137

MODERN TIMES THE EVE OF

, inal terms ded their ongt

'. hich must surely have transcen h

10 descriptions W h whic

' h tages throng .

of reference . . d for us t e s . In ancien.

have preserve , b ginnmgs,

In Greece we d vi I1y from Its e cially the

I hi passe virtua and espe

linguistic scholars 'P .. e that we hove, . amrnar,

f I I, uistic hteratur , '" Sanskrit gr

India most 0 t ie mg ,,, ition Panini S I line of

f li IStlC compos • . f a ong

best known piece 0 lOgu d the culmination 0 , " grammar

h end an as d Panini s

manifestly came at t e direct knowle ge. " :d d into eight

k f hich we have no , it is d1VI e

previous wor o wrn - ~ • Eight books ; , . down 0' put

is known as the A~!adhyaYl, or h ther its author wrote It , usly been

' . is not known wed it has vano

mall sections.Tr IS no is uricertain, an I J however,

all it date too, IS u C Clear y,

it tog"h" or. y;' s , and Mound 3°0'. • well befo re 110,

assigned to around 600 B,C, iously under way

, . t have been sen .

linguistics 10 India rnus t of Indw.

' • B c. the res

middle of the first millenm~m . d as the model for liest g"mm",

Sanskrit Indian scholarship se~e , am one of the ear idi (~second

' , , f the Tolkttppzy, d th In ra '

It was <he inspiranon or f cent ra l an sou 'Tib t'

of Tamil a Dravidian language 0 atical tradition of ; 'y~chronic

' f h ative gramm I I field 0 s ,

century B,C,), and or ten , lly the W 10 e '. Paniru, re-

red virtua entativc, . I

Indian scholars cove ir b t known rep res " . d range. n

h h their es f a limite t

linguistic studies, t oug 'treatment 0 " de its [mpac

J intensive h It rna

stricted his work to t 1C , t as it was w en I centuries to-

di chievcmen n severs t in

rerie'.ving the In Ian a . " I itimate to spa } " divergen

" " It IS cgl 1 holars HP, h ce

on European Iinguistics, k f Indian sc ". under t r

id the wor 0 1 I traditIOn, tics

gether and to consi er 'it)' of scho ar Y anticS, phone I

' d by the contmu , and sem

time though unrte 1 1" guistic theory bv

di renera in 't was \

p'incip.I headings: g ". -amrnar. . hol""", ".

and phonology, and des;;nptI.\a: ~ebated by Indf,a}n eS:ightecnth cent,ur)t

' ,. theory w dot 1 id d agams

GenerallmgUlstlc b fore the en . consi ere '"

though C' age" as 'I nquiry:

scholars in the west, 1 em. Langu h'losophlca e _

t between t J , d of pi, d almost

there was no contac " y studies an holarslHp an "

d b th of literar estern sc I famlhar to

the backgronn 0 'familiar to W e were a so

f the topics f languag

and a number 0 , ation 0 d

. us examin of word an

i,,';table in a seno Iy times. dlng the nature. Indian

Indian linguists I'o~ "'Ived in "nde"'~~erent poi." of view. rded as

Various questions mvo" ssed from I • gs could be rega "3

. were discu -hich meanm , h onomatopoCI

sentence mea~,"g d the ex".t to" he extent to whoc. hi bet.","

Iingui,,, considere 01 ",.,d., 0' t "",ibing the relations ment (p .• 8,

a natural property odel for d com'enllon argu

the rn natur'e-

could be taken as , the \-vestern

word and thing, As in

above), men soon realized the very limited part that such a factor can play in language, and how much more typical of language is the arbitrary conventional relation between a form and its meaning.

M~ch thought was given to the variabilityand extensibility of word meam~gs, on~ ~f the major characteristics of language, enabling it to fulfil the unlimited requirements placed on it with its necessarilv limited resources. Meanings were seen to be learned both from observation of the contexts of situation in which words were actually used in s:ntences and from direct statements by elders and teachers on particular words and their uses. While limits could hardly be set to actual usage,. collocation often restricted the meaning range of a word by the

exclusion of certain oth' b I' ' .

. . erwlse accepta e meanmgs of the word 1fi lS0·

lation, Thus dhenub which by itself could mean both 'mare' and 'cow', could only be taken as m ' , , in such . -

. ,eamng cow in sue a collocation as sauats«

dhe~ub, cow with calf.s The -almost unanswerable question was faced in Indl~, as elsewhere, on the extent to which single word forms with

multiple meanings should b d d

• . e regar· e as polysemous words or as a

numb:r of different but homophonous words. Within this context much attenuon was paid t th I'

, . 0 e re anons between what was considered the

pnmary meaning of d hi h .

h. . a wor ,w ic was said to be understood first, and

t e various meanmgs ,. f '

. ansmg rom Its metaphorical use (laksana), both

on everyday discourse . d f . .

, . an or particular literary effects.

While these were q tions of .. .'

I ". d . ues ions 0 great literary importance the Indian

ogieians ebated a . . did: . . . ' ,

'I d - ,gam as I. western logicians whether words pn-

man y 'euoted partie I 1 '

word meast u ars, c asses, or abstract universals and how far

y mearungs were . '. '.' .. . '

negative in dl '. hiP~sIt~ve In ldentlfYlng an object for what it was or

. IstmgUlSng it from th f ali ali d

that a w d .. e rest c re ity, It was also re rze

or , e.g. fire can st dr'

denotation. ' an lor Itself as well as for its primary

A question that is far fro bei . '

relation betw m emg solved today is that of the semantic

een a sentence and .

dearly more than the SUm ofth ' ,Its component words. Sentences are

from the semantic Or th .. en Jux~aposed ".,'ords, whether considered tradition tended to e grammatical point of view. The western

'concentrate on wo d indi ., '

bearers and to regard the .. r s as m ividual minimal meanmg

'. e sentence as the product f d binati

III specific types '0·£ I . al . ro uct a war come matiOnS

. ogre propo" p

cussed meaning in rel at' sition. lato and Aristotle mostly dis-

ion to word 'I

the semantic minimality (' L! " S as ISO ares, and Aristotle stressed in HIS VIew) d i d

such (p. 26, above). The St ' an 10 ependence of the word as

limitation of a word's fieldolcsr appear to have pointed to the further

o reference ' d' . .

or its isarnbiguation as the

CHAPTER SIX

THE EVE OF MODERN TIMES

139

result of specific collocations (pp. 21-2, above), and this doctrine was developed in the course of the distinction between signiftcatio and suppositio in the Middle Ages (p. 77, above). Indian linguists debated the whole question of the primacy of the word as against that of the sentence. One set of thinkers maintained a view very like the general western attitude that the sentence is built up of words each contributing its meaning to the total meaning of the sentence. But an opposite view, particularly associated with Bhartrhari, author of V tikyapadi~~ (c, seventh century A,D.), regarded the sentence as a single und~Vlded utterance conveying its meaning 'in a flash', just as a picture IS first perceived as a unity notwithstanding subsequent analysis into it.s component coloured shapes. Given the conception of the word urut, sentences can be identified as one-word sentences or as many-word sentences, but for the speaker and hearer they are primarily sin?le

. . . .' bei 1 gely the creation

sentence unities, words and word meamngs eing arzerv u ,

of linguists and self-conscious. speakers trying to analyse and classify

.. 11 nt As an example of

sentence meanmgs III terms of smauer compooei s, .

Bhartrhari's attitude the sentence fetch a cuckoo from the woods is not

d . , cis . ther because the full

un erstood first as a sequence of wor put toge , . .

meaning of fetch in the sentence (i.e. the mode of fetchi~g) IS onlYf

, . f k d omeone Ignorant a

grasped together With the meaning 0 cue 00, an s .. f

h• . . c. e extent Ignorant 0

t e mearung of the word cuckoo IS therelore to sam

the meaning of the rest of the sentence. 6 , h d in

_ ' . ' . ._ d it w . extreme, It IS ec oe I

Such a View may be criticized, an It was, as,. 1 lin uistlc

Malinowski's dictum that' isolated. words ar~ In fae~ ?~ Y d .. pgerhaps

dr' he analysIs, an - -

figments, the products of an advance mg\1lS ..' ble unit for

. ' 1 alit f the word as a via

underestimates the psychologlca rea:tl yo. ., lyti 1 apparatus

f h llnguist sana lca ... .

the native speaker as well as part ate 1 f an analytical

. b bi a better examp e 0

(the bound morpheme IS pro a y . erally a technical

, . , h that morpheme IS gen .

creation, and It IS notewort Y h as 'fords for word are

. h ical term, were , .

term, or translated by a tee n b th written and unwntten).

found in a very large number of1an~uages" 0 t the typical western ten-

I . . ry correctiVe agarns

t IS, however, a necessa . .' the word as a wholly inde-

t· enqulnes on .

dency to concentrate seman IC . •

. I put into sentences. .

pendent unit only sub~e~uent Y h. mantic unity of the sentence lS

Thi di ciation of t e se . ,

. IS In Ian appre . . "'ted with their early appreclatlOn

- h . ve been eonne ...

parallel to and ~ay a d honetic differences between words as pro-

of the phonological an. P nced in connected spoken sentences d ords pronou

nounced isolates an w .

