The Philosophic Grammar of American Languages, as Set Forth by Wilhelm Part 3

Certainly a language which thus leaves confounded together ideas so distinct as these, is inferior to one which discriminates them; and this is why the formal elements of a tongue are so important to intellectual growth. The Tupis may be an energetic and skillful people, but with their language they can never take a position as masters in the realm of ideas.

The absence of the pa.s.sive in most, if not all, American tongues is supplied by similar inadequate collocations of words. In Huasteca, for example, _nana tanin tahjal_, is translated "I am treated by him;"

actually it is, "I, me, treats he." This is not a pa.s.sive, but simply the idea of the Ego connected with the idea of another acting upon it.

This is vastly below the level of inflected speech; for it cannot be too strenuously maintained that the grammatical relations of spoken language are the more perfect and favorable to intellectual growth, the more closely they correspond to the logical relations of thought.

Sometimes what appears as inflection turns out on examination to be merely adjunction. Thus in the Mbaya tongue there are such verbal forms as _daladi_, thou wilt throw, _nilabuite_, he has spun, when the _d_ is the sign of the future, and the _n_ of the perfect. These look like inflections; but in fact _d_, is simply a relic of _quide_, hereafter, later, and _n_ stands in the same relation to _quine_, which means "and also."

To become true formal elements, all such adjuncts must have completely lost their independent signification; because if they retain it, their material content requires qualification and relation just as any other stem word.

A few American languages may have reached this stage. In the Mexican there are the terminals _ya_ or _a_ in the imperfect, the augment _o_ in the preterit, and others in the future. In the Tamanaca the present ends in _a_, the preterit in _e_, the future in _c_. "There is nothing in either of these tongues to show that these tense signs have independent meaning, and therefore there is no reason why they should not be cla.s.sed with those of the Greek and Sanscrit as true inflectional elements."[24-*]

-- 13. PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF INCORPORATION.

This Incorporative plan, which may be considered as distinctive of the American stock of languages, is explained in its psychological origin by Humboldt, as the result of an _exaltation of the imaginative over the intellectual elements of mind_. By this method, the linguistic faculty strives to present to the understanding the whole thought in the most compact form possible, thus to facilitate its comprehension; and this it does, because a thought presented in one word is more vivid and stimulating to the imagination, more individual and picturesque, than when narrated in a number of words.[25-*]

But the mistake must not be made of supposing that Incorporation is a _creative act_ of the language-sense, or that its products, the compounds that it builds, are real words. Humboldt was careful to impress this distinction, and calls such incorporated compounds examples of _collocation_ (Zusammensetzung), not of _synthesis_ (Zusammenfa.s.sung). On this ground, he doubted, and with justice, the a.s.sertion of Duponceau, that the long words of the Lenape (Delaware) dialect are formed by an arbitrary selection of the phonetic parts of a number of words, without reference to the radical syllables.[25-]

He insisted, as is really the case, that in all instances the significant syllable or syllables are retained.

-- 14. EFFECT OF INCORPORATION ON COMPOUND SENTENCES.

As has been seen, the theory of Incorporation is to express the whole proposition, as nearly as possible, in one word; and what part of it cannot be thus expressed, is left without any syntax whatever. Not only does this apply to individual words in a sentence, but it extends to the various clauses of a compound sentence, such as in Aryan languages show their relation to the leading clauses by means of prepositions, conjunctions and relative p.r.o.nouns.

When the methods are a.n.a.lyzed by which the major and minor clauses are a.s.signed their respective values in these tongues, it is very plain what difficulties of expression the system of Incorporation involves.

Few of them have any true connecting word of either of the three cla.s.ses above mentioned. They depend on scarcely veiled material words, simply placed in juxtaposition.

It is probable that the prepositions and conjunctions of all languages were at first significant words, and the degree to which they have lost their primary significations and have become purely formal elements expressing relation, is one of the measures of the grammatical evolution of a tongue. In most American idioms their origin from substantives is readily recognizable. Frequently these substantives refer to parts of the body, and this, in pa.s.sing, suggests the antiquity of this cla.s.s of words and their value in comparison.

In Maya _tan_ means in, toward, among; but it is also the breast or front of the body. The Mexican has three cla.s.ses of prepositions--the first, whose origin from a substantive cannot be detected; the second, where an unknown and a known element are combined; the third, where the substantive is perfectly clear. An example of the last mentioned is _itic_, in, compounded of _ite_, belly, and the locative particle _c_; the phrase _ilhuicatl itic_, in heaven, is literally "in the belly of heaven." Precisely the same is the Cakchiquel _pamcah_, literally, "belly, heaven"=in heaven. In Mexican, _notepotzco_ is "behind me," literally, "my back, at;" this corresponds again to the Cakchiquel _chuih_, behind me, from _chi_, at, _u_, my, _vih_, shoulder-blades. The Mixteca prepositions present the crude nature of their origin without disguise, _chisi huahi_, belly, house--that is, in front of the house; _sata huahi_, back, house--behind the house.

