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INTRODUCTION    TO  THE   SCIENCE 
OF    LANGUAGE. 


INTRODUCTION    TO    THE 


SCIENCE    OF  LANGUAGE. 


BY 


A.    H.    SAYCE, 


•  EI'lTY    PROFKSSOK    OK    COM  I'AKATIVK    I'HIl.OLOGT    IN    THE    UNIVERSITY    OF    OXFOKD. 


IN   TWO   VOLUMES. 


VOL.    II. 


LONDON : 

C.  KEGAN    PAUL   &   CO.,  i,  PATERNOSTER  SQUARE. 

1880. 


"  Ille  demum  foret  nobilissima  grammaticae  species,  si  quis  in 
linguis  tarn  eruditis  qu?im  vulgaribus  eximie  doctus,  de  variis  lin- 
guarum  proprietatibus  tractaret ;  in  quibus  quasque  excellat.  in  qui- 
bus  deficiat  ostendens." — BACON  ("  De  Aug.  Scient./'  vi.  i). 


The  rights  of  translation  and  of  reproduction  are  reserved. 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS. 

VOL.   II. 


PAGE 


Chapter  VI.     Roots i 

Genealogical  Classification  of  Languages  (with 

list  of  grammatical  authorities)       .        .        .31 
„      VII.     The   Inflectional   Families  of  Speech  (Aryan, 
Semitic,    Old    Egyptian,    Sub-Semitic    and 
Ethiopian,  Hottentot,  Alarodian)   ...      65 
„     VIII.     The  Agglutinative,  Incorporating,  Polysynthetic, 

and  Isolating  Languages        .         .        .        .188 
„        IX.     Comparative   Mythology  and   the   Science   of 

Religion 230 

„          X.     The  Origin  of  Language,  and  the  relation  of  the 
Science  )|of  Language  to  Ethnology,  Logic, 

and  Education 300 

Selected  List  of  Works  for  the  Student 354 

Index 365 


CHAPTER  VI. 

ROOTS. 

"  Innumene  linguae  dissimillimas  inter  se,  ita  ut  nullis  machinis 
ad  communem  originem  retrahi  possunt." — F.  SCHLEGEL. 

"  Die  Etymologic  hat  den  vollen  Reiz  aller  der  Wissenschaften, 
welche  sich  mit  den  Anfangen  und  dem  Werden  grosser  Erzeug- 
nisse  der  Natur  oder  des  Geistes  beschaftigen." — G.  CURTIUS. 

IN  the  Welsh  book  of  Taliessin,  a  manuscript  of  the 
fourteenth  century,  the  bard  declares  that  "there  are 
seven  score  Ogyrven  in  song,"1  and  Prof.  Rhys  points 
out 2  that  these  are  the  same  as  the  "  seven  score  and 
seven  Ogyrven,"  or  roots,  which,  according  to  another 
Welsh  writer,  who  lived  a  century  or  two  later,  "are  no 
other  than  the  symbols  of  the  seven  score  and  seven 
parent-words,  whence  every  other  word."  But  the  doc- 
trine that  all  our  words  are  descended  from  a  limited 
number  of  primaeval  germs  or  roots  is  far  older  than  the 
Welsh  bards.  More  than  two  thousand  years  ago  the 
grammarians  of  India  had  discovered  that  the  manifold  v 
words  of  their  language  could  all  be  traced  back  to 
certain  common  phonetic  forms  which  they  termed  "  ele- 
ments." Already  the  Prati'sakhya  of  Katyayana  speaks 
of  the  verb  "  by  which  we  mark  being  "  as  a  dhdtu  or 

1  Skene  :  "  The  Four  Ancient  Books  of  Wales"  (1868),  i.  p.  527, 
ii.  p.  132. 

2  "  Lectures  on  Welsh  Philology"  (1877),  p.  320. 

II.  B 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

root,  and  before  the  Nirukta  of  Yaska  was  composed,  a 
fierce  controversy  had  begun  as  to  whether  these  roots 
were  all  necessarily  verbs.  Yaska  sums  up  the  contro- 
versy, and  after  stating  fairly  the  arguments  on  both 
sides,  decides  in  favour  of  the  Nairuktas  or  "etymolo- 
gists," the  followers  of  the  philosopher  'Saka/ayana,  who 
held  that  every  noun  was  derived  from  a  verb.  Vain 
were  the  pleadings  of  Gargya  and  the  Vaiyakara^as  or 
"  analyzers  "  on  the  other  side.  They  urged  that  if  all 
nouns  came  from  verbs,  a  knowledge  of  the  verb  would 
of  itself  make  the  noun  intelligible,  that  whoever  per- 
formed the  same  action  would  be  called  by  the  same 
name  (all  flying  things,  for  instance,  being  called  feathers, 
from  flat,  "to  fly"),  and  that  everything  would  receive  as 
many  names  as  there  are  qualities  belonging  to  it,  while 
the  derivations  proposed  for  many  words  were  forced  and 
unnatural,  and  as  things  come  before  being  per  se,  that 
which  comes  first  could  not  be  named  from  that  which 
comes  afterwards.  But  the  Nairuktas  had  their  answers 
ready.  All  words,  they  said,  really  were  significant  and 
intelligible,  while  custom  rules  that  agents  and  objects 
should  get  their  names  from  some  single  action  or 
quality,  the  "soldier"  from  the  pay  he  receives,  the 
"stable"  from  its  standing  up.  If  an  etymology  were 
forced,  so  much  the  worse  for  the  etymologist,  not  for  the 
method  he  pursued  ;  and  as  for  the  last  objection,  no  one 
can  deny  that  some  words  are  derived  from  qualities, 
even  though  qualities  may  be  later  than  the  subjects  to 
which  they  belong.1 

1  Max  Miiller  :  "  History  of  Ancient  Sanskrit  Literature,"  2nd 
edition  (1860),  pp.  164-68. 


ROOTS.  3 

The  question  over  which  the  Hindu  grammarians 
contended  has  been  revived  in  our  own  day.  Compara- 
tive philology  was  the  result  of  the  study  of  Sanskrit, 
and  the  Sanskrit  vocabulary  had  been  ranged  under  a 
certain  number  of  verbal  roots.  Both  the  term  and  the 
conception,  indeed,  had  already  been  made  familiar  to 
the  scholars  of  the  West  by  their  Arab  and  Hebrew 
teachers,  the  only  difference  between  the  Sanskrit  and 
the  Semitic  root  being  that  the  one  was  a  monosyllable, 
the  other  a  triliteral.  European  philology  began  to  re- 
cognize at  last  that  words  have  a  history ;  that  we  cannot 
compare  Latin  and  Greek  and  English  words  together 
before  we  have  discovered  their  oldest  forms,  and  that 
the  common  phonetic  type  under  which  a  cognate  group 
of  words  is  classed  must  be  no  mere  arbitrary  invention 
of  the  lexicographer,  but  be  based  on  reality  and  fact 
Roots  are  the  barrier  that  divides  language  from  the 
inarticulate  cries  of  the  brute  beast ;  they  are  the  last 
result  of  linguistic  analysis,  the  elements  out  of  which  the 
material  of  speech  is  formed,  like  the  elementary  sub- 
stances of  the  chemist.  But  we  must  be  careful  not  to 
fall  into  the  mistake  of  the  Indian  grammarians  and 
their  modern  followers,  and  confound  these  roots  with 
verbs  or  any  other  of  the  constituents  of  living  speech. 
The  roots  of  language  are  like  the  roots  of  the  tree  with 
its  stem  and  branches  ;  the  one  implies  the  other,  but  all 
alike  spring  from  the  seed,  which  in  language  is  the 
undeveloped  sentence  of  primitive  man,  the  aboriginal 
monad  of  speech.  Roots,  as  Professor  Max  Miiller  has 
fitly  called  them,  are  phonetic  types,  the  moulds  into 
which  we  pour  a  group  of  words  allied  in  sound  and 


4  THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

meaning.  Thus  in  the  Semitic  tongues,  a  root  is  the 
union  of  three  consonants,  out  of  which  numberless  words 
are  created  by  the  help  of  varying  vowels  and  suffixes. 
Kdtal,  for  instance,  is  " he  killed,"  kotel,  "killing,"  Ktol, 
"  to  kill"  and  "kill,"  kdtul,  "killed,"  katl,  kitl  or  kutl,  "a 
killing,"  where  the  difference  of  signification  is  marked 
by  a  difference  of  vowel ;  and  the  whole  series  of  co- 
existing forms  presupposes  a  triliteral  root  or  phonetic 
type  k-t-l,  to  which  was  attached  the  general  sense  of 
"killing."  Such  a  root  could  not,  of  course,  have  found 
any  actual  expression  in  speech  ;  it  was  an  unexpressed, 
unconsciously-felt  type  which  floated  before  the  mind  of 
the  speaker  and  determined  him  in  the  choice  of  the 
words  he  formed.  When  Van  Helmont  invented  the 
word  gas,  he  did  but  embody  in  a  new  shape  the  root 
which  we  have  in  our  ghost  and  yeast.  The  primordial 
types  which  presented  themselves  almost  unconsciously 
before  the  framers  of  language,  which  lay  implicit  in  the 
words  they  created,  must  be  discovered  and  made  ex- 
plicit by  the  comparative  philologist.  Just  as  the  phono- 
logist  breaks  up  words  into  their  component  sounds,  so 
must  the  philologist  break  up  the  groups  of  allied  words 
into  their  roots,  for  roots  are  to  groups  of  words  what 
the  letters  and  syllables  are  to  each  word  by  itself. 

The  influence  of  the  Hindu  tradition  has  introduced 
into  European  philology  expressions  like  "  a  language  of 
roots,"  "  the  root-period  of  language,"  and  the  like,  and 
has  made  some  writers  even  speak  as  though  our  remote 
ancestors  conversed  together  in  monosyllables  which  had 
such  general  and  vague  meanings  as  "shining,"  "going," 
or  "  seeing."  Prof.  Whitney,  the  leading  representative 


ROOTS.  5 

of  the  "common-sense"  school  of  philology,  has  not 
shrunk  from  stating  clearly  and  distinctly  the  logical 
consequences  of  such  language.  He  tells  us  that  "Indo- 
European  language,  with  all  its  fulness  and  inflective 
suppleness,  is  descended  from  an  original  monosyllabic 
tongue ;  our  ancestors  talked  with  one  another  in  single 
syllables,  indicative  of  the  ideas  of  prime  importance,  but 
wanting  all  designation  of  their  relations."1  Such  a 
language,  however,  is  a  sheer  impossibility — even  for  a 
body  of  philosophers  or  comparative  philologists,  and  it 
is  contradicted  by  all  that  we  know  of  savage  and  bar- 
barous dialects.  In  these,  while  the  individual  objects  of 
sense  have  a  superabundance  of  names,  general  terms 
are  correspondingly  rare.  The  Mohicans  have  words 
for  cutting  various  objects,  but  none  to  convey  cutting 
simply  ;  and  the  Society  Islanders  can  talk  of  a  dog's 
tail,  a  sheep's  tail,  or  a  man's  tail,  but  not  of  tail  itself. 
"  The  dialect  of  the  Zulus  is  rich  in  nouns  denoting  dif- 
ferent objects  of  the  same  genus,  according  to  some 
variety  of  colour,  redundancy,  or  deficiency  of  members, 
or  some  other  peculiarity,"  such  as  "red  cow,"  "white 
cow,"  "  brown  cow ; " 2  and  the  Sechuana  has  no  less 
than  ten  words  to  denote  horned  cattle.3  The  Cheroki 
possesses  thirteen  different  verbs  to  denote  particular 
kinds  of  washing,  but  none  to  denote  "washing"  itself;4 
and,  according  to  Milligan,5  the  aborigines  of  Tasmania 

1  "  Language  and  the  Study  of  Language,"  p.  256. 

"  "Journal  of  the  American  Oriental  Society,"  i.  No.  4,  p.  402. 

3  Casalis  :  "  Grammar,"  p.  7. 

4  Pickering  :  "  Indian  Languages,"  p.  26. 

5  "  Vocabulary  of  the  Dialects  of  some  of  the  Aboriginal  Tribes 
of  Tasmania,"  p.  34. 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


had  "  no  words  representing  abstract  ideas  ;  for  each 
variety  of  gum-tree  and  wattle-tree,  &c.  &c.,  they  had 
a  name,  but  they  had  no  equivalent  for  the  expression 
'a  tree;'  neither  could  they  express  abstract  qualities, 
such  as  hard,  soft,  warm,  cold,  long,  short,  round."  The 
lower  races  of  men  have  excellent  memories,  but  very 
poor  reasoning  powers  ;  and  the  European  child  who 
acquires  a  vocabulary  of  three  or  four  hundred  words  in 
a  single  year,  but  attaches  all  its  words  to  individual 
objects  of  sense,  reflects  their  condition  very  exactly.  We 
may  be  sure  that  it  was  not  "the  ideas  of  prime  impor- 
tance" which  primitive  man  struggled  to  represent,  but 
those  individual  objects  of  which  his  senses  were  cogni- 
zant. As  M.  Breal  observes,1  "  It  is  not  probable  that 
in  the  ante-grammatical  period  there  were  as  yet  no 
words  to  denote  the  sun,  the  thunder,  or  the  flame.  But 
the  day  when  these  words  came  into  contact  with  pro- 
nominal elements,  and  so  became  verbs,  their  sense  also 
became  more  fluid,  and  they  dissolved  into  roots  which 
signified  shining,  thundering^  or  burning.  We  can  under- 
stand how*  the  old  words  which  designated  the  (indi- 
vidual) objects,  afterwards  disappeared  to  make  room 
for  words  derived  by  the  help  of  suffixes  from  these 
newly-created  roots.  We  can  better  understand,  too, 
the  existence  of  numerous  synonyms  which  signify 
going,  shining,  resounding ;  they  are  the  abstracts  or 
abstracta  of  former  appellatives.  The  idea  of  shining, 
for  instance,  could  be  taken  from  the  fire  as  well  as  from 
the  sun,  and  so  a  considerable  number  of  roots,  from 

1  See  his  excellent  article  :  "  La  Langue  indo-europe'enne,"  in  the 
"Journal  des  Savants,"  Oct.  1876  (p.  17). 


ROOTS.  7 

very  different  starting-points,  have  come  to  be  united  in 
a  common  term."  An  elementary  work  on  French  etymo- 
logy groups  words  like  rouler,  roulement,  roulage,  roulier, 
rouleau,  roulette,  roulis,  round  a  root,  roul,  with  the  general 
sense  of  "  circular  movement ; "  yet  in  this  case  we  know 
that  this  imaginary  root  roul  is  nothing  else  than  the 
Latin  substantive  rotula.  The  error  of  the  Sanskritists 
is  really  the  same,  though  the  loss  of  the  parent-language 
prevents  us  from  checking  it  with  the  same  ease  as  when 
we  are  dealing  with  French.  "  Father  "  and  "  mother  " 
must  have  had  names  in  Aryan  speech  long  before  the 
suffix  tar  was  attached  to  what  we  call  the  "  roots  "  pa 
and  ma,  and  Buschmann  has  shown  that  throughout 
the  world  these  names  are  almost  universally  pa  or 
ta  and  ma.  Words  like  our  door,  the  Latin  fores,  the 
Greek  S^«,  the  Sanskrit  dwaram  (dur),  cannot  be  traced 
to  any  root ;  that  is  to  say,  a  group  of  cognate  words  has 
either  never  existed,  or  else  been  so  utterly  forgotten  and 
lost,  that  we  can  no  longer  tell  what  common  type  they 
may  have  represented.  "A  word  like  [the  French]  car!' 
remarks  M.  Van  Eys,1  "  could  pass  for  a  root  if  we  did 
not  know  its  derivation." 

Roots,  then,  are  the  phonetic  and  significant  types  dis- 
covered by  the  analysis  of  the  comparative  philologist  as 
common  to  a  group  of  allied  words.  They  form,  as  it 
were,  the  ultimate  elements  of  a  language,  the  earliest 
starting-point  to  which  we  can  reach,  the  reflections  of 
the  manifold  languages  framed  by  the  childhood  of  our 
race.  Each  family  of  languages  has  its  own  stock  of 
roots,  and  these  roots  are  the  best  representatives 
1  "  Dictionnaire  basque-francais  "  (1873),  p.  v. 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


we  can  obtain  of  the  vocabulary  of  primitive  man. 
Like  grammar  and  structure,  roots,  too,  embody  the 
linguistic  instinct  and  tendency  of  a  race  ;  they  are 
the  mirror  whereon  we  can  still  trace  the  dim  out- 
lines of  the  thought  and  mental  point  of  view  which 
has  shaped  each  particular  family  of  tongues.  What 
the  language  is,  that  also  are  its  roots ;  the  roots  of 
Chinese  or  Polynesian  are  as  distinctively  and  charac- 
teristically Chinese  or  Polynesian  as  the  roots  of  Aryan 
are  Aryan.  We  have  to  extract  them  from  the  existing 
records  of  speech,  and  like  the  individual  sounds  of  which 
words  are  composed,  the  character  they  assume  will  be 
that  of  the  particular  speech  itself.  "  Unpronounced," 
says  Prof.  Pott,1  "  they  fluttered  before  the  soul  like  small 
images,  continually  clothed  in  the  mouth,  now  with  this, 
now  with  that,  form,  and  surrendered  to  the  air  to  be 
drafted  off  in  hundredfold  cases  and  combinations." 
They  are,  in  fact,  the  product  of  the  unconscious  working 
of  analogy,  that  potent  instrument  in  the  creation  of  lan- 
guage. The  name  given  to  an  individual  object  becomes 
a  type  and  centre  of  the  ideas  that  cluster  about  it ;  sense 
and  sound  are  mingled  together  in  indissoluble  union, 
and  the  instinct  of  speech  transforms  the  combination 
into  a  root.  Upon  this  root,  or  rather  upon  the  analogy 
of  the  name  that  is  the  true  source  of  the  root,  is  built  a 
new  superstructure  of  words  by  the  help  of  suffixes  and 
other  derivative  elements.  But  the  root  and  all  the 
family  of  words  that  belong  to  it  must  remain  the 
shadow  and  reflection  of  the  original  word  from  which 
it  arose,  and  consequently  display  all  the  characteristics 
1  As  quoted  by  Professor  Max  Miiller,  "  Lectures,"  ii.  p.  85. 


ROOTS.  9 

of  the  words  itself,  and  the  language  of  which  it  forms 
part. 

Hence  it  is  that  the  roots  of  a  family  of  languages 
have  the  characteristics  of  the  languages  to  which  they 
belong.  Thus  the  roots  of  a  Semitic  tongue  are  triliteral, 
consisting,  that  is  to  say,  of  three  consonants,  while  the 
roots  of  the  Finno-Ugrian  dialects  exhibit  the  same  vowel- 
harmony  as  the  developed  dialects  themselves.1  Hence, 
too,  it  is  that  the  roots  given  by  lexicographers  merely  re- 
present the  oldest  forms  of  words  of  which  we  know,  and 
do  not  exclude  the  possibility  that  these  words  are  really 
compounds,  or  that  phonetic  decay  has  acted  upon  them  in 
some  other  way  long  before  the  earliest  period  to  which 
our  analysis  can  reach  back.  In  certain  cases,  indeed, 
we  have  good  proof  that  such  a  possibility  has  been  an 
actual  fact.  Thus  the  Arabic  root  'dm,  "to  be  orphaned," 
is  a  decayed  form  of  an  older  'dlam?  and  such  co-existent 
Aryan  roots  as  vridh  and  ridh,  both  signifying  "growing," 
imply  the  loss  of  an  initial  letter,  while  it  is  only  within 
the  last  few  years  that  the  labours  of  Dr.  Edkins  and 
M.  de  -Rosny  have  given  us  any  idea  of  the  roots  of  Old 
Chinese.  By  the  help  of  the  old  rhymes,  of  a  comparison 
of  the  living  dialects  and  of  other  similar  sources  of 
aid,  Dr.  Edkins  has  restored  the  pronunciation  of  Man- 
darin Chinese  such  as  it  was  2,000  or  even  4,000  years 
ago.3  Thus 72,  "one,"  was  once  tit;  ta,  "great,"  was  dap; 

1  Donner  in  the  "  Z.  d.  D.  M.  G.,"  xxvii.  4  (1873). 

2  Ewald:  "  Ausfuhrliches  Lehrbuch  der  Hebraischen  Sprache" 
(8th  edition),  p.  ix. 

3  See  his  "  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  the  Chinese  Characters" 
(1876). 


10 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE, 


ye,  "  to  throw,"  was  tik.  There  are  words  in  which  we 
can  trace  a  continuous  process  of  change  and  phonetic 
decay,  tsie,  "a,  joint,"  for  instance,  being  tsit  in  the 
classical  poetry,  and  since  in  Chinese  k  changes  to  ty  and 
not  contrariwise,  while  there  is  evidence  that  the  word 
once  ended  in  a  guttural,  we  are  carried  back  to  a 
period  earlier  than  noo  B.C.  for  the  time  when  tsit  was 
still  tsik.  But  even  tsik  is  not  the  oldest  form  to  which 
we  can  trace  it  back.  Tsik  is  developed  out  of  tik,  and 
to  tikj  therefore,  we  must  look  for  a  representation  of 
the  root  to  which  it  and  other  allied  words  have  to  be 
referred. 

Wherever  ancient  monuments,  or  a  sufficient  number 
of  kindred  dialects  are  wanting,  the  roots  we  assign  to 
a  set  of  languages  will  represent  only  their  latest  stage. 
The  further  we  can  get  back  by  the  help  of  history  and 
comparison,  the  older  the  forms  of  the  words  we  com- 
pare, the  better  will  be  the  chance  we  have  that  our 
roots  will  reflect  an  epoch  of  speech,  not  so  very  far 
removed,  perhaps,  from  its  first  commencement.  The 
so-called  "  root-period  "  of  the  primitive  Aryan,  really 
means  the  analysis  of  the  most  ancient  Aryan  vocabulary, 
which  a  comparison  of  the  later  dialects  enables  us  to 
make.  Behind  that  "  root-period  "  lay  another,  of  which 
obscure  glimpses  are  given  us  by  the  roots  we  can  still 
further  decompose.  A  series  of  words,  for  instance,  like 
the  Greek  ucrpivy,  and  the  Sanskrit  yudkmas,  presuppose 
a  root  yudh(ci),  but  when  we  remember  other  sets  of 
words  presupposing  the  roots  yu  ("joining  together") 
and  dlia  ("placing"),  we  are  carried  back  to  a  time  when 
the  word  signifying  "  battle,"  which  embodied,  as  it  were, 


ROOTS.  ii 

the   root  yndh,  was    itself  a   newly-formed    compound 
meaning  "conflict." 

The  existence  of  such  a  primary  "  root-period  "  is  also 
made  clear  to  us  in  another  way.  M.  Breal *  draws  at- 
tention to  the  number  of  homophonous  roots  in  com- 
parative dictionaries  like  those  of  Fick  or  Curtius  ;  thus 
we  have  a  root  kar,  "  making "  (Latin  creare\  another 
root  ^ar,  "mingling"  (Greek  Htpanufju),  and  a  third  root 
kar,  "cutting"  (Latin  cernere].  So,  too,  in  Old  Chinese, 
as  we  have  seen,  there  were  homonyms  like  tik,  "to 
throw,"  and  tik,  a  "joint,"  which  may  both  be  referred 
to  a  root  t-k.  Now  in  the  actual  speech  there  was  little 
danger  of  any  confusion  arising  from  the  homophony  of 
these  roots.  In  Chinese,  where  phonetic  decay  has  made 
such  widespread  ravages,  an  immense  number  of  words 
has  certainly  come  to  assume  the  same  outward  ap- 
pearance, but  means  have  been  found  for  distinguishing 
between  them  by  the  invention  of  "tones,"  and  by  recourse 
to  writing.  In  the  Aryan  tongues  the  words  embodying 
such  homophonous  roots  as  those  quoted  just  now  are 
conjugated  differently.  Nevertheless,  Chinese  "tones" 
cannot  claim  a  very  much  greater  antiquity  than  Chinese 
writing,  the  spread  of  education  producing  a  slovenly 
pronunciation,  and  the  results  of  a  slovenly  pronunciation 
being  obviated  by  the  introduction  of  new  tones,  while 
we  can  follow  the  Aryan  verb  up  to  an  age  when  it  did 
not  yet  exist,  and  when,  consequently,  there  were  as  yet 
no  verbal  flections.  We  cannot  suppose,  however,  that 
language  was  at  all  less  particular  at  this  period  about 
distinguishing  between  its  words  than  it  has  been  during 
1  "  La  Langue  indo-europeenne,"  p.  14. 


12  THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

the  historical  epoch ;  indeed,  the  observation  of  savage 
idioms  proves  that  a  barbarous  dialect  is  much  more 
careful  to  keep  its  words  apart  in  pronunciation  than  a 
cultivated  and  literary  one.  The  Frenchman  with  his 
written  speech,  his  large  vocabulary,  and  his  practised 
keenness  of  intelligence,  can  far  better  afford  to  heap 
homophone  upon  homophone  than  the  inhabitant  of  the 
Admiralty  Islands.  The  Aryan  kar  and  the  Chinese  tik 
alike  show  that  the  epoch  of  speech  they  represent  has 
another  behind  it,  when  as  yet  the  words  embodying  the 
ideas  of  "  making,"  "  mingling,"  and  "  cutting,"  or  of 
"throwing,"  and  "joint,"  had  not  coalesced  in  sound. 
The  roots  which  represented  this  epoch  are  irrecoverable, 
because  the  words  which  contained  them  are  lost,  but  we 
may  feel  sure  that  the  words  from  which  the  homopho- 
nous  roots  are  extracted,  are  but  the  worn  relics  and 
remains  of  those  earlier  ones. 

Roots  differ  as  the  languages  to  which  they  belong 
differ ;  here  they  are  monosyllabic,  there  they  are  poly- 
syllabic. In  the  Polynesian  family  every  consonant  must 
be  accompanied  by  a  vowel ;  in  Aryan  two  and  even 
three  consonants  may  follow  one  another;  while  in 
Semitic,  and  possibly  Chinese,  the  root  contains  no 
vowel  at  all.  It  is  probable  that  the  majority  of  roots  in 
most  languages  are  of  more  than  one  syllable,  and  that 
if  we  could  get  back  to  the  first  stage  of  speech,  we 
should  find  that  this  was  universally  the  case.  As  Dr. 
Bleek  has  pointed  out,  such  natural  sounds  as  sneezing, 
and  the  like,  can  only  be  represented  articulately  by  a 
succession  of  syllables,  and  since  languages  change  mainly 
through  the  action  of  phonetic  decay,  we  should  expect 


ROOTS.  13 

to  find  the  words  becoming  more  and  more  polysyllabic 
the  further  we  mount  back.  Professor  Whitney  observes 
with  truth  that  "  bow-wow  is  a  type,  a  normal  example, 
of  the  whole  genus  'root.'"1  The  sentence-words  of 
primitive  language  were  probably  at  least  disyllabic,  and 
the  monosyllabism  of  Chinese  or  of  the  Taic  and  Bush- 
man tongues  would  merely  be  an  illustration  of  their 
vast  antiquity  and  the  long-continued  action  of  phonetic 
decay.  The  roots  of  the  Semitic  languages  are  di- 
syllabic, or  if  sounded  with  vowels  trisyllabic,  like  kadhala, 
and  the  attempts  that  have  been  made  to  reduce  them 
to  a  single  syllable  have  all  been  failures.  Bohtlingk 2 
notes  that  many  Tibetan  words  at  present  monosyllabic 
were  formerly  polysyllabic,  and  the  polysyllabism  of  the 
roots  of  the  Ba-ntu  family  is  well  known.  .  Such  is  also 
the  case  with  the  roots  of  Kanuri,  Wolof,  Pul,  Maforian, 
and  Malayo-Polynesian.  In  some  of  these  instances 
monosyllabic  roots  stand  by  the  side  of  polysyllabic 
ones,  just  as  in  Old  Egyptian,  where  we  find  keb,  "to  go 
round,"  by  the  side  of  kebelih,  tionen,  "  to  be,"  by  the  side 
of  icon.  They  stand  out  like  the  stray  waifs  of  an  other- 
wise extinct  world,  the  last  record  of  the  first  beginnings 
of  speech.  Like  the  child  of  the  present  day,  the 
primaeval  speaker  did  not  confine  his  utterances  to  a 
simple  ah!  or  oh! 

