CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY
LANGUAGE AND THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE,
LECTURE X
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 18925, pp. 356-394
[Lehmann pp. 225-256] {Textual Conventions}
By the latter part of the nineteenth century, sufficient work had been done in linguistics to suggest the need for general handbooks. The most representative of these is Whitney's. In 1864 he was asked to present six lectures "on the principles of linguistic science" at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. These were expanded to twelve when presented in Boston, and published essentially in that form. In his preface Whitney acknowledges obligations to Heinrich Steinthal and August Schleicher, and refers to his frequent antagonist, the great popularizer Max Müller. Since Whitney was at home in the linguistic centers of Europe, his statements on the "science of language" may be taken as representative of views of the time. His book was first published in 1867. Bloomfield, Language 16, says of it and its successor The Life and Growth of Language (New York, 1874). Today they seem incomplete, but scarcely antiquated, and still serve as an excellent introduction to language study. " Readers may make their own judgements of Whitney's views through the segment presented here.
Lecture X surveys the problem which pervades much of nineteenth-century linguisticslinguistic classification both genealogical and typological. It also deals with the relationship between language and other elements of culture, as well as race. Although some of Whitney's views may not have been immediately adopted, they are in large part the ones that we now hold, such as the view that there is little evidence for proposing a relationship between Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic; or that there is little likelihood of establishing interrelationships beyond a certain time, on the basis of the materials we now know. As Bloomfield indicated, the matter of Lecture X is therefore scarcely antiquated. Whitney's interest in Schleicher's attempts at linguistic formalization is also in keeping with current activities. [225]
William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894) was called by Jespersen, Language 88, "the leading exponent of general linguistics after the death of Schleicher." We hold him in high regard for his temperate views; as Jespersen remarked, "he was opposed to all kinds of mysticism, and words were to him conventional signs." All who have used his Sanskrit Grammar (Leipzig and Boston, 18963) can scarcely have failed to be amused by the first sentences of its preface: "It was in June, 1875, as I chanced to be for a day or two in Leipzig, that I was unexpectedly invited to prepare the Sanskrit grammar for the Indo-European series projected by Messrs. Breitkopf and Hartel. After some consideration, and consultation with friends, I accepted the task, and have since devoted to it what time could be spared from regular duties, after the satisfaction of engagements earlier formed. If the delay was a long one, . . ." In four years he completed, presumably in his spare time, the grammar which has remained standard ever since. A professor at Yale University, Whitney is responsible for its early eminence in linguistics. Any member of the Linguistic Society of America knows the veneration still accorded him.
Classification of languages. Morphological classifications; their defects. Schleicher's morphological notation. Classification by general rank. Superior value of genetic division. Bearing of linguistic science on ethnology. Comparative advantages and disadvantages of linguistic and physical evidence of race. Indo-European languages and race mainly coincident. Difficulty of the ethnological problem. Inability of language to prove either unity or variety of human species. Accidental correspondences; futility of root comparisons.
Our inquiries into the history and relations of human languages have last brought us to a review and brief examination of their groupings into families, so far as yet accomplished by the labors of linguistic students. The families may be briefly recapitulated as follows. First in rank and importance is the Indo-European, filling nearly the whole of central and southern Europe, together with no inconsiderable portion of south-west Asia, and with colonies in every quarter of the globe; it includes the languages of nearly all the modern, and of some of the most important of the ancient, civilized and civilizing races. Next is the Semitic, of prominence in [226] the world's history second only to the Indo-European, having its station in Arabia and the neighboring regions of Asia and Africa. Then follows the loosely aggregated family of the Scythian dialects, as we chose to term them, ranging from Norway almost to Behring's Straits, and occupying a good part of central Asia also, with outliers in southern Europe (Hungary and Turkey), and possibly in southernmost Asia (the Dekhan, or peninsula of India). Further, the southeastern Asiatic or monosyllabic family, in China and Farther India, and countries adjacent to these; the Malay-Polynesian and Melanesian, scattered over the numberless islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans; the Hamitic, composed of the Egyptian and its congeners, chiefly in northern Africa; the South-African, filling Africa about and below the equator; and the American, covering with its greatly varied forms our western continent, from the Arctic Ocean to the Antarctic. Besides these great families, we took note of several isolated languages or lesser groups, of doubtful or wholly unknown relationship: as those in extreme north-eastern Asia, in the Caucasian mountains, in central Africa; as the Basque in the Pyrenees, the Albanian in north-western Greece, the Yenisean in Siberia, and the extinct Etruscan in northern Italy.
