Founding Grammars

by Rosemarie Ostler

  Not unnaturally, White felt deeply insulted by the contemptuous tone of the Courant articles. He describes one comment as “at best rather worthy of a cheap and lively newspaper than of a Yale professor.” Of another criticism he says, “If this is a fair mode of argument or attack at Yale, I am very glad that I was bred in another school.” He calls the articles “a fine example” of “malicious … and destructive criticism.” Nonetheless the authors have not shaken White from his point of view. He remains tenaciously committed to the claims in his book in spite of all the arguments against them that the Courant articles provide. He doesn’t accept Lounsbury and Whitney’s premises, so their conclusions are irrelevant to him. White and his critics are traveling along paths too widely divergent ever to intersect.12

  * * *

  The clash between White and the Yale professors is similar in some ways to earlier grammar conflicts. Previous disagreements between orthodox grammarians and their critics also hinged on issues such as the histories of words and the legitimacy of popular usages. Nearly one hundred years before the College Courant articles appeared, Webster was lambasting other grammarians for their dismissal of Horne Tooke’s etymologies, as well as attacking them for their refusal to accept common locutions like Who did she speak to? Nor was it remarkable that Lounsbury and Whitney justified their position by claiming to be more knowledgeable and more sensible than their opponent. Nearly every grammar book writer after Lowth made some such statement in his preface.

  The Yale professors, however, gave this familiar attitude a new spin. They didn’t just attack White’s conclusions—they questioned his right to speak on the subject at all. Throughout the Courant articles, they repeatedly suggest that White’s errors stem from straying outside his area of expertise. Unlike them he has not studied or taught philology, nor has he done extensive research on the history and structure of English. They imply that he bases his linguistic judgments on his own reasoning abilities because it’s easier than the “long and patient study” required to master his subject. In other words, he is an amateur, while they are professionals.

  Lounsbury and Whitney were pioneering a new way of analyzing English, one that owed more to the natural sciences than the grammar writings of earlier eras. The trend toward scientific classification that influenced the rational grammarians in the 1820s had grown stronger in recent decades, especially after the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Scientific rigor was the new order of the day. Language scholars were now beginning to see how scientific principles of careful observation and description could also benefit grammar and usage studies. These new methods called for specialized knowledge, however. The Yale professors had it and White did not.

  Thirty-two-year-old Thomas Lounsbury, an 1859 graduate of Yale, had recently been appointed a professor of English language and literature at that institution. Lounsbury was a burly, bearded man who resembled a soldier more than a staid college professor—he was a Union army officer during the Civil War—but the scope of his learning was impressive. His specialties ranged from Chaucer and Shakespeare to the history of the English language. As the Courant articles make clear, Anglo-Saxon English was one of his strengths. Later in his career, Lounsbury’s interests would expand further into spelling and pronunciation issues, as well as usage standards. Among his prolific writings are books on all three topics.

  William Dwight Whitney came to philology from science rather than literature. He grew up intensely interested in the natural world. As a young man, he shot and mounted a collection of New England birds that he later presented to Yale. He also accompanied his older brother Josiah (after whom California’s Mount Whitney is named) on an 1849 geological survey of the area around Lake Superior. William originally planned a career in medicine, but on the first day of his apprenticeship in a doctor’s office, he contracted measles. By the time he completed his convalescence, a chance discovery had sent him in a new direction. Browsing among the volumes in Josiah’s library one day, William found a book about Sanskrit, the language of traditional Hindu religious and literary texts. Intrigued, he began to read it. Before long he was engrossed in the details of Sanskrit grammar, and had transferred his fascination with classifying from nature to languages.

  In 1849 Whitney began training for his new career. First he enrolled in Yale for a year to study with one of the few Sanskrit specialists living in the United States. Next he traveled to Germany to learn from eminent language scholars there. Sanskrit eventually led him to comparative language studies—a key component of philology—and the historical study of English. He made quick strides in his chosen field. In 1854, when he was twenty-seven, Yale offered him a professorship of Sanskrit and related language studies.

  A man of medium height who wore a long beard during most of his life, Whitney looked more like a college professor than Lounsbury and had equally impressive scholarly credentials. By 1870, when he and Lounsbury launched their attack on White, he was widely respected both for his work on Sanskrit and his writings on language study generally. In 1867 he published Language and the Study of Language, which introduced the latest discoveries of philology to a broad audience. In 1869 he helped found the American Philological Association and became its first president. White was familiar with Whitney’s work—he cited Whitney’s 1867 book admiringly in Words and Their Uses for its negative remarks about cheap newspapers. It was one of the two men’s few areas of agreement.

  * * *

  The path from Sanskrit to English usage rules may not seem clear-cut, but in the early decades of the nineteenth century this ancient Indian tongue became the catalyst for a profoundly new approach to analyzing languages. Before then, Sanskrit had been nearly unknown to Europeans. One of the first westerners to learn it was a colonial Indian judge named Sir William Jones. A gifted language scholar, Jones was already fluent in several languages when he arrived in Kolkata (Calcutta) in 1783. He was eager to learn Sanskrit, partly because the literature attracted him, but even more because Sanskrit was the language of the Hindu law code. Most British judges in India relied on interpreters when hearing cases. Sir William wanted to read the laws for himself.