. 3 below),

(sandhi, pp, '42- ,

CHAPTER SIX

THE EVE OF MODERN TIMES

An inevitable problem in any serious linguistic thought is the relation between the perceived utterances, spoken and written, of a language and the language itself, whether regarded from the point of view of what the speaker possesses as his linguistic competence or from that of what the linguist sets up as the system or systems of elements; categories, and rules underlying and accounting for the infinitely varied output of a living language. Langue and parole, abstraction and exponent, emit and etic unitJarm and substance, are all examples of recent attempts to compass and express this relation. Indian linguists sought to express it in the theory of sphota, This theory was formulated somewhat differently by different Indian scholars and has been much discussed, Essentially, in any linguistic element or constituent two aspects arc distinguished, the actual event or individual realization (dhvani) and the unexpressed and permanent entity (spho!a) actualized by each occurrent dhvani. Sentence spko!a, word sphota, and sound unit (vaTf.1o) spho!a were all envisaged,

Th~ spho!a of a sentence as a single meaningful symbol is realized or actualized by a succession of articulated sounds. At a lower level the word, in so far as it is a meaningful symbol in its own right, may be regarded as a unitary sphota also actualized by a succession of sounds, But s~unds do not function simply as audible disturbances of the air; a particula- abstract and permanent unit of distinctive sound signalling capable of semantic diff "" .. . d f

• .. I erennanor, IS actualized by the multitu e 0

slightly different prom ".,. .". ivid l'

" .'. . I:' . unclatlOns each v,arymg with the indivi ua ~

VOice, his style and the pl . al ... , ." . TIll L

, • ' II IYSle situation m which he speaks. ' s last

concepuon of the va .. I • . ~. '

( '. r~la spnota Was especially associated with Patafijali

c. 150 B,C,). Bhartrhari 0 th the ' hi'

t h f h ' . ,n e 0 r hand, in consonance With s

cory 0 t e primacy of t1

~pl.t t b h '. ie sentence, seems to have held the sentenc. e

, nO, a 0 e t e real sphot H 'f' .

realization f th . Q. e, m act, envisaged three levels In the

o I:: sentence s:phot· h

iritegral symbol" ts If . hi ta as a unitary meaningful symbol: t e

tial phonolog'call e , grap ically and phonically ineffable, the sequen-

. 1 pattern that exp e . ,

tion of all indl'\i'l"du'l. . '" . r sses 11, as normalized by the elimina-

. a vanatlOns (pr ~k . ., .' f

this in the individual . . a(ta d/mam), and the realization 0

, . utterances of the." . . . ') 1

would appear that the' eli sentence (vaikrta dhvant , it

, me ate stage W ld .. .

pretatIons.' of varna splrot . d o~ correspond to some inter-

. ta, an the enUre h d

with the interlevel status accorded to h'· sc e~e may be compare

and lexis on one side and t h "P onology in relation to grammar o p orne \lUera

linguists today. . nee on the other by some

A further development of th~ d "

nvafll9spkota I·' hin I "

. . re ations ip 15 seen tn

. (Dh . nyiiloka ninth cen-

Anandavardhana's theory of poetic language va '..1

. . . gf 1 entities rhemse ves,

tury A.D.). Just as the sounds reveal the meamn u. at f rrther

d h '1· al earungs reve u ' so in poetry the chosen words an t eir Iter m

- . .'. f h ' a whole. Here one

sugges.ted senses and the beauty 0 t ,e poem as , f tylistic

, H· I - 1 " conceptIOn or s

remarks a striking parallel , ... -ith . Je ms ev s . . I

1 d the expresslon p ane

analysis as the treatment of the content pane an . ther

ific : as themselves toge ..

of a natural language in some specl c usage . .. • a

, der ' nnotatlve semlOtlc .

forming the expression plane of a higher or er co . I tion

• . d i ient Iridian specu a -

Much of what has been briefly notice 10 anci d s. iliar

ik h rds alrea y rami I

on semantics and the theory of language str es. co. her different.

in the western tradition, though their ap .. proach. I~ oftenkr~t it manifest

I di h netic wor IS I s

What is most remarkable about nan po. . dOth anything

. '. . d tl·'on as compare Wl

supenonty m conception an execu. . ib ' . had

. f h Indian contrl· utlOn

p. roduced in the west or elsewhere be ore tne r . H· . Sweet takes

become I I a1 ay say that . enry

ecorne known there" . n gene~ one, m . ff 9 We have seen how

over where the Indian phonetic treatises lea. ve 0 ifi . f letters as

h . r classi catIOns 0 '

Greek and Roman linguists made t e rnajo h . ISt'lc impres-

. d· t ms of t err acOl

the representatives of speech soun s, In er, h t chnoiogy and

. . 1· .. pnor to t e . e

srons, But at this stage in mgmstlcs,. d .aves articula-

. ifi . alYSJS of soun w ,

equipment needed for the scienti c an ate and syste-

. . ibl f me for an accur ,

tory description was the only poSSt e ra. . d the observatlOnal

. . .. .' f the nnma.cy an .. "

mane c. las.slficatlOn. And 10 VIew 0 I:' f h natl·onarticulatton

. th act or po,

accessibility of the speech organs me .' yen though modern

'. ' h. ti deSCriptIOn, e .

still remaIns fundamental m P one Ie . . . . . persede articulatory

" • ·1 t and even su

acoustic categories may supp emen .

ones in phon. ological. analysis .. t o "I t nf features secondary in

de artlcu a a. J d

The Greeks and the Romans rna tans went further an.

h . . .', Arabic gramman . hei tern

t err phonetic descnptlOns, .rics : but above all t eir con. -

achieved more in articulatory phon~ucS, h century were the ancient poraries and successors before the. ntneteent d in a number of phonetic

. , " k IS preserve. 8 0

Indian phoneticians, whose wor . 'bed to the period 00-15

, tauve1y ascn

treatises which have been ten . .

Il.C. II .. d or translated, the Indian phc-

. . ' mastere . "y to

'Once their termwology IS f relatively few pomt.s, eas .-

" . , k it are apart rom .' he nr and

netic Writings on Sans f1, ., d With phoneUc t eO'J '.'

d cquamte . h

follow for the modern rea er al .' re is known cert3mly about r e

, "" As a resu e, rno ibed (h rit at and sacred

phonetic descnptlOns. 'h they descnbe ,t e n u •. . .

.. f h Sansknt t at I·'~;n matters their

pronuncranon 0 t e .' t language. n certai .

rher anCIen.. . d heas the

texts) than about any 0 be readily interpreted to ay, w erei .

detailed statements can

CHAPTER SIX

THE EVE OF MODERN TTMES

143

nineteenth-century scholar W. D. Whitney, though he realized their \';o:th and importance, Was led to a too hasty dismissal of some of their reported observations. I:!

The place of phonetics was seen as the linking of grammar to utter. ~ncc, and phonetic description was organized under three main head. mgs, the processes of articulation, the segments (consonants and vowels), and the synthesis of the segments in phonological structures,

The articulatory organs were divided into intrabuccal and extrabuccal, extrabuccal being the glottis, the lungs, and the nasal cavity, These three are responsible for the distinctions of voice and voicelessn~s.s, a~piration and non-aspiration, and nasality and non-nasality. g~v~ng In the phonological system of Sanskrit a five term system at :~~eren~ articulatory positions, which may be exemplified by the hila.

la, senes jb/, /p/, Ibh/, /ph/,. and ImJ.. Within the buccal cavity the ar:,culatory organs are described from the back to the front, ending 'nth the lips, and four degrees of stricture are distinguished: total

buccal obstruction (st - d a1 ' • , '

, ops an nas consonants), fricative constncnon,

semi vowel const . ti db.'

• • - fIC lon, an a sence of constriction, this last constituting

vocahc artIculation Th . h . iculation Is describ d '

- . . e mecamsm of articulation IS descri e In

terms of a stat' 0 int of a-et . , -d

1 . I nary point 0 artIculatIOn (sthiina) for example the har

pa ate and a mov' 'I . ' .

, - ' . mg artlcu ator (kaTana), e.g, the tongue. ThIS concep-

non Was extended t . b'l bi ' , ,

I . 0 Cover . I a ial and glottal articulation where It I.S

scarce y plausible t· d 'd

th her , ·0 regar One of the parts involved as stationary an

e ot er as movlng.

The correct diagno' f h '

regar d d SIS 0 t, e glottal activ. ity in voicing is ngh.tlY

. e as one of the h ' . h

nearest app h . P onetle tnumphs of the ancient Indians, The

roac to an accu d '. . h

of Holde' h rate eSCrtptlOn in the west had been t at

r til t e seventee th

heeded at the t' Thn c~ntury (p. 118, above)., which we.nt un-

nne. e Ind .. r . f

Voicelessness aCcord' h· Ian mgulsts distinguished voice rom

, mg as t e glott' I d ., ] ,

notlced the tenden r . IS Was c ose or open in articu anon,

. cy Lor otherWise .' I'd'

mtervocalic position ( . VOIce ess consonants to be voice In

a common ph' . f

languages). and ag' L • onene OCCurrence In a. number. 0.