The  Hindu  grammarians  reduced  the  roots  of  their 
language  to  single  syllables,  and  comparative  philology 
inherited  from  them  the  belief  that  the  roots  of  the 
Aryan  family  are  necessarily  monosyllabic.  Such  is  un- 

1  "  Life  and  Growth  of  Language  "  (1875),  P-  299- 

2  "  Ueber  die  Sprache  der  Jakuten,"  p.  xvii.  note  46. 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


doubtedly  the  case  with  a  root  like  i  or ya,  "going,"  but 
there  are  good  grounds  for  believing  that  is  not  the  case 
with  most  other  roots.  Thus  a  certain  number  of  these 
roots  end  with  the  double  consonant  kv  or  kw,  like  sakw, 
''following"  (Latin  sequor\  and  whatever  we  may  imagine 
to  have  been  the  pronunciation  of  such  a  sound,  we  can 
imagine  none  which  would  allow  it  to  be  pronounced 
without  a  vowel  after  it.1  If,  again,  we  compare  the 
Latin  vectu  or  vectul  with  the  Sanskrit  vodkavai,  and  the 
Slavonic  v&ti,  we  can  discover  no  bond  of  union  between 
them,  unless  a  root,  vaghi-tavai,  be  presupposed.  So, 
too,  compound  roots,  like  yu-dh  for  yu-dha,  are  neces- 
sarily disyllabic,  and,  as  Fick  has  lately  shown,2  the  so- 
called  stems  in  a,  ya,  i,  and  u,  are  really  rather  roots 
than  stems.  We  cannot  separate  words  like  ayo-j  and 
ayo-fjw,  the  Sanskrit  bhara-s,  bhara-tlia,  and  bkara-ti,  "he 
bears,"  any  more  than  we  can  separate  po'fo-f  and  (psfs-rs, 
or  Qpi%o-g  and  t-Qpfa-pa.  We  cannot  derive  either  the 
verb  from  the  noun  or  the  noun  from  the  verb  ;  they  are 
co-existent  creations,  belonging  to  the  same  epoch  and 
impulse  of  speech.  The  second  vowel  which  characte- 
rizes both  alike,  therefore,  cannot  be  a  classificatory 
suffix  ;  it  distinguishes  neither  noun  nor  verb,  but  is  the 
common  property  of  both.  What  makes  po'po-s  a  noun  is 
the  pure  flection — the  change  of  vowel  in  the  first  syl- 
lable. A  form  like  bkara-,  accordingly,  cannot  be  treated 

1  In  fact,  De  Saussure  has  shown  that  the  velar  k  implied  a  fol- 
lowing a3  (a  or  a,  o  or  <?)  when  represented  in  Sanskrit  by  a  guttural, 
a1  or  a2  (e,  a)  when  represented  by  a  palatal  ("  Me"moires  de  la 
Socidte  de  la  Linguistique  de  Paris"),  and  consequently  sakw-  (the 
Sanskrit  sack)  must  have  been  followed  by  a  or  £ 

2  Bezzenberger's  "  Beitrage,"  i.  pp.  i,  120,  231,  312,  &c. 


ROOTS.  15 

as  a  stem,  because  a  stem  is  necessarily  furnished  with  a 
classificatory  suffix  or  some  other  mark  to  determine  to 
what  part  of  speech  it  belongs  ;  we  have  nominal  stems 
and  verbal  stems,  but  a  stem  which  is  at  once  nominal 
and  verbal  is  not  a  stem  but  a  root.  It  is  the  ultimate 
element,  the  phonetic  type,  contained  by  a  group  of 
allied  words  whose  grammatical  relations  are  indicated  by 
varying  contrivances.  The  so-called  suffix  -ya  must  be 
banished  along  with  the  suffix  -a ;  "ayyehia  is  nothing  else 
than  ayyetyo  declined  as  a  noun,  which  appears  as  a  verb 
in  ayyF.xyo-fji.Ev,"  and  /wa£oV  (fMz.tyo-s)  and  the  Latin  madeo 
are  equally  based  on  a  "root"  madya.  Even  the  " stems 
in  -as  "  must  lose  their  initial  vowel ;  the  classificatory 
suffix  is  -s,  not  the  vowel,  which  is  common  to  both 
nouns  and  verbs  ;  and  though  there  may  seem  to  be  a 
grammatical  difference  between  the  final  vowels  of  ydog 
and  >j3i/j,  the  difference  vanishes  when  we  compare  the 
Greek  /xe^-A  on  the  one  side  and  the  Latin  argn-ere  on 
the  other.  'H?4  would  seem  to  stand  for  Sds-ft-s.  As 
Fick  observes,  even  in  the  case  of  those  nouns  whose 
"root "  agreed  with  that  of  the  sigmatic  future,  and  aorist 
in  possessing  no  vocalic  ending,  "the  Indians  with 
horrible  consistency  assumed  a  suffix — namely,  the  suffix 
Zero."  ' 

1  In  the  fourth  volume  of  Bezzenberger's  "  Beitrage"  (1878),  Fick 
shows  that  the  stem  of  a  present,  like  ndOu  or  0£uy<w,  is  more  original 
than  the  stem  of  the  aorist  i-mO-ov,  e-^wy-ov,  the  shortening  of  the 
vowel  being  occasioned  by  the  accent  which  in  the  aorist  fell  upon 
the  last  syllable.  Accordingly  a,  I,  and  v  in  the  present  are  con- 
tracted into  a,  i,  and  v  in  the  aorist,  and  f  disappears  altogether. 
Fick  further  remarks  that  the  old  theory  would  logically  make  <nr, 
TTT,  <j>v,  and  f  TT  the  roots  of  such  verbs  as  a-rrkaQai,  TTTsaOai,  irtyvt,  and 
(—  ft-pTrtiv},  the  final  e  being  considered  "thematic,"  and 


i6 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


There  is  yet  another  reason  for  thinking  that  the  ma- 
jority of  Indo-European  roots — that  is  of  the  types  which 
underlay  the  oldest  Aryan  vocabulary  of  which  we  know 
— must  be  regarded  as  polysyllabic.  Prof.  Max  Miiller l 
draws  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  existence  of  parallel 
roots  of  similar  meaning,  but  different  terminations,  like 
mardh,  marg,  mark,  marp,  mard,  smar,  and  mar,  can  be 
better  explained  by  elimination  than  by  composition. 
The  so-called  determinatives  or  final  letters  cannot  be 
classificatory,  as  they  convey  no  modification  of  meaning, 
and  are  to  be  found  in  words  belonging  to  all  the  parts 
of  speech.  "  There  is  at  all  events  no  a  priori  argument 
against  treating  the  simplest  roots  as  the  latest,  rather 
than  the  earliest  products  of  language."  "  It  would  be 
perfectly  intelligible  that  such  roots  as  mark,  marg, 
mard,  mardh,  expressing  different  kinds  of  crushing,  be- 
came fixed  side  by  side,  that  by  a  process  of  elimination 
their  distinguishing  features  were  gradually  removed, 
and  the  root  mar  left  as  the  simplest  form  expressive  of 
the  most  general  meaning."  In  other  words,  the  vocables 

not  belonging  to  the  root.  In  the  second  part  of  the  third  volume 
of  the  same  periodical  (1879),  Fick  points  out  that,  "through  the 
influence  of  the  accent  the  vowels  e  and  o  can  be  reduced  to  e  and 
0,  mere  voice-checks,  for  which  loss  of  the  vowel  can  be  substi- 
tuted, especially  in  open  syllables.  This  original  e  and  0,  which  I 
call  sh'wa  for  the  sake  of  brevity,  generally  appears  in  Sanskrit  as 
i  or  i  (also  as  u  or  u  before  and  after  liquids),  in  Zend  as  e  and  /", 
in  Greek  mostly  as  a,  in  German  as  o  (Gothic  u)."  "In  the  aorist 
the  final  sh'wa  is  retained  in  the  a  of  the  Greek  aorist  e'xevac,"  &c. 
"  Hence  it  is  clear  that  stems  like  ed,  bhid,  or  ruk  had  no  existence 
whatever  originally,  but  first  arose  out  of  ede,  bhide,  and  ruke  ;  the 
Indian  theory  of  roots,  with  all  its  perverse  consequences  (thematic 
and  union  vowels,  Guna,  &c.),  must  be  definitely  set  aside." 
1  "Chips,"  iv.  pp.  128,  129. 


ROOTS.  17 

that  embodied  these  roots  underwent  the  wear  and  tear 
of  phonetic  decay,  many  of  them  passed  out  of  the  living 
speech  and  were  replaced  by  others,  and  there  was  left 
at  last  a  whole  family  of  nouns  and  verbs,  whose  sole 
common  possession  was  the  syllable  mar.  That  alone 
had  resisted  the  attacks  of  time  and  change.  We  indeed 
have  some  difficulty  in  realizing  the  variability  of  savage 
and  barbarous  languages,  or  of  the  readiness  with  which 
new  words  are  coined  and  old  ones  forgotten.  Mr.  Theal, 
illustrating  the  Kafir  rule  that  a  woman  may  not  men- 
tion the  names  of  any  of  her  husband's  male  relations  in 
the  ascending  line,1  states  that  "  a  woman  who  sang  the 
song  of  Tangalimlibo  for  me  used  the  word  angoca  in- 
stead of  amanzi  for  water,  because  this  last  contained  the 
syllable  nzi,  which  she  would  not  on  any  account  pro- 
nounce. She  had  therefore  manufactured  another  word, 
the  meaning  of  which  had  to  be  judged  of  from  the  con- 
text, as  standing  alone  it  is  meaningless."  It  will  be 
noticed  that  the  word  is  trisyllabic,  and  not  a  monosyl- 
lable, as  the  Indianist  theory  would  require,  and  if  other 
words  came  to  be  framed  after  its  model,  it  would  origi- 
nate a  root,  which  would  certainly  be  of  more  than  one 
syllable.  Phonetic  decay  alone  could  reduce  it  to  the 
orthodox  monosyllabic  form. 

The  existence  of  compound  roots  has  already  been 
alluded  to,  implying  a  division  of  roots  into  simple  and 
compound,  the  first  class  consisting  of  those  which  were 
really  simple  from  the  first,  as  well  as  of  those  which  our 
ignorance  prevents  us  from  decomposing.  Compound 
roots  form  part  of  the  class  of  "  secondary  "  roots  as  dis- 
1  "  Cape  Monthly  Magazine,"  xiv.  36  (June,  1877),  p.  349- 

II.  C 


i8  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

tinguished  from  "  primary  ; "  yu  and  mar  being  examples 
of  primary  roots,  yudh  andyug;  mardh,  mard,  marg,  mark, 
and  smar  of  secondary  ones.  A  primary  root,  therefore, 
is  the  simplest  element  of  sound  and  meaning  which  can 
be  extracted  from  a  group  of  words  ;  it  constitutes  their 
characteristic  mark  and  sign  of  relationship,  and  indi- 
cates where  the  line  of  division  must  be  drawn  between 
them  and  other  unallied  words.  A  secondary  root  deter- 
mines a  species  within  the  larger  genus  ;  words  contain- 
ing the  root  mard/i,  for  instance,  form  a  specific  class 
within  the  wider  class  of  those  which  contain  the  root 
mar.  The  Latin  ju-s,  "right"  or  "bond/'  is  an  example 
of  the  genus  of  which  jung-erey  "to  join,"  is  an  example 
of  the  species  ;  but  whereas  in  natural  history  a  species 
is  posterior  to  the  genus,  the  converse  is  the  case  with 
the  roots  of  the  philologist.  The  reason  of  this  is  plain 
enough  ;  the  genera  and  species  of  zoology  and  botany 
answer  to  actually  existing  forms  of  life,  whereas  the 
roots  of  language  are  due  to  the  reflective  analysis  of  the 
grammarian.  At  the  same  time,  some  of  the  secondary 
roots  are  undoubtedly  compounds,  that  is  to  say,  are  ex- 
tracted from  compound  words,  and  wherever  this  is  the 
case,  the  species  or  secondary  root  will  necessarily  be 
later  than  the  primary  or  generic  one. 

One  of  the  first  attempts  to  decompose  the  secondary 
roots  was  made  by  Professor  Pott.  He  started  the  view 
that  a  large  number  of  them  were  compounded  with  pre- 
positions ;  thus  pinjt  "painting,"  is  derived  from  api  or 
EOT  and  anj,  "  anointing."  But  such  a  view  is  no  longer 
tenable.  The  loss  of  the  initial  vowel  in  a  word  like  api 
is  peculiar  to  Sanskrit,  and  not  a  characteristic  of  the 


ROOTS.  19 

parent- Aryan ;  the  origin  of  the  Latin  ping-ere  would 
therefore  be  inexplicable.  Moreover,  the  preposition  was 
a  late  growth  in  Aryan  speech,  and  in  early  times  there 
was  no  close  amalgamation  of  it  with  the  verb.  Even  in 
Greek  and  Sanskrit  the  prepositions  are  still  so  indepen- 
dent that  the  augment  and  reduplication  are  inserted  be- 
tween them  and  the  verbal  form,  and  we  all  remember 
how  loosely  attached  they  are  to  the  verb  throughout  the 
larger  part  of  Homer.  Pott's  theory  must  therefore  be 
given  up,  and  another  be  proposed  in  its  place.  This  has 
been  done  by  Professor  G.  Curtius,  who  suggests  that 
many  of  the  compound  roots  were  similar  to  such  Latin 
tenses  of  a  later  day  as  amav-eram  (for  amavi-eraui)  and 
amav-ero  (for  amavi-ero],  where  we  have  two  verbal  forms 
agglutinated  one  to  another.  Hence  in  a  secondary  root 
like  yudh,  we  may  see  an  amalgamation  of  the  two 
primary  roots  yu  and  dha,  the  first  with  the  sense  of 
"  mingling,"  and  the  second  with  that  of  "  placing."  It 
is  very  possible  that  the  Greek  passive  aorist  E-T&Q-QYI-V 
and  optative  Tipao-ivt-v  may  contain  the  roots  d/ia,  "plac- 
ing," and  ya,  "  going,"  which  we  find  in  the  Latin  ven-eo, 
venuin-ire  ;  at  all  events,  the  existence  of  such  com- 
pounds in  the  parent-Aryan  is  shown  to  be  more  than  a 
mere  conjecture  by  the  Latin  credo  which  appears  under 
the  form  of  ' srad-dadhami  in  Sanskrit.  Sanskrit  and 
Latin  alike  throw  light  on  one  another,  and  show  us  that 
credere,  "to  believe,"  is  really  a  compound  of  cor(d\  "the 
heart,"  the  Greek  xaftiot,  and  the  root  dha,  "to  place," 
which  elsewhere  appears  in  the  Latin  ab-dere,  con-dere, 
e-derel  "  To  believe "  was  therefore  originally  "  to 
1  Darmesteter :  "  Mdmoires  de  la  Societd  de  Linguistique,"  iii.  p.  52. 


20 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


place  "  or  "  set  the  heart  "  towards  another  object.  How 
old  the  compound  is  may  be  gathered  from  the  form 
it  has  assumed  in  Sanskrit.  The  ordinary  word  for 
"  heart "  in  both  Sanskrit  and  Zend  presupposes  a  root 
ghard ;  'srad  alone  in  this  curious  old  compound  has  the 
same  root,  kard,  as  the  words  which  signify  "  heart "  in 
the  European  branch  of  the  Aryan  family.  The  parent- 
Aryan  had  its  dialects  like  all  spoken  languages,  and 
these  dialects  possessed  slightly  differing  forms  of  the 
same  word.  One  form  finally  triumphed  in  Western 
Aryan,  another  form  in  Eastern  Aryan,  but  before  this 
happened  the  compound  credo,  'srad-dadhdmi,  was  al- 
ready in  existence,  testifying  to  a  time  when  the  West- 
Aryan  form  was  employed  in  East  Aryan  itself.  , 

A  very  common  secondary  root  is  one  formed  by  redu- 
plication. Originally  the  whole  root  was  probably  re- 
peated ;  but  in  course  of  time  broken  reduplication  be- 
came prevalent,  consisting  in  the  repetition  of  only  a  part 
of  the  whole  root.  Thus  by  the  side  of  ^^p-og  and/>/r- 
fur  we  find  me-mor  and  KITT^T-M,  tu-tud-i  and  vs-run-a. 
The  loss  of  the  second  consonant  might  be  compensated 
for  ;  in  the  Greek  *«/Aa^  and  Saioateog,  for  instance,  a 
diphthong  marks  the  existence  of  a  former  consonant. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  vowel  of  the  second  syllable 
might  be  lengthened  or  intensified,  as  in  the  Greek  ay- 
uy-h  and  kr-rnv^o^  and  when  the  second  syllable  was  thus 
strengthened  the  vowel  of  the  first  syllable  was  very 
liable  to  become  correspondingly  weak.  So  in  Latin  we 
have  ci-conia  and  ci-catrix,  and  in  Greek  Si-dawa  for  3i- &w- 
0-*«,  and  'iffTYifju  for  en-oni/xt.  WThen  the  variation  of  vowel 
had  once  been  introduced,  the  changes  that  could  be 


ROOTS.  21 

rung  upon  it  were  almost  innumerable.  We  have  seen 
how  they  were  made  subservient  to  the  needs  of  flection 
in  the  Greek  verb  where  the  difference  of  the  vowel  in 
di-oupi  and  3*»&wa  marked  also  a  difference  of  tense. 

But  reduplication  is  one  of  those  primitive  contri- 
vances of  language  which,  though  continually  reappear- 
ing in  the  nursery  dialect  or  thieves'  slang,  does  not  seem 
to  be  a  favourite  with  a  more  cultivated  age,  There  is 
hardly  anything  which  is  attacked  with  more  persistency 
by  phonetic  decay  than  reduplication.  Did  alone  bears 
witness  to  the  reduplicated  perfects  of  our  Teutonic 
ancestors,  and  the  reduplicated  perfects  of  Latin  are  few 
and  exceptional.  A  reduplicated  root  can  sometimes  be 
recovered  only  by  a  wide-reaching  comparison  of  words, 
and  even  where  this  is  not  the  case  the  original  redupli- 
cation has  often  been  so  far  obliterated  as  at  first  sight 
to  escape  observation.  If  we  take  the  Greek  $0$,  "  life," 
we  shall  have  some  difficulty  in  detecting  any  reduplica- 
tion at  all,  and  it  is  not  until  we  come  to  the  Latin  vivo 
that  the  fact  becomes  clear  to  us.  But  vivo  itself  is  but 
a  fragment  of  its  primitive  self.  The  perfect  vixi  (vic-si) 
tells  us  that  it  has  lost  a  guttural,  and  what  this  guttural 
was  is  only  to  be  discovered  by  an  appeal  to  the  English 
quick  and  the  Sanskrit /*V&*Mf,  "  life."  Both  jS/oj  and  vivo 
are  the  bare  and  shattered  relics  of  a  word  which  con- 
tained the  reduplicated  root  gwi-gwi. 

Roots  naturally  display  all  the  variability  of  the  words 
in  which  they  inhere.  The  vowel  may  change  not  only 
when  they  are  reduplicated,  but  in  other  cases  as  well. 
By  the  side  of  ar  in  aro,  "  to  plough,"  we  have  er  in  Ipcr/uov, 
"an  oar,"  and  or  in  of-vy^ti,  "to  rise,"  and  within  the  same 


22 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


Greek  verb  itself  we  find 


with 


for 


E-JCTOV-S  w  a,  XTEIVU 
with  e,  and  E-ttrw-a  with  o.  As  we  have  seen  before,  in 
cases  like  po^oj  by  the  side  of  <p£$u}  the  change  of  vowel 
becomes  a  sign  of  flection,  and  we  have  to  look  to  Sanskrit, 
where  the  single  vowel  a  answers  to  the  three  European 
vowels  a,  e,  and  ot  for  our  root.  At  other  times  instead 
of  a  change  of  vowel  we  find  a  change  in  the  position  of 
the  consonant.  Thus,  if  we  compare  the  Greek  to$aw  and 
with  the  Latin  labor  and  cerno,  or  the  Greek  forms 
and  TatocvTov  with  one  another,  we  have  vocalized 
consonants  developing  vowels  in  different  positions. 
The  root  is  a*p-  for  Greek,  and  lab-  for  Latin.  Again, 
the  consonant  itself  may  vary  in  two  allied  dialects  or 
even  within  one  and  the  same  dialect  ;  in  Greek,  for 
instance,  iA-fiav  and  Sa/zjSo?  stand  by  the  side  of  %%0/xai  (!f- 
fftcofjuu)  and  £Ta$ov,  and  the  Latin  vivere  corresponds  with 
the  Greek  /3/o$.  Sometimes  the  consonant  may  become 
a  vowel  or  a  vowel  become  a  consonant,  as  in  AOWEIV,  "  to 
wash,"  the  Latin  lavere,  or  iljty,  our  water.  The  Latin 
deus  and  divus,  like  the  Greek  ftbj  and  3»fao$  (for  SE/^OJ), 
go  back  to  a  root  dfo,  whereas  the  allied  words  Zei/j  and 
Jitpiter,  for  AJ/E^  and  Dyu-piter,  answering  to  a  Sanskrit 
dyaus-pitar,  presuppose  a  root  dyu.  Here  we  see  v  voca- 
lized to  w  in  the  one  case,  and  i  hardened  to  y  in  the 
other.  The  roots  have  no  existence  apart  from  the  words 
which  contain  them,  and  the  phonetic  variations  of  the 
words  must  therefore  be  faithfully  represented  in  their 
corresponding  roots. 

Now  just  as  words  are  divisible  into  two  great  classes, 
presentative  and  representative,  conceptual  and  symbolic, 
predicative  and  pronominal,  so  too  necessarily  are  roots. 


ROOTS.  23 

There  are  pronominal  and  demonstrative  roots,  just  as 
there  are  verbal  or  predicative  ones,  and  since  a  root  does 
but  reflect  the  common  characteristic  of  the  group  of 
words  to  which  it  belongs,  pronominal  roots,  like  the 
pronouns  themselves,  are  short  in  outward  form  and 
symbolic  in  inward  meaning.  "  Symbolic  words,"  says 
Prof.  Earle,1  "  are  those  which  by  themselves  present  no 
meaning  to  any  mind,  and  which  depend  for  their  intel- 
ligibility on  a  relation  to  some  presentive  (or  objective) 
word  or  words."  They  are  what  the  Chinese  call 
"empty"  words,  that  is,  words  which  have  been  stripped 
of  their  original  nominal  or  verbal  signification,  and  ap- 
plied as  auxiliaries  and  helpmeets  to  express  the  relations 
of  a  sentence.  Ki, "  place,"  li,  "  interior,"  or/,  "  to  use,"  for 
instance,  have  all  become  empty  words  with  hardly  a  trace 
of  their  primitive  meaning,  ki  being  used  as  a  relative 
pronoun,  li  and  y  as  mere  signs  of  the  locative  and  instru- 
mental. The  number  of  symbolic  words  in  a  cultivated 
and  analytic  language  like  English  is  very  considerable  ; 
a  or  an,  the,  but,  from,  if,  of,  is,  tJiere,  tlien,  and  the  pro- 
nouns generally  will  occur  at  once  to  the  mind  of  every- 
one. Many  of  these  symbolic  words,  like  the  "  empty 
words  "  of  Chinese,  can  be  traced  back  to  a  time  when 
they  were  still  predicative,  when  they  still  denoted  ob- 
jects and  attributes,  and  could  be  used  as  predicates  of 
the  sentence.  Others  of  them,  however,  have  lost  all 
vestiges  of  any  such  predicative  meaning,  if  ever  they 
possessed  it ;  even  during  the  earliest  period  at  which 
we  become  acquainted  with  them  they  are  already  sym- 

1  "Philology  of  the  English  Tongue"  (2nd  edition),  p.  222.     See 
Locke's  "  Essay  on  the  Understanding,"  iii.  ch.  vii.  ("  On  Particles.") 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

bolic,  already  mere  marks  of  relation.  This  is  especially 
the  case  with  the  pronouns,  and  since  most  of  the  pro- 
nouns can  be  shown  to  have  once  had  a  demonstrative 
sense,  those  roots  which  are  not  verbal  or  predicative 
have  been  termed  sometimes  pronominal,  sometimes 
demonstrative.  Pronominal  or  demonstrative  roots  form 
a  smaller  class  by  the  side  of  the  predicative  ones.  Con- 
stant use  and  close  amalgamation  with  other  words  tend 
to  attenuate  symbolic  words,  and  cause  them  to  be  espe- 
cially affected  by  the  action  of  phonetic  decay  ;  hence  it 
is  that  pronominal  roots  consist  for  the  most  part  of 
open  syllables  like  ka,  na,  ma,  ta.  We  may  describe 
them,  in  fact,  as  consisting  of  only  one  consonant,  the 
initial  letter  of  those  little  but  important  words  which 
they  represent.  It  has  often  been  proposed  to  identify 
the  classificatory  suffixes  of  a  flectional  language  with 
these  attenuated  pronominal  roots,  and  appeal  has  been 
made  to  the  fact  that  the  person-endings  of  the  verb — 
ad-mi,  at-si,  at-ti — actually  are  personal  pronouns.  It 
is  difficult,  however,  to  see  what  else  they  could  be,  since 
the  persons  of  the  verbs  necessarily  imply  the  personal 
pronouns,  and  the  fact  in  question,  therefore,  gives  no 
support  to  a  theory  which  assumes  the  existence  of  pro- 
nouns where  no  pronominal  meaning  can  be  attached  to 
them.  Decay,  it  is  true,  attacks  the  meaning  as  well  as 
the  sounds  of  words,  and  what  was  once  significant  may 
afterwards  cease  to  be  so ;  but  before  we  can  admit  the 
hypothetical  presence  of  pronouns  or  pronominal  roots, 
we  must  be  assured  of  the  appropriateness  or  even  the 
possibility  of  the  meanings  to  be  assigned  to  them.  The 
similarity  that  exists  between  the  phonetic  form  of  many 


R007S.  25 

of  the  suffixes  and  that  of  the  pronominal  roots  can  be 
accounted  for  very  simply  by  the  attenuated  character  of 
these  roots.  Now  and  then,  however,  a  similarity  has  been 
assumed  that  does  not  exist.  Thus  the  guttural  suffix 
ka  can  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  "root"  of  the  Latin 
quis,  the  Greek  TIJ  and  the  Sanskrit  chit,  "somewhat," 
since  the  guttural  here  is  velar ;  and  as  Prof.  Ludwig 
has  pointed  out,1  the  "  pronominal "  ta  which  plays  so 
great  a  part  in  the  ordinary  analysis  of  flectional  forms 
is  a  pure  nonentity,  as  t  is  always  followed  by  the  vowel 
i.  In  fact,  the  identification  of  suffixes  and  "  demonstra- 
tive roots  "  is  due  to  a  confusion  of  ideas ;  suffixes  can 
have  no  roots  ;  they  are  only  parts  of  words,  common  to 
nearly  all  groups  of  words  alike,  and  varying  continually 
within  the  same  group.  But  groups  of  words  alone  can 
be  said  to  possess  roots,  and  if  we  assign  roots  to  sym- 
bolic words,  it  is  because  they  also,  like  the  predicative 
words  of  the  sentence,  fall  into  groups.  The  root  is  a 
property  of  words,  not  of  their  suffixes. 

It  is  highly  probable  that  even  those  words  which  we 
find  acting  as  auxiliaries  and  pronouns  as  far  back  as  our 
linguistic  analysis  allows  us  to  go,  were  themselves  once 
full  or  predicative  words,  and  that  if  we  could  penetrate 
to  an  earlier  stage  of  language,  we  should  meet  with  the 
original  forms  of  which  they  are  the  maimed  and  half- 
obliterated  descendants.  Analogy  certainly  is  in  favour 
of  this  view.  Such  symbolic  words  as  an  (one)  or 
will,  of  which  we  have  a  history,  are  known  to  have 
been  formerly  presentative,  and  there  is  nothing  to  pre- 
vent other  symbolic  words,  with  whose  history  we  are 
1  "Agglutination  oder  Adaptation"  (1873),  p.  18. 


26 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


unacquainted,  from  having  been  so  too.  The  relative 
pronoun  in  Chinese  can  be  proved  to  have  once  been  a 
substantive  meaning  "  place,"  and  it  would  seem  that  the 
Hebrew  relative  Dasher  had  the  same  origin,  'asm  in 
Assyrian,  'athar  in  Aramaic  signifying  "  a  place."  The 
Assyrian  pronoun  mala,  "  as  many  as,"  is  merely  a  fossil- 
ized substantive  meaning  "fulness,"  and  the  Ethiopic  lall 
and  ciya>  which,  when  combined  with  suffixes,  express  the 
nominative  or  accusative  of  the  personal  pronoun,  really 
signified  originally  " separation  "  and  "entrails."  The 
Malay  ulun,  "I,"  is  still  "a  man"  in  Lampong,  and  the 
Kawi  ngwang,  "  I,"  cannot  be  separated  from  nwang,  "  a 
man."  In  Japanese  the  same  word  may  stand  for  all 
three  persons ;  but  this  is  because  it  was  primitively  a 
substantive,  such  as  "servant,"  "worshipper,"  and  the 
like.  Even  now  the  Chinese  scholar  will  say,  ts'ie  ("  the 
thief")  instead  of  "I,"  while  tsidn  ("bad")  and  ling 
("  noble  ")  are  used  for  "  mine  "  and  "  thine."  2  "  The  in- 
habitants of  Ceylon,"  says  Adelung,  3  "  have  seven  or 
eight  words  to  denote  the  second  personal  pronoun," 
and  Pott  remarks4  that  even  German  is  still  so  much 
influenced  by  the  habits  of  an  earlier  barbarism  as  scru- 
pulously to  avoid  the  employment  of  the  second  personal 
pronoun,  recourse  being  had,  where  Er  and  Sie  fail,  to 
the  uncivilized  method  of  denoting  the  personal  pronoun 
by  means  of  a  substantive.  In  Greek  we  find  o'dfe  b  avyp 
used  as  the  equivalent  of  "  I,"  and  a  somewhat  unsatis- 


1  Pratorius  :  "  Z.  d.  D.  M.  G."  xxvii.  4  (1873). 

2  Endlicher:  "  Chines.  Grammatik,"  pp.  258-89. 

3  "  Mithridates,"  i.  233. 

4  "  Die  Ungleichheit  menschlicher  Rassen,"  pp.  5,  6. 


ROOTS.  27 

factory  attempt  has  been  made  to  derive  this  pronoun 
itself,  the  Latin  ego,  the  Sanskrit  afiam,  from  the  root  agh, 
"  speaking,"  which  we  have  in  the  Latin  ad-agi-um,  "  a 
proverb,"  the  Greek  y-(M,  and  the  Gothic  af-aik-an,  "to 
deny."  However  this  may  be,  we  must  always  bear  in 
mind  the  possibility  of  tracing  symbolic  words  to  concep- 
tual ones,  and  of  discovering  that  what  we  have  imagined 
to  be  the  pronominal  root  is  really  a  reduced  and  muti- 
lated form.  Above  all,  we  must  not  fall  into  the  mistake 
of  confounding  these  pronominal  roots  with  the  classifi- 
catory  suffixes,  a  mistake  which  has  been  perpetrated  in 
the  classification  of  roots  as  material  and  formal.  It  is 
perfectly  true  that  some  of  the  suffixes,  such  as  -tar,  or 
our  own  -ward,  or  the  person-endings  of  the  Aryan  verb, 
can  be  referred  to  old  nouns  and  pronouns  ;  but  what  is 
true  of  some  of  them  is  not  true  of  all,  while  even  these 
suffixes  are  not  identical  with  pronominal  roots  but  be- 
long to  groups  of  words  containing  both  pronominal  and 
predicative  roots. 

And  so  we  are  brought  back  to  our  starting- 
point.  Roots  are  the  phonetic  and  significant  types 
which  underlie  a  group  of  words  in  a  particular  family 
of  speech.  Each  family  of  speech  has  its  own  stock  of 
roots,  its  own  common  heritage  of  words,  which  serve, 
like  its  grammar  and  its  structure,  to  mark  it  off  from 
every  other  family.  We  have  seen  how  the  various  races 
of  man  have  started  with  different  grammatical  concep- 
tions and  modes  of  constructing  the  sentence  ;  they  have 
equally  started  with  different  lexical  types.  Roots  are 
for  the  dictionary  what  the  mental  ways  of  viewing  the 
relations  of  the  sentence  are  for  grammar.  Allied  Ian- 


28 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


guages   must   agree   in  their  roots  as   well  as  in   their 
grammar. 

But  it  is  not  necessary  that  the  roots  possessed  by 
each  member  of  a  family  of  speech  should  all  be  the 
same.  We  find  cases  and  case-endings  in  Latin  which 
do  not  exist  in  Greek,  while  the  Greek  terminations  in 
-Si  and  -Sev  are  equally  unknown  to  Latin.  Similarly  in 
the  vocabulary,  one  dialect  may  retain  words  which  have 
been  lost  by  another,  or  drop  words  which  are  in  use  in 
the  remaining  cognate  tongues.  This  is  one  of  the 
causes  of  the  difficulty  experienced  by  etymologists  in 
finding  a  derivation  for  every  word  in  the  lexicon,  that  is 
to  say  in  settling  the  root  to  which  it  must  be  referred. 
Unless  we  have  allied  words  in  cognate  dialects  with 
which  to  compare  our  recalcitrant  word,  no  etymological 
tact  or  scientific  attainments  will  enable  us  to  determine 
its  roots  and  connections.  The  logicians  tell  us  that  w.e 
can  draw  no  inference  from  a  single  instance ;  it  is  just 
as  impossible  to  discover  an  etymology  for  an  isolated 
word.  But  there  may  be  other  reasons  for  this  impossi- 
bility besides  the  simple  one  that  a  word  may  be  the  last 
waif  and  stray  of  an  otherwise  extinct  group.  Lan- 
guages borrow  words  from  their  neighbours,  and  it  may 
very  well  happen  that  the  word  whose  derivation  we  are 
seeking  may  be  a  foreign  importation  which  has  slightly 
changed  its  appearance  in  being  naturalized.  We  know 
from  Livy  (vii.  2)  and  Festus1  that  the  Latin  histrio 
(kister),  "  a  play-actor,"  and  nepos,  "  a  spendthrift,"  were 
borrowed  from  Etruscan,  and  the  inscriptions  have  further 
informed  us  that  the  Latin  Aulus  was  originally  the 

1  Ed.  Muller,  p.  165. 


ROOTS.  29 

Etruscan  Avile,  "the  long-lived  one,"  but  there  is  little 
doubt  that  many  words  exist  in  Latin  which  were  also 
introduced  from  Etruria,  but  of  whose  parentage  our 
ignorance  of  the  old  Etruscan  language  forbids  us  to  give 
any  account.  Maize  and  hammock  seem  genuine  Eng- 
lish words  enough,  but  they  have  come  to  us  through  the 
medium  of  Spanish  from  the  dialect  of  the  natives  of 
Hayti.1  To  search  for  their  etymology  in  the  Aryan 
family  of  speech  would  be  parallel  to  M.  Halevy's  endea- 
vour to  explain  agglutinative  Accadian  from  the  Semitic 
lexicon.  But  there  is  yet  a  third  reason  for  the  existence 
of  roots  peculiar  to  only  one  out  of  a  group  of  allied 
languages.  Even  in  its  most  advanced  and  cultured 
state,  language  never  wholly  resigns  its  power  of  creating 
new  words,  and  with  them  new  roots.  It  is-  true  that  the 
inventions  of  the  nursery  are  nipped  in  the  bud  or  con- 
fined within  the  nursery  walls  ;  it  is  also  true  that  words 
like  the  Kafir  angoca,  mentioned  before,  could  never  be 
introduced  into  literary  idioms  like  English  and  French  ; 
but  it  is  also  true  that  the  native  instinct  of  language 
breaks  out  wherever  it  has  the  chance,  and  coins  words 
which  can  be  traced  back  to  no  ancestors.  The  slang  of 
the  schoolboy,  the  argot  of  the  large  towns,  Americanisms, 
and  thieves'  cant,  all  contain  evidences  that  the  creative 
powers  of  language  are  even  now  not  extinct.  The 
murderer  Pierre  Riviere  invented  the  word  ennepharer 
for  the  torture  to  which,  as  a  boy,  he  subjected  frogs, 
and  the  word  calibene  for  the  instrument  with  which  he 
killed  birds.2  Prince  "  Plon-plon "  can  be  assigned  no 

1  Humboldt :  "  Travels  "  (Engl.  transl.),  i.  p.  329. 

2  Charma  :  "  Essai  sur  le  Langage  "  (1846),  p.  66. 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE, 


parentage,  any  more  than  the  game  of  squalls  with  its 
swoggle  and  absquatulate.  Du  Merit  refers  to  the  purely 
musical  names  given  by  children  to  those  they  are  fond 
of,  and  Nodier  tells  a  curious  story  to  account  for  the 
origin  of  a  lady's  falbala.1  A  witty  prince  of  the  last 
century,  Marshal  de  Langlee,  entered  a  shop  with  the 
intention  of  testing  the  assurance  of  the  milliner  in  it. 
He  therefore  coined  the  word  falbala  on  the  spot,  and 
immediately  asked  for  one.  The  milliner  at  once  brought 
him  the  dress  called  volant,  which  with  its  light  floating 
points  reminded  her  of  the  root  involved  in  the  newly- 
invented  word,  and  perhaps  called  up  the  sound  and 
signification  of  foldtre  or  flatter?  Even  natural  science 
has  added  to  the  stock  of  Aryan  roots.  To  pass  over 
Van  Helmont's  gas,  Neckar  invented  sepal 'to  denote  each 
division  of  the  calyx,3  Reichenbach  the  expression  "  Od 
force,"  and  Guyton  de  Morveau  the  chemical  terms  sul- 
fite  and  sulfate.  Here,  however,  we  have  a  reference  to 
sulphur,  just  as  M.  Braconnot's  ellagic  acid,  the  sub- 
stance left  in  the  process  of  making  pyrogallic  acid,  is 
merely  galle  read  backwards.4  To  find  the  process  of 
word-making  in  full  vigour,  we  must  look  elsewhere  than 
to  the  scientific  age.  We  have  something  better  to  do 
than  to  spend  our  time  in  inventing  new  words ;  that 
employment  must  be  left  to  the  disciples  of  Irving  and 
other  theological  enthusiasts.  The  heritage  we  have 
received  is  large  enough  for  our  wants  ;  our  part  is  to 

1  "  Notions  de  Linguistique,"  p.  211. 

