From the very earliest days of classical
history, language was recognised as perhaps the most singularly significant
factor which defined human beings as distinct from the animal kingdom. The Greek rhetorician Isocrates (436-338 bc) argued:
In
most of out abilities we differ not at all from the animals; we are in fact
behind many in swiftness and strength and other resources. But because there is born in us the power to
persuade each other and to show ourselves whatever we wish, we not only have
escaped from living as brutes, but also by coming together have founded cities
and set up laws and invented arts, and speech has helped us attain practically
all of the things we have devised. For
it is speech that has made laws about justice and injustice and honor and
disgrace, without which provisions we should not be able to live together. By speech we refute the wicked and praise the
good. By speech we educate the ignorant
and inform the wise. We regard the
ability to speak properly as the best sign of intelligence, and truthful, legal
and just speech is the reflection of a good and trustworthy soul (Isocrates,
Speech to Nicocles or the Cyprians, section 6).
What is worth noting from this, is
the idea not only that speech (not writing) is seen as the key
element of language, but that there is a clear sense that it is what humans
can achieve with language which sets them apart – not simply that they
posses it.
You might notice from the lists
above that those key aspects which Isocrates identifies as central to the value
and significance of language all seem to revolve around the human capacity to
express reason. It is about the
capacity for logical persuasion, and for educating. This sense of reason is encapsulated
in the Greek word logos – which is here being translated as
'speech'. 'Logos' is also translated as
'reason' or ‘word’, and it is frequently used in Greek writings with a kind of
semi-religious awe. This 'word' is in
some respects divine – the divine logos.
Heraclitus, writing around 500 bc, described how “all things come to pass in accordance with this Word” (Fragments). It is this sense of the divinity of reason
and speech which the Biblical writer John was drawing on in his gospel, when he
begins:
In the beginning, was the Word.
(John 1:1)
The 'word' here has the same
conflated sense of being both to do with language and reason and divinity,
because John's target audience was primarily one which would have been familiar
with Greek models of philosophy and theology.
This combination of speech and
divine reason meant that for the Greeks language linguistic aptitude was
something to be treated with awe. The
poet Homer, with his extraordinary skill in words, was not only seen for
centuries as a “repository of moral and historical
truths” by the Greeks (Harris and Talbot, 1989. p. xii), but he also
shaped the emergence of a classical civilization, turning its initial values
and ideals into a doctrine of heroism that shaped countless succeeding
generations (Kim, 2010).
This Greek vase shows a scene from Homer’s epic poem The Iliad
Those who were good with language
were considered 'wise men', or 'Sophists', and the teaching of language was
often focused on its function in oratory and debate (O’Grady, 2008).
This valuation of language
continued into the period of Roman supremacy, as the Roman's largely lifted
many of the philosophical roots of Greek civilisation and planted them firmly
at the heart of Roman culture. It is
possible, during this period, to see a distinct division of language into three
components:
- Grammar: The components of language, and the
ability to express it (this included those aspects of technical
composition in poetry)
- Logic: The capacity to turn grammatical
expressions into logical and reasoned arguments
- Rhetoric: The capacity to frame those
arguments in speech designed to persuade
Surrounding these three components
of language, theories tended to revolve around one of three central questions
(these have been drawn from Harris and Talbot, 1989. p. xiii):
- Is language something we are born with, or is it
simply a convention – a habit or a skill which we human societies have
developed and evolved over time, like ship-building or masonry? It is, perhaps, easy to see that this is
a question which has continued to fascinate linguistic theorists right up
to the present day, and is encapsulated in the 'nature vs nurture' debate
as well as the debate between B. F. Skinner's behaviouristic theories of
language, and Chomsky's theories of 'Universal Grammar'.
