Note 264 — Chapter XV

In these considerations I find myself able largely to reconcile what has always been regarded as a contradiction between the views of Professor Whitney and those of other philologists on the subject of sentence-words. Partly following Schleicher—who maintains the doctrine still more unequivocally—he regards the word as having been historically prior to the sentence. This, of course, is in contradiction to the doctrine of the sentence having been historically prior to the word, which, as we have seen, is the doctrine now held by philologists in general. But, now, what the latter doctrine really amounts to is, that words were sentences before they were names—predicative before they were nominative; and, as I understand it, Whitney’s objection to this doctrine is really raised on grounds of psychology. If so, the above considerations show that he is perfectly right. Intellectually, primitive man was fully capable of acquiring the use of words as names; and, therefore, psychologically considered, it was only an accident of social environment which prevented him from so doing.