The scheme of classification, as thus drawn out, was a genetical one, founded on actual historical relationship. Each family or group was intended to be made up of those tongues which there is found sufficient reason to regard as kindred dialects, as common descendants of the same original. We were obliged, however, to confess that our classification had not everywhere the same value, as the evidences of relationship were not of an equally unequivocal character in all the families, or else had been thus far incompletely gathered in and examined. Where, as in the case of Indo-European and Semitic speech, we find structural accordance combined with identity of material, as traced out and determined by long-continued and penetrating study on the part of many investigators, there the unity of the families is placed beyond the reach of reasonable doubt. But it is unfortunately true that these two are the only groups of wide extent and first-rate importance respecting which the linguistic student can speak with such fullness of confidence; everywhere else, there is either some present deficiency of information, which time may or may not remove, or the conditions are such that our belief in the genetic relationship must rest upon the more questionable ground of correspondence in structural development. We may by no means deny that morphological accordance is capable of rising to such a value as should make it a sufficient and convincing evidence of genetic unity; but it is evidently of a less direct and unmistakable character than material identity, and requires for its estimation a wider range of knowledge, a more acute insight, and a more [227] cautious judgement. If two languages agree in the very material of which their words and apparatus of grammatical inflection are composed, to a degree beyond what can possibly be regarded as the effect of accident or of borrowing, the conclusion that they are akin is inevitable; nothing but community of linguistic tradition can explain such phenomena: but agreement in the style only in which words are composed and thought expressed admits of being attributed to cause other than historicalto equality of mental endowment, of intellectual force and training. We may look hopefully forward to the time when linguistic science shall have reached such a pitch of perfection, shall have so thoroughly mastered the infinitely varied phenomena of universal human language and traced out their causes, that she shall be able to separate with certainty the effects of ethnic capacity from those of transmitted habit: but that time has certainly not yet come; and, as the value of morphological accordances as evidence of genetic connection has hitherto been repeatedly overrated, so it will long, and always in unskilful or incautious hands, be peculiarly liable to a like mistreatment.
We have already had occasions to refer to and describe some of the principal structural peculiarities which are illustrated in the variety of human tongues; but it will be worth while here to bestow a few words farther upon them, and upon the systems of morphological classification to which they have served as foundation.
The languages of mankind have been divided into two grand classes, the monosyllabic (otherwise called isolating, or radical) and the polysyllabic (or inflectional). To the former belong the tongues of China and Farther India, with their relatives in the same quarter of Asia, and perhaps one or two idioms in other parts of the world. In them there is a formal identity of root and word; none of their vocables are made up of radical and formative elements, the one giving the principal idea, the other indicating its limitation, application, or relation; they possess no formally distinguished parts of speech. Usage may assign to some of their roots the offices which in inflectional tongues are filled by inflective endings, suffixes or prefixes; it may also stamp some as adjectives, others as nouns, as pronouns, as verbs, and so on: yet means of this sort can only partially supply their lack of the resources possessed by more happily developed languages; categories undistinguished in expression are but imperfectly, if at all, distinguished in apprehension; thought is but brokenly represented and feebly aided by its instrument. To the latter, or inflectional class, belong all the other languages of the world, which, whatever and however great their differences, have at least this in common, that their signs of category and relation are not always separate words, but parts of other words, that their vocables are, to some extent, made up of at least two elements, the [228] one radical, the other formative. There can be, it is evident, no more fundamental difference in linguistics structure than this. And yet, it is not an absolute and determinate one. It lies in the nature of the case that, as the inflectional languages have grown out of a monosyllabic and noninflecting stage, there should be certain tongues, as there are in other tongues certain forms, which stand so closely upon the line of division between the two stages, that it is hard to tell whether they are the one thing or the other. In our own tongue, there is no definite division-line to be drawn anywhere in the series of steps that conducts from a mere