SOURCE: "Hugh Blair's Theory of the Origin and the Basic Functions of Language," Papers from the 5th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Cambridge, 6-9 April 1987, edited by Sylvia Adamson, Vivien Law, Nigel Vincent and Susan Wright, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1990, pp. 165-87.

In the history of English studies, the figure of Hugh Blair, the Scottish divine and prominent member of the Edinburgh literati of the second half of the 18th century is of particular interest. When he was appointed Regius Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the University of Edinburgh in 1762, the institutional study of what later became the English Language and Literature course can, in a very real sense, be said to have been initiated. It should perhaps be pointed out that, provided this interpretation of Blair's role is accepted, England was well over a century behind Scotland in setting up comparable chairs either in the ancient universities or in the more recently founded 19th century institutions. My claim is this: in courses like that taught by Blair at Edinburgh, or by Adam Smith in Glasgow¹, by Robert Watson² at St. Andrews or James Beattie³ in Aberdeen, we have the nucleus of what in time became what I would like to call the the Oxford model' of the English Language and Literature course. I am not concerned here with the 'belles lettres' or strictly rhetorical aspect of these courses, though the subject is by no means devoid of interest. In saying that this tradition goes back to Blair, I am not claiming that he was the first to lecture on the subject in a Scottish university: even before Smith became Professor of Logic at Glasgow, he had lectured in an informal capacity on rhetoric in Edinburgh⁴, and according to John Millar (quoted by Dugald Stewart, Stewart, 1795: 274) he completely transformed the barren course of logic offered by his predecessors at Glasgow "illustrating the various powers of the human mind … from the several ways of communicating our thoughts by speech." It is a curious sidelight on the culture of 18th century Scotland, that the author of The Wealth of Nations in some of his earliest published work concerned himself with the problems of language, and in fact his Considerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages and the Different Genius of Original and Compounded Languages (a greatly expanded version of the language part of the Rhetoric lectures) first appeared in 1761. It is noteworthy that Blair acknowledged his debt both to Smith's published treatise on language and to his unpublished lectures on rhetoric⁵. As is well known⁶, a MS of these lectures was discovered as recently as 1961 and first published in 1963. But Smith's was by no means the only treatment of language with the Scottish rhetoric courses. Watson's lectures at St. Andrews consisted basically of a digest of Harris's Hermes and there is evidence that this work was studied at Edinburgh too⁷, and even Leechman's lectures on pulpit oratory⁸ at Glasgow contained observations on linguistic matters.

Blair tells us in the Preface to his Lectures (Blair I 1785: iv) that the text now published represented the lectures he had been delivering at Edinburgh over the previous twenty-four years, and it is clear that during this period of time his ideas on language, as on other subjects, must have matured considerably. A synopsis of the Lectures (Blair 1777) had already appeared six years before their publication in book form and there are numerous MS student notes preserved in the Edinburgh University Library. He considered his Lectures

neither as a work wholly original, nor as a Compilation from the writings of others. On every subject contained in them, he thought for himself. He consulted his own ideas and reflections; and a great part of what will be found in these Lectures is entirely his own. (Blair 1785 I: iv)

Perhaps it is precisely this capacity as an expounder of of received ideas, his exposition of a 'consensus' view of the subjects he treats—we may remember that Blair was one of the leading moderates within the Church of Scotland at the time—that accounts for his extraordinary popularity not only in the English-speaking world, but also throughout Europe. Within a few years of the first publication of the Lectures, there appeared translations into French, German, Italian, Dutch and Spanish. To mention only those I am most familiar with: I have counted no fewer than twenty different editions or adaptations of the Italian translation⁹, published between 1801 and 1859 in five different Italian cities, but the list is almost certainly incomplete. Let us put it this way: Blair's Lectures became an internationally acknowledged textbook and we may therefore assume that generations of students were brought up not only on his digest of classical rhetorical theory and on his comments on the great authors of the past, but also on his ideas on the nature, history and structure of language.