' , aanst tile III t .. .

Mtill.e .. r and Whitney. ne eenth-century incredulity of Max

lC ([- , properly accou . t dr, d

" I An. u .. ' De lor the production of VOIce

Junction features and cetta< .

in COllflected utterance reee' lnd prosodic features of stretches of speech

h ' 1 vecareful att .' T'" b

t e now umversal technical - enhon. his IS witnessed y

t . h d Use of the Sa k'. . . , .

oget er, to enote the clift ns nt term sandhi JOIning

h erences bet"" d' ,

P emes, and the Iike, and the - een Isconnected words, mar-

same element b' .

S com rned into conearen-

, r . t asserted the priority ated sequences. Indeed, as some India_n rmg• ms, s. me of the phonetic

h d s a meamng u unrt, so . .

of the sentence over t .e worea .. " tence outSide or

" . d . dnt phonetic eXlS ,

treatises denied the word an 10 . epen. e . . basi nit of phonet1c

b h was the asic U

apart from the text: the reatl group. 'I dagogical devices.

. " d' I t were pnrnan y pae h

desc!.lptlOn and wor ISO a es .. di e rather t an

d nnected lScours,

Sanskri.t orthography repr.esente . co h tice of Greek and

d h as was t e prac

successions of isolated wor s, sue h hie practice today;

. 1 I E pean art ograp ,

Latin orthography and IS arge y urot , normal sandht~

I 1 '. s were in use, a )

but with some texts para le version . f a pada (word

, '. - rd isolate orms,

marking text and a text wntten m wo

text. .' t re features associated

The phonetics of word. and morpheme Jun:o:'el length and syl1ab~e with initiality and finality in the breath gro,up, "se detail. VediC

11 descnbed in preci .. _

quantity, tone, and tempo were a: . , I and falling (udatta,

'-' , it hes high rOW,. ,_ - H

Sanskrit had three distmCtive pI c .• .., h Chnstlan era.

d d· eared by t e " h

anudatta, svaTita)~ these ha isapp . are Sansknt WIt

, rises we can comp

Thanks to the Indian phonetiC trea 1 b bly the tonal system

f hat was pro a

Ancient Greek, joint preservers 0 w

" s

of unitary Indo-european. h t the Indjan phonetiCian

, . ,. ·k it is clear t a . " 1 s The

In their descriptive war 1 • f h nernic pnnc1p es. . .

, .' ncepuon 0 pOI oreneal

operated within an innnuve co . h honeme as .a t ie

, , ept like t e P b seen to

treatises do not diSCUSS a co. nc f· h phota theory may e . h .

. cts 0 t e S They s 0\\

abstraction, though some aspe , f the phoneme. h: h

' d . terpretauons 0 , d'ff· noes VI rcn,

approach certain mo ern in 'honcUc 1 ere ,-

ll of certam P . d iptlon but

themselves, however., we aware d h ld be noted in a escr h fro1

d . ne s ou ple tne . T

being environmentally etermt . d units for exam d '

, . tive soun , , ly ; an In

not assigned to separate dlsune: bi Is and velars respectwe h . r dis

and [x] allophones of fhl before a plaatafij'ali pointed out_ thhat1 tells 15 -

. d 1 w tones· 1 Plte eve,

describing the high an 0 Iati e not their abso ute have been

' . d their re aUV hown to

tmctiveness re~te on s llabary has been s s rnbcl being

The Sanskrit alphabet or .. 'Y1'nes -the only redun. dant 'Yee fn]. only

1 honemlc 1, . t r"(a)) srn U'

devised on segmenta p. I tal nasal eonso~n . U' I tal consonant, ,to

di f r the pa.a , ' ith a: pa ata

the one stan mg 0. f /·/'n J-uxtapOSltlOn W n equally sound

t h eon J . 1 se fr·om a

occurs as an al op on . f symbos aro . t of ehe

- , redundancy 0 he usual arrangemen

And here this very . which governed t e , es in recise1y the same

phonologic~lanalysls d to the palatal ploslV. P IfJl Irtf. /01.1, and

alphabet, since []lJ stO:Od the other nasal consonants. ,

. s di ' 17

phonetic relatlOn a d'ng plosive seoes.. I d' s are nOW seen to

rm/· to their correspon ~ orks of the anCient n nan

, honetlC w

Worthy as the p

144 eHA P TER SIX

have ?een, it is for their . . .'

analysIs. of their own 1 gram. mahcal theory and the grammatical

hi , anguage S kri h . ,

S Ip IS best known t d . . , . ans rrt, t at Indian linguistic scholar-

p~ , . . . 0 ay, and among I di ,

Hl')IIU stands out b .. . n Ian grammanans the name of

definitely his is the a o~e all, Though his date is uncertain quite

earliest gtamrnaf a1.' '

european language. d h ,... IC treatise extant on. any Indo-

1 ,an t e earliesr ' if

anguage, and in Bloo fi Id' scienn c work in any Indo-european

h' m e swords' f h

. uman. Intelligence' 18 u one 0 t e greatest monuments of

It • nowever· hi! ' bri

S aVowed intention ' . .' Welt rings almost to perfection

deal '. s In the :field of S kri

s, It IS not what would ordi . ans nt grammar with which it

the ~~~krit language, manly be called a complete grammar of

Panml's

st .' . grammar includes as '. '

atement of the rule f Its mam co.mponent an exhaustive

The. ISO word [0 .' f

se ru es are expressed' h rmalIOn 0 the Sanskrit language.

often call d " 10 Sort statem t hori

Th e, giVing either d f ' . enrs, orap .. orisrns as theyare

, eyafe referred to . _ e llltlOns, or processes of word formation, mstru fas sutras thre d

C IOns in some of tl ' , a 5, a term also used of the ritual

append' . .', ie earlIer "tr di J'

. Ices glVmg a li . ~ e lC tterature, There are also

words d 1St of verbal '

,an a Jist of the s d roots, a list of similarly inflected

today' oun s of S kri T

s generative gtatnm ' ans nt, he rules, like the rules of

apart from til anans, have to b Ii

S .k' e completeness ith .. , e app led In a set order; and

ans rrt wo d f WIt which P- , , f

I di r ormation th . .. anmi Covers every aspect c

n ia Or lat· ,ose who hay d' , '

whi h h. er In Europe hat b. e stu led hIS work, whether in

IC e a I . ,. e een rno t

fo . c 11eved the ext . S struck by the ingenuity with

r economy, . reme economy f hi ,

tical co . ,~as eVidently part f he, 0 .IS statements, ThIS quest

length mrPosJtl0n j a commentat Q the context of early Indian gramma-

a a short ,. or remarked d h ' .

a gram . \ oWel In frarn'· rat t e savmg of half the

nlarJan as tI· lDg a gramm' l

have b' te bjrth of.· atica rule meant as much to

een inspi d' a son, III Th'

mitmem to re pnmarily by th JS demand for economy may

" memory b ,e needs of or I ' .

In Its O\ .... n 'h ' ut It clearly b a recitanon and com-

ng t. It d ecarne a ca f sc . .

mously com]". oes, however k non 0 scholarly ment

leamer. 's Or aP tlC3ted; the AstiidIz1'ri~ .rr:a e the task of the reader enor-

. _ eacher' '. 'J 'Jl IS a gra. .' ,

sura Thrax' """. s manual (in this e mmanan s grammar, not a

. , S J. ecll1li) As B . IS respect't ' ,

with a commen ," ' loomfield b I IS qurte unlike Diony-

tary ao and ' a serves it' ".

menr and ex 1: " ", It has b ' .. IS Intelligible only

u.: pucatJon e ' . een the sub' . .

uFUllya (' GJleat . Vcr Since it w . jeer of continuous com-

comment as cornp d .

rnost SUbsequent I eli . ary') is the m' . os~ , Patafijali's MaM-

Though Panin'l'sD com Work has been caoJor Indian commentary, and

f ' . mp" nunent

rom one's conce ' OSltton is ab on Comment

phon of .. . Out as f •

a teaching granun at removed as could be

ar, the te hi .

ac JOg and presen-

THE EVE OF MODERN TIMES 145

tation of Sanskrit today, as well as several important directions and features of descriptive linguistics can be traced back immediately to his genius,

PaQini's grammar is set in a context wherein the rest of the grammatical description. of the language and its underlying theory are implicit. The phonetic description of the language is equally taken for gr~ted; the set of sound units represented in the Sanskrit alphabet, and listed in the A#adhyayi is given without further comment, though the sO,unds are ordered in sequences that are both phonetically and morphologIcal~y relevant to his grammatical rules. Actual phonetic statements 10

P~ini are very few.

Indian linguists made use of four classes of words: nouns and ver~s

(inflected), and prepositions and particles (uninflected). The bas~c Indian theory of sentence structure required that for words to constitute a sentence they must fulfil three requirements: they must ha~e mutual expectancy as members of appropriate grammatical ~lasses ~n proper constructions, or they would be no more than a lexical hst devoid

f f h ' , b' all approp· riate to one

o urt er Significance; they must be semantic y .,

th t1 grammatIcal non-

ano er, or we would have to accept apparen Y , -'

sentences like .m wets it with fire, such as have, in fact, troubled 11ll,gu,stsd·

, .'. . f li istic thought an

In the east and the west throughout the history .0 mgu . .