The conjunctions are equally transparent. "And" in Maya is _yetel_, in Mexican _ihuan_. One would suppose that such an indispensable connective would long since have been worn down to an insoluble ent.i.ty. On the contrary, both these words retain their perfect material meaning. _Yetel_ is a compound of _y_, his, _et_, companion, and _el_, the definite termination of nouns. _Ihuan_ is the possessive, _i_, and _huan_, a.s.sociate, companion, used also as a termination to form a certain cla.s.s of plurals.

The deficiency in true conjunctions and relative p.r.o.nouns is met in many American languages by a reversal of the plan of expression with us. The relative clause becomes the princ.i.p.al one. There is a certain logical justice in this; for, if we reflect, it will appear evident that the major proposition is, in our construction, presented as one of the conditions of the minor. "I shall drown, if I fall in the water," means that, of the various results of my falling in the water, one of them will be that I shall drown. "I followed the road which you described," means that you described a road, and one of the results of this act of yours was that I followed it.

This explains the plan of constructing compound sentences in Qquichua.

Instead of saying "I shall follow the road which you describe," the construction is "You describe, this road I shall follow;" and instead of "I shall drown if I fall in the water," it would be, "I fall in the water, I shall drown."

The Mexican language introduces the relative clause by the word _in_, which is an article and demonstrative p.r.o.noun, or, if the proposition is a conditional one, by _intla_, which really signifies "within this," and conveys the sense that the major is included within the conditions of the minor clause. The Cakchiquel conditional particle is _vue_, if, which appears to be simply the particle of affirmation "yes," employed to give extension to the minor clause, which, as a rule, is placed first.

Or a conventional arrangement of words may be adopted which will convey the idea of certain dependent clauses, as those expressing similitude, as is often the case in Mexican.

-- 15. THE DUAL IN AMERICAN LANGUAGES.

In his admirable philosophical examination of the dual number in language, Humboldt laid the foundation of a linguistic theory of numerals which has not yet received the development it merits. Here he brings into view the dual and plural endings of a list of American languages, and explains the motives on which they base the inclusive and exclusive plurals so common among them. It is, in fact, a species of p.r.o.nominal dual confined to the first person in the plural.

This, he goes on to say, is by no means the only dual in these tongues. Some of them express both the other cla.s.ses of duals which he names. Thus, the Totonaca has duals for all objects which appear as pairs in nature, as the eyes, the ears, the hands, etc.; while the Araucanian equals the Sanscrit in extending the grammatical expression of the dual through all parts of speech where it can find proper application.[27-*]

-- 16. HUMBOLDT'S ESSAY ON THE AMERICAN VERB.

The essay on the American verb translated in the following pages has never previously appeared in print, either in German or English. The original MS. is in the Royal Library at Berlin, whence I obtained a transcript. The author alludes to this essay in several pa.s.sages of his printed works, most fully in his "Letter to M. Abel-Remusat"

(1826), in which he says:

"A few years ago, I read before the Berlin Academy a memoir, which has not been printed, in which I compared a number of American languages with each other, solely with regard to the manner in which they express the verb as uniting the subject with the attribute in the proposition, and from this point of view I a.s.signed them to various cla.s.ses. As this trait proves to what degree a language possesses grammatical forms, or is near to possessing them, it is decisive of the whole grammar of a tongue."

On reading the memoir, I was so much impressed with the acuteness and justness of its a.n.a.lysis of American verbal forms that I prepared the translation which I now submit.

In the more recent studies of the American verb which have appeared from the pens of Friedrich Muller, J. Hammond Trumbull and Lucien Adam, we have the same central element of speech subjected to critical investigation at able hands. But it seems to me that none of them has approached the topic with the broad, philosophic conceptions which impress the reader in this essay of Humboldt's. Although sixty years and more have elapsed since it was written, I am confident that it will provide ample food for thought to the earnest student of language.

_On the Verb in American Languages. By Wilhelm von Humboldt[TN-6]

Translated from the unpublished original. By D. G. Brinton, M.D._

You recently had the goodness to give an appreciative hearing to my essay on The Origin of Grammatical Forms.

I desire to-day to apply the principles which I then stated in general to a particular grammatical point through a series of languages. I choose those of America as best suited to such a purpose, and select the Verb as the most important part of speech, and the central point of every language. Without entering into an a.n.a.lysis of the different parts of the verb, I shall confine myself to that which const.i.tutes its peculiar verbal character--the union of the subject and predicate of the sentence by means of the notion of Being. This alone forms the essence of the verb; all other relations, as of persons, tenses, modes and cla.s.ses, are merely secondary properties.

