Schriften zur Sprache

by Wilhelm von Humboldt

This set of lectures on language delivered at the Berlin Academy between 1820 and 1829, will give the reader a comprehensive overview of Humboldt's conceptual development. Originally designed for the general though interested public these essays are generally deemed to be more digestible than the famous Kawi-Introduction and will thus facilitate the access to the ideas of this outstanding scholar.

Genres: Linguistics

260 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Wilhelm (Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand) von Humboldt, German man of letters extraordinary, close friend of the poets Goethe and Schiller, whose life's work encompasses the areas of philosophy, literature, linguistics, anthropology, education, and political thought as well statesmanship was born in Potsdam on June 23, 1767 and died at Tegel near Berlin on April 8, 1835. Although there has always been strong interest in Humboldt expressed by political and cultural historians and educationists in Germany, it is only in recent decades that his contributions to the formation of modern linguistics, to semiotics, hermeneutics and language philosophy have given rise to renewed attention to his pioneering achievements in these areas, even though much of his work in linguistics has remained unknown or unexplored until recently. Yet numerous linguists beginning with Pott and Steinthal in Germany and the American Brinton in the nineteenth century to Boas, Sapir, Bühler, Weisgerber, and Chomsky in the twentieth century derived or claimed to have derived important insights from Humboldt. But their interest in Humboldt was partial at best and limited to those aspects of his work that could be utilized to reinforce or to legitimize their own projects and methodologies. It is quite misleading to associate the term “Humboldtian linguistics” or “Humboldtian language philosophy” with any one specific direction, for example with the Whorfian thesis of “linguistic relativity” or with Chomsky's opposite notion of a universalist “generative grammar” because these tend to ignore other equally or more important dimensions of Humboldt's work. After his death in 1835 his linguistic work was effectively disregarded by mainstream linguists in Germany whose primary interest was focused on the Indo-European language group Thus a prominent figure like Franz Bopp would maintain that the languages of the South Pacific represented but decayed forms of Sanskrit despite the fact that Humboldt had already thoroughly disproved this opinion in his Kavi Work and demonstrated that these languages constituted what is called today the Austronesian language group (Mueller-Vollmer 1991). Even the linguist Heyman Steinthal who published in 1884 a two volume edition of Humboldt's writings entitled Die Sprachphilosophischen Werke Wilhelm's von Humboldt (Humboldt's works in language philosophy) (see “Works”, bibliography) in his introduction and commentaries criticises Humboldt from a reductionist psychologistic position and neither here or anywhere in his other writings made a serious attempt to discuss Humboldt's own arguments and to investigate his actual philosophical position. In France, on the other hand, we find throughout the 19th century a comparatively sustained interest in Humboldt that was confined chiefly to his work in the Asian languages and to his Basque studies. As a member of the Société Asiatique in Paris he published a number of articles in the society's official journal, the Journal Asiatique (For a list of these articles, see Bösch 2006, p. 234) and the latter in turn carried reviews of some of his writings. It has to be noted that this French reception resulted largely from the personal contacts and scholarly exchanges that he maintained with a number of prominent French linguists such as Jean-François Champollion, Jean-Pierre Abél Rémusat, Eugène Jacquet, and Eugène Burnouf Yet Humboldt's French reception, while including some of his important linguistic studies, all but omitted their philosophical concerns and underlying principles. Typical is the review of Humboldt's groundbreaking treatise from 1827, “On the Dual” that appeared in the Nouvelle Revue Germanique, I: 378–381 (1829), where the reviewer blended out entirely the philosophical intent and key argument of the piece (Ibid. 105/6) and thus distorted beyond recognition Humboldt's integration of linguistic research and language philosophy which lies

Reviews

[William Bies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wilhelm von Humboldt tends to be remembered and honored as the pedagogue who gave the classic expression to the ideal of life-long self-education [Bildung], his more colorful brother Alexander as an explorer and naturalist. The contrast in personalities recalls that between their contemporaries, the likewise brilliantly gifted pair of brothers August Wilhelm Schlegel and Friedrich Schlegel. But although Wilhelm von Humboldt was indeed involved in the founding in 1809 of the university in Berlin now named after him, his association with the institution was rather slender and short-lived and his professional career as a scholar rests to a far greater extent on his activities as a philologist and early philosopher of language. Therefore, let us postpone a discussion of his ideas as an educator to another date and take up the subject of his real metier, namely language. For he was extraordinarily gifted as a linguist, aside from his mother tongue German conversant in French, Latin and Greek from an early age, to which he would later add Spanish, Italian, English, Sanskrit, ancient Egyptian along with several Mexican, Indonesian and Polynesian languages – expertise which established him as a pioneer in comparative linguistics. If this were all, though, he would earn a footnote in academic history (he would be particularly known as an early promoter of European interest in and scholarship on Sanskrit literature), but of hardly any concern to us. His most distinctive contribution, however, is to philosophy, for which he continues to be of current interest in the field (vide our review of Charles Taylor, The Language Animal, here).