Let us now look at these ideas a little more closely. I have mentioned what I called the 'Oxford model' of the English syllabus and its development from the end of the 19th century onwards. The language part of this was—and, to some extent still is—largely concerned with the historical study of the English language, with some Gothic and Old Norse thrown in for good measure. We all know this, since I suppose most of us were brought up on it. Blair's language sections (Lectures 6-9, but there are passages of considerable interest for linguists also in Lectures 10-16, i.e. those dealing with rhetorical theory) partly also deal with historical matters, though much of this is what in the 18th century was known as 'conjectural history', a term I shall return to shortly. His brief account of the origin and history of the English language, whose "irregular grammar" is said to be due to the fact that English is of hybrid origin, is disappointing and shows little direct knowledge of the earlier phases of the history of our tongue. Blair is far more interested in language as a general phenomenon of human societies than in any particular language. In choosing this approach, he is squarely within the tradition of 18th century rational grammar, a philosophical rather than a philological discipline, although he complains that "few authors have written with philosophical accuracy on the principles of General Grammar, and what is more to be regretted, fewer still have thought of applying those principles to the English Language" (Blair I 1785: 172-73), unlike the French who have "considered its construction and determined its propriety with great accuracy" (Blair I 1785: 174). Some attempts have been made, but much remains to be done. I am not concerned here with refuting Blair's claim that little had been written on general grammar in English, though this would not be difficult, bearing in mind influential authors like Harris, Smith or Priestley, but I do want to go back for a moment to the concept of 'conjectural history', because I believe this is central to our understanding of how Blair, like most of his contemporaries, approached the study of language. The term, which came to be widely used of all forms of history, was coined by Dugald Stewart in talking about Smith's Considerations

In this want of direct evidence we are under a necessity of supplying the place of fact by conjecture; and when we are unable to ascertain how men have actually conducted themselves upon particular occasions, of considering in what manner they are likely to have proceeded, from the principles of their nature, and the circumstances of their external situation. In such enquiries, the detached facts which travels and voyages afford us, may frequently serve as landmarks to our speculations, and sometimes our conclusions a priori may tend to confirm the credibility of facts, which on a superficial view, appeared to be doubtful or incredible.

(Stewart 1975: xli-xlii)

If this was true in general of human history, it was true in particular of the history of language: an account of the history of human speech is above all an account of its nature, and vice versa, the nature of language can be understood by reconstructing not its more or less documented stages, but by an a priori reasoning, on 'how it must have happened', where 'must' is to be interpreted in terms of an objective rather than subjective epistemic modality, since the facts described arise out of considerations based on the general principles of communication, which give the term 'conjectural' objective validity. To a considerable extent, this explains the recurrent concern of 18th century writers on language, both in France and in Britain as well as in Germany (we remember Herder's prize-winning essay for the Berlin Academy in 1771) with the question of origins. It was a subject that loomed as large in most 18th century accounts of language as it is conspicuous by its absence in practically all contemporary writing on the subject. I am not sure that I would go all the way with Aarsleff's interpretation of the origins question, when he affirms that what these authors were interested in was a model, rather than a historical state of things

the philosophical question of the origin of language first formulated by Condillac sought to establish man's linguistic state of nature in order to gain insight into the nature of man … the search for origins concerned the present state of man, not the establishment of some 'historical' fact or 'explanation' of how things actually were at some point in the past.

(Aarsleff 1974: 107-8)

Blair of course cites Condillac among his sources, together other French authors like the Port-Royal grammarians, Du Marsais, Beauzée, Batteaux, de Brosses, Girard, Rousseau as well as English works like those of Adam Smith and Harris, and in a long note in Lecture 7 he discusses Monboddo's account of "some of the first articulate sounds" of certain primitive tongues, in which he accepts Monboddo's contention, in its turn based on a hypothesis enunciated by Smith and ultimately traceable to Condillac, that they

denoted a whole sentence rather than the name of a particular object; conveying some information, or expressing some desires or fears, suited to the circumstances in which that tribe was placed, or relating to the business they had most frequent occasion to carry on; as the lion is coming, the river is swelling & c.