2  Falbala  has  been  borrowed  by  most  of  the  European  languages 
under  various  forms,  appearing  in  English  as  furbelow.     It  is  first 
found  in  De  Caillieres  (1690). 

3  Whewell  :  "  History  of  the  Inductive  Sciences,"  ii.  p.  535. 

4  Whewell  :  op.  cit.  ii.  p.  547. 


ROOTS.  31 

improve  and  develop  it.  But  the  case  is  very  different 
with  the  savage  tribes  of  the  modern  world  or  the  still 
more  savage  tribes  among  whom  the  languages  of  the 
earth  first  took  their  start.  With  them  language  is  still 
a  plaything  ;  a  plaything,  it  may  be,  which  has  a  myste- 
rious influence  for  good  or  ill,  but  nevertheless  a  play- 
thing which  may  help  to  while  away  the  long  hours  of 
the  day.  Hence  it  is  that  the  vocabularies  of  the  lower 
races  are  in  a  perpetual  state  of  flux  and  change ;  the 
word  which  is  in  fashion  one  day  is  dropped  the  next,  and 
its  place  taken  by  a  fresh  favourite.  But  they  are  words 
and  not  roots  which  are  thus  suddenly  called  into  exis- 
tence. The  Kafir  woman  coins  a  fully-formed  word,  not 
the  root  which  we  can  extract  from  it.  Here,  as  else- 
where in  nature,  the  complex  precedes  the  simple,  the 
embryonic  jelly-fish  is  older  than  man.  What  is  logically 
first  is  historically  last. 

Roots,  however,  are  one  of  the  instruments  with  which 
the  comparative  philologist  determines  and  classifies  his 
families  of  speech.  We  have  seen  that  languages  may 
be  arranged  morphologically  as  polysynthetic,  incorpo- 
rating, isolating,  agglutinative,  inflectional,  and  analytic  ; 
we  have  further  seen  that  grammar  forms  our  first 
and  surest  ground  for  asserting  or  denying  the  relation- 
ship of  languages  ;  -but  besides  similarity  of  structure  and 
grammar  we  must  also  have  a  common  stock  of  roots 
before  we  can  throw  a  group  of  languages  and  dialects 
together,  and  assert  their  connection  one  with  another. 
The  genealogical  classification  of  languages,  that  which 
divides  them  into  families  and  sub-families,  each  mount- 
ing up,  as  it  were,  to  a  single  parent-speech,  is  based  on 
the  evidence  of  grammar  and  roots.  Unless  the  grammar 


32  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

agrees,  no  amount  of  similarity  between  the  roots  of  two 
languages  could  warrant  us  in  comparing  them  together, 
and  referring  them  to  the  same  stock.  Accidental  resem- 
blances of  sound  and  sense  between  words  are  to  be  found 
all  the  world  over,  and  the  probable  origin  of  language 
in  great  measure  from  the  imitation  of  natural  sounds, 
or  the  cries  uttered  during  the  performance  of  a  common 
action,  would  produce  superficial  likenesses  between  the 
roots  of  unallied  tongues.  But  on  the  other  hand,  where 
we  find  dissimilar  roots  combined  with  grammatical 
agreement,  it  is  necessary  to  hesitate  before  admitting 
a  genetic  relationship.  There  are  instances,  indeed,  in 
which  nearly  the  whole  of  a  foreign  vocabulary  has  been 
borrowed,  whereas  a  borrowed  grammar  is  a  doubtful,  if 
not  unknown  occurrence ;  but,  nevertheless,  such  in- 
stances are  rare,  and  we  must  have  abundant  testimony 
before  they  can  be  admitted.  The  test  of  linguistic  kin- 
ship is  agreement  in  structure,  grammar,  and  roots. 
Judged  by  this  test,  the  languages  at  present  spoken  in 
the  world  probably  fall,  as  Prof.  Friedrich  M tiller  ob- 
serves,1 into  "about  100  different  families,"  between 
which  science  can  discover  no  connection  or  relationship. 
When  we  consider  how  many  languages  have  perished 
since  man  first  appeared  on  the  globe,  we  may  gain 
some  idea  of  the  numberless  essays  and  types  of  speech 
which  have  gone  to  form  the  language-world  of  the  pre- 
sent day.  Language  is  the  reflection  of  society,  and  the 
primitive  languages  of  the  earth  were  as  infinitely  nu- 
merous as  the  communities  that  produced  them.  Here 
and  there  a  stray  waif  has  been  left  of  an  otherwise 
1  "  Grundriss  der  Sprachwissenschaft,"  i.  i.  p.  77. 


ROOTS.  33 

extinct  family  of  speech.  The  isolated  languages  of.the 
Caucasus,  or  the  Basque  of  the  Pyrenees,  have  remained 
under  the  shelter  of  their  mountain  fastnesses  to  tell  of 
whole  classes  of  speech  which  have  been  swept  away.  It 
is  but  the  other  day  that  the  last  Tasmanian  died,  and 
with  him  all  trace  of  the  four  Tasmanian  dialects  which 
our  colonists  found  on  their  arrival  in  the  island.  Etrus- 
can seems  to  be  a  language  sui  generis,  the  remnant 
probably  of  a  family  which  once  spread  over  the  present 
Tyrol  ;  and  all  that  we  know  of  Etruscan  is  contained 
in  some  three  thousand  short  inscriptions,  bristling  with 
proper  names,  and  only  half-decipherable.  "  Nature," 
said  Aristotle,  "  does  nothing  sparingly," l  and  the  myriad 
types  of  life  that  she  has  lavished  upon  the  globe  are 
but  the  analogue  and  symbol  of  the  types  of  language 
in  which  the  newly-awakened  faculty  of  speech  found  its 
first  utterance.  So  far  as  the  available  data  allow,  the 
existing  languages  of  the  world  may  be  classified  as  fol- 
lows, though  it  must  be  remembered  that  in  many  cases 
our  information  is  scanty  and  doubtful,  and  languages 
here  grouped  under  a  single  head  may  hereafter  turn  out 
to  be  distinct  and  unrelated.2 

I.  Bushman  (agglutinative    and    isolating)  : — Baroa  : 
}  Khuai  :  &c.3 

1  "Polit."i.  i. 

:  The  list  of  linguistic  families,  as  well  as  the  leading  authorities 
upon  them,  are  taken  from  Dr.  Friedrich  M tiller's  "  Grundriss  der 
Sprachwissenschaft "  (1876),  i.  I.  pp.  82-98,  with  modifications  and 
additions.  The  obelus  (f)  denotes  that  the  language  mentioned  is 
extinct. 

3  Dr.  Bleek:  in  "The  Cape  and  its  People,  and  other  Essays," 
edited  by  Prof.  Noble  (1869),  p.  269,  sq.  ;  Bleek:  "A  Brief  Account 
of  Bushman  Folklore  and  other  Texts  "  (1875) ;  Hahn  :  in  "Jahres- 

II.  D 


34  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

II.  Hottentot  (semi-inflectional): — Namaqua  :  !  Kora  : 
fCape    dialect:   Eastern    dialects.1      Perhaps   a   dialect 
spoken  near  Lake  Ngami  is  to  be  included.2 

III.  Kafir  or  Ba-ntu  (prefix-pronominal) : — 

(a).  Eastern :    Zulu  ;    Zambesi    (Barotse,     Bayeye, 

Mashona)  ;  Zanzibar  (Kisuahili,  Kinika,  Ki- 

bamba,  Kihiau,  Kipokomo). 

(/3).  Central:  Setshuana  (Sesuto,  Serolong,  Sehlapi). 
(7).  Tekeza  (Mankolosi,  Matonga,  Mahloenga). 
(£).  Western  :    Herero  ;    Bunda ;     Londa ;    Congo, 

Mpongwe,  Dikele,  Isubu,  FernandorPo,  Du- 

alla  or  Dewalla.3 

berichte  des  Vereins  fur  Erdkunde  zu  Dresden,"  vi.  and  vii.  (1870). 
pp.  71-73;  Fr.  Mliller  :  "  Grundriss  d.  Sprachw."  i.  2,  pp.  25-89; 
MS.  grammar  by  Rev.  C.  F.  Wuras,  in  Sir  G.  Grey's  Library,  Cape- 
town. 

1  Bleek  :  "  Comparative  Grammar  of  South  African  Languages  " 
(1862  and  1869);  Tindall :  "Grammar  of  Namaqua  Hottentot;" 
Wallmann  :   "Die  Formenlehre  der    Namaqua-Sprache "  (1857); 
Hahn  :  "  Die  Sprache  der  Nama"  (1870);  Fr.  Muller  :  "  Gr.  d.  W." 
i.  2,  p.  189  ;  Grammar  of  the  !  Kora  dialect  in  Appleyard  :  "  The 
Kafir  Language"  (1850),  pp.  17.  sq.  ;  vocabularies  of  Cape  Hotten- 
tot in  Witsen  (1691),  and  "Cape  Monthly  Magazine,"  Jan.  and 
Feb.  1858. 

2  This  is  Miss  Lloyd's  opinion,  who  has  heard  it  spoken.     She 
thinks  it  resembles  Namaqua. 

3  Bleek  :  "  Comp.  Gram,  of  S.  African  Lang. ;"  Brusciotto:  "Re- 
guise  quaedam  pro  Congensium  idiomatis   faciliori   captu "  (Rome, 
1659);  Appleyard:  "The  Kafir  Language"  (1850);    Bishop   Co- 
lenso  :  "Grammar  of  the  Zulu  Language"  (1859)  ;  Grout  :  "The 
Isizulu  ;  a  Grammar  of  the  Zulu   Language"  (1859)  ;  Steere  :  "A 
Handbook  of  the  Svvahili  Language"  (1870),  and  "Collections  for 
a  Handbook  of  the  Yao  Language"  (1875) ;  Archbell  :  "A  Gram- 
mar of  the  Bechuana  Language"  (1837)  ;  Clarke  :  "Introduction  to 
the  Fernandian  Tongue"  (1848)  ;  Saker  :  "Grammatical  Elements 
of  the  Dualla  Language"  (1855) ;   Krapf  :  "  Outline  of  the  Elements 
of  the  Kisuaheli  Language,  with  special  reference  to  the  Kinika 


ROOTS.  35 

IV.  Wolof1  (agglutinative): — Kayor  :  Walo  :  Dakar: 
Baol :  Gambia. 

V.  Mende    (agglutinative)  : — Mandingo  :    Bambara  : 
Susu  :  Vei  :  Kono  :  Tene  :  Gbandi  :  Landoro  :  Mende  : 
Gbese  :  Toma  :  Mano.2 

VI.  Felup    (agglutinative)  : — Felup  :    Filham  :     Bola  : 
Sarar:  Pepel :  Biafada  :  Pajade  :  Baga  :  Kallum  :  Temne: 
Bullom  :  Sherbro  :  Kisi.3 

VII.  Central-African  (isolating): — Sonrhay  :  Hausa  : 
Landoma :  Limba  :  Bulanda  :  Nalu  :  Banyum  :  Bijogo.4 

VIII.  Bornu    (agglutinative)  : — Kanuri :    Teda  :    Ka- 
nem  :  Nguru  :  Murio.5 

IX.  Kru  (agglutinative)  : — Grebo  :  Kru." 

dialect"  (1850);  Cannecattim  :  "  Collec£ao  de  Observacoes  Gram- 
maticaes  sobre  a  Lingua  Bunda  ou  Angolense"  (1805)  ;  Hahn  : 
"  Grundziige  einer  Grammatik  der  Herero-Sprache "  (1857);  Le 
Berre  :  "  Grammaire  de  la  Langue  Pongue'e  "  (1873). 

1  Dard  :  "Grammaire  Woloffe"  (1826);  Boilat :  "Grammaire 
de  la  Langue  commerciale  du  Sdndgal  ou  de  la  Langue  woloffe  " 
(1858). 

-  Steinthal,  H.  :  "Die  Mande-Neger  Sprachen  "  (1867);  Koelle : 
"Outlines  of  a  Grammar  of  the  Vei  Languages"  (1854).  [For  an 
account  of  the  Vei  syllabary  invented  by  Momoru  Doalu  Bukereor 
Mohammed  Doalu  Gunwar,  Doalu  meaning  "  Bookman,"  see 
Steinthal  :  "  Mande-Neger-Sprachen,"  p.  257,  sq.,  and  Koelle  : 
"  Outlines."] 

3  Schlenker :  "Grammar  of  the  Temne  Language"  (1864); 
Nylander:  "  Grammar  and  Vocabulary  of  the  Bullom  Language" 

(1814). 

1  Barth:  "Sammlung  central-afrikanischer  Vocabularien"  (1862- 
1866);  Schon:  "Grammar  of  the  Hausa  Language"  (1862). 

5  Kolle :  "  Grammar  of  the  Bornu  or  Kanuri  Language"  (1854) ; 
Norris  and  Richardson:  "  Grammar  of  Bornu  or  Kanuri,  with  Dia- 
logues, Vocabulary,  &c."  (1853). 

6  "  A  Brief    Grammatical  Analysis  of   the   Grebo  Language " 
(Cape  Palmas,  1838,  Svo.). 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


X.  Eve  (agglutinative) : — Eve :  Yoruba  :  Oji  or  Ash- 
anti  :  Fanti  or  Inta  :  Ga  or  Akra.1 
XL  Nubian  (agglutinative)  : — 

(a).  Fulah  or    Poul    dialects    (Futatoro,   Futajallo, 

Bondu,  Sokoto).2 
(3).  Nuba  dialects  (Tumale,  Nubi,  Dongolawi,  Kol- 

dagi,  Konjara).3 
(y).  Wakuafi:  Masai.4 

XII.  Ibo  (agglutinative)  : — Ibo  :  Nupe.5 

XIII.  Nile    Group     (agglutinative)  : — Barea  :     Bari  : 
Dinka  :  Nuer  :  Shilluk.6 

XIV.  &  XV.  Unclassified  Negro-languages  : — 
(a).  Isolating  :— Mbafu  :  Maba  :   Michi. 

(0).  Agglutinative  : — Musgu  :  Batta :  Logone  :  Ba- 
ghirmi.7 

1  Schlegel :    "  Schliissel    zur    Ewe-Sprache  "    (1857);    Bowen: 
"Grammar  and  Diet,  of  the  Yoruba  Language"  (Smithsonian  Inst. 
1858);  Crowther:  "Grammar  and  Vocabulary  of  the  Yoruba  Lan- 
guage, with  Introductory  Remarks  by  O.  E.  Vidal"  (1852)  ;  Riis  : 
"  Elemente  des  Akwapim-Dialektes  der  Odschi-Sprache"  (1853): 
Zimmermann :  "  A  Grammatical  Sketch  of  the  Akra-  or  Ga-Lan- 
guage,  with  an  Appendix  on  the  Adamme-dialect "  (1858);  Chris- 
taller:  "  Grammar  of  the  Asante  and  Fante  language"  (1876). 

2  Macbrair:  " Grammar  of  the  Fulah  Language"  (1854);  Faid- 
herbe  in  the  "  Revue  de  Linguistique  et  de  philologie  comparee," 
vii.  pp.  i<)5iseq.  (1875). 

3  Tutschek  in  the  "  Gelehrte  Anzeigen  der  k.  bayer.     Akademie 
der  Wissenschaften,"  xxv.  p.  729,  seq. 

4  Krapf :  "  Vocabulary  of  the  Enguduk  Eloikob,  spoken  by  the 
Masai  in  East  Africa"  (1857). 

5  Schon  :   "  Oku  Ibo,  Grammatical  Elements  of  the   Ibo  Lan- 
guage" (1861). 

6  Mitterutzner:  "DieDinka-SpracheinCentral-Afrika"(i866);and 
"  Die  Sprache  der  Bari  in  Central- Afrika  "  (1867);  F.  Miiller :  "  Die 
Sprache  der  Bari"  (1864);  Reinisch:  "  Die  Barea-Sprache  "  (1874). 

7  See  Barth  :  "  Sammlung  central-afrikanischer  Vocabularien  " 
(1862-6). 


ROOTS.  37 

XVI.  Hamitic  (inflectional)  : — 
(a),  f  Old  Egyptian  :l  f  Coptic.'" 

(|3).  Sub-Semitic  or  Libyan  :  f  Numidian  :3  f  Guan- 
ches  of  Canaries  :4  Berber,  Kabyle,  Tama- 
shek,  &c.4 

(7).  Ethiopian  :  Beja,  Denkali,  Somali,  Galla,  Agaii, 
Saho.5 

XVII.  Semitic"  (inflectional)  :— 

(a).  Northern  :    f  Assyro-Babylonian  ; 7    f  Phsenico- 

1  Brugsch:  "  Hieroglyphische  Grammatik"  (1872),  and  "Gram- 
maire  demotique"   (1855);    LC   Page  Renouf :  "An    Elementary 
Manual  of  the  Egyptian  Language"  (1876). 

2  Schwartze  :    "  Koptische    Grammatik"   (1850);    Revillout    in 
"  Melanges  d'Archdologie  Egyptienne  et  Assyrienne,"  ii.  2,  3,  iii.  i, 
'(1875-6);  F.Rossi:  "  Grammatica  Copto-Geroglifica  "  (1878). 

3  See   Pritchard  :    "Researches    into    the   Physical    History  of 
Mankind,"  iii.  2,  2,  p.  32  ;  and   De  Macedo  in  the  "Journal  of  the 
Royal  Geographical  Society,"  1841,  pp.  171-183. 

4  Hanoteau:  "  Essai  de  Grammaire  Kabyle"  (1858) ;  and  "Essai 
de    Grammaire   de   la   Langue    Tamachek"    (1860)  ;    Faidherbe  : 
"  Collection  complete  des  Inscriptions  numidiques,"  in  the  "  Md- 
moires   de   la   Socicte*   des    Sciences,  etc.,  de    Lille,"  viii.  p.  361 
(1870). 

5  Isenberg:  "A  small   Vocabulary  of  the   Dankali    Language" 
(1840);  Tutschek  :  "A  Dictionary  and  Grammar  of  the  Galla  Lan- 
guage" (1845);  HaleVy  :   "Essai  sur  la   Langue  agaou"  (1874); 
Munzinger  :   "  Ost-Afrikanische  Studien  "  (1864);  Pratorius  in  the 
"Z.  D.   M.  G."  xxiv.   (1870);  Pott  in  the   "  Z.  D.  M.   G."  xxiii. 
(1869). 

''  Renan:  "  Histoire  des  Langues  semitiques "  (2nd  edit.  1858); 
Castell:  "Lexicon  Heptaglotton"  (1669). 

7  Oppert :  "Grammaire  assyrienne,"  2nd  edit.  (1868);  Sayce  : 
"An  Assyrian  Grammar  for  Comparative  Purposes"  (1872),  "An 
Elementary  Assyrian  Grammar  and  Reading-book,"  2nd  edit. 
(1876),  and  "  The  Tenses  of  the  Assyrian  Verb,"  in  the  "  J.  R.  A.  S." 
Jan.  1877;  Schrader:  "Die  assyrisch-babylonischen  Keilinschrif- 
ten,"  in  the  "  Z.  D.  M.  G."  xxvi.  i,  2  (1872). 


38  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

Hebrew  j1  t  Punic  ;  Samaritan  ; 2  Aramaic 
(f  Chaldee,  f  Syriac,  f  Mandaite,  Neo- 
Syriac).3 

(£).  Southern  :  f  Gheez  (Ethiopic) ; 4  Amharic  ; 5 
Tigre  (Tigrina)  ; 6  Harari  ; 7  f  Himyaritic 
(Sabean);8  Mehri;9  f  Ehkili ; 9  Arabic;10 
fSinaitic;11  f  Safa  ; 12  Maltese.13 

I  Gesenius:  "Hebrew  Grammar,"  edit,  by  Rodiger  (Engl.  trans. 
1869);  Ewald  :  "Ausfuhrliches  Lehrbuch  der  hebraischen  Sprache 
des  Alten  Bundes,"  8th  edit.   1870;    Olshaus'en  :    "Lehrbuch  der 
hebraischen    Sprache"  (1861)  ;    Land:    "Principles   of    Hebrew 
Grammar"  (transl.  by  Poole,  1876);  Schroder:  "Die  Phonizische 
Sprache"  (1869);  Driver:  "  Use  of  the  Tenses  in  Hebrew"  (1874). 

'2  Petermann:  "  Brevis  linguae  Samaritanae  grammatica "  (1873); 
Nichols:  "Grammar  of  the  Samaritan  Language"  (1859);  Uhle- 
mann:  "  Institutiones  Linguae  Samaritanae"  (1837). 

3  Merx :  "  Grammatica  Syriaca"  (1867-70);  Hoffmann:  "Gram- 
matica Syriaca"  (1827);  Uhlemann  :  "Grammatik  der  syrischen 
Sprache"  (2nd edit.  1857);  Noldeke:  "  Grammatik  der  neu-syrisch- 
en  Sprache  am  Urmia-See  und  Kurdistan"  (1868),   and  "  Man- 
daische  Grammatik"  (1875). 

4  Ludolf:  "Grammatica  yEthiopica"  (1661);  Dillmann:  "  Gram- 
matik der  aethiopischen  Sprache"  (1857);  Schrader:  "  De  lingua 
^Ethiopica  cum  cognatis  linguis  comparata"  (1860). 

5  Isenberg  :    "Grammar  of   the   Amharic    Language"   (1842); 
Massaja:  "  Lectiones  grammaticales  pro  missionariis  quiaddiscere 
volunt  linguam  Amaricam"  (1867). 

6  Praetorius:  "  Grammatik  der  Tigrinasprache  "  (1871-2). 

7  Praetorius  in  "  Z.  D.  M.  G."  xxiii.  (1869). 

*  Prideaux:  "A  Sketch  of  Sabean  Grammar"  in  the  "  Transac- 
tions of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archaeology,"  v.  i,  2  (1877). 

9  Von  Maltzan  in  "Z.  D.  M.  G."  xxvii.  3  (1873). 

10  Wright  :  "Arabic   Grammar,"  2nd  edit.  (1874-6);    De   Sacy : 
"Grammaire  arabe,"  2nd  edit.  (1831);  Ewald:  "Grammatica  cri- 
tica  linguae  Arabicae"  (1832). 

II  Beer:  "  Inscriptiones  veteres  Litteris  et  Lingua  hue  usque  in 
cognitis  ad  montem  Sinai  servatae"  (1840-3) ;  Tuch  in  the  "Z.  D 
M.  G."xiv.  (1849). 

12  Halevy  in  the  "Z.  D.  M.  G."  xxxii.  I.  (1878). 

13  Schlienz:  "On  the  Mnltese  Language"  (1838). 


ROOTS.  39 

XVIII.  Aryan  or  Indo-European  (inflectional)  l : — 
(a).  Indian  Group  :  f  Sanskrit ; 2  f  Prakrit ; 3  t  Pali, 
Singalese  or  Elu 4  (see  under  DRAVIDIAN)  ; 
modern  vernaculars  (Bengalese,  Assamese, 
Oriya,  Nepaulese,  Kashmirian,  Scindhi,  Pun- 
jabi, Brahui,  Gujarati,  Marathi,  Hindi,  Hindu- 
stani); 5  Siyah-posh-Kafir  ; 8  Dard  ; 7  Rom- 
many  (Gipsy),  with  13  European  dialects.8 

1  Bopp :  "  Vergleichende  Grammatik  des  Sanskrit,  Zend,  Griech- 
ischen,  Lateinischen,  Lithauischen,  Altslavischen,  Gothischen  und 
Deutschen"  (1833-52,  3rd  edit.  1808-70;  English  translation  by 
Eastwick  from  the  first  edit.  1845);  Schleicher:  "Compendium  der 
vergleichend.  Grammatik  der  indo-germanischen  Sprachen  "  (1861, 
3rd  edit.  1871;  English  translation  by  Bendall,  1874). 

3  Benfey  :   "  Handbuch   der   Sanskritsprache  "  (1852-54);   Max 
Miiller :  "A  Sanskrit  Grammar  for  Beginners,"  2nd  edit.  (1870); 
Monier  Williams:  "  Practical  Grammar  of  the  Sanskrit  Language," 
3rd  edit.  (1864);  Delbriick:  "Das  altindische  Verbum"  (1874). 

*  Lassen:  "  Institutiones  linguae  Pracriticae"  (1837). 

4  Kuhn  :     Beitrage    zur    Pali-Grammatik     (1875);    Minayeff : 
"  Grammaire  Palie"  (1874);  Carter:  "Lesson-book  of  Singhalese, 
on  Ollendorf's  System"  (1873);  Lambrick:  "Sinhalese  Grammar" 

(i834). 

5  Cust :    "  A   Sketch   of  the  modern   Languages   of   the    East 
Indies"  (1878);  Beames:  "A  Comparative  Grammar  of  the  modern 
Aryan  Languages  of  India"  (1872);  Forbes:  "A  Grammar  of  the 
Bengali  Language"  (1862);  Sutton  :  "An  Introductory  Grammar 
of  the  Oriya  Language"  (1831);  Trumpp:  "  Grammar  of  the  Sindhi 
Language"  (1872);  "A  Grammar  of  the  Panjabi  Language"  (Lodi- 
ana,  1851);  Yates:  "Introduction  to  the  Hindustani   Language" 
(1845);    Garcin   de  Tassy  :    "Rudiments   de  la  Langue  hindoui" 
(1847);  Shapurji  Edalji:  "A  Grammar  of  the  Gujarati  Language" 
(1867);  "The  Student's  Manual  of  Marathi  Grammar"  (Bombay, 
1868). 

6  Trumpp  in  "Z.  D.  M.  G."  xx.  (1866). 

7  Leitner:  "Results  of  a  Tour  in  Dardistan"  (1868). 

3  Pott:  "  Die  Zigeuner  in  Europa  und  Asien  "  (1844-5);  Paspati: 
"Etudes  sur  les  Tchinghianes "  (1870);  Miklosich  :  "  Ueber  die 
Mundarten  und  Wanderungen  der  Zigeuner  Europa's"  (1872-77); 
Ascoli:  "Zigeunerisches  "  (1865). 


40  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

(P).  Iranian  Group :  f  Old  Persian  (Achaemenian)  ;* 
f  Pahlavi ; 2  Parsi ; 3  Neo-Persian  ; 4  Kurd- 
ish ; 5  Beluchi  ; 6  f  Zend  (Old  Baktrian)  ; 7 
Pukhtu  (Afghan) ; 8  Ossetian.9  Armenian  10 
is  generally  included  in  this  group. 

(y).  Keltic  Group:  Insular  (Welsh,  fCornish,  Breton,11 
Irish,  Manx,  Scotch)  ;f  Continental  (fGaulish).11 

(d).  Italian  Group :  f  Umbrian  ;12  f  Oscan ;  "  f  Latin;14 

1  Spiegel:  "Die  altpersischen   Keilinschriften "  (1862);  Kosso- 
wicz:  "  Inscriptiones  Palaeo-Persicae  "  (1872). 

2  Spiegel:  "  Grammatik  der  Huzvaresch-Sprache"  (1856);   Haug: 
"An  old  Pahlavi-Pazend  Glossary"  (1870). 

3  Spiegel:  "Grammatik  der  Parsi- Sprache"  (1851). 

4  Vullers:  "Grammatica  linguae  Persicse"  (2nd  edit.  1870). 

5  Friedrich  Miiller  :  "  Beitrage  zur  Kenntniss  der  neupersischen 
Dialekte"  in  the  "  Sitzungberichte  der  k.  Akademie  der  Wissen- 
schaften  zuWien,"  xlvi.  andxlviii.  (1864-65).;  Garzoni:  "  Grammatica 
e  Vocabulario  della  lingua  Kurda"  (1787);  Chodzko:  "  Etudes  phi- 
lologiques  sur  la  Langue  Kurde"  (1857). 

6  See  Mockler's  Grammar  of  the  Mekrani  dialect  (London,  1877). 

7  Justi:    "  Handbuch  der   Zendsprache"  (1864);    Hovelacque  : 
"Grammaire  de  la  Langue  zende"  (1872);  Haug:  "  Essays  on  the 
Parsis,"  edit,   by  West,  in   Triibner's   "Oriental   Series"  (1878); 
Bartholomae  :  "Das  altiranische  Verbum"  (1878);  Hiibschmann, 
in  Kuhn's  "Zeitschrift,"  xxiv.  4  (1878). 

8  Trumpp:   "Grammar  of  the  Pashto,  or   Language  of  the  Af- 

ghans"(i873). 

9  Sjogren:  "  Ossetische  Sprachlehre"  (1844). 

10  Petermann:  "Grammatica  linguse  Armeniacae"  (1837);  Hiibsch- 
mann, in  Kuhn's  "  Zeitschrift,"  xxiii.  i,  3  (1877) ;  Cirbied:   "  Gram- 
maire de  la  Langue  arme'nienne"  (1823). 

11  Zeuss:  "  Grammatica  Celtica  "  (2nd  edit.  1871);  Rhys:  "Lec- 
tures on  Welsh  Philology  "  (2nd  edit.  1879). 

12  Aufrecht  and  Kirchhoff:  "  Die  umbrischen  Sprachdenkmaler  " 
(1849-51);  Brdal:  "  Les  Tables  Engubines"  (1875). 

13  Bruppacher  :  "  Oskische   Lautlehre  "  (1869);  Enderis:  "  Ver- 
such  einer  Formenlehre  der  oskischen  Sprache"  (1871). 

14  Corssen  :  "  Ueber  Ausprache,  Vokalismus  und   Betonung  der 


ROOTS,  41 

Neo-Latin  or  Romanic  (Italian,  Sardinian, 
Gallo-italic,  French,  Provengal,  Catalan, 
Spanish,  Portuguese,  Rumansh,  Friulian, 
Rumanian)  ; ]  f  Messapian  (lapygian).2 

(E).  Thrako-Illyrian  Group  :  |  Thrakian  ; 3  Alba- 
nian.4 

(£).  Hellenic  Group  :  f  Phrygian  ; 5  f  Greek  ; 6  Mo- 
dern Greek.7 

lateinischen  Sprache"  (2nd  edit.  1868-70);  and  "  Kritische  Beitrage 
zur  lateinischen  Formenlehre  "  (1863-66);  Draeger:  "  Historische 
Syntax  der  lateinischen  Sprache"  (1874-8);  Roby:  "A  Grammar 
of  the  Latin  Language"  (1872-4). 