The question to be answered is therefore:--

Through what form of grammatical notation do the languages under consideration indicate that subject and predicate are to be united by means of the notion of Being?

I believe I have shown with sufficient clearness that a language may have a great diversity of apparent forms, and may express all grammatical relations with definiteness, and yet when taken as a whole it may lack true grammatical form. From this arises an essential and real graduated difference between languages. This difference, however, has nothing to do with the question whether particular languages employ exclusively agglutination or inflection, as all began with agglutination; but in the languages of the higher cla.s.s, it became in its effects on the mind, identical with inflection.

As languages of the higher cla.s.s, one has but to name the cultivated idioms of Asia and Europe, Sanscrit, Greek and Latin, in order to apply to them the above statement. It is still more necessary, however, to understand thoroughly the structure of those languages which are on a lower plane, partly because this will convince us of the correctness of the cla.s.sification, partly because these tongues are less generally known.

It is enough to take up some single leading grammatical relation. I select for this purpose the verb as the most important part of speech, with which most of the others come into relation, and which completes the formation of the sentence, the grammatical purpose of all language--and often embraces it wholly in itself. But I shall confine myself solely to that which makes the verb a verb, the characteristic notation of its peculiar verbal nature. In every language this point is the most important and the most difficult, and cannot be made too clear to throw light upon the whole of the language. Linguistic character can be ascertained through this point in the shortest and most certain manner.

The verb is the union of the subject and predicate of the sentence by means of the notion of Being; yet not of every predicate. The attribute which is united to the substance by the verb must be an energic one, a participial. The substance is represented in the verb as in motion, as connecting the Being with the energic attribute. By means of this representation, and the peculiar nature of the attribute, the verb is distinguished from the mere logical copula, with which it is liable to be confounded if these ideas are not understood. If the verb is explained merely as a synthesis of Being with any other attribute, then the origin of the tenses cannot be wholly derived from one idea, for the idea of time alone would allow only a three-fold distinction. Moreover, in such case the true and efficient nature of the verb is misunderstood. In the sentence, "The man is good," the verb is not a synthesis of the adjective "good" with the substantive, but it is a participial of the energic attribute "to be good," which contains a condition, having beginning, middle and end, and consequently resembles an action. Fully a.n.a.lyzed, the sentence would be, "He is being good." Where the substantive verb stands without a visible predicate, as in the sentence, "I am," then the verb "to be" has itself as the object of a synthesis, "I am being." But as rude nations would find this difficult to comprehend, the verb "to be" is either entirely lacking, as in many American languages, or else it has an original material sense, and is confounded with "to stand," "to give," "to eat," etc., and thus indicates Being as identical with the most familiar occupations.

The subject, the substance represented as in action, may be one independent of the speakers, or it may be identical with one of them, and this ident.i.ty is expressed by the p.r.o.nouns. From this arises the persons. The energic attribute may exert its action in various manners in the substance or between two substances; this gives rise to the forms or cla.s.ses of verbs. Their action must be confined to a given point or period of time. The Being may be understood as definite or indefinite, etc., and in this is the origin of modes. Being is inseparably connected with the notation of time. This, united with the fixation of the point or period of time of an action, forms the tenses. No verb, therefore, can be conceived as without persons and tenses, modes and cla.s.ses; yet these qualities do not const.i.tute its essence, but arise from the latter, which itself is the synthesis brought about by the notion of Being. The signs of these qualities must be made to appear in the grammatical notation of the verb, but in such a manner that they appear dependent on its nature, making one with it.

The energic attribute, which aids in forming the verb, may be a real movement or action, as going, coming, living, working, etc., or merely a qualitative Being, as a being beautiful, good, mortal, or immortal.

In the former case, we have a real attributive verb, in the latter a substantive verb, in which an attribute is considered as at rest, hence as an adjective. Although in both cases the nature of the verb is the same, yet in many languages this difference leads to a corresponding variety in grammatical notation.

In accordance with these ideas culled from universal grammar, the forms of the conjugations in the various languages will now be considered.

I have taken as a basis for this investigation as many American languages as I thought sufficient for the purpose, and as would not make the survey oppressive by their number; but as I do not name all of them, and pay still less attention to pointing out in what other groups of languages the peculiarities named occur, it must be understood that what is here said is not intended as a characterization of American languages. This is reserved for another study.

In order to judge how closely these languages approach grammatical perfection in this point, we must take as our criterion that condition of speech where there is a cla.s.s of words, which possess verbal power, and are at the same time separated by a definite form from all other parts of speech. With reference to this condition as the highest, we must arrange in various grades all other structural forms or paraphrases of the verb.

The notion of Being, which const.i.tutes the basis and the essence of the verb, can be indicated either,

1. As expressed independently.