(Blair I 1785: 176)

It is certainly true that much of the discussion of the origins of speech is conducted in philosophical terms. For Condillac, as for Rousseau and Monboddo, arises in response to human need, primitive men

n'ont pas dit, faisons une langue: ils ont senti besoin d'un mot, et ils ont prononcé le plus propre à représenter la chose qu'ils vouloient faire connaître

(Porset 1970: 162-63)

Beauzée too talks of sociabilité as the source of the universal phenomenon of human language, emphasizing that the elements that all human languages have in common are far more numerous and basic than the superficial elements of time, place and custom that determine the difference between individual tongues, an idea that we also find in other 18th century philosophers: Blair, for example, would have found it in the writings of the most prominent Scottish philosopher of his time, David Hume, and another Scot, Thomas Reid, distinguishes between 'natural' and 'artificial' signs (Reid 1764: 103), a distinction much insisted upon also by Monboddo when he talks of the 'language of nature' vs. the 'language of art': it is only the latter which has the full status of language, since the former, especially in Reid's formulation, is nothing but the direct expression of the passions not mediated by the double articulation characteristic of human speech.¹⁰

But let me return to my previous point: Aarsleff s 'metaphorical' reading of 18th century concerns with origins. Since the subject is not dealt with in detail by Blair, I will limit myself here to saying that the interest shown in Britain by such writers as Monboddo or in France in the numerous accounts of the customs and speech of primitive tribes (echoed, for example, in de Brosses) is surely proof that these 18th century scholars were concerned not merely with the general principles of human speech, which is undeniable, or with primitive languages as somehow representing the basic functions of language, which too I believe to be beyond doubt, but that they sought to provide a concrete and empirically verifiable account of what the speech of primitive man was actually like. I do not believe one necessarily excludes the other, though in the case of Blair the philosophical as opposed to the empirical interest appears to be predominant.

There are several aspects of the origin question that were widely debated and that Blair too is concerned with. I shall not deal with the vexed question of whether language was of human or divine origin (Blair is inclined to accept the latter view), since this is not my central concern here. Blair, like Rousseau, whose Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité parmi les hommes he quotes, is caught up in what we might roughly call the chicken or the egg dilemma, i.e. of whether we can conceive of a society prior to the 'invention' of language, or whether language is a condition necessary to the existence of society:

So that, either how Society could form itself, previously to Language, or how words could rise into a Language previously to Society formed, seem to be points attended with equal difficulty.

(Blair I 1785: 126)

Since there is no obvious answer to this question, Blair skates over the problem in order to consider just what this language must have been like. Like most of his contemporaries, he identifies the 'language of nature' with the grammatical category of interjections, which must therefore have been the first words, though the term 'word' may be inappropriate for such direct expressions of the passions. "Those exclamations, therefore," he affirms, "which by Grammarians are called Interjections, uttered in a strong and passionate manner, were beyond doubt, the elements of beginnings of Speech" (Blair I 1785: 128-29). Like de Brosses, Blair rejects a purely arbitrary origin for the first linguistic signs, for

To suppose words invented, without any ground or reason, is to suppose an effect without a cause. There must have always been some motive which led to the assignation of one name rather than another

(Blair I 1785: 128-29)

although he concedes in a different passage that sound symbolism can have affected only a very limited sphere of the vocabulary.¹¹

The problem is twofold: what words were first 'invented' and how did they develop in the course of human history to form the languages of the polite nations of Europe, which are now greatly refined and not only have words for all the objects of the world, but also a series of ornaments, a state of affairs which has been in existence "among many nations for some thousand years" (Blair I 1785: 124). In the second place he sought to ascertain how these words were arranged in structures to convey propositional, not merely atomistic meanings. It is to these two subjects that I now wish to turn my attention.