'II . ' al contlgmty· or they

sit tease us today; and they must occur in temp or , '

d t d as a slOgle utterance

could not be carrie.d in the memory or un e. rs .00 -k _.'1."_.

1· . h i el11entswere a· tl1.1r<rt1,

at a 1. The Sanskrit terms for these t ,ree requ r h

. d t the smnew. at corr~s-

yogyata, and smrznidhi; they may be co.mp~r~ . 0 d collocability of the ponding Firthian relationships of colligablhty an

I ... . th '. t al exponents,21

e ementsand temporal sequen. ce of err ac u 'I diar rammatical

I . 1 rID sandht n Ian g

n addition to the phonologlca te. . d.' ub,;ect to which

f d ompoun mg, a s ~ ..

names for the different types 0 wor . c· d i to general currencv-

h ' have passe In -.;

t ey devote. d considerable. attentJon, . . ( a) attrib utive com-

0' t t1rllTusha tatpurUi" .

ne may mstance the terms a r .. ' bahmnihi (bahuvrikz), exooenttlc

pound (e.,g, doorknob, blackberry), and

comp.· ound (e .. g. turnkey, huntpback),~Z be . d tense was taken as the

, . . num er. an' .

The verb, mflected for person,. .. in Latin and Greek, the verb

core. of the. sentence (in S. an. skrit. as ) Other words stood in specific lete sentence .

could stand alone as a camp. th most important were the nouns

1• h b and of these e ,. .

re anons to t ever " ' N uns standing in dlfferent relations

, hei di··a e uulexlOPS• 0 k

tn t eir uerentcas. d b the term kiiTaka; the kiira as were

to the verb were designate. Yf relation bety.een the action or proeess classified by the different types 0 .

CHAPTER SIx

referred to by the verb and the denotata of the nouns. I Agent' and 'object' were two of them; but the kiirakas are not to be equated with cases, as normally understood; the Sanskrit genitive in its most general lise is not considered to express a kiiraka, because it relates nouns to nouns as its main grammatical function, not nouns to verbs. The exponents of hdraka» included the case endings of Case inflected words, but the same karaka could be expressed in more than one formal structure.'!

The rules of Sanskrit grammatical word formation, which form tbe bulk of Pa.r;J.ini's A~!iidhyiiYI, are set in the general grammatical context sketched above. They are difficult to describe and exemplify without r~ference to the Sanskrit language. Bloomfield in an extended review gives a good summary of Panini's method and of how a Paninian descriprion of the relevant parts of English grammar would appear and what It ' v 'ould accomplish.24

The generation of the word form dbhaoat, he, she, it was, from the root Mii-, to be, passes through the following stages (the numbers refer to some of the relevant siitras) :ZS

bhli-a bhil.-a·t tl-bhii-a-; d-bho-a-t d-hhav-a-t dbhacat,

3·1.2, 1·4·99, 6+71, 7.3.84. 6.I·7~.

3·1.68.

3·1.2, 3.2.1 I I, 6.1.158.

3+100.

Only the final r,eprcs"nt ti . h f' . d

. '. " a Ion is t e orm of a real word as pronounce

In IsOlatIOn' those p: di '. . f

t '. . recc Ing it lllustrate tl.le ordered application a

ru es, Covermg of h

h h ." Coursc, t e formation of large numbers 0.£ words

ot er t an this one Th 'h I d '.

d . . e w 0 e esCnptlve procedure may be com-

pare with the stages b -hi h

. y W IC the transformational-generative gram-

rnanans, more than two th ' d

th h . ousan years later, arrive at an actual form

mug successive rep .

tl '" resentatlons of elements combined with each

o ier In acCordance with d d

rhe f 11 .' or ere, rules. Thus from the stem disayd-,

o 0\\ mg stages. are paS!i:ed th . h i

'rouge Inorder;~6

4isayd-if' disQyz-i'l' dfsayS-iv ,k~aysiv.

Pilryini's dt'sc ... iptir>n~ i1wolvt:

the i~olate ide.ntification or roots and

147

THB EVE OF MODERN TIMES

. .. .. h me concept of present-day

affixes, which directly inspired the morp e d Arabic had led later

grammatical analysis. The study of Hebrew an . . a constant that

• h b tract root as .

mediaeval Europe to reco~mze teas, '. . . 1 European model of

underlies inflexional paradigms, but the tYPlca. h nded down by

. . . . . d to be the one a .

grammatical description contmue ., . . d-and-paradlgm

Dionysius Thrax and Priscian, a thorough-b~mg word gogical advan-

. h . . obVIOUS pae a

one. Such a model, indeed, Wit Its very hi gespeciaHy the

tages, continues strongly in use in language teac 10 ,

teaching of ancient languages. . 1 t lements such as

. . functi 11 eqmva en e ., ,

Formal vanations among unctiona -y ai' I hs of single mor-

are handled under the modern concept ofomorp. 11 He set up

. . - .. '. hophonemlca y. .

phemes were dealt WIth by Pa.r;J.lnl morp ..' . a1') which

' -' , h ~.. a place, ongm ,

abstract basic forms, called sthiinf~' (. a~mg e and internal sandhi were

by the rules of morphophonological chang . d . the formal re-

. l mornh f the resultant wor s, .

converted mto the actual morp so, ' G. al rules were given

(' b . t t ') ener

placements were called iide,ta su sti u e . formation of verbs

together with exceptions; in English the past :ensementally determined

1 d t the environ .

with ,-dl would have been re ate .0. 'odd d) with separate rnentton

variants such as '-t/ (walked) and f-ldl (pIa e , fi ld's Metlomini mol'-

. . like r ran Z7 Bloom e .'

of individual irregularities e Tun,. .' . method and lnsplra-

d d s Paruman m

Phophonemics has been regarue a '.

tion.28 , f statement referred to

, e economy 0 .•.. of a

In the interests of the extrem . that the repetttlon ,

t in such a way . deled

earlier, P~l)ini'srules are set au " d formation IS ren . ,

b t rule rn wor, .' I devices·'

rule in relation to a. su sequen. rnber of specla '. '

. f . h r served by a nu . d i a speCial

unnecessary. Economy IS . urt e _ '. . are arrange In

. l' ted by PaQ.l1u . h tatement

the distinctive sound units IS '. • tly involved in t e s .

.. h h e sounds Jam . . id d by the inter-

order, bringing toget er t os . f rther divi ec l f

' ' ences are u. h succesSIOn 0

of certain rules. These sequ, tively so t at a ' .

. d demarca , h rker followmg

position of sound un.lts use h first sound and t e n:a. d b 011,

sounds can be abbreViated to t e .' (n) a i u can be In. dicate . Y, '11

uence a , U .' , b ed to mean a.

the last. Thus from the seq, . (e) ac can e us , . . f

I (11) at au, . 1). 29 This type 0

and from a i u (~) r. e 0 care r and I, r,e8pectlve y. fers to all

vowels' (r and I stand for vo 1 atieal elements; sup re ers '

.'. .' . d d to gramm . at endings.

abbreviation 19 exten edt" to all verbal. person bi is his final

di s an ttl, Y of ver rage I '

nominal case en rng le of paQini'seconom. hat a (which

A rather famous examp 'a a', that lS to say t . ~

- . which takes the form . e ualitative equivalent of a, so

sutra (8.4.68), . 6,1,101) as th q . omically stated

had been treated (e.g. In l coalescence could be econ

. 1 of \,owe

that the sandh, ru e

148 CHAPTER SIX

as i~i = i, U~U = ii, a-a = a) is in fact a closer, more central vowel

sound.I? ,

. , d ' f 'I' . I' . t today zero representahon

A descriptive ' evrce . arru tar to mguis s, .

of an element or category, is owed directly to Panini. Apparently , . d . egular at the more Irregular forms may be rna. e to appea.r more r . . . f '

abstract levels of representation. and analysis, by the ~umpuon 0 a

, h"" th no overt exponent

morpheme represented by a zero morp , l.e. WI , d

. , , .. E I'} noun plurals inclu e

III the phonic material, Thus since most ng IS 1 .

.. . . I lik h 'P as a plural (all

an overt morph, usually a suffix, examp es e s ee

be analysed as being IJi:p/-0. f

' . . 1 t re of a noun orrn

Panini sets up as the minimal grammatlca struc 1I .'

