Progress in language, with special reference to English

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PROGRESS

IN

LANGUAGE

Of the

Studier over Engelske Kasus, the said

ACADEMY

(2nd January, 1892)

:

" Mr. Jespersen has long ago gained a high reputation as a phoneThe introductory essay will secure for him a distinguished

tician.

position

It is long since we read so philological thinkers. its kind. ... It seems strange that this

among

brilliant a

performance of

powerful and suggestive essay should be published as a mere introduction to a series of discussions

on English Grammar probably the it in a riper form, and we hope in ;

author will at some time re-issue

some language more widely known than Danish. [The body of contains an extraordinary amount of acute and highly .

.

.

the work]

probable reasoning, and not a few observations of facts hitherto overlooked. shall certainly look with keen interest for the .

.

.

We

succeeding instalments of his work."

PROGRESS

IN

LANGUAGE

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO ENGLISH

BY

OTTO JESPERSEN,

PH. DR.

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH I.V TMK UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGENAUTHOR OF "THE ARTICULATIONS OF SPEECH SOUNDS"

"CHAUCER'S LIV

S

or,

UIGHTNING," ETC.

LONDON \V A N SOX N N SC H E N NEW YORK: MACMII.I.AX !:

I

,\

&

(

ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS.

PREFACE. THIS volume

is

translation of

my

an English Studier over Engelske Kasns,

to a certain extent

vied cn Indledning: Fremskridt i Sproget, which was submitted to the University of Copenhagen

February, 1891, as a dissertation for the Ph. D. degree, and appeared in print in April of that year. In preparing this English edition in

have, however, altered my book so materially as to make it in many respects an entirely new In the first place, what was originally work. I

1

only an introductory essay has been enlarged and made the principal part of the book, as Consealready indicated by the altered title. quently, I could only retain those chapters of the special investigation on the history of English cases which had some bearing on the central idea of chs. I

vi.

and

"Progress

vii.

he small numbers

of the Danish book

the changes

made

in

;

(formerly

in i.

Language," viz., and ii., on "the

in parentheses refer to the paragraphs they will enable the reader to judge of revising the work for this edition.

PREFACE. "

English Case-Systems

"

and on

Case-Shift-

Pronouns

while the last chapter, "), dealing with the history of voiced and voiceless consonants, was of too special a nature to be ings in the

inserted in this volume.

shall probably find an opportunity of reprinting part of this invesI

tigation in the introduction

to

the edition

of

Hart's Orthographic, which I am preparing for and I may the Early English Text Society ;

here provisionally refer the readers to Dr. Sweet's New English Grammar, 731, 86 1, 810, 813, 997, 999, 1001), 862, 863 (cf. also where I am glad to say that the eminent author has accepted even those of my results which

run counter to his

own

1

previous views. By have found place for

leaving out this chapter I the last two chapters of the present volume, of

which one

" (viii.

The English Group

Genitive

")

" entirely new; while the other, on the Origin of Language," was read in a somewhat shorter is

form before the Philological Congress in Copenhagen, on the 2ist of July, 1892, and printed in the Danish periodical Tilskueren^ in October of the same year. x

1076-87 of the same Grammar will be found to cover nearly the same ground as my ch. vii. (ii. in the Danish edition).

PREFACE.

Secondly, to

me

have

I

out whatever seemed

present any interest to the numerous especially

likely to

little

readers,

English

left

instances of Danish developments parallel to in the new those mentioned in chapter vii. ;

have refrained from giving such I hope some day to find an opportunity of publishing my Danish collections chapter

viii.

I

parallel cases, but

separately.

have taken due notice of those my Danish book in which reasons I were given for dissenting from my views must especially thank Professors Herman Moller and Arwid Johannson for opening my Thirdly, reviews of

I

;

s

even

to if

some weak

points in my arguments, have not been able to make their

I

opinions mine

;

on the contrary, a consideration

of their objections has only strengthened unbelief in the progressive tendency of languages In the linguistic literature which has

at large.

appeared since my Slurficr, to learn with regard to my

von

I

have found

own

subject;

little if

G.

Hie Sprachwissenschaft (L'-ip/i^, [891) had appeared before instead of after my Shuticr. it would probably have influenced my exposition, as should have been der


riginal English, by H. Barker (Lond., 1889).

.V.

/. D.

Roister

Ruskin,

=

(Udall, Sel.

=

?)

Roister Doister, Arber's reprint.

Selections

from

the

Writings of John Ruskin,

i.-ii.

Allen, 1893).

Sh. or Shak.

= Shakespeare, quoted

folio (1623);

in the spelling of the first

tne acts, scenes, and lines, numbered as in

the Globe edition; for Romeo and Juliet (Rom.

.

msen's edition has been used, in which the lines of the second quarto are numbered continuously the abbre>ns of the titles of the plays will be easily understood ;

;

All's,

As,

Ant., Cor., Cymb.,

L. L. L.

=

Love's Labour's

CONTRACTIONS. Lost,

Mcb.

etc.,

=

Macbeth (the numbering of the lines i H. IV.

according to A. Wagner's edition, Halle, 1890) = First Part of King Henry the Fourth. Shelley, Poet. W., Macmillan's

Sheridan, Dr.