Early man had few words at his disposal, since his experience of the world was limited and he therefore had to help himself out by an abundant use of metaphor, since Blair, like practically all his contemporaries, holds that abstract terms all have their origin in concrete nouns denoting the objects of the world:

The names of sensible objects were, in all languages, the words most early introduced, and were by degrees, extended to those mental objects, of which men had more obscure conceptions, and to which they found it more difficult to assign a distinct name

(Blair I 1785: 353)

so that primitive speech was

strong and expressive … (and) could be no other than full of figures and metaphors, not correct indeed, but forcible and picturesque … Mankind never employed so many figures of speech, as when they had hardly any words for expressing their meaning

(Blair I 1785: 141)

That the men of letters of the Enlightenment were fascinated by 'primitive' (or what they believed to be primitive) poetry is a commonplace: as is well known, Blair was one of the chief defenders of the authenticity of Macpherson's Ossian, which he considered to be the perfect example of primitive, but powerful poetry. Like other writers on rhetoric, Blair is distinctly wary of the use of figures of speech, which must be strictly subordinate to the supreme requirement of clarity, or as the oft quoted Quintilian had put it, "nobis prima sit virtus perspicuitas" (Inst. Or. VIII, ii, 2).

Figurative language is associated with primitive societies, whereas "Language is become, in modern times, more correct indeed, and accurate, but however less striking and animated" (Blair I 1785: 157). Ours is, in other words, an age of reason and philosophy, not of poetry and oratory. I do not know if Matthew Arnold knew this passage of Blair's; it would certainly have been grist to his mill in his contention that the 18th century was essentially an age of prose.

The earliest vocal sounds were interjections, but the first real words were

substantive nouns, which are the foundation of all Grammar, and may be considered as the most antient part of Speech; For, assuredly, as soon as men got beyond simle interjections, or exclamations, of passions, and began to communicate themselves (sic), they would be under a necessity of assigning names to the objects they saw around them; which, in Grammatical Language is called the invention of substantive nouns.¹²

(Blair I 1785: 176)

The idea that the naming process is the basis of all language goes back at least as far as the mediaeval so-called 'modistae' school of grammarians, who insisted on the primacy of the 'modus entis' over the 'modus esse'. In English linguistic theory this is particularly evident in Wilkins's Essay, where everything, except the purely grammatical operators called 'particles', is reduced to the basic category of the noun. In Blair this must be seen in his almost Bloomfieldian account of the first linguistic utterances, which are treated in terms of stimulus and response¹³. However, unlike his 17th century predecessors, who in one way or another tend to subsume the verb in the naming process, for Blair

Verbs must have been coëval with men's first attempts towards the formation of Language

(Blair I 1785: 203)

and, following Smith's suggestion (Smith 1983: 215-16), as we have already had occasion to mention, he opines that impersonal verbs must have been the first to appear, so that the origin of speech must be seen not in the mere naming process, envisaged as a mythical savage pointing to a tree laden with apples and uttering the word 'apple', but in 'event verbs' in elementary one argument propositions like 'it is raining'.

Blair follows Harris's scheme of dividing lexical words into substantives and attributes, and he is of the opinion that since adjectives, the simplest form of attributes, are found in all languages, they must have been among the first words to be invented, whereas adverbs, which can generally be reduced to nouns plus prepositions

may be conceived as of less necessity, and of later introduction in the System of Speech, than any other classes of words

(Blair I 1785: 210)

In other words, for Blair, most ancient means most essential or necessary. The whole concept of the 'necessary' elements of a language is fully developed in Beauzée, who mentions "éléments necessaires" on the very title-page of his Grammar. Shortage of space does not permit me to go into Blair's many points of contact with this influential French work, published some 16 years prior to the Lectures. Necessary is seen in terms of basic, so we come back once again to the idea that, at least to some extent, and in the case of Blair rather more so than in an author like Monboddo, the origins question is intimately connected with what are seen to be the basic structures of language: richness of vocabulary, elegance, harmony, ornament are the additions of a politer age, which make language suitable for scientific and philosophical discourse, but do not constitute the essential categories that serve to convey meaning as invented by the first men. To what extent we are justified in equating these basic categories with our contemporary concept of deep structure is a question I would like to leave open for the time being, but à suspect it may well be possible to draw some sort of parallel between the two.

