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Title: Introduction to the science of language, Volume 1 (of 2)
Author: A. H. Sayce
Release date: May 9, 2024 [eBook #73585]
Language: English
Original publication: London: C. Kegan Paul & Co, 1880
Credits: Anita Hammond and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INTRODUCTION
TO THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE, VOLUME 1 (OF 2) ***](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20528-241008114533-7514cd39/85/Download-full-ebook-of-t-instant-download-pdf-23-320.jpg)
![Exception may perhaps be taken to the use I have made of the
languages and condition of modern savage tribes to illustrate those
of primitive man. It is quite true that in many cases savage tribes
are examples of degeneracy from a higher and less savage state;
the Arctic Highlanders of Ross and Parry, for instance, have
retrograded in social habits, and the disuse of boats and harpoons,
from the Eskimaux of the south; and if we pass from savage to more
civilized races there is distinct evidence in the language of the
Polynesians that they have lapsed from a superior level of
civilization. It is also quite true that, however degraded a tribe or
race may now be, it is necessarily much in advance of palæolithic
man when he first began to create a language for himself, and to
discover the use of fire. Nevertheless, it is in modern savages and,
to a less degree, in young children, that we have to look for the best
representatives we can find of primæval man; and so long as we
remember that they are but imperfect representatives we shall not
go far wrong in our scientific inferences. As Professor Max Müller has
said:[1] “The idea that, in order to understand what the so-called
civilized people may have been before they reached their higher
enlightenment, we ought to study savage tribes, such as we find
them still at the present day, is perfectly just. It is the lesson which
geology has taught us, applied to the stratification of the human
race.”
In the matter of language, however, we are less likely to make
mistakes in arguing from the modern savage to the first men than in
other departments of anthropology. Here we can better distinguish
between old and new, can trace the gradual growth of ideas and
forms, and determine where articulate language passes into those
inarticulate efforts to speak out of which it originally arose. In fact, a
chief part of the services rendered to glottology by the study and
observation of savage and barbarous idioms consists in the
verification they afford of the results of our analysis of cultivated and
historical languages. If, for example, this leads us to the conclusion
that grammatical simplicity is the last point reached in the evolution
of language, we must go to savage dialects for confirmation before](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20528-241008114533-7514cd39/85/Download-full-ebook-of-t-instant-download-pdf-27-320.jpg)
![hence it was easy to derive φιλητής, “a thief,” from ὑφέλεσθαι, “to
steal,” by “depriving” the latter word of its first syllable, and to see in
cœlum, “heaven,” cœlatum, “covered,” “because it is open,” or in
fœdus, “covenant,” fœdus, “hateful,” “because there is nothing
hateful in it.”[2] After this we need not smile at Plato’s derivation of
θεοί, “gods,” from θέειν, “to run,” because the stars were first
worshipped, or Aristotle’s assumption that objects are easy of
digestion when they are “light” in weight. Dr. Jolly has pointed out
that the fact that ἐτυμός is Ionic indicates the origin of the pseudo-
science in the Ionic schools of philosophy; it is therefore a
remarkable illustration of the “self-sufficient” nature of Greek
thought and of Greek contempt for the “barbarian,” that the dialects
of Asia Minor, though so closely akin to Greek, should have been
utterly disregarded, and the investigations into language
consequently left to the vagaries of the fancy without the light of
comparison to guide them to the truth. Plato in the “Kratylus” is
almost the only Greek who has noticed the resemblance of one of
these “barbarous” dialects to his own, and he has only noticed it to
draw a wrong conclusion from the fact. Many Greek words, he
maintains, were borrowed from abroad; and by way of examples he
quotes κύων (the Sanskrit śwan, the Latin canis, and our hound),
ὑδώρ (the Sanskrit udam, the Latin unda, and our water), and πῦρ
(the Latin pruna, the Umbrian pir, and our fire), as being identical
with the names of the same objects in Phrygian. The very fact,
however, that Plato has noticed this resemblance shows that the
stimulating influence of contact with Persia was still felt, even in the
domain of language, when the Greeks found themselves in the
presence of an allied and similar civilization, with all its contrasts to
their own, and when men like Themistokles found it politic to acquire
a fluent knowledge of the Persian tongue. It was not until the
Empire of Alexander had overthrown that of Cyrus and Darius and
impressed upon the Greek a sovereign contempt for the Asiatic, and
an equal belief in his own innate superiority, that any regard for the
jargons of the “barbarians” became altogether out of the question. It
was then that the masterpieces of early Greek literature came to be](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20528-241008114533-7514cd39/85/Download-full-ebook-of-t-instant-download-pdf-35-320.jpg)
![the sole objects of study and investigation, and philological research
took the form of that one-sided, and therefore erroneous, exposition
of the grammar of a single language, which has been the bane of
classical philology down to our own time.
The linguistic labours of the age of the Sophists were occasioned
by the needs of oratory. When rhetoric became a profitable and all-
powerful pursuit, and the end of education was held to be the ability
to hold one’s own, whether right or wrong, and confute one’s
neighbour, words necessarily came to be regarded as more valuable
than things, and the main care and attention of the sophist were
bestowed upon the form of his sentences and the style of his
argument. Just as language had been approached in the preceding
period from a purely metaphysical point of view, and was to be
approached in the succeeding period from a logical point of view, so
now it was looked at from the side of rhetoric. It was not etymology,
a knowledge of the “truth,” that was wanted, but a knowledge of the
composition of sentences and of the way in which they could best be
arranged for the purposes of persuasion. The first outlines of
European grammar accordingly go back to this Sophistic age. We
find Protagoras criticizing the opening verse of the Iliad, because
μῆνις, “wrath,” is used as a feminine, contrary to the sense of the
word, or distinguishing the three genders and busying himself with
the discovery of the verbal moods, while the lectures of Prodikus
were occupied with the analysis and definition of synonyms. Some
idea may be formed of the grammatical zeal of the Sophists from the
“Clouds” of Aristophanes,[3] where he ridicules the pedantry that
would force the artificial rules of grammar upon the usage of living
speech.
Plato and Aristotle, the products of the impulse given to thought
by that greatest of the Sophists, Sokrates, form the connecting link
between the Sophistic and the Alexandrine periods, and renew in the
shape required by the progress of philosophy the old contest
regarding the nature of language between the followers of
Herakleitus and those of Demokritus. In philology as elsewhere, the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20528-241008114533-7514cd39/85/Download-full-ebook-of-t-instant-download-pdf-36-320.jpg)
![idealism of Plato stands opposed to the practical realism of his pupil
Aristotle. Plato paints language as it ought to be; Aristotle reasons
upon it as it is. But in both cases it was not language in general, but
the Greek language in particular, that was meant; and owing to this
short-sightedness of view and disregard of the comparative method,
the theories of each, however suggestive and stimulating, are yet
devoid of scientific value and mainly interesting to the historian
alone. The problem of Plato’s “Kratylus” is the natural fittingness of
words, which finally resolves itself into the question how it happens
that a word is understood by the bearer in the same sense as it is
intended by the speaker. No answer is given to the question; but the
dialogue gives occasion for a complete review of the linguistic
opinions prevalent at the time, and the conclusion put into the
mouth of Sokrates is that while in actual (Greek) speech no natural
and innate connection can be traced between words and things, it
were much to be wished that an ideal speech could be created in
which this natural connection would exist. In this wish, as Dr. Jolly
remarks, Plato shows himself the forerunner of Leibnitz and Bishop
Wilkins, the one with his “Lingua characteristica universalis,” and the
other with his “Essay towards a real Character and a Philosophical
Language.”
Aristotle, as might be expected, will have nothing to do with the
theory of the natural origin of speech. He declares himself
unequivocally on the side of its opponents, and lays down that
language originates through the agreement and convention of men
(συνθήκῃ). Words, he holds, have no meaning in themselves; this is
put into them by those who utter them, and they then become so
many symbols of the objects signified (ὅταν γίνεται σύμβολον). “For
the sentence (λόγος), when heard, makes one’s meaning intelligible,
not necessarily but accidentally, since it consists of words, and each
word is a symbol.”[4] At the same time Aristotle makes no clear
distinction between thought and language; concept and word are
with him interchangeable terms; and his famous ten categories into
which all objects can be classed are as much grammatical as logical,
or perhaps more rightly a mixture of both. In his hands the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20528-241008114533-7514cd39/85/Download-full-ebook-of-t-instant-download-pdf-37-320.jpg)
![and supported on this assumption. Their opponents, the Epicureans,
contented themselves with inquiries into the origin of speech, which
had to be explained, like everything else, in accordance with the
theory of atoms. The large part, however, played by the action of
society in their system gave their theorizing upon the subject an
accidental aspect of truth which at first sight is somewhat surprising;
and even the well-known lines of Horace (Sat. I. 3. 99, sq.) contain
a more correct representation of the primitive condition of man and
the evolution of language than the speculations current upon the
matter up to the last few years. Language, it was held, existed
φύσει, not θέσει; but the nature which originated speech was not
external nature, but the nature of man. The different sounds and
utterances whereby the same object is denoted in different
languages are due to the varying circumstances in which the
speakers find themselves, and are as much determined by their
climate and social condition, their constitution and physique, as the
lowing of the ox or the bleating of the lamb. Men, indeed, create
speech, not however deliberately and with intention (ἐπιστημόνως),
but instinctively through the impulse of their nature (φυσικῶς
κινούμενοι).[5] We may perhaps trace in these expressions the
germs of the theory of the onomatopœic origin of language.
While the Epicureans were speculating on the origin of speech, the
grammarians of Alexandria were busying themselves with the
elaboration of what the French would call a grammaire raisonnée.
“Alexandria,” says Dr. Jolly, “was the birthplace of classical philology,
a study which has directly raised itself upon the ruins of the old
Hellenic culture and spiritual originality.” The intense mental activity
and productiveness of Athens had made way for the frigid pedantry
and artificial mannerisms of commentators and court-poets; the free
national life and small rival states of Greece had been replaced by a
semi-oriental despotism and a cosmopolitan centralization; and
unable themselves to emulate the great creations of the classic age,
the literary coterie of the Alexandrine Museum could do no more
than admire and edit them. The very dialect in which the Attic
tragedians and historians had composed and written had become](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20528-241008114533-7514cd39/85/Download-full-ebook-of-t-instant-download-pdf-39-320.jpg)
![and general rules of any sort flatly denied, except in so far as they
were consecrated by custom. The purism of his opponents, who
wished to correct everything which contravened the grammatical
laws they had laid down, was thus met by an unqualified defence of
the rights of usage—“quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma
loquendi.” Our own schoolmasters who have introduced an l into
could (coud), the past tense of can, because should from shall has
one, or have prefixed a w to whole, the twin-brother of hale (Greek
καλός), because of the analogy of wheel and which, are the fitting
successors of the Alexandrine Analogists, and it was unfortunate for
both that they had no Aristophanes to transfer them to cloudland,
and ridicule them in the light of common sense.
