DERIVATIONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2355, 13 April 1899, Page 59

DERIVATIONS.

11. By SOUTHLANDER.

But how did the sound "kan " come to denote the idea "hand"? Out of the many scunde which primitive man had at his disposal, what led him to think of " hand " when he said "kan"? This question is involved in the general subject of the origin of language.

Tho usual theory is that language is ono" matopoetic in its beginning ; that one or two meaningless sounds or cries came to be associated with certain ideas and thus became words; and that from them by an easily understood process of development other words arose.

With a view of testing this theory I began to make a collection of all words which are admitted to have arisen in this way. After listing some 50 or 40, I saw that they were all amongrt the mofat infertile words in the dictionary. A few, such as " call " ami "cry," have been faiily repioductive, but it was an easy tack to* discover and set down all their derivatives. Whereas, of such roots as " ak " and " ker," apparently not made from sounds, Ihe ramifications were endless Abandoning, theiefore, a line of investiga tion which had proved so unsatisfactory, I considered what would bo tho words man would bo most likely to need as he emerged from a lower stage of animal life' to the plane of humanity. It would be no injustice, even to a human being, if not endowed with speech — and by some it is maintained there can be no reason without speech, — to regard him, when making his first efforts at thought and speech, as, in Uie?o respects, no bettor than one of our own infants. We all know the difficulties of articulation our children labour under, and how long its is before they can express the leUtionships of things or differences of time ; also that at first their words are all names of things : and that the use by them of verbs and pronouns denotes a distinct advance in their mental growth. It is self-evident, too, that the rapidity with which they do learn to speak is owing to the inatiuction of their parents and others. Primeval man, having no one to imitate and no one to instruct him, may have re quired many generations to advance beyond a stago that the child of civilised parents will paes through in a few months.

Each class of animals has certain cries peculiar to itself and by which it may bo recognieed. Such words as "pa," "ma,' " ta," which, however acquired, are the firnt elements of every child's vocabulary, and are the common property of all Aryan nations, may at first, have been merely the animal cries of man.

It is iiossible that the man who first afpociated the sound "pa" with the idea "man or "father" may have diod without acquiring another word. A whole generation may have passed after raising, in like manner, the cry of " ma " to the dignity of a word by uniting to it the notion of "mother."

The dictionaries derive " pater " (" father") and " mater " (" mother ") from the roots "pa" and "ma," but they assign to them the primary meanings of "protect" and " nourish " respectively, and regard the words "father" and "mother" as derivatives from them. This would be to assume either that all Aryan nations have united in forgetting what names parents were first known by, or that oui first ancestors had names for the ideas "protect" and " nou rish " before they had names for their fathers and mothers, neither" of which supposition is very likely. Given that "pa " and "ma " wore in tho first place the names of " father 1 ' and "mother," then tho notions, not only of " protect " and " nourish," but of many other related ideaa, would in the course ol time receive name 3 derived from them.

All mothers use the word " ta," or " tata,'" when speaking to their babies ; and until quite recently, if I noticod it at »11, it wae simply to set it down as a maternal invention. But anyone who goes philosophising will goon arrive At the conviction that of the million or more words in the Aiyan vocabularies, very few. indeed are thosg which, have

not been formed from some pre-existing word. "Quiz" is the only word I know of in the^English dictionary which may be inscribed as a pure invention.

In the next place, the further he prosecutoi his researches the more certain will he be that the immense number of known Aryan words sprang originally from very few roote. Also, that in the laborious, even pitiful efforts of little children to speak and think. wo are presented with a vivid picture of the difficulties our first parents must have had to surmount when acquiring the power lo think and 3peak.

The root " ta," above referred to, holds a most important position in all the Aryan languages. It is found in the Celtic dialects with the meaning "father" attached to it. In Greek and Sanscrit it takes the form " tata " with tho same meaning. In short, it is the " daddy " and the " tata " of our nurseries. In Lithuanian it is " tat," and means "that one" or "it." Therefore, I put it with " pa " and " ma " as forming part and perhaps with, them, the whole linguistic capital of the first generation of Aryan men.

When at length, and most probably by accident, a man, imitating the sound a stone axe would make when used, said " ak," and at the same time thought of his axe, he would have created a word, and a word which, whether so obtained or not, now pervades evory part of every Aryan vocabular3 r , and always with a moaning attached to it which can, without any forcing, be derived from some property or use of the axe

All races of mci? seem in the early stages of their existence to have adopted the plan of doubling their roots, perhaps from n desire to make the most of their Fcant) stock of words. So used, the duplication or repetition of words would be a mere figure o f rpeech, but tho first of all figures of speech, and as such it has been employed with wonderful effect by orators and writers in all azes.

The poetical devices of assonance, alliteration, and rhyme were perhaps first suggested by the consonance of founds necessarily produced by this duplication of words : and the fact that the literary efforts of each nation fceera firei, to have taken a metrical shapo may ho explained in the same way.

Under the name of the reduplication of the root this doubling of words holds a most important place in comparative grammar, where it is treated aa if it were a grammatical convention invented by the Aryans before Oiey dispersed, in order to indicate the past tense of a verb. But there aro sufficient examples left in Greek and Latin, such an

"diilomni," " bibo," " sisto," to prove !hat it was originally doubled in the present tense as well as in the past ; and although, as it has come down to us, the reduplication of the verbal root has a very conventional look, especially in Gothic, it is in its origin the rhetorical figure referred to above. Bepides the example? already given, there are many other worci3 which have evidently been formed from the doubled root. " Vol," I turn (as a bird, for instance), hence "volo," I fly: "vol vol." turn and turn, hence " volvo," I roll. If attention be paid to tho laws of letter-change, such Englifih words as "walk." "wharf," "quick," "quake," can be shown to be duplicated roots.

As some nations— cho French, for instance — v.aually accent their words on the end syllable, and others, as the English, on the first, and. as tlfe racial differences of to-day are perhaps the continuation of the tribal differencea of old. it would follow that the root " kerker," meaning "move and move," therefore "run " or "turn and turn," therefore "roll," might originate, if accented on the end syllable, the Latin past tense " cucurri " ; or, if pronounced by another tribe, " kerk-er," such Latin words as " eire-us " and euch English words as "wharf" and perhaps "swerve."