Note note 53 — ANALYSIS OF THE PHENOMENA OF THE HUMAN MIND James Mill

53 The account of predication above given is in conformity with the phenomena of the family of languages known as the Indo-European. Logicians, in fact, in treating of this subject have had almost exclusive regard to Greek and Latin and the literary languages of modern Europe, which are all of one type. It might therefore be presumed that the theory thus formed would be found not to fit in all its parts when applied to languages of an altogether different structure. The mental process must doubtless be the same in all; but the words that express the several parts may be used in new and unprecedented ways. Were naturalists to construct a scheme of the animal organism without ever having seen any other animals than those of the vertebrate type, the theory would certainly fail in generality; certain organs or functions would be set down as essential to animal existence which acquaintance with other classes of creatures shows can be quite well dispensed with. Similarly, the current theory of predication, when viewed in the light of a wider and deeper knowledge of the organism of speech, seems to attach an exaggerated importance to the peculiar predicative power presumed to be inherent in verbs, and especially in the verb of existence. It is now a well known fact that in the monosyllabic class of languages, in which a third part of the human race express their thoughts, there is no distinction among the parts of speech. In Chinese, for example, the word ta expresses indifferently great, greatness, to be great, to make great or magnify, greatly. It is only position that determines in each case how the word is to be understood; thus traditional convention assigns to ta fu the meaning of “a great man,” and to fu ta that of “the man is great.” Being habituated to the constant use of the verb is in such a case as the latter, we are apt to suppose that the expression derives its predicative force from its suggesting the verb of existence, which the mind instinctively and necessarily supplies for itself. How little ground there is for this presumed necessity, has been conclusively shown by the late Mr. Garnett, in his profound and exhaustive essay on the Nature and Analysis of the Verb. Speaking of the theory that makes the essential difference between the verb and other parts of speech to reside in the verb substantive, which is to be supplied by the mind in all cases where the functions of the verb proper are to be called into requisition, he observes: “This theory presupposes the existence of a verb substantive in the languages in question, and consciousness of that existence and of the force and capabilities of the element in those who speak them. Unfortunately the Spanish grammarians, to whom we are indebted for what knowledge we possess of the Philippine dialects, unanimously concur in stating that there is no verb substantive either in Tagalá, Pampanga, or Bisaya, nor any means of supplying the place of one, except the employment of pronouns and particles. Mariner makes a similar remark respecting the Tonga language; and we may venture to affirm that there is not such a thing as a true verb substantive in any one member of the great Polynesian family.

“It is true that the Malayan, Javanese and Malagassy grammarians talk of words signifying to be; but an attentive comparison of the elements which they profess to give as such, shows clearly that they are no verbs at all, but simply pronouns or indeclinable particles, commonly indicating the time, place or manner of the specified action or relation. It is not therefore easy to conceive how the mind of a Philippine islander, or of any other person, can supply a word totally unknown to it, and which there is not a particle of evidence to show that it ever thought of.”

Of the substitutes put in place of the substantive verb, by far the most common are pronouns, and particles indicating position. Thus in Coptic, the descendant of the ancient Egyptian, the demonstrative pe, “this,” after a noun singular masculine, or te when the noun is feminine, is equivalent to is; and ne, “these,” after a plural, to are. In the ancient hieroglyphic monuments the function of the substantive verb is performed by the same means. Even in the Semitic languages, which have substantive verbs, pronouns are habitually used instead of them; so that I I, or I he, stands for I am, and we we or we they, for we are. “Thou art my King” (Ps. 44, 5) is in the Hebrew “Thou he my King;” “We are the servants of the God of heaven” (Ezra 5, 11) is in Chaldee “We they servants of the God of heaven;” “I am the light of the world,” is in Arabic “I he the light of the world.”

Although such modes of expression are foreign to the Indo-European languages, even they furnish abundant evidence of the predicative power of pronouns and particles. If any word required to have inherent in it the peculiar affirmative power attributed to verbs, it is the word yes. Accordingly Tooke derives it from the French imperative a-yez: forgetting, or not knowing, that the Anglo-Saxon gese or yea (cognate with the Sanscrit pronoun ya) was in existence long before the French ayez. The fact is that Eng. yes, Ger. ja, and the corresponding words in the other European languages are oblique cases of demonstrative pronouns, and mean simply “in this (manner),” or “thus.” The Italian si (yes) is from Lat. sic, (thus); the Provençal oc is from Lat. hoc; and the modern Fr. oui was originally a combination of hoc illo, and passed through the stages of ocil and oil into its present form.

The consideration of these and a multitude of similar phenomena suggests, that the Sanscrit as-mi, Gr. ei-mi, Lat. s-um (for es-um), Eng. a-m, may have had for its root the demonstrative pronoun sa, and meant primarily “that (or there) as to me.” Be that as it may, all philologists are agreed that the verbs now used to express being in the abstract, expressed originally something physical and palpable. Thus Ital. stato, Fr. été, been, are from the Lat. statum, the participle of sto, “to stand;” and exist itself meant “to stand out or be prominent.” Eng. be, Lat. fu- is identical with Gr. phy- “to grow;” and, according to Max Müller, as the root of as-mi meant “breath” or “breathing.” It may then be safely affirmed that no word had for its primary function to express mere existence; it seems enough for the purpose of predication that existence be implied.

With regard to ordinary verbs, the analytic processes of comparative grammar show no traces of a substantive verb entering into their structure. It is now an accepted doctrine of philology that, as a rule, the root of a verb is of the nature of an abstract noun; and that it became a verb simply by the addition of a pronominal affix—as in the Greek δί-δω-μι, δί-δω-ς, δί-δω-σι, in which the terminations were originally -μι, -σι, -τι. The habits of thought arising out of the present analytic state of the Indo-European languages naturally lead us to conceive these pronominal affixes as nominatives. But gift I does not seem a very natural way of getting at the meaning “I give;” and therefore Mr. Garnett maintains that the affixes were originally in an oblique case—the genitive or the instrumental—so that the literal meaning was “gift of me,” or “giving by me.” That this is the nature of the verb in the agglutinate languages—by far the most numerous class—it seems hardly possible to dispute; for in these the affixes remain rigidly distinct and little disguised. Thus, according to Garnett, the Wotiak, in order to express “my son,” “thy son,” &c., joins oblique cases of the personal pronouns to the noun pi in the following way:—

pi-ĭ son of me

pi-ed son of thee

pi-ez son of him

pi-mi son of us

pi-dy son of you

pi-zy son of them

In an exactly similar way the preterite of the verb to speak stands thus—

bera-i speech of me == I spoke

bera-d speech of thee

bera-z speech of him

bera-my speech of us

bera-dy speech of you

bera-zy speech of them

In the Fiji language loma means “heart” or “will;” and loma-qu (heart of me) may, according to the connection, signify either “my heart or will,” or “I will.”

In the inflected languages the affixes are so amalgamated with the root and otherwise obliterated that there is no such direct evidence of their nature; but a great many facts tend to show that the structure of the verb was originally the same as in the agglutinate family.

If this analysis of the verb is correct, the affirmation of existence found no expression in the early stages of language; the real copula connecting the subject with the predicate was the proposition contained in the oblique case of the pronominal affix.—F.