PhD in Philosophy, Petrova Yulia Andreevna

Bashanaeva Khadizhat Ruslanovna

Korotchenkova Anastasia Vladimirovna

Rostov State University of Economics (RIPE)

Language as an Organism

Annotation: The idea that language is a «life form» was popular amongst Indo-European linguists in Germany and France till the middle of the 19^th century. Researches of that period pointed the form of evolution (transformation) and compared language with the organism; linguistics was a natural science in their understanding; all changes in the language were considered as the natural growth, controlled by natural laws, independently on human will or consciousness.

Keywords: evolutionary views, language, organism, Darwinism, Indo-European, speech.

The field of linguistics during Darwin’s development of his evolutionary views, and most biologists thought of species as fixed, virtually all linguists thought of languages as evolutionary. Prussian philosopherhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher, W. von Humboldt (1767 - 1835) saw language as symbiotic organism which was greater than the individual but an integral part of the physiology of our species; he wrote «der Mensch ist nur Mensch durch Sprache; um aber die Sprache zu erfinden, müßte er schon Mensch sein, (a man is only a man by language; to invent, however, the language, he would already have to be a man)» in his book «Organismus der Sprache» (1812). The idea that language is a «life form» was popular amongst Indo-European linguists in Germany in the early 19^th century. F. von Schlegel (a philosopher, linguist 1772 - 1829), compared language to living tissue in a metaphor. J. Grimm (a philologist 1785 - 1863), claimed that grammar was a comparative anatomy [9; 55p.].

Comparative-historical research of the 19^th century in linguistics can be attributed to the work of German linguist F. Bopp (1791 - 1867), the pioneer of the kinship of the Indo-European languages, which he outlined in his first comparative grammar (1833-1852) «Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanskrit ...». According to Bopp’s investigations – language is considered as an organism where physical and mechanical laws control its development» [7; 6p.]. An outstanding German figure in linguistics – A. Schleicher (1821-1868), and his work «Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European languages» («Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen», 1861), where the author defined language as a natural organism and linguistics as a natural science.

Schleicher, the most important proponent of the theory of the linguistic transmutation of species, integrated this theory into a doctrine of a continuous branching tree of language, a theory at first conceived in a strictly Linnaean framework with the purpose of finding a good classification and typology of languages [5; 14p.], and to give a graphic illustration of the descent of the Indo-European languages from «Ursprache» [8; 7-8p.p.]. The twigs, branches, boughs, etc. of the tree of life of languages represented, respectively, species, genera, families, etc. Through Darwin [2; 160p.], this figure of the tree of life had become a new paradigm n evolutionary theory [3; 179p.], and it was all the more easily adopted by Schleicher. What he ignored was that Darwin`s primary goal was not the classification of species, but the explanation of the process of speciation itself. The most important reason why Schleicher1s transformationist version of linguistics was later abandoned was, however, his attempt to accommodate it with Hegelian ideas – and here the agreement among the linguists of the 19^th century stopped.

Thus, «evolution» and «history» are mutually exclusive be definition. According, there were two periods, that we may trace in all Schleicher’s works: language evolution (Sprachbildung), i.e., phylogeny, and language history (Sprachgeschichte), and «History», which he defined in the Hegelian sense, as the necessary condition of which is man`s spiritual consciousness of his freedom. During the period of « evolution », language is created (naturally), it progresses from the simple to the perfect. Having reaches a state of perfection, it can only decay or degenerate during the period of its «history».

French researchers of the 19^th century took Schleicher’s form of evolution (transformation) and compared language with the organism; linguistics was a natural science in their understanding; all changes in the language were considered as the natural growth, controlled by natural laws, independently on human will or consciousness. For instance, a Belgian Indo-Europeanist and Semitologist who started natural linguistics in France – H. Chavée (1815-1877) said: «Each language – is natural addition to the human organism, which is anatomically, physiologically, and psychologically specialized for each race» [6; 159p.].

The prehistoric formation and structure of a language can be studied through the «comparative anatomy» of linguistic forms. An example would be the reconstruction of the proto-Indo-European vocabulary in the work of Chavée. The decay of linguistic forms can, however, be directly examined. It follows strict rules or principles, and this (again) or two levels: phonetic and on the level of meaning, to which A. Hovelacque (French anthropologist and linguist, 1843-1896), added word-formation. In his work he reject the view that semantic laws are somehow natural laws determining the semantic changes of language quite independently of any use speakers make of it. A. Hovelacque, as well as all members of the French school integrated the study of language in the framework provided by A. Schleicher in the following way, suggested the basic assumption that «the language is alive», that «the life of the language» is not just a metaphor, but an observed reality. The language passes through three stages: birth (according to Schleicher in the prehistoric period), life and death.

Another point of convergence, or agreement, between the linguists of that period was the theory of the transformation of species applied to the evolution of languages. Following Ch. Lyell, who in 1863 had incorporated a chapter on language in his Antiquity of Man, and Schleicher, who in 1863 had integrated Darwinism into his theory of language, evolving for the sake of a better typology of languages, most linguists of that period would have subscribed to this statement: «Transmutation of species in the kingdom of speech is not hypothesis, but a patent face, one of the fundamental and determining principles of linguistic study» [4; 438p.].

A. Darmsteter (French philologist, 1846 - 1888) amalgamated Darwinism (in this case especially the theory of variation and natural selection) with psychology. Words are compared to organism. They, as well as ideas, struggled for survival in the mind and in the language. Language-change is governed by «laws of the mind» [1; 18p.]. A. Darmesteter had said although with a proviso worth nothing, that «If there is a single commonplace truth today, it is that languages are living organisms whose life, although purely intellectual in nature, is for that matter no less real and may be compared to that of vegetable or animal organisms» [1; 13p.]. In his book «La vie des mots», the author pointed that language had a life cycle, being born, growing, and ultimately dying, at both the level of the individual and the species.

The common factor in these definitions is that they attribute to language an autonomous existence, independent of human will. Language thus appears to constitute a kind of fourth realm of nature.

Most linguists of that period shared this point of view, some by philosophical conviction, others perhaps simply for convenience of exposition. This way of seeing things can to some degree be explained by a language’s length of life – measurable in centuries – which so manifestly surpasses the paltry human life-span.

REFERENCES

1. Darmesteter A., La vie des mots étudiée dans leurs significations. Paris.: Delagrave, 1886. – 18p

2. Darwin Ch., The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, London: John Murray, 1859 – 160p.

3. Goudge T.A., Book Reviews: Science and Sentiment in America: Philosophical Thought From Jonathan Edwards to John Dewey. N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1973. – 179p.

4. Hovelacque A., La Linguistique, par Abel Hovelacque. – Paris: C. Reinwald, 1876 – 438p.

5. LeRoy L.W., Subsurface Geologic Methods. Colorado School of Mines; Second edition, 1950. – 14p.

6. Levinas E., Otherwise than Being: Or Beyond Essence, Duquesne University Press, 1998. – 159p.

7. Maher B. A. Principles of psychopathology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966. – 6p.

8. Schleicher A., Die deutsche Sprache. Stuttgart, 1860. – 7-8s.s.

9. Stamos D. N., Darwin and the Nature of Species, State University of New York Press, 2007. – 55p.