What von Humboldt implicitly understands throughout is why the theory of the origin of language in an intersubjectively agreed-upon convention cannot work. For the very process leading up to the invention of the convention has to be mediated by language, or more precisely, by the activity of the mind that gives rise to language. The following quotations illustrate his understanding of the social context:

Das Wort ist freilich insofern ein Zeichen, als es für eine Sache oder einen Begriff gebraucht wird, aber nach der Art seiner Bildung und seiner Wirkung ist es ein eignes und selbstständiges Wesen, ein Individuum, die Summe aller Wörter, die Sprache, ist eine Welt, die zwischen der erscheinenden außer, und der wirkenden in uns in der Mitte liegt; sie beruht freilich auf Konvention, insofern sich alle Glieder eines Stammes verstehen, aber die einzelnen Wörter sind zuerst aus dem natürlichen Gefühl des Sprechenden gebildet, und durch das ähnliche natürliche Gefühl des Hörenden verstanden worden; das Sprachstudium lehrt daher, außer dem Gebrauch der Sprache selbst, noch die Analogie zwischen dem Menschen und der Welt im allgemeinen und jeder Nation insbesondre, die sich in der Sprache ausdrückt, und da der in der Welt sich offenbarende Geist durch keine gegebene Menge von Ansichten erschöpfend erkannt werden kann, sondern jede neue immer etwas endeckt, so wäre es vielmehr gut die verschiedenen Sprachen so sehr zu vervielfältigen, als es immer die Zahl der den Erdboden bewohnenden Menschen erlaubt. (p. 8)

Nur sehr wenige begreifen, daß eine Sprache gar nicht allein durch ihre Literatur, auch nicht bloß durch den sich in ihr offenbarenden Charakter der Nation, und die sich aus ihr ergebenden historischen Aufschlüsse interessiert, sondern den Geist und die Empfindung noch viel anders durch ihren innern Bau und die Natur ihrer Grundbestandteile anzieht und fesselt. (p. 17)

Die Sprache, in ihrem wirklichen Wesen aufgefaßt, ist etwas beständig und in jedem Augenblicke Vorübergehendes. Selbst ihre Erhaltung durch die Schrift ist immer nur eine unvollständige, mumienartige Aufbewahrung, die es doch erst wieder bedarf, daß man dabei den lebendigen Vortrag zu versinnlichen sucht. Sie selbst ist kein Werk (Ergon), sondern eine Tätigkeit (Energeia). Ihre wahre Definition kann daher nur eine genetische sein. Sie ist nämlich die sich ewig widerholende Arbeit des Geistes, den artikulierten Laut zum Ausdruck des Gedanken fähig zu machen. (p. 36)

In der Erscheinung entwickelt sich jedoch die Sprache nur gesellschaftlich, und der Mensch versteht sich selbst nur, indem er die Verstehbarkeit seiner Worte an andren versuchend geprüft hat….Je größer und bewegter das gesellige Zusammenwirken auf eine Sprache ist, desto mehr gewinnt sie unter übrigens gleichen Umständen….Mit dem Verstehen verhält es nicht anders. Es kann in der Seele nichts, als durch eigne Tätigkeit vorhanden sein, und Verstehen und Sprechen sind nur verschiedenartige Wirkungen der nämlichen Sprachkraft. (pp. 48-49)

Es gibt keine Kraft der Seele, welche hierbei nicht tätig wäre; nichts in dem Innern des Menschen ist so tief, so fein, so weit umfassend, das nicht in die Sprache überginge und in ihr erkennbar wäre. Ihre intellektuellen Vorzüge beruhen daher ausschließlich auf der wohlgeordneten, festen und klaren Geistes-Organisation der Völker in der Epoche ihrer Bildung oder Umgestaltung und sind das Bild, ja der unmittelbare Ausdruck derselben. (p. 83)

Beide nun aber, der innere Sprachsinn und der Laut, indem sich der letztere an die Forderungen des ersteren anschließt, zusammen und die Behandlung der Lauteinheit wird dadurch zum Symbole der gesuchten bestimmten Begriffseinheit. Diese, dadurch in die Laute gelegt, ergießt sich als geistiges Prinzip über die Rede und die melodisch und rhythmisch künstlerisch behandelte Lautformung weckt, zurückwirkend, in der Seele eine engere Verbindung der ordnenden Verstandeskräfte mit bildlich schaffender Phantasie, woraus also die Verschlingung der sich nach außen und nach innen, nach dem Geist und nach der Natur hin bewegenden Kräfte ein erhöhtes Leben und eine harmonische Regsamkeit schöpft. (p. 123)

Unfortunately, we have to confine ourselves here to generalities and cannot trace the detailed discussions that make perusal of this work so rewarding: on morphology and stem-words, inflected versus agglutinative languages, Chinese versus the Semitic languages, what is special about Sanskrit (and from it what we today would call the Indo-European family of languages), the study of living versus dead languages, the individual characteristics of Sanskrit versus Greek, Latin and the Germanic languages, what morphological and grammatical elements conspire to confer upon a language an advantage in expressiveness in certain areas (von Humboldt would endorse the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis if it is understood as concerning more gross features than minor details like how many words there are for snow) etc.