1  Diez  :  "  Grammatik  der  romanischen  Sprachen"  (1836,  3rd 
edit.  1870)  and  "  Etymologisches  Wb'rterbuch  der  romanischen 
Sprachen"  (1853)  (4th  edition  with  additions  by  Scheler,  1878); 
Prince  L-L.  Bonaparte:  "Remarques  sur  les  Dialectes  de  la  Corse" 
(1877);  Lemcke's  "  Jahrbuch  fiir  romanische  und  englische  Litera- 
tur,"  since  1860;  Boehmer's  "Romanische  Studien,"  since  1871; 
"Revue  des  Langues  romanes,"  since  1870;  "Romania,"  since 
1872;  "  Rivista  di  filologia  romanza,"  since  1872;  Ascoli  :  "  Archivio 
glottologico  italiano,"  since  1873  ;  Brachet:  "  Grammaire  historique 
de  la  Langue  franchise"  (1873);  Littre*:  "  Histoire  de  la  Langue 
frangaise"  (1863). 

1  Mommsen:  "Die  unteritalischen  Dialekte"  (1850). 

3 'Bottcher:  "Arica"  (1851)  [Lagarde:  "  Gesammelte  Abhand- 
lungen,"  1866]. 

1  Von  Hahn:  "  Albanesische  Studien  "  (1853);  Camarda:  "  Sag- 
gio  di  grammatologia  comparata  della  lingua  Albanese"  (1864-7)  '•> 
Dozon  :  "  Manuel  dela  Langue  Chkipe  ou  albanaise"  (1878). 

5  Fick:  "Die  ehemalige  Spracheinheit  Europa's  "  (1873). 

s  Georg  Curtius:  "  Grundziige  der  griechischen  Etymologic" 
(1858,  4th  edit.  1874,  English  translation  by  Wilkins  and  England), 
and  "Das  Verbum  der  griechischen  Sprache"  (1873-6);  Leo  Meyer: 
"  Vergleichende  Grammatik  der  griechischen  und  lateinischen 
Sprache "(1861-5);  Ku'hner:  "  Ausfuhrliche  Grammatik  der  griech- 
ischen Sprache"  (1869-72). 

7  Mullach  :  "  Grammatik  der  griechischen  Vulgarsprache  " 
(1856). 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


(>i).  Letto-Slavonic  :  (i)  Slavic:1  t  Old  Slavonic 
(Church  Slavonic)  ; 2  Bulgarian  ;  Russian  ; 
Servian  ;  Slovene  ;  Slovak  ;  Polish  ;  Polabic 
(Cassubian) ;  f  Wend  ;  (2)  Lettic  :  f  Old 
Prussian  ; 3  Lithuanian  ; 4  Lett.5 

(S).  Teutonic  Group:  (i)  f  Gothic;6  Low  German 
(Old,  Middle,  and  New);  f  Anglo-Saxon  ; ' 
English  ;  Frisian  ;  Dutch  ;  (2)  High  German 
(Old,  Middle,  and  New);8  (3)  f  Old  Norse;9 
Icelandic  ; 10  Swedish  ;  Danish  ;  Norwegian. 
XIX.  f  Etruscan  (agglutinative).11 

1  Miklosich  :      "  Vergleichende     Grammatik    der     Slavischen 
Sprachen"  (1852-76),  and  "Altslovenische  Formenlehre"  (1874). 

2  Schleicher:  "Die  Formenlehre  der  kirchenslawischen  Sprache" 
(1852);    Chodzko  :   "  Grammaire    paldo-slave  "   (1869);    Leskien  : 
"  Handbuch  der  altbulgarischen  Sprache"  (1871). 

3  Pauli:  "  Preussische  Studien,"  in  Kuhn's  "  Beitrage,"  vi.  and  vii. 

4  Schleicher:  "  Handbuch  der  litauischen  Sprache"  (1856-7). 

3  Bielenstein  :  "  Die  lettische  Sprache  nach  ihren  Lauten  und 
Formen"  (1863-4),  and  "Handbuch  der  lettischen  Sprache3'  (1863). 

6  Leo  Meyer:  "Die  gothische  Sprache"  (1869);  Stamm:  "  Ul- 
philas"   (4th  edit,   by   Heyne,    1869);    Holtzmann:    "Altdeutsche 
Grammatik,  umfassend   die  gotische,  altnordische,  altsachsische, 
angelsachsische  und  althochdeutsche  Sprachen"   (1870);  Helfen- 
stein  :    "A  Comparative   Grammar   of  the   Teutonic  Languages" 
(1870) ;  "  Zeitschrift  fiir  deutsche  Philologie,"  since  1869 ;  "Archiv  fur 
die  Geschichte  der  deutschen  Sprache  und  Dichtung,"  since  1873. 

7  March:  "A  Comparative  Grammar  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Lan- 
guage" (1870);  Sweet:  "An  Anglo-Saxon  Reader"  (1876). 

8  Schleicher:  "Die  deutsche  Sprache"  (3rd  edit.  1874);  Wein- 
hold:  "Grammatik  der  deutschen  Mundarten"  (1863-67);  Scherer: 
"Zur  Geschichte  der  deutschen  Sprache"  (2nd  edit.  1878). 

'  Wimmer:  "  Oldnordisk  formlaere  til  Brug  ved  Undewisnung 
og  Selvstudium"  (1870);  (translated  by  Sievers :  "Altnordische 
Grammatik,"  1871). 

10  Cleaseby-Vigfusson :  "An  Icelandic-English  Dictionary,  chiefly 
founded  on  the  Collections  made  from  prose-works  of  the  Twelfth 
to  the  Fourteenth  Centuries"  (1869-76). 

11  Deecke:  "  Corssen  und  die  Sprache  der  Etrusker''  (1875), 


ROOTS.  43 

. 

XX.  Basque  (Eskuara),  (incorporating).1 
XXL  Turanian  or  Ural-Altaic  (Ugro-Altaic)  (aggluti- 
native) : 2 — 

(i).  f  West- Asia  Group  : — 

(a),  t  Accadian  or  Sumerian.3 
(/3).  t  Susianian,  f  Kossaean  :  f  Protomedic.4 
(2).  Uralic  Group  :s — 

(a).  Tchudic  : — (a).  Finnish   or    Suomi,6   Vepse    or 
Old     Tchude,7     Vote,8      Karelian :     Estho- 

"Etruskische  Forschungen,"  3  pts.  (1876-79);    K.  O.  Miiller:  "  Die 
Etrusker,"  ed.  by  Deecke  (1875-7). 

1  Prince  L-L.  Bonaparte  :  "  Le  Verbe  basque  en  tableaux,  ac- 
compagne^  de  notes  grammaticales,  selon  les  huit  dialectes  de  1'En- 
skara"  (1869);  Van   Eys  :  "  Essai  de  Grammaire  de  la  Langue 
basque,"  2nd  edit.  (1867),  and  particularly  "Grammaire  compare'e 
des  Dialectes  basques"  (1879);  "Ribdry:  "Essai  sur  la  Langue 
basque,"  translated  with  notes,  &c.,  by  Vinson  (1877). 

2  Max  Miiller  on  the  "Last  Results  of  the  Turanian  Researches," 
in  Bunsen's  "  Outlines  of  the  Philosophy  of  Universal  History," 
vol.  i.  pp.  263-520. 

3  Sayce  :  in  the  "Journal  of  Philology,"  iii.  5  (1870),  and  the 
"Transactions  of  the  Philological  Society,"  pt.  i  (1877)  ("Accadian 
Phonology");  Fr.  Lenormant:  "  Etudes  accadiennes"  (1873),  and 
"  La  Langue  primitive  de  la  Chaldee"  (1875). 

4  Sayce:  in  the  u  Transactions  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archaeo- 
logy," iii.  2  ( 1 874)  ("  The  Languages  of  the  Cuneiform  Inscriptions 
of  Elam  and  Media"). 

5  Boiler:  "Die  finnischen  Sprachen  "  in  the  "  Berichte  der  k. 
Akad.  zu  Wien,"  x.  i  (1853);  Thomsen:  "  Ueber  den  Einfluss  der 
germanischen    Sprachen    auf  die    finnischen-lappischen    (1870)  ; 
Weske :    "  Untersuchungen   zur    vergleichenden   Grammatik    des 
finnischen  Sprachstammes"  (1873);  De  Ujfalvy,  in  the  "Revue  de 
Philologie  et  d'Ethnographie,"  i.  I,  2  (1874-5). 

6  Euren  :  "  Finsk  Spraklara"  (1869);  Strahlmann  :  "  Finnische 
Sprachlehre"  (1816)  ;  Kellgren:   "Die  Grundziige  der  finnischen 
Sprachen  mit  Riicksicht  auf  die  anderri  altaischen  Sprachen"  (1847). 

7  Lonnrot:  "Om  det  nord-tschudiska  Spraket"  (1863). 

8  Ahlqvist:  "Wotisk  Grammatik,"  in  the  "Transactions  of  the 
Finnish  Society,"  v.  (1855). 


44  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

nian,1    Krevingian  :    Livonian,2    f  Dialect  of 
Salis.    (b).  Lapp.3 

(|3).  Permian  : — (a).  Permian,  Zyrianian.4  (b).  Votiak." 
(7).  Volgaic: — (a).  Tcheremiss  :6  (b).  Mordvin  (Ersa 

and  Moksha).7 
(o).  Uigur:—  (a).  Magyar.8    (b).    Vogul.9    (c).  (Oloi) 

Ostiak.10 

(3).  Samoied   Group  :" — Yurak  :   Tawgy  :  Ostiak-Sa 
moied  :  Yenissei-Samoied  :   Kamassin. 


1  Ahrens:  "  Grammatik  der  esthnischen  Sprache  revalschen  Dia 
lektes"  (1853);  Wiedemann:  "  Versuch  ueber  den  werro-esthnischen 
Dialekt "  in  the  "  Memoires  de  1' Academic  des  Sciences  de  St.  Pe- 
tersbourg,"  vii.  (1864);  Hupel :  "  Ehsthnische  Sprachlehre  "  (1780). 

2  Sjogren:  "  Livische  Grammatik"  (1861). 

3  Ganander  :  "  Grammatica   Lapponica  "  (1743);  Friis  :  "  Lap- 
pisk  Grammatik"  (1856);  Lonnrot:  "Ueber  den  Enare-Lappischen 
Dialekt,"  in  the  "  Actes  de  la  Societe  scientifique  finnoise,"  iv.  (1854); 
Budenz  (Bezzenberger's  "  Beitrage,"  iv.  1878)  dissociates  Lapp  from 
Finn,  and  classifies  the   Ugrian   group  as  follows  : — (i).    North- 
Ugrian  :  Lapp,  Wotiak  and  Zyrianian,  Magyar,  Wogul  and  Ostiak. 
(2).  South- Ugrian:  Tcheremiss,  Mordvin,  Finnish. 

4  Castre'n  :  "Elementa  grammatices  Syrjasnas"  (1844);  Wiede- 
mann:   "Versuch  einer   Grammatik  der  Syrjanischen    Sprache" 
(1847). 

5  Wiedemann:  "  Grammatik  der  votjakischen  Sprache  "  (1851). 

6  Castren:    "Elementa    grammatices    Tscheremissae "    (1845); 
Wiedemann  :  "  Versuch   einer  Grammatik  der  tscheremissischen 
Sprache"  (1847). 

7  Wiedemann:  "Grammatik  der  Ersa-mordvinischen  Sprache" 
(1865);  Ahlgvist:  "Versuch  einer  Mokscha-mordvinischen  Gram- 
matik" (i  86 1). 

8  Riedl:  "  Magyarische  Grammatik"  (1858);  Fauvin:  "Essaid 
Grammaire  hongroise"  (1870). 

9  Hunfaivy:  "  Kondai  vogul  nyelv  "  (1872). 

10  Castren:  "Versuch  einer  ostjakischen   Sprachlehre"   (1849 
edited  by  Schiefner  (1858). 

11  Castren:  Grammatik  der  Samojedischen  Sprachen,"  edited  b 
Schiefner  (1854). 


ROOTS.  45 

{4).  Turkish-Tatar  Group  :' — 
(a).  Yakute.2 
(j3).  Uigur:3    Komanian :    Tchagatai:4  Turkoman: 

Usbek  :  Kazan. 

(7).  Nogai :    Kumu'k  :     Bashkir  :    Kirgish  :     Tshu- 
wash  : 5     Karachai :     Karakalpak  :     Mesch- 
cheryak. 
(5).  West  Turkish  (of  Durbend,  Aderbijan,  Krimea, 

Anatolia  and  Rumelia  =  Osmanli).6 
(5).  Mongol : — 

(a).  East  Mongol  (Sharra,  Khalkha,  Sharaigol).7 
(/3).  Kalmuk  (Shoshot  or  Kokonur,  Dsungur,  Tor- 
god,  Diirbek,  Aimak).8 
(7).   Buriat.9 
(6).  Tungusian  : — 

(a).  Tunguse  (Chapogire,  Orotong,  Nyertchinsk).10 
(£).  Mantchu  (and  Lamute  and  Yakutsk).11 

1  Schott:  "Altajische  Studien"  (1867-72). 

2  Bohtlingk  :  "  Ueber  die  Sprache  der  Jakuten  "  (1851). 
J  Vambery:  "  Uigurische  Sprachmonumente"  (1870). 

4  Vambery:  "  Chagataische  Sprachstudien  "  (1867). 

5  Schott:  "  De  lingua  Tschuwaschorum  dissertatio  "  (Berlin).— 
See  Radloff:  "  Die  Sprachen  der  tiirkischen  stamme  Siid-Siberiens : 
die  Dialekte    der  Altajer  u.  Teleuten,    Lebed-Tataren,    Schoren 
und  Sojonen"  (1866). 

8  Kasem-Beg :  "Allgemeine  Grammatik  der  Tiirkisch-tata- 
rischen  Sprache,"  translated  by  Zenker  (1848);  Barker:  "Read- 
ing-book of  the  Turkish  Language,  with  Grammar  and  Vocabu- 
lary" (1854);  Redhouse:  "  Grammaire  de  la  Langue  ottomane " 
(1846). 

7  Schmidt:  "Grammatik  der  mongolischen  Sprache"  (1831). 

8  Zwick:  "Grammatik  der  westmongolischen  Sprache"  (1851). 

9  Castren:  "  Versuch  einer  biirjatischen  Sprachlehre"  (1857). 

0  Castren:  "Grundziige  einer  tungusischen  Sprachlehre"  (1856). 

1  Adam:  "Grammaire  de  la  Langue  mandchou  "  (1873);  Von 
der  Gabelentz:  "EleVnens  de  la  Grammaire  mandchou."  (1833). 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  L. 


Telugu  :4 


?  Japanese  and  Loo-choo.1 
XXII.  Dravidian2  (agglutinative):  —  Tamil: 
Tulu  :5    Canarese:6   Malayalam:7   Toda  :  8    Kudagu  or 
Coorg:9  Khond  or  Ku  :  Badaga  :  Kota  :  Uraon  or  Dhan- 
gar:  Rajmuhali  or  Maler  :  Gond.10 

Elu  (Singhalese),11  though  ordinarily  placed  here,  is 
rather  an  Aryan  language.    [See  under  XVIII. 


XXIII.  Kolarian  (agglutinative)  :—  Santhal  :  12  Mun- 
dari13  (Bhomij  ;  Ho  or  Kole)  :  Kharia:  Juar\g  :  Korwa  : 
Kur  and  Kurku  :  Savara  :  Mehto. 


1  Hoffmann:    "A  Japanese   Grammar,"   2nd   edit.   (1876);    de 
Rosny:  "  Premiers  Elemens  de  la  Grammaire  japonaise    (langue 
vulgaire)"  (1873);  Hall:  "Voyage  of  Discovery  to  West  Coast  of 
Corea  and  the  Great  Loo-choo  Island,  with  a  Vocabulary  of  the 
Loo-Choo  Language  by  Clifford"  (1818). 

2  Caldwell  :   "A  Comparative    Grammar  of  the   Dravidian  or 
South-Indian  family  of  Languages  "  (2nd  edit.  1876). 

3  Graul:  "  Outlines  of  Tamil  Grammar"  (1855). 

4  Brown  :  "A  Grammar  of  the  Telugu  Language  "  (2nd  edit.  1857). 

5  Brigel:  "A  Grammar  of  the  Tulu  Language"  (1872). 

6  Hodgson:  "An  Elementary  Grammar  of  the  Kannada  or  Ca- 
narese Language"  (2nd  edit.  1864). 

7  Peet:  "A  Grammar  of  the  Malayalim  Language"  (1841). 

8  Pope:  "A  brief  Outline  of  the  Grammar  of  the  Toda  Language  " 
in  Marshall's  "  Phrenologist  among  the  Todas"  (1873,  P-  24!)- 

9  Cole  :  "An   Elementary  Grammar  of  the  Coorg  Language" 
(1867). 

10  Driberg  and  Harrison:  "Narrative  of  a  Second  Visit  to  the 
Gonds  of  the  Nerbudda  Territory,  with  a  Grammar  and  Vocabulary 
of  their  Language"  (1849). 

11  De  Alwis:  "The  Sidath  Sangarawa,  a  Grammar  of  the  Singha- 
lese Language"  (1852)  ;  Chater  :  "  A  Grammar  of  the  Singhalese 
Language"  (1815). 

12  Skrefsrud:  "A  Grammar  of  the  Santhal  Language"  (1873). 

13  Brandreth  in  the  "  Journal  of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society,"  x.  I 
(1877),  pp.  7,  8. 


ROOTS.  47 

XXIV.  Tibeto-Burman  x  (isolating):— 

(i).  Nepaul  Group: — Sunwar :  Gurung  and  Murmi  : 
Magar:2  Kusunda:  Chepang :  Pahri  :  Newar : 
Bhramu  :  Kiranti  :  Vayu  :3  Limbu. 

(2).  Sikhim  : — Lepcha.1 

(3).  Assam  Group  : — Dhimal  : '  Kachari  or  Bodo  : 5 
Aka  :  Deoria-Chutia  :  Dophla  :  Miri :  Abor  : 
Mishmi  :  Singpho  or  Kakhyen  :  Naga  :  Mikir: 
Garo:'1  Pani-Koch  (?).' 

(4).  Munipur-Chittagong  Group  : — Munipuri :  Liyang 
or  Koreng  :  Maring  :  Maram  :  Kapui :  Tang- 
khul :  Luhupa  :  Tipura  or  Mrung  :  Kuki :  Lu- 
shai  :  Shendu :  Banjogi  :  Sak  :  Kyau. 

(5).  Burma  Group  : — Burmese  (Mugh  or  Rakheng)  : T 
Khyen  :  Kumi  :  Mru  :  Karen  :8  Kui  :  Kho  : 
Mu-tse. 

(6).  Trans- Himalayan  Group  : — Gyarung  :  Changlo  : 
Thochu  :  Manyak  :  Takpa  :  Horpa  :  Kunawari : 
Tibetan  or  Bhotiya9  (Sarpa  :  Llopaor  Bhutani). 

(7).  China  Group  : — Lolu  :  Mautse  :  Lisavv. 

1  Brandreth:  I.e.  pp.  9-25. 

-  Beames:  "The  Magar  Language  of  Nepaul"  (1869)  ;  Hodgson  r 
"  Essays  on  the  Languages,  Literature,  and  Religion  of  Nepal  and 
Tibet  "(1874). 

3  Hodgson:  "  Grammar  of  the  Vaya  Language"  (1857). 

4  See  "  Journal  of  the  Asiatic  Society  of  Bengal,"  vol.  ix. 

5  Hodgson:  "On  the  Kocch,  Bodo,  and  Dhimal  Tribes,  including 
Vocabulary,  Grammar,  &c."  (1847). 

6  See  Robinson:  "Assam"  (1841). 

7  Judson  :    "Grammar  of   the    Burmese    Language"     (1866); 
Chase:  "Anglo-Burmese   Handbook"  (1852);  Latter:  "Burmese 
Grammar"  (1845). 

*  Wade:  "  Grammar  of  the  Karen  Language"  (1861). 

9  Csoma  de   Koros  :    "  Grammar  of   the   Tibetan   Language " 
(1834);  Schmidt:  "  Grammatik  der  tibetischen  Sprache"  (1839); 


48 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


XXV.  Thai  or  Tai1  (isolating)  : — Siamese  or  Thai:2 
Lao  :3    Shan  :    Ahom  :    Khamti :    Aiton  :    Tai-Mow   or 
Miau-tsi  dialects  (China).4 

XXVI.  Mon-Anam5  (isolating) : — Mon,  or  Talain,  or 
Peguan:6  Kambojan  :7   Annamite  or    Cochin-Chinese  :s 
Paloung  :  dialects  of  the  tribes  beyond  the  river  Mekong. 

XXVII.  Khasi9   (isolating)  :— Khasi,  Synteng,  Batoa, 
Amwee,  Lakadong. 

XXVIII.  Chinese10  (isolating): — Amoy,11  Cantonese  or 
Kong,  Foochow,  Punti,  Shanghai,12  Mandarin.13 

.  XXIX.  Corean:14  (?)  Gilyak. 
XXX.  tLycian15  (inflectional). 

Jaeschke :  "  A  short  practical  Grammar  of  the  Tibetan  Language  " 
(1865);  Foucaux:  "  Grammaire  de  la  Langue  tibe'taine"  (1859). 

1  Brandreth:  /.  c.  pp.  27,  28. 

2  Pallegoix:  "  Grammatica  linguae  Thai"  (1850). 

3  See  "Journal  of  the  Asiatic  Soc.  of  Bengal"  (1837). 

4  Edkins:  "  The  Miau-tsi  Tribes"  (1870). 
*  Brandreth:  /.  c.  pp.  28-30. 

6  Haswell:  "  Peguan  Grammar  "( 1 876). 

'  Janneau  :  "  Manuel  pratique  de  la  Langue  cambodienne " 
(very  rare).  , 

8  Aubaret:  "  Grammaire  de  la  Langue  annamite"  (1864). 

'  Brandreth:  /.  c.  pp.  25-27;  Schott:  "Die  Cassia-Sprache,"  in 
the  "Abhandlungen  der  k.  Akad.  der  Wissensch.  in  Berlin"  (1859). 
These  groups  from  XXII.  to  XXVII.  with  their  literature  are 
treated  by  Cust :  "  The  Modern  Languages  of  the  East  Indies  "  (1878). 

10  Endlicher  :  "  Anfangsgriinde  der  Chinesischen   Grammatik " 
(1845);  Schott:  "Chinesische  Sprachlehre"  (1857);  Stanislas  Julien: 
*'  Syntaxe  nouvelle  de  la  Langue  chinoise  "  (1869);  Edkins:  "In- 
troduction to  the  Study  of  the  Chinese  Characters  "  (1876). 

11  Macgowan:  "  Manual  of  the  Amoy  Dialect"  (1869). 

12  Edkins:  "Grammar  of  the  Shanghai  Dialect"  (1868). 

13  Edkins:  "Grammar  of  the  Mandarin  Dialect "  (2nd  edit.  1864). 

14  De  Rosny:  "Apergu  de  la  langue  core'enne  "  (1864). 

15  Moriz  Schmidt :  "The  Lycian  Inscriptions  after  the  accurate 
copies  of  Aug.  Schonborn"  (1869). 


ROOTS.  49 

XXXI.  Lesghic    (inflectional):  —  Lesghian  :    Avar:1 
Andi :  Dido  :  Kasikumiik  :  Akush  :  (?)  Kyra. 

XXXII.  Ude2  (agglutinative). 

XXXIII.  Circassian  (prefix-agglutinative  and  incorpo- 
rating) : — Abkhas  or  Absne  :  Cherkess  :s  Bzyb  :  Adige. 

XXXIV.  Thushian    (inflectional) :  — Thush  :4    Chet- 
chenz,4  or  Kistic,  or  Mizhdzedzhi :  Arshte  or  Aristoiai  : 
Ingush  or  Lamur. 

XXXV.  Alarodian    (inflectional) : — |  Vannic,5    Geor- 
gian :6  Lazian  :7  Mingrelian  :7  Suanian.7 

XXXVI.  Malayo-Polynesian  (agglutinative)  :8 — 
(i).  Malayan  Group  : — 

(a).  Philippine  dialects   (Tagala,    Zebuana,  Bisaya, 
Pampanga,   Ilocana,  Bicol) : 9   Mariana  (La- 

1  Schiefner :  "  Versuch  iiber  das  Avarische,"  in  the  "  Mdmoires 
de  1' Academic  des  Sciences  de  St.  Pdtersbourg,"  v.  8  (1862). 

2  Schiefner:  "Versuch  iiber  der  Uden,"  in  the  "  Me'moires  de 
PAcade'mie  des  Sciences  de  St.  Pe"tersbourg,"  vi.  8  (1863);  Fr.  Le- 
normant:  "  La  Langue  primitive  de  la  Chalde'e,"  pp.  424-5. 

3  Schiefner:  "  Bericht  iiber  des  Generals  Baron  Peter  von  Uslar 
abchasische  Studien,"  in  the  "  Me'moires  de  1'Acaddmie  de  St.  Pdters- 
bourg,"  vi.  12(1863);  Rosen:  "Ossetische  Sprachlehre  nebst  einer 
Abhandlung  iiber  das  Mingrelische,  Suanische  und  Abchasische," 
in  "Abhandl.  Berlin.  Akad.  (1845). 

4  Schiefner:  "Versuch  iiber  die  Thush-Sprache,"  in  the  "  Mdm. 
etc."  vi.  9  (1856),  and  "  Tchetschenzische  Studien,"  in  the  "  M6- 
moires,"  vii.  5  (1864). 

5  Schulz  in  the  "Journal  Asiatique,"  3rd  ser.  ix.  (1828);  Fr.  Le- 
normant  :  "  Lettres  Assyriologiques,"  i.  2  (1871) ;  Sayce,  in  Kuhn's 
"  Zeitschrift,"  xxiii.  4  (1877). 

6  Brosset:  "Elements  de  la  Langue  georgienne"  (1837). 

7  Rosen  :  "  Sprache  der  Lazen  "  (1847),  in  the  "Abhandlungen  der 
Berlin.  Akademie."     See  also  his  "  Ossetische  Sprachlehre  "  (1845). 

8  Friedrich  Miiller:  "Reise  der  oesterr.  Fregatte  Novaraum  die 
Erde:  Linguistischer  Theil"  (1867),  pp.  267,  sq. 

9  Totanes:  "Arte  de  la  Lengua  Tagala,"  3rd  edit.  (1850);  Men- 
trida:  "Arte  de  la  Lengua  Bisaya  Hiliguayna"  (1818);  Bergano: 

II.  E 


50  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

drone)  Islands  dialects  :  Molucca  Islands  : 
Timur  Islands  (Bima,  Endeh,  Solor  and 
Allor,  Sumba,  Timurese,  Teto,  Kissa,  Savoe, 
Rotti) :  Malagas!  :l  Formosa  dialects.2 
(/3).  Malayo-Javanese  (Malay,3  Achinese,  Batak, 
Rejang,  Lampong,  Javan  or  f  Kawi,4  Sun- 
da,5  Madurese,6  Balinese,7  Sassak,  Bugis, 
Bouton,  Makassar,8  Alfurian,9  Dayak  [Bor- 
neo],10 Kyan). 

"Arte  de  la  Lengua  Pampaga,"  2nd  edit.  (1736);  Lopez:  "  Com- 
pendio  y  Methodo  de  la  Suma  de  las  Reglas  del  Arte  Ydioma  Ylo- 
cano  "  (1792);  "Arte  de  Langua  Zebuana"  (616  pp.  undated  ;  very 
rare);  Fausto  de  Cuevas  :  "Arte  nuevo  de  la  Lengua  Ybanag" 
(1826);  SanAugustin:  "Arte  de  la  Langua  Bicol"  (1795). 

1  Kessler:  "An  Introduction  to  the  Language  and  Literature  of 
Madagascar"  (1870);  Dalmond:  "  Vocabulaire  et  Grammaire  pour 
les  Langues  Malgaches,  Sakalave,  et  Betsimitsara"  (1842).    See  Cou- 
sins, in  the  "Transactions  of  the  Philological  Society,"  pt.  2  (1878). 

2  H.  C.  von  der  Gabelentz  in  the  "  Z.  D.  M.  G."  xiii.  (1859) ; 
Happart  :  "  Dictionary  of  the  Favorlang  Dialect  of  the  Formosan 
Language  written  in  1650,"  translated  by  W.  Medhurst  (1840). 

3  De  Hollander:  "  Handleiding  bij  de  beoefening  der  Maleische 
taal-en  letterkunde  "  (1856);  Marsden:  "A  Grammar  of  the  Malayan 
Language"  (1812). — Van  der  Tuuk:  "  Bataksch  Leesboek  bevattende 
stukken  in  het  Tobasch,  Mandailingsch  en  Dairisch  "  (1860-2),  and 
"  Kurzer  Abriss  einer  Batta'schen  Formenlehre  in  Toba-dialekte," 
translated  by  Schreiber  (1867). 

4  De  Hollander:  "  Handleiding  bij  de  beoefening  der  Javansche 
taal-en  letterkunde"  (1848);  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt:  "  Ueber  die 
Kawi-Sprache  auf  der  Insel  Java"  (1836-9). 

5  Coolsma:  "  Handleiding  bij  de  beoefening  der  Soendaneesche 
taal  »(i  873). 

6  Vreede:    "  Handleiding  tot  de  beoefening  der  Madoeresche 
taal  "(1874). 

7  Van  Eck:  "  Beknopte  Handleiding  bij  de  beoefening  van  de 
Balineesche  taal"  (1874). 

8  Matthes:  "  Makassaarsche  Sprackkunst"  (1858). 

9  Niemann:  "  Bijdragen  tot  de  kennis  der  Alfoersche  taal  in  de 
Minahasa"  (1866). 

Hardeland  :   "  Versuch    einer   Grammatik  der  Dajackschen 


10 


ROOTS.  51 

(2).  Polynesian  Group  :'— Samoan  :2  Tongan  : 3  Ma- 
ori4 [New  Zealand]:  Tahitian:5  Raroton- 
gan : 6  Hawaiian:7  Marquesan;8  Easter  Is- 

Sprache"  (1858);  H.  C.  von  der  Gabelentz  :  "  Grammatik  der  Da- 
jak-Sprache"  (1852). 

1  Mr.  Whitmee  is  preparing  a  "  Comparative   Dictionary  and 
Grammar  of  the  Polynesian  Languages,"  to  be  published  by  Messrs. 
Triibner  and  Co.,  of  which  the  "  Samoan  Grammar"  by  Mr.  Pratt 
(2nd  edit.)  has  already  appeared.     See  also  "  United  States  Ex- 
ploring Expedition  during  the  years   1838-42  :  Ethnography  and 
Philology,"  vol.  vii.  by  Hor.  Hale. 

2  Pratt:  /.  c.  (ist  edit.  1862,  2nd  edit.  1878). 

3  West:  "Ten  years  in  South-Central  Polynesia "  (Grammar  in 
App.)  (1865). 

*  Maunsell :  "  Grammar  of  the  New  Zealand  Language,"  2nd 
edit.  (1862);  Kendall:  "A  Grammar  and  Vocabulary  of  the  Lan- 
guage of  New  Zealand"  (1820). 

5  Davies:  "A  Grammar  of  the  Tahitian  Dialect  of  the  Polyne- 
sian Language"  (1823);  Gaussin:  "  Du  Dialecte  de  Tahiti,  de  celui 
des  lies  marquises  et  en  gdneralde  la  Langue  polyne'sienne"  (1853). 

6  Buzacott:  "Grammar  of  the  Rarotongan  Language"  (1854). 

7  Andrews  :  "  Hawaiian  Grammar"  (1836) ;  Alexander :  "A  short 
Synopsis  of  the  most  essential  points  in  Hawaiian  Grammar"  (1864). 

8  Buschmann :  "  Apergu  de  la  Langue  des  lies  marquises  "  (1843). 
Mr.  Whitmee  makes  the  Polynesian  linguistic  stem  as  follows  : — 


52  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

land  :    Gambier   Islands  :    Niue  :    Tokelau 
Ellice  Islands  :  Uvea. 

