Note 49-* — CONCLUSION

It is exceedingly interesting to trace the course of criticism since the appearance of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s great work, Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts (Berlin, 1836). Dr. Brinton gave it most unqualified approval; (see especially his monograph read before the American Philosophical Society in 1885, and printed the same year). Prof. H. Steinthal (Grammatik, Logik und Psychologie, 1855) calls the subject of “inner form” the most important one in linguistic science, and von Humboldt’s treatment of it his greatest contribution to that science. And so on. But the work has nevertheless received little attention from a large number of writers, most of them declaring it “unclear.” These two views, when one studies the various writers, seem to follow closely upon the standpoints from which each approaches the study. Those who study language (perhaps one should here say, languages) as a phenomenon, a set of external forms, an act, a thing done, get little use out of von Humboldt’s work. Those who see it as a human “activity,” an energy, get much. This is quite apparent in one of the clearest and ablest linguistic works which has recently appeared, Dr. Adolf Noreen’s Vårt Språk (in 9 vols., still in course of publication, Lund, 1903 and later), a work of far wider linguistic value than appears from its title. Dr. Noreen, however, dismisses von Humboldt’s work, and the subject of “inner form,” with a few pages, and the results are apparent in several interesting points. In the first place, in the course of an acute and critical analysis, wherein he shows that the purpose of speech is not simply expression of thoughts or ideas, but the communication to some other person of the knowledge of the ideas so held by the speaker, he goes on to say: “the same knowledge of A’s wishes could be as well communicated by his saying ‘I want you to come’ as by his saying just ‘Come.’” This is quite true; but the energic effect is quite different. Language is the bridge from man to man, and it is also a creative activity of man. Of course Dr. Noreen, in a later volume, where he most lucidly analyses the terms ‘words,’ ‘forms,’ and ‘concepts,’ etc. (ord, morfem, semem, etc.), and corrects many errors of definition made by his predecessors, acknowledges the difference between the two forms; still his whole admirable work, analytical and critical as it is, is devoted to this phase of language as a mere phenomenon, a set of forms which serve as a medium of communication. From this standpoint, we know all there is to know about language when we have classified its forms. But from the other, the study is ever leading us into the regions and depths of man’s consciousness, his creative activity as it goes out to the world; and the true definition of language, from this position, “can hence only be a genetic one.” (von Humboldt, Gesammelte Werke, VI, 42)

It is further not unworthy of note that, except where directly required in treating of verbal categories, nearly all of the enormous number of illustrations which Dr. Noreen chooses for his points, are nouns, names of things, and vary rarely verbal forms, words of action and doing. But it is simply a fact that all the potency of language is in the verb, and almost all there is of language, in a philosophic sense, lies there. The verb is the bridge of communication and action upon external things, just as is language itself, going out of man. And it is also noteworthy that the recognition of this position of the verb, together with these other matters of which we are speaking, seems nearer at hand and clearer to those students who are led beyond Aryan languages to the study of American and Asiatic, especially Central and Northern Asiatic. For instance, G. v. d. Gabelentz, Die Sprachwissenschaft, and other works.