Krates, however, has better claims upon our attention than as
leader of the Anomalists. To him we owe the first formal Greek
grammar and collection of the grammatical facts obtained by the
labours of the Alexandrine critics. That a formal grammar, which
implies an enunciation of general rules as well as of the exceptions
to them, should have been the work of an Anomalist rather than of
an Analogist, may at first sight seem surprising; but we must
recollect that the Anomalist did not deny the existence of general
rules altogether, but only their universal and unqualified applicability;
while the Analogist who sought to produce an artificial uniformity in
language instead of accepting the facts of speech as they are, was
totally unfitted for composing a practical grammar.[6]
The immediate cause, however, of the grammar in question was
really the tardy comparison of Greek with a foreign tongue, the
Latin, and the need of a Greek grammar felt by the citizens of Rome.
Appius Claudius Cæcus (censor in b.c. 312) had already written upon
grammar,[7] and Spurius Carvilius, a writing-master (b.c. 234), had
regulated the Latin alphabet, substituting the indispensable g for the
useless z, and when Krates came to Rome in 159 b.c., as the
Ambassador of Attalus, the King of Pergamos, he found a ready
audience for his ἀκροάσεις, or “lectures” upon the study of Greek.
Almost all that the Romans knew of literary culture and civilization](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20528-241008114533-7514cd39/85/Download-full-ebook-of-t-instant-download-pdf-41-320.jpg)
![came from the Greeks; their native literature was coarse and
insignificant, and their language uncultivated and inflexible.
Education at Rome, therefore, meant education upon Greek models
and in the Greek language. Boys learned Greek before they learned
Latin, and the Greek words with which the plays of Plautus are
strewn, as well as their Alexandrine origin, show pretty plainly that a
familiarity with the language of Greece was not confined to the
literary salon of a Scipio, or the houses of a wealthy aristocracy.
Livius Andronicus, the father of Latin literature, was a Greek
professor (272 b.c.), and his translation of the “Odyssey” into Latin
was doubtless for the use of his pupils;[8] the first history of Rome,
that of Fabius Pictor (in 200 b.c.), was written in Greek; and even a
popular tribune like Tiberius Gracchus published the Greek speech
he had made at Rhodes. In fact, a knowledge of Greek was
necessary not only for acquiring the barest amount of culture and
education, but even for a proper acquaintance with the Latin
language itself. Partly through its stiff and cumbrous immobility,
partly through the want of originality in its speakers, Latin literature
and Latin oratory were alike impossible without the genial and
fructifying influence of the Greek. With Greek teachers and Greek
models, a native literature came into existence, and the language
was artificially trained to become a suitable instrument for
communication between the more polished nations of the ancient
world and their Roman masters. It is true that classical Latin was
really more or less of a hothouse exotic, interesting therefore rather
to the student of literature than to the student of linguistic science;
but the attempt to rear and nurture it, to keep it unpolluted by the
spoken dialects of Rome or the provinces, and to confine it within
the rules and metres of a foreign rhythm made it the seedplot of
grammatical questions and philological investigations. The study of
grammar was of practical importance to the practical Roman; he
applied himself to it with all the energy of his nature, and treated
the whole subject in a practical rather than a philosophical way.
Julius Cæsar, the type and impersonation of the Roman spirit, found
time to compose a work, “De Analogiâ,” and invent the term](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20528-241008114533-7514cd39/85/Download-full-ebook-of-t-instant-download-pdf-42-320.jpg)
![ablative, amid the distractions of political life, and even Cato with all
his dogged conservatism, learnt Greek in his old age in order that he
might be able to teach it to his son. The zeal with which the deepest
problems of grammar were discussed seems strange to us of to-day,
but upon the settlement of these problems depended the possibility
of making Latin the vehicle of law and oratory, and preventing the
Roman world from becoming Greek.
The first school grammar ever written in Europe was the Greek
grammar of Dionysius Thrax, a pupil of Aristarchus, which he
published at Rome in the time of Pompey. The grammar is still in
existence,[9] and its opening sentence, in which grammar is defined
as “a practical acquaintance” with the language of literary men, and
divided into six parts—accentuation and phonology, explanation of
figurative expressions, definition, etymology, general rules of
flection, and critical canons[10]—has formed the starting-point of the
innumerable school-grammars which have since seen the light. It
has also been the cause of much of that absurd etymologizing which
the Romans received from the Greeks and handed on to the
lexicographers of modern Europe. Not content with transcribing the
grotesque etymologies of their Greek teachers, the Latin writers
strove to emulate them by still more grotesque etymologies of their
own. Lucius Ælius Stilo, of Lanuvium, about 100 b.c. first gave a
course of lectures on Latin literature and rhetoric, and one of his
pupils, Marcus Terentius Varro, wrote five books, “De Linguâ Latinâ,”
which he dedicated to his friend Cicero. The “science” of Latin
etymology was now founded, and a fruitful field opened to future
explorers. Every word had to be provided with a derivation, and on
the received principles of etymology this was no difficult task. By the
law of antiphrasis, bellum is made the neuter of bellus, “because
there is nothing beautiful in war;” and parcus is so named because
the niggard “spares (parcere) nobody.” It has been left to the
vagaries of a later day to excel the Romans in this part of their
labours. The lawyers tell us that parliament is derived from parler,
“to speak,” mentem, “one’s mind;” Junius[11] that the soul is “the
well of life” from the Greek ζάω, “to live,” and the Teutonic wala,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20528-241008114533-7514cd39/85/Download-full-ebook-of-t-instant-download-pdf-43-320.jpg)
![“well,” while merry comes from μυρίζειν, because the ancients
anointed themselves at feasts; and a book entitled “Ereuna,”
published as late as the year of grace 1875, would raise the envy of
a Latin etymologist. When we find Jupiter (Diespiter) gravely derived
in it from the “Celtic” oyo-meir, “infinite,” and peitir, “a thunderbolt;”
Nemesis discovered to be the “Celtic” neam-aire, “pitiless,” and
manna man-neam, “food of heaven”—we may trace the last results
of that unhappy disease of “popular etymologizing” which it is the
work of comparative philology to cure.[12]
The introduction of Greek grammar into Rome, however, was
attended by another evil than the propagation of a false system of
etymology. The technical terms of Greek grammar were in many
cases misunderstood, and, accordingly, mistranslated. Thus, in the
province of phonology, the mutes were divided into the ψιλά (k, t,
p), and their corresponding “rough” or aspirated sounds (δασέα), the
soft g, d, and b being placed between the ψιλά and δασέα, and
consequently named μέσα, or “middle.” The Romans rendered μέσα
by mediæ, and δασέα by aspiratæ, but ψιλά they mistranslated
tenues, and the mistranslation still causes confusion in modern
treatises on pronunciation. Similarly, genitivus, the “genitive” or case
of “origin,” is a blundering misrepresentation of the Greek γενική, or
case of “the genus,” a wholly different conception; and accusativus,
“the accusative,” or case “of accusing,” perpetuates the mistake
which saw in the Greek αἰτιατική a derivative from αἰτιάομαι, to
“blame,” instead of αἰτία, “an object;” while the Greek ἀπαρέμφατος
signifies “without a secondary meaning” of tense or person, and not
“the indefinite” or “indetermining” as the Latin infinitivus would
imply. We still suffer from the errors made in transferring to Rome
the grammatical terminology of Alexandria.
The Romans continued to take an interest in questions of
grammar and of etymology down to the last. It is true that they
confined their inquiries to their own and the Greek language; the
descent they claimed from Æneas and the Trojans inspired them
with no desire to investigate the dialects of Asia, and even the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20528-241008114533-7514cd39/85/Download-full-ebook-of-t-instant-download-pdf-44-320.jpg)
![Etruscan language and literature which lingered on almost to the
Christian era at their own doors, were left unregarded by the leading
philologists of Rome. In language, as in everything else, the
provincial had to adapt himself to the prejudices of his conqueror.
Never before or since has the principle of centralization been carried
out with greater logical precision. Even Cæsar who found time to
discuss grammatical questions in the midst of his campaigns in Gaul,
never troubled himself to examine the language of his Gallic
adversaries, or to compare the grammatical forms they used with
those of Latin.
Passing by the Emperor Claudius, who endeavoured to reform the
Roman alphabet, and actually introduced three new letters, we come
to Apollonius Dyskolus and his son Herodian, two eminent
Alexandrine grammarians of the second century. We possess part of
the “Syntax” of the former, who specially devoted himself to this
branch of the subject, and expressed himself so briefly and
technically (like the grammarians of ancient India) as to gain the
name of Dyskolos, “the Difficult.” His son Herodian continued the
labours of his father, and in the works of these Græco-Roman
grammarians we see the long controversy between the Analogists
and the Anomalists finally settled. Analogy is recognized as the
principle that underlies language; but in actual speech exceptions
occur to every rule, and break through the hard-and-fast lines of
artificial pedantry. The Greek and Latin school-grammars of our
boyhood are the heritage that has come down to us from this old
dispute and its final settlement. Dr. Jolly remarks with justice[13] that
the radical fault of these grammatical labours was the confusion
between thinking and speaking, between logic and grammar—a
confusion which intruded the empirical terminology of formal logic
into grammar, and was only dissipated when an investigation of the
languages of the East introduced the comparative method into the
treatment of speech, and showed that to interpret aright the
phænomena of Greek and Latin we must study them in the light of
other tongues.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20528-241008114533-7514cd39/85/Download-full-ebook-of-t-instant-download-pdf-45-320.jpg)
![The tradition handed down by Herodian was taken up by Ælius
Donatus in the fourth century, and Priscian in the sixth; the former
the author of the Latin grammar which dominated the schools of the
Middle Ages; the latter of eighteen books on grammar, the most
extensive work of the kind we have received from classical antiquity.
Priscian flourished at Constantinople during the short revival of the
Roman Empire and glory that marked the reign of Justinian; and one
of the most noticeable things in his writings is his comparison of
Latin with Greek, especially the Æolic dialect. In this he followed
Tyrannio or Diokles, the manumitted slave of Cicero’s wife and the
author of a treatise “On the Derivation of the Latin Language from
the Greek.” Donatus and Priscian were the philological lights of
Europe for more than a thousand years, and such lights were little
better than darkness. Once, and once only, was an attempt made to
break down their monopoly and to introduce oriental learning into
Western education. Pope Clement V., at the Council of Vienne in
1311, exhorted the four great Universities of Europe—Paris, Bologna,
Salamanca, and Oxford—to establish two Chairs of Hebrew, two of
Arabic, and two of Chaldee, in order that their students might be
able to dispute successfully with Jews and Mohammedans. About the
same time Dante, in his treatise “De Vulgari Eloquentiâ,” compared
the dialects of Italy, and selected one which he calls “Illustrious,
Cardinal and Courtly,” spoken wherever education and refinement
were to be found, and sprung from the brilliant Sicilian court of
Frederick II.[14]—a dialect destined to become the language of the
“Divina Commedia” and the nursing-mother of the languages and
literatures of modern Europe. But elsewhere the “Doctrinale
puerorum” of the priest Alexander de Villa Dei, or Villedieu, of Paris,
written in leonine verses, was the sole grammar taught and learnt;
and the Latin dictionary of Giovanni de Balbis, of Genoa, was the
only guide to Latin literature. No wonder that Roger Bacon, in his
“Opus Majus,”[15] has to lay down that Greek, Hebrew, and Latin are
three separate and independent languages, which must be learned
and treated separately and independently, and that “those words
only which are derived from Greek and Hebrew ought to be](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20528-241008114533-7514cd39/85/Download-full-ebook-of-t-instant-download-pdf-46-320.jpg)
![interpreted by those tongues, since those which are purely Latin
cannot be explained except by Latin words.” “For,” he goes on to say,
“Latin pure and simple is quite different from every other language,
and therefore cannot be interpreted from any other.” The most
approved scholars and etymologists of his day amused themselves
by deriving amen from the Latin a, “without,” and the Greek mene (?
