MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF LANGUAGE AND OPINION. § 23. The study of language is necessary in order to understand the influence which language and opinion have upon each other. The opinion entertained of an object influences the mind in the application of a term to that object, and the term, when applied, influences the opinion. Call thunder "the bolt of God's wrath," and you excite the emotion of terror, as if it were an instrument of destruction. Call it, like the German peasant, the "dear thunder," das liebe gewitter, and you excite a different emotion." The good old man is passing along the air," der gute alte faehret. The good old man is God, and his passing along the air is thunder. Here God is presented to us under the aspect of a benefactor. "From the black cloud he makes bare his red, wrathful hand." Here God is presented to us under the image of a destroyer. When Schiller, in his boyhood, climbed the tree in the thunder-storm, was it not that he might get nearer the "good old man?" As illustrating the connection between language and opinion, "It is a significant circumstance, that no large society of which the language is not Teutonic (Gothic) has ever turned Protestant, and that wherever a language derived from ancient Rome is spoken, the religion of modern Rome to this day prevails."-MACAULAY'S England, p. 64. THE STUDY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. § 24. From the general relations of language considered in this chapter, we gather an argument of great power in favor of carefully studying one's own language, whether for its own sake as an end, it being a subject of great intrinsic interest, or for its uses and applications to the great purposes of life. To an Englishman or an American, the study of the English language offers a twofold advantage, to wit, in the mental discipline it furnishes, and in the knowledge it imparts. The discipline he can obtain without the necessity of studying a foreign language. The knowledge gained is appropriate to him as an Anglo-Saxon, embodied as it is in his native tongue. "If language is the outward appearance of the intellect of nations, if their language is their intellect and their intellect their language," then, by studying the English language, he becomes acquainted with the intel lect of the Anglo-Saxon race, while his own intellect is improved by the disciplinal process through which the study must lead him. By studying the language, he is brought into contact, and thus into close sympathy with the race who have written and spoken it. By understanding and using it in its full power, he becomes a teacher, a leader of those of the race who hear or read his words. Thus he at once takes possession of the inheritance bequeathed to him from past generations, constantly becoming more valuable by the contributions of the present; and, at the same time, he qualifies himself to use that inheritance for his own advantage and that of others, and to transmit it, enriched and improved, to future generations. QUESTIONS UNDER CHAPTER I. 1. What is the derivation of the word language? 2. What is the primary meaning of the term? 3. What is the secondary meaning of the term? 4. Will you mention the three classes of signs which constitute language in the secondary sense? 5. Compare language in the primary sense with language in the secondary sense as a sign of thought and emotion. 6. Mention the three opinions with respect to the origin of language. 7. Give the argument for the third opinion, with a full statement of the opinion itself. 8. Is language stationary or progressive? 9. Explain the growth of language as connected with the growth of thought. 10. Is there any natural connection between words and the ideas which they represent? 11. Give examples of onomatopoetic words. 12. Give illustrations of the law of growth in the English language. 13. Where is the birth-place of language? 14. Give the opinion of Sir HUMPHRY DAVY, and of Sir WILLIAM Jones, and of ADELung. 15. State the grounds of ADELUNG's opinion. 16. What do you say concerning the search for the primitive language? 17. In what condition does the primitive language exist? 18. What do you say of the value of language as related to reason? 19. From what is the permanent value of language derived? 20. State your author's views of the imperfection of language, and in what respects it is imperfect. 21. Describe the decay of languages. 22. Describe the death of languages. 23. What are the three arguments to prove the original unity of language? 24. Give instances of the affinities of languages. 25. Exhibit BoPP's views of philology. 26. State the three opinions which have prevailed in respect to the origin of the diversities of languages. 27. State the causes of the diversities in languages. 28. Mention the ways in which diversities of languages take place. 29. What reasons can you give for the study of language? 30. From what does a language borrow its character? 31. What relation does language bear to history? 32. What does your author say of the lost meaning of words? 33. Describe the relation of language to the laws of the human mind. 34. Describe the mutual influence of language and opinion. 35. Mention the advantages of the study of the English language. CHAPTER II. THE CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES. § 25. LANGUAGES are so numerous that a classification is absolutelely necessary in order to a convenient consideration of them. A classification can be made only so far as the affinities and diversities among them are known. In the present state of comparative philology, a full classification of all the languages spoken on the globe is quite out of the question. So little is known of the Chinese, the Japanese, the Tartar, the Malay, and of many other languages, that only a general classification can be expected until the study of ethnography shall throw additional light upon comparative philology. SCHLEGEL'S CLASSIFICATION. § 26. The following classification, proposed by A. W. von SCHLEGEL, and adopted by Bopp, is in a high degree logical and satisfactory: I. Languages with monosyllabic roots, but incapable of composition, and, therefore, without grammar or organization. To this class belong the Chinese stock, in which we have nothing but naked roots, and the predicates and other relations of the subject are determined merely by the position of words in the sentence. II. Languages with monosyllabic roots, which are susceptible of composition, and of which the grammar and organization depend entirely on this. In this class the leading principle of the formation of words lies in the connection of verbal and pronominal roots, which in combination form the body and the soul of the language. To this belongs the Sanscrit family and all other languages not included under I. and III., and preserved in such a state that the forms of the words may still be resolved into their simplest elements. III. Languages which consist of dissyllabic verbal roots, and require three consonants as the vehicles of their fundamental signification. This class contains the Shemitic languages only; its grammatical forms are produced not merely by composition, as is the case with the second, but also by means of a simple internal modification of roots. CLASSIFICATION ADOPTED IN THIS WORK. § 27. The common classification, founded partly on ethnological and partly on linguistical principles, is adopted in this work, as practically more convenient. I. The Chinese stock of languages. V. The American stock of languages. VI. The Oceanic or Polynesian stock of languages. It has been found that the average number of persons speaking the same language is greatest in the civilized divisions, thus indicating a tendency in civilization toward a unity of language. This tendency is strongly manifested in the most civilized nations of Europe, namely, the English, the French, the Germanic nations, inasmuch as science, religion, travel, and commerce produce extensive intercourse with each other. The ancient tendency was to diversity, the modern is to unity, of language. And if, in the early ages of the world, causes were in operation elsewhere, as well as on the plains of Shinar, which produced a confusion of tongues in the human race, we are prepared to believe that causes are now in operation which will produce an opposite result. European and American commerce is finding its way to China and Japan, and to every region where man is found, and is thus making a common medium of intercourse necessary. The missionaries of the cross, in preaching one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God as the father of all, not only are promoting the sense of universal brotherhood through the race, but also the unity of language. Thus we can believe that if "one song shall employ all nations," one language shall be the principal medium of intercourse. |