Finally, I would like to turn to the question of how words are arranged in sentences so as to convey propositional rather than purely lexical meaning. The problem of word order, i.e. the order of words considered to be most natural, was much debated during the 18th century. That word order constitutes one of the principal criteria of modern typological studies hardly needs emphasizing.¹⁴ The problem was seen in terms of rigid as opposed to (comparatively) free word order, with particular attention to the position of the subject. Girard, whose Les vrais principes is cited by Blair among his list of sources, had divided languages into 'analogous' and 'transpositive' types, roughly what later linguists called 'analytic' and 'synthetic' languages, and this division is followed, among others, by Beauzée in France and in Britain by the anonymous author of the article on 'Language' in the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1771). In both cases, analogous languages are said to respect the order of nature. Beauzée calls this the "analytical order" or "analytical succession of ideas", since according to him

La succession analytique des idées est le fondement unique & invariable des loix de la Syntaxe dans toutes les langues immaginables

(Beauzée 1947: 467-68)

and Du Marsais, another much quoted author in English treatments of the subject, in his article for the Encyclopaedie (Porset 1970: 232) is of much the same opinion. A full examination of word order as treated by 18th century grammarians and philosophers (but there is often little difference between the two) would be out of place here. I have referred to it since Blair approaches the question from a rather different point of view. Word order, like the question of word categories, is seen in terms of origins:

Let us go back … to the most early period of Language. Let us figure to ourselves a Savage, who beholds some object, such as fruit, which raises his desire, who requests another to give it to him … He would not express himself, according to an English order of construction, 'Give me fruit', 'Fructum da mihi': For this plain reason, that his attention was wholly directed towards fruit, the desired object

(Blair I 1785: 148-49)¹⁵

In other words, Blair is concerned with a psychological as opposed to a logical succession of ideas, an order which he calls "though not the most logical … the most natural order (Blair I 1785: 149), and in view of the importance focusing has acquired in recent linguistic theory, this dichotomy of natural (i.e. psychological) vs. logical order is of considerable interest. This question had been the cause of controversy between Beauzée and Batteaux, another French source quoted by Blair, and nearer home, Campbell in his highly influential The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), a work Blair greatly esteemed, had talked of a grammatical vs. a rhetorical order, ascribing universal status to the latter, but only local and particular validity to the former

I imagine that the only principle in which this subject can safely rest, as being founded in nature, is that whatever most strongly fixes the attention, or operates on the passion of the speaker, will first seek utterance by the speaker … In these transpositions, therefore, I maintain that the order will be found, on examination, to be more strictly natural than when the more general practice in the tongue is followed.

(Campbell 1850: 357-58)

Within the context of 18th century Enlightenment culture the question could not but be seen in terms of the superiority of the classical languages as compared with their modern successors, or vice versa. Unlike some of his contemporaries, who came down very decidedly on the side of the moderns¹⁶, Blair tries to reconcile the two positions in some way: Latin order is said to be "more animated", English "more clear and distinct", the Latin order reflecting the succession in which ideas rise in the speaker's mind, ours "the order in which the understanding directs those ideas to be exhibited (Blair I 1785: 153)¹⁷.

The above remarks by no means aim to give an exhaustive account of Blair's ideas on the nature, structure and development of language: there are a great many points, both in the chapters strictly concerned with language and in his treatment of the laws of rhetoric, that would repay much more detailed study, especially within the wider framework of the contribution of the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment to linguistic theory, than is possible in a short paper. In conclusion, I would not claim any great originality for Blair's ideas, but I do think that it was precisely because he was not original that he became so popular and that both as the first Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Letters and as the author of an internationally acclaimed text-book he deserves more than an honourable mention in the history of English Studies.

Notes

¹ Smith was appointed Professor of Logic and Rhetoric at Glasgow in 1751 and following year he succeeded Thomas Craigie as Professor of Moral Philosophy. The rhetoric lectures, as they have come down to us in the Glasgow University Library MS, go back to the session 1762-63, but according to Bryce (in Smith 1983: 9) he began lecturing on rhetoric as soon as he took up his appointment in Glasgow.