. . ffi' fl.' 1 ffi 1 most noun fOrl115

the sequence rect-i-stem su x-j-m exiona su x, nr

each of these elements can be linked to actual phonetic segments as

. . 1'h . bh~' m sharing (ac.::usa-

their exponents, but not ill all nouns. us m - aJa , . al

tive singular), -bhiij- represents the root, bhaj-, a~d -am th~ ~:el' inflexional suffix. Panini's rules for such nouns specify a descriptr d Y earlier segment v representing the stem-forming suffix (3.2,62), an .a . .. . hat i t ay deletes It later rule depnves this v of overt representatIon, t at IS 0 S

or represents it by zero (6,1.67), ", '. dern

Many different uses have been made of the zero concept. m.rno. linguistics; some have protested against its excessive .exploItatiOn, sed

h - ' ally analyse

t ereare forms In many languages that are most economic. ." .,

by means of a. zero element. AU of these uses derive from PalJm~ s fi,rst known application of this device; the most PiiQinian example outs~de Sanskrit is de Saussure's analysis of Greek nominative 'case forms hke phlOx (/phI6ks/), flame, in which /pb16g_ / represents the root, /-s/, the nominative singular suffix; and the stem formative (as in hippos (}hIppo-s/), horse) is represented by a zero suffix (fphl6g-0-sf).31

The impact of the work of Panini and the other Indian linguists oll

S kritsr di . E' 'h' Two

ans nt stu res in . urope from 1800 was deep and far-reac mg. ,

of the earliest Sanskrit grammars published in English, W. Carey s Grammar of the Sungskri't langu.age (Serampore, 1806) and c .. Wilkins's Grammar of the SanskTl:ta latlgllage (London, '1808) pay tribute to t~e work of their Indian predecessors, which they had studied with the aid of living Sanskrit pundits in India.>s

Concentration on the historical aspects of linguistic studies during the nineteenth century, itself the immediate result of the discovery by Europeans of the Sanskrit language and its relationships with the classical and modern languages of Europe, had the effect of delaying the full appreciation of Indian grammatical concepts and methods in

149

O~ MODBRN TIMBS

THE EVE ..

. . bts were influential

b . honetics the Indian lOS1g d practice

descriptive work, ut 10 P f both theory an'

, 1" d development 0

in the snmu anon an .

, teenth-

throughout the century. " it ment to early nine "

I. . the pnme mci e . OpltlOUS

The study 'Of Sans nt was k B t it came at a pr '. d

. d hi torical wor. u d thi ough an

century comparative an 5 .' F Dante anwar, r . d .t

time and to a Europe prepared for it. . romd attempts had been rna e a

. disconnecte "between

after the Renaissance, various , t ted compansons .

d t h'storicaHy onen a b en seen In

linguistic history an a 1 .' holarship as has e . r

languages; but the bulk of lingUlstIc sCh description and analYS1S °d

d b directed at t e.. 1- ations an

earlier chapters, ha een nd other app ic "

. he paedagogy a h f language ,

languages. synchrOniC t eery, . . d h 'philosoP· yo·

, 1 1 be calle· t e in human

approaches to what can oose y .-king of language .

, t· nd the wor. .

general theories of the p ace a , g

"was turnm

affairs, , however, speculatlon a . 'fhe

During the eighteenth centu!) uch . rather general W y, , ble

, thoug In a f' concelva

towards historical questions, d the reach 0 an~ d ople

hi] for ever beyon . 11 mtnde pee

origin of language, W I e ~ f inated linguisuca y t recorded

linguistic science, has alway:s asfc s of attention through~ulde5t' i.e.

, 'ff f has been a ocu - -er the 0 ' •

and III di erent orrns . ., . ttempt to dISCO'> (PhrygHl.D

, h f Egypt sa· tterance

history. Psammetic us 0 dl bv recording ~n U hless environ-

the original, language allege lll) brought up III a speec . onages and bekos, bread) from a ch.ildcare .u ,~ r tales, told of other ~el~teenth cen-

f Qther SUUl 11 . k of the erg h

ment i.s a forerunn. er o: l' . istic th .. in cr.s 'd t answer t e

B everal mgu d d rrte 0 ,

other lang.uages"J3 ut s tries aske an language and ItS

ff E ropean coun f hnman 't

tury in di erent U h beginnings 0 d of laJlguage as 1

, . 1 bet\veen t e . the see 5· '"

question, what ay and ho\~ 'an's prehistory.

sent form, own In m f

obviously daborate pre. ld have been 5. b erved formS 0

. , " ' 1 urnes cou , of the 0 s ""

was known 10 hlstonca· ical planations. . "les of Imgul.5tlC

1 ' tone' ex.· , - 1 ponclp d '

Men further sought u,s posedly u11lVefSa tic historical stu .~

d WIth sup the systema , nd

words in accor ance " far from . I grew up In a

'1, 11 thlS ,,,a5 ges sue 1 as '".

development. \'Vhle a. d families of lan~ua d by the increasing '110\\-

'fi d detcrnune . OUr15he . C he xrutnd-

of speci c an . . it was n '. ages or tnc c. r-

,'. t century, d'. overed iangu

dominated the nex ' , t of ne\.,.ly I:SC.. and trade.

ledge, al. beit often partla , Ionization, misslOln5, {ions of the Or1!P. n ~d

f E ropean co t ex P ana . 1 species

ing world 0 u . 51'1.' thought-~U . sidered as a sing e .'

Att~mpts at senou - in manktnd, con, al;st persuasions charae-

f language , . - t and rallon -k'ng well

development 0 . f the etnpJnClS r r with those WOI 1 .

uni~ed philosop~ers 0 nth century an~ ear I~ement of its later years and

" f he elghtee . RomantiC mO"

terisuc 0 t ationahst ..

within the counter-r

150 CHAPTER SIX

the turn of the century, This is not surprising, since it is in language that men both communicate the collectively accumulated knowled,ge, argument, and principles of reasoning, such as were held in so h~~h esteem bv men of the rationalist Enlightenment, and, equally. gne expression to the emotions and individual sentiments on which the Romantics laid such stress, Vernunftmemch, the man of reason, and Gefiihlsmemch. the man of feeling, realize themselves through the resources of their language,

Half-way through the eighteenth century two French philosophers discussed the origin and early development of human speech. !~ 174h E, B. de CondilJac devoted the second part of his Essai sur l'ortgme. de~ connoissallces humainesH to language, and in 1755 Rousseau treated .thl.' same topic more briefly in part of his Discourse on the origin oj inequahty, making favourable mention of Condillac's viewS,35 A later .work published posthumously in 1782 was his essay on the ongm of

Ianguages,J6 .

Condillac wrote within the rationalist-empiricist tradition, relying a good deal on Locke's theory of knowledge. whereas Rousseau looked forward to the Romantic movement that was to follow; indeed, in many respects he can be said to have been one of its heralds, Their conceptions of the genesis of language were very similar, Language originated in deicticand imitative gestures and natural cries, but since gestur~s were less efficient as .comtnunicative signals the phonic element In human language became dominant, as specific sound sequences were semantically associated with existents and phenomena and 'as the pow~r of human thought increased" Condillac envisaged a mixed stag~ In which spoken verb forms were accompanied by gestures indicating time reference, these latter subsequently replaced by vocal symbols utter-ed after the verb itself and finally. in the stage reached by Latin, agglutmated to it,37 Rousseau suggested an almost deliberate agreement to make this substitution from gesture to speech on the lines of the social contrac t, J 8

Both Condillac and Rousseau considered that abstract vocabulary and grammatical complexity developed from an earlier individual concrete vocabulary with very few grammatical distinctions or constraints: and both regarded reliance on tonal contrasts in the manner of Chinese as-a survival of a primitive feature, and likewise the attention paid to the intonation of dedamatory speech in classical antiquity,J9 and both considered poetry to have sprung from chanting as the earliest literarv form of languagt>, On this, hOWcyer, their different philosophical am-

MODERN TIMES nlE EV!:! OF

pared Latin

dill d'spassionately com n

tudes revealed themselves, Con I act, al e judgment as betwee

and French oratory, and refused. to. express a.~ '~~ly free word order and

. " h ' mmaucjU· , d 40

the stylistic merits of Latin ';It Its gra 'd more fixed wo.rd ?r er.

French with its, more analytic structure,. an h 'U. pposed vivacity and

d .". dint e s. h d not

Rousseau on the other han rejoice " when poetry a .,

" f human language, bohze

passion of the earlier stages 0 ,,'t'ng' unable to sym id

." 'd before wn 1, , f ch ha

been chilled into reasoning, an , al inflexions 0 spee , f

itch diff s and the voc ' l' liness 0

the stress and pitch I erence, . ated the iveu

ion' and enerv 'h racter

substituted 'exactitude for express change their c a

, .. " 1 ages have to d m of the

language itself: • All written angu, , ' ' ho could rea

. " 1 't '41 Rousseau, w ' , u1d also

and lose vigour In gaming can y , 'd ' "I government, co di

d b rop erty an . crvi proso ic,

noble savage uncorrupte y p. . ,', these are sonorous, f

' bl . freedom ' d f orn a ar.

write of' languages favoura. e to r he d and understoo r ., 42

hi h can be ear, . room .

harmonious languages, w tC . , . of the drawmg.

desi d for the buzzmg f 'he century U1

Our lau!;uages are esrgne , ., h ,cond half or t , d bv

d ' t during t e se 'Instance .

