|
page xxix:-
however, it seems that language in general has, from a few
rude and half-articulated sounds, acquired its present
copiousness, fastidiousness, and customs. Such a theory as
this, (if it be indeed only a theory,) is strongly backed by
observation. Few wants, and few objects, have never been
found to produce a copious mode of speech, and where many
wants and many objects grew upon those few, what method
could the human mind have of pointing them out, but by an
analogy to those things which were familiar to them before?
The derivatives, which we are still able to trace with a
tolerable degree of certainty from a very remote stock,
indicate, that such a comparing principle has had no small
share in increasing words, and more particularly phrases:
They give us also large room to suspect that there is a
great number more of the same sort, the clue of which is
lost; and that though conjecture, or perhaps something more
substantial, amy occasionally patch up the affinity of some,
yet there are others which have lost sight of their origin
for ever. We have at least one satisfactory conclusion from
the circumstances which were mentioned before, that,
whatever it was which gave language birth, (and it was
probably the imitation of sounds,) simile and metaphor have
been its [n]urses Derivation, indeed, and composition have
lent their aid, but it was as subalterns, and they only
expressed partial changes, affecting the meaning of their
originals, whereas besides these effects, the other from
their natural tendency often gave expression even to new
ideas. That the reader may have a more compleat notion of
what I would inculcate by the foregoing observations, I
shall refer him to the treatise which that learned oriental
Dr Gregory Sharp has write upon the subject of the Origin of
Language; he will there find, (what indeed the small number
of the Hebrew roots, and the very temper of the language
must have made the Doctor feel forcibly,) that, even in far
different languages, which were intermingled with a variety
of others, a strange transposition of terms had occasionally
obtained. He relates, that from the name of a town in Italy
where a sort of little swords or daggers were first made,
that those daggers took their name; and in imitation of them
afterwards, a Spanish coin, a diminutive gun, and a dapper
fellow; for such an account does he give of the word Pistol.
From similar causes arose the names of the Gates of
Cilicia and Thermopylae: from a part of the leg
the Greeks took their expression for the continuation of a
mountainous ridge, the Romans and Macedonians encountered at
a place called the Dogs' Heads: and indeed all
languages seem more or less to abound with names originating
from resemblances either direct or analogical, applied more
or less in the stile of metaphors. However, before I go
further, it is but fair to acknowledge that the language of
Ribaldry, or, as we were wont to call it,
Blackguardism, is the most fertile in this kind of
poetry, and that a rude mode of speech, from a scantiness of
certain terms, is more beholden to it than the more copious
and polished, which are on that very account more restricted
in the use of new phrases. It is thus that we talk familiar
enough of the head, brow, side, foot, &c. of a
hill, without ever adverting to that principle in the human
mind which gives birth to such expressions, though the
allusion is exceedingly obvious. Thus also, as in English
the prominence on the face is called a Nose, and has a
similar name in several languages, a promontory of lands has
often the same name, especially in the Northern parts; or,
as in Scotland and the Isles, is Ness; in Norway it
seems to be Naze; and beyond Kamichatka, in the
narrow extreme of the Great Pacific Ocean, is Noss:
neither will one wonder if all these names should be found
to have one original, after considering in how prodigious an
extent of nations, utterly disjoined, late navigators have
found dialects of the Malay tongue. The Sneb of the
Dutch corresponds with the word Neb in Cumberland,
signifying also nose, and this had in a like manner been
applied to capes and headlands: one hill also in these parts
is called Tongue, and another Saddle Back. From that part of
the entrance of a house which is called Hallen, a narrow
turn of the Lake Ulles-Water has its name; from a part of
the Gullet, which is called Hause, (a term which
seems undoubtedly a relick of the Latin verb Haurio,)
has been taken the word Hause, applied to a narrow
entrance into a valley. I need hardly mention, as similar to
these, that of two hills near Winandermere-Mere, one is
called Hard-Knot, and the other Wry-Nose.
Applications of names in this manner, derived from the human
body, or other things, seem, (whether we consider the
numbers of them, which we may every day meet with, or the
natural disposition
|
Lakes Guides menu.
