The Philosophic Grammar of American Languages, as Set Forth by Wilhelm von Humboldt. Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison) Brinton
statements led him into vagueness of expression; and partly because in some cases he was uncertain of his ground. In spite of these blemishes, this essay remains the most suggestive work ever written on the philosophy of language.
§ 3. The Final Purpose of the Philosophy of Language
Humboldt has been accused of being a metaphysician, and a scientific idealist.
It is true that he believed in an ideal perfection of language, to wit: that form of expression which would correspond throughout to the highest and clearest thinking. But it is evident from this simple statement that he did not expect to find it in any known or possible tongue. He distinctly says, that this ideal is too hypothetical to be used otherwise than as a stimulus to investigation; but as such it is indispensable to the linguist in the pursuit of his loftiest task – the estimate of the efforts of man to realize perfection of expression.13
There is nothing teleological in his philosophy; he even declines to admit that either the historian or the linguist has a right to set up a theory of progress or evolution; the duty of both is confined to deriving the completed meaning from the facts before them.14 He merely insists that as the object of language is the expression of thought, certain forms of language are better adapted to this than others. What these are, why they are so, and how they react on the minds of the nations speaking them, are the questions he undertakes to answer, and which constitute the subject-matter with which the philosophy of language has to do.
Humboldt taught that in its highest sense this philosophy of language is one with the philosophy of history. The science of language misses its purpose unless it seeks its chief end in explaining the intellectual growth of the race.15
Each separate tongue is “a thought-world in tones” established between the minds of those who speak it and the objective world without.16 Each mirrors in itself the spirit of the nation to which it belongs. But it has also an earlier and independent origin; it is the product of the conceptions of antecedent generations, and thus exerts a formative and directive influence on the national mind, an influence, not slight, but more potent than that which the national mind exerts upon it.17
So also every word has a double character, the one derived from its origin, the other from its history. The former is single, the latter is manifold.18
Were the gigantic task possible to gather from every language the full record of every word and the complete explanation of each grammatical peculiarity, we should have an infallible, the only infallible and exhaustive, picture of human progress.
§ 4. Historical, Comparative and Philosophic Grammar
The Science of Grammar has three branches, which differ more in the methods they pursue than in the ends at which they aim. These are Historic, Comparative and Philosophic Grammar. Historic Grammar occupies itself with tracing the forms of a language back in time to their earlier expression, and exhibits their development through the archaic specimens of the tongue. Comparative Grammar extends this investigation by including in the survey the similar development of a number of dialects of the same stock or character, and explains the laws of speech, which account for the similarities and diversities observed.
Both of these, it will be observed, begin with the language and its forms, and are confined to these. Philosophic Grammar, on the other hand, proceeds from the universal constructive principles of language, from the abstract formulæ of grammatical relations, and investigates their application in various languages. It looks upon articulate speech as the more or less faithful expression of certain logical procedures, and analyzes tongues in order to exhibit the success, be it greater or less, which attends this effort. The grammatical principles with which it deals are universals, they exist in all minds, although it often happens that they are not portrayed with corresponding clearness in language.19
Philosophic Grammar, therefore, includes in its horizon all languages spoken by men; it essays to analyze their inmost nature with reference to the laws of thought; it weighs the relations they bear to the character and destiny of those who speak them; and it ascends to the psychological needs and impulses which first gave them existence.
It was grammar in this highest sense, it was the study of languages for such lofty purposes as these, with which Humboldt occupied himself with untiring zeal for the last fifteen years of his life, when he had laid aside the cares of the elevated and responsible political positions which he had long filled with distinguished credit.