The widesprea mteres . " f language 1S r-

' the ongm 0 ' ay answe '

resolving problems concernmg .' d' in 1769 for an ess 1 uage

the prize offered by the Prussian Aca emy . olved, unaided, a?g ,

" could have ev 'Th' enqUlry was

mg the questions whether man h rent about It, IS d ag ainst

dif how e Vi nts an

as it was known then, an I so , tisfactory state me h the COID-

' " thitherto unsa, 754 t at .

m part a reaction agams " n of Silssmileh 1n I . lained as the

the scientifically hopeles~ assertio . ages could only be~xp Rousseau on plelity and perfect orderlngo! la~g~ew also ,expr,essed . Y b. Plato. and direct gift of God to manklll~' a vf language. hmted at tsY in the Old

di 'n 'dance "In the evolutIOn 0 11 'cal acCQUn

VIe gUl ., 1 ytho og

" f traditiona m , , h

found in a number 0 von him t e

h 43 th Academy"

Testament and elsew ere" 's put by e tber den UTSPrung

Herder's solution to the questlOn his Abhandlun~ U 'at feeling (he

'hd'n177zas dWlthgre.

prize and was publis e ,I , in reat haste an of his opimons ?n

der Sprache.44 It was wntten y;ars before some rher academic pnze had in fact set down a few 45) Probably few 0 ks or exhibit so

' , b of essays . , tion mar

language in a. num er exclama

,. 'so many ,. ,1 . age

compOSitIOns contain .. .. d thought;angu

irnpassi:oneda. rhetoric. bJ'lity. of language anhinkiOg, <10 The c,lose

' epara f h man t . f

Herder asserted the lOS d the form 0 U d been a commonplace 0

is the tool the content, ~t and language ~a from Aristotle to the

' n thoug r er wnters . f l nguage

connection betwee , 'ty but ear I ., hi dependence oa ,

phi1~sophy since an:~;u;r~ted the hi~~.: a~sumption of the common

modistae had taken d bstraction. Her e '

, inki an a

on prior thi eng

CHAPTER SIx

origin and parallel development of both together through successive stages of growth and maturity was rather new i and he stated that, since language and thinking were interdependent, the thought patterns and the popular literature of different peoples could only properly be understood and studied through their own languages.s" Such opinions had been ,expressed before, but at the beginning of the European and especially of the German Romantic era, and with the forces of European nationalism about to become a dominant theme of nineteenth-century ~ol,itics, the assertion of the individuality of a nation's speech and its mt~ma:e bonds with national thought, national literature, and national s,ohd:~n~ was readily appreciated and initiated a: continuing trend of l~g~lst~c theory, Sapir may be right in attributing much of Humboldt's distinctive thought on language to Herder's inspiration and if this is so bot~ the adherents of Whorfian theories and the g~nerative grammariana today can each trace links back to this formative philosopher of language,4B

Herder answered the question on the pnonty of language or of

thought hy sa '. th ' .' '

, ymg at SLOce each depended on the other for Its exist-

ence the two had a com ,. d manki d - 1

- rnon origm an mankind had advance ill eacn

b! ~qual stages, developing a faculty uniquely possessed by man as

distinct from all the i f h ' . h

, rest ate animal kingdom, The first step was t e

abstractIon and rec '. f , I

ogmtlOn 0 a recurrent entity with its own relative Y

constant and d" : . '. .

,. . lstlOctlve charactenshcs from the' whole ocean of expen-

ence ~ 49 and at the s' , , . - H

arne time its designation by a vocal symbol. . e

assumed that hearing . h . d

d . hi was t e .. sense whose data were first isolated an

name In t S way and th 1- .

bi d' B" ,. e amb was hailed as 'the bJeeter' ('. Ha r Du

. ist as lockende P $0) F -

tl '.. d' ." rom the vocal symbolization of things by

ItHr au nary charaer - ,

id d b enStics mankind moved outwards to the data

prOVI e y the other se H '

centrality· of th di nses, erder s arguments in support of the

e au ltOry se dure Ii

they stand h h nse may en ure little examination today as

. - ) ut t e phonaestl ti . '

wherein visual d h ieuc component of so many vocabularies

an, ot er feature (I' I . , )

manifestly corrcla.t ith ..' s. Itt eness, splkm. ess, nearness., etc,

e wit certain typ f

support to his hypothesis s IT· es 0 sound feature, lends some

Iary' sz one largely.. fi '. d. .he first.word stock was a "simple vocabu-

• can ne to obse bl b '

after lexical diversity d _ .. .. ,:a e,. emgs and events, and there-

aocumulating treasure anf· gr~atJcal dIfferentiations grew with the . •. 0 men s thought

ThIS h ypotheticai reoonst' •

ruct.J.on of the h' - .

its obvious naiveties of exnr , . . pre rstory of speech, despite

... preSSlon IS as d '

of events that lie beyond the teach 'of _ gO? as many. other probmgs

. sClentxfic observation, In particu-

THB I!;VE Of MODERN TIMI'S

153

·1' . alk on the origin of language

lar it was a distinct advance on some ear ier t , mate in

, , h f h w did language ong

that had put the question m t e arm, 0 the time of

, '11 h t he was known at

man considered III a ot er respecs as .' .., h

asking and differing only by the lack of aruc~late speecf ' ll1anguages,

, h di 1 enetic theory 0 a

Herder retained te tra rtiona monog h t 'cted time

, . ff ed from tne res ri

as of all cultures; and his theory su er .. ,,' renee on the

, h h t ry to man s eX1S

perspective allotted in the erg teent cen u , t' cs of the

during charactens I

earth, with a consequential attempt to see en , v 'lst'lng in the

, " languabes eA

early stages of language in alleged < pnmltlve _ that the verb

present, This carried with it such silly suggestIOnS -d lasses (in fact

. , . . ong the war c

enjoyed temporal pnonty of emergence am 1 are distin-

- , 1 t least two c asses

word class can have no meamng un ess a - . .' ti n with the

, . d b t ssed hIS ssser to

gUlshed In a language); and Her er ut re. 53

, . 1 ild' use of language,

equally fallacious analogy with the C 11 S h d id that he

'ting when e 1,

It is less of a reproach to Herder, wrt ..' whose specu]a-

h dern writers rn '11

resorted to such arguments t an to rna . analogies stJ

, h h arne outworn

lions into the prehistory of speec t ese s

make their unmerited appearance, , movements and

- I' d the RomantiC hi

Herder lay between the l"atlOna 1St an , 'ficance to IS

. h hi gives great sigru •

came under the influence of bot ; t IS 54 His own theory ot

writings on history as well as those on language, . d was not out of

, . ately expresse , -

the ongin of language, though passion, I b the time the new 5

key with rationalist thinking, I.,nterestlOg Y'h' Yess3'1.r he had moved

, for IS J' 'h t

r'eached him that he had won the prize hi g but happy w1th w a

further towards the Romantics and was anyt rn . .

he had written.» , al philosophical theory ~f

, f the UOlvers . J s Harn~

A prominent representative 0, h century was. arne , -I'

, the elghteent d umversa

grammar in England during , . nitlg language at: . . , . d

hi I nQll1ry concer b assoCiate

whose Hermes or a philosop Ica e .. , thought can e , ,

, 51 56 Barns s 't 1 expOSitIOnS

grammar was published in 17' , - .. vhile conunen a .

b id c Platorusts, \ . the rnain on

with the so-called Cam n g b d themselves III II d

Ii amma!' ase 1 d very we rea

Of. universal rationa 1St gr . ' telian scho a. an h h-Io-

., h as an AnslO· A ' t rle for tne P I

Descartes, Harris, woW , ' looked to ris 0 . is h d to

, . 1 . d hterature,. lists HarrtS a

In ancient philosop.y an Like all umversa f . 'ular

- 'f grammar, . . I di tier,ences 0 par tIC

sophieal foundatIons or , di "dual structura I all' 57 In his

di ishb the in lV1 tial to them ' .

istinguish en.veen . '1 S that are eSsen . d are related

nnclP ell sely ; wor s

languages and • those P I d Aristot e co, f

caning he fol owe _ d language is 'a system .0

theory of word m . b conventlO[1 an . d word as

to what they designa:e Y bv compact'.slI Sentence an .

, significant J

articulate: VOiceS

CHAPTER SIX

universals are defined in Aristotelian terms as, respectively, a I compound quantity of sound significant, of which certain parts are themselves also significant', and a 'sound significant" of which no part is itself significant', 5 9

Harris's. system of grammar requires two 'principals', nouns (illduding pronouns) or 'substantives', 'significant of substances', :111(1 verbs or "attributives ', 'significant of attributes', 60 Verbs include what are formally distinguishable as verbs proper, participles, and adjecti\:cg; this is "et)" much in agreement with Plato and Aristotle on the rhema (pp. 26-7, above), Adverbs are a special type of attributives, being attributives of attributives, or second order attributives, Apart from the I priocipals ', languages distinguish two 'accessories', which lack independent meaning and may be compared to Aristotle's syndesmoi (except for his inclusion of personal pronouns among them), divided into' definitives ' (articles and Some pronominal words), which construct with a single word, and conjunctions (conjunctions and prepositions), which construct with (\\'0 or more words.s- Unlike the Greek gramruariahs , but following the Latin practice, Harris recognized [nrerjections as a separate component of Janguages, though not a part of speech in the same way as the others. 6~

. While b~sing his theory of universal grammar on Aristotelian doctrine, Barns was, unlike Aristotle, well aware of and interested in the surface differences between various languages ; but just because the sam,e funct~on, as he considered it, was served by case inflexions in Latin and by prepositional phrases in English (Bnit'i, .of Brutus), one must look more deeply for the identification of those universal categories ~f grammar and relations which alone can give significance to the purdy tormal,grammars of particular languages, 6;

In, his theory of meaning Harris regarded the' principal' words, that

had mdependent meaning ,. '1 " I'

. ,as pnrnan y, essentially and Immediate y

the symbols of general id . d .