² Robert Watson was appointed to the Chair of Logic at St. Salvator's College, St. Andrews in 1756 and Principal of the same in 1778. There are five sets of student notes of his lectures on universal grammar delivered at St. Andrews preserved in the University Library dating from between 1758 and 1778. With the exception of MS PN 173, they are substantially identical and consist of an abstract of Books I and II of Harris's Hermes. Watson never published anything on the subject.

³ James Beattie was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic at Marischal College, Aberdeen in 1760. The following year he was elected member of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, of which George Campbell, Principal of Marischal College, was a founder member. Though Rule 17 of the statutes of the Society states that "all Grammatical Historical and Philological Discussion being conceived to be foreign to the Design of this Society", Campbell certainly read a number of papers on rhetoric to the Society. These papers were later transformed into The Philosophy of Rhetoric, and there are other contributions on such matters as the word order of the ancient compared with those of the modern languages (George Skene), the characteristics of a polished language (James Dunbar) or writing systems (Thomas Gordon). See Aberdeen University Library MS 539, reprinted in Humphries 1931. Beattie's The Theory of Language too is based on lectures delivered at Aberdeen. Copies of the Session Journals of Marischal College preserved in the Aberdeen University Library give a very clear idea of how his Rhetoric course was structured.

⁴ In 1748 at the suggestion of Lord Kames. At the time Smith was 25 years old. Cf. Bryce in Smith 1983: 8.

⁵ Smith's Considerations are mentioned among his sources in Lecture V, whereas in Lecture XVIII we read: "On this head … several ideas have been taken from a manuscript treatise on rhetoric, part of which was shewn to me many years ago, by the learned and ingenious Author, Dr. Adam Smith; and which, it is hoped, will be given by him to the Public" (Blair II 1785: 24).

⁶ Cf. Introduction to Smith 1983: 1.

⁷ For example there is a notebook (MS 3125) in the National Library of Scotland entitled 'Universal Grammar written by James Trail' which is very similar to the Watson notes in the St. Andrews University Library. James Trail was educated at Edinburgh, but the notes were apparently originally taken down by his brother David, who was a student at St. Andrews. It would therefore appear that Watson's Universal Grammar course, based on Harris, was also in use at Edinburgh. There are frequent echoes of Harris in Blair's treatment, for example his division of words into substantives and attributives in Lecture VIII or his definition of adjectives in the same Lecture.

⁸ 'Lectures on Composition by the Reverend Mr. Leechman'. The parts that have some linguistic interest are Lectures 11-18. Leechman (1706-1785) was appointed Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow in 1743 and Principal in 1761. He gave lectures on composition and the Evidences of Christianity in alternate years (Wodrow I 1779: 49).

⁹Lezioni di Retorica e Belle Lettere di Ugone Blair … Tradotte dall'Inglese e commentate da Francesco Soave C.R.S., Parma: dalla Real Tipografia MDCCCI-MDCCCII.

¹⁰ In case it may be thought that I am arbitrarily using contemporary concepts and terminology (e.g. double articolation) in referring to different ways of conceptualizing these matters, I would refer the reader to Monboddo's extended treatment of the enormous conceptual jump represented not only by the use of sounds to symbolize ideas, as compared with the direct expression of the passions which are said to their origin in animal cries, but by what he calls the matter of language, i.e. the sound system and the development of articulate, that is to say significant sounds, which in Monboddo's view provide the real dividing line between true language and the language of nature.

¹¹ "natural connexion (i.e. sound symbolism) can affect only a small part of the fabric of language; the connexion between words and ideas may, in general, be considered as arbitrary, and conventional, owing to the agreement of men among themselves" (Blair I 1785: 123). Even the most outstanding exponent of the view that there exists a natural correspondence between certain sounds and some of the basic human needs or sentiments like de Brosses (e.g. "Dans tous les siècles et dans toutes les contrées on emploie la lettre de lèvre ou à son default la lettre de dent, ou tous les deux ensemble, pour exprimer les premieres mots enfantins papa et maman" de Brosses 1798 I: 222) has to accept that conventional words are far more numerous than 'natural' words.