collocation to a pure form-wordfrom house floor to house-top, from tear-filled to tearful, from godlike to godly; and, in like manner, it is often a matter of doubt, in languages of low development, where isolation ends and where a loose agglutination begins. Thus, even the Chinese, the purest type of all the isolating structure, is by some regarded as, in its colloquial forms, and yet more in some of its dialects, a language of compounded words; and the possession of one or two real formative elements has been claimed for the Burmese; while the Himalaya is likely to furnish dialects whose character, as isolated or agglutinative, will be much disputed. But the main objection to the classification we are considering is not so much its want of absolute distinctness (a defect incident to all classification, in every department of science) as its onesidedness: it is too much like the proverbial lover's division of the world into two parts, that where the beloved object is and that where she is not: it leaves almost all human tongues in one huge class together. Accordingly a much more popular and current system distinguishes three primary orders, separating the mass of inflectional languages into such as are agglutinative, or attach their formative elements somewhat loosely to a root which is not liable to variation; and such as are inflective, or unite more thoroughly their radical and formative elements, and make internal changes of the root itself bear their part, either primarily or secondarily, in the expression of grammatical relations. The distinction between these three orders is well expressed by Professor Max Müller in the following terms:
1. Roots may be used as words, each root preserving its full independence.
2. Two roots may be joined together to form words, and in these compounds one root may lose its independence.
3. Two roots may be joined together to form words, and in these compounds both roots lose their independence.1
No better scheme of division, of a simple and comprehensive character,
has yet been devised than this, and it is likely to maintain [229] itself long in use. It faithfully represents,
in the main, three successive stages in the history of language, three
ascending grades of linguistic development. But its value must not be
overrated, nor its defects passed without notice. In the first place, it
does not include all the possible and actually realized varieties in the
mode of formation of words. It leaves altogether out of account that
internal change of vowels which, as was shown in the eighth lecture, is
the characteristic and principal means of grammatical inflection in the
Semitic tongues. The distinctions of qatala 'he killed',
qutila 'he was killed', qattala 'he massacred', 
'he tried to kill', aqtala 'he
caused to kill' and the like, are not explainable by any composition of
roots and loss of their independence, even though the somewhat analogous
differences of man and men, lead and led, sing
and sang, sit and set, do admit of such explanation. In the
second place, it is liable to something of the same reproach of
one-sidedness which lies against the former, the double method of
classification. It puts into a separate class, as inflective languages,
only two families, the Indo-European and the Semitic: these are, to be
sure, of wide extent and unapproached importance; yet the mass of spoken
tongues is still left in one immense and heterogeneous body. And finally,
a yet more fundamental objection to the scheme is this heterogeneity,
which characterizes not its middle class alone, but its highest also. It
classes Indo-European and Semitic speech together, as morphologically
alike, while yet their structural discordance is vastly greater than that
which separates Indo-European from many of the agglutinative tonguesin
some respects, even greater than that which separates Indo-European from
the generality of agglutinative and from the isolating tongues. Not only
are the higher Scythian dialects, as the Finnish and Hungarian, almost
inflective, and inflective upon a plan which is sufficiently analogous
with the Indo-European, but, from a theoretical point of view (however the
case may be historically), Chinese, Scythian, and Indo-European are so
many steps in one line and direction of progress, differing in degree but
not in kind: Semitic speech, on the other hand, if it started originally
from the same or a like center, has reached an equally distant point in a
wholly different direction. The two inflective families may lie upon the
same circumference, but they are separated by the whole length of the
diameter, being twice as far from one another as is either from the
indifferent middle. A less fundamental discordance, perhaps, but an equal
variety of structure, belongs to those tongues which are classed together
as agglutinative. The order includes such extremes in degree of
agglutination as the barren and almost isolating Manchu or Egyptian, on
the one hand, and, on the other, the exuberantly aggregative Turkish and
the often excessively agglomerative American or Basque; it includes such
[230] differences in the mode of agglutination
as are presented by the Scythian, which makes its combinations solely by
suffixes, and the Malay or South-African, which form theirs mainly by