  After a few months of lessons, Jones began to notice striking similarities between Sanskrit and the two classical languages of Europe, Latin and Greek. He discovered dozens of words that are similar in form and mean the same thing—Sanskrit mātar, Latin māter, Greek mētēr, “mother”; Sanskrit pitar, Latin pater, Greek patēr, “father”; pat, pēs, pous, “foot”; mam, mē, me, “me”; and many others. Chance resemblances can occur between words in any two languages, but the similarities in this case were too numerous to make that explanation probable. Furthermore, the words came from the most basic sections of the vocabulary—names for relatives, body parts, numbers, pronouns. Cultures rarely borrow such terms. If those words correspond closely in two languages, the languages are probably historically related.

  Sir William also noticed that Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek show similarities in their grammar. For instance, they conjugate verbs in a similar way. The verb to be is irregular in all three languages, with forms that look remarkably alike. Sanskrit asmi, asi, asti (“I am, you are, he/she is”) matches Latin sum, es, est and Greek eimi, ei, esti. The odds against three unrelated languages displaying such a pattern by chance are astronomical, especially when the languages share many other common features as well.

  Describing Sanskrit in a 1786 presentation to fellow members of Kolkata’s Asiatic Society, Sir William declared it to be “more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident.” He went on to surmise that the three languages were “sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.” He also speculated—correctly, as it would turn out—that Persian, Irish, and Gothic (an extinct German language) belonged in the same group.13


  Sir William’s discovery created a sensation in scientific circles. Others before him had noted that Latin and Greek share many common features, but most people attributed these resemblances to the linguistic intermingling that occurred during centuries of trade and conquest. This explanation didn’t work when Sanskrit was added to the mix. Sanskrit speakers would have had little if any contact with the two western cultures of classical times, so vocabulary exchange was extremely unlikely. The simplest explanation for the host of similarities is that Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek are all offshoots of a single much older tongue.

  When word of Sir William’s theory spread, language scholars were inspired to examine other European languages using his method. They began systematically comparing broad swaths of vocabulary in search of cross-linguistic patterns. Eventually scholars would conclude that most of the languages of Europe and western Asia are related—descended from a “common source” that scholars would name Indo-European. Indo-European originated several thousand years ago, probably in the Russian steppes or somewhere nearby. As its speakers migrated east and west, their once unified language splintered into many distinct languages, but traces of common ancestry are still apparent in the vocabulary and grammar of the descendants. English is a member of this vast language family, part of the Germanic subgroup that also includes German, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish.

  Even more inspiring than the discovery of this hidden linguistic relationship was the way that Sir William had reached his conclusions. Word historians of the past like Horne Tooke and Webster usually proceeded with their etymologies word by word, often speculating about a word’s origin, then looking for evidence to support their ideas. Sir William’s method was closer to comparative anatomy. He looked at the languages in question as systems, and searched for widespread patterns rather than resemblances between specific words. Looking for broad patterns is a surer way to discover linguistic relationships than considering words one at a time because the changes that occur in languages tend to affect certain sounds or grammatical features, not just random words.

  When comparing two languages for signs of a connection, the patterns of differences can be as revealing as the similarities. For instance, Latin pater and English father mean the same thing and are similar enough to be related, but with slightly mismatched sounds, such as the initial p and f. Comparing a whole range of Latin and English word pairs reveals that the p/f mismatch is not unique to pater and father. It shows up in many word pairs—pēs/foot, piscis/fish, pūlex/flea, pluit/flow.

  Rather than weakening the case for a historical connection between English and Latin, this difference strengthens the likelihood that they’re related. The best explanation is that pater/father and the other pairs each evolved out of a single Indo-European word with the initial sound p. (Indo-European words are reconstructed by comparing related words in the descendant languages to determine the most likely original form.) Over time, as English and Latin grew into two distinct languages, the p of Indo-European evolved into an English f.14

  The comparative method can also help reveal the history of a single language. A nineteenth-century philologist looking for the origins of from, for instance, would use the comparative method to carefully trace versions of the word back through English documents of earlier times, and then through records of other Indo-European languages. He would discover related words in the Germanic languages—Anglo-Saxon fram, Old German fram, Old Norse frá. He would also find the apparently related Latin word prō, yet another example of the p/f pattern.

  This new way of constructing word histories was a clear departure from the Horne Tooke style of free-form theorizing. The study of word histories and language relationships—once a pursuit for individual enthusiasts—grew into an organized discipline with established guidelines and well-researched conclusions. From now on, no one could get away with declaring, as Horne Tooke had once done, that from came from a noun that meant “beginning” without providing historical evidence to back up the claim.