¹² Cf. Smith's much fuller account of the origin of common nouns: "Those objects only which were most familiar to them, (i.e. to the first men) and which they had most frequent occasion to mention, would have particular names assigned to them. The particular cave whose covering sheltered them from the weather, the particular tree whose fruit relieved their hunger, the particular fountain whose water allayed their thirst, would first be denominated by the words cave, tree, fountain … Afterwards when the more enlarged experience of these savages had led them to observe, and their necessary occasions obliged them to make mention of other caves, and other trees, and other fountains, they would naturally bestow, upon each of those new objects, the same name, by which they had been accustomed to express the similar objects they were first acquainted with. The new objects had none of them any name of its own, but each of them exactly resembled another object, which had such an appellation … And thus, those words, which were originally the proper names of individuals, would each of them insensibly become the common name of a multitude" (Smith 1983: 203-204).

¹³ Like Bloomfield in his account of Jack and Jill and the apple tree (Bloomfield 1935: 22), he talks of a savage who desires a fruit.

¹⁴ Among recent treatments, see for example the special issue on typology of Folia Linguistica, Plank 1986.

¹⁵ Condillac in the chapter entitled "Des Mots" discusses the question of 'natural' word order at some length: "l'ordre le plus naturel des idées vouloit qu'on mit le régime avant le verbe: on disoit, par example, fruit vouloir … les mots se construissoient dans la même ordre dans lequel ils se régissoient; unique moyen d'en faciliter l'intelligence. On disoit fruit vouloir Pierre pour Pierre veut du fruit; & la premiere construction n'étoit pas moins naturelle que l'autre l'est actuellement" (Condillac 1792: 263-64). The example, it will be noted, is almost identical to Blair's, but Condillac's reason for preferring OV order is grammatical-conceptual, whereas Blair's is psychological.

¹⁶ For example Beauzée and even more strongly the anonymous author of the above-mentioned article on "Language" in the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

¹⁷ Cf. "Le français suit l'ordre de l'intelligence, mais le latin suit l'ordre du sentiment et des mouvements du coeur" (de Brosses I 1798: 71). Beauzée dedicates a great deal of space to refuting Batteaux's thesis that languages like Latin represent the order in which ideas arise in the mind, since his interest is not so much in the input as in the output of language. As to ornament or elegance "l'ordre analytique peut donc être contraire àl'éloquence sans être contraire à la nature du Langage, pour lequel l'éloquence n'est qu'un accessoire artificiel" (Beauzée II 1974: 530).

References

Aarsleff, H. 1974. 'The Tradition of Condillac. The Problem of the Origin of Language in the Eighteenth Century and the Debate in the Berlin Academy before Herder'. In D. Hymes, ed. Studies in the History of Linguistics, 93-156. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Batteaux, Charles. 1764 (1746). Traité de la Construction Oratoire. Vol. 5 of Principes de la Litterature. Nouvelle Edition. Paris: Desaint & Saillant.

Beattie, James. 1788. The Theory of Language. London: A. Strahan. Microfiche reproduction in English Linguistics 1500-1800. Menston: Scolar Press, 1968.

Beauzée, Nicolas. 1974 (1767). Grammaire générale ou exposition raisonnée des éléments nécessaires du langage. Nouvelle impression en facsimile de l'édition du 1767 avec une introduction par Barrie E. Bartlett. 2 vols. Stuttgart-Bad Caunstatt: Fromman.

Blair, Hugh. 1777. Heads of the Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh: W. Creech.

——. 1785 (1783). Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. 3 vols. Second edition corrected. London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell; Edinburgh: W. Creech.

Bloomfield, L. 1935 (1933). Language. Revised British edition. London: Allen & Unwin.

de Brosses, Charles. 1798 (1765). Traité de la formation méchanique des langues. Paris: chez Terrelonge.