μείων), “defect,” parascene (parasceve) from the Latin parare and
cæna, and cælum from the hybrid case-helios, or “house of the sun”
(!), much in the same way that Jacobus de Voragine, the genial
author of the “Legenda Aurea,”[16] derives Clemens from “cleos,
quod est gloria, et mens, quasi gloriosa mens;” and says of the
name Cæcilia, “quasi cæli lilia, vel cæcis via, vel a cælo et lya: vel
Cæcilia quasi cæcitate carens; vel dicitur a cælo et leos quod est
populus.”
But even the older Humanists were not much better. They knelt
before the spirit of classical antiquity with a worship at once child-
like and unreasoning. Their object was to write and speak Latin
correctly—that is to say, in accordance with the usage of certain
literary men of Rome, not to discover the grounds on which this
usage rested. Switheim declares that it matters as little to know why
this or that verb governs a case, as it does to know why bin, the
Latin sum, “governs the nominative, ich, ego.” “We can say that the
verb governs the nominative, because it was once so agreed among
the grammarians of antiquity that the verb should govern the
nominative ante se. If it had been agreed among the ancients that
the object of the verb should be in the accusative, the verb would
govern the accusative.” The grammatical term “to govern” was, by
the way, a legacy bequeathed by the schoolmen; and a very
mischievous legacy it was. Priscian does not yet know it, though it is
found in Consentius. Unreasoning and unreasonable, however, as
the Humanists were in their treatment of grammar, they were
outdone by the orthodox who found in the “errors” of the Vulgate—
such as Da mihi bibere—direct proofs of Divine inspiration, and the
power of the Holy Spirit to override the usual rules of grammar.
Johannes de Gallandia, for instance, states boldly:—“Pagina divina](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20528-241008114533-7514cd39/85/Download-full-ebook-of-t-instant-download-pdf-47-320.jpg)
![non vult se subdere legi Grammatices, nec vult illius arte regi.” So,
again, Smaragdus writes in reference to the rule laid down by
Donatus, that scalæ, scopæ, quadrigæ must be used in the plural:
“We shall not follow him because we know that the Holy Spirit has
always (namely, in the Vulgate) employed these words in the
singular.”[17]
We have seen that a knowledge of more than one language is an
indispensable preliminary to the formation of a grammar of either;
we have seen also that it was among the Semites of Babylonia and
Assyria that the earliest grammatical essays were first made. The
impulse given to grammatical studies by these attempts did not
survive the fall of Babylon; and though the Jewish schools in
Babylonia and elsewhere were forced to accompany the extinct
Hebrew of their sacred books with glosses and commentaries in
Aramaic, they produced nothing that can be called with any truth a
grammatical work. It was not until the foundation of the School of
Edessa, in the sixth century, that the traditions of the scribes of
Assur-bani-pal were taken up by their successors in Mesopotamia.
The study of Greek for ecclesiastical purposes among the Syrian
Christians led to the compilation of a Syrian grammar; and Jacob of
Edessa (a.d. 650-700) succeeded in elaborating one which served as
a model for all succeeding works. His whole grammar, however, was
based on that of the Greeks, and his terminology was either
borrowed directly from the Greek, or formed after the analogy of his
Greek originals. Jacob, to whom the systematization of the Syriac
vowel-points is to be ascribed, was followed by Elias of Nisibis
(eleventh century), and John Barzugbi (thirteenth century), who,
says M. Renan, “may be regarded as the author of the first complete
grammar of the Syriac language.”[18] The Arabs were not slow to
imitate the example of their Syrian neighbours. The preservation of
the text of the Korân turned their attention to philological studies at
an early period; and we may assign the real foundation of Arabic
grammar to the end of the seventh century, when Abul-Aswed (who
died 688 a.d.) introduced the diacritical points and vowel-signs, and
wrote some treatises on several questions of grammar. His labours](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/20528-241008114533-7514cd39/85/Download-full-ebook-of-t-instant-download-pdf-48-320.jpg)
Download full ebook of t instant download pdf
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- 4. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kieso, Intermediate Accounting, 16/e Instructor’s Manual (For Instructor Use Only) 1-1 Solution Manual for Intermediate Accounting, 16th Edition, Donald E. Kieso Full download chapter at: https://testbankbell.com/product/solution-manual-for- intermediate-accounting-16th-edition-donald-e-kieso/ CHAPTER 1 Financial Accounting and Accounting Standards ASSIGNMENT CLASSIFICATION TABLE Topics Questions Cases 1. Subject matter of accounting. 1, 2 4 2. Environment of accounting. 3, 29 6, 7 3. Role of principles, objectives, standards, and accounting theory. 4, 5, 6, 7 1, 2, 3, 5 4. Historical development of GAAP. 8, 9, 10, 11 8, 9 5. Authoritative pronouncements and rule- making bodies. 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24 3, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17 6. Role of pressure groups. 22, 23, 26, 27, 28 10, 15, 16, 17 7. Ethical issues. 25, 27, 29 15
- 5. 1-2 Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kieso, Intermediate Accounting, 16/e Instructor’s Manual (For Instructor Use Only) ASSIGNMENT CHARACTERISTICS TABLE Item Description Level of Difficulty Time (minutes) CA1-1 FASB and standard-setting. Simple 15–20 CA1-2 GAAP and standard-setting. Simple 15–20 CA1-3 Financial reporting and accounting standards. Simple 15–20 CA1-4 Financial accounting. Simple 15–20 CA1-5 Objective of financial reporting. Moderate 20–25 CA1-6 Accounting numbers and the environment. Simple 10–15 CA1-7 Need for GAAP. Simple 15–20 CA1-8 AICPA’s role in rule-making. Simple 20–25 CA1-9 FASB role in rule-making. Simple 20–25 CA1-10 Politicalization of GAAP. Complex 30–40 CA1-11 Models for setting GAAP. Simple 15–20 CA1-12 GAAP terminology. Moderate 30–40 CA1-13 Rule-making Issues. Complex 20–25 CA1-14 Securities and Exchange Commission. Moderate 30–40 CA1-15 Financial reporting pressures. Moderate 25–35 CA1-16 Economic consequences. Moderate 25–35 CA1-17 GAAP and economic consequences. Moderate 25–35
- 6. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kieso, Intermediate Accounting, 16/e Instructor’s Manual (For Instructor Use Only) 1-3 LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1. Understand the financial reporting environment. 2. Identify the major policy-setting bodies and their role in the standard-setting process. 3. Explain the meaning of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and the role of the Codification for GAAP. 4. Describe major challenges in the financial reporting environment. *5. Compare the procedures related to financial accounting and accounting standards under GAAP and IFRS.
- 7. 1-4 Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kieso, Intermediate Accounting, 16/e Instructor’s Manual (For Instructor Use Only) CHAPTER REVIEW 1. Chapter 1 describes the environment that has influenced both the development and use of the financial accounting process. The chapter traces the development of financial accounting standards, focusing on the groups that have had or currently have the responsibility for developing such standards. Certain groups other than those with direct responsibility for developing financial accounting standards have significantly influenced the standard-setting process. These various pressure groups are also discussed. Nature of Financial Accounting 2. (L.O. 1) The essential characteristics of accounting are (1) the identification, measure- ment, and communication of financial information about (2) economic entities to (3) interested parties. Financial accounting is the process that culminates in the preparation of financial reports on the enterprise for use by both internal and external parties. 3. Financial statements are the principal means through which a company communicates its financial information to those outside it. The financial statements most frequently provided are (1) the balance sheet, (2) the income statement, (3) the statement of cash flows, and (4) the statement of owners’ or stockholders’ equity. Other means of financial reporting include the president’s letter or supplementary schedules in the corporate annual report, prospectuses, reports filed with government agencies, news releases, management forecasts, and social or environmental impact statements. Accounting and Capital Allocation 4. Accounting is important for markets, free enterprise, and competition because it assists in providing information that leads to capital allocation. The better the information, the more effective the process of capital allocation and then the healthier the economy. Objective of Financial Reporting 5. The objective of general-purpose financial reporting is to provide financial information about the reporting entity that is useful to present and potential equity investors, lenders, and other creditors in decisions about providing resources to the company. General-purpose financial statements provide financial reporting information to a wide variety of users. 6. The objective of financial reporting identifies investors and creditors as the primary users for general-purpose financial statements. As part of the objective of general-purpose financial reporting, an entity perspective is adopted. Companies are viewed as separate and distinct from their owners. When making decisions, investors are interested in assessing (1) the company’s ability to generate net cash inflows and (2) management’s ability to protect and enhance the capital providers’ investments.
- 8. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kieso, Intermediate Accounting, 16/e Instructor’s Manual (For Instructor Use Only) 1-5 7. The accounting profession has developed a common set of standards and procedures known as generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). These principles serve as a general guide to the accounting practitioner in accumulating and reporting the financial information of a business enterprise. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) 8. (L.O. 2) After the stock market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression, there were calls for increased government regulation and supervision—especially of financial institutions and the stock market. As a result, the federal government established the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to help develop and standardize financial information presented to stockholders. The SEC is a federal agency and administers the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and several other acts. Most companies that issue securities to the public or are listed on a stock exchange are required to file audited financial statements with the SEC. In addition, the SEC has broad powers to prescribe the accounting practices and standards to be employed by companies that fall within its jurisdiction. 9. At the time the SEC was created, it encouraged the creation of a private standards-setting body. As a result, accounting standards have generally been developed in the private sector either through the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) or the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). The SEC has affirmed its support for the FASB by indicating that financial statements conforming to standards set by the FASB will be presumed to have substantial authoritative support. 10. Over its history, the SEC’s involvement in the development of accounting standards has varied. In some cases, the private sector has attempted to establish a standard, but the SEC has refused to accept it. In other cases, the SEC has prodded the private sector into taking quicker action on setting standards. 11. If the SEC believes that an accounting or disclosure irregularity exists regarding a company’s financial statements, the SEC sends a deficiency letter to the company. If the company’s response to the deficiency letter proves unsatisfactory, the SEC has the power to issue a “stop order,” which prevents the registrant from issuing securities or trading securities on the exchanges. Criminal charges may also be brought by the Department of Justice. The AICPA and Development of Accounting Principles 12. The first group appointed by the AICPA to address the issue of uniformity in accounting practice was the Committee on Accounting Procedure (CAP). This group served the accounting profession from 1939 to 1959. During that period, it issued 51 Accounting Research Bulletins (ARBs) that narrowed the wide range of alternative accounting practices then in existence.