- Is language regular? This debate was divided between the analogists
– who believed that all human language was essentially regular – and the anomalists
– who didn't. For the analogists,
the study of language involved “the establishment of the various models …
[by which the regular words of the language could be classified” (Lyons,
1968. p. 6). An example of this
regularity might be to suggests that there is a systematic distinction
which can be made between the singular and the plural, and language can
demonstrate this by adding 's' to the end of the singular (i.e., 'book' =
singular, 'books' = plural). This,
analogists argued, is how language should be organised. Anomalists, but contrast, “pointed to
the many instances of irregular words for the formation of which analogical
reasoning is of no avail” (Lyons, 1968. p. 7). In other words, there are so many
instances which break from the rules or regularity (i.e. 'child' =
singular, 'child's' = possessive, 'children' = plural), that language
could never be made to fit such a regular pattern of analysis.
- How many parts of speech are there? This question, perhaps the least sexy,
has rarely excited much interest since Priscian wrote his grammar of Latin
around 500 ad.
Plato: The
Cratylus Dialogue
One of the major theoretical
consideration of the functions of language belonging to this era is that which
Plato recorded in his Cratylus Dialogue (427-348 bc). It is a fictional re-telling of a debate
between Socrates and Hermogenes on the nature of names. What, the question is, constitutes a name? Is the name of a thing defined by universal
acceptance of what the thing itself is, or is a name an arbitrary label which
is pinned on an object, and which can be arbitrarily changed with no ill
effect?
Here is Hermogenes summing up his
own point of view:
For my part, Socrates, I have often talked with Cratylus and
many others, and cannot come to the conclusion that there is any correctness of names other than convention and
agreement. For it seems to me that
whatever name you give to a thing is its right name; and if you give up that
name and change it for another, the later name is no less correct than the
earlier (Plato, Cratylus).
Socrates disagrees. For him, such a point of view argues for
chaos and a lack of any real communication at all. All things, he argues,
have some fixed reality of their own, not in relation to us
nor caused by us; they do not vary, swaying one way and another in accordance
with our fancy
Underpinning this linguistic debate
is a broader philosophical debate about the nature of truth, and as the debate
evolves it becomes clear that language can “guarantee
that truth must be valued over consentual agreement” and that it “reaches both beyond our opinions and beyond itself”
(Harris and Talbot, 1989. p. 19).
This Greek fresco shows a ‘symposium’ of the kind in which Plato
describes Socrates’ dialogues with Hermogenes
The Middle Ages: A
Horse by any other name...
As the great powers of Greece and
of Rome wained from around 410 ad (when Rome itself was destroyed by celtic and
barbarian forces), the map of the world became increasingly polarised between
East and West. The opposition of Islamic
and Christian forces forced a cultural and linguistic split. Towards the end of its period of dominance,
Rome had been largely Christianised and the classical language of Latin was
heavily associated with a cultural /
religious movement of central and western Europe.[1] In the West, particularly in western Europe,
non-Roman languages began to flourish as the imposition of Latin was not
determined by threat of force or of economic dominance. However, the cultural link with the educated
and culturally sophisticated Romans meant that Latin remained the primary
language of learning and of education.
The middle ages saw a cultural and
linguistic separation between the Christianised West, and the Islamic East – a
separation most forcibly demonstrated by the Crusades.
The burgeoning Universities in
Europe continued to offer learning in Latin, and continued to focus learning
around the three central components which characterised Greek linguistic
practices: grammar, rhetoric and logic.
The central theoretical debate of
the period revolved around the argument between nominalists and realists. This debate was one which centred on the
relationships between a word (for example, 'horse'), the specific
physical object being described (for example, 'this particular horse right in
front of us'), and the universal abstract conceptualisation of that word
which determines its universal significance (for example, the idea of
'horseness' which enables us to identify a horse when we see it) (Kelly, 2002).
- Realists: In Plato's most famous text, The
Republic (c. 380 bc), Plato outlines his vision of the relationship
between Truth (with a capital 'T', meaning truth which is universal), and
reality (meaning the particulars which we see around and about us).
And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature
is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living
in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light
and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their
childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they
cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by
the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them
a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall
built along the way, like the screen which marionette players
have in front of them, over which they show the puppets … they see only their own shadows, or the shadows
of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of
the cave (Plato, The Republic.
8:7).