prefixes. Here, again, it may be made a question whether the morphological
relationship of Scythian and Indo-European be not closer than that of
Scythian and Malay. The principle which divides the former is, it is true,
reasonably to be regarded as of a higher order than that which divides the
two latter; yet it is more teleological than morphological; it concerns
rather the end attained than the means of at tainment. The reach and
value, too, of the distinctively inflective principle, as developed in
Indo-European language, is, as I cannot but think, not infrequently
overrated. In no small part of the materials of our own tongue, for
example, the root or theme maintain' its own form and distinction from the
affixes, and these their distinction from one another, not less completely
than is the case in Scythian. All the derivatives of love, as
love-d, lov-ing, lov-er, loverly; the derivatives of
true, as tru-ly, tru-th, tru-th-ful, truth-ful-ly,
un-tru-th-ful-lythese, and the host of formations like them, are
strictly agglutinative in type: but we do not recognize in them any
inferiority as means of expression to those derivatives in which the
radical part has undergone a more marked fusion, or dis guising change.
Loved from love is as good a preterit as led from
lead, or sang from sing; truth from
true is as good an abstract as length from long, or
filth from foul; nor is the Latin lædo-r, 'I am
hurt', from lædo, 'I hurt', inferior to the nearly equivalent
Arabic qutila, from qatala. The claim might plausibly enough
be set up th the unity which the Scythian gives to its derivative words by
m akin the vowels of their suffixes sympathize with that of the principal
or radical element, is at least as valuable, in itself considered, as the
capacity of an Indo-European root to be phonetically affected by the
ending that is attached to ita subjection of the superior to the in ferior
element. Not that the actual working-out of the latter principle in the
tongues of our family has not produced results of higher value than the
former has led to; but this may be owing in great measure to the way in
which the two have been handled respectively.
The immensely comprehensive order of agglutinative languags is sometimes reduced a little by setting apart from it a polysynthetic or incorporative class, composed of the Basque and the American family. This, however, is rather a subdivision of one of the members of the triple system than the establishment of a new, a quadruple, scheme of classification.
Professor Müller2 seeks to find a support and explanation of the threefold division of human language which we are now considering by paralleling it with the threefold condition of human society, as patriarchal, nomadic, and political. Monosyllabic or "family [231] languages" are in place, according to him, among the members of a family, whose intimacy, and full knowledge of one another's dispositions and thoughts, make it possible for each to understand the other upon the briefest and most imperfect hints. Agglutinative or "nomadic languages" are required by the circumstances of a wandering and unsettled life; the constantly separating and reassembling tribes could not keep up a mutual intelligence if they did not maintain the integrity of the radical elements of their speech. Inflective or "state languages" are rendered possible by a regulated and stable condition of society, where uninterrupted intercourse and constant tradition facilitate mutual comprehension, notwithstanding the fusion and integration of root and affix. Tne comparison is ingenious and entertaining, but it is too little favored by either linguistic philosophy or linguistic history to be entitled to any other praise. It would fain introduce into the processes of linguistic life an element of reflective anticipation, of prevision and deliberate provision, which is altogether foreign to them. That wandering tribes should, in view of their scanty intercourse, their frequent partings to be followed by possible meetings, conclude that they ought to keep their roots unmodified, is quite inconceivable; nor is it easy to see what purpose the resolution should serve, if the endings are at the same time to be suffered to vary so rapidly that mutual unintelligibility is soon brought about. In every uncultivated community, the language is left to take care of itself; it becomes what the exigencies of practical use make it, not what a forecasting view of future possibilities leads its speakers to think that it might with advantage be made to be: let two tribes be parted from one another, and neither has any regard to the welfare of its fellow in shaping its own daily speech. In point of fact, moreover, Indo-European languages were inflective, were "state languages", long before the tribes had formed stateswhile many of them were as nomadic in their habits as the wildest of the so-called Turanian tribes. And to denominate the immense and highly-organized Chinese empire a mere exaggerated family, and account for the peculiarities of its speech by reference to the conditions of a family, is fanciful in the extreme. No nomenclature founded on such unsubstantial considerations has a good claim to the acceptance of linguistic scholars; and the one in question has, it is believed, won no general currency.
