LECTURE IX.

VOCABULARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

For the purpose of obtaining a comprehensive view of particular branches of knowledge, and of determining the special relations which subsist between them all, modern science has found the form of generalization termed classifi cation, a very efficient, not to say a necessary, instrument. In fact orderly, and what may be called progressive, arrangement, is considered so essential a feature in all scientific method, that the principles of classification have been made the subject of much profound investigation and philosophic discussion, and they may be said to have been erected into a science of themselves. As an auxiliary to the comprehension of a given classification, and especially as a help to the memory in retaining it, a systematic, and, as some hold, so far as possible, a descriptive, nomenclature is indispensable. The wide range of recent physical science, and the extent to which, in its various applications, it enters into and pervades the social life of the age, have made its dialect in some sort a common medium of intercommunication between men of different races and tongues. And thus Linnæus, the father

of modern botany and zoology, and Lavoisier, who occupies a scarcely less conspicuous position in the history of modern chemistry, have indirectly exercised almost as important an influence on the language, as, directly, upon the science of succeeding generations. A full discussion of the principles of scientific nomenclature would be too wide a digression. from the path of inquiry marked out for the present course, but it will be useful to notice some misapplications of them, and I shall have occasion to recur again to the subject, in treating of the parts of speech.*

I will precede what I have now to say in relation to it, by some remarks on the classification of languages, and on derivation and composition in English. Languages have been variously classed according to their elements, their structure, their power of self-development, their historical origin or their geographical distribution. But the application of scientific principle to the comparison of different languages, or families of language, is so new a study that no one system. of arrangement can yet be said to have received the assent of scholars, in any other way than as a provisional distribution. The nomenclature of the different branches of linguis tic knowledge, phonology, derivative etymology, inflection and syntax, is perhaps still more unsettled, and almost every Continental grammarian proposes a new set of names for even the parts of speech. So far is the passion for anatomizing, describing and naming carried, that some philologists, as for instance Becker, divide, subdivide, distinguish and specify language and its elements, until it is almost a greater effort to master and retain the analysis and its nomenclature,

* See Lecture XIV.

than to learn the grammatical forms and syntactical rules of the speech to which they are applied. I doubt the practical value of methods so artificial as to elevate the technicalities of art above art itself, and I shall, throughout this course, which I have more than once described as altogether introductory and preparatory, confine myself, as far as practicable, to old and familiar appellations of all that belongs to the description of language and the elements which compose it.

Among the various classifications of language, not the most scientific, certainly, but one of the most obvious, is that which looks at them with reference to their power of enlarging their vocabulary by varying and compounding native radicals, or in other words, their organic law of growth. This classification is incomplete, because it respects words considered as independent and individual, leaving syntactical structure and other important points altogether out of view; but, as we are now considering the vocabulary, it is, for our present purpose, the most convenient arrangement.

Derivation, in its broadest sense, includes all processes by which new words are formed from given roots. In ordinary language, however, grammatical inflections are not embraced in the term, and it may be added, that where the primitive and the derivative belong to the same language, there is usually a change of form, a change of grammatical class, and a change of relative import.* I shall, at present, speak only of derivation from native roots. A radical, which, in its simplest form and use, serves only as an attributive, in

There is not always a change of form, as will be seen hereafter, nor is there necessarily a change of grammatical class. The noun auctioneer is derived from the noun auction; and again, since is derived from sithence, and that from a still older form, without any change of either class or meaning. See Lecture XIV.

other words an adjective, may be made to denote the quality which it ascribes, or an act by which that quality is manifested or imparted, and thus become a noun or a verb; or contrariwise, a root which affirms the doing of an act, the being in a state, or the consciousness of a sensation or emotion, and of course a verb, may become the name of an agent, a quality or a condition. Thus, to take the first case supposed, red is the simplest form in which that root is known to the English language, and in that form it is an adjective denoting that the object to which it is applied possesses a certain color. If we add to this root the syllable -ness, forming the derivative redness, the new word means the power of producing upon the eye the sensation excited by red objects; it becomes the name of that color, and is a substantive. If instead of that ending, we add the syllable -den, which gives us redden, the derivative signifies to become red, or to make red, and is a verb. So in the other case, the verb admire, (which for the present purpose may be treated as a radical,) signifying to regard with wonder or surprise mingled with respect or affection, by the addition of the consonant -r, becomes a substantive, admirer, and denotes a person entertaining the sentiment I have just defined. In the form admiration, it is also a substantive, indicating the consciousness or expression of that sentiment, and if changed to admirable, it becomes an adjective expressing the possession of qualities which excite admiration, or entitle objects to be admired. In all these cases, the modified words are said to be derived from, or to be derivatives of, the simple radical, and they are changed in form by the addition of a syllable. But the change of form may be made in a different way, namely, by the substitution of other letters, usually vowels, for some of

those of the radical. Thus from the verb bind, we have, by a change of vowel, the substantives band and bond, all expressing the same radical notion; from the verb think, by a change of both vowel and consonant, the substantive thought; from the verb see, by a like change, the substantive sight; from the verb to freeze, the substantive frost; from the substantives glass and grass, by a change of the spoken not the written vowel, the verbs to glaze and to graze. Thus far the change of grammatical class has been indicated by a change of form, and this is the usual, but not the constant process of derivation. There are still many instances, and in earlier stages of English there were many more, where a radical is employed in a new class, without a change of form. Thus the substantive man, without the alteration of a letter, becomes a verb, and we say to man a ship; so from arm, to arm a fortress; from saddle, bit, and bridle, to saddle, bit, or bridle a horse; and the Morte, d'Arthur speaks of a knight as being well sworded and well shielded, using participial forms which imply the verbs to sword, and to shield.*

Composition in etymology means the forming of one word out of two or more, with or without change of form in either. In words framed by composition, each of the constituents may possess and still retain an independent significance, as for example in steam-ship, in which instance each half of the

In many cases of this sort the modern verb has been formed from an AngloSaxon word of the same etymology and grammatical class, by dropping the characteristic verbal ending -an; in others, it is altogether of recent origin, and so long as it has existed as a verb, it has been identical in form with its primitive noun.

Our American to progress is one of the few verbalized nouns of recent coinage. It has not much to recommend it besides its novelty, but it seems likely to secure full recognition on both sides of the Atlantic. See further, Lecture XIV.