Truth, in this
picture which Plato is painting, is represented by the fire. This fire shines a light on real objects, but
because human beings are trapped and chained in a cave of the World, all we see
of them are the shadows cast by the fire flickering on the cave wall in front
of us. We cannot turn our heads to see
the reality (Truth) itself, and have to content ourselves with a mere shadow of
that Truth.
This rather jolly cartoon illustrates
Plato’s cave. The reality we perceive is
the shadows on the cave wall, but there is a ‘universal’ truth we cannot see –
the objects themselves on the shelf behind us.
‘Truth’ is the light which casts the shadow.
For the
realists, the relationship between universal concept (Truth – or the idea of
'horseness') and reality (what we see in front of us, or 'this particular
horse) are intrinsically connected, albeit separated. The shadow of a horse, cast by the flickering
fire, still has the shape and resemblance of the horse itself. In the same way, the specific image of a
horse has a resemblance to the universal idea of 'horseness'.
For the
realists, language reflected this same relationship. Language was the conduit by which the
flickering, specific image of a horse was transmitted from the universal
concept. The abstract idea of a horse is
independent, and contains within it all the characteristic notions of
horseness by which we are able to define the specific reality of the horse
standing in front of us. The horse we
see in front of us is dependent on the abstract idea of horseness.
Let me put it
another way. For the realists there is a
world of thought (the abstract and the universal) and a world of reality (the
physical and the specific). The world of
reality is a reflection of the world of thought. The specific is a shadow of the
universal. The horse is a reflection of
the idea horseness. The physical is
dependent on the abstract.
 |
Language
|
 |
|
The Universal reality is solid and
‘True’
|
|
The shadow resembles the ‘Truth’,
but is only a reflection of it
|
- Nominalism: If the realists build a view of
the world in which the physical realities around us are a shadow, or
representation, of a universal truth, the nominalists reverse this
image. For the nominalists, there
is no such thing as a universal Truth which exists independently of
physical reality. The word 'horse'
is not used in order to demonstrate how the four-footed mammal in front of
us reflects universal ideas of horseness.
Instead, the word 'horse' is a label which we attach to an
independent reality in order to categorise it. The universal, or abstract idea of
horseness is something which emerges from our identification of
common factors in a physical and independent reality – and thus the idea
of 'horseness' is dependent on the physical reality of the four-footed
mammal standing in front of us.
|
|
Language
|
 |
|
The ‘universal’ is an incomplete
pattern of similarities by which we might group similar-looking objects into
a single category
|
|
Physical reality is something we are
able to categorise because it shares a basic pattern with other objects
labelled ‘horse’
|
Thomas of Erfurt: Grammatica
Speculativa
Thomas of Erfurt is a character for
whom history has little to say. We know
that he was a teacher in the early 1300s, of probable German origin, and that
much of his work may have been completed while he was in Paris. What history can say with more
certainty is that Thomas of Erfurt has become of the most significant figures
in the modistae movement of the 14th century: a movement of
'speculative grammarians' who were influenced by Aristotle, and concerned more
with the philosophical and theoretical implications of grammar than with its
practical applications in language use.
In all science, understanding and knowledge derive from a
recognition of its principles … we therefore, wishing to know the science of
grammar, insist that it is necessary to know its principles which are the modes
of signifying. But before we enquire
into their particular features, we must first set forth some of their general
features without which it is not possible to obtain the fullest understanding
of them (Thomas of Erfurt, cited in Harris and Talbot, 1989. p. 75).
For Thomas of Erfurt and the other modistae,
language is a reflection of the human mind.
The human mind, in turn, interprets the concrete realities it sees
around it. Therefore, language is a
reflection of how we perceive reality – or, as Harris and Talbot put it, “our words are sounds standing symbolically for our mental
impressions, which in turn are 'images' of a perceived reality in the external
world” (1989, p. 76).
