The Philosophic Grammar of American Languages, as Set Forth by Wilhelm von Humboldt. Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison) Brinton
the subjective roots, Humboldt meant the personal pronouns. To these he attributed great importance in the development of language, and especially of American languages. They carry with them the mark of sharp individuality, and express in its highest reality the notion of Being.
It is not easy to understand Humboldt’s theory of the evolution of the personal pronouns. In his various essays he seems to offer conflicting statements. In one of his later papers, he argues that the origin of such subjective nominals is often, perhaps generally, locative. By comparing the personal pronouns with the adverbs of place in a series of languages, he showed that their demonstrative antedated their personal meaning.25 With regard to their relative development, he says, in his celebrated “Introduction”:
“The first person expresses the individuality of the speaker, who is in immediate contact with external nature, and must distinguish himself from it in his speech. But in the ‘I’ the ‘Thou’ is assumed; and from the antithesis thus formed is developed the third person.”26
But in his “Notice of the Japanese Grammar of Father Oyanguren,” published in 1826, he points out that infants begin by speaking of themselves in the third person, showing that this comes first in the order of knowledge. It is followed by the second person, which separates one object from others; but as it does so by putting it in conscious antithesis to the speaker, it finally develops the “I.”27
The latter is unquestionably the correct statement so far as the history of language is concerned and the progress of knowledge. I can know myself only through knowing others.
The explanation which reconciles these theories is that the one refers to the order of thought, or logical precedence, the other to the order of expression. Professor Ferrier, in his “Institutes of Metaphysics,” has established with much acuteness the thesis that, “What is first in the order of nature is last in the order of knowledge,” and this is an instance of that philosophical principle.
§ 7. Formal and Material Elements of Language
A fundamental distinction in philosophic grammar is that which divides the formal from the material element of speech. This division arises from the original double nature of each radical, as expressing both Being and Action.
On the one hand, Action involves Relation; it assumes an object and a subject, an agent, a direction of effort, a result of effort; usually also limitations of effort, time and space, and qualifications as to the manner of the effort. In other words, Action is capable of increase or decrease both in extension and intension.
On the other hand, Being is a conception of fixed conditions, and is capable of few or no modifications.
The formal elements of a language are those which express Action, or the relation of the ideas; they make up the affixes of conjugations and declensions, the inflections of words; they indicate the parts of speech, the so-called “grammatical categories,” found in developed tongues. The material elements are the roots or stems expressing the naked ideas, the conceptions of existence apart from relation.
Using the terms in this sense, Humboldt presents the following terse formula, as his definition of Inflection: “Inflection is the expression of the category in contrast to the definition of the idea.”28 Nothing could be more definitive and lucid than this concise phrase.
The inflectional or formal elements of language are usually derived from words expressing accessory ideas. Generally, they are worn down to single letters or a single syllable, and they usually may be traced back to auxiliary verbs and pronouns.
Often various accessories are found which are not required by the main proposition. This is a common fault in the narratives of ignorant men and in languages and dialects of a lower grade. It is seen in the multiplication of auxiliaries and qualifying particles observed in many American languages, where a vast number of needless accessories are brought into every sentence.
The nature of the relations expressed by inflections may be manifold, and it is one of the tasks of philosophic grammar to analyze and classify them with reference to the direction of mental action they imply.
It is evident that where these relations are varied and numerous, the language gains greatly in picturesqueness and force, and thus reacts with a more stimulating effect on the mind.
§ 8. The Development of Languages
Humboldt believed that in this respect languages could be divided into three classes, each representing a stage in progressive development.
In the first and lowest stage all the elements are material and significant, and there are no true formal parts of speech.
Next above this is where the elements of relation lose their independent significance where so used, but retain it elsewhere. The words are not yet fixed in grammatical categories. There is no distinction between verbs and nouns except in use. The plural conveys the idea of many, but the singular not strictly that of unity.
Highest of all is that condition of language where every word is subject to grammatical law and shows by its form what category it comes under; and where the relational or formal elements convey no hint of anything but this relation. Here, only, does language attain to that specialization of parts where each element subserves its own purpose and no other, and here only does it correspond with clear and connected thinking.
These expressions, however, must not be understood in a genetic sense, as if historically one linguistic class had preceded the other, and led up to it. Humboldt entertained no such view. He distinctly repudiated it. He did not believe in the evolution of languages. The differences of these classes are far more radical than that of sounds and signs; they reach down to the fundamental notions of things. His teaching was that a language without a passive voice, or without a grammatical gender can never acquire one, and consequently it can never perfectly express the conceptions corresponding to these features.29
In defining and appraising these inherent and inalienable qualities of languages lies the highest end and aim of linguistic science. This is its true philosophic character, its mission which lifts it above the mere collecting of words and formulating of rules.
If the higher languages did not develop from the lower, how did they arise? Humboldt answered this question fairly, so far as he was concerned. He said, he did not know. Individuals vary exceedingly in their talent for language, and so do nations. He was willing to call it an innate creative genius which endowed our Aryan forefathers with a richly inflected speech; but it was so contrary to the results of his prolonged and profound study of languages to believe, for instance, that a tongue like the Sanscrit could ever be developed from one like the Chinese, that he frankly said that he would rather accept at once the doctrine of those who attribute the different idioms of men to an immediate revelation from God.30
He fully recognized, however, a progress, an organic growth, in human speech, and he expressly names this as a special branch of linguistic investigation.31 He lays down that this growth may be from two sources, one the cultivation of a tongue within the nation by enriching its vocabulary, separating and classifying its elements, fixing its expressions, and thus adapting it to wider uses; the second, by forcible amalgamation with another tongue.
The latter exerts always a more profound and often a more beneficial influence. The organism of both tongues may be destroyed, but the dissolvent force is also an organic and vital one, and from the ruins of both constructs a speech of grander plans and with wider views. “The seemingly aimless and confused interminglings of primitive tribes sowed the seed for the flowers of speech and song which flourished in centuries long posterior.”
The immediate causes of the improvement of a language through forcible admixture with another, are: that it is obliged to drop all unneccessary accessory elements in a proposition; that the relations of ideas must be expressed by conventional
His explanation of inflection is most fully given in his Introductory Essay,
See these teachings clearly set forth in his Essay,
The eloquent and extraordinary passage in which these opinions are expressed is in his