  Comparative linguistics was slow to arrive in the United States. Part of the reason was simply the sluggish pace of all communications at that time. Sir William’s 1786 talk did not appear in print until 1790. Then the print version had to make its way out of India by sail, arriving in Europe some months later before eventually traveling to America. Another roadblock was the devotion of many American language scholars to the writings of Horne Tooke, or in Webster’s case, to his own theories. Webster was aware of Jones’s work, but skeptical of it. He writes in the introduction to his 1828 dictionary, “It is obvious that Sir W. Jones had given very little attention to the subject [of etymology], and that some of its most common and obvious principles had escaped his observation.”15 As always, Webster preferred his own methods.

  By 1870 American scholars were beginning to embrace this new field, although only a few universities, such as Yale, offered classes in the subject. Lounsbury and Whitney were among the earliest American philologists. As they and their colleagues applied the comparative method to the various stages of English, they realized that many of the “rules” proposed by Lowth and later grammarians either weren’t based on any historical norm—as in the ban on double negatives—or tried to preserve usages that were becoming obsolete—as in the case of shall.

  White’s verbal analysis, in Lounsbury and Whitney’s view, showed the same weaknesses. What he insisted were logical principles seemed to them to be disguised personal preferences. When White talked about word histories—typically while defending his ideas of linguistic purity—he still leaned on the old-fashioned eighteenth-century intuitive method. The two philologists considered his “feel” for English a poor substitute for an informed understanding of its history and development.

  White and other popular commentators condemned many reasonable usages based on their own notions of linguistic elegance. Nineteenth-century philologists, like their spiritual forebears the rational grammarians, believed that usage standards should be based on the real structure of English. Lounsbury and Whitney were fighting the same battles that Webster and Fowle had fought decades earlier, but their detailed research into the history of the language provided them with more potent ammunition.

  * * *

  White’s position came under attack from more than one direction. In 1872, only a year after the College Courant articles appeared, he endured a more prolonged and vicious assault from Fitzedward Hall, an American philologist living in England. Hall’s slender book, titled Recent Exemplifications of False Philology, is devoted almost entirely to attacking White. Like the Courant articles, False Philology reflects a new way of thinking about language use.

  Fitzedward Hall arrived at philology by an adventurous route. Hall was born in Troy, New York, in 1825, the oldest of six children. As the son of a prosperous lawyer, he received a conventional education. Although the origins of English words always intrigued him, he concentrated on studying mathematics and science, earning a civil engineering degree at the age of seventeen. Four years later he enrolled at Harvard for further education, but before he could begin classes, his younger brother threw the family into an uproar by running away to sea. As the oldest child, twenty-one-year-old Fitzedward was delegated to go after him. He sailed from Boston in the spring of 1846, bound for Kolkata.

  Hall’s ship wrecked as it sailed into the mouth of the Ganges River, an accident that changed the course of his life. As he was now stranded in Kolkata for the near future, he decided to fill in time by learning Hindustani and Persian (a common second language in nineteenth-century India). He later added lessons in Bengali and Sanskrit. Hall never found his brother, but he did discover a passion for language studies.

  Hall stayed in India for over ten years. While there, he married an Englishwoman living in Delhi, taught Sanskrit and English at Government College in Benares, became an inspector of public instruction for the colonial British government, and fought alongside the British during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. All the tim
e, he continued to perfect his knowledge of Sanskrit. He was the first American to edit a Sanskrit text. He also learned as much as he could about philology and the history of English.

  When Hall finally left India, he did not return home to the United States, but settled with his family in London. For a while, his life assumed a more conventional shape. He held a professorship of Sanskrit, Hindustani, and Indian jurisprudence at King’s College, as well as the post of librarian at the India Office, which oversaw British Indian affairs. Then in 1869 events took another strange turn.

  Hall was dismissed from his post of India Office librarian and ejected from the London Philological Society after a controversy concerning the loan of valuable manuscripts in his charge. The details of the scandal are murky. Long after the events, Hall described his firing to an acquaintance by saying that the India Office had wrongly accused him of being a hopeless drunkard and a foreign spy. The public record from the time consists mainly of a series of elliptical letters in the Atheneaum from Hall and others, hinting at devious maneuvers and subtle counterploys. After it was all over, Hall escaped to the Suffolk village of Marlesford. A few years later, his marriage broke up. He stayed on in Marlesford alone, resentful and increasingly reclusive.

  In this bitter frame of mind, Hall turned to writing about his own language. Recent Exemplifications of False Philology is an extended attack on what he terms “the rabble of verbal critics” currently pontificating about English with little knowledge of their subject. Although his book covers many of the same points as Lounsbury and Whitney, their criticisms seem politely reserved compared with Hall.

  Hall’s writing style manages to be both arcane and outrageous at the same time. He describes the work of White and his like this way: “The criticaster [inferior critic], having looked for a given expression … in his dictionary, but without finding it there, or even without this preliminary toil, conceives it to be novel, unauthorized, contrary to analogy, vulgar, superfluous, or what not. Flushed with his precious discovery, he explodes it before the public.” Hall intends to expose the fallacies of this “style and temper of philologizing.”16