Underpinning Thomas of Erfurt's
ideas, is the powerful idea that language – and grammar in particular - is not something which added on to human
consciousness in order to allow it to describe things. Instead, grammar is the mechanism by which
reality is perceived. This
psychologically complex notion assumes that “both
grammar and logic are reflections of the way the universe is constructed, but
the former is psychologically prior to the latter” (Harris and Talbot,
1989. p. 85).
The Renaissance: A
New Babel
It may seem a little strange that we are leaping all the way from Thomas
of Erfurt in 1310 to the John Lock in 1689 with scarcely a toilet-break between
– and certainly this rather dramatic leap is more to do with the limitations of
a 15-credit module than they are with a shortage of interesting linguistic
theory or debate within the intervening 400 year period. We will, therefore, regretfully be bypassing
the linguistic monuments of Caxton, Erasmus, Scaliger, Ramus, Scaliger, Arnauld
and Lancelot, Francis Bacon, Cave Beck, Francis Lodwick, Thomas Sprat and John
Wilkins. We will even, with great regret
indeed, need to wave by the significant impact of Johann Gutenberg, whose
invention of the printing press quite possibly has had a greater impact upon
the evolution of linguistic theory (and, indeed, upon the evolution of modern
civilization) than anyone else under consideration.
The Gutenburg press
from around 1440 revolutionised language and learning
Suffice it to say for the moment, that the Renaissance saw significant
developments in terms of the solidification of national borders, and the
concretion of national identities through both linguistic specialisations and
through international expansion. Let me
briefly explain what I mean with a couple of examples.
Prior to the Renaissance period, to be 'English' meant very little. England as a nation was by no means
considered a European superpower.
Indeed, by many European nations England was still seen to be something
of a barbaric nation of uneducated and unsophisticated inhabitants. Aside from brief periods of military
dominance and success (particularly the victories of Henry V in France), the
middle ages for England were characterised by in-fighting, civil war, and
frequent military losses.
The Pope, and the institution of the Catholic church, held enormous
political authority throughout Europe, and the English King was seen as very
much subject to the authority of Rome.
But all changed when Henry VIII came to the English throne. Henry broke off England's alliance with Rome,
and established England as an independent religion, and an independent
nation. By the time of Queen Elizabeth,
Henry's daughter, the Pope have managed to mobilise Prince Philip of Spain to
mount an attack on England designed to bring the upstart nation back to heel.
The plan failed. The Spanish
Armanda floundered against the English ships in the Channel, and broke against
the rocks in the unpredictable waters of the Scottish coast as they attempted
to escape. England as a proud,
independent nation, finally emerged – and as the military might of Spain was
broken, so other nations in Europe (France and the Netherlands) found space to
dig out a little independence.
In this period it was only natural that the English language became
especially prized by the English. It was
their language. It spoke of their
national identity. And in the
Renaissance this was finally something to be proud of. As the French were proud of their
language. And the Dutch proud of
theirs.
This portrait of Queen Elizabeth I by
George Gower, completed in 1590, commemorates the victory against the Spanish
Armada in 1588. It is a bold expression
of the glory of England as a culturally and politically independent
nation. The seas which England had now
claimed dominance over, would provide them with a highway to further economic
success through trade and conquest.
At the same time, England
saw a great flourishing in trade. The
introspective economic dominance of the landed gentry was being gradually
replaced by the entrepreneurship of tradesmen, who invested in ships which set
sail from Portsmouth to discover new lands to colonise – new products to
trade. In the 16th century,
Euro-centric linguists discovered the existence of Amerindian and Chinese
languages, which (being outside of the proto-indo-european traditions) meant
the need to radically overhaul ideas and universality and regularity in
language.
The Seventeenth
Century: Universal Languages and the Emergence of Science
The world was no
longer populated by people who were generally the same. It was becoming increasingly clear that
people were more different than had ever been considered before. Francis Bacon illustrated this by using
Plato's image of the cave again – except that in this New World there was no
longer one cave for all human beings.