- 9. 1-6 Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kieso, Intermediate Accounting, 16/e Instructor’s Manual (For Instructor Use Only) 13. In 1959, the AICPA created the Accounting Principles Board (APB). The major purposes of this group were (a) to advance the written expression of accounting principles, (b) to deter- mine appropriate practices, and (c) to narrow the areas of difference and inconsistency in practice. The APB was designated as the AICPA’s sole authority for public pronouncements on accounting principles. Its pronouncements, known as APB Opinions, were intended to be based mainly on research studies and be supported by reason and analysis. Transition to FASB 14. The APB operated in a somewhat hostile environment for 13 years. Early in its existence it was criticized for lack of productivity and failing to act promptly, then it was criticized for overreacting to certain issues. A committee, known as the Study Group on Establishment of Accounting Principles (Wheat Committee), was set up to study the APB and recommend changes in its structure and operation. The result of the Study Group’s findings was the demise of the APB and the creation of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). The FASB 15. The FASB represents the current rule-making body within the accounting profession. The mission of the FASB is to establish and improve standards of financial accounting and reporting for the guidance and education of the public, which includes issuers, auditors, and users of financial information. The FASB differs from the predecessor APB in the following ways: a. Smaller membership (7 versus 18 on the APB). b. Full-time remunerated membership (APB members were unpaid and part-time). c. Greater autonomy (APB was a senior committee of the AICPA). d. Increased independence (FASB members must sever all ties with firms, companies, or institutions). e. Broader representation (it is not necessary to be a CPA to be a member of the FASB). Two basic premises of the FASB are that in establishing financial accounting standards: (a) it should be responsive to the needs and viewpoints of the entire economic community, not just the public accounting profession, and (b) it should operate in full view of the public through a “due process” system that gives interested persons ample opportunity to make their views known. Due Process 16. The FASB issues two major types of pronouncements: a. Accounting Standards Updates. The Updates amend the Accounting Standards Codification, which represents the source of authoritative accounting standards, other than standards issued by the SEC. Each Update explains how the Codification has been amended and also includes information to help the reader understand the changes and
- 10. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kieso, Intermediate Accounting, 16/e Instructor’s Manual (For Instructor Use Only) 1-7 when those changes will be effective. They are considered GAAP and must be followed in practice. b. Financial Accounting Concepts. The SFACs represent an attempt to move away from the problem-by-problem approach to standard setting that has been characteristic of the accounting profession. The Concept Statements are intended to form a cohesive set of interrelated concepts, a conceptual framework that will serve as tools for solving existing and emerging problems in a consistent manner. Unlike FASB statements, the Concept Statements do not establish GAAP. 17. In 1984, the FASB created the Emerging Issues Task Force (EITF). The purpose of the Task Force is to reach a consensus on how to account for new and unusual financial transactions that have the potential for creating differing financial reporting practices. The EITF can deal with short-term accounting issues by reaching a consensus and thus avoiding the need for deliberation by the FASB and the issuance of an FASB Statement. GAAP 18. (L.O. 3) Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) are those principles that have substantial authoritative support. Accounting principles that have substantial authoritative support are those found in FASB Statements, Interpretations, and Staff Positions; APB Opinions; and Accounting Research Bulletins (ARBs). If an accounting transaction is not covered in any of these documents, the accountant may look to other authoritative accounting literature for guidance. 19. The FASB developed the Financial Accounting Standards Board Accounting Standards Codification (“the Codification”) to provide in one place all the authoritative literature related to a particular topic. The Codification changes the way GAAP is documented, presented, and updated. The Financial Accounting Standards Board Codification Research System (CRS) is an online real-time database that provides easy access to the Codification. Impact of User Groups 20. (L.O. 4) Although accounting standards are developed by using careful logic and empirical findings, a certain amount of pressure and influence is brought to bear by groups interested in or affected by accounting standards. The FASB does not exist in a vacuum, and politics and special-interest pressures remain a part of the standard-setting process. 21. Along with establishing the PCAOB, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act implements stronger inde- pendence rules for auditors, requires CEOs and CFOs to personally certify that financial statements and disclosures are accurate and complete, requires audit committees to be comprised of independent members, and requires a code of ethics for senior financial officers. In addition, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires public companies to attest to the effectiveness of their internal controls over financial reporting.
- 11. 1-8 Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kieso, Intermediate Accounting, 16/e Instructor’s Manual (For Instructor Use Only) Financial Reporting Chalenges 23. Some of the challenges facing financial reporting in the future include: a. Nonfinancial measurements, which include customer satisfaction indexes, backlog information, and reject rates on goods purchased. b. Forward-looking information. c. Soft assets, include such intangibles as market dominance, expertise in supply chain management, and brand image. d. Timeliness, including real-time financial statement information. e. Understandability, including concerns about the complexity and lack of understandability of financial reports raised by investors and market regulators. 24. Most countries have recognized the need for more global standards. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and U.S. rule-making bodies are working together to reconcile U.S. GAAP with the IASB International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The FASB and the IASB agreed to make their existing financial reporting standards fully compatible as soon as practicable, and coordinate their future work programs to ensure that once achieved, compatibility is maintained. 25. In accounting, ethical dilemmas are encountered frequently. The whole process of ethical sensitivity and selection among alternatives can be complicated by pressures that may take the form of time pressures, job pressures, client pressures, personal pressures, and peer pressures. Throughout the textbook, ethical considerations are presented to sensitize you to the type of situations you may encounter in your profession.
- 12. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kieso, Intermediate Accounting, 16/e Instructor’s Manual (For Instructor Use Only) 1-9 LECTURE OUTLINE The material in this chapter usually can be covered in one class session. The issues in this chapter can be addressed by organizing a lecture around the following. A. (L.O. 1) Major financial statements and financial reporting. 1. Identification, measurement, and communication of financial information (discuss differences between financial statements and financial reporting). a. Financial statements: (1) Income statement. (2) Balance sheet. (3) Statement of cash flows. (4) Statement of owners’ or stockholders’ equity. b. Other financial reporting means: (1) President’s letter or supplementary schedules in the annual report. (2) Prospectuses. (3) Reports filed with the SEC and other government agencies. (4) News releases and management forecasts. (5) Social or environmental impact statements. 2. About economic entities. 3. To interested parties (including stockholders, creditors, government agencies, management, employees, consumers, labor unions, etc.). B. Accounting and capital allocations. 1. A world of scarce resources. Accounting helps to identify efficient and inefficient users of resources. 2. Capital allocation. Accounting assists in the effective capital allocation process by providing financial reports to interested users. 3. Changing user needs. Accounting will continue to be faced with challenges to providing information needed for an efficient capital allocation process.
- 13. 1-10 Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kieso, Intermediate Accounting, 16/e Instructor’s Manual (For Instructor Use Only) C. Objective of financial reporting. 1. To provide financial information about the reporting entity that is useful to present and potential equity investors, lenders, and other creditors in making decisions about providing resources to the entity. a. General-purpose financial statements. b. Equity investors and creditors. c. Entity perspective. d. Decision-usefulness. D. Need for accounting standards. 1. To meet the various needs of users, companies prepare a single set of general-purpose financial statements. 2. Users expect financial statements to present fairly, clearly, and completely the company’s financial operations. 3. The accounting profession has developed a set of standards and procedures called generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). E. (L.O. 2) Parties involved in standard-setting. 1. Standard setting in the public sector: a. The role of the SEC, reasons for its establishment, SEC jurisdiction. b. Delegation of SEC’s authority to the private sector (AICPA and FASB). 2. Standard setting in the private sector. a. History of private-sector standard setting: (1) Committee on Accounting Procedure (CAP). a. This group served the accounting profession from 1939 to 1959. During that period, it issued 51 Accounting Research Bulletins (ARBs) that narrowed the wide range of alternative accounting practices then in existence.
- 14. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kieso, Intermediate Accounting, 16/e Instructor’s Manual (For Instructor Use Only) 1-11 (2) Accounting Principles Board (APB). a. The major purposes of this group were (a) to advance the written expression of accounting principles, (b) to determine appropriate practices, and (c) to narrow the areas of difference and inconsistency in practice. Its pronouncements, known as APB Opinions, were intended to be based mainly on research studies and be supported by reason and analysis. (3) Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). a. Reasons for establishment of the FASB. b. Composition, membership, and voting rules of the FASB. c. Organization and funding of the FASB. b. Description of the FASB’s “due process” system in setting standards. c. Two major types of pronouncements issued by FASB: (1) Accounting Standards Updates amend the Accounting Standards Codification, which represents the source of authoritative accounting standards, other than standards issued by the SEC. (2) Financial Accounting Concepts represent an attempt to move away from the problem-by-problem approach to standard setting that has been characteristic of the accounting profession. The Concept Statements are intended to form a cohesive set of interrelated concepts, a conceptual framework. d. Emerging Issues Task Force were created by FASB for the purpose of reaching a consensus on how to account for new and unusual financial transactions that have a potential for creating differing financial reporting practices. 3. The SEC continues to play an active role in influencing standards, e.g., accounting for business combinations and intangible assets; and concerns about the accounting for off-balance sheet items raised by the failure of Enron. F. (L.O. 3) Meaning of GAAP. 1. Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) have substantive authoritative support. 2. The AICPA’s Code of Professional Conduct requires that members prepare financial statements in accordance with GAAP. 3. GAAP includes: a. FASB Standards and Interpretations, APB Opinions, AICPA Accounting Research Bulletins. (Most authoritative.)
- 15. 1-12 Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kieso, Intermediate Accounting, 16/e Instructor’s Manual (For Instructor Use Only) b. AICPA Industry Audit and Accounting Guides, AICPA Statements of Position, FASB Technical Bulletins. c. FASB Emerging Issues Task Force, AICPA AcSEC Practice Bulletins, widely recognized/prevalent industry practices. (1) The AICPA no longer issues authoritative accounting guidance for public companies. d. AICPA Accounting Interpretations, FASB Implementation Guides (Q and A) 4. The FASB developed the Financial Accounting Standards Board Accounting Standards Codification (“the Codification”). a. The Codification changes the way GAAP is documented, presented and updated. b. Explains what GAAP is and eliminates nonessential information. G. (L.O. 4) Major challenges in the financial reporting environment. 1. Politicization and the impact of various user groups on the development of GAAP 2. The expectations gap. a. What people think accountants should do vs. what accountants think they can do. b. Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. 3. Financial reports fail to report: a. Nonfinancial measurements. Financial reports failed to provide some key performance measures widely used by management. b. Forward-looking information. Financial reports failed to provide forward-looking information needed by present and potential investors and creditors c. Soft assets. Financial reports focused on hard assets (inventory, plant assets) but failed to provide much information about a company’s soft assets (intangibles). d. Timeliness. Generally only historical information is provided with little to no real-time financial statement information available. e. Understandability. Financial reports are often complex and hard to understand. f. International accounting standards. 1) Companies outside the U.S. often prepare financial statements using standards different from GAAP. 2) There is a growing demand for one set of high-quality international standards.