. . . 1 cas,. an only secondarily and Via these

ge~eralld~as the sy~bols of particular ideas, 64 He defended the concept of innate Ideas against the PalE' , " , d

I· , . I hi , . rev ent nghshemplrlclst .attltude, an

a_ong WIt 1 IS mSlstence on ' 1

' f . , umvers. a grammar he considered that the

capacity 0 mankind to frame 1.1' 1

., ,. .. '. ntversa or general ideas, of which words

"ere the signs, Was certalnl}, God- .. ,6 A -, id

. gn:en, 5 s a philosopher he pal

most attentlon,tola:nguage as the rn .e f' , . . ,

ans 0 expressing I at proposi-

tions; but while he linked his theory f 1 ' oglc. d

. h hilo hi ... 0 anguage With Aristotle an

wrt p osop ical Universalism in a nu b f . . d

tn ueve haracteri ,J • m er 0 ways he looked forwar

o c aractensuc of th h

e t ought of the later eighteenth

THE EVE OF MODERN TIMES

centun .. Indeed his use of the Aristotelian distinction between ohonic

'J" , f t the p 10mc

and form (hyle (07\"T1) and eldos (ElSo!»)) WIth. re ercncc 0 he i rt-

' '.' f eh foreshadows t e Impo .

substance and the semantic function 0 spec k f \~T 'on

"r. t in the war 0 ',,'

ant doctrine of inn ere Spree 1:1 O1~m set au I .

Hl,!mooldt earlv in the nineteenth c,entury .. ,0,6 , 1 agc

. f ' Is in the usc ot angu .. ,

In stressing the importance 0 uruversai . L i'

'. . - 1·1 .ith Herder who pralseC us

Hams agreed With Condillac as we as WI , ..'

h . 1 tl e faculty of ahstractlOfi

work 67 in linking the faculty of specc WIt 1 1 '. • "

, . , h and pcrslstmg entitles

and the recognition of recurrent p enomena , hi rrt of his

, . dOll it d Locke In t IS par . .'

resembling one another, Con 1 ac ct e '. 'gid!"

I' Ideas though hIS more n •

treatise; J .ockc attributed genera ity to 1 ., ,~. d tl t O'cnera]itv

. , . k I' d H urne consioerc ta e- -

cmpmcist successors, Bel' e e) an .. '. I w -J not ideas,68

. .I I ' t ms I e 0 \\ 01 S,

could he properly predicted on y in cr ., ' . "'ficance to be

,., 'h' ition of the slgm

Yirh Herder, Harris shared t e recogm I " Th h he erected

. " f 1 language oug

seen in the individual peculiarities 0 cac 1 • . h'l hical gram-

I'· " d lvi iversals as a p IOSOP

lIS linguistic theory on un er )m,g umv ,. ". t li flanO'uagcs and

. I the WdlVI( ua ltv 0 Eo

marian must, he laid more werg It on, ' d life - f the people \\"110

their intimate connection with the history an ite o ')S had done

1 '1 I ical gramman31' ,

speak them than some previous p 11 DSOP 1 • . d most charactcr-

hr'sHc attltl1 cs

and in this he looked forward to t e IOglll assagc he enlarged

• • , 69 In an eloquent P k

rstic of the Romantic movement. .: "ccllences of Gree .

, .' I' I of the twin ex . .

ann Illustrated his theme In 11S ell ogy .' ely fitted to gl\'C

thinkers and writers and of the Greek language unrqu .

them expressicn.?" , rr than it might otberwise

Harris's Hennes is somewhat bettcr knO\\kn b Horne Tooke, TO.D. ke

, h et for attac Y b f

have been because It was t e targ t . he wrote anum er 0

, . . , . d involvemen 5, . bscri

Was a man of Wide interests an , -rin an appeal for su scnp-

, I d leading part 1 . ,

political pamphlets, and p aye a I.' t killed bv British troops at

. . A . can co olliS s • h ,.

iions in aid of relatives of I~erJ, he illibcral manner of aut on;lcs

Lexington in 1775 for which III t, . fined him £200 and un-

, , . George's Justices litv

engaged in warfare King , d J' later gout to the poor qua 1 .'

. (1 attnbute us u« ) A· '1' kc was a

prisoned him for a year ie "Bench prison, s ,00 .

of the claret available ill the ~]fidg s position in what today would b,c

H 'OCCuplC a . nent 71 and It

natural rebel and. arrts ..' vas an obVIOliS opponen, '

h t' Harns \ . 1 tl antago

called 'the cstablis men : " b t language was VIO en y -

happened that Tooke'S thm~l~lgs~p~~cal grammar such as had been

do. of p,ll 0

ntstic to the tra IUOD .

expounded by Harris, . l Hanis for his ouscurity of language, HI

It was not difficult to [aul 1f_contradictions, as when, stmgglmg

. d for apparent se

several places, an .

CHAPTER SIX

with the semantics of some of his • accessories' (a problem on which linguistic theory is still unsettled), Harris declared that conjunctions shared the attributes both of words having signification and of those having no signification of their own,72 nor to criticize his erection of an alleged universal system of grammar on the basis of an inadequate factual knowledge of languages, as when he allowed a place for prepositions, but not for postpositions such as are found with comparable syntactic and semantic functions in Hungarian and Turkish (and in several other major languages not cited by Tooke).Jl Harris also opened his defences to Tooke's onslaught when he declared that a 'distant analogy' determined that the sun and moon are naturally assigned nouns of masculine and feminine genders respectively, in defiance or ignorance of the facts of the Germanic languages and of Russian. 74

Tooke's ideas on language are set out in a number of dialogues ill which he gives himself a part, somewhat loosely and inconsequentially ~ut t01?ether in E.'pea pteroema or the diversions of Puriey,75 first published In two volumes in 1786 and 1805. Tooke's style is often pungent and :acy; the following passage from a footnote (typically attacking Harris and seeking to explain av v ay his undoubted estimation) may be cited as characteristic of the author and his writing: 'For which [Harris's reput ti ] h ' g

, - a Ion. owever I can easily account; not by suppOSl!I

that Its doctrine gave any more satisfaction to their minds who quoted it than to mine· b t b . . ., b e ' u ecause, as Judges shelter their knavery 'y prec -

dents, so do scholars their ignorance by authority: and when they cannot reason it is af . did' t . ' , . s rer an ess IsgracefuI to repeat that nonsense a

secon~ hand which they would be ashamed to give originally as their own,' ,6

Tooke's approach t·, c I

d ' 0 grammar IS partly in line with modern torrna

octnnes; gender for hi . .t

im IS, as a grammatical category prirnari y an

exponent of syntacf' 'h

I IC constructIOns involving nominals in t ose

.anguages wherein it ap 77 H'

b 'd· pears. . IS theory however in so far as he can

c S3J. to have fo . 1 d "

and diach Lane- ate a theory, shows a total mixture of synchrony

rony, anguage as \ k . h d f

natural .' ve now It, . e declared. develope rO.1l1

CrJocs (a theory put ot t b h ' h h

identifi~d'l '. t " . U'. Y at· ers in this period), with which e

~ n erJeChons ('th d .,

downfall of int " e OmlD1on of speech is erected upon the

erJections' 78) Fo thO

marians of wh H'· r IS reason he chided other gram-

, om arns was h £

aduu. 'tting them as f one, tough with reservations, ror

a part 0 speech

Tooke admitted only two ess :

verb ,q, everv othe I f entIat parts of speech, the noun and the

, , r c ass 0 word' h ,

IS t e tes1J!t of 'abbreviation or

ERN TIMES THE EVE OF MOD

157

thly He laid

. de to run more smoo .

corruption, by which language IS rna .. and gave a good deal of

great weight on this concept of abbrevI.auonf, . -ildly incorrect, to .. try

, . t b . t much 0 It "'1 f

detailed etymology, some corree . u . , ' "'ere the result 0

, , d b d preposltlOnS ",

to show that conjunctions, .. a ver s, an.. I d Adi ectives and pa . .rtl.-

'1 d and verb wor s.. J ..

abbreviated or mutt ate noun .. ivall (' di ctived") by posmon

, rerb d diectivally a Je -

ciples were nouns and ver s use a J. .

and syntax, 80 d Tooke regarded

h t - and afterwar s, 1.

Like others in the eighteent cen ury f ments of ear ier

lin words as rag h.

inflexional and derivational e ements . . . d Again some of IS

, . d t the root wor . • ..f I Independent words agglutmate ? lish adjectival suffi.x -i»

identifications were correct, as With the Eng 1 -rong as when he

t avagant Y w: . , I

(beautiful, etc.), but others were e~ r . Ius b- (= Greek bou ~

derived Latin ibO. I shan go, from l~, to I ~~alr hear, from audi(te), to

(~OIJA-), to wish) plus (eg)o, I, and audlam, .