A very noteworthy attempt has been made within a short time by Professor Schleicher, of Jena,3 to give greater fulness and precision to the morphological classification and description of language, by a more thorough analysis, and a kind of algebraic notation, of morphological characteristics. A pure root, used as a word without variation of form or addition of formative elements, he denotes by a capital letter, as A: a connected sentence expressed by a [232] series of such elements, as is sometimes the case in Chinese, he would represent by A B C, and so on. Such a sentence we may rudely illustrate by an English phrase like fish like water in which each word is a simple root or theme, without formal designation of relations.4 A root which, while retaining its substantial independence, is so modified in signification and restricted in application as to form an auxiliary or adjunct to another root (which was shown in the last lecture to be a frequent phenomenon in the isolating languages), is marked by an accented letter, as A': thus, in the English shall like would be represented by A' + A; shall have put, by A' + B' + A: the interposed sign of addition indicating the closeness of relation between the elements. The position of the accented letters in the formula would point out whether the auxiliaries are placed after the main word, as in Burmese, or before it, as in Siamese, or on either or both sides, as sometimes in Chinese.
If, now, the formative element is combined with the radical into a
single word, it is indicated by a small letter, which is put before or
after the capital which stands for the root, according to the actual
position of the elements in combination. Thus, if we represent true
by A, untrue would be aA; truly or truth would be Aa;
untruly, aAb; untruthfully, aAbcd; and so on. Expressions of
this kind belong to the agglutinative type of structure; and they are, it
is plain, capable of very considerable variation, so as to be made to
denote the various kinds and degrees of agglutination. It is possible, for
example, to distinguish the endings of inflection from those of
derivation, or elements of pronominal from those of predicative origin, by
the use of a different series of letters (as the Greek) to indicate one of
the classes: thus, truths might be Aa
, but truthful, Aab;
babalarumdan, in Turkish (see above, p. 318), might be 
but sevishdirilememek,
Aabcdef. An adroit use of such means of distinction might enable one even
to set forth with sufficient clearness the peculiarities and intricacies
of polysynthetic tongues.
Again, an inflective change of the root itself for the expression of grammatical relations is denotable by exponents attached to the root-symbol. Thus, man being A, men would be Aa; men's, Aaa, sang, sung, song, from sing, would be denoted by Aa, Ab, Ac; spoken from speak, would be Aaa; its German counterpart, gesprochen, aAab. And in the Semitic tongues, where the root never appears without a vocalization which is formal and significant, the constant radical emblem would be Aa.5
Compounds, finally, would be expressed in this method by putting side by side the symbols expressive of their separate members, the capital letters with their modifications and adjuncts. House-top, would be AB; songwriter, AaBa; and so on.
It is unnecessary to explain with any more of detail Professor [233] Schleicher's system of morphological notation, or to spend many words in pointing out its convenience and value. It may evidently be made a means of apprehending distinctly, and setting forth clearly, the main structural features of any language. It will not, indeed, enable us to put in a brief and compact form of statement the whole morphological character of every spoken tongue. Most tongues admit no small variety of formations; each must be judged by its prevailing modes of formation, by the average of highest and lowest modes, by their respective frequency of application, and the purposes they are made to serve. It does not help us to a simple and facile scale and classification of all the dialects of mankind; but this is to be imputed to it as a merit, not as a fault: it thus fairly represents the exceeding variety of languages, the complexity of the characteristics which distinguish them, and their incapacity of separation into a few sharply defined classes.