- 16. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kieso, Intermediate Accounting, 16/e Instructor’s Manual (For Instructor Use Only) 1-13 3) There are two sets of acceptable rules for international use—GAAP and International Financial Reporting Standards issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). 4) The FASB and the IASB have agreed to use their best efforts to: a) Make their existing financial reporting standards fully compatible as soon as practicable, and b) Coordinate their future work programs to ensure that once achieved, compatibility is maintained. H. Ethics and financial accounting. 1. In accounting, companies frequently encounter ethical dilemmas. Some of these dilemmas are easy to resolve but many are not, requiring difficult choices among allowable alternatives. 2. Time, job, client, personal, and peer pressures can complicate the process of ethical sensitivity and selection among alternatives. 3. Decisions are sometimes difficult because a public consensus has not emerged to formulate a comprehensive ethical system that provides guidelines in making ethical judgments. *I. (L.O. 5) IFRS Insights. 1. Most agree that there is a need for one set of international accounting standards. Here is why: a. Multinational corporations. Today’s companies view the entire world as their market. For example, Coca-Cola, Intel, and McDonald’s generate more than 50 percent of their sales outside the United States, and many foreign companies, such as Toyota, Nestlé, and Sony, find their largest market to be the United States. b. Mergers and acquisitions. The mergers between Fiat/Chrysler and Vodafone/Mannesmann suggest that we will see even more such business combinations in the future. c. Information technology. As communication barriers continue to topple through advances in technology, companies and individuals in different countries and markets are becoming more comfortable buying and selling goods and services from one another. d. Financial markets. Financial markets are of international significance today. Whether it is currency, equity securities (stocks), bonds, or derivatives, there are active markets throughout the world trading these types of instruments. 2. Relevant Facts
- 17. 1-14 Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kieso, Intermediate Accounting, 16/e Instructor’s Manual (For Instructor Use Only) a. International standards are referred to as International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), developed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). As a result of recent events in the global capital markets, many are examining which accounting and financial disclosure rules should be followed. b. U.S. standards, referred to as generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), are developed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). The fact that there are differences between what is in this textbook (which is based on U.S. standards) and IFRS should not be surprising because the FASB and IASB have responded to different user needs. It appears that the United States and the international standard- setting environment are primarily driven by meeting the needs of investors and creditors. c. The internal control standards applicable to Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) apply only to large public companies listed on U.S. exchanges. There is a continuing debate as to whether non-U.S. companies should have to comply with this extra layer of regulation as it will generate higher costs. d. A number of ethics violations have occurred. e. IFRS tends to be simpler in its accounting and disclosure requirements; some people say more “principles-based.” GAAP is more detailed; some people say more “rules- based.” This difference in approach has resulted in a debate about the merits of “principles-based” versus “rules-based” standards. 3. International Standards-Setting Organizations. a. International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) is dedicated to ensuring that the global markets can operate in an efficient and effective basis. b. International Accounting Standards Boards issues International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) which are used on most foreign exchanges. c. Three types of pronouncements. (1) International Financial Reporting Standards. (2) Framework for financial reporting. This Framework sets forth fundamental objectives and concepts that the Board uses in developing future standards of financial reporting. (3) International financial reporting interpretations. These interpretations cover (1) newly identified financial reporting issues not specifically dealt with in IFRS, and (2) issues where unsatisfactory or conflicting interpretations have developed, or seem likely to develop, in the absence of authoritative guidance. 4. International Accounting Convergence.
- 18. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Kieso, Intermediate Accounting, 16/e Instructor’s Manual (For Instructor Use Only) 1-15 a. The FASB and the IASB have been working diligently to (1) make their existing financial reporting standards fully compatible as soon as is practicable, and (2) coordinate their future work programs to ensure that once achieved, compatibility is maintained.
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- 22. The Project Gutenberg eBook of Introduction to the science of language, Volume 1 (of 2)
- 23. This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: Introduction to the science of language, Volume 1 (of 2) Author: A. H. Sayce Release date: May 9, 2024 [eBook #73585] Language: English Original publication: London: C. Kegan Paul & Co, 1880 Credits: Anita Hammond and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE, VOLUME 1 (OF 2) ***
- 24. Transcriber’s Note: For this book you will need to have a font installed that can render phonetic symbols such as ᴔ, ʌ, ǀ, ↋. If these do not display for you, then the International Phonetic Association recommends Times New Roman, Arial, Courier New, and Segoe UI; LaserIPA fonts; Stone Phonetic. INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. BY A. H. SAYCE, DEPUTY PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I.
- 25. LONDON: C. KEGAN PAUL & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1880. “Ille demum foret nobilissima grammaticæ species, si quis in linguis tam eruditis quam vulgaribus eximie doctus, de variis linguarum proprietatibus tractaret; in quibus quæque excellat, in quibus deficiat ostendens.”—Bacon (“De Aug. Scient.,” vi. 1). The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.
- 26. PREFACE. But few words of Preface are needed for a work which will sufficiently explain itself. It is an attempt to give a systematic account of the Science of Language, its nature, its progress and its aims, which shall be at the same time as thorough and exhaustive as our present knowledge and materials allow. How far the attempt has been successful is for the reader to judge; the author cannot do more than his best. The method and theories which underlie the work have been set forth in my “Principles of Comparative Philology,” where I have criticized certain of the current assumptions of scientific philology, and endeavoured to show their inadequacy or positive error. It is gratifying to find that my views and conclusions have been accepted by leading authorities on the subject, and I shall, therefore, make no apology for tacitly assuming them in the present work. So far as the latter is concerned, however, it matters little whether they are right or wrong; an Introduction necessarily has mainly to deal with the statement and arrangement of ascertained facts. The theories the facts are called upon to support are of secondary importance. It may be objected that I have handled some parts of the subject at disproportionate length. But it has seemed to me that an Introduction should give a survey of the whole field to be explored, and not neglect any portion of it for the sake of literary unity or easy reading. There is certain work which must be done once for all, if the ground is to be cleared for future research and progress, and if well done need not be done again. The historical retrospect in the first chapter is indispensable for a right understanding of the “Science of Language;” but in writing it I have tried not to forget that brevity is a virtue as well as completeness. It is the fault of the subject-matter if the chapter seems unduly long.
- 27. Exception may perhaps be taken to the use I have made of the languages and condition of modern savage tribes to illustrate those of primitive man. It is quite true that in many cases savage tribes are examples of degeneracy from a higher and less savage state; the Arctic Highlanders of Ross and Parry, for instance, have retrograded in social habits, and the disuse of boats and harpoons, from the Eskimaux of the south; and if we pass from savage to more civilized races there is distinct evidence in the language of the Polynesians that they have lapsed from a superior level of civilization. It is also quite true that, however degraded a tribe or race may now be, it is necessarily much in advance of palæolithic man when he first began to create a language for himself, and to discover the use of fire. Nevertheless, it is in modern savages and, to a less degree, in young children, that we have to look for the best representatives we can find of primæval man; and so long as we remember that they are but imperfect representatives we shall not go far wrong in our scientific inferences. As Professor Max Müller has said:[1] “The idea that, in order to understand what the so-called civilized people may have been before they reached their higher enlightenment, we ought to study savage tribes, such as we find them still at the present day, is perfectly just. It is the lesson which geology has taught us, applied to the stratification of the human race.” In the matter of language, however, we are less likely to make mistakes in arguing from the modern savage to the first men than in other departments of anthropology. Here we can better distinguish between old and new, can trace the gradual growth of ideas and forms, and determine where articulate language passes into those inarticulate efforts to speak out of which it originally arose. In fact, a chief part of the services rendered to glottology by the study and observation of savage and barbarous idioms consists in the verification they afford of the results of our analysis of cultivated and historical languages. If, for example, this leads us to the conclusion that grammatical simplicity is the last point reached in the evolution of language, we must go to savage dialects for confirmation before
- 28. we can accept the conclusion as proven. Moreover, there is much of the primitive machinery of speech which has been lost in the languages of the civilized nations of the world, but preserved in the more conservative idioms of savage tribes—for savages, it must be remembered, are the most conservative of human beings; while were we to confine our attention to the groups of tongues spoken by civilized races we should form but a very partial and erroneous view of language and its structure, since the conceptions upon which the grammars of the several families of speech are based are as various as the families of speech themselves. Nor must we forget the lesson of etymology, that the poverty of ideas with which even our own Aryan (or rather præ-Aryan) ancestors started was as great as that of the lowest savages of to-day. My best thanks are due to Professor Mahaffy for his kindness in looking over the sheets of the present work during its passage through the press, and to Mr. Henry Sweet for performing the same kind offices towards the fourth chapter. Mr. Sweet’s name will guarantee the freedom of the chapter from phonetic heresies. I have also to tender my thanks to Professor Rolleston for the help he has given me in the preparation of the diagrams which accompany the work, while I hardly know how to express my gratitude sufficiently to Mr. W. G. Hird, of Bradford, who has taken upon himself the onerous task of providing an index to the two volumes. How onerous such a labour is can be realized only by those who have already undergone it. A. H. Sayce. Queen’s College, Oxford, November, 1879.