Now there were many caves, and many reflections:
The idols of the cave
are illusions of the individual man. For
(apart from the aberrations of human nature in general) each man has a kind of
individual cave or cavern which fragments and distorts the light of nature …
The evident consequence is that the human spirit (in its different dispositions
in different man) is a variable thing, quite irregular, almost haphazard
(Bacon, 1620. p. 41)
John Wilkins, in 1641, echoed these
sentiments by emphasising that language is an expression of individual
identity, and individual perceptions.
Communication through language is as infinitely varied as human beings
are infinitely varied:
Every rationall creature, being of an imperfect, and
dependant happinesse, is therefore naturally endowed with an ability to
communicate its owne thoughts and intentions; That so by mutuall services, it
might the better promote it selfe, in the prosecution of its owne wel-being
(Wilkins, 1641. p. 1).
Wilkins was a philosopher, a clergyman,
and a founder member of the Royal Society.
For Wilkins, this infinite variety
was a problem. If each human being saw
the world in different ways, and expressed things in different ways, how on
earth were we ever going to be able to understand each other, or communicate
anything?
Linguistic specialisation for
Wilkins, was a curse. Learning was
impossible when no objective truth could be communicated – and it was therefore
a responsibility of science and learning to find a form of language which was not
individual. A 'Universal Language':
After the fall of Adam,
there were two general curses inflicted on Mankinde: The one upon their labours; the other upon their language … But now, if there were such an universall
character, to expresse things and notions, as might be legible to all people
and countries, so that men of severall Nations might with the same ease, both
write and read it; this invention would be a farre greater advantage in this
particular, and mightily conduce to the spreading and promoting of all Arts and
Sciences (Wilkins, 1641. pp. 105-6).
Francis Lodwick rose to this
challenge in his 1647 A Common Writing:
Whereby two, although not understanding one the others Language, yet by the
helpe thereof, may communicate their minds one to another. Lodwick's solution was clearly was not
sufficient for Sir Thomas Urquhart, since in 1653 he can be seen still
complaining that there “ought to be a proportion
betweixt the sign and thing signified; therefore should all things, whether
real or rationall, have their proper words assigned unto them”
(Urquhart, 1653. p. ).
In 1654, Seth Ward proposed a
system of language which used mathematical symbols instead of words while in
1657 Cave Beck boldly published The Universal
Character: A system of language which he claimed could be learned in two
hours by people of any nationality whatsoever.
In 1660 a group of scientists and
academics including John Wilkins, Christopher Wren (of St. Paul's Cathedral
fame) and Robert Boyle founded a new Royal Society of London for Improving
Natural Knowledge. In so doing, they
discovered a stumbling-block in the centuries new-found distrust in the
capacity of an infinity varied language to communicate a single objective
truth. In his 1667 History of the Royal-Society of London Thomas Sprat highlighted the
deplorably inexact state of the English language. How could science “redeem
the minds of Men, from obscurity, uncertainty, and bondage” when the
language used to communicate it was both obscure and uncertain (Sprat, 1667. p.
)?
John Locke: An
Essay Concerning Human Understanding
There are few figures in mdoern history who have had quite such an
impact as John Locke. His Two
Treatises of Govenment, published in 1692, was ruthlessly plagiarised by
Thomas Jefferson in 1776, and is know frequently more famous as the American
Declaration of Independence. His Essay
Concerning Human Understanding so radically influenced contemporary thought
that half a century after its publication people would find themselves
paraphrasing sections of it as though it ideas were common sense.
Language was of supreme importance in Locke's work – indeed, he did not
believe it was possible to begin to consider human understanding without trying
first to understand human language:
I find, that there is so close a connection between Ideas
and Words ... that it is impossible to speak clearly and distinctly of our
Knowledge, which all consists in Propositions, without considering, first, the
Nature, Use, and Signification of Language (Locke, 1789).
Locke challenged the established notions of 'innatism': the idea that
language, as well as the character of individuals, is written into them at
birth. According to innatist theory,
ideas derive from some Universal truth which is inputted into the human mind
abstractly. For Locke though, ideas
derived from experience. Human minds
are, according to Locke, a tabula rasa: "a
clean slate, on which the story of experience is subsequently inscribed"
(Harris and Talbot, p. 110).