XXXVII.  Melanesian    (agglutinative)  : — Dialects    of 
Viti   or  Fiji,  Annatom,  Erromango,    Tana,    Mallicolo^ 
Lifu,  Baladea,  Bauro,  Gera  or  Guadalcanar,  Mota,  Dauru, 
Fate,  Api,  Pama,  Ambryn,  Vunmarama,  Yehen  or  Yen- 
gen,  Ulaua,  Mara  Ma-siki,  Anudha,  Mahaga,  &c.  (New 
Caledonia,  New  Hebrides,  New  Britain,  Loyalty,  Solo- 
mon's, and  Admiralty  Islands).1 

XXXVIII.  Papuan  (agglutinative)  :- 
(a).  Papuan  of  New  Guinea.2 

.    (|3).  Negrito  dialects  of  the  Philippines  and  Semang. 
(7).  (?)  Dialects  of  the  Mincopies  or  Andamanners.3 

XXXIX.  Anio  of  Japan,4  and  Kamchadal. 


1  See  H.  C.  von  der  Gabelentz:  "Die  melanesischen  Sprachen 
nach  ihrem  grammatischen  Bau  und  ihrer  Verwandtschaft  unter 
sich  und  mit  den  malaiisch-polynesischen  Sprachen,"  in  the  "  Ab- 
handl.  der  k.  Sachsischen  Gesellschaft  der  Wissenschaften,"  vii.  and 
xvii.  (pt.  i,  1860;  pt.  2,   1873);  Hazlewood:  "Grammar  and  Dic- 
tionary of  the  Fiji  Language  "  (Bau  dialect),  2nd  edit.,  edited  by 
Calvert  (undated). — Codrington:  "A  Sketch  of  Mota  Grammar" 
(Bank's  Islands)  (1877);  Moseley  on  the  Admiralty  Islanders  in 
the  "Journal  of  the  Anthropological  Institute,"  May,  1877. 

2  A.  B.  Meyer :    "  Ueber   die  Mafoor'sche  und   einige  andere 
Papua- Sprachen  auf  New-Guinea,"  in  the  "  Sitzungsberichte  der  k. 
Akademie  der  Wissenschaften  in  Wien,"  Ixxvii.  (1874),  pp.  299,  sg.; 
Grey  and  Bleek:  "  Handbook  of  African,  Australian,  and  Polyne- 
sian Philology"  (1858-62),  vol.  ii.;  Earl:  "The  Native  Races  of  the 
Indian  Archipelago:  Papuans"  (1853). 

3  Roepstorff :  "  Vocabulary  of  Dialects  spoken  in  the  Nicobar  and 
Andaman  Islands"  (1874). 

4  See  Pfitzmaier:  "Ueber  den  Bau  der  Aino  Sprache,"  in  the 
"  Sitzungsberichte  der  k.  Akademie  d.  Wissensch.  in  Wien,"  vii. 
(1851),  pp.  382,  sg.  (published  1852),  and  "  Kritische  Durchsicl 
von  Davidson's  Wortersammlung  der  Ainds"  (1852). 


ROOTS.  53 

XL.  Australian  (agglutinative)  : — Kamilaroi,1  &c.,  &c. 
Possibly  also  the  f  four  dialects  of  Tasmania.2 

XLI.  Unclassified  South  American  languages  (poly- 
synthetic)  : — Peschereh  or  Fuegian3  (divided  into  Ali- 
kulip  and  Tekeenika)  :  Patagonian  or  Tehuelhet  :* 
Puelche  or  Querandi  (Argentine  Republic  and  Pam- 
pas):5 Charrua  :  f  Chibcha  (language  of  the  Muisca  or 
Moska  in  New  Granada)  :6  f  Yaro  and  Guenoa :  f  Bo- 

1  Threlkeld :  "  An  Australian  Grammar,  comprehending  the  prin- 
ciples and  natural  rules  of  the  Language,  as  spoken  by  the  Abori- 
gines in  the  vicinity  of  Hunter's  River,  Lake  Macquarie,  &c.,  New 
South  Wales"  (1834);  Ridley:    "Kamilaroi  and  other  Australian 
Languages,"   2nd    edit.   (1875);    Friedrich   Miiller :    "  Reise   der 
oesterr.  Fregatte  Novara,"  iii.  (1867);  Hale  in  "  U.  S.  Exploring 
Expedition,   &c."  pp.   479-531  :    Teichelmann   and   Schuermann  : 
"  Outlines  of  a   Grammar,   Vocabulary,   and   Phraseology  of  the 
Aboriginal  Languages  of  South  Australia"  (1840);  "Australian  Lan- 
guages and  Traditions,"  in  the   "  Journal  of  the  Anthropological 
Institute,"  Feb.  1878. 

2  Milligan:  "On  the  Dialects  and  Language  of  the  Aboriginal 
Tribes  of  Tasmania,"  in  the  "  Papers  and  Proceedings  of  the  Royal 
Society  of  Tasmania,"  iii.  2  (1859);  see  also  Lhotsky  in  the  "Journal 
of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society,"  1839,  PP-  157-162. 

3  See  D'Orbigny :  "  L'Homme  ame'ricain,"  i.  pp.  412,  sg.;  Hervas: 
"Catalogo  delle  lingue  conosciute"  (1784),  p.   15;  Laet:  "Orbis 
novus  s.  descriptionis  Indiae  occidentalis   libri  xviii."  (1633),  pp. 
511,  516-18,  520.  [The  Peshereh  or  Pesherai  Indians  are  also  called 
Yakanaku,  and  are  divided  into  the  three  tribes  Kamentes,  Karai- 
kas,  and  Kennekas.]     For  a  list  and  literature  of  the  American 
languages,  see  the  exhaustive  "  Literature  of  American  Aboriginal 
Languages,"  by  H.  E.  Ludewig,  edited  by  N.  Triibner  (1858). 

4  Hale  :   "  United  States    Exploring  Expedition  :  Ethnography 
and  Philology,"  pp.  656,  sg.  (1846);  Muster:  "  Patagonians"  (1871). 

5  Hale:  pp.  653,  sg.     [The  Puelches  are  divided  into  Chechehet, 
Divihet,  and  Taluhet.] 

3  Uricoechea :  "  Grammatica,  vocabulario,  catecismo  i  confesion- 
ario  de  la  Lengua  Chibcha"  (1871);  Bern,  de  Lugo:  "  Gramaticaen 
la  Lengua  general  del  nuevo  reyno  llamada  Mosca"  (1619). 


54 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


hene  :  f  Ghana  :  Minuane  :  Kasigua  :  5 1  languages  of 
Brazil  (Adelung's  "  Mithridates,"  iii.  i.  pp.  461-469): 
f  Payagua  :  f  Lengua  :  f  Enimaga  ;  f  Yakurure  :  Machi- 
kuy  :  Mataguaya  :  Malhalae  :  Pitilaga  :  Toba  :  Yarura  : 
Ele  and  Betoi.1 

XLII.  Guaycuru-Abiponian2  (polysynthetic) : — (Guay- 
curu  spoken  between  the  Paraguay  and  the  Pilcomayo, 
Abiponian  in  the  valley  of  the  Salado)  :2  Mokobi:2 
Mbaya:3  (?)  Aquiteguedichaga :  (?)  Grato :  (?)  Ninaqui- 
guila :  (?)  Guana  (Adelung's  "  Mithridates,"  iii.  I.  pp.  473- 

477)- 

XLIII.  fArda:4  Andoa  :  Shimigac  (polysynthetic).4 
XLIV.  Araucanian    or    Moluch   of  Chili5    (polysyn- 
thetic) : — Picunche  :  Pehuenche :  Huilliche. 

XLV.  Peruvian6     (polysynthetic):  —  Quichua  :7    Ay- 


1  For  Yarura  and  Betoi  Grammar  see  Adelung:  "Mithridates," 
iii.  i,  pp.  635-47. 

a  Dobrizhoffer  :  "  Historia  de  Abiponibus  "  (1784);  grammars  in 
Adelung:  "Mithridates,"  iii.  i,  pp.  498-506. 

3  Mbaya  Grammar  in  Adelung:  "  Mithridates"  (1812),  iii.  i,  pp. 
482-488. 

4  According  to  Alcedo  spoken  on  the  Upper  Napo.  A  "Doctrina 
Christiana"   (Madrid,    1658)  and   a  "Paternoster"   are  the   only 
specimens  left  of  it.     For  the  Andoa  and  17  other  possibly  con- 
nected languages  see  Adelung:  "  Mithridates,"  iii.  i,  pp.  583-597. 

5  Havestadt:  "  Chilidugu,  sive  res  Chilenses"  (with  grammar  and 
dictionary),  (1777);  Febres:  "Arte  de  la  Lengua  general  del  Reyno 
del  Child"  (1765;  2nd  edit.  1846);  De  Valdivia:  "Arte  Grammatica, 
Vocabulario en  la  Lengua  de  Chile"  (1608);  Adelung:  "Mithridates," 
(1812),  iii.  i,  pp.  404-416. 

6  Lopez:  "  Les  Races  Aryennes  de  Pdrou"  (1872).     [Unscien- 
tific]. 

7  Von  Tschudi  :   "Die   Kechua-Sprache "    (1853);    Markham  : 
"Quichua  Grammar"  (1864)  ;  Domingo  de   S.  Thomas:  "Arte  y 
Vocabulario   en   la  Lengua  general  del  Peru  llamada   Quichua" 
(1586). 


ROOTS.  55 

mara  : l  Juracares  :  Mayoruna :  Calchaqui :  Atacama  : 
Changes  :  Conibos  : 2  (?)  Mochika  (Puquina,  and  Yunka  ; 
see  Adelung's  "  Mithridates,"  iii.  I.  pp.  548-551). 

XLVI.  Andes-languages,  or  Maipurian  (isolating) : — 
(a).  Moxa  :3    Chiquita  :3    Zamuca  :3     Panos  :    Mai- 
pur  : 4  Pacaguayra. 

(|3).  Barre  or  Pareni  :5  Baniwa  :  Tariana  :    Chima- 
noo  :  Tikuna  :  Uainamben  or  Mauhe  :  Juri. 
(7).  (?)  Salivi.6 

XLVII.  Tupi-GuaraniT  (polysynthetic) : — 
(i).  North  Guarani    or   Tupi  : — Tupinaba  :    Tupinin- 

quin :  Tuppinamba. 

(2).  Chiriguano  and  'Guarayi  (West  Guarani). 
(3).  South  Guarani. 
(4).  Omagua.8 
XLVIII.  Carib0  (polysynthetic):— Carib: 10  Aravvak:11' 

1  Bertonio:  "Arte  breve  de  la  Lengua  Aymara"  (1603-12);  Moss- 
bach:  "  Die  Inkas-Indianer  und  das  Aymara"  (1874). 

2  See  "Bulletin  de  la  Socie'te'  Gdographique  de  Paris,"  1853. 

3  Marban  :  "Arte  de  la  Lengua  Moxa"  (1701)  ;  Chiquita  and 
Zamuca  Grammars  in  Adelung:  "  Mithridates,"  iii.  i.  pp.  553-563. 

4  For  grammar  see  Adelung:  "  Mithridates,"  iii.  i,  pp.  619-23. 

5  Wallace:  "  Travels  on  the  Amazon  "  (1853). 

8  For  grammatical  notes  see  Adelung  :  "Mithridates,"  iii.  i,  pp. 
624-627. 

7  Platzmann:  "Grammatik  der  brasilianischen  Sprachen"  (1874); 
De  Montoya:  "Arte  y  Vocabulario  de  la  Lengua  Guarani"  (1640); 
Adelung:  "Mithridates,"  pp.  432-460;  De  Anchieta:  "Arte  de 
Grammatica  da  Lingoa  mais  usada  na  costa  do  Brasil"  (1595). 

*  For  grammar  see  Adelung:  "Mithridates,"  iii.  i,  pp.  606-10. 

}  Vocabulary  in  Davies  :  "History  of  the  Carriby  Islands" 
(1666);  Raymond  Breton:  "Grammaire  de  la  Langue  carai'be " 
(1668). 

0  "  Dictionnaire  Galibi,  pre'ce'de'e  d'un  essai  de  Grammaire,"  par 
"M.  D.  L.  S."  (1763);  Grammar  in  Adelung:  "Mithridates,"  iii.  i, 
pp.  685-696. 

11  Quandt:  "Arowakische  Grammatik/5  in  Schomburgk:  "Reisen 


56  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

Chayma :  Guarauna  :  Tamanaque:1  Cumana  :  Cuman- 
agota. 

XLIX.  Lule2  (in  La  Plata)  (pojysynthetic) :— Isiftene, 
Tokistine,  Oristine,  Tonocote  :  Vilela:2  (?)  Chumipy  (in 
Chaco). 

L.  Cueva  (isolating) : — Guanuca  or  Cocamua  in  Po- 
payan  :  Tule  :  Cunacuna  :  Cholo  :  Uraba  in  Darien  : 
Guaimie  or  Huaimie  in  Veraguas.3 

LI.  t  Cibuney  dialects  of  the  Antilles'  (isolating)  : — 
(?)  The  Mosquito  languages : 5  (?)  Nagranda  or  Oro- 
tina  : 6  (?)  Chorotega  :  (?)  Chontal  :  (?)  Coribici. 

LIT.  Maya     (polysynthetic) :  —  Maya  :7     Huasteca  :8 

in  Britisch-Guyana "  (1840-48);  Brinton  :  "The  Arawak  Language 
of  Guiana,"  in  "  Trans.  American  Phil.  Society  "  (Philadelphia,  New 
Ser.  xiv.  pp.  427,  sg.). 

1  Grammar  in  Adelung:  "  Mithridates,"  iii.  i,  pp.  656-66. 

2  Machoni:  "Arte  de  la  Lengua  Lule"  (1732);  Grammar  in  Ade- 
lung: "Mithridates,"  iii.  i,  pp.  510-516. 

3  Hervas:  "Catalogo  delle  Lingue"  (pp.  69-72);  Bancroft:  "Na- 
tive Races  of  the  Pacific,"  iii.  pp.  793-95  (1875). 

4  See  Adelung:  "Mithridates,"  iii.  2,  pp.  3,4;  De  Rochefort: 
"  Histoire  naturelle  et  morale  des  lies  antilles,"  ii.  ch.  10  (1665). 

5  Grammar  in  Bancroft:  "  Native  Races,"  iii.  pp.  784-790. 

6  Grammar  in  Bancroft:  "  Native  Races,"  iii.  pp.  791-793. 

7  Beltran:  "Arte  del  Idioma  Maya,"  2nd  edit.  (1859);  Gallatin  in 
the  "  Trans,  of  the  American  Ethnological  Society,"  i.  pp.  252,  sq.; 
Pimentel:  "  Cuadro  descriptive  y  comparativo  de  las  lenguas  indi- 
genas  de  Mexico"  (1862),  ii.  i;  Ruz:  "  Silabario  de  Maya"  (1845); 
Squier:  "States  of  Central  America"  (1858);  Brasseur  de  Bour- 
bourg:  "  Dictionnaire,  Grammaire  et  Chrestomathie  de  la  Langue 
Maya  "(1872);    De  Rosny:  "  L'interpre'tation  des  anciens  Textes 
Maya"  (1875). 

8  Gallatin:  /.  c.  pp.  276,  sq.\  Pimentel:  /.  c.  i.   3;  De  Olmos: 
"  Grammatica"  (1560);  De  Charencey:  "Le  Pronom  personnel  dans 
les  Idiomes  de  la  famille  Tapochulane-Huaxteque"    (1868),  and 
"  Recherches  surles  Lois  phonetiques  dans  les  Idiomes  dela  famille 


ROOTS.  57 

Quiche  :8  Kachiquel:1  Zutuhil  :2  Poconchi,  or  Pokomam  :3 
Mame  or  Zaklohpakap.3 

LI  1 1.  Mexican  (polysynthetic) : — 

(i).  fNahuatl:4  Aztec:5  Niquiran :  Tlaskaltek. 

(2).  Sonorian  :6 — 

(«).  Cahita  :  Cora  :  Tepeguana  :  Tarahumara. 

(/3).  'Opata :    Heve  (or   Endeve)  ;7  Tubar  :   Yaqui : 

Tejana  :  Ahome. 
(7).  Pima,  or  Nevome  :8  Papago. 
(3).  Kizh  :9  Netela  :9  Cahuillo:10  Chemahuevi :  Kechi. 

Mame-Huaxteque"  (1872);  Bancroft:  /.  c.  iii.  pp.  779-781 ;  Bras- 
seur  de  Bourbourg: "  Grammaire  de  la  Langue  Quiche'e-espagnole- 
frangaise,  mise  en  parall£le  avec  ses  deux  Dialectes  Cakchiquel  et 
Tzutuhil"  (1862),  and  "  Popol  Vuh,  le  livre  sacrd  et  les  mythes  de 
I'antiquite'  americaine,  avec  les  livres  heroiques  et  historiques  des 
Quiche's  "  (1861). 

1  Flores:  "Arte  de  la  Lengua  Kakchiquel"  (1753). 

*  Brasseur  de  Bourbourg:  "  Grammaire  de  la  Langue  Quiche'e" 
(1862). 

3  Larios:  "Arte  de  la  Lengua  Mame"  (1697);  Gallatin:  /.  c.  pp. 
269,  sq.  ;  Adelung  :    Poconchi  Grammar    in  Adelung  :    "  Mithri- 
dates,"  iii.  2, pp.  6-13;  Bancroft:  /.  c.  iii.  pp.  764-66. 

4  De  Olmos:  "Grammaire  de  la  langue  Nahuatl"  (1547),  edited 
with  notes  by  Remi  Simeon  (1875). 

5  Carochi :  "  Arte  de  la  Lengua  Mexicana"  (1645)  >  De  Arenas  : 
"  Guide  de  la  Conversation  en  trois  Langues,  frangais,  espagnol  et 
mexicain"  (1862);  De  Charencey:  "  Notice  sur  quelques  families 
de  Langues  du  Mexique"  (1878). 

6  Buschmann:  "Die  Sonorischen  Sprachen,"  in  the  "  Abhand- 
lungen  der  k.  Akademie  der Wissensch.  in  Berlin"  (1863,  et  seq.}; 
Grammars  in  Bancroft:  "  Native  Races,"  iii.  ch.  viii. 

7  Buckingham  Smith:  "Grammatical  Sketch  of  the  Heve  Lan- 
guage" (1862);  JOpata  grammar  in  Bancroft:  /.  c.  iii.  pp.  702-4. 

8  B.  Smith:  "Grammar  of  the  Pima"  (1862),  in  Shea's  "Library 
of  American  Linguistics,"  v. 

9  Buschmann:  "  Die  Sprachen  Kizh  und  Netela"  (1856). 

10  "  Pacific  R.  Reports,"  vol.  ii.  (1855). 


58  THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

(f).  Shoshone,  or  Snake  Indian  or  Maradigo  dia- 
lects : l    Bannack  :    Shoshokee  :   Comanche  : 
Moqui :  Utah  :  Pah-Utah  or  Paduca. 
LIV.  Isolating  languages  of  Mexico  [belonging  pro- 
bably to  several  different  families]  : — 

Othomi  or  Hia-hiu.2 

Totonak.3 

Tarasca.4 

Matlazinca  or  Pirinda.5 

Mixtek6    (Tepuzcolana,    Yanguistlan,    Cuixlahuac, 
Tlaxiaco,  &c.) :  Chocho  or  Cholo. 

Zapotek  or  Oajaca  :7  f  Zacapulan  :  f  Zacatek. 

Mixe. 

Mazahua. 

Huave. 

Chiapanek.8 

Pame  (with  3  dialects). 

1  "Trans,  of  American  Ethnol.  Soc."  vol.  ii.;  Schoolcraft:  "In- 
dian Tribes,"  vols.  ii.  iv.  (1851-5). 

2  Naxera:  "  De  lingua  Othomitorum  dissertatio  "  (1835);  Piccolo- 
mini:  "  Grammatica  "  (1841);  "  Elements  de la  Grammaire  Othomi, 
traduits  de  I'espagnol"  (Paris,  1863). 

*  Bonilla:  "Arte  de  la  Lengua  Totonaca"  (1742);  Pimentel:  /.  c. 
i.  pp.  221,  sq. 

4  Basalenque:  "Arte  de  la  Lengua  Tarasca"  (1714);  Pimentel: 
/.  c.  i.  pp.  269,  sq.\  Bancroft:  /.  c.  iii.  pp.  744-46. 

5  Pinelo:  "Epitome"  (Madrid,  1737-8);  Grammar  in  Bancroft: 
/.  c.  iii.  pp.  747-8. 

6  De  los  Reyes:  "Arte  de  la  Lengua  Mixteca"  (1593);  Bancroft: 
/.  c.  iii.  pp.  749-53- 

7  Cueva:  "Arte  de  lagrammatica  de  la  Lengua  Zapoteca  "  (1607); 
Bancroft:  /.  c.  iii.  pp.  754-6. 

8  De  Cepeda:  "Arte  de  las  Lenguas  Chiapa,  Zoque,  Celdales,  y 
Cinacanteca"  (Mexico,  1560). 


ROOTS.  59 

LV.  Unclassified  Pueblo  dialects  (isolating): — Zuni  :* 
Queres  (and  Kiwomi) :  Jemez  :  Tezuque  :  Tegue  :  Hu- 
raba  dialects. 

LVI.  Yuma  (polysynthetic): — Cuchan  :  Mahao  :  Hah- 
walco  :  Yampaio  :  Cocopah  :  Puemaja  or  Camoye  :  Mo- 
jave:  Diegueiio.2 

LVI  I.  Unclassified  Californian  languages  (polysyn- 
thetic) :— 

(i).  Cochimi  dialects. 
(2).  Pericu  dialects.3 
(3).  Guaicuri  dialects.4 
(4).  Porno  dialects.5 
(5).  Meidu  and  Nesheeman. 
(6).  East  Sacramento. 
(7).  West  Sacramento. 
(8).  Runsien.6 
(9).  Eslene. 
(10).  Tatche.7 
(11).  San  Miguel. 

(12,  13,  &c.).  Yakon,  Klamath,  Euroc,  &c. 
LVIII.  Selish  (polysynthetic)  :*— 
(i).  Kaitlen:  Billikula  (British  Columbia). 

1  Vocabulary  in  "Pacific  R:  Report,"  vol.  ii.  (1855).     See  Ban- 
croft: "  Native  Races/'  iii.  pp.  682-3. 

2  See  Bancroft:  /.  c.  iii.  pp.  684-5. 

8  Clavigero:  "  Storia  della  California,"  i.  pp.  no,  sq.  (1789). 

4  Grammar  in  Bancroft :  /.  c.  iii.  pp.  688-90. 

5  Grammar  of  the  Gallinomero  dialect  in  Bancroft :  /.  c.  iii.  pp. 
644-6. 

6  Grammar  of  the  Mutsun   dialect   in   Bancroft :    /.  c.  iii.  pp. 
655-6. 

Tatche  Grammar  in  Bancroft:  /.  c.  iii.  pp.  656-8. 
8  "  Contributions  to   North  American    Ethnology,     in   "  U.  S. 


6o 


7 HE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


(2).  Nanaimuk :    Kowitsin :     Songhu :     Soke     (V 

couver's  Island). 
(3).  Kowlitz  :  S'klallam  :  Tsihalis  :  Kwainautl' :  Kwil- 

lehiut. 
(4).  Niskwalli:— 

(a).  Skwanksnamish  :  Kwulseet  (Skokomish.) 

(b).  S'hotlmamish :  Skwai-aitl':  Sahewamish :  Steh- 

tsasamish  :  Sawamish:  Nu-seht-satl'. 
(c).  Niskwalli  proper:     Segwallitsu:     Stailaku-ma- 

mish  :  Skwalliahmish. 

(d.)  Puyallupahmish :  T'kwakwamish  :  S'homamish- 
(e).  Sukwamish  :    Samamish  :    Skopamish  :    St'ka- 

mish:  Sk'tehlmish. 
(/).  Snohomish. 
(g).  Snokwalmu  :  Stoluts-whamish  :    Sk'tahle-jum  : 

Skihwamish :  Kwehtl'mamish. 
(//).  Yakama.1 

(i).  Skagit :    Kihiallu  :    Towah-hah  :     Nu-kwat-sa- 
mish  :  Smali-hu  :  Saku-mehu  :  Skwonamish: 
Miskai-whu  :  Swinamish  :  Miseekwigweelis. 
(j).  Lummi  :  Samish  :  Nuk-sahk. 
LIX.   Chinuk  or  Tsinuk 2  (polysynthetic)  : — Clatsop  : 
Clatlascon  or  Wasco  :  Wakaikam.     Chinook  jargon.3 

Geographical  and  Geological  Survey  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  Re- 
gion," i.  (1877),  PP-  24J5  s<?-  )  Mengarini  :  "  Grammatica  linguae 
Selica3"(i86i). 

1  Pandosy  :    "  Grammar  and   Dictionary   of  the  Yacama  Lan- 
guage" (1862),  in  Shea's  "  Library,"  vol.  vi. 

2  Grammatical  Notes  on  the  Watlala  Dialect  in  Bancroft : "  Nativ 
Races/'  iii.  pp.  628-9. 

3  "  Dictionary  of  the  Chinook  Jargon,  to  which  is  (sic)  adde 
numerous  Conversations,"  6th  edit.,  published  by  S.  J.  M'Cormic 
Portland,  Oregon. 


ROOTS.  6 1 

LX.  Sahaptin  or  Nez-percees  '  (polysynthetic)  : — Tai- 
tinapan  :  ?  T'likatat  :  ?  Walla-walla. 

LXI.  Nutka  or  Yucuatl2  (polysynthetic) : — Makah  : 
Tlaoquatsh. 

LXII.  Appalachian  (Florida)  (polysynthetic)  : — Nat- 
chez :3  Muskogee  or  Creek  Indian:  Choctaw:4  Cherokee 
(Cheroki)  or  Chilake.5 

LXIII.  Pawnee  (Pani)  or  Riccaree6  (polysynthetic). 

LXIV.  Dakota  (Dacotah),  spoken  by  the  Sioux  or 
Issati  (polysynthetic)  :7  Iowa  or  Sac  :8  Winnebago :  Osage. 

LXV.  Iroquois  (polysynthetic) : — Onondago  : 9  Sene- 
ca :  Oneida :  Mohawk  :  Cayuga  :  Tuscarora  :  Nottoway. 

1  "Contributions  to   N.  A.  Ethnology  "  (1877);  Bancroft:  "Na- 
tive Races,"  iii.  pp.  621-5. 

2  Vocabulary  in  "  American   Ethnology,"  vol.  ii. ;  grammatical 
notes  in  Bancroft:  /.  c.  iii.  610-12. 

3  Brinton :  "  On  the  Language  of  the  Natchez,"  in  the   "  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  American  Philosophical  Society,"  xiii.  (5th  Dec. 

1873). 

4  Byington:  "  Grammar  of  the  Choctaw  Language"  (1870),  edited 
by  Brinton. 

5  Jonathan  Edwards  :    "  Observations  on  the  Language  of  the 
Muhhekaneew  Indians,"   edited  by  Pickering  (1823);  "  Cherokee 
Primer"  (Park  Hill,  Arkansas,  2nd  edit.  1846).     For  the  native  syl- 
labary invented  by  Segwoya  (George  Guess)  in  1820,  see  Faulmann: 
"  Das  Buch  der  Schrift "  (1878),  p.  12. 

6  See  W.  Matthews:  "  Ethnography  and  Philology  of  the  Hidatsa 
Indians"  (1877).     [Classed  with  the  Caddo  of  Texas  by  Latham.] 

7  Riggs:  "Grammar  and  Dictionary  of  the  Dacota  Language" 
(Smithson.  Inst.)  (1851);  H.  C.  von  der  Gabelentz :  "  Grammatik 
der   Dakota-Sprache "  (1852);    Pond:    "Dakota  Reading-book," 
(1842). 

8  Hamilton  and  Irwin  :    "An  Iowa  Grammar,  illustrating  the 
principles  of  the  language  used  by  the  Iowa,  Otoe,  and  Missour 
Indians"  (1848). 

9  Shea:  "  Dictionnaire  Frangais-Onontague  "  (with  grammar),  in 
Shea's  "  Library  of  Amer.  Linguistics,"  i.  (1859). 


62 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


LXVI.  Algonquin  *  (polysynthetic) : — Cree  : 2  Ottawa  : 
Ojibway  or  Chippeway 3  (4  dialects) :  f  Mohican,  or  Mo- 
hegan,  or  Pequot  :  Micmac  or  Miramichi  (including 
Acadian  and  Gaspesian)  :4  Shawnee  :  Blackfoot :  Leni- 
Lenape  or  Delaware  :  Abenaki  :  f  Narragansets  : 5  f  Na- 
tick  or  Massachusetts.6 

LXVII.  Athapaskan  or  Tinneh7  (polysynthetic)  : — 
(i).  Athapaskan  proper,  or  Chippewyan  (dialects  of 
the  Hare,  Dogrib,  Yellow-knife,  and  Copper- 
mine Indians)  :  Sarsee  :  Tacallie. 
(2).  Tinneh  : — Qualhioqua  :    Owillapsh  :    Tlatskanai  : 

Umkwa :  Tututen  :  Hupah. 
(3).  Apache  : 8  Navajo  :  Lipanes. 

1  Fr.  Miiller:  "Der  grammatische  Ban  der  Algonkinsprachen" 
(1867);  Cf.  Du  Ponceau:  "  Me'moire  sur  le  Systeme  grammatical 
des  Langues  de  quelques  nations  indiennes  de  I'Amerique"  (1838), 
pp.  207,  sq. 

2  Howse  :    "Grammar  of  the   Cree    Language"  (1805).      [For 
the  native  syllabary  of  the  Crees  andTinnehs,  see  Faulmann:  "Das 
Buch  der  Schrift,"  p.  u.] 

3  Schoolcraft:   "Ethnological  Researches  concerning  the  Red 
Man  of  America,"  iv.  pp.  385-396;    Edwin  James:  "Chippeway 
First  Lessons  in  spelling  and  reading "  (undated)  ;  Baraga  :  "  A 
Theoretical  and  Practical  Grammar  of  the  Otchipwe  Language " 
(1850). 

4  Maillard:  "  Grammar  of  the  Micmac  Language"  (1864). 

5  Roger  Williams  :  "A  Key  to  the  Languages  of  America  "  (1643). 

6  John    Eliot :    "  The  Indian  Grammar  Begun,"    reprinted  by 
Pickering,  in  Second  Ser.  of  "  Collections  of  the  Mass.  Hist.  Soc." 
(1832),  ix.  pp.  223-312,  and  i.-liv. 

7  Buschmann:  "Der  athapaskische  Sprachstamm"  (1856),  and 
"  Ueber  die  Verwandtschaft   der  Kinai-Idiome  mit  dem  grossen 
Athapaskischen  Sprachstamme,"   in  !  the    "  Monatsberichte  d.   k. 
Akad.  d.  Wissensch.  in  Berlin"  (1854),  pp.  231,  sq.    [The  Tinnehs 
have  a  native  syllabary.] 

8  Grammar  in  Bancroft:  /.  c.  iii.  pp.  596-601. 


ROOTS.  .    63 

(4).  Tinneh  or  Atnah  dialects  in  Alaska  : — 3  Western  : 
7  Eastern  :  10  Kutchin  dialects  (2  extinct).1 
[Tinneh  or  Atnah  is  called  Kolshina  by  the 
Russians.] 

LXVIII.  Tlinket2  (polysynthetic):— 

(i).  Yakutat. 

(2).  Chilkaht-kwan  :  Sitka-kwan :  Stakhin-kwan. 

(3)-  Kygahni. 

(4).  Nass :  Chimsyan.' 

(5).  Kolush.4 

LXIX.  Aleutian  or  Unungun5  (polysynthetic)  : — 
(a).  Eastern  or  Unalashkan.6 
(&).  Western  or  Atkan. 

LXX.  Eskimo  (Esquimaux)  or  Innuit7  (polysyn- 
thetic) :— 

(i).  Western  Eskimo  (N.  W.  America  and  North- 
East  Asia)  : — (a).  West  Mackenzie  Innuit ;  (£). 
Western  Innuit :  (<:).  Fishing  Innuit :  (d).  South 
Eastern  Innuit.8 

1  "  Contributions  to  North  American  Ethnology,"  vol.  i.  pp.  24- 
40(1877). 