Burnett, James (Lord Monboddo). 1773-1792. On the Origin and Progress of Language. 6 vols. Edinburgh: Kincaid & Creech; London: T. Cadell. Microfiche reproduction in English Linguistics 1500-1800. Menston: Scolar Press, 1968.

——. 1779-1799. Antient Metaphysics. 6 vols. Edinburgh: J. Balfour; London: T. Cadell. Both works were published anonymously.

Campbell, George. 1850 (1776). The Philosophy of Rhetoric. London: W. Tegg.

Condillac, Etienne Bonnot de. 1792 (1746). Essai sur l'origine des connoissances humaines. Troisième Edition revue & augmentée. Paris: chez le Libraires Associés.

——. 1775. Cours d'étude pour l'instruction du Prince de Parme. In Porset 1970: 149-211.

Du Marsais, César Chesneau. In porset 1970: 210-301.

Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1771. "by a Society of Gentlemen in Scotland". 3 vols. Edinburgh: Bell & Macfarquhar.

Frank, T. 1979. Segno e significato. La lingua filosofica di John Wilkins. Napoli: Guida.

Girard, Gabriel. 1747. Les vrais principes de la langue françoise. 2 vols. Paris: Le Breton.

Harris, James. 1751. Hermes; or a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Language and Universal Grammar. London: H. Woodfall. Microfiche reproduction in English Linguistics 1500-1800. Menston: Scolar Press, 1968.

Herder, Johann Gottfried. 1772. Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache. English translation by A. Gode, Essay on the Origin of Language. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986.

Humphries, W.R. 1931. 'The First Aberdeen Philosophical Society'. Transactions of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, 5.203-38.

Lancelot, Claude and Antoine Arnauld. 1660. Grammaire Générale et Raisonnée. Paris: Presse Le Petit. Repr. Menston: Scolar Press, 1968.

Leechman, William. 1779. Sermons. London: A. Strahan & T. Cadell; Edinburgh: E. Balfour & W. Creech.

——. c. 1770. Glasgow University Library MS Gen 51. The last six leaves of this contain an abstract of Harris's Hermes.

——. 1770 (but delivered 1754-55). 'Lectures on Composition'. Edinburgh University Library MS Dc.7.86. Student notes.

Plank, F. (ed.) 1986. Folia Linguistica. Special Issue. 20/1-2.

——. 'The Smith-Schlegel Connection in Linguistic typology: forgotten fact or fiction?'. To appear in Zeitschrift für Fonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung.

Porset, 1970. Varia Linguistica. Bordeaux: Ducros.

Quintilian (M. Fabius Quintilianus). Istituto Oratoria, ed. H.E. Butler. London: Heinemann, 1921.

Reid, Thomas. 1764. An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. London: A. Millar; Edinburgh: Kincaid & Bell.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1755. Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes. English transaltion by M. Cranston, A Discourse on Inequality. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. 1984.

Smith, Adam. 1983. (1762-63?). Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, ed. J. Bryce. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

——. 1761. Considerations Concerning the First Formation and the Different Genius of Original and Compounded Languages in Smith 1983.

Soublin, F. 1976. 'Rationalisme et grammaire chez Dumarsais' in H. Parret ed. History of Linguistic Thought and Contemporary Linguistics, 383-409. Berlin-New York: de Gruyter.

Stewart, Dugald. 1795. An Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith LL.D., published as an introduction to Smith's Essays on Philosophical Subjects. London: T. Cadell Jun. & W. Davies; Edinburgh: W. Creech.

Watson, Robert. Student notes on Watson's lectures on universal grammar delivered at St. Andrews University and preserved in the St. Andrews University Library:

1. MS PN 173 (1762).

2. MS 36978 (1776).

3. MS BC 6 Wl (1776).

4. MS BC W2 (1778).

5. MS PN 173 (1758) contains an earlier version.

Wilkins, John. 1668. An Essay towards a Real Character and Philosophical Language. London: Gellibrand. Microfiche reproduction in English Linguistics 1500-1800. Menston: Scolar Press, 1968.

Wodrow, James. 1779. Life of William Leechman in Leechman 1779 I: 1-102.