ROOTS OF LANGUAGE, 285 



origin. In the present connection, however, it is of interest 

 to notice how this authority deals with such cases. He 

 says : — " Not one of them is of any importance in helpinc^ us 

 to account for real words in Sanskrit. Most of them have 

 had no offspring at all, others have had a few descendants, 

 mostly sterile. Their history shows clearly how far the 

 influence of onomatopoeia may go, and if once we know 

 its legitimate sphere, we shall be less likely to wish to extend 

 it beyond its proper limits." * 



Now, under our present point of view we can see a very 

 good reason why this element of sterility should have 

 attached to these roots of Sanskrit whose onomatopoetic 

 origin still admits of being clearly traced : it is just because 

 they failed to be extended that their imitative source 

 continues to be apparent.f But suppose, for the sake of 

 illustration, that any one of them had been extended, and 

 what would have happened t If ma, to bleat, had been 

 metaphorically applied to the crying of a child, and had 

 then become more and more habitually used in this new 

 signification, while the original meaning became more and 

 more obsolete, it might have taken the place of any such root 

 as bhi, to fear; ish, to love, &c. ; and in all the progeny of 

 words which in this its conventional use it might subse- 

 quently have generated, no trace of imitative origin could 

 now have been met with — any more than such an origin can 

 be detected in the sound "quack," as used by the above- 

 mentioned child to designate a shilling. 



Several other considerations to the same general effect 

 might be adduced. But, to mention only some of the 

 more important, Steinthal points out that imitative utter- 



• Science of Thought^ pp. 317, 318. 



t Or, as Heyse puts it, many onomatopoeias are not "old fruitful roots of 

 language, but modern inventions which remain isolated in language, and are 

 incapal:)le of originating any families of words, because their meaning is too 

 limited and special to admit of a manifo' ^ application " (System, s. 92, quoted by 

 Farrar, Chapters on Language, p. 152, who also shows that words of onomatopoetic 

 origin are not invaria' " sterile. When such origin is not so remote as to have 

 become wholly obscured by a widely connotative extension, it does remain 

 possible to trace its progeny through areas of smaller extension). 