No single trait or class of traits, however fundamental may be its importance, can be admitted as a definite criterion by which the character of a language shall be judged, and its rank determined. We saw reason above to challenge the absolute superiority of the inflective principle, strongly as it may indicate a valuable tendency in language-making. Certainly it is wholly conceivable that some language of the agglutinative class may decidedly surpass in strength and suppleness, in adaptedness to its use as the instrument and aid of thought, some other language or languages of the inflective class. Not morphological character alone is to be taken account of; for not every race of equal mental endowment has originated and shaped a language, any more than an art, of equivalent formal merit. Some one needed item of capacity was wanting, and the product remains unartistic; or the work of the earliest period, which has determined the grand features of the whole after-development, was unadroitly performed; the first generations left to their successors a body of constraining usages and misguiding analogies, the influence of which is not to be shaken off; and the mental power of the race is shown by the skill and force, with which it wields an imperfect instrument. Many a tongue thus stands higher, or lower, in virtue of the sum of its qualities, than its morphological character would naturally indicate. The Chinese is one of the most striking instances of such a discordance; though so nearly formless, in a morphological sense, it is nevertheless placed by Wilhelm von Humboldt and Steinthal6 in their higher class of "form languages", along with the Indo-European and Semitic, as being a not unsuitable incorporation of clear logical thought; as, though not distinctly indicating relations and categories, yet not cumbering their conception, their mental apprehension, by material adjuncts which weaken and confuse the thought.
But further, apart from this whole matter of morphological [234] form, of grammatical structure, of the indication, expressed or implied, of relations, another department contributes essentially to our estimate of the value of a language: namely, its material content, or what is signified by its words. The universe, with all its objects and their qualities, is put before the language-makers to be comprehended and expressed, and the different races, and tribes, and communities, have solved the problem after a very different fashion. Names-giving implies not merely the distinction of individual things, but no less, classification and analysis, in every kind, and of every degree of subtlety. There are conceptions, and classes of conceptions, of so obvious and practical character, that their designations are to be found in every language that exists or ever has existed: there are hosts of others which one community, or many, or the most, have never reached. Does a given tongue show that the race which speaks it has devoted its exclusive attention to the more trivial matters in the world without and within us, or has it apprehended higher things? Has it, for example, so studied and noted the aspects of nature that it can describe them in terms of picturesque power ? Has it distinguished with intellectual acuteness and spiritual insight the powers and operations of our internal nature, our mind and soul, so that it can discuss psychological questions with significance and precision? Any dialect, isolating or inflective, monosyllabic or polysynthetic, may be raised or lowered in the scale of languages by the characteristics which such inquiries bring to light. In these, too, there is the widest diversity, depending on original capacity, on acquired information and civilization, and on variety of external circumstance and conditiona diversity among different branches of the same race, different periods of the same history, and, where culture and education introduce their separating influences, between different classes of the same community. Our earliest inquiries (in the first three lectures) into the processes of linguistic growth showed us that the changes which bring about this diversity, the accretions to the vocabulary of a tongue, the deepening of the meaning of its words, are the easiest of all to make, the most pervading and irrepressible in their action, throughout every period of its existence. Here, then, more than in any other department, it is practicable for later generations to amend and complete the work of earlier; and yet, such is the power of linguistic habit that, even here, original infelicities sometimes adhere to a language during its whole development.
To make out a satisfactory scheme of arrangement for all human tongues upon the ground of their comparative value, accordingly, will be a task of extreme difficulty, and one of the last results reached by linguistic science. It will require a degree of penetration into the inmost secrets of structure and usage, an acuteness of [235] perception and freedom from prejudice in estimating merits of diverse character, and a breadth and reach of learning, which will be found attainable only by a few master-minds. Great play is here afforded for subjective views, for inherited prepossessions, for sway of mental habits. Who of us can be trusted fairly to compare the advantages of his own and of any other language?