.. t hear)!Sl . ' I

hear, plus am(o), I love (I.e. I want 0 b 'e) that morphologlca

, I'll .(p I 5.0 a 0" d t

The view also found in Condi ac m, , , ' of indepcn cn

, . f the agglutmatiOn "0

variation in word forms anses rom. .": ber of formatlons J

. '1 idence ill anum d rder

words is borne out by hlstonea ev.. d bt after the war 0 .

Ice no ou hand

languages, We can trace the e~a escen " I shall give, in Fren~ ,

became fixed, of doniire habeo to dOllnerm, d the suffixed articles. of

, , , R ce languages; an 'd f om ear her

Similar forms in other oman 'e denve r

, , d f Romanian ar iatel fter the

the Scandmavlan languages an 0 iti on immedl:ate y a -.

ing a pOSI 1 . 'II Romantan

demonstrativ. e. pronouns o.ccuPYI I.. L~tin lupus t e>· h

'd (I cal ate ",. d" the muc '

nouns to which they referre 0 be seen to ay in .

... t ge can dega:tlve

lupul, the wolf), A sort of half-,":~Y sal~ fixed pronouns. an h ~ freelv

more tightly bound and po. SJtlon, Y as compared With t elrh'call~

b 1 pressJOns . d rthograp· I J

elements in French ver a ex .' art1y recognize 0 bal ly (e.g.

. . L ti This IS p . 'postver

moblle antecedents in a m. hen occurnng d 't to us l).

. - f h forms W _J. /0 sen 1

m the hy. phonation 0 suer . Italian maTl-Ualece, J can be

, t us I cp.· 11 morpho og1'

mon.trez-le~nous, shoW.1t 0 , pose that a . .de·ntify· the

, " . imnli ti tQ sup . ttempt to I

But It is naively simp IS ic .'U more so to a . f ntemporary or

ascribed to this process, and 5tbl ound morphemes 0 co

.. . .. 1 f all the .

mdependent ongma S 0 f T oke's hist:orica.l

" d quacy 0 .0 .

att,ested languages. . d acy or loa e f· h parts of speech

- the a equ . do· t e

Moreover, wha~ever . d derivations, an his argu ments are

, infiexl ns an .. . in these,

explanatIon of 1 exio b as origtnattng 1 d by the sixteenth-. and

d ver 5 d rstoO .' .

other than nouns an, Jearly un e . of their definiticn

, h uesllon, c ,_1. uranunanans, -. fail

Irrelevant to t e q .. al Engh: ... b' f language. HIS ure

mplnc . cion 0 a tar .

seventeenth-centu.ry e nchronic desenp

and classification rn a sy

IS8 CHAPTER SIX

to grasp the point of descriptive grammar weakens t,he force of some otherwise merited criticisms of Harris and of other writers on language, In dealing with the semantics of fairly restricted ranges of words s,uch

'I thei ti c system as an arncu-

as prepositions one must ana yse t, err seman 1 "

' , :, , hi . hi di of the spatial relations

lated whole "\'likms saw t IS rn rus ; iagram or : ""

' '. , . 1" k . tif bly criticized him

expressed by Enghsh prepositIOns; 00 e unjus 1 a I f words

over this, on the ground that • he overlooked the etyma ogy ° d ' , . in which their secret lay',H That etymology is popularly co~fus:

" " iustificati f r this confusion In

with correct semanne analysJs 1S no just] cation 0

what purports to be scholarly investigation. 'h

Harris's linguistic work was highly valued by another elght~ent century British linguist, James Bumett (Lord Monboddo), a promln~nt . . h I' "'fi 1'[ f Ed b gh who wrote a SIXtiguremt e,'lteraryandsclentl, Cleo IH"Uf, ,.' " ided

volume treatise OJ the origin and progr,essoj iangllage,83 which Inclu e extensive accounts of the classical languages and some modern Euro-

L'k H is Monpean languages and a discourse on literary style, Ie arr.,

boddo did not wish to deny divine intervention in the creation of ~o wonderful and complex a faculty as Ianguage,84 but he turned ~1S attention more towards its historical development than to the assertion of linguistic universals, He saw the intimate connexion between human Society and human speech, but only envisaged a unilateral dependence between them, in that society may have existed for many ages bef~re the invention of language, hut this invention depended on the p'no~ existence of society, He was quite prepared to admit the polygene,s~s, 0 language, and thollgh 'primitive languages' were said to lack facilities for abstract expressions, l\Ionboddo asserted that man must h~VC: t:ormed i.deas of universals before he invented the words to symbohz~ them.8• Herder's conception of the parallel origin and development of

speaking and thinking is much more plausible. ,

M b . Ii ists

on oddo was among an unfortunately large number ot mgu

Who have thought that the origin of language could be partly brought

r h b h . . id of

to. I~ .t , Y t e study of certain existing languages, seekingevie ence

pmrlltlVlty and the continuance of eaily characteristics in the languages ~f~~t~,aUy P'i"iti~, ond ilIi"",,, peopl es, The," ar gum en ts that pnmlt1ve ]an.guageScontain Htde abstract vocabulary and an madequate gram.matical organization are also seen in Herder, who knew and appro"ed of Monboddo's Work and saw the first volume translated into German in l784,86 They are also found in later Writers with less and less justification as Jinguistic descriptions of remote Ian~uages grew in numbers and in quality,

159

DEll.N TIMES THE EVE OF MO

, the exist-

, d elopment in ., .

r istic under ev . sinaularh

Monboddo's evidence of . mgu hi . and its possessor was .0 and

. . . for a t mg , Hungarian

ence of one word expressions I k no further than forma-

' h needed to 00 , 1. the same

unfortunate, R7 SI. nee ae to find precise y " h kiitelli,

E· n languages. fi ' ,Ftnnls

Finnish among uropea 'f .t "'iragU1lk, our m\erf, l.tel'ates and

' 1 'b ~ my 00. ", 0 pre 1

lion (Hunganan a a~, , d of the languages d 's allegation

my hand); and descriptive ,stu Y\"ay bears out ]"Ionbo~ oJ. classes and

' ,. eople In no ,. of wor

culturallv pnrrutrve p ) differentiation e hand in

. -ithout t le . the on . ,

that such languages ar~ '\1, • l'mitations are seen ond in Iy defective

' I 88 I,T' linguistic I , .cee 109 d

svntactic ru es. -us f h. Chinese as ex have' rna c.'

. 1 1 age ate. ld not

his dismissal of t te angu , uence they cou. tement that

. h .t III conseq . his sta ,

and his assumption tad on the other !O .. like Wilkins s

' hil hy an 'I phy I

any progress In p IOSOp. " les of phi 050 ,

. , . d upon pnoclp

Sanskrit was forme ". pts at the

"'S9 t ryattem ,

artificial "real character. .' h e"lghteenth-ccn U h t.hinkers I.n

. f d fault Wit, hv is t at '

It is all too easy to ·10 What is notewort y 1 drawn towards

historical study of language, . backgrounds wer~ h history of

' d .'th dn'erse 'herem t e k

different countries an w I of a century '" t was to rna c

n the eve . the eas ,

the history of language 0 . h f li ... ht from

db a flas 0 '" languages, enlivene . y

unprecedented advances,

ULTATION _,

FOR FURTHER CONS . London, 19~3·. von der Anilkl1

, .. anderlt Indm,. . Blltwicklung 80-152',

w, S. ALLEN, Phonetics In. h "t' der Gang.threr. d dition),1969,

h ' ensc aJ '( con e

II. ARENS, Sprac ~UlSS 'burg/Munich se r poona, 19~5· Philolog1'c

l.~ Ge,aet!wart, Frei k. "t gramma , 'talascherl

inS ZUT ... if SanS 11 . if~ und orten

s. I" BELVALK. ... R, ~yste~~ °spraeh~cissenscha , rammarians',

1'. BTh'FEY, Geschichte . h r869, .' in the Sanskrit g

in Deutschland, ~u:t ~nerallingUlStJCS 6

J, BROUCH, "Theories g . 'TPS 1953. r61-7 .

TPS 11951, 27-46. . of mean mg. .. 1930.

~ • Some Indian the~r:de~ Leiden. 1 939k· 't grammar, Calcutta,

' The Tnpa l, ,f sans rz 1933.

K, E, BUISKOOL, The philosoPhy OJ Hindr~s, Calcutta, !11lIaines (Oe,ut'r£',f

r,c, CHAKRAVAR:TI: eculations of ~le des connoirsances It

The linglllsUC sp , l'orlglne

-, . . ESS(il mr, r). 193()'

1:, B, lYE CONDILLAC,. 8 volume . '.. Amsterdam, do t JamJ!s

' l Pans, 179 , , 'r _ammor, . 'Sah-,hufl er s ..

de Cond%l. ac, . on Piinl1l.' s .. ' ,,_ ach~zehlltm J' hil ."'hiD Berne,

St dtes " h· =1 . S hp r OIOy '>

8 FADD£GON, U chphilosoP ttl,-._ I ;chre der prClc

. · Spro LT<"$C z.

O. FUNKE, Zfjr • ($tudien ::UT

Harris's' Bernlts

1927, 5-48).