⩩ 43
It is not only that by turning to a word in its own right you see its shape and can break it down, if it is made up of other words, but that you hear its sound, which has echoes and rhymes. Every word has related forms which anticipatingly vibrate when it is used. In the traditional image, these related forms spring from the same root.
I mean, for example, retire and retirement, or propose, proposal, and proposition, or teach, teacher and teaching. There are different forms of many word, and those different forms come into play when they are used. They hover just off-stage, just below the surface of consciousness.
A good deal of our movement between ideas, our inferences and deductions, depend on our perceiving this kind of grammatical connection, and we are able to move more widely and freely to the extent that we traverse these chutes and ladders. We know that, because blood is the outcome of bleeding, if there is no blood, then there is no bleeding, and if there is bleeding, then there must be blood. This kind of inference is routine, and yet it is deserving of our close attention.
One grammatical chute of special importance is the relationship between the verb and its internal noun. When I “smell the bread,” the bread is outside the activity, but when we “bleed blood,” blood is in the verb. With internal nouns like these, the noun is in the verb from the beginning. It is implicit in the concept of the activity. Bleeding logically implies blood. The noun is just the activity of the verb completed.
Another example: sing, sang, sung, song. Where there is singing, there is song, and visa-versa. The underlying grammar allows us to make inferences in either direction.
We sit, sat, in a seat. I love getting my hands on matches like these, and not only verbs and nouns. Here, there, where. I am a full-on enthusiast for this sort of thing, though I have no special training in it. In fact, that’s part of what I love about it. No special training is required. Any speaker, any child can do it. All it takes is a feel for joints and an ear for rhyme. The sound of a word becomes a clue to its broader meaning.
But is this a curiosity, or profound? I believe it’s profound. Allow me to arrange in order differing grades, a ladder of profundity. On the first step we find some-one and none-the-less, which show most clearly how an originally literal compound description codifies into a uniform fossil. On this level we might also find to-day and to-morrow. In our time these forms tantalize us. While it is hard for us to grasp what these prepositions originally meant, the fact of an evolution is clear.
On the next step, we might find a word like kind-ness. What is kindness? What is it to be kind or to treat someone with kindness? Isn’t the mere recognition of kind, a moment’s pause on the root of this compound, enough to save this word from the pit of cliche and meaninglessness? The suggestiveness of one treating another as of a kind with you. The wonder in this moment of reflection is essential. And is in breaking the word down and rebuilding it, we follow the footsteps of its creation.
Next is shepherd, descendant of sheep-herder. It is remarkable to me how many years I didn’t make the connection, despite the fact that they are nearly identical. The original surface is pretty plainly showing, with the exception of a little smudging, a sound change. Nonetheless, it is a surprise when its original form shines through to you. In the same area we have gift, in its tie to give, as in a thing given. The insight is profound, because it provides a standard to judge by whether something is or is not a gift: it lends the word deeper meaning.
Next we find things like holiday, from holy-day, and happiness, in its connection to happen, happening, happenstance and that family. Who can say what we are to make of this connection? And yet it is obviously rich. On the same plane, in analogy to stealth and steal, we find, with heal, not only health, but whole and holy too. Then we find wealth with weal, in the sense of well-health. This invites us to create a new reflective standard for measuring wealth, instead of mechanically adopting the conventional one. It opens the door to a renewed conception of wealth.
You are reading Footnotes, by Garrett Allen, a series of philosophical-ish short essays. You just read ⩩ 43, the fourth installment in a chapter on language.