1  "  Contributions  to  N.  A.  Ethnol.,"  p.  40,  pp.  111-114  (Grammar 
by  G.  Gibbs),  pp.  121,  sg. 

*  "  Contrib.,"  &c.  pp.  155-6. 

4  Buschmann  :  "  Die   Pima-Sprache  und  die  Sprache  der  Ko- 
Ioschen"(i857). 

5  Wenjaminoff:  "  Opyt  grammatiki  Aleutsko-lisjevskago  jazika  " 
(S.  Petersburg,  1846);  "Contributions   to   North   Amer.  Ethnol.," 
pp.  22-24. 

6  Grammatical  Notes  in  "  Contributions,"  &c.,  pp.  115,  116. 

7  Kleinschmidt :  "Grammatik  der  gronlandischen  Sprache"  (1851). 

8  "  Contributions  to  N.  A.  Ethnol."  pp.  9-24  ;  Grammatical  Notes 
in  Bancroft:  "Native  Races,"  Hi.  pp.  576-77;  Veniaminoff:  "Ueber 
die  Sprachen  der  russischen  Amer."  in  Erman's  "Archiv,"  vii.  i.  pp. 
126,  sg. 


64 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


(2).  Eastern  Eskimo  or  Greenlandish  or  Karali. 

(3).  Arctic  Highlanders. 

LXXI.  American  Chukchi.1 

LXXII.  Asiatic  Chukchi  and  Koriak  (agglutinative).2 

LXXIII.  Yukhagir  or  Andondommi  (agglutinative).3 

LXXIV.  Yenissei-Ostiak  and  Kott  (Khotowski)  or 
Kanski  (agglutinative).4 

LXXV.  Unclassified  island-languages  : — 

(i).  Mergui  Archipelago  languages. 

(2).  (?)  Andaman  languages.     [See  under  XXXV 

(3).  Nicobar  languages,5  &c.  &c.  &c. 

LXXVI.  Micronesian  (agglutinative)  : — Gilbert  Is- 
lands : 6  Ponape  : T  Ladrone  :  Yap :  Marshall  Islands 

(Ebon)  :  Tobi. 
; 

1  "  Contributions,"  &c.,  pp.  12-14. 

2  Radloff  in  "  Me'moires  de  1'Acade'mie  impdriale  des  Sciences  de 
St.  Pdtersbourg,"  vii.  pp.  382,  sq.  (1851). 

3  Schiefner  in  the  "  Bulletin  de  1'Acade'mie  imp^riale  des  Sciences 
de  St.  Pe'tersbourg"  (1859). 

4  Castrdn:  "Versuch  einer  jenissei-ostjakischen  und  kottischen 
Sprachlehre"  (1858). 

5  De  Roepstorff  gives  a  vocabulary  of  five  dialects  (Calcutta 
1875). 

6  Hale  in  "  United  States  Exploring  Expedition,"  1838-42,  vol. 
vii. 

7  Gulick:  "Grammar  and  Vocabulary  of  the  Ponape  Language," 
in  the  "Journal  of  the  American  Oriental  Society,"  x.  (1872). 


' 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH. 

"  Si  nous  connaissons  la  langue  des  Aryas  telle  qu'elle  existait 
vers  le  moment  de  leur  dispersion  finale,  et  sans  doute  d£jk  divise'e 
en  dialectes,  nous  pourrions  y  retrouver  avec  beaucoup  de  suretd 
Phistoire  de  leur  deVeloppement  anteVieur  dans  ses  phases  succes- 
sives."— PICTET. 

PROPHETS  and  preachers  have  never  been  weary  of  de- 
nouncing the  innate  vanity  and  deceitfulness  of  the* 
human  heart,  but  their  success  hitherto  has  been  but 
scanty.  It  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  see  ourselves 
with  the  eyes  of  others,  to  measure  truly  our  own  impor- 
tance and  that  of  the  society  in  which  we  live.  It  is  only 
the  historian  of  a'  later  age  that  can  calmly  and  impar- 
tially trace  the  causes  and  effects  of  the  events  which 
have  marked  a  particular  era ;  the  actors  themselves,  as 
well  as  those  who  live  near  the  same  epoch,  behold  every- 
thing through  a  blurred  and  distorted  medium,  wherein 
the  true  proportions  of  things  are  altogether  lost.  The 
greatest  of  thinkers  have  never  been  able  to  free  them- 
selves wholly  from  the  prejudices  and  habits  of  their 
time :  Aristotle  could  not  conceive  of  a  state  of  society 
in  which  slavery  did  not  exist ;  and  Lord  Bacon,  like  his 
contemporary  Raleigh,  still  retained  a  lingering  belief  in 
astrology,  even  saying  that  "  comets  without  doubt  have 
power  over  the  gross  and  mass  of  things."  We  are  apt 
II.  F 


66 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


to  fancy  that  the  culture  and  civilization  of  modern 
Europe  are  superior  to  those  of  any  other  age  or  of  any 
other  part  of  the  world  ;  the  Anglo-Indian  calls  the  de- 
scendants of  Manu  and  Vikramaditya  "  niggers/'  and  a 
great  English  poet  has  declared  :  "  Better  fifty  years  of 
Europe  than  a  cycle  of  Cathay."  It  is  hard  to  remember 
that  ours  is  not  the  only  civilization  the  world  has  seen  ; 
that  in  many  things  it  falls  short  of  that  of  Athens,  or 
even  those  of  ancient  Egypt  and  Babylonia,  or  modern 
Japan ;  and  that  we  are  not  the  best  judges  of  our  own 
deservings. 

The  spirit  of  vanity  has  invaded  the  science  of  lan- 
guage itself.  We  have  come  to  think  that  not  only  is 
the  race  to  which  we  belong  superior  to  all  others,  but 
that  the  languages  we  speak  are  equally  superior.  That 
inflection  is  the  supreme  effort  of  linguistic  energy,  that  it 
marks  the  highest  stage  in  the  development  of  speech,  is 
regarded  as  a  self-evident  axiom.  The  Greek  and  Latin 
classics  have  formed  the  staple  and  foundation  of  our 
education,  and  if  we  have  advanced  beyond  them,  it  is 
generally  to  the  study  of  Hebrew  or  Sanskrit,  them- 
selves also  inflected  tongues.  The  inflected  Aryan  lan- 
guages, whether  living  or  dead,  have  formed  our  canons 
of  taste,  and  our  judgment  of  what  is  right  or  wrong  in 
the  matter  of  language.  Even  the  grammars  of  our  own 
English  speech  have  been  forced  into  a  classical  mould, 
and  been  adorned  with  tenses  and  cases,  if  not  genders. 
The  belief  that  whatever  is  unfamiliar  must  be  either 
wrong  or  absurd,  exercises  a  wider  influence  than  is  ordi- 
narily imagined.  Everything  has  tended  to  make  the 
European  scholar  see  in  an  inflected  language  the  normal 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH,    67 

type  of  a  perfect  and  cultivated  tongue.  The  dialects  he 
speaks  or  studies  are  mostly  inflectional  ones,  and  even 
should  he  be  acquainted  with  languages  like  Chinese  or 
Basque,  which  belong  to  another  class  of  speech,  the  ac- 
quaintance has  seldom  been  made  in  the  earlier  and 
more  impressionable  years  of  life. 

But  there  is  a  further  reason  for  the  widespread  opinion 
that  an  inflectional  language  must  necessarily  rank  before 
all  others.  The  founders  and  cultivators  of  comparative 
philology  were  Germans,  who  spoke  therefore  one  of  the 
most  highly  inflected  languages  of  modern  Europe.  The 
vanity  of  race  and  education  was  thus  supplemented  by 
the  vanity  of  nationality  and  custom.  The  great  Grimm, 
it  is  true,  recognized  the  superiority  of  grammarless  Eng- 
lish, and  even  urged  his  countrymen  to  adopt  it,  but  it  is 
needless  to  say  that  he  met  with  no  support.  It  was  just 
the  "  poverty  "  and  want  of  inflections  which  characterize 
modern  English,  that  seemed  to  indicate  its  degenerate 
and  imperfect  nature.  If  great  works  had  been  produced 
in  it,  this  was  in  spite  of  its  character,  not  by  reason  of  it. 
The  prejudices  of  a  classical  education  were  still  strong; 
the  literature  of  a  language  was  confounded  with  the 
language  itself,  and  the  fallacy  maintained  that  because 
certain  writers  of  Greece,  or  Rome,  or  Judea  were  models 
of  style,  the  languages  in  which  they  wrote  must  be 
models  too.  Comparative  philology  has  had  a  slow  and 
laborious  task  in  rooting  up  these  false  notions,  and  lay- 
ing down  that  whatever  may  be  its  form,  that  language 
is  best  which  best  expresses  the  thoughts  of  its  speakers. 
Language  is  an  object  of  study  in  and  for  itself,  not  be- 
cause of  the  books  that  may  have  been  composed  in  it,  and 


68 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


it  not  unfrequently  happens  that  some  of  the  most  precious 
of  its  secrets  are  to  be  discovered  in  jargons  the  very 
names  of  which  are  almost  unknown.  It  is  not  in  Greek 
or  Latin  or  Sanskrit  that  we  shall  find  the  answers  to 
many  of  the  most  pressing  questions  of  linguistic  science, 
but  in  the  living  dialects  of  the  present  world.  The 
antiquarian  study  of  language  is  no  doubt  indispensable 
to  a  historical  science  like  glottology ;  but  this  anti- 
quarian study  must  be  preceded,  corrected,  and  verified, 
by  a  study  of  the  pronunciation  and  usages  of  actual 
speech.  Comparative  philology  rests  upon  phonology, 
and  in  phonology  we  must  begin  with  the  known  sounds 
of  living  language. 

Just  as  the  type  of  physical  beauty  differs  among  the 
various  races  of  the  earth,  so,  too,  does  the  type  of  literary 
excellence.  The  Chinaman  finds  more  to  admire  in  the 
language  and  style  of  his  classics  than  in  those  of  Plato 
or  Shakspeare,  and  Montezuma  would  probably  have 
preferred  an  Aztec  poem  to  all  the  works  of  ^Eschylus 
or  Goethe.  If  we  are  to  decide  between  the  rival  claims 
of  different  forms  of  speech  to  pre-eminence,  it  must  be 
upon  other  grounds  than  the  excellency  of  the  literature 
belonging  to  them  ;  and  we  have  already  seen  in  a  pre- 
vious chapter  how  seriously  it  may  be  doubted  whether, 
after  all,  an  inflectional  language  stands  on  a  higher 
level  than  an  agglutinative  one. 

The  number  of  known  inflectional  families  of  speech 
is  not  large,  though  the  literary  and  historical  impor- 
tance of  two  of  them  far  exceeds  that  of  any  other  group 
of  languages.  Passing  by  Hottentot,  the  inflectional 
character  of  which,  though  maintained  by  Bleek  and 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.    69 

Lepsius,  is  denied  by  Friedrich  Mtiller,  all  the  inflec- 
tional languages  of  which  we  know  are  confined  to 
Western  Europe  and  the  basin  of  the  Mediterranean. 
South  of  the  Caucasus  comes  Georgian,  the  leading 
representative  of  the  so-called  Alarodian  family,  to  which 
the  dialect  of  the  cuneiform  inscriptions  of  Van  may  have 
belonged.  It  is  just  possible  that  the  extinct  language 
of  the  Lykian  inscriptions  is  to  be  included  in  this 
family,  though  Savelsberg  and  others  would  connect  it 
with  the  Indo-European  group,  and  especially  with  Zend. 
Neither  roots  nor  grammatical  forms,  however,  seem  to 
permit  this  ;  and  it  is  for  the  present  safest  to  regard  the 
ancient  Lykian  as,  like  the  Etruscan,  a  relic  of  an  other- 
wise extinct  family  of  speech.  South  of  Georgia,  again, 
comes  the  domain  of  the  Semitic  languages  which  once 
extended  from  the  Tigris  to  the  Mediterranean,  and 
from  the  Tauros  and  Zagros  ranges  to  the  Indian  Ocean 
and  Abyssinia.  Probably  the  Old  Egyptian  of  the 
monuments,  which  goes  back  to  between  4000  and  5000 
B.C.,  along  with  its  daughter,  Coptic,  must  be  considered 
as  remotely  connected  with  th6  Semitic  group,  as  well  as 
the  so-called  Sub-Semitic  dialects  of  northern  Africa, 
Berber,  Haussa,  &c.  The  larger  part  of  Europe,  to- 
gether with  India,  Persia,  and  Armenia,  is  occupied  by 
the  Aryan  family  which  has  now  scattered  its  colonies 
over  the  whole  world.  In  fact,  modern  emigration  is 
almost  wholly  confined  to  Aryans,  Jews,  and  Chinese. 

The  Aryan  or  Indo-European  family  has  been  baptized 
with  a  variety  of  names.  "  Indo-European  "  is  perhaps 
the  one  in  most  favour,  and  the  chief  objection  to  it  is  its 
length.  "  Indo-Germanic,"  the  term  chosen  by  Bopp,  has 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


now  a  wide  circulation  among  German  scholars,  "  for  no 
other  assignable  reason,"  says  Prof.  Whitney,  "  than  that 
it  contains  the  foreign  appellation  of  their  own  particular 
branch,  as  given  by  their  conquerors  and  teachers,  the 
Romans."  l  "  Sanskritic  "  has  also  been  proposed,  but  is 
now  universally  discarded,  as  giving  undue  prominence 
to  a  single  representative  of  the  family.  "  Japhetic," 
modelled  after  "  Semitic,"  is  still  occasionally  used ;  it 
is,  however,  thoroughly  objectionable,  as  the  so-called 
"  ethnological  table  "  in  Genesis  is  really  geographical, 
and  the  descendants  of  Japhet  do  not  cover  the  different 
branches  of  the  Aryan  group.  "  Caucasian  "  is  another 
term,  which  has  been  immortalized  by  Tennyson ;  but 
the  term  originated  rather  with  the  physiologists  than 
the  philologists,  and  is  in  no  way  applicable,  since 
none  of  the  Caucasian  tribes,  with  the  single  exception 
of  the  little  colony  of  the  Iron  or  Ossetes,  belong  to 
the  Aryan  race.  Iron  is  but  a  form  of  Aryan,  a  name 
which  is  due  to  Prof.  Max  Miiller.  In  the  Rig- Veda, 
"dry a  occurs  frequently  as  a  national  name  and  as  a 
name  of  honour,  comprising  the  worshippers  of  the  gods 
of  the  Brahmans,  as  opposed  to  their  enemies,  who  are 
called  in  the  Veda  Dasyus"'  The  word  is  a  derivative 
from  arya,  perhaps  " ploughman"  or  " cultivator,"  which 
is  applied  in  later  Sanskrit  to  the  Vaisyas  or  "  house- 
holders "  of  the  third  caste.  The  great  recommendation 
which  "Aryan"  possesses  is  its  shortness,  and  since  it  has 
been  widely  adopted  it  is  the  term  which  is  generally 
used  in  the  present  work.  It  must  not  be  forgotten, 

1  "  Life  and  Growth  of  Language"  (1875),  p.  180. 

2  Max  Miiller  :  "  Lectures,"  i.  (8th  edition),  p.  275. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.     71 

however,  that  the  term  is  really  of  Sanskrit  origin,  and 
therefore  more  applicable  to  the  Asiatic  branch  of  the 
Indo-European  family  than  to  its  European  branch.  It 
is  on  this  account  that  certain  French  scholars,  while 
adopting  Chavee's  "Aryaque"  as  a  designation  for  the 
whole  family,  confine  "Aryan  "  to  its  eastern  members, 
making  it  include  both  Indie  and  Iranian.  On  the  other 
hand,  Prof.  Max  Miiller  may  be  right  in  seeing  the  word 
in  Aria,  the  old  name  of  Thrace,  as  well  as  in  the  German 
Arii,  near  the  Vistula,  whose  name,  however,  Grimm 
would  connect  with  the  Gothic  harji,  "  army." 

A  glance  at  the  genealogical  table  in  the  last  chapter 
will  .show  that  the  Aryan  family  must  be  subdivided  into 
East  Aryan  or  Indo-Iranian  and  West  Aryan  or  Euro- 
pean, the  first  branch  comprising  Indian  (Sanskrit,  Pra- 
krit, Hindi,  &c.)  and  Persian  (sometimes  called  Iranian), 
the  second  Greek,  Italic,  Keltic,.  Slavonic,  Lithuanian, 
and  Keltic.  Hiibschmann  would  place  Armenian  and 
Ossetic  between  these  two  groups  ;  Friedrich  Miiller, 
on  the  contrary,  makes  them  Persian  dialects.  The  main 
difficulty  in  the  way  of  Hiibschmann's  view  is  that  the 
cuneiform  inscriptions  of  Assyria  show  no  indications  of 
any  Aryan  settlers  in  Armenia  or  the  Caucasus  before 
the  eighth  or  seventh  century  B.C.,  even  the  Aryan 
Medes,  like  their  brethren  the  Persians,  not  advancing  so 
far  to  the  west  as  Media  Rhagiana  until  the  ninth  cen- 
tury B.C.  It  is,  of  course,  quite  possible  that  the  Arme- 
nians may  have  crossed  the  Caucasus  in  the  wake  of  the 
Scythians,  but  Fick  seems  to  have  proved  that  the  Scy- 
thic  words  preserved  by  the  classical  writers  belong  to 
the  European,  and  not  to  the  Iranian  branch  of  the  Aryan 


72 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


family.  The  scanty  relics  of  the  Aryan  languages  oi 
Asia  Minor  found  in  inscriptions  and  the  glosses  oi 
Greek  grammarians  belong  to  the  Western  division  of  the 
family,  and  thus  bear  out  the  old  traditions  which  made 
Lydians,  Carians,  Mysians,  and  Phrygians  brethren  one 
of  the  other,  which  derived  the  Mysians  from  Thrace, 
and  saw  in  the  Phrygians  the  Thracian  Briges.  The 
Halys  formed  the  eastern  boundary  of  Aryan  domination 
in  Asia  Minor ;  the  country  beyond  was  possessed  per- 
haps by  Alarodians,  certainly  by  tribes  not  of  the  Aryan 
stock. 

At  the  head  of  the  Indian  group  of  dialects  stands 
Sanskrit,  the  classical  language  of  Hindustan  and  its 
sacred  books,  which  though  long  since  extinct,  is  still 
spoken  by  the  Brahmans  as  Latin  was  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  We  must  distinguish,  however,  between  Vedic 
Sanskrit  and  classical  Sanskrit,  the  older  Sanskrit  of  the 
Veda  differing  in  many  respects  from  the  later  Sanskrit 
of  the  Hindu  epics.  Thus  the  second  and  fifth  lines  of 
the  first  hymn  of  the  Rig- Veda  end  with  the  words  vak- 
shati  and  gamat,  forms  unknown  to  classical  Sanskrit, 
but  corresponding  to  the  Greek  sigmatic  and  "  second  " 
aorists  conjunctive  (TJA|/>I(T)  and  iw»f(T))i  from  the  roots 
vach,  "  to  speak,"  and  gam,  "  to  go."  So,  too,  the  old 
modal  forms  of  the  aorist  disappear  in  the  post- Vedic 
language,  with  the  exception  of  the  precative  or  benedic- 
tive,1  as  well  as  the  augmented  preterite,  which  Delbriick 
has  compared  with  the  Homeric  pluperfect,  while  post- 

1  The  benedictive  is  really  the  optative  of  the  simple  aorist  in 
the  parasmaipada  or  active  voice,  and  of  the  sigmatic  aorist  in  the 
atmanepada  or  middle  voice. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.     73 

Vedic  Sanskrit  introduces  a  new  tense  in  the  shape  of 
the  first  future  bkavitdsmi,  a  compound  of  the  noun 
bhavi-tar  and  the  substantive  verb  asmi. 

Both  Vedic  and  post- Vedic  Sanskrit  were  poor  in 
vowels,  possessing  only  #,  z,  and  u  long  and  short,  with 
the  diphthongs  e,  ai,  o,  and  au,  and  the  linguals  r  and  /; 
on  the  other  hand,  they  were  rich  in  consonants,  among 
which  the  "  cerebral "  or  linguo-dental  /  and  d  are  usually 
supposed  to  have  been  borrowed  from  the  Dravidian 
tongues.1  The  euphonic  laws  are  strict  and  delicate,  the 
final  sounds  of  a  wrord  being  affected  by  the  initial  sounds 
of  the  word  following  according  to  precise  and  well-ob- 
served rules.  The  syntax  is  comparatively  simple,  com- 
position taking  its  place,  especially  in  the  later  period  of 
the  language.  The  grammatical  forms,  however,  are 
very  full  and  clear,  and  it  is  to  them  that  Sanskrit  mainly 
owes  the  high  position  that  it  has  occupied  in  the  com- 
parative study  of  Aryan  speech.  It  has  often  preserved 
archaic  forms  that  have  been  obscured  elsewhere,  though 
it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  this  is  by  no  means  invari- 
ably the  case ;  Greek  and  Latin,  for  instance,  are  some- 
times more  primitive  than  the  old  language  of  India. 
The  declension  is  especially  complete,  preserving  the 
dual  as  well  as  a  locative  and  an  instrumental.  Other 
cases,  however,  which  must  have  been  once  possessed  by 
the  parent-speech,  have  either  disappeared  or  left  faint 
traces  behind  them  ;  thus  we  have  the  secondary  abla- 

1  Such  is  still  Bishop  Caldwell's  opinion  in  the  2nd  edition  of  his 
"Comparative  Grammar  of  the  Dravidian  Languages"  (1875),  but 
it  must  be  remembered  that  these  consonants  are  possessed  by  the 
Aryan  Pashtu  of  Afghanistan,  west  of  the  Indus. 


74 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


tives  mat-tas,  "  from  me,"  twat-tas,  "  from  thee,"  like  the 
Latin  peni-tus  and  radici-tus,  where  Prof.  Max  M tiller 
has  shown  that  the  forms  mat  and  twat  are  merely 
stems.1  The  Sanskrit  alphabet,  known  as  the  Devana- 
gari  or  "  divine  writing,"  was  introduced  into  India  from 
the  West,  and  is  probably  based  on  an  Aramean  original ; 
as  the  first  inscriptions  composed  in  it  are  not  older  than 
the  third  century  B.C.,  it  is  plain  that  the  Yavandnt,  or 
"writing  of  the  Yavanas,"2  of  Panini  must  refer  to  a  dif- 
ferent and  now  forgotten  mode  of  writing.  The  word 
Sanskrita  means  "  put  together,"  or  "  perfect,"  as  distin- 
guished from  Prdkrita,  "  derived  from  a  model,"  that  is 
to  say,  "secondhand"  or  "vulgar,"  prdkrita  being  the 
name  assigned  to  the  current  language  of  the  people  at 
a  time  when  the  Sanskrit  was  rapidly  becoming  extinct, 
or  was  confined  to  the  literary  and  priestly  classes.  The 
Prakrit  dialects  followed  upon  Sanskrit  just  as  the 
Romanic  dialects  of  Europe  followed  upon  Latin,  and 
the  inscriptions  of  the  Western  caves,  as  well  as  the  lan- 
guage of  the  lower  orders  in  the  plays,  prove  that  they 
had  already  taken  the  place  of  the  classical  tongue  two 
or  three  hundred  years  before  the  Christian  era.  One  of 
the  Prakrit  dialects,  the  Pali  of  Magadha  or  Behar,  in 
north-eastern  India,  was  transported  by  Buddhist  mis- 
sionaries to  Ceylon,  and  there  became  the  sacred  lan- 
guage of  the  new  faith.3  Pali,  now  dead  like  Sanskrit 

1  Fleckeisen's  "  Jahrblicher  "  (1877),  p.  702. 

2  Max  M tiller  disputes  the  view  that  this  means  the  "  writing  of 
the  Greeks,"  in  "  History  of  Ancient  Sanskrit  Literature,"  pp.  520, 
521. 

3  This  is  the  tradition  of  the  Southern  Buddhists  themselves,  but 
Pali  differs  considerably  from  the  Magadhi  of  the  Prakrit  gram- 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.    75 

itself,  shows  in  some  respects  a  marked  superiority  over 
the  Prakrits  of  the  plays,  and  has  certainly  been  less  af- 
fected by  phonetic  decay  than  most  of  its  sister  idioms. 
The  three  Sanskrit  sibilants,  however,  have  been  merged 
in  one,  the  vowel  ri  has  disappeared,  being  mostly 
replaced  by  a,  the  long  vowels  have  been  frequently 
shortened,  the  dual  and  dative  are  lost,  and  all  words 
must  end  either  in  a  simple  or  in  a  nasalized  vowel.  The 
modern  Aryan  languages  of  India  have  developed  out 
of  the  other  Prakrits,  and  in  their  present  form  are  con- 
sidered not  to  go  back  further  than  the  tenth  century. 
Bengali  and  Assamese  retain  many  features  of  Sanskrit; 
Sindhi  and  Gujarati  in  the  north-west,  Nepali  and  Kash- 
miri in  the  north,  Hindi  in  the  centre,  and  Marathi  in 
the  south,  are  all  more  or  less  changed  from  the  primi- 
tive type.  Hindi  is  merely  the  modern  form  of  Hindui, 
a  language  which  was  much  cultivated  during  the  Middle 
Ages  of  recent  Hindu  literature,  while  Hindustani  or 
Urdu,  the  language  of  the  "camp,"  is  Hindi  mixed  with 
Arabic  and  Persian — in  fact,  a  lingua  franca  which  grew 
up  at  the  time  of  the  Mahommedan  invasion  in  the 
eleventh  century.  The  chief  characteristic  of  these 

marians.  Kern  ("  Over  de  Jaartelling  der  zuidelijke  Buddhisten," 
1873)  believes  it  to  be  an  artificial  language  based  on  some  unde- 
termined Prakrit  dialect ;  Pischel  ("Academy,"  1873,  p.  397,  sq.} 
maintains  that  Pali  was  the  popular  Magadhi,  the  Magadhi  of  the 
grammarians  and  playwriters  being  an  artificial  jargon.  Wester- 
gaard  ("  Indbydelsesskrift  til  Kjobnhavns  Universitets  Aarsfest," 
1860)  has  pointed  out  that  Pali  is  almost  identical  with  the  lan- 
guage of  an  inscription  of  A'soka,  set  up  near  Ujjayini  (Girnar  in 
Guzerat),  and  he  and  Kuhn  hold  it  to  represent  the  dialect  spoken 
in  Malava  in  the  third  century  B.C.,  and  brought  to  Ceylon  by  the 
Buddhist  apostle  Mahendra. 


76 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


modern  dialects  is  their  analytical  tendency,  even  the 
plural  being  expressed  by  particular  suffixes,  while  on 
the  phonological  side  they  incline  towards  assimilation, 
the  change  of  y  to  i  and  r  to  d,  and  the  substitution  of 
the  simple  aspirate  h  for  the  aspirated  explosives  kht  ///, 
and  th. 

Among  these  neo-Hindu  dialects  must  be  included  the 
Rommany  of  the  Gipsies,  who  seem  to  have  penetrated 
into  Europe  in  the  twelfth  or  thirteenth  century  of  our 
era.  Miklosich  has  endeavoured  to  trace  their  line  of 
march  by  a  careful  examination  of  their  vocabulary, 
and  concludes  that  they  must  have  passed  successively 
through  Persia,  Armenia,  Greece,  Rumania,  Hungary, 
and  Bohemia,  whence  they  scattered  themselves  towards 
Germany,  Poland,  Russia  and  Scandinavia,  Italy  and 
Spain,  England  and  Scotland.1 

Recent  researches,  and  more  especially  the  decipher- 
ment of  early  inscriptions,  have  obliged  us  to  add  the 
Sinhalese  or  Elu  of  Ceylon,  in  which  the  commentaries 
on  the  Buddhist  canon  were  first  written,  to  the  Indian 
branch  of  the  Aryan  languages.  According  to  Mr.  Rhys 
Davids,2  "  it  is  based  on  the  dialect  spoken  by  the  colony 
from  Sinhapura  in  Lala,  on  the  west  coast  of  India,  who 
drove  into  the  remote  parts  of  the  island  the  former  in- 
habitants, borrowing  very  little  indeed  from  their  lan- 
guage. Later  on  the  Sinhalese  derived  their  religion 
and  literature  from  the  opposite  side  of  India,  but  in 

1  "  Ueber  die  Mundarten  und  die  Wanderungen  der  Zigeuner 
Europas,"Th.  2  (1873). 

2  "  Annual  Address  of  the  President  of  the  Philological  Society  " 
(1875),  P-  73- 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.    77 

dialects  akin  to  their  own."  Sinhalese  possesses  the 
linguals  f  and  d,  has  lost  all  gender  except  in  the  pro- 
nouns and  names  of  living  things,  all  case-endings  for 
adjectives,  and  many  for  nouns,  as  well  as  the  person- 
endings  of  the  verb,  expresses  number  and  case  by  post- 
fixes, different  postfixes  being  used  for  the  plural  of 
animate  and  inanimate  beings,  as  in  Persian,  and  has 
borrowed  a  large  number  of  Sanskrit  words. 

West  of  the  Indus  is  the  Pashtu  or  Pakhtu  of  the  Af- 
ghans, the  descendants  probably  of  the  Paktyes  of  Hero- 
dotus, which  has  long  been  considered  to  belong  to  the 
Iranian  group,  but  since  Dr.  Trumpp's  labours  must  be 
classed  among  the  Indian  dialects.  It  forms  a  stepping- 
stone,  as  it  were,  between  the  Indian  and  Iranian  divi- 
sions, partaking  to  a  certain  extent  of  the  features  of 
both,  but  with  predominant  Prakrit  characteristics.  Like 
Sindhi,  it  has  borrowed  from  its  Iranian  neighbours  a 
whole  system  of  pronominal  suffixes.  The  language  is 
also  known  under  the  names  of  Patan  and  Siyah-Push. 

In  a  small  triangle  to  the  extreme  north  of  Afghanis- 
tan, with  Badakshan  on  one  side  and  Kashmir  on  the 
other,  lies  Dardistan,  the  country  of  the  Dards,  among 
whom  Dr.  Leitnerhas  discovered  a  number  of  interesting 
dialects.  The  principal  of  these  seems  to  be  the  Shina, 
a  name  sometimes  applied  to  the  whole  Dardu  group ; 
among  the  others  may  be  mentioned  the  Arnyia,  the 
Khajuna,  the  Ghilgiti,  the  Astori,  and  the  Kalasha- 
Mander.  Dard  probably  holds  much  the  same  position 
as  Pashtu,  being  an  Indian  rather  than  an  Iranian  lan- 
guage. The  present  tense  of  the  substantive  verb  in 
Arnyia  is  conjugated  as  Am,  astis,  astir,  asdsi,  astimi,  asuni; 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


the  aspirated  explosives  are  generally  preserved  instead 
of  being  changed  into  h  as  in  the  Prakrits  ;  and  the  past 
tense — at  all  events  in  Kalasha — preserves  the  initial 
augment  (as  in  Sanskrit  and  Greek). 

We  now  come  to  the  Persian  or  Iranian  group,  the 
most  nearly  akin  to  Sanskrit  of  all  the  Indo-European 
languages,  and  forming  with  the  Indian  dialects  the 
Eastern  or  Asiatic  branch  of  the  family.  In  some  re- 
spects, as  in  the  retention  of  the  old  ablative  in  at  or  the 
preservation  of  the  diphthong  au,  ao,  Persian  is  more 
archaic  than  Vedic-Sanskrit.  Its  literary  monuments, 
however,  are  of  more  recent  date  ;  the  oldest  parts  of  the 
Zend-Avesta,  the  Bible  of  the  Zoroastrian  faith,  being 
younger  than  the  hymns  of  the  Rig- Veda  and  belonging 
to  an  age  when  a  portion  of  the  Aryan  community  had 
broken  with  the  polytheistic  religion  of  their  brethren, 
and  under  the  conduct,  it  may  be,  of  an  individual  pro- 
phet, had  turned  back  from  the  Punjab  to  the  mountains 
of  the  north-west.  But  we  have  one  great  advantage  in 
studying  the  Iranian  group,  and  that  is  our  opportunity 
of  tracing  the  history  of  the  language  through  successive 
and  long-continued  periods.  We  may  divide  this  history 
into  five  periods,  represented  by  Zend,  Old  or  Achae- 
menian  Persian,  Huzvaresh  or  Pehlevi,  Parsi,  and  Neo- 
Persian. 