§ 5. Definition and Psychological Origin of Language
Humboldt remarks that the first hundred pages or so of his celebrated “Introduction” are little more than an expansion of his definition of language. He gives this definition in its most condensed form as follows: “Language is the ever-recurring effort of the mind to make the articulate sound capable of expressing thought.”20
According to this definition, language is not a dead thing, a completed product, but it is an ever-living, active function, an energy of the soul, which will perish only when intelligence itself, in its highest sense, is extinguished. As he expresses it, language is not an εργον, but an ενεργεια. It is the proof and the product of a mind consciously working to a definite end.
Hence, in Humboldt’s theory the psychological element of self-consciousness lies at the root of all linguistic expression. No mere physical difference between the lower animals and man explains the latter’s possession of articulate speech. His self-consciousness alone is that trait which has rendered such a possession possible.21
The idea of Self necessarily implies the idea of Other. A thought is never separate, never isolated, but ever in relation to another thought, suggested by one, leading on to another. Hence, Humboldt says: “The mind can only be conceived as in action, and as action.”
As Prof. Adler, in his comments on Humboldt’s philosophy, admirably observes: “Man does not possess any such thing as an absolutely isolated individuality; the ‘I’ and the ‘thou’ are the essential complements of each other, and would, in their last analysis, be found identical.”22
On these two fundamental conceptions, those of Identity and Relation, or, as they may be expressed more correctly, those of Being and Action, Humboldt builds his doctrines concerning the primitive radicals of language and the fundamental categories of grammar.
§ 6. Primitive Roots and Grammatical Categories
The roots of a language are classified by Humboldt as either objective or subjective, although he considers this far from an exhaustive scheme.23
The objective roots are usually descriptive, and indicate an origin from a process of mental analysis. They bear the impress of those two attributes which characterize every thought, Being and Action. Every complete objective word must express these two notions. Upon them are founded the fundamental grammatical categories of the Noun and the Verb; or to speak more accurately, they lead to the distinction of nominal and verbal themes.
The characteristic of the Noun is that it expresses Being; of the Verb that it expresses Action. This distinction is far from absolute in the word itself; in many languages, especially in Chinese and some American languages, there is in the word no discrimination between its verbal and nominal forms; but the verbal or nominal value of the word is clearly fixed by other means.24
Another class of objective root-words are the adjective words, or Determinatives. They are a later accession to the list, and by their addition bring the three chief grammatical categories, the Noun, the Verb and the Adjective, into correlation with the three logical categories
“Der Idee der Sprachvollendung Dasein in der Wirklichkeit zu gewinnen.”
In his remarkable essay “On the Mission of the Historian,” which Prof. Adler justly describes as “scarcely anything more than a preliminary to his linguistical researches,” Humboldt writes: “Die Philosophie schreibt den Begebenheiten ein Ziel vor: dies Suchen nach Endursachen, man mag sie auch aus dem Wesen des Menschen und der Natur selbst ableiten wollen, stört und verfalscht alle freie Ansicht des eigenthümlichen Wirkens der Kräfte.”
“Das Studium der verschiedenen Sprachen des Erdbodens verfehlt seine Bestimmung, wenn es nicht immer den Gang der geistigen Bildung im Auge behält, und darin seinen eigentlichen Zweck sucht.”
“Eine Gedankenwelt an Töne geheftet.”
This cardinal point in Humboldt’s philosophy is very clearly set forth in his essay, “
See
“Les notions grammaticales resident bien plutôt dans l’esprit de celui qui parle que dans le matériel du language.” Humboldt,
Steinthal does not like Humboldt’s expression “to make capable” (fähig zu machen). He objects that the “capacity” to express thought is already in the articulate sounds. But what Humboldt wishes to convey is precisely that this capacity is only derived from the ceaseless, energizing effort of the intellect. Steinthal,
“Nur die Stärke des Selbstbewusstseins nöthigt der körperlichen Natur die scharfe Theilung und feste Begrenzung der Laute ab, die wir Artikulation nennen.”
Ubi suprá, p. 17. Compare Humboldt’s words, “Im Ich aber ist von selbst auch das Du gegeben.”
Expressed in detail by Humboldt in his