99.66

anyhow to express the nursery ideas of mother, father, nurse, toy, sleep, &c. Thus while we have our way of using papa and mama, the Chilians say papa for "mother," and the Georgians mama for "father," while in various languages dada may mean father," cousin," "nurse;" tata "father," "son," "good-bye" ! Such children's words often find their way into the language of grown people, and any slight change makes them look like ordinary words. Thus in English one might hardly suspect pope and abbot of having their origin in baby-words, yet this is evident when they are traced back to Latin papa and Syriac abba, both meaning "father."

These nursery words have already come beyond the "natural language" of self-expressive gestures and sounds. From its simple and clear facts we thus pass to the more difficult and obscure principles of "articulate language." On examining English, or any other of the thousand tongues spoken in the world, it is found that most of the words used show no such connection between sound and sense as is so plain in the natural or self-expressive words. To illustrate the difference, when a child calls a pocket timepiece a tick-tick, this is plainly self-expressive. But when we call it a watch, this word does not show why it is used. It is known that the instrument had its name from telling the hours like a watch-man, whose name 'denotes hist duty to watch, Anglo-Saxon weccan, from wacan, to move, wake; but here explanation comes to a stop, for no philologist has succeeded in showing why the syllable wac came to denote this particular idea. Or if the same child call a locomotive engine a puff-puff, this is self-expressive. Grown

people call it an engine, a term which came through French from Latin ingenium, which meant that which is "in-born," thence natural ability or genius, thence an effort of genius,

V

invention or contrivance, and thence a machine. By going farther back and taking the Latin word to pieces, it is seen that the syllables in and gen convey the ideas of "in" and "birth"; but here again etymology breaks down, for why these sounds were chosen for these meanings no one knows. Thus it is with at least nine-tenths of the words in dictionaries; there is no apparent reason why the word go should not have signified the idea of coming, and the word come the idea of going; nor can the closest examination show cause why in Hebrew chay means live, and mêth dead, or why in Maori pai means good and kino bad. It is main| tained by some philologists that emotional and imitative sounds such as have been described in this chapter are the very source of all language, and that although most words now show no trace of such origin, this is because they have quite lost it in the long change of pronunciation and meaning they have gone through, so that they are now become mere symbols, which children have to learn the meaning of from their teachers. Now all this certainly has taken place, but it would be unscientific to accept it as a complete explanation of the origin of language. Besides the emotional and imitative ways, several other devices have here been shown in which man chooses sounds to express thoughts, and who knows what other causes may have helped? All we have a right to say is, that from what is known of man's ways of choosing signs, it is likely that there was always some kind of fitness or connection which led to each particular sound being taken to express a particular thought. This seems to be the most reasonable opinion to be held as to the famous problem of the Origin of Language.

At the same time, what little is known of man's ways of making new words out of suitable sounds, is of great

importance in the study of human nature. It proves that so far as language can be traced to its actual source, that source does not lie in some lost gifts or powers of man, but in a state of mind still acting, and not above the level of children and savages. The origin of language was not an event which took place long ago once for all, and then ceased entirely. On the contrary, man still possesses, and uses when he wants it, the faculty of making new original words by choosing fit and proper sounds. But he now seldom puts this faculty to serious use, for this good reason, that whatever language he speaks has its stock of words ready to furnish an expression for almost every fresh thought that crosses his mind.

CHAPTER V.

LANGUAGE (continued).

Articulate Speech, 130-Growth of Meanings, 131-Abstract Words, 135-Real and Grammatical Words, 136-Parts of Speech, 138Sentences, 139 — Analytic Language, 139-Word Combination, 140 Synthetic Language, 141 - Affixes, 142-Sound-change, 143-Roots, 144-Syntax, 146-Government and Concord, 147Gender, 149-Development of Language, 150.

A SENTENCE being made up of its connected sounds as a limb is made up of its joints, we call language articulate or "jointed," to distinguish it from the inarticulate or "unjointed" sounds uttered by the lower animals. Such conversation by gestures and exclamations as was shown in the last chapter to be a natural language common to mankind, is half-way between the communications of animals and full human speech. Every people, even the smallest and most savage tribe, has an articulate language, carried on by a whole system of sounds and meanings, which serves the speaker as a sort of catalogue of the contents of the world he lives in, taking in every subject he thinks about, and enabling him to say what he thinks about it. What a complicated and ingenious apparatus a language may be, the Greek and Latin grammars sufficiently show. Yet the

more carefully such difficult languages are looked into, the more plainly it is seen that they grew up out of earlier and simpler kinds of speech. It is not our business here to make a systematic survey of the structure of languages, such as will be found in the treatises of Max Müller, Sayce, Whitney, and Peile. What we have to attend to, is that many of the processes by which languages have been built up are still to be found at work among men, and that grammar is not a set of arbitrary rules framed by grammarians, but the result of man's efforts to get easier, fuller, and exacter expression for his thoughts. It may be noticed that our examples are oftener taken from English than from any other tongue. The reason of this is not merely the convenience of using the most familiar words as instances, but that English is of all existing languages perhaps the best for explaining the development of language in general. While its words may in great part be traced to high antiquity, its structure has passed through extreme changes in coming down to modern times, and in its present state the language at once keeps up relics of ancient formations, and has the freest growth actually going on. Thus, in one way or another, English has something to show in illustration of three out of four of the processes known to have helped in the making of language, at any time and anywhere.

As in the course of ages man's knowledge became wider and his civilization more complex, his language had to keep up with them. Comparatively few and plain expressions had sufficed for his early rude condition, but now more and more terms had to be added for the new notions, implements, arts, offices, and relations of more highly organized society. Etymology shows how such new words are made by altering and combining old ones, carrying on old words