Chapter I

A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS

The science that has been developed around the facts of language passed through three stages before finding its true and unique object. First something called "grammar" was studied. This study, initiated by the Greeks and continued mainly by the French, was based on logic. It lacked a scientific approach and was detached from language itself. Its only aim was to give rules for distinguishing between correct and incorrect forms; it was a normative discipline, far removed from actual observation, and its scope was limited. Next appeared philology. A "philological" school had existed much earlier in Alexandria, but this name is more often applied to the scientific movement which was started by Friedrich August Wolf in 1777 and which continues to this day. Language is not its sole object. The early philologists sought especially to correct, interpret and comment upon written texts. Their studies also led to an interest in literary history, customs, institutions, etc.^ They apphed the methods of criticism for their own purposes. When they dealt with linguistic questions, it was for the express purpose of comparing texts of different periods, determining the language peculiar to each author, or deciphering and explaining inscriptions made in an archaic or obscure language. Doubtless these investigations broke the ground for historical linguistics. Rifschl's studies of Plautus are actually linguistic. But philological criticism is still deficient on one point: it follows the written language too slavishly

and neglects the living language. Moreover, it is concerned with little except Greek and Latin antiquity. The third stage began when scholars discovered that languages can be compared with one another. This discovery was the origin of "comparative philology." In 1816, in a work entitled Über das Conjugationssijstem der Sanskritsprache, Franz Bopp compared Sanskrit with German, Greek, Latin, etc. Bopp was not the first to record their similarities and state that all these languages belong to a single family. That had been done before him, notably by the English orientalist W. Jones (died in 1794); but Jones' few isolated statements do not prove that the significance and importance of comparison had been generally understood before 1816. While Bopp cannot be credited with the discovery that Sanskrit is related to certain languages of Europe and Asia, he did realize that the comparison of related languages could become the subject matter of an independent science. To illuminate one language by means of another, to explain the forms of one through the forms of the other, that is what no one had done before — him. Whether Bopp could have created his science so quickly at least without the prior discovery of Sanskrit is doubtful. With Sanskrit as a third witness beside Latin and Greek, Bopp had a larger and firmer basis for his studies. Fortunately, Sanskrit was exceptionally well-fitted to the role of illuminating the comparison. For example, a comparison of the paradigms of Latin genus (genus, generis, genere, genera, generum, etc.) and Greek (génos, géneos, génei, génea, genéõn, etc.) reveals nothing. But the picture changes as soon as we add the corresponding Sanskrit series (ganas, ganasas, ganasi, ganasu, ganasãm, etc.). A glance reveals the similarity between the Greek forms and the Latin forms. If we accept tentatively the hypothesis that ganas represents the primitive state and this step facilitates explanation then we conclude that s must have fallen in Greek forms wherever it occurred between two vowels.Next we conclude that s became r in Latin under the same conditions. Grammatically, then, the Sanskrit paradigm exemplifies the concept of radical, a unit (ganas) that is quite definite and stable. Latin and Greek had the same forms as Sanskrit only in their earlier stages. Here Sanskrit is instructive precisely because it has preserved all the Indo-uropean s's. Of course Sanskrit failed in other respects to preserve the features of the prototype; for instance, it had completely revolutionized the vocalic system. But in general the original elements that Sanskrit has preserved are remarkably helpful in research and fate decreed that it was to clarify many points in the study of other languages. Other distinguished linguists soon added to the contribution of Bopp: Jacob Grimm, the founder of Germanic studies (his Deutsche Grammatik was published from 1822 to 1836); Pott, whose etymological studies made a considerable amount of material available to linguists; Kuhn, whose works dealt with both linguistics and comparative mythology; the Indie scholars Benfey and Aufrecht, etc. Finally, among the last representatives of the school, Max Müller, G. Curtius, and August Schleicher deserve special attention. In different ways, all three did much to advance comparative studies. Max Miiller popularized them in his brilliant discussions (Lessons in the Science of Language, 1861) ; but his failing was a certain lack of conscientiousness. Curtius, a distinguished philologist known especially for his Grundzüge der griechischen Etymologie (1879), was one of the first to reconcile comparative philology with classical philology. The latter had watched the progress of the new science suspiciously, and