There can be no question that, of all the modes of classification with which linguistic scholars have had to do, the one of first and most fundamental importance is the genetical, or that which groups together, and holds apart from others, languages giving evidence of derivation from the same original. It underlies and furnishes the foundation of all the remaining modes. There can be no tie between any two dialects so strong as that of a common descent. Every great family has a structural character of its own, whereby, whatever may be the varying development of its members, it is made a unit, and more or less strikingly distinguished from the rest. Whatever other criterion we may apply is analogous in its character and bearings with the distinction of apetalous, monopetalous, and polypetalous, or of monogynous, digynous, etc., or of exogenous and endogenous, or of phenogamous and cryptogamous, in the science of botany˜all of them possessing real importance in different degrees, variously crossing one another, and marking out certain general divisions; while the arrangement of linguistic families corresponds with the division of plants into natural orders, founded upon a consideration of the whole complicate structure of the things classified, contemplating the sum of their characteristic qualities; fixing, therefore, their position in the vast kingdom of nature of which they are members, and determining the names by which they shall be called. The genetical classification is the ultimate historical fact which the historical method of linguistic study directly aims at establishing. With its establishment are bound up those more general historical results, for the ethnological history of mankind, which form so conspicuous a part of the interest of our science.
To subjects connected with this department of interest, the bearing of linguistic science on ethnology, we have next to turn our attention, occupying with them the remainder of the present lecture.
One of the first considerations which will be apt to strike the notice of any one who reviews our classification of human races according to the relationship of their languages, is its non-agreement with the current divisions based on physical characteristics. The physicists, indeed, are far from having yet arrived at accordance in their own schemes of classification, and the utter insufficiency of that old familiar distinction of Caucasian, Mongol, Malay, African, and American, established by Blumenbach, and probably learned by most of us at school, is now fully recognized. But it does not seem [236] practicable to lay down any system of physical races which shall agree with any possible scheme of linguistic races. Indo-European, Semitic, Scythian, and Caucasian tongues are spoken by men whom the naturalist would not separate from one another as of widely diverse stock; and, on the other hand, Scythian dialects of close and indubitable relationship are in the mouths of peoples who differ as widely in form and feature as Hungarians and Lapps; while not less discordance of physical type is to be found among the speakers of various dialects belonging to more than one of the other great linguistic families.
Such facts as these call up the question, as one of high practical consequence, respecting the comparative value of linguistic and of physical evidence of race, and how their seeming discrepancy is to be reconciled. Some method of bringing about a reconciliation between them must evidently be sought and found. For neither linguistic nor physical ethnology is a science of classification merely; both claim to be historical also. Both are working toward the same endnamely, a tracing out of the actual connection and genealogical history of human racesand, though each must follow its own methods, without undue interference from without, they cannot labor independently, careless each of the other's results. To point out the mode of reconciliation, to remove the difficulties which lie in the way of harmonious agreement between the two departments of ethnological science, I shall not here make the least presence; such a result can be attained only when the principles and conclusions of both are advanced and perfected far beyond their present point. All that we can attempt to do is to notice certain general considerations bearing upon the subject, and requiring not to be lost from sight by either party; and especially, to point out the limitations and imperfections of both physical and linguistic evidence, and how necessary it is that each should modestly solicit and frankly acknowledge the aid of the other.
How language proves anything concerning race, and what it does and does not prove, was brought clearly to light in the course of our earliest inquiries into its nature and history. What we then learned respecting the mode of acquisition and transmission of each man's, and each community's, "native tongue" was sufficient to show us the total error of two somewhat different, and yet fundamentally accordant, views of language, which have been put forth and defended by certain authoritiesthe one, that speech is to man what his song is to the bird, what their roar, growl, bellow are to lions, bears, oxen; and that resemblances of dialect therefore no more indicate actual genetic connection among different tribes of men than resemblances of uttered tone indicate the common descent of various species of thrushes, or of bears, inhabiting different parts of the world: the [237] other, that language is the immediate and necessary product of physical organization, and varies as this varies: that an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Chinaman talk unlike one another because their brains and organs of articulation are unlike; and that all Englishmen talk alike, as do all Frenchmen, or all Chinamen, because, in consequence of their living amid similar physical conditions, and their inheritance of a common race-type, their nervous and muscular systems minutely correspond. And doctrines akin with these are more or less distinctly and consciously implied in the views of those who hold that language is beyond the reach of the free-agency of men, and can be neither made nor changed by human effort. All who think thus virtually deny the existence of such a thing as linguistic science, or reduce it to the position of a subordinate branch of physiology: speech becomes a purely physical characteristic, one among the many which by their common presence make up man, and by their differences distinguish the different varieties of men; and it would be for the physicist to determine, here, as in the case of other physical characteristics, how far its joint possession indicated specific unity, or how far its diversities of kind indicated specific variety. All these false theories are brushed away at once by our recognition of the fact that we do not produce our speech from within, but acquire it from without ourselves; that we neither make nor inherit the words we use, whether of our native tongue or of any other, but learn them from our instructors.