;

one-volume edition.

W. = Dramatic Works

(T.).

=

Specimens of Early English, by (Morris and) Skeat, Spectator, H. Morley's edition (Routledge). Spec.

Storm, E. Phil. Sweet, H. E. S.

New

= =

English

Tennyson,

i.-iii.

Englische Philologie (Heilbronn, 1881).

History of English Sounds (1888)

Grammar

Poetical Works,

N. E. G.

;

=

(1892).

Macmillan's one-volume

edit.,

supple-

mented by Tauchnitz ed. The. or Thack. = Thackeray, V. F. = Vanity Fair (in the Minerva Library); P. or Pend. = Pendennis (T.); Esmond (T.).

Thenks awflly, Sketches in Cockney (Field & Tuer, 1890). The other abbreviations require no explanation the works of W. Black, Robert Browning, Byron, Conan Doyle, Miss ;

Muloch, R. L. Stevenson, Swift, Trollope (Troll.) and Mrs. Humphrey Ward are quoted from the Tauchnitz edition (T.), but in all other cases I have used editions printed in England.

TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE

CHAP. I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

i

Introduction,

Ancient and Modern Languages,

18

Primitive Grammar, The History of Chinese and of Word-Order, The Development of Language,

VI. English Case-Systems, Old and Modern, VII. Case-Shiftings in the Pronouns,

VIII.

-

112

-

138 182

The English Group Appendix.

Genitive, "Bill Stumps his Mark,"

IX. Origin of Language, I.

II.

III.

-

Method, Sounds,

-

Grammar.

-

IV. Vocabulary, V. Conclusion,

279 etc.,

-

318

-

328 328

... -

-

-

40 80

-

338 3^5

350 354

CHAPTER

I.

INTRODUCTION.

1.

(i)

No

is

language

better suited than

English

to the purposes of the student who wishes, by means of historical investigation, to form an independent

opinion on the

life

and development of language

in

In English we have an almost uninterrupted general. series of written and printed works, extending over a period of more than a thousand years and, if we ;

arc

not contented with the results to be obtained

from these sources, comparative philology comes in, drawing its conclusions from all the cognate tongues, and showing us, with no little degree of certainty, the nature of the language spoken by the old Germans at

the time

when the

differentiation of the several

had as yet scarcely begun. The scientific inons of our century go still further back they have brought together Greek and Latin, German, Slavonic, Lithuanian, Celtic, Indian and Persian, as

tribes

:

one indissoluble unity through a long succession of parallelisms they have pointed out what is common to all these laiumagrs and have made it possible ;

PROGRESS IN LANGUAGE. to

some extent

guage used several

know where lived,

to

reconstruct

the

unwritten

lan-

intercourse

centuries

historically

termed,

in

before

accessible

by the ancestral people the era of any languages

to

we

If

us.

original Arian

the

(or, as

do it

is

not often

Indo-European or Indo-Germanic) people

we know much about

the structure of their

speech. 2. (i) During the course of the ages the language of the Arians has changed in a multiplicity of ways in the mouths of different nations but nowhere has the ;

more radically modified than in The amount and thoroughness of these England. modifications will perhaps be perceived most clearly if we take some recognised definition of the most essential

original type been

features

characterising Arian speech, in opposition shall motley crowd of other tongues.

We

to the

find that scarcely

one of those features

is

character-

of present-day English. FRIEDERICH MtJLLER thus describes the distinguishing traits of the languages of the Arian type l " In the Indo-Germanic languages istic

:

stem and word are rigorously discriminated ". In English words such as man or wish no one is able " The two categories to make any such separation. of noun and verb are kept clearly from each other." root,

so in English e.g., man is generally a noun, but used as a verb when we say, "Man the skip" " Nouns belong compare also / wish and my wish.

Not

:

it is

;

1

Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft,

iii.,

2, p. 420.

INTRODUCTION. to one of three genders, masculine, feminine, or neuter."

From English grammatical gender has disappeared. The distinction between the several grammatico-

"

is

logical categories is

This

here carried out strictly."

not the case in English, where, to mention only

one

nouns and

point,

adverbs

be

may

used

as

adjectives.

But

3. (2)

if

the

old

order

has

thus

changed,

yielding place to new, the question naturally arises Which of these two is the better order? Is the sum

:

of those infinitesimal modifications which have led our language so far away from the original state to be termed evolution or dissolution, growth or decay ? Are languages as a rule progressive or regressive ?

And, specially, is modern English superior or inferior to primitive Arian ? If

I

am

right in

my

interpretation of the tendencies

of recent philology, the answer cannot be doubtful but there is as little doubt that this answer will be ;

the exact opposite of what an older generation of linguists

would have given as

therefore be of

some

their verdict.

interest to

may

It

examine more

closely

the linguistic philosophy of the age that is now going How did the leading men of some thirty years sify and estimate different types of speech,

out.

and what place did they assign as modern English ? It would scarcely be possible to bctt