The  first  knowledge  Europe  obtained  of  Zend  and  the 
Zend-avesta  was  due  to  the  enthusiasm  of  a  Frenchman, 
Anquetil  Duperron,  who,  without  means,  and  in  the  face 
of  great  hardship,  learnt  the  language  from  some  Pars! 
priests  at  Surat,  and  returned  to  France  in  1762  wit 
over  a  hundred  MSS.  These  enabled  Eugene  Burnouf 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.     79 

to  correct  the  attempt  of  Duperron  to  translate  the  Zend- 
avesta  from  a  modern  Persian  translation,  as  well  as  the 
faulty  and  uncritical  teaching  of  the  language  he  had 
received  from  the  Parsi  priests.  Burnouf  must  be  re- 
garded as  the  true  founder  of  Zend  philology. 

Now  Zend  was  the  language  of  the  ancient  Persian 
Zoroastrians,  or  worshippers  of  Ormazd,  in  eastern  Iran, 
and  consequently  the  language  in  which  their  sacred 
books  were  composed.  All  that  has  come  down  to  us  of 
the  latter  are  the  four  books — the  Ya'sna,  the  Vispered, 
the  Yashts,  and  the  Vendidad — which  make  up  the  pre- 
sent Bible  of  the  Zoroastrian  or  Parsi  community,  the 
last  of  them  giving  a  legendary  account  of  the  early 
migrations  of  the  Iranian  tribes.  The  modern  Parsis 
regard  avesta  as  meaning  the  text,  and  zend  as  the  Peh- 
levi  commentary ;  but  this  is  certainly  wrong,  and  Prof. 
Haug  would  explain  the  first  by  a  hypothetical  dvista, 
"what  is  notified,"  from  d-vid,  the  second  being  usually 
taken  as  a  corruption  of  zainti,  "  knowledge,"  the  San- 
sbritjdnti  (ywiiirij).  Dr.  Oppert  is  probably  right  in  think- 
ing that  neither  zend  nor  avesta  belonged  to  the  dialect 
of  eastern  Iran,  but  are  identical  with  two  words  (zandi 
and  abastaya)  which  occur  in  the  cuneiform  inscriptions 
of  western  Persia,  and  mean  respectively  "prayer"  and 
"  law."  At  any  rate,  the  great  inscription  set  up  at  Be- 
histun  by  Darius  Hystaspis,  commemorates  his  restora- 
tion not  only  of  the  Zoroastrian  faith  after  its  overthrow 
by  the  Turanian  Magi,  but  also  of  the  text  and  commen- 
tary of  the  Zend-avesta  itself,  which  had  been  neglected 
or  proscribed.  In  a  passage,  unfortunately  defaced  in 
the  Persian  original,  but  preserved  in  the  Protomedic 


8o 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


version,  we  find,  according  to  Dr.  Oppert's  version  : — 
"And  Darius  the  king  says  :  I  have  made  also  elsewhere 
a  book  in  the  Aryan  language,  that  formerly  did  not 
exist.  And  I  have  made  the  text  of  the  Divine  Law 
(Avesta),  and  a  commentary  of  the  Divine  Law,  and  the 
prayer,  and  the  translation.  And  it  was  written,  and  I 
sealed  it.  And  then  the  ancient  book  was  restored  by 
me  in  all  nations,  and  the  nations  followed  it."1  In  fact, 
Darius  describes  himself  as  acting  like  another  Ezra  of 
the  Jewish  tradition,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt 
that  additions  were  made  to  the  book  at  this  time.  In- 
deed, we  can  clearly  distinguish  fragments  of  varying 
antiquity  in  the  portions  that  have  been  preserved.  The 
Gathas,  certain  obscure  hymns  in  the  Ya'sna,  are  older 
than  any  other  part  of  the  Zend-avesta,  in  spite  of  Prof, 
de  Harlez's  doubts  ; 2  they  are  quoted  or  referred  to  in 
all  other  parts,  and  stand  to  the  latter  in  much  the  same 
relation  as  the  Rig- Veda  stands  to  the  later  Vedic  and 
Brahmanic  literature.  The  dialect  of  the  Gathas  differs 
slightly  from  that  of  the  remaining  Zend  writings,  pos- 
sibly because  it  is  earlier,  possibly  because  it  was  spoken 
in  the  highland  regions.  However  this  may  be,  both 
dialects  are  included  in  the  Zend,  the  oldest  form  of 
Persian  speech  to  which  we  can  go  back.  As  Zend  was 
the  language  of  eastern  Iran,  bounded  by  Sogdiana  on 
the  north,  by  Hyrcania  on  the  west,  and  by  Arachosia 
on  the  south,  it  is  frequently  called  Bactrian  or  Old  Bac- 
trian.  It  seems  to  have  lingered  on  till  the  Greek  period, 

1  "Records  of  the  Past"  (1876),  vii.  p.  109.     Dr.  Oppert  has 
omitted  the  words  "  by  the  favour  of  Ormazd,"  which  introduce  the 
king's  assertion. 

2  Avesta  :  "  Livre  sacrd  des  Sectateurs  de  Zoroastre"  (1875-6). 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.     81 

and  thus  to  have  been  a  contemporary  of  the  Old  or 
Achaemenian  Persian  which  was  spoken  in  the  west. 

The  latter  dialect  has  been  recovered  from  the  cunei- 
form monuments  of  Darius  Hystaspis  and  his  successors, 
the  key  to  which  was  first  found  by  the  genius  of  Grote- 
fend.  In  some  points  Old  Persian  is  less  removed  from  the 
primitive  Aryan  than  is  Zend  ;  generally  speaking,  how- 
ever, the  contrary  is  the  case.  The  cuneiform  alphabet 
of  forty  characters  in  which  the  inscriptions  are  written 
was  obtained  in  a  very  ingenious  manner  from  the  com- 
plicated syllabary  of  Assyria  and  Babylon,  apparently 
under  the  direction  of  Darius  himself.  It  fell  into  disuse, 
however,  almost  before  a  century  had  passed.  What 
kind  of  writing  was  used  by  the  eastern  Iranians  before 
the  time  of  Darius  it  is  impossible  even  to  conjecture. 

Pehlevi  or  Huzvaresh  is  known  to  us  by  translations 
of  the  Zend-avesta,  a  treatise  on  cosmogony  called  the 
"  Bundehesh,"  and  the  coins  and  inscriptions  of  the 
Sassanian  dynasty  (A.D.  226-651),  and  seems  to  have 
been  the  language  of  the  western  district  of  Sevad, 
though  subdivided  into  the  two  dialects  of  Chaldeo- 
Pehlevi  and  Sassano- Pehlevi.  Not  only  its  vocabulary, 
but  even  its  grammar  has  been  invaded  in  a  most  ex- 
traordinary way  by  Semitic  influences,  and  if  we  are  to 
suppose  that  the  language  we  find  in^books  and  inscrip- 
tions was  ever  spoken  beyond  the  limits  of  a  Court  circle, 
we  shall  have  to  admit  the  possibility  of  a  mixed  gram- 
mar. It  seems  most  probable,  however,  that  the  mixture 
was  to  be  found  rather  in  the  writing  than  in  the  spoken 
language ;  at  all  events  the  Huzvaresh  translation  of  the 
Avesta  was  read  by  substituting  Iranian  for  Aramean 

II.  G 


82  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

expressions,  Iranian  terminations  being  added  in  the 
MSS.  to  Semitic  words.  While  this  curious  idiom  was 
being  cultivated  in  the  west,  another  idiom,  Parsi  or 
Pazend,  had  grown  up  in  the  east,  and  was  perpetuated 
in  India  by  the  Guebres,  or  fire-worshippers,  who 
fled  from  Mahommedan  persecution  to  Guzerat.  Parsi 
differs  but  slightly  from  the  language  of  Firdusi,  the 
great  epic  poet  of  Persia,  whose  "Shahnameh"  or 
"  Book  of  Kings,"  commemorating  the  past  glories  of 
Aryan  Persia,  was  composed  about  1000  A.D.  With 
Firdusi  the  history  of  modern  Persian  begins  ;  in  his 
hands  it  is  a  pure  Aryan  dialect,  free  from  foreign  ad- 
mixture ;  but  by  slow  degrees  it  incorporated  an  increas- 
ingly large  Semitic  element  until  its  dictionary  became 
half-filled  with  Arabic  words.  Neo-Persian  resembles 
English  in  the  simplicity  of  its  grammar ;  it  has  even 
rid  itself  of  any  distinction  of  gender  in  the  third  per- 
sonal pronoun,  while  the  idea  of  the  genitive  is  expressed 
by  the  vowel  z,  a  remnant  of  an  old  relative  ;  the  lan- 
guage, nevertheless,  is  melodious  and  forcible,  and  Per- 
sian poetry  takes  a  high  rank.  Of  course,  the  literary 
dialect  of  modern  Persia  is  only  one  out  of  many ; 
among  the  provincial  dialects  the  best  known  is  perhaps 
that  of  Mazenderan. 

But  we  have  not  yet  finished  our  survey  of  the  lan- 
guages belonging  to  the  Iranian  section  of  Indo-European 
speech.  There  still  remain  the  Kurdic  dialects,  of  which 
the  chief  are  the  Kurmanji  between  Mosul  and  Asia 
Minor  and  the  Zaza,  the  Beluchi  of  Beluchistan,  and  th 
dialects  of  the  Lurs  (Bashiari  and  Fa'ili),  of  the  Tats  in 
the  south-east  of  the  Caucasus,  and  of  the  Iron  or  Os- 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.     83 

setes  in  the  same  neighbourhood.  Ossetian  is  divided 
into  a  great  variety  of  patois,  and  is  closely  connected 
with  the  Armenian,  which  along  with  it,  must  be  ex- 
cluded from  the  Iranian  group,  if  Hiibschmann's  opi- 
nion is  right.  The  classic  period  of  Armenian  begins 
with  the  formation  of  the  alphabet  by  Mesrop  in  the 
fifth  century  of  our  era,  and  the  works  of  Moses  of 
Chorene,  Lazar  of  Pharp,  Eznik  of  Kolb,  and  others. 
The  literary  dialect  declined  in  the  eleventh  century, 
when  the  local  patois  began  to  take  its  place.  A  leading 
phonetic  feature  of  Armenian  is  the  change  of  the  hard 
into  the  soft  explosives,  and  of  the  soft  into  the  hard  ones, 
while  original/  becomes  h  (as  in  hayr—pater\  Three 
new  tenses — a  perfect,  a  pluperfect,  and  a  future — have 
been  created  in  the  verb  by  the  help  of  participles. 

We  must  now  pass  at  a  leap  to  the  westernmost  of  all 
the  Aryan  languages,  that  still  spoken  by  the  Kelts  of 
Wales,  Brittany,  Ireland,  and  the  Scotch  highlands. 
Cornish  became  extinct  only  in  the  last  century,  and 
Manx  may  even  now  be  occasionally  heard  in  the  Isle  of 
Man.  The  ancient  Gaulish  or  Gallic  disappeared  wholly 
from  France  before  the  inroads  of  Latin  and  Teutonic, 
leaving  behind  it  only  some  twenty  or  thirty  half-deci- 
phered inscriptions  in  Roman  characters  ;  but  its  utter 
•disappearance  must  have  been  subsequent  to  the  time  of 
Sidonius  Apollinarius,  who  congratulates  Ecdicius,  his 
brother-in-law,  on  inducing  the  Aryernian  nobility  to 
give  up  the  use  of  the  Keltic  language.1  The  Breton  or 

1  "  Quod  sermonis  Celtic!  squamam  depositura  nobilitas,  nunc 
oratorico  stylo,  nunc  etiam  camasnalibus  modis  imbuebatur," 
""  Epist."  3.  iii. 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE, 


Armorican  of  Brittany  was  a  subsequent  importation, 
derived  from  the  Britons  of  Cornwall  and  South  Wales, 
who  were  led  there  by  Maximus  in  the  fifth  century,  or 
afterwards  driven  out  of  their  country  by  the  Saxon 
invaders.  The  Keltic  tongues  are  generally  divided  into 
Kymric,  comprising  Welsh,  Cornish,  Breton  and  Gaulish, 
and  Gaelic  or  Goidelic,  which  includes  Irish  or  Erse, 
Scotch  Gaelic  (also  called  Erse),  and  Manx.  This  divi- 
sion, however,  is  founded  on  the  supposed  fact  that 
Kymric  and  Gaulish  agree  in  changing  c  (qu)  into  /, 
and  since  the  supposed  fact  turns  out  not  to  be  a  fact 
at  all,  Welsh  preserving  the  original  velar  guttural  on  its 
inscribed  stones  up  to  the  seventh  century,  Prof.  Rhys 
has  proposed  a  new  classification  of  the  Keltic  race 
into  insular  and  continental.  The  Gauls  of  the  Con- 
tinent had  transformed  their  £'s  into/'s  centuries  before 
their  kinsmen  in  Britain  did  so,  and  if  we  find  local 
names  of  Keltic  origin  m  the  south  of  England  which 
contain  /  instead  of  k,  this  is  to  be  accounted  for  by  the 
Gaulish  conquest  and  occupation  of  this  part  of  our 
island  to  which  Caesar  is  a  witness.1  There  was  a  time 
when  a  Keltic-speaking  people  inhabited  parts  of  Swit- 
zerland, the  Tyrol,  and  even  the  country  south  of  the 
Danube,  as  may  be  proved  by  the  evidence  of  local 
names,  as  well  as  those  of  certain  plants  of  Dacia  de- 
scribed by  the  physician  Dioskorides  ;  but  it  has  left 
but  little  trace  behind,  and  like  the  rest  of  the  Keltic 
family,  been  pressed  westward  by  the  stronger  tribe 
from  the  east.  The  Kelts  of  Gaul,  however,  took 
their  revenge  by  military  expeditions  southward  and 
1  See  Rhys  :  "  Lectures  on  Welsh  Philology"  (1877),  pp.  19  sg. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.    85 

eastward,  among  which  the  two  most  celebrated  are 
those  led  by  the  Brennus  or  "king"  (Welsh  brennin) 
when  Rome  was  destroyed  B.C.  390,  and  Delphi  threat- 
ened a  hundred  years  later.  Unsuccessful  in  Greece,  the 
Gauls  settled  in  some  places  on  the  Thracian  coast, 
while  a  much  larger  colony  crossed  into  Asia  Minor,  and 
there  occupied  the  district  called  Galatia  after  them.  The 
Galatian  language  survived  down  to  the  days  of  St.  Jerome. 
The  Keltic  dialects  are  distinguished  by  a  regular 
mutation  of  the  initial  consonants,'  as  it  is  termed,  the 
final  letters  of  one  word  influencing,  as  in  Sanskrit,  those 
of  the  following  word.  But  their  grammar  also  displays 
certain  features  which  seem  to  indicate  the  action  of  a 
non-Aryan  influence  at  a  time  when  the  Aryan  Kelts 
were  in  close  contact  with  the  earlier  populations  of 
western  Europe.  Prof.  Rh£s  has  suggested  the  possi- 
bility of  seeing  Basque  or  "Iberian"  influence  in  the 
incorporation  of  the  pronouns  between  the  Irish  verb 
and  its  prefixes,  a  phenomenon  that  appears  exception- 
ally in  Welsh,  as  well  as  in  the  Breton  verb  to  have.  The 
differentiation  of  the  verb  and  noan,  again,  .which  had 
been  effected  at  an  early  time  in  Aryan,  has  been  partly 
effaced  in  Welsh,  as  though  the  latter  language  had  come 
into  contact  with  one  in  which  the  verb  and  noun  were 
not  distinguished  ;  while  the  inflection  of  the  Welsh  pre- 
positions (as  erof,  "for  me,"  erot,  "for  thee"),  and  of  the 
substantive  yr  eiddof,  "  my  property,"  i.  e.  "  mine,"  re- 
minds us  strongly  of  Magyar  usage.  It  is  remarkable 
that  we  find  a  mixture  of  two  very  distinct  races  among 
all  Keltic-speaking  peoples ;  the  first,  generally  called 
"  Iberian"  by  physiologists,  being  short  and  brachyce- 


86 


SCIENCE 


•UAGE. 


phalic  with  black  eyes  and  hair,  and  the  second,  the 
pure  Keltic,  being,  on  the  contrary,  tall  and  fair  with 
long  skulls,  light  hair,  and  blue  eyes. 

Excepting  glosses  of  the  eighth  century,  and  a  few  in- 
scriptions of  still  earlier  date,  Welsh  literature  begins 
with  the  revival  in  the  eleventh  century,  when  such  of 
the  older  poems  as  had  been  preserved  were  modernized 
in  language,  and  a  large  number  of  additions  were  made 
to  them  and  ascribed  to  the  traditional  names  of  Aneu- 
rin,  Taliessin,  and  other  bards.  The  best  part  of  the 
literature  belongs  to  the  next  two  centuries,  when  among 
other  productions  the  Triads  and  a  number  of  chronicles 
were  composed. 

The  oldest  literary  relic  of  Cornish  is  a  glossary  en- 
titled "  Vocabula  Britannica,"  of  the  twelth  or  thirteenth 
century.1  The  only  remarkable  specimen  of  Cornish 
literature,  however,  is  a  Passion-play  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  which  is  full  of  English  loan-words.2 

In  Breton  we  have  the  chartularies  of  the  monasteries 
of  Rhedon  and  Landevin,  dating  from  the  tenth  and 
eleventh  centuries,3  the  "  Buhez  Santez  Nonn,"  or  "  Life 
of  Saint  Nonna,"4  of  the  fourteenth  century,  and  a  few 
other  works.  The  "ancient"  Breton  poems  given  by 
Villeneuve  in  his  "Barzaz  Breiz"  have  unfortunately  been 
proved  to  be  as  modern  as  the  "  Bepred  Breizad  "  or 
"  Toujours  Breton  "  of  M.  Luzel. 

1  Marked  Vesp.  A  14  in  the  Cotton  Collection  in  the  British  Mu- 
seum, and  edited  in  Norris's  "  Cornish  Drama,"  vol.  ii. 

2  Edited  by  Whitley  Stokes  in  the  "  Transactions  of  the  Philolo- 
gical Society  of  London"  (1862). 

3  See  Courson's  "  Histoire  des  Peuples  Bretons"  (1846). 

4  Edited  by  Legonidec  (1837). 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.     87 

Irish  literature  is  perhaps  the  oldest  and  most  impor- 
tant of  any  produced  by  a  Keltic  people.  Glosses  of 
the  eighth  century,  ecclesiastical  and  poetical  literature, 
tales  and  chronicles  such  as  the  famous  "  Annals  of  the 
Four  Masters,"  are  among  the  works  that  may  be  men- 
tioned. The  "  Book  of  Kells,"  now  preserved  in  the 
Library  of  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  and  written  in  Latin, 
is  the  most  exquisite  example  in  the  world  of  that  minute 
and  intricate  style  of  illuminating  for  which  the  Irish 
monks  were  especially  esteemed.  In  the  earlier  part  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  indeed,  Ireland,  "The  Isle  of  the  Saints," 
was  regarded  as  a  centre  of  light  and  intelligence,  and  it 
was  not  without  reason  that  Charlemagne  made  "  Cle- 
ment the  Scot "  head  of  the  Palatine  School,  and  estab- 
lished another  Irishman,  John  of  Mailros,  at  Pavia. 
A  considerable  number  of  early  inscriptions  have  been 
discovered  in  Ireland,  written  in  the  so-called  Ogham 
characters,  which  are  also  met  with  in  Wales  and  Eng- 
land. Prof.  Rhys  has  attempted  to  show,  with  fair  suc- 
cess, that  the  Ogmic  alphabet  was  primarily  derived 
by  the  Kymric  Kelts  from  a  Teutonic  people,  and  after- 
wards passed  on  to  the  Kelts  of  Ireland.1 

Scotch  Gaelic  is  the  most  corrupt  of  all  the  Keltic 
tongues,  and  its  pronunciation  bears  but  a  very  faint 
resemblance  to  its  spelling.  Its  chief  literary  interest  is 
connected  with  the  Ossianic  controversy,  which  is  still 
far  from  being  completely  settled.  The  Dean  of  Lis- 
more's  book,  however,  compiled  about  1530,  and  con- 
taining popular  poems  relating  to  Fingal  the  Finn, 
some  of  which  are  ascribed  to  Ossian,  make  it  clear  that 
1  See  his  "  Lectures  on  Welsh  Philology"  (1877). 


88 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


Macpherson  had  genuine  materials  before  him,  how- 
ever much  he  may  have  improved  upon  his  originals. 
His  "Ossian,"  indeed,  would  never  have  had  the  success 
it  obtained  had  it  not  breathed,  to  a  certain  extent,  the 
spirit  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Various  minor  poets 
have  arisen  among  the  Scotch  Highlanders  during  the 
past  two  hundred  years,  and  specimens  of  their  produc- 
tions are  given  in  English  verse  by  Prof.  Blackie  in  his 
"  Language  and  Literature  of  the  Scottish  Highlands  " 
(1876),  where  he  also  sums  up  the  history  and  present 
position  of  the  "  Ossianic  question." 

Wherever  the  Kelt  has  gone  he  has  been  followed  by 
the  Teuton,  and  little  by  little  has  had  to  make  way 
before  his  stronger  and  more  stolid  supplanter.  The 
Teutonic  group  includes  also  the  Scandinavian,  and  it  is 
not  difficult  to  form  a  hypothetical  grammar  and  dic- 
tionary of  the  language  once  spoken  by  the  common 
ancestors  of  Germans  and  Norsemen.  Both,  in  fact,  are 
branches  of  a  single  stem.  We  may  divide  the  Teutonic 
family  into  four  groups  —  the  Gothic,  the  Norse,  the  Low 
German,  and  the  High  German,  their  chief  features  being 
the  adaptation  of  the  Ablaut  or  change  of  vowel  in  the 
verbal  conjugation  to  express  the  distinction  between 
present,  past,  and  participle  (as  in  sing,  sang,  sung). 
Gothic  or  Maesogothic  represents  the  first  group  of  which 
we  have  literary  record,  and  in  some  respects,  such  as  the 
simpler  character  of  the  vocalism,  the  cases  of  the  noun, 
and  the  dual  of  the  verb,  it  shows  more  signs  of  archaism 
than  its  sister  dialects.  Our  knowledge  of  Gothic,  how- 
ever, is  almost  entirely  confined  to  the  fragments  that 
remain  of  the  Gothic  version  of  the  Bible  made  by  the 


THE  INFLECTIONAL   FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.     89 

Arian  bishop  Wulfila  or  Ulphilas  in  Maesia  (born  A.D. 
318,  died  388).  His  parents  had  been  carried  captive 
from  Cappadocia  by  Gothic  invaders,  and  after  convert- 
ing large  numbers  of  the  Goths  to  Christianity,  he  and 
his  converts  had  to  escape  into  Roman  territory  shortly 
before  Constantine's  death.  It  says  much  both  for  the 
difficulties  he  must  have  encountered,  and  for  his  own 
practical  sense,  that  he  refused  to  translate  the  books 
of  Kings  on  the  ground  that  the  Goths  were  already 
too  fond  of  war  and  bloodshed.  The  famous  "Codex 
argenteus,"  now  preserved  at  Upsala,  is  the  main  autho- 
rity for  the  text  of  his  Bible,  .of  which  all  that  is  left  are 
considerable  portions  of  the  Gospels,  the  Epistles  of  St. 
Paul,  and  fragments  of  a  Psalm,  of  Ezra,  and  of  Nehe- 
miah.  Excluding  a  mutilated  calendar,  and  two  short 
documents  from  Naples  and  Arezzo,  this  constitutes  all 
the  materials  we  have  for  a  study  of  the  Gothic  tongue. 
The  language  seems  to  have  died  out  in  the  ninth  cen- 
tury. Its  phonetic  system  agrees  with  that  of  the  Low 
German,  and  not  of  the  High  German  group. 

Norse  is  represented  by  Icelandic  and  Norwegian, 
Danish  and  Swedish,  the  two  first  forming  the  East 
Scandinavian  section,  the  two  latter  the  West  Scandi- 
navian. Icelandic,  thanks  to  its  isolation,  has  changed 
but  little  since  its  importation  into  the  island  in  the  ninth 
century,  and  is  practically  identical  with  the  Old  Norse, 
the  Dansk  of  the  Skalds  or  poets,  and  the  Court  dialect 
of  all  the  Scandinavian  nations  as  late  as  the  eleventh 
century.  The  East  Scandinavians  had  advanced  along 
the  Bothnian  Gulf,  driving  out  the  Finnic  population 
they  found  there,  while  the  western  branch  crossed  over 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


from  the  continent  to  the  Aland  Islands,  and  from  thence 
to  the  southern  coast  of  the  peninsula.  The  two  Runic 
alphabets  of  sixteen  and  twenty-four  letters,  both  derived 
according  to  the  usual  view  from  the  Latin  capitals, 
were  chiefly  used  by  the  Scandinavian  tribes,  though  not 
unknown  to  the  other  members  of  the  Teutonic  family, 
and  the  earliest  Runic  inscriptions  yet  found  cannot  be 
much  later  than  200  A.D.1  The  stones  of  the  prehistoric 
tumulus  of  Maeshow  in  the  Orkneys  are  still  scored 
with  the  runes  of  Norse  marauders,  who  broke  into  it  in 
search  of  treasure  about  1150,  and  they  let  us  see  how 
widely  spread  a  knowledge  of  this  mode  of  writing  must 
have  been  among  the  people.  But  the  old  poetry  of  the 
Skalds,  including  short  songs  (Jiliod  or  quidci]  on  the  deeds 
of  the  gods  and  heroes,  was  first  collected  and  committed 
to  writing  in  Iceland  in  the  twelfth  century.  This  col- 
lection of  mythic  poems  goes' by  the  name  of  the  "Edda" 
or  "  Great-Grandmother,"  and  is  ascribed  to  Saemund 
Sigfusson  (died  1133).  The  younger,  or  prose  "  Edda," 
was  the  work  of  Snorri  Sturluson,  who  died  in  1241, 
and  consists  of  three  parts — the  mocking  of  Gylfi,  the 
speeches  of  Bragi,  and  the  Skalda,  a  sort  of  Norse  "Ars 
Poetica."  The  poetical  language  described  in  the  Skalda 
was  as  artificial  as  that  of  the  Arabs  ;  objects  were  to 
be  called  by  a  variety  of  epithets,  some  obvious,  some 
far-fetched,  but  seldom  by  their  proper  names,  and  the 
accumulation  of  synonyms  accordingly  became  im- 

1  See  Wimmer  :  "  Runeskriftens  Oprindelse  og  Udvikling  i 
Norden"  (1874).  Mr.  Isaac  Taylor,  however,  seems  to  have  proved 
that  the  runes  were  derived  from  an  Ionic  Greek  alphabet  of  the 
sixth  century,  B.C.  See  his  work  on  the  "Alphabet"  (1879). 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.     91 

mense.  Thus  an  island  could  be  called  by  120  different 
words,  and  a  sword  by  nearly  as  many.  This  poetical 
dialect  made  free  use  of  foreign  words,  and  we  find 
a  poem  called  the  "Alvi'ssmal "  (or  "  Speech  of  the 
Allwise"),  preserved  in  the  Old  Edda,  assigning  the 
Low  German  biorr  ("  beer ")  to  the  JEsir  or  gods,  while 
the  Norse  ol  or  ale  belongs  to  the  language  of  men.  It 
is  hardly  necessary  to  refer  to  the  curious  parallel  and 
illustration  this  affords  of  the  similar  distinction  drawn 
in  Homer  between  the  languages  of  "  gods  "  and  "  men." 
The  literary  era  of  Iceland  lasted  till  its  conquest  by 
Hacon  VI.  of  Norway,  and  we  owe  to  it  the  larger  num- 
ber of  the  Sagas,  such  as  the  story  of  the  "Burnt  Njal,"  or 
of  "  Grettir  the  Strong,"  which  have  recently  attracted  so 
much  attention.  The  oldest  monuments  of  Danish  lite- 
rature mount  back  to  the  thirteenth  century,  and  among 
them  we  may  perhaps  include  the  Latin  History  of  Saxo 
Grammaticus,  embodying  a  number  of  ancient  myths ; 
modern  literary  Danish  has  grown  out  of  the  Zeeland 
dialect  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Swedish  and  Lithu- 
anian are  the  only  two  Aryan  languages  which  have 
retained  any  traces  of  the  original  musical  accent,  and 
the  number  of  vowels  and  diphthongs  possessed  by  Old 
Norse  is  a  proof  of  the  delicate  character  of  its  organiza- 
tion. 

The  Low  German  family  is  especially  interesting  to 
the  Englishman,  whose  own  language  belongs  to  it, 
Anglo-Saxon,  that  is,  the  three  slightly  varying  Anglian, 
Kentish,  and  Saxon  dialects,1  was  spoken  by  a  mixture 

"  The  Anglian  was   characterized   by  a  special  tendency  to 
throw  off  final  n,  and  by  a  frequent  use  of  the  weak  ending  u(n}. 


92  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

of  tribes  from  the  north  of  Denmark  and  the  whole  coast 
of  the  German  Ocean,  and  in  spite  of  successive  deposits 
of  Danish,  Norman-French,  and  Latin,  has  remained  the 
kernel  and  essence  of  the  English  language  up  to  the 
present  day.  The  tribes  who  remained  at  home  were 
afterwards  termed  Frisians,  their  oldest  literary  remains 
being  some  legal  documents  of  the  thirteenth  century. 
The  Frisic  subdialects  are  very  numerous,  notwithstand- 
ing the  smallness  of  the  population  that  speaks  them,  but 
they  have  suddenly  sprung  into  notoriety  of  late  in  con- 
sequence of  the  curious  forgery  known  as  "  The  Oera 
Linda  Book,"  which  professes  to  have  been  composed  in 
the  year  559  B.C.  The  earliest  English  or  Anglo-Saxon 
production  is  the  epic  of  Beowulf,  of  the  seventh  century, 
portions  of  which  still  breathe  a  pagan  spirit  ;  but  it 
may  have  been  composed  on  the  continent.  The  literary 
dialect  of  Anglo-Saxon  was  destroyed  by  the  Norman 
Conquest,  and  the  period  that  followed — sometimes 
termed  Semi-Saxon — was  characterized  by  a  struggle 
between  the  local  dialects  and  Norman  French.  With 
the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century  begins  a  new  stage 
in  the  history  of  our  speech,  which  for  the  sake  of  con- 
venience may  be  called  Early  English ;  then  comes 
Middle  English,  the  Court  dialect  of  Chaucer  and  his 
followers,  succeeded  by  the  Modern  English  of  Elizabeth 
and  our  own  day.  Besides  Frisic,  Anglo-Saxon  claims 

Kentish  and  Saxon  agreed  in  the  absence  of  these  features.  Saxon 
was  distinguished  both  from  Anglian  and  Kentish  by  its  as  for  /. 
Kentish,  finally,  was  separated  from  the  others  by  its  occasional  ei 
for  eg"  Sweet  :  "  Dialects  and  Prehistoric  Forms  of  English,"  in 
the  "Transactions  of  the  Philological  Society  of  London,"  1876 
(p.  19). 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.     93 

close  relationship  with  the  Old  Saxon  of  the  south  be- 
tween the  Rhine  and  the  Elbe  ;  indeed,  from  the  second 
to  the  fifth  centuries  the  three  groups  of  dialects,  Frisic, 
Anglo-Saxon,  and  Old  Saxon,  probably  formed  but  a 
single  language,  which  differed  chiefly  from  the  extant 
Old  Saxon  in  its  preservation  of  the  diphthong  ai  and 
of  the  thematic  i  and  u.1  The  most  important  relic  of 
this  Old  Saxon  tongue  is  the  Christian  poem  of  the 
"  Heliand,"  or  "  Saviour,"  preserved  in  two  MSS.  of  the 
ninth  century.2  Its  modern  representatives  are  the  Low 
German  proper,  or  "  Platt  Deutsch,"  spoken  in  the  low- 
lands of  northern  Germany,  and  the  Netherlandish, 
divided  into  its  two  dialects  of  Dutch  and  Flemish. 
Flemish  was  once  the  Court  language  of  Flanders  and 
Brabant,  but  has  had  to  yield  its  place  to  the  Dutch. 