Harris and Talbot provide a useful example: If we think of the word
'gold', then we are able to conceptualise what the word is signifying because
we are able to relate it to other sensory concepts: 'yellow', 'heaviness',
'cold', 'solidity'. These sensory
concepts are ones which we can only understand through experience – we
have seen yellow, we have weighed heaviness, we have felt cold
and solidity. The word 'gold' is,
clearly, something which has a root in reality – gold exists. The idea of 'justice', however, is less
tangible – but is still rooted in experience.
This 'mixed mode' concept combines sensory experience (the feeling of
injustice, or of things not being fair) and reflective experience (experiencing
how our mind processes and reflects upon the sensory input).
Unlike previous model of linguistic theory, Locke's does not create a
division between a physical reality and an abstract or 'universal'
reality. Although he acknowledges
abstract concepts, these abstracts are rooted in the reality of
experience. There is no 'Truth' outside
of the cave of experience. Experience is
Truth.
Let me put it another way. The
image of Plato's cave assumes there are two forms of reality – the physical
reality which we percieve, and a 'deeper' reality which underlies it, and which
connects all our percieved realities together into a Universal reality (or
'Truth'). For Locke, there is no
distinction between physical reality and deeper reality. 'Truth' is not something passed through the
filter of experience. Instead, 'Truth'
is shaped by that experience itself.
The Eighteenth
Century: Doubt and Debate
Into the eighteenth century, and Locke's theories of language and human
understanding are beginning to have a serious impact. Of course, the moment you create a philosophy
which denies innatist principles (in other words, one which argues that people
individually forge their own intellectual as well as social identities) then
you lay the ground for the emergence of a form of ‘Enlightenment’ empiricism.
Science, not God, became the new source of knowledge of the world, and
this less to a kind of euphoric confidence in the capacity of mankind to
explain all visible phenomenon through science – and a belief as well that
science and innovation could make the world a better place. The eighteenth
century was a century which Addison described as “enlightened by
Learning and Philosophy” (Addison, 1712).
Locke’s ideas
about language and human understand were a significant part of this
‘enlightenment’. Indeed, according to
the rhetorician Thomas Sheridan nothing about the human mind was really
understood at all before Locke:
Is it not amazing to reflect, that from the creation of the
world, there was not a part of the human mind clearly delineated, till within
the last sixty years? when Mr. Locke arose, to give us a just view, of one part
of our internal frame, ‘the understanding,’ upon principles of philosophy founded
on reason and experience (Sheridan, 1762, p. v).
Because?
his [Locke’s] discovery was, that as we cannot
think upon any abstract subject, without the use of abstract terms; as in
general we substitute the terms themselves, in thinking, as well as speaking,
in the room of the complex ideas for which they stand; it is impossible we can
think with precision, till we first examine whether we have precise ideas annexed
to such terms: and it is equally impossible to communicate our thoughts to
others with exactness, unless we are first agreed in the exact meaning of our
words (Sheridan,
1762. p.vi).
In other words, what Locke had demonstrated (beyond doubt, according to
Sheridan) was that the seemingly impossible chaos of the arbitrary sign was a
reality which we simply choose to ignore.
We might think, when we use language, that we are saying what we mean –
and that because we use language that other people can understand what we
mean. However, Locke had argued that
this is not the case.
In Locke’s enlightenment world there is not a single and Universal truth
that we see reflections of. Each truth,
is found in the individual percpetions of each individual – and unless another
individual shares that same truth the two will never be able to understand each
other.
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Printed by T.R. for J. Martyn and the Bell without Temple-bar,
and J. Allestry at the Rose and Crown in Duck-lane,
Printers to the Royal Society
·
Urquhart,
T (1653). Logopandecteision; or, an
Introduction to the Universal Language. London, Giles Calvert and Richard
Tomlins
[1] This polarisation was more cultural than
religious, as both Christian and Islamic religion flourished in different forms
on either side of the divide – for example, Catholic forms of Christianity in
the West and Orthodox forms in the East.
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