- 29. TABLE OF CONTENTS. VOL. I. PAGE Preface v Chapter I. Theories of Language 1 ” II. The Nature and Science of Language 90 ” III. The three Causes of Change in Language (Imitation, Emphasis, and Laziness) 163 Dialectic Variety 202 Appendix to Chapter III. Specimens of Mixed Jargons 219 Chapter IV. The Physiology and Semasiology of Speech (Phonology and Sematology) 226 Etymology 345 Appendix I. to Chapter IV. The Vocal Organs of Animals 350 ” II. ” The Alphabets of Prince L-L. Bonaparte (Mr. A. J. Ellis) and Mr. H. Sweet 353 Chapter V. The Morphology of Speech 364 The Metaphysics of Language 404 Comparative Syntax 421
- 30. CHAPTER I. THEORIES OF LANGUAGE. “If we preserve in our histories of the world the names of those who are said to have discovered the physical elements—the names of Thales, and Anaximenes, and Empedocles—we ought not to forget the names of the discoverers of the elements of language—the founders of one of the most useful and most successful branches of philosophy—the first grammarians.”—Max Müller. “Speech is silvern, silence is golden,” is the well-known saying of a modern prophet, wearied with the idle utterances of a transition age, and forgetful that the prophet, or προφητής, is himself but the “spokesman” of another, and that the era which changed the Hebrew seer into the Nabi, or “proclaimer,” brought with it also the beginning of culture and civilization, and the consciousness of a high religious destiny. Far truer was the instinct of the old poet of the Rig- Veda, the most ancient monument of our Aryan literature, written, it may be, fifteen centuries before the birth of Christ, when he calls “the Word” one of the highest goddesses “which rushes onward like the wind, which bursts through heaven and earth, and, awe- inspiring to each one that it loves, makes him a Brahman, a poet, and a sage.” The haphazard etymology which saw in the μέροπες ἄνθρωποι of Homer “articulate-speaking men,” must indeed be given up, but we may still picture to ourselves the “winged words” which seemed inspired with the life and divinity of Hermês, or the sacred Muses from whom the Greek singer drew all his genius and power. Language is at once the bond and the creation of society, the symbol and token of the boundary between man and brute. We must be careful to remember that language includes any kind of instrumentality whereby we communicate our thoughts and feelings to others, and therefore that the deaf-mute who can
- 31. converse only with the fingers or the lips is as truly gifted with the power of speech as the man who can articulate his words. The latter has a more perfect instrument at his command, but that is all. Indeed, it is quite possible to conceive of a community in which all communications were carried on with the hands alone; to this day savage tribes make a large use of gestures, and we are told that the Grebos of Africa ordinarily indicate the persons and tenses of the verb by this means only. Wherever there is the power of making our thoughts intelligible to another, or even simply the possibility of this power, as in the case of the infant, there we have language, although for ordinary purposes the term may be restricted to spoken or articulate speech. It is in this sense that language will be understood in the following pages. Now one of the earliest subjects of reflection was the language in which that reflection clothed itself. The power of words was clear even to the barbarian, and yet at the same time it was equally clear that he himself exercised a certain power over them. Wonder, it has been said, is the mother of science, and out of the wonder excited by the great mystery of language came speculations on its nature and its origin. What, it was asked, are those modulations of the voice, those emissions of the breath, which inform others of what is passing in our innermost souls, and without which the most rudimentary form of society would be impossible? Perhaps it was in Babylonia that the first attempt was made to answer the question. Here there was a great mixture of races and languages, and here it was accordingly that the scene of the confusion of tongues was laid. The Tower of Babel, the great temple of the Seven Lights of Borsippa, whose remains we may still see in the ruins of the Birs-i- Nimrúd, was, it was believed, the cause and origin of the diversity of human speech. Men endeavoured to make themselves equal to the gods, and to storm heaven like the giants of Greek mythology, but the winds frustrated their attempts, and heaven itself confounded their speech. Such was the native legend, fragments of which have been brought from the Assyrian library of Assur-bani-pal, or
- 32. Sardanapalus, and which cannot fail to bring to our minds the familiar history of Genesis. Now the same library that has given us these fragments has also given us the first beginnings of what we may call comparative philology. The science, the art, and the literature of Babylonia had been the work of an early people who spoke an agglutinative language, and from them it had all been borrowed and perhaps improved upon by the later Semitic settlers in the country. Their language, which for the want of a better name we will call Accadian, had ceased to be spoken before the seventeenth century b.c., but not before the civilization and culture it enshrined had been adopted by a new race, who had to study and learn the dead tongue in which they were preserved, as the scholars of the Middle Ages had to study and learn Latin. Hence came the need of dictionaries, grammars, and reading-books; and the clay tablets of Nineveh accordingly present us not only with interlinear and parallel Assyrian translations of Accadian texts, arranged upon the Hamiltonian method, but also with syllabaries and lexicons, with phrase-books and grammars of the two languages. It is the first attempt ever made to draw up a grammar, and the comparative form the attempt has assumed shows how impossible was even the suggestion of such a thing without the comparison of more than one form of speech. The vocabularies are compiled sometimes on a classificatory principle, sometimes on an alphabetic one, sometimes on the principle of grouping a number of derivations around their common root; and the latter principle enunciates at once the primary doctrine and object of comparative philology—the analysis of language into its simplest elements. With the discovery of roots we may date the possibility and the beginning of linguistic science. Next in order of time to the grammarians of Babylonia and Assyria came the grammarians of India, whose labours again were called forth by the comparison of different forms of speech. The sacred language of the Veda had already become antiquated and obscure, while the rise and spread of Buddhism had raised more than one popular dialect to the rank of a literary language, and obliged the
- 33. educated Hindu not only to study his own speech in its earlier and later forms, but to compare it with other more or less related idioms as well. Since Indian philology, however, is intimately connected with the history of the modern science of Language, it will be more convenient to consider it further on. The problems of language were naturally among the first to present themselves to the activity of the Greek mind. Already the instinct of their wonderful speech, itself the fitting creation and reflex of the national character, had found in the word λόγος an expression of the close relationship that exists between reasoned thought and the words in which it clothes itself; and the question which Greek philosophy sought to answer was the nature of this relationship, and of the language wherein it is embodied. Do words exist, it was asked, by nature (φύσει) or by convention (θέσει); do the sounds which we utter exactly and necessarily represent things as they are in themselves, or are they merely the arbitrary marks and symbols conventionally assigned to the objects we observe and the conceptions we form? This was the question that the greatest of the Greek thinkers attempted to solve; and the controversy it called forth divided Greek philosophy into two camps, and lies at the bottom of all its contributions to linguistic science. It is true that the question was really a philosophic one, and that the advocates of free-will on the one side, and of necessity on the other, naturally saw in speech either the creation and plaything of the human will, or else a power over which man has as little control as over the forces of nature. Important as were the results of this controversy, not only to the philosophy of language, but yet more to the formation of grammar, it was impossible for a science of language to arise out of it: its results were logical rather than linguistic, for science requires the patient à posteriori method of induction, not the à priori method of immature philosophizing, however brilliantly handled. The Greeks had, indeed, grasped a truth which has too often been forgotten in modern times, the truth that language is but the outward embodiment and crystallization of thought; but they overlooked the fact that to discover its nature and its laws we must observe and
- 34. classify its external phænomena, and not until we have ascertained by this means the conditions under which thought externalizes itself in language, can we get back to that thought itself. Greek researches into language fall into three chief periods, the period of the præ-Sokratic philosophy, when language in general was the subject of inquiry, the period of the Sophists, when the categories of universal grammar were being distinguished and worked out, and the period of Alexandrine criticism, when the rules of Greek grammar in particular were elaborated. Herakleitus and Demokritus are the representatives of the first period: the one the advocate of the innate and necessary connection between words and the objects they denote, the other of the absolute power possessed by man to invent or change his speech. The dispute, however, was soon shifted from words as they are to words as they once were; since on the one hand it was manifest that the union assumed to exist between words and objects could no longer be pointed out in the majority of instances, and on the other hand that numerous words are merely the later corruptions of earlier forms, so that the invention of even a single word must be pushed back to an age far beyond the oldest experience. Hence grew up the so-called science of etymology, a science whose name, it must be confessed, fully justified one of its leading principles which resulted in the derivation of lucus a non lucendo, “because the sun does not shine therein.” Ἐτυμο-λογία was “the science of the truth,” the ascertainment of the true origin of words; but in Greek hands its truer designation would have been the “science of falsehood” and guess-work. Its follies have been enshrined in ponderous works like the “Etymologicum Magnum” or the “Onomastikon” of Pollux; and its curious illustrations of the absurdities into which a clever and active intellect will fall when deprived of the guidance of the scientific method of comparison, are scattered broadcast through the writings of Greek thinkers. Two of its rules, for instance, both founded on the assumption of the “natural” origin of words, lay down that the word undergoes the same modifications as the thing it denotes, and that objects may be named from their contraries (κατ’ ἀντίφρασιν); and
- 35. hence it was easy to derive φιλητής, “a thief,” from ὑφέλεσθαι, “to steal,” by “depriving” the latter word of its first syllable, and to see in cœlum, “heaven,” cœlatum, “covered,” “because it is open,” or in fœdus, “covenant,” fœdus, “hateful,” “because there is nothing hateful in it.”[2] After this we need not smile at Plato’s derivation of θεοί, “gods,” from θέειν, “to run,” because the stars were first worshipped, or Aristotle’s assumption that objects are easy of digestion when they are “light” in weight. Dr. Jolly has pointed out that the fact that ἐτυμός is Ionic indicates the origin of the pseudo- science in the Ionic schools of philosophy; it is therefore a remarkable illustration of the “self-sufficient” nature of Greek thought and of Greek contempt for the “barbarian,” that the dialects of Asia Minor, though so closely akin to Greek, should have been utterly disregarded, and the investigations into language consequently left to the vagaries of the fancy without the light of comparison to guide them to the truth. Plato in the “Kratylus” is almost the only Greek who has noticed the resemblance of one of these “barbarous” dialects to his own, and he has only noticed it to draw a wrong conclusion from the fact. Many Greek words, he maintains, were borrowed from abroad; and by way of examples he quotes κύων (the Sanskrit śwan, the Latin canis, and our hound), ὑδώρ (the Sanskrit udam, the Latin unda, and our water), and πῦρ (the Latin pruna, the Umbrian pir, and our fire), as being identical with the names of the same objects in Phrygian. The very fact, however, that Plato has noticed this resemblance shows that the stimulating influence of contact with Persia was still felt, even in the domain of language, when the Greeks found themselves in the presence of an allied and similar civilization, with all its contrasts to their own, and when men like Themistokles found it politic to acquire a fluent knowledge of the Persian tongue. It was not until the Empire of Alexander had overthrown that of Cyrus and Darius and impressed upon the Greek a sovereign contempt for the Asiatic, and an equal belief in his own innate superiority, that any regard for the jargons of the “barbarians” became altogether out of the question. It was then that the masterpieces of early Greek literature came to be
- 36. the sole objects of study and investigation, and philological research took the form of that one-sided, and therefore erroneous, exposition of the grammar of a single language, which has been the bane of classical philology down to our own time. The linguistic labours of the age of the Sophists were occasioned by the needs of oratory. When rhetoric became a profitable and all- powerful pursuit, and the end of education was held to be the ability to hold one’s own, whether right or wrong, and confute one’s neighbour, words necessarily came to be regarded as more valuable than things, and the main care and attention of the sophist were bestowed upon the form of his sentences and the style of his argument. Just as language had been approached in the preceding period from a purely metaphysical point of view, and was to be approached in the succeeding period from a logical point of view, so now it was looked at from the side of rhetoric. It was not etymology, a knowledge of the “truth,” that was wanted, but a knowledge of the composition of sentences and of the way in which they could best be arranged for the purposes of persuasion. The first outlines of European grammar accordingly go back to this Sophistic age. We find Protagoras criticizing the opening verse of the Iliad, because μῆνις, “wrath,” is used as a feminine, contrary to the sense of the word, or distinguishing the three genders and busying himself with the discovery of the verbal moods, while the lectures of Prodikus were occupied with the analysis and definition of synonyms. Some idea may be formed of the grammatical zeal of the Sophists from the “Clouds” of Aristophanes,[3] where he ridicules the pedantry that would force the artificial rules of grammar upon the usage of living speech. Plato and Aristotle, the products of the impulse given to thought by that greatest of the Sophists, Sokrates, form the connecting link between the Sophistic and the Alexandrine periods, and renew in the shape required by the progress of philosophy the old contest regarding the nature of language between the followers of Herakleitus and those of Demokritus. In philology as elsewhere, the