A couple reflections, to close:

1) While in theory von Humboldt is committed to a view of language as mediating an ongoing interaction between mankind and the world – thus, as dynamical, in practice he treats linguistics as, in the main, a static phenomenon. This limitation is not to be discounted, however, since it forms the logical starting point and in itself comprehends a rather rich domain. As an analogy, classical thermodynamics began as a study of stationary equilibrium states, which in the course of time was to be supplemented with a non-equilibrium version. The counterpart in the philosophy of language would have to address possible laws governing linguistic transitions. Von Humboldt is already aware of this, of course; in one rather interesting section he characterizes what he sees as the principal stages in the development of a language – the pre-historic (accessible to us only through speculative reconstructions), youth (for instance, Greek in the Homeric age), maturity and old-age or decline. For him, the circumstance that the language faculty issues from the spirit ensures that the senescent stage will never be permanent; as we know, for instance, the downfall of classical Latin that set in during the sixth century was the pre-condition of the rise of the Romance languages. For all his historical sensitivity, though, von Humboldt never posits any laws of linguistic change or the driving factors behind it. As an illustration of what we might have in mind here, look at his contemporary Johann Herbart’s psychology of relations. Needless to say, as von Humboldt hints at elliptically, a structural and a dynamical analysis of language must be interrelated. If a latter-day Humboldtian were however to undertake an investigation of this connection, it would transcend the parameters of contemporary scientific discourse. For the following passage does illustrate what von Humboldt would understand to belong to its purview (what every self-respecting modern would shy away from out of exaggerated humility):

Mit dem richtigen Entwicklungsgange der Sprache steht der des intellektuellen Vermögens überhaupt in natürlichen Einklange. Denn da das Bedürfnis des Denkens die Sprache im Menschen weckt, so muß, was rein aus ihrem Begriffe abfließt, auch notwendig das gelingende Fortschreiten des Denkens befördern. Versänke aber auch eine mit solcher Sprache begabte Nation durch andere Ursachen in Geistesträgheit und Schwäche, so würde sie sich immer an ihrer Sprache selbst leichter aus diesem Zustande hervorarbeiten können. Umgekehrt muß das intellektuelle Vermögen aus sich selbst Hebel seines Aufschwunges finden, wenn ihm eine, von jenem richtigen und natürlichen Entwicklungsgange abweichende Sprache zur Seite steht. Es wird alsdann durch die aus ihm selbst geschöpften Mittel auf die Sprache einwirken, nicht zwar schaffend, da ihre Schöpfungen nur das Werk ihres eigenen Lebenstriebes sein können, allein in sie hineinbauend, ihren Formen einen Sinn leihend und eine Anwendung verstattend, den sie nicht hineingelegt und zu der sie nicht geführt hatte. (pp. 128-129)

So, if anyone were to take von Humboldt seriously again, it could serve as a stimulus to groundbreaking research.

2) Today’s artificial distinction between syntax and semantics is, in a Humboldtian perspective, already overcome in the context of a single historical process of linguistic development [Sprachverfahren]. Put in other – more inflammatory – terms: he aims to derive all of language itself from pragmatics! As an aside, we could point out that reflection on this state of affairs should instill some insight into why a genuine all-purpose artificial intelligence must ever remain but a mirage. The present-day popularity of forecasts of a machine civilization rests upon ignorance of von Humboldt’s central theses about language and its development.

3) Concerning von Humboldt’s oeuvre as a whole: one could say that he exemplifies Thomas Kuhn’s pre-scientific stage. Contrast his philosophical reflectivity with the utter lack thereof in present-day approaches under the guiding influence of computer science. Thus, one ought to disrecommend a study of von Humboldt to anyone who aspires to be a professional linguist: these could find in him at best a store of straw men to attack. What does this entail, though? Academia can no longer be deemed an appropriate setting for one who wishes to pursue the Humboldtian ideal of life-long self-education. By all means, a liberal-arts education in college is a necessary propaedeutic to the life of the mind. But today’s Ivy League universities seem to be enmeshed in the striving to terminate the liberal-arts tradition altogether and to render themselves instead into institutes of higher ideological indoctrination. Exempli gratia: the wrongness of racial prejudice follows as an immediate consequence of the unity of all mankind in Adam and racist attitudes of any kind have always been foreign to the Catholic Church (being what she says she is, catholic), whether in theory or in practice, but to elevate anti-racialist doctrines into the be-all and end-all of the curriculum were to put something creaturely and secondary into the first place and thereby to violate the first commandment (Exodus 20:1-3).