But from this it also follows that no individual's speech directly and necessarily marks his descent; it only shows in what community he grew up. Language is no infallible sign of race, but only its probable indication, and an indication of which the probability is exposed to very serious drawbacks. For it is evident that those who taught us to speak, of whose means of expression we learned to avail ourselves, need not have been of our own kith and kin. Not only may individuals, families, groups of families, of almost every race on earth, be, as at present in America, turned into and absorbed by one great community, and made to adopt its speech, but a strange tongue may be learned by whole tribes and nations of those who like our negroes, are brought away from their native homes, or, like the Irish, have lived long under a foreign yoke, or like the Celts of ancient Gaul and Spain, have received laws, civilization, and religion from another and a superior race. Languages unnumbered and innumerable have disappeared from off the face of the earth since the beginning of human history; but only in part by reason of the utter annihilation of the individuals who had spoken them; more often, doubtless, by their dispersion, and incorporation with other communities, of other speech. Everywhere, too, where the confines of different forms of speech meet, there goes on more or [238] less of mixture between them, or of effacement of the one by the other. Yet, on the other hand, mixture of language is not necessarily proof of mixture of race. We can trace the genesis of a very large part of our own vocabulary to the banks of the Tiber, but hardly the faintest appreciable portion of our ancestry is Roman. We obtained our Latin words in the most strangely roundabout way: they were brought us by certain Germanic adventurers, the Normans, who had learned them from a mixed people, the French, chiefly of Celtic blood; and these, again, had derived them from another heterogenous compound of Italian races, among whom the Latin tribe was numerically but a feeble element. [239]
Notes
1. Lectures, first series, eighth lecture. Text
2. In his Letter on the Classification of the Turanian Languages, p. 21. Text
3. See his paper, "Contribution to the Morphology of Language,"; in the Memoirs of the Academy of St. Petersburg, Vol. i, No. 7 (1859); also, the Introduction to his work, the German Language (Stuttgart, 1860), p. 11 seq. Text
4. Of course the parallel is to be regarded as only an imperfect one; though these three words are to our apprehension primitives, they are far from being ultimate roots; they all either contain formative elements added to such a root, or have possessed and lost them; each is, to be sure, employable as noun, adjective, or verb, [255] without change of form, yet not, like Chinese roots, in virtue of an original indefiniteness of meaning, but as one distinct part of speech is in our usage convertible directly into others; nor can it be said that, even as they stand, they are altogether formless; for each is defined in certain relations by the absence of formative elements which it would otherwise exhibit: water is shown to be singular by lacking an s, fish and like to be plural by the absence of s from like. Text
5. Professor Schleicher, indeed, adopts this emblem as that of the Indo-European root also, since he holds the view, briefly stated and controverted above (in the eighth lecture, p. 293), that the radicals of our family were originally liable to a regular variation, of symbolic significance, for purposes of grammatical expression. I regard it, on the contrary, as the weak point in his system, as applied by himself, that it does not distinguish an internal flection like the Semiticwhich, so far as we can trace its history, is ultimate and original, and which continues in full force, in old material and in new formations, through the whole history of the languages from one like the Indo-European, which is rather secondary and accidental, constantly arising in new cases under the influence of phonetic circumstances, but never winning a pervading force, and in many members of the family hardly taking on anywhere a regular form and office, as significant of relations. Text
6. See the latter's Charakteristik etc., pp. 70, 327. seq.; see also his Lectures, first series. Text [256]
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