- 37. idealism of Plato stands opposed to the practical realism of his pupil Aristotle. Plato paints language as it ought to be; Aristotle reasons upon it as it is. But in both cases it was not language in general, but the Greek language in particular, that was meant; and owing to this short-sightedness of view and disregard of the comparative method, the theories of each, however suggestive and stimulating, are yet devoid of scientific value and mainly interesting to the historian alone. The problem of Plato’s “Kratylus” is the natural fittingness of words, which finally resolves itself into the question how it happens that a word is understood by the bearer in the same sense as it is intended by the speaker. No answer is given to the question; but the dialogue gives occasion for a complete review of the linguistic opinions prevalent at the time, and the conclusion put into the mouth of Sokrates is that while in actual (Greek) speech no natural and innate connection can be traced between words and things, it were much to be wished that an ideal speech could be created in which this natural connection would exist. In this wish, as Dr. Jolly remarks, Plato shows himself the forerunner of Leibnitz and Bishop Wilkins, the one with his “Lingua characteristica universalis,” and the other with his “Essay towards a real Character and a Philosophical Language.” Aristotle, as might be expected, will have nothing to do with the theory of the natural origin of speech. He declares himself unequivocally on the side of its opponents, and lays down that language originates through the agreement and convention of men (συνθήκῃ). Words, he holds, have no meaning in themselves; this is put into them by those who utter them, and they then become so many symbols of the objects signified (ὅταν γίνεται σύμβολον). “For the sentence (λόγος), when heard, makes one’s meaning intelligible, not necessarily but accidentally, since it consists of words, and each word is a symbol.”[4] At the same time Aristotle makes no clear distinction between thought and language; concept and word are with him interchangeable terms; and his famous ten categories into which all objects can be classed are as much grammatical as logical, or perhaps more rightly a mixture of both. In his hands the
- 38. rhetorical gives way to the logical treatment of language, and the sentence is analyzed in the interests of formal logic. As Kant and Hegel observed long ago, the logical system of Aristotle is purely empirical; it is based on the grammar of a single language, and is nothing but an analysis of the mode in which the framers of that language unconsciously thought. To understand and criticize it properly we must bear this fact in mind, and remember that the system cannot be corrected or replaced until comparative philology has taught us to distinguish between the universal and the particular in the grammar of Greek and Aryan. Whatever injury, however, logic may have suffered from having been thus built up upon the idiosyncrasies of the Greek Sentence, Greek grammar gained an equivalent advantage. Besides the ὄνομα or “noun,” and the ῥῆμα or “verb,” Aristotle now added to it the σύνδεσμος or “particle,” and introduced the term πτῶσις or “case,” to denote any kind of flection whatsoever. He also divided nouns into simple and compound, invented for the neuter another name (τὸ μεταξύ) than that given by Protagoras, and starting from the termination of the nominative singular endeavoured to ascertain the rules for denoting a difference of gender. The work begun by Aristotle was continued by the Stoics, who perfected his grammatical system just as they had perfected his logical system. They separated the ἄρθρον or “article” from the particles, and determined a fifth part of speech, the πανδέκτης or “adverb;” they confined the πτῶσις or “case” to the flections of the noun, and distinguished the four principal cases by names, the Latin translations or mistranslations of which are now so familiar to us; they divided the verb into its tenses, moods, and classes, and in the person of Chrysippus, the adherent of the Stoic school (b.c. 280- 206), separated nouns into appellativa and propria. But, like Aristotle, they assumed the same laws for both thought and language, and were thus led into difficulties and fallacies which the slightest acquaintance with another language might have prevented. Thus the logical copula was confounded with the substantive verb by which it was expressed in Greece, and false arguments were framed
- 39. and supported on this assumption. Their opponents, the Epicureans, contented themselves with inquiries into the origin of speech, which had to be explained, like everything else, in accordance with the theory of atoms. The large part, however, played by the action of society in their system gave their theorizing upon the subject an accidental aspect of truth which at first sight is somewhat surprising; and even the well-known lines of Horace (Sat. I. 3. 99, sq.) contain a more correct representation of the primitive condition of man and the evolution of language than the speculations current upon the matter up to the last few years. Language, it was held, existed φύσει, not θέσει; but the nature which originated speech was not external nature, but the nature of man. The different sounds and utterances whereby the same object is denoted in different languages are due to the varying circumstances in which the speakers find themselves, and are as much determined by their climate and social condition, their constitution and physique, as the lowing of the ox or the bleating of the lamb. Men, indeed, create speech, not however deliberately and with intention (ἐπιστημόνως), but instinctively through the impulse of their nature (φυσικῶς κινούμενοι).[5] We may perhaps trace in these expressions the germs of the theory of the onomatopœic origin of language. While the Epicureans were speculating on the origin of speech, the grammarians of Alexandria were busying themselves with the elaboration of what the French would call a grammaire raisonnée. “Alexandria,” says Dr. Jolly, “was the birthplace of classical philology, a study which has directly raised itself upon the ruins of the old Hellenic culture and spiritual originality.” The intense mental activity and productiveness of Athens had made way for the frigid pedantry and artificial mannerisms of commentators and court-poets; the free national life and small rival states of Greece had been replaced by a semi-oriental despotism and a cosmopolitan centralization; and unable themselves to emulate the great creations of the classic age, the literary coterie of the Alexandrine Museum could do no more than admire and edit them. The very dialect in which the Attic tragedians and historians had composed and written had become
- 40. strange and foreign, while the language of the Homeric Poems, which it must be remembered were to the Greeks what the Bible is to us, seemed as obscure and obsolete to the Alexandrine, as the tongue of Layamon or Piers Plowman does to the ordinary Englishman. If we add to this the existence of numerous and discordant copies of Homer, we have abundant reason for the growth of that large army of commentators, grammarians, and lexicographers which characterized the schools of Alexandria and laid the foundations of literary criticism. A minute investigation of the grammatical facts of the Greek language was rendered necessary, and a comparison of the older and later forms of the language as well as of its dialects grounded this investigation upon a comparatively secure basis. The metaphysical turn, however, given to the first linguistic inquiries still overshadowed the whole study, and the absurd and misleading “science of etymology” remained to the last the evil genius of Greek philology. The old dispute as to the origin of words now assumed a new form, mainly through the influence of the Stoic and Epicurean systems of philosophy, and the schools of Alexandria were divided into the two contending factions of Analogists and Anomalists. The first, among whom was counted the famous Homeric critic Aristarchus, found in language a strict law of analogy between concept and word, which was wholly denied by the others. It was round this question that Greek philology ranged itself from the third century b.c. to the first century a.d., and out of the controversy it occasioned was formed that Greek grammar which created the scholars of the last four hundred years, and is still so widely taught in our own country. Thus Aristarchus, for instance, in his anxiety to smooth away every irregularity and remove all exceptions to the rules he had formulated, determined that the genitive and dative of Ζεύς should no longer be Διός or Ζῆνος, but Ζεός, and Ζεΐ, and the endeavours of his opponents to upset this piece of pedantry led to the discovery of other similar exceptions to the general rule, and to the complete settlement of this portion of the grammar. Krates of Mallos, the head of the Pergamenian school, stands forward as the chief rival of Aristarchus on the opposite side. In his hands “anomaly” was made the leading principle of language,
- 41. and general rules of any sort flatly denied, except in so far as they were consecrated by custom. The purism of his opponents, who wished to correct everything which contravened the grammatical laws they had laid down, was thus met by an unqualified defence of the rights of usage—“quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi.” Our own schoolmasters who have introduced an l into could (coud), the past tense of can, because should from shall has one, or have prefixed a w to whole, the twin-brother of hale (Greek καλός), because of the analogy of wheel and which, are the fitting successors of the Alexandrine Analogists, and it was unfortunate for both that they had no Aristophanes to transfer them to cloudland, and ridicule them in the light of common sense. Krates, however, has better claims upon our attention than as leader of the Anomalists. To him we owe the first formal Greek grammar and collection of the grammatical facts obtained by the labours of the Alexandrine critics. That a formal grammar, which implies an enunciation of general rules as well as of the exceptions to them, should have been the work of an Anomalist rather than of an Analogist, may at first sight seem surprising; but we must recollect that the Anomalist did not deny the existence of general rules altogether, but only their universal and unqualified applicability; while the Analogist who sought to produce an artificial uniformity in language instead of accepting the facts of speech as they are, was totally unfitted for composing a practical grammar.[6] The immediate cause, however, of the grammar in question was really the tardy comparison of Greek with a foreign tongue, the Latin, and the need of a Greek grammar felt by the citizens of Rome. Appius Claudius Cæcus (censor in b.c. 312) had already written upon grammar,[7] and Spurius Carvilius, a writing-master (b.c. 234), had regulated the Latin alphabet, substituting the indispensable g for the useless z, and when Krates came to Rome in 159 b.c., as the Ambassador of Attalus, the King of Pergamos, he found a ready audience for his ἀκροάσεις, or “lectures” upon the study of Greek. Almost all that the Romans knew of literary culture and civilization
- 42. came from the Greeks; their native literature was coarse and insignificant, and their language uncultivated and inflexible. Education at Rome, therefore, meant education upon Greek models and in the Greek language. Boys learned Greek before they learned Latin, and the Greek words with which the plays of Plautus are strewn, as well as their Alexandrine origin, show pretty plainly that a familiarity with the language of Greece was not confined to the literary salon of a Scipio, or the houses of a wealthy aristocracy. Livius Andronicus, the father of Latin literature, was a Greek professor (272 b.c.), and his translation of the “Odyssey” into Latin was doubtless for the use of his pupils;[8] the first history of Rome, that of Fabius Pictor (in 200 b.c.), was written in Greek; and even a popular tribune like Tiberius Gracchus published the Greek speech he had made at Rhodes. In fact, a knowledge of Greek was necessary not only for acquiring the barest amount of culture and education, but even for a proper acquaintance with the Latin language itself. Partly through its stiff and cumbrous immobility, partly through the want of originality in its speakers, Latin literature and Latin oratory were alike impossible without the genial and fructifying influence of the Greek. With Greek teachers and Greek models, a native literature came into existence, and the language was artificially trained to become a suitable instrument for communication between the more polished nations of the ancient world and their Roman masters. It is true that classical Latin was really more or less of a hothouse exotic, interesting therefore rather to the student of literature than to the student of linguistic science; but the attempt to rear and nurture it, to keep it unpolluted by the spoken dialects of Rome or the provinces, and to confine it within the rules and metres of a foreign rhythm made it the seedplot of grammatical questions and philological investigations. The study of grammar was of practical importance to the practical Roman; he applied himself to it with all the energy of his nature, and treated the whole subject in a practical rather than a philosophical way. Julius Cæsar, the type and impersonation of the Roman spirit, found time to compose a work, “De Analogiâ,” and invent the term