each school had mistrusted the other. Schleicher was the first to try to codify the results of piecemeal investigations. His Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (1861-62) is more or less a systemization of the science founded by Bopp. His book, with its long record of service, recalls better than any other the broad outlines of the comparative school, which is the first chapter in the history of Indo-European linguistics. But the comparative school, which had the indisputable merit of opening up a new and fruitful field, did not succeed in setting up the true science of linguistics. It failed to seek out the nature of its object of study. Obviously, without this elementary step, no science can develop a method. The first mistake of the comparative philologists was also the source of all their other mistakes. In their investigations (which embraced only the Indo-European languages), they never asked themselves the meaning of their comparisons or the significance of the relations that they discovered. Their method was exclusively comparative, not historical. Of course comparison is required for any historica lreconstruction, but by itself it cannot be conclusive. And the conclusion was all the more elusive whenever the comparative philologists looked upon the development of two languages as a naturalist might look upon the growth of two plants. For example Schleicher, who always invites us to start from Proto-Indo-European and thus seems in a sense to be a confirmed historian, has no hesitancy in saying that Greek e and o are two grades (Stufen) of the vocalic system. This is because Sanskrit has a system of vocalic alternations that suggests the notion of grades. Schleicher supposed that each language has to pass through those grades separately and in exactly the same way, just as plants of the same species pass through the same developmental stages independently of one another, and saw a reinforced grade of e in Greek o and a reinforced grade of á in Sanskrit ã. The fact is that a Proto-Indo-European alternation was reflected differently in Greek and in Sanskrit without there being any necessary equivalence between the grammatical effects produced in either language (see pp. 158 ff.). The exclusively comparative method brought in a set of false notions. Having no basis in reality, these notions simply could not reflect the facts of speech. Language was considered a specific sphere, a fourth natural kingdom this led to methods of reasoning; which would have caused astonishment in other sciences. Today one cannot read a dozen lines written at that time without being struck by absurdities of reasoning and by the terminology used to justify these absurdities. But from the viewpoint of methodology, the mistakes of the comparative philologists are not without value; the mistakes of an infant science give a magnified picture of those made by anyone in the first stages of scientific research, and I shall have occasion to point out several of them in the course of this exposition. Not until around 1870 did scholars begin to seek out the principles that govern the life of languages. Then they began to see that similarities between languages are only one side of the linguistic phenomenon, that comparison is only a means or method of reconstructing the facts. Linguistics proper, which puts comparative studies in their proper place, owes its origin to the study of the Romance and Germanic languages. Romance studies, begun by Diez his Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen dates from 1836-38 were instrumental in bringing linguistics nearer to its true object. For Romance scholars enjoyed privileged conditions that were unknown to Indo-European scholars.They had direct access to Latin, the prototype of the Romance languages, and an abundance of texts allowed them to trace in detail the evolution of the different dialects; these two circumstances narrowed the field of conjecture and provided a remarkably solid frame for all their research. Germanic scholars were in a similar situation. Though they could not study the prototype directly, numerous texts enabled them to trace the history of the languages derived from Proto-Germanic through the course of many centuries. The Germanic scholars, coming to closer grips with reality than had the first Indo-European scholars, reached different conclusions. A first impetus was given by the American scholar Whitney, the author of Life and Growth ofLanguage (1875). Shortly afterwards a new school was formed by the neogrammarians (Junggrammatiker), whose leaders were all Germans: K. Brugmann and H. Osthoff; the Germanic scholars W. Braune, E. Sievers, H. Paul; the Slavic scholar Leskien, etc. Their contribution was in placing the results of comparative studies in their historical perspective and thus linking the facts in their natural order. Thanks to them, language is no longer looked upon as an organism that develops independently but as a product of the collective mind of linguistic groups. At the same time scholars realized how erroneous and insufficient were the notions of philology and comparative philology.$^2$ Still, in spite of the services that they rendered, the neogrammarians did not illuminate the whole question, and the fundamental problems of general linguistics still await solution.