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However, we need not be surprised, for we find similar barbarisms in English. Even in Anglo-Saxon, the third person plural, sind, has by a false analogy been transferred to the first and second persons; and instead of the modern English,

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Dialectically we hear I be, instead of I am; and if Chartism should ever gain the upper hand, we must be prepared for newspapers adopting such forms as I says, I knows.

These various influences and conditions under which language grows and changes, are like the waves and winds which carry deposits to the bottom of the sea, where they accumulate, and rise, and grow, and at last appear on the surface of the earth as a stratum, perfectly intelligible in all its component parts, not produced by an inward principle of growth, nor regulated by invariable laws of nature; yet, on the other hand, by no means the result of mere accident, or the production of lawless and uncontrolled agencies. We cannot be careful enough in the use of our words. Strictly speaking, neither history nor growth is applicable to the changes of the shifting surface of the earth. History applies to the actions of free agents; growth to the natural unfolding of organic beings. We speak, however, of the growth of the crust of the earth, and we know what we mean by it; and it is in this sense,

1 The Gothic forms sijum, sijuth, are not organic. They are either derived by false analogy from the third person plural sind, or a new base sij was derived from the subjunctive sijau, Sanskrit syâm.

but not in the sense of growth as applied to a tree, that we have a right to speak of the growth of language. If that modification which takes place in time by continually new combinations of given elements, which withdraws itself from the control of free agents, and can in the end be recognized as the result of natural agencies, may be called growth; and if so defined, we may apply it to the growth of the crust of the earth; the same word, in the same sense, will be applicable to language, and will justify us in removing the science of language from the pale of the historical to that of the physical sciences.

There is another objection which we have to consider, and the consideration of which will again help us to understand more clearly the real character of language. The great periods in the growth of the earth which have been established by geological research are brought to their close, or very nearly so, when we discover the first vestiges of human life, and when the history of man, in the widest sense of the word, begins. The periods in the growth of language, on the contrary, begin and run parallel with the history of man. It has been said, therefore, that although language may not be merely a work of art, it would, nevertheless, be impossible to understand the life and growth of any language without an historical knowledge of the times in which that language grew up. We ought to know, it is said, whether a language which is to be analyzed under the microscope of comparative grammar, has been growing up wild, among wild tribes, without a literature, oral or written, in poetry or in prose; or whether it has received the cultivation of poets, priests, and orators, and retained the

78 CONNECTION BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND HISTORY.

impress of a classical age. annals of political history one language has come in contact with another, how long this contact has lasted, which of the two nations stood higher in civilization, which was the conquering and which the conquered, which of the two established the laws, the religion, and the arts of the country, and which produced the greatest number of national teachers, popular poets, and successful demagogues. All these questions are of a purely historical character, and the science which has to borrow so much from historical sources, might well be considered an anomaly in the sphere of the physical sciences.

Again, it is only from the that we can learn whether

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Now, in answer to this, it cannot be denied that among the physical sciences none is so intimately connected with the history of man as the science of language. But a similar connection, though in a less degree, can be shown to exist between other branches of physical research and the history of man. zoology, for instance, it is of some importance to know at what particular period of history, in what country, and for what purposes certain animals were tamed and domesticated. In ethnology, a science, we may remark in passing, quite distinct from the science of language, it would be difficult to account for the Caucasian stamp impressed on the Mongolian race in Hungary, or on the Tatar race in Turkey, unless we knew from written documents the migrations and settlements of the Mongolic and Tataric tribes in Europe. A botanist, again, comparing several specimens of rye, would find it difficult to account for their respective peculiarities, unless he knew that in some parts of the world this plant has been cultivated for centuries,

whereas in other regions, as, for instance, in Mount Caucasus, it is still allowed to grow wild. Plants have their own countries, like races, and the presence of the cucumber in Greece, the orange and cherry in Italy, the potatoe in England, and the vine at the Cape, can be fully explained by the historian only. The more intimate relation, therefore, between the history of language and the history of man is not sufficient to exclude the science of language from the circle of the physical sciences.

Nay, it might be shown, that, if strictly defined, the science of language can declare itself completely independent of history. If we speak of the language of England, we ought, no doubt, to know something of the political history of the British Isles, in order to understand the present state of that language. Its history begins with the early Britons, who spoke a Celtic dialect; it carries us on to the Saxon conquest, to the Danish invasions, to the Norman conquest: and we see how each of these political events contributed to the formation of the character of the language. The language of England may be said to have been in succession Celtic, Saxon, Norman, and English. But if we speak of the history of the English language, we enter on totally different ground. The English language was never Celtic, the Celtic never grew into Saxon, nor the Saxon into Norman, nor the Norman into English. The history of the Celtic language runs on to the present day. It matters not whether it be spoken by all the inhabitants of the British Isles, or only by a small minority in Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. A language, as long as it is spoken by anybody, lives and has its substantive existence. The last

80 LANGUAGE INDEPENDENT OF HISTORICAL EVENTS.

old woman that spoke Cornish, and to whose memory it is now intended to raise a monument, represented by herself alone the ancient language of Cornwall. A Celt may become an Englishman, Celtic and English blood may be mixed; and who could tell at the present day the exact proportion of Celtic and Saxon blood in the population of England? But languages are never mixed. It is indifferent by what name the language spoken in the British Islands be called, whether English or British or Saxon; to the student of language English is Teutonic, and nothing but Teutonic. The physiologist may protest, and point out that in many instances the skull, or the bodily habitat of the English language, is of a Celtic type; the genealogist may protest and prove that the arms of many an English family are of Norman origin; the student of language must follow his own way. Historical information as to an early substratum of Celtic inhabitants in Britain, as to Saxon, Danish, and Norman invasions may be useful to him. But though every record were burned, and every skull mouldered, the English language, as spoken by any ploughboy, would reveal its own history, if analyzed according to the rules of comparative grammar. Without the help of history, we should see that English is Teutonic, that like Dutch and Friesian it belongs to the LowGerman branch; that this branch, together with the High-German, Gothic, and Scandinavian branches, constitute the Teutonic class; that this Teutonic class, together with the Celtic, Slavonic, the Hellenic, Italic, Iranic, and Indic classes constitute the great IndoEuropean or Aryan family of speech. In the English dictionary the student of the science of language

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