- 43. ablative, amid the distractions of political life, and even Cato with all his dogged conservatism, learnt Greek in his old age in order that he might be able to teach it to his son. The zeal with which the deepest problems of grammar were discussed seems strange to us of to-day, but upon the settlement of these problems depended the possibility of making Latin the vehicle of law and oratory, and preventing the Roman world from becoming Greek. The first school grammar ever written in Europe was the Greek grammar of Dionysius Thrax, a pupil of Aristarchus, which he published at Rome in the time of Pompey. The grammar is still in existence,[9] and its opening sentence, in which grammar is defined as “a practical acquaintance” with the language of literary men, and divided into six parts—accentuation and phonology, explanation of figurative expressions, definition, etymology, general rules of flection, and critical canons[10]—has formed the starting-point of the innumerable school-grammars which have since seen the light. It has also been the cause of much of that absurd etymologizing which the Romans received from the Greeks and handed on to the lexicographers of modern Europe. Not content with transcribing the grotesque etymologies of their Greek teachers, the Latin writers strove to emulate them by still more grotesque etymologies of their own. Lucius Ælius Stilo, of Lanuvium, about 100 b.c. first gave a course of lectures on Latin literature and rhetoric, and one of his pupils, Marcus Terentius Varro, wrote five books, “De Linguâ Latinâ,” which he dedicated to his friend Cicero. The “science” of Latin etymology was now founded, and a fruitful field opened to future explorers. Every word had to be provided with a derivation, and on the received principles of etymology this was no difficult task. By the law of antiphrasis, bellum is made the neuter of bellus, “because there is nothing beautiful in war;” and parcus is so named because the niggard “spares (parcere) nobody.” It has been left to the vagaries of a later day to excel the Romans in this part of their labours. The lawyers tell us that parliament is derived from parler, “to speak,” mentem, “one’s mind;” Junius[11] that the soul is “the well of life” from the Greek ζάω, “to live,” and the Teutonic wala,
- 44. “well,” while merry comes from μυρίζειν, because the ancients anointed themselves at feasts; and a book entitled “Ereuna,” published as late as the year of grace 1875, would raise the envy of a Latin etymologist. When we find Jupiter (Diespiter) gravely derived in it from the “Celtic” oyo-meir, “infinite,” and peitir, “a thunderbolt;” Nemesis discovered to be the “Celtic” neam-aire, “pitiless,” and manna man-neam, “food of heaven”—we may trace the last results of that unhappy disease of “popular etymologizing” which it is the work of comparative philology to cure.[12] The introduction of Greek grammar into Rome, however, was attended by another evil than the propagation of a false system of etymology. The technical terms of Greek grammar were in many cases misunderstood, and, accordingly, mistranslated. Thus, in the province of phonology, the mutes were divided into the ψιλά (k, t, p), and their corresponding “rough” or aspirated sounds (δασέα), the soft g, d, and b being placed between the ψιλά and δασέα, and consequently named μέσα, or “middle.” The Romans rendered μέσα by mediæ, and δασέα by aspiratæ, but ψιλά they mistranslated tenues, and the mistranslation still causes confusion in modern treatises on pronunciation. Similarly, genitivus, the “genitive” or case of “origin,” is a blundering misrepresentation of the Greek γενική, or case of “the genus,” a wholly different conception; and accusativus, “the accusative,” or case “of accusing,” perpetuates the mistake which saw in the Greek αἰτιατική a derivative from αἰτιάομαι, to “blame,” instead of αἰτία, “an object;” while the Greek ἀπαρέμφατος signifies “without a secondary meaning” of tense or person, and not “the indefinite” or “indetermining” as the Latin infinitivus would imply. We still suffer from the errors made in transferring to Rome the grammatical terminology of Alexandria. The Romans continued to take an interest in questions of grammar and of etymology down to the last. It is true that they confined their inquiries to their own and the Greek language; the descent they claimed from Æneas and the Trojans inspired them with no desire to investigate the dialects of Asia, and even the
- 45. Etruscan language and literature which lingered on almost to the Christian era at their own doors, were left unregarded by the leading philologists of Rome. In language, as in everything else, the provincial had to adapt himself to the prejudices of his conqueror. Never before or since has the principle of centralization been carried out with greater logical precision. Even Cæsar who found time to discuss grammatical questions in the midst of his campaigns in Gaul, never troubled himself to examine the language of his Gallic adversaries, or to compare the grammatical forms they used with those of Latin. Passing by the Emperor Claudius, who endeavoured to reform the Roman alphabet, and actually introduced three new letters, we come to Apollonius Dyskolus and his son Herodian, two eminent Alexandrine grammarians of the second century. We possess part of the “Syntax” of the former, who specially devoted himself to this branch of the subject, and expressed himself so briefly and technically (like the grammarians of ancient India) as to gain the name of Dyskolos, “the Difficult.” His son Herodian continued the labours of his father, and in the works of these Græco-Roman grammarians we see the long controversy between the Analogists and the Anomalists finally settled. Analogy is recognized as the principle that underlies language; but in actual speech exceptions occur to every rule, and break through the hard-and-fast lines of artificial pedantry. The Greek and Latin school-grammars of our boyhood are the heritage that has come down to us from this old dispute and its final settlement. Dr. Jolly remarks with justice[13] that the radical fault of these grammatical labours was the confusion between thinking and speaking, between logic and grammar—a confusion which intruded the empirical terminology of formal logic into grammar, and was only dissipated when an investigation of the languages of the East introduced the comparative method into the treatment of speech, and showed that to interpret aright the phænomena of Greek and Latin we must study them in the light of other tongues.
- 46. The tradition handed down by Herodian was taken up by Ælius Donatus in the fourth century, and Priscian in the sixth; the former the author of the Latin grammar which dominated the schools of the Middle Ages; the latter of eighteen books on grammar, the most extensive work of the kind we have received from classical antiquity. Priscian flourished at Constantinople during the short revival of the Roman Empire and glory that marked the reign of Justinian; and one of the most noticeable things in his writings is his comparison of Latin with Greek, especially the Æolic dialect. In this he followed Tyrannio or Diokles, the manumitted slave of Cicero’s wife and the author of a treatise “On the Derivation of the Latin Language from the Greek.” Donatus and Priscian were the philological lights of Europe for more than a thousand years, and such lights were little better than darkness. Once, and once only, was an attempt made to break down their monopoly and to introduce oriental learning into Western education. Pope Clement V., at the Council of Vienne in 1311, exhorted the four great Universities of Europe—Paris, Bologna, Salamanca, and Oxford—to establish two Chairs of Hebrew, two of Arabic, and two of Chaldee, in order that their students might be able to dispute successfully with Jews and Mohammedans. About the same time Dante, in his treatise “De Vulgari Eloquentiâ,” compared the dialects of Italy, and selected one which he calls “Illustrious, Cardinal and Courtly,” spoken wherever education and refinement were to be found, and sprung from the brilliant Sicilian court of Frederick II.[14]—a dialect destined to become the language of the “Divina Commedia” and the nursing-mother of the languages and literatures of modern Europe. But elsewhere the “Doctrinale puerorum” of the priest Alexander de Villa Dei, or Villedieu, of Paris, written in leonine verses, was the sole grammar taught and learnt; and the Latin dictionary of Giovanni de Balbis, of Genoa, was the only guide to Latin literature. No wonder that Roger Bacon, in his “Opus Majus,”[15] has to lay down that Greek, Hebrew, and Latin are three separate and independent languages, which must be learned and treated separately and independently, and that “those words only which are derived from Greek and Hebrew ought to be
- 47. interpreted by those tongues, since those which are purely Latin cannot be explained except by Latin words.” “For,” he goes on to say, “Latin pure and simple is quite different from every other language, and therefore cannot be interpreted from any other.” The most approved scholars and etymologists of his day amused themselves by deriving amen from the Latin a, “without,” and the Greek mene (? μείων), “defect,” parascene (parasceve) from the Latin parare and cæna, and cælum from the hybrid case-helios, or “house of the sun” (!), much in the same way that Jacobus de Voragine, the genial author of the “Legenda Aurea,”[16] derives Clemens from “cleos, quod est gloria, et mens, quasi gloriosa mens;” and says of the name Cæcilia, “quasi cæli lilia, vel cæcis via, vel a cælo et lya: vel Cæcilia quasi cæcitate carens; vel dicitur a cælo et leos quod est populus.” But even the older Humanists were not much better. They knelt before the spirit of classical antiquity with a worship at once child- like and unreasoning. Their object was to write and speak Latin correctly—that is to say, in accordance with the usage of certain literary men of Rome, not to discover the grounds on which this usage rested. Switheim declares that it matters as little to know why this or that verb governs a case, as it does to know why bin, the Latin sum, “governs the nominative, ich, ego.” “We can say that the verb governs the nominative, because it was once so agreed among the grammarians of antiquity that the verb should govern the nominative ante se. If it had been agreed among the ancients that the object of the verb should be in the accusative, the verb would govern the accusative.” The grammatical term “to govern” was, by the way, a legacy bequeathed by the schoolmen; and a very mischievous legacy it was. Priscian does not yet know it, though it is found in Consentius. Unreasoning and unreasonable, however, as the Humanists were in their treatment of grammar, they were outdone by the orthodox who found in the “errors” of the Vulgate— such as Da mihi bibere—direct proofs of Divine inspiration, and the power of the Holy Spirit to override the usual rules of grammar. Johannes de Gallandia, for instance, states boldly:—“Pagina divina
- 48. non vult se subdere legi Grammatices, nec vult illius arte regi.” So, again, Smaragdus writes in reference to the rule laid down by Donatus, that scalæ, scopæ, quadrigæ must be used in the plural: “We shall not follow him because we know that the Holy Spirit has always (namely, in the Vulgate) employed these words in the singular.”[17] We have seen that a knowledge of more than one language is an indispensable preliminary to the formation of a grammar of either; we have seen also that it was among the Semites of Babylonia and Assyria that the earliest grammatical essays were first made. The impulse given to grammatical studies by these attempts did not survive the fall of Babylon; and though the Jewish schools in Babylonia and elsewhere were forced to accompany the extinct Hebrew of their sacred books with glosses and commentaries in Aramaic, they produced nothing that can be called with any truth a grammatical work. It was not until the foundation of the School of Edessa, in the sixth century, that the traditions of the scribes of Assur-bani-pal were taken up by their successors in Mesopotamia. The study of Greek for ecclesiastical purposes among the Syrian Christians led to the compilation of a Syrian grammar; and Jacob of Edessa (a.d. 650-700) succeeded in elaborating one which served as a model for all succeeding works. His whole grammar, however, was based on that of the Greeks, and his terminology was either borrowed directly from the Greek, or formed after the analogy of his Greek originals. Jacob, to whom the systematization of the Syriac vowel-points is to be ascribed, was followed by Elias of Nisibis (eleventh century), and John Barzugbi (thirteenth century), who, says M. Renan, “may be regarded as the author of the first complete grammar of the Syriac language.”[18] The Arabs were not slow to imitate the example of their Syrian neighbours. The preservation of the text of the Korân turned their attention to philological studies at an early period; and we may assign the real foundation of Arabic grammar to the end of the seventh century, when Abul-Aswed (who died 688 a.d.) introduced the diacritical points and vowel-signs, and wrote some treatises on several questions of grammar. His labours
- 49. were continued in the schools of Basra and Kufa, and Sibawaih (770), the oldest grammarian whose works have come down to us, shows us Arabic grammar almost complete. His successors, as M. Renan remarks, did little more than fill out the details of his teaching; and in the fifteenth century, Suyuthi knows of no less than 2,500 grammarians who had made a name in Arabic literature. With Syriac and Arabic grammars thus formed, and the doctrine of triliteral roots enunciated, all that was wanting was to work out a comparative grammar of the Semitic dialects. Just as the grammarians of Greece and Rome had perceived the connection that existed between the two languages, and in their haphazard and arbitrary fashion had endeavoured to trace the origin of Latin words to Greek sources, so the relationship between the Semitic idioms could not but be detected as soon as serious labours were commenced upon them; and the closeness of this relationship prevented the errors and absurdities into which the classical grammarians were betrayed by their ignorance of other tongues. To the Jews belongs the merit of first formulating what we may term a comparative grammar. The Saboreans and Masoretes in the sixth century did for the Old Testament what the Alexandrine Greeks had done for Homer, the Arabs for the Korân, and the Hindus for the Veda; and in the tenth century a Hebrew grammar was founded under Arabic influence, and with it a comparative grammar of the Semitic languages. The Jews, who had warmly received Mohammedan culture, and even become intermediaries between their Arabic masters and the “infidel” philosophy of Greece, were necessarily bilingual; and the first fruits of this necessity were the grammatical works of the Gaon, Saadia-el-Fayyumi (who died 942). After Saadia came Menahem-ben-Seruk of Tortosa (960), and Dunash-ben-Librât of Fez (970), who composed the first works on Hebrew lexicography, and of whom the latter declares that he “compares the relation of Arabic and Hebrew, counts all the genuine words of Arabic which are found in Hebrew, and points out that Hebrew is pure Arabic.” About the same time Judah Khayyug of Fez gave an exhaustive account of defective roots and the permutation