High  German,  with  all  its  dialects,  is  the  language  of 
the  greater  part  of  modern  Germany.  Its  history  falls 
into  three  distinct  periods.  The  Old  High  German 
period  can  be  traced  back  to  Charlemagne  and  the  oaths 
of  Strassburg,  preserved  in  the  "Annals"  of  Nithard,3and 
may  be  divided  into  Prankish,  Alemanno-Suabian,  and 
Austro-Bavarian.  From  the  twelfth  century  onwards  the 
vowel  endings  tend  to  disappear,  and  the  language  enters 
upon  its  second  or  Middle  High  German  stage.  This  is 
the  period  of  the  redaction  of  the  Nibelungen  Lied  and 
of  the  great  Minnesingers,  Walther  von  der  Vogelweide, 
Wolfram  von  Eschenbach,  and  Tanhuser.  The  Court 


1  Sweet :  loc.  cit.  p.  27. 

2  Edited  by  Schmeller  :  "  Heliand  :  Poema  Saxonicum  Saeculi 
noni"  (1830). 

3  Edited  by  Pertz  (1839),  pp.  38,  39. 


94 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


dialect  was  based  on  that  used  in  Suabia.  Early  in  the 
sixteenth  century  New  High  German  took  its  rise  in  the 
Chancelleries,  and  through  the  influence  of  Luther,  who 
had  adopted  it  in  his  translation  of  the  Bible,  gradually 
became  the  standard  of  educated  speech. 

We  must  now  turn  to  the  Letto-Slavic  languages,  which, 
like  the  Keltic  on  the  west,  have  been  perpetually  pushed 
back  by  the  more  vigorous  and  encroaching  Teutonic. 
Old  Prussian  is  extinct,  like  the  Slavonic  tongues  of 
German  Austria,  and  it  is  somewhat  remarkable  that 
both  the  capitals  of  modern  Germany — Berlin  and 
Vienna — stand  on  ground  that  was  once  Slavonic.  The 
Lettic  and  Slavonic  groups  bear  much  the  same  relation 
to  one  another  as  the  Scandinavian  and  German,  but  the 
first,  though  confined  to  a  comparatively  small  district, 
is  decidedly  the  more  archaic,  and  nearest  the  primitive 
Aryan  speech.  In  certain  points  Lithuanian  grammar 
is  of  an  older  type  than  even  that  of  Sanskrit — essi, 
"  thou  art,"  for  instance — but  in  most  respects  the  con- 
verse is  the  case.  So  far  as  the  conjugation  is  concerned, 
Lithuanian  is  far  inferior  to  the  oldest  known  Slavonic. 
This  is  Church  Slavonic  or  Old  Bulgarian,  once  spoken 
from  the  Adriatic  to  the  Danube  and  Black  Sea,  and 
still  the  liturgical  language  of  the  orthodox  Slav.  Owing 
to  slight  changes  inevitably  introduced  into  it  in  the 
course  of  time,  this  Church  Slavonic  may  be  classified  as 
Old  and  New.  It  was  the  language  into  which  the  Bible 
was  translated  by  the  brothers  (Constantine)  Cyrillus  and 
Methodius  in  the  ninth  century,  the  oldest  copy  of  the 
translation  being  the  Gospel  of  Ostromir,  1056  A.D.  The 
Greek  alphabet  was  modified  by  Cyrillus  to  suit  the 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.     95 

peculiarities  of  Slavonic  pronunciation,  but  the  Slavs  be- 
longing to  the  Latin  Church  rejected  this  in  favour  of 
another  called  Glagolitic.  The  modern  dialects  of  the 
Slavonic  family  are  the  Russian,  the  Ruthenian  or  Little 
Russian,  the  Polish,  the  Czech  (Chek)  or  Bohemian,  the 
Slovak,  the  Slovenian,  the  two  Sorabian  idioms,  also 
called  Wendic  and  Lusatian,  the  Bulgarian,  and  the 
Servo-Croatian.  Russian  (or  Great  Russian)  is  characte- 
rized by  the  same  phonetic  and  grammatical  complexity 
as  the  sister  Slavonic  tongues,  and  its  power  of  forming 
agglutinative  compounds  has  often  been  noticed.  Thus 
the  two  words  bez  Boga,  "  without  God,"  can  be  fused 
into  a  single  whole,  from  which,  by  the  help  of  an  adjec- 
tival suffix,  bezbozhnm,  "  godless,"  can  be  formed  ;  from 
this,  again,  the  noun  bezbozknik,  "  an  atheist,"  then  the 
denominative  verb  beznozJinicliat,  "  to  be  an  atheist,"  with 
a  whole  crop  of  derivatives,  including  the  abstract 
bezbozhnichestvo,  "the  condition  of  being  an  atheist," 
from  which  we  finally  get  the  barbarous  compound  bez- 
bozhnichcstvovat"  "  to  be  in  the  condition  of  being  an 
atheist."  Participles,  too,  have  replaced  the  aorist  and 
imperfect,  which  have  also  been  lost  in  Ruthenian, 
though  retained  in  Servian  and  Bulgarian,  and  in  this 
change  we  may  perhaps  trace  the  influence  of  those 
Tatar  tribes  whose  blood  enters  so  largely  into  that  of 
the  modern  Russian  community. 

Ruthenian  or  Rusniak  occupies  a  large  part  of  southern 
Russia,  comprising  Kiev,  the  ancient  capital,  and  is  also 
spoken  over  a  considerable  portion  of  Galicia.  Its  litera- 
ture is  chiefly  national  and  traditional,  like  that  of  Rus- 
sian proper,  which  has  shown  signs  of  activity  and 


96 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


originality  only  since  the  age  of  Lomonosov  (1711-17^ 
Ruthenian  differs  from  Russian  in  several  points,  among 
which  may  be  mentioned  the  loss  of  the  present  passive 
participle  and  the  possession  of  infinitives  with  diminu- 
tive endings.     A  far  more  cultivated  tongue  is  the  Polish, 
which  has  a  literature  reaching  back  to  the  end  of  the 
tenth  century.     This,  however,  was  for  the  most  part  in 
Latin  ;  a  strictly  native  literature  cannot  be  said  to  com- 
mence before  the  fourteenth  century.     Polish  is  divided 
into  a  variety  of  dialects,  which  Russian  and  Prussian 
despotism  have  been  doing  their  best  to  stamp  out,  but 
it  may  be  considered  as  still  spoken  by  about  ten  mil- 
lions.    Words  (foreign  importations   excepted)  are  ac- 
cented on  the  penultima,  in  contrast  to  Czech  and  Sora- 
bian,  which  accent  the  first  syllable,  while  in  Russian, 
Ruthenian,  Slovenian,    and   Croato-Servian,  the   accent 
may  fall  on  any  part  of  the  word.    The  consonants  when 
in     combination     undergo     considerable     modification. 
Czech  and  the  closely  allied  Slovak  are  spread  over  the 
whole  of  Bohemia,  except  a  strip  on  the  west  and  north, 
the  greater  part  of  Moravia  and  the  tract  to  the  south. of 
Poland,  and  are  the  dialects  of  about  6,500,000  people. 
The  earliest  Bohemian  documents  go  back  to  the  eighth 
century,  the  first  records  being  the  MSS.  of  Kralovdor  or 
Konigenhof,  and  Zelenohora  (Griinberg)  discovered  in 
1817,  which  belong  to  the  period  of  the  conversion  of  the 
country  to  Christianity,  and  embody  a  number  of  inte- 
resting myths.     Up  to  the  Hussite  war,  Bohemian  litera- 
ture was  much  in  advance  of  that  of  any  of  its  Slavonic 
neighbours  ;  it  is  only  since  the  close  of  the  last  century 
that    it   has    been    again  revived.     The    language   has 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.     97 

changed  considerably  since  it  first  comes  before  us  in  the 
eighth  century,  the  old  imperfect  and  aorist  have  dis- 
appeared, and  phonetic  decay  has  been  somewhat  active. 
Among  the  vowels  at  present  possessed  by  it  may  be 
noticed  the  vocalic  r  and  /,  always  short  in  Czech,  but 
often  long  in  Slovak,  which  give  its  words,  when  spelt,  a 
strange  appearance.  A  reform  in  the  orthography  of  the 
language  was  completed  in  1830  by  substituting  Roman 
for  Gothic  letters,  and  the  Polish  and  German  w  has  sub- 
sequently been  discarded  for  the  Latin  v. 

Serbian  or  Sorabian  is  distinguished  into  two  dialects, 
High  Lusatian  and  Wendic,  or  High  and  Low  Sorabian. 
The  district  in  which  it  is  spoken  is  now  reduced  to 
•small  dimensions  watered  by  the  Spree,  and  lying  partly 
in  Prussia,  partly  in  Saxony.  Its  literature  is  insignifi- 
cant, in  spite  of  a  literary  society  founded  in  1845  to  re- 
vive and  cultivate  it,  and  its  first  printed  book  is  a  work 
of  Catholic  devotion,  published  in  1512.  Servo-Croatian 
or  Illyrian,  on  the  other  hand,  has  of  late  been  taking  a 
somewhat  prominent  position.  The  countries  over  which 
it  extends — Servia,  Bosnia,  Herzegovina,  Montenegro, 
Slavonia,  Croatia,  and  part  of  southern  Hungary,  have 
been  made  notorious  by  the  events  of  the  recent  Turkish 
war.  Istria  and  Dalmatia  are  also  included  in  its  domain, 
and  though  the  dialects  spoken  over  this  large  tract  of 
country  are  necessarily  numerous  they  may  be  divided 
into  three  main  groups  : — the  Servian,  the  Dalmatian, 
.and  the  Croato-Bosnian.  The  three  groups  are  character- 
ized by  the  different  pronunciation  of  a  vowel  originally 
/,  which  at  Belgrade  remains  /,  while  at  Agram  it  appears 
as  i,  and  in  Cattaro  asjy/or  iyc.  Servian  literature  was 

II.  H 


98  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE 

practically  founded  by  Vouk  Stephanovitch  Karajich  at 
the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  though  the  east 
Servian  dialects  can  boast  of  documents  at  least  five 
hundred  years  old,  and  the  west  Servian  of  records  that 
date  from  the  twelfth  century,  while  the  admirable  litera- 
ture of  Ragusa  goes  back  to  the  sixteenth.  But  it  is  the 
Pesma  (Pisma)  or  ballad,  which  characterizes  the  native 
and  national  literature  of  Servia.  Many  of  the  ballads 
are  quasi-historical,  and  of  great  age,  and  Kapper,  in 
1851,  united  a  portion  of  them  relating  to  the  same 
mythical  cycle  in  a  long  Epic,  and  so  created  a  Servian 
Homer.  A  large  number  of  Turkish  and  French  words 
have  found  their  way  into  the  modern  dialect,  but  the 
old  aorist  and  imperfect  have  been  retained  (biJi  =  "  fui," 
bijah  =  "  eram  "),  while  a  perfect  has  been  formed  by 
means  of  a  participle,  as  sam  bio,  "  I  have  been." 

Slovenian  is  spread  over  southern  Carinthia  and  Styria, 
as  well  as  Carniola  and  a  part  of  northern  Istria,  and  is 
the  native  tongue  of  more  than  1,200,000  persons.  It  is 
very  closely  connected  with  Servo-Croatian,  and  may  be 
classed  writh  the  latter  under  the  general  name  of  Illy- 
rian.  Its  literature  begins  with  the  sixteenth  century, 
and  it  is  the  native  dialect  of  the  great  Slavonic  philo- 
logist, Miklosich.  Last  of  the  living  Slavonic  languages 
comes*  Bulgarian,  spoken  north  and  south  of  the  Balkans 
by  about  6,000,000  persons,  a  large  part  of  whom,  how- 
ever, are  Ugrian  Huns  by  descent.  The  adoption  of  a 
Slavonic  language  by  a  race,  whose  skulls  still  belong  to 
the  Finnish  type,  according  to  Virchow,  is  an  interesting 
illustration  of  the  small  relation  that  exists  between 
philology  and  ethnology.  The  fact  explains  the  attenu- 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.     99 

ated  condition  of  Bulgarian  grammar  when  compared 
with  that  of  other  Slavonic  tongues,  as  well  as  the  post- 
position of  the  article  which  it  shares  with  Wallach  and 
Albanian.  The  vocabulary  also  is  full  of  Turkish,  Greek, 
Albanian,  and  Rumanian  words.  Some  efforts  have 
been  made  of  late  years  to  introduce  schools  and  a  taste 
for  literature  into  the  country.  Like  Servo-Croatian, 
Ruthenian,  and  Russian,  Bulgarian  has  lost  the  dual  in 
the  verbal  conjugation  possessed  by  Church  Slavonic  ; 
on  the  other  hand,  in  agreement  with  the  other  Slavonic 
languages,  it  has  a  "  compound  declension  "  in  which  the 
adjective  is  made  definite  by  postfixing  the  pronoun  i. 
Thus  in  Servian  rast  visok  means  "  a  lofty  oak,"  msoki 
rasf,  "  the  lofty  oak."  The  same  form  of  declension  is 
also  met  with  in  Lithuanian,  and  we  may  even  compare 
the  difference  between  the  terminations  of  the  German 
adjective,  when  standing  alone  or  preceded  by  the  article. 
It  may  be  added  that  a  Servian  writer,  Danitchitch,  has 
lately  proposed  the  following  classification  of  the  Slavonic 
tongues,  on  purely  phonetic  grounds  : — 

Polish  and  Polabish 

Czech  and  Sorabian 

f  Ruthenian 
(Russian 
Bulgarian 

.Church  Slavonic     (Slovenian 

Servo-Croatian 

There  are  various  other  conflicting  schemes,  however, 
and  the  "  primitive  Slavonic "  is  probably  a  figment  of 
the  philological  analyst,  the  several  Slavonic  languages 


Primitive  Slavonic* 


TOO  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

being  the  relics  of  co-existing  dialects  which  existed  from 
the  beginning.  Many  of  these  dialects  have  of  course 
perished,  among  them  being  the  Polabish  or  old  dialects 
of  the  Slavonians  of  the  Elbe,  whose  literary  remains 
belong  to  the  beginning  of  the  last  and  the  end  of  the 
preceding  century. 

The  Lettic  group  comprises  the  two  living  dialects  of 
Lithuanian  and  Lettish  spoken  by  a  population  of  nearly 
three  millions  on  the  south-east  coast  of  the  Baltic  and 
in  Courland  and  Covno,  and  the  extinct  dialect  of  Old 
Prussian  once  dominant  between  the  Vistula  and  the 
Niemen.  The  latter  is  only  known  to  us  from  documents 
of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  the  most  im- 
portant being  a  translation  of  the  German  Catechism 
printed  in  1561,  and  a  German-Prussian  vocabulary  of 
more  than  800  words  compiled  in  the  fifteenth  century, 
and  lately  edited  by  Nesselmann.1  Lettish  may  be 
•described  as  Lithuanian  in  a  later  stage  of  development, 
its  accentuation,  for  instance,  being  invariably  on  the  first 
syllable  and  not  movable  as  in  Lithuanian.  It  is  usually 
divided  into  High  and  Low  Lettish,  the  last  being  again 
subdivided  into  north-west  Kurish  or  Tahmish,  and  the 
Middle  dialect  on  which  the  common  literary  language 
is  based.  Lithuanian  was  similarly  divided  by  Schleicher 
into  High  and  Low,  distinguished  by  the  change  of  tj 
and  dj  into  cz,  and  dz  in  the  former ;  but  this  division 
has  been  successfully  attacked  by  Kurschat,2  who  pro- 

1  "  Ein  deutsch-preussisches  Vocabularium  aus  dem  Anfang  des 
15  Jahrh."  (1868).  See  Pott  in  the  "  Beitrage  zur  vergl.  Sprachf.," 
vi. 

a  «  Worterbuch  der  Litauischen  Sprache,"  p.  viii.  (1870). 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.    101 

poses  to  call  the  dialect  of  the  extreme  south  of  Prussian 
Lithuania  (the  common  literary  language)  High  Lithu- 
anian, while  a  somewhat  widely  divergent  dialect  spoken 
in  the  north  a  few  miles  below  Memel  might  be  termed 
Low  Lithuanian.  Lithuanian  literature  consists  in  large 
measure  of  dainas,  or  "  national  songs,"  and  prose  tales, 
and  it  also  boasts  of  one  poet,  Christian  Donaleitis  (1714- 
80),  whose  poem  of  "  The  Seasons  "  in  3,000  lines  pos- 
sesses considerable  merit.  Lithuanian  phonology  agrees 
strikingly  in  some  respects  with  that  of  the  Indie  branch, 
sz  (  =  s/i)  answering  to  I-E.  /£,  Sansk.  's,  Zend  $  ;  k  to 
I-E.  kiv,  Sk.  ch,  Zend  k ;  z  (—  French  j)  to  I-E. g,  Sk./, 
Zend  2  ;  and^  to  I-E.  giu,  Sk.  and  Zend  g  (j)-  These 
sounds  have  undergone  further  modification  in  Lettish, 
where  k  and  g  have  become  c  (  =  ts)  and  dz  before  the 
soft  vowels,  as  in  celt,  "  to  lift,"  Lith.  kc'lti,  and  sz  and  z 
have  become  s  and  z,  as  sirds,  "  the  heart,"  Lith.  szirdls 
or  zeme,  "  the  earth,"  Lith.  seme.  Lithuanian  has  pre- 
served the  dual  as  well  as  the  various  case-endings  in  the 
noun  and  the  present  and  future  tenses  in  the  verb.  A 
new  perfect  and  imperfect,  however,  have  come  into 
existence,  the  latter  being  a  compound  tense  formed  by 
the  help  of  the  auxiliary  to  do. 

We  must  now  pass  on  to  another  and  very  important 
branch  of  the  Aryan  family,  the  Greek,  or  Hellenic.  In 
no  other  of  the  allied  languages  has  the  vowel  system 
been  developed  with  such  perfection  and  adapted  to  the 
expression  of  grammatical  forms.  In  fact,  the  Greek  of 
the  historic  period  is  characterized  by  a  sensitive  euphony, 
a  plastic  clearness,  and  a  logical  consistency.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  know  how  far  to  the  north  dialects  belonging  to 


102  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

the  Hellenic  stem  may  have  extended  :  Thessalian  was 
regarded  as  a  rude  ^Eolic  dialect,  Macedonian  was  still 

seems  to  belong  to  another  stock.  At  the  same  time 
the  scanty  remains  that  have  been  left  of  the  Phrygian 
language  in  inscriptions  and  glosses  prove  the  latter  to 
have  been  Hellenic,  and  the  Phrygians  traced  their 
descent  from  the  Briges  or  "  Freemen  "  of  Thrace.  The 
other  Aryan  languages  of  Asia  Minor,  Mysian,  Lydian, 
and  probably  Karian,  must  also,  it  would  appear,  be 
classified  as  Hellenic.  If  any  trust  can  be  put  in  the 
translations  proposed  by  Gompertz  for  the  inscriptions 
in  Cypriote  characters  on  the  terra-cotta  whorls  found 
by  Dr.  Schliemann  at  Hissarlik,  a  language  almost 
purely  Greek  would  have  been  spoken  in  the  Troad  at 
an  early  period.  However  that  may  be,  within  Greece 
itself  and  the  islands  and  colonies  adjacent  three  main 
dialects  were  considered  to  exist — Doric,  Ionic,  and 
^Eolic.  Doric  was  spread  over  the  Peloponnesus,  Megara, 
Crete,  Rhodes,  and  the  colonies  of  Sicily,  Libya,  and 
Southern  Italy.  The  Doric  "accent"  was  especially 
strong  in  Laconia.  Ionic  must  be  divided  into  Old  Ionic, 

O  " 

New  Ionic,  and  Attic,  and  while  Doric  was  pre-eminently 
the  dialect  of  landsmen  and  mountaineers,  Ionic  was  the 
dialect  of  sailors  and  merchants.  Its  centre  was  the 
^gean,  on  either  side  of  which  it  was  spoken  in  Attica 
and  Ionia,  where  there  were  four  local  varieties  according 
to  Herodotus.1  Old  Ionic  has  been  preserved  in  many 
of  the  forms  and  phrases  of  the  Homeric  poems,  and 
is  distinguished  from  New  Ionic  by  its  more  archaic  cha- 

1  i.  142. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.  103 

racter,  preserving  the  primitive  long  vowels  for  instance, 
which  become  short  in  New  Ionic,  as  in  VEOJ  instead  of  WQ$ 
(  =  ndvas),  or  the  old  genitive  termination  in  -ow,  which 
subsequently  passed  through  -oo  into  the  contracted  -ot/. 
Attic  stands  midway  between  Old  and  New  Ionic  in  the 
matter  of  conservative  tendencies  ;  thus  the  loss  of  the 
digamma  in  ndvas  is  compensated  by  the  lengthening  of 
the  second  vowel  (n«?),  which  is  never  made  short.  JEolic 
was,  perhaps,  the  most  widely  used  of  the  Greek  dia- 
lects, and  may  be  classified  as  JEolic  proper,  Bceotic,  and 
Thessalian.  It  was  the .  dialect  of  Lesbos,  Cyprus, 
Thessaly,  Bceotia,  Elis,  and  Arcadia,  though  the  last  two 
are  made  Doric  by  Westphal.1  The  form  it  assumed  in 
Cyprus  has  recently  been  disclosed  to  us  by  the  de- 
cipherment of  the  Cypriote  syllabary,  and  is  particularly 
interesting,  its  main  features  being  the  amalgamation  of 
the  article  with  the  initial  vowel  of  the  next  word  and 
the  preservation  of  the  digamma  (v\  which  was  elsewhere 
lost  early,  as  well  as  of  the  yod  (y).  Besides  these 
dialects  there  was  also  an  artificial  epic  dialect,  based 
partly  on  Old  Ionic,  partly  on  New  Ionic,  and  resulting 
from  the  recitation  of  half-modernized  epic  poems  by 
clans  of  rhapsodists  who  frequently  used  archaic  words 
and  forms  wrongly  or  created  others  by  false  analogy. 
The  epic  dialect  of  Homer  and  the  other  fragments  of 

1  "  Vergleichende  Grammatik  der  indogermanischen  Sprachen," 
i.  p.  48.  See,  however,  Gelbke  and  Schrader,  in  Curtius'  "  Studien," 
ii.  i,  x.  (1869, 1878),  who  show  that  Arcadian  occupies  a  middle  place 
between  Lesbo-Cyprian  and  Thessalo-Boeotian.  Elean  must  be 
classed  with  Arcadian,  though  after  the  fifth  century  B.C.  it  is  much 
affected  by  Laconisms,  and  from  the  first  had  a  remarkable  predi- 
lection for  the  vowel  a. 


104 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


the  epic  cycle,  together  with  that  of  such  later  imita- 
tors as  Apollonius  Rhodius,  is  a  kind  of  tesselated  pave- 
ment in  which  the  whole  history  of  the  poems  is  reflected. 
Thus  such  stray  ^olisms  as  Trta-ufsg,  <pyf,  &QEO$,  ai<rv(£VYim$f 
atwdig,  QepriTw  confirm  the  tradition  that  the  home  of  epic 
verse  was  in  yEolian  Smyrna  and  the  neighbourhood  of 
the  Trojan  plain,  whence  it  was  handed  on  to  the  Court 
poets  of  the  Ionian  cities.  The  intermixture  of  Old  and 
New  Ionic  forms,  the  use  of  the  same  word  now  with  the 
digamma  and  now  without,  the  sporadic  appearance  of 
yod  (as  in  SEOJ  yu$),  or  of  a  long  -a  in  the  neuter  plural, 
the  co-existence  of  two  or  three  different  forms  charac- 
teristic of  successive  stages  in  the  growth  of  the  language 
(as  the  genitives  in  -wo  for  -o<ryo,  -oo,  and  -ou,  or  the  dative 
plural  with  and  without  -i),  are  among  the  many  indica- 
tions of  the  length  of  time  during  which  the  lays  were 
orally  handed  down,  and  so  reflected  the  several  changes 
undergone  by  the  living  speech.  The  false  forms,  such 
as  hio-ono  from  elpi  with  a  digamma,  or  s*Aa&e  and  Imux&s 
with  a  double  consonant,  the  mistaken  meanings  at- 
tached to  words  preserved  in  some  ancient  formula 
or  epithet,  the  extension  given  to  an  assumed  "  poetic 
licence,"  all  show  the  artificial  character  which  the  poeti- 
cal language  gradually  assumed.  The  Atticisms  which 
occur  on  every  page,  and  caused  Aristarchus  to  consider 
Homer  as  an  Athenian,  as  well  as  words  and  phrases  which 
seem  to  belong  to  the  Periklean  era,  are  witnesses  to  more 
than  one  Attic  recension  after  the  poems  had  been  trans- 
ferred to  the  mainland  of  Europe.  And  lastly,  the  few 
forms  which  bear  the  impress  of  the  Alexandrine  age 
testify  to  the  harmonistic  labours  of  the  critics  of  Alexan- 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.  105 

dria,  who  sought  to  remove  contradictions  and  incon- 
sistences  by  expunging  whole  passages  or  introducing 
trifling  corrections.  But  the  epic  dialect,  such  as  we  have 
it,  was  essentially  a  creation  of  the  Ionian  mind  ;  it  grew 
up  among  the  .^Eolian  and  Ionic  settlers  in  Asia  Minor, 
who  had  fled  from  the  Dorian  invaders  of  the  Pelopon- 
nesus ;  it  recorded  their  glories  and  their  hatreds,  and 
with  the  exception  of  a  single  line  in  Odyssey  (xix.  177), 
there  is  as  little  trace  of  the  Dorian  name  as  there  is  of 
the  Dorian  dialect. 

This  Dorian  dialect,  however,  as  befitted  the  idiom  of 
uncorrupted  mountaineers,  is  the  most  conservative  of  all 
the  Greek  dialects.  Thus  it  preserves  the  digamma,  as 
well  as  the  primitive  dental,  which  had  become  a  sibilant 
in  the  other  dialects,  as  in  3i'3om  ( =  %$u<ri),  TUTTTOVTI 
(  =  TUTTTovn),  facan  (  =  eixoffi) ;  while  the  accent  of  the 
aorist  ETVTTOV  embodies  the  fact  that  the  last  syllable  has 
been  shortened  by  losing  a  final  consonant  (e-n/Vovr). 
Next  to  Doric,  Old  Ionic  and  Attic  exhibit  the  most 
archaisms.  The  Homeric  and  Hesiodic  literature  bear 
witness  to  the  comparatively  late  date  at  which  the 
digamma  became  extinct  in  the  Ionic  dialect,  though 
only  one  Ionic  inscription  with  this  letter  has  yet  been 
found  (in  Naxos),  and  the  legends  scratched  on  the 
granite  colossi  of  Abu-Simbel  by  the  Ionian  mercenaries 
of  Psammitichus  (probably  B.C.  650)  show  no  sign  of  its 
existence.  Except  in  the  matter  of  the  digamma,  which 
was  retained  up  to  a  comparatively  late  date,  Lesbian 
yEolic  has  gone  furthest  in  the  path  of  phonetic  and 
grammatical  change.  Even  the  accent  has  been  uni- 
formly thrown  as  far  back  as  possible.  However,  the 


io6 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


verbs  in  -/>«  were   more   numerous   than   in   the  sister- 
idioms,   QitoifM  for   example  answering  to  the   ordinary 


pfAsa),  but  most  of  these  are  of  late  formation  though 
modelled  after  an  ancient  pattern. 

It  has  been  the  fashion  to  class  Greek  with  Latin,  and 
even  to  constitute  a  hypothetical  Helleno-Italic  or 
"  Pelasgic  "  language  from  which  the  dialects  of  Greece 
and  Italy  have  been  supposed  to  have  sprung.  But  such 
a  theory  is  but  the  echo  of  the  effete  prejudices  and  be- 
liefs  of  pre-scientific  "  philology."  Greek  and  Latin  were 
generally  the  only  dead  languages  taught  and  known, 
and  where  Hebrew  did  not  come  into  competition  it  was 
imagined  that  everything  must  be  derived  from  Greek. 
Not  only  were  the  two  classical  tongues  thought  to  be 
intimately  bound  together,  but  it  was  further  laid  down 
that  Latin  was  but  a  dialect  of  Greek,  a  sort  of  corrupt 
^Eolic  in  fact.  It  is  no  longer  possible  to  believe  that 

% 

the  relation  between  Greek  and  Latin  is  especially  close. 
Latin  gravitates  rather  towards  the  Keltic  languages, 
where,  as  in  Latin,  we  find  a  passive  in  -r,  and  a  future 
in  -b,  while  Greek  is  much  more  nearly  related  to 
Asiatic  Zend.  Alone  in  Greek,  Zend,  and  Sanskrit  has 
the  augment  been  preserved  ;  the  comparative  in  -TE^CS, 
the  alpha  privative,  the  /**  (md)  prohibitive,  and  the  voice- 
less aspirate,  all  find  their  analogues  in  Zend  ;  while, 
as  Prof.  Max  Muller  points  out,  there  are  striking  re- 
semblances between  the  lexicons  of  Greek  and  Zend. 
Thus  the  Greek  a-rof^z,  7rtei<rTo$,  ava,  olo$,  ytpcu;,  SefMft  otxavfa 
answer  to  the  Zend  f  taman,  fraesta,  ana,  aeva  ("one"), 
garanh  ("reverence"),  dami  ("creation"),  v 

1  "  Chips,"  iv.  p.  249. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.  107 

On  the  other  hand,  Greek  stands  in  marked  contrast  to 
Latin  as  regards  phonology.  While  Greek  preserves  the 
vowels,  Latin  preserves  the  consonants,  and  the  aspirated 
tenues,  %,  S,  <p,  become  in  Latin  the  simple  //  and  f. 
Equally  opposed  is  the  verbal  conjugation  where  Latin 
has  dispensed  with  a  large  number  of  the  old  tenses  and 
supplied  their  place  with  new  compounds.  By  way  of 
compensation  the  Greek  declension  is  poorer  than  the 
Latin,  in  spite  of  its  retention  of  the  dual  and  use  of  the 
archaic  endings  -Sc(v)  and  -&. 

The  loss  of  consonants,  v,  y,  s,  &c.,  has  been  the  chief 
cause  of  the  phonetic  changes  of  the  Greek  language. 
The  rule  that  drops  s  between  two  vowels  has  been  espe- 
cially prolific  of  change.  So  also  has  been  the  disap- 
pearance of  y,  which,  when  coming  after  a  dental,  has 
given  rise  to  z.  The  grammatical  terminations,  again, 
have  been  strangely  transformed  by  the  rule  which  for- 
bids a  word  to  end  in  any  consonant  save  n,  r,  s  (and  in 
two  cases  /£).  The  decay  of  the  final  consonants  was, 
however,  but  slow,  and  the  late  date  at  which  the  final 
nasal  of  the  accusative  disappeared  may  be  judged  of 
by  the  preservation  of  the  vowel  a,  as  in  Qefarra,  a  nasal 
preventing  any  modification  of  a  preceding  alpha.  In 
the  declension,  the  locative  has  taken  the  place  of  the 
dative,  as  Troipev-i,  vav-o-i,  nov-ei  (  =  nod-cri),1  and  the  instru- 
mental ending  is  preserved  in  the  Homeric  vaS-$i(v).  In 
the  verb  the  old  middle  or  intransitive  voice  has  been 
retained,  which  has  been  lost  in  Keltic  and  Letto- 
Slavonic,  and  has  left  but  few  traces  in  Latin.  Though 

1  -<ri  is  a  compound  of  the  two  locative  endings  -su  and  -2,  and 
stands  for  sm. 


zoS 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


capable  in  an  eminent  degree  of  forming  compounds 
Greek  has  remained  free  in  this  respect  from  the  extrava- 
gances of  Sanskrit,  and  its  syntax  has  reached  a  high 
level  of  development. 

Political  and  literary  reasons  made  Attic  the  standard 
dialect  of  Greece,  and  in  the  hands  of  the  Alexandrian 
writers  it  became  the  xoivy  SIOAMTOJ,  or  "  common  language," 
of  the  Greek  world.  But  outside  the  literary  coterie  and 
such  University  cities  as  Athens  or  Alexandria,  this 
"  common  language  "  changed  considerably,  and  we  have 
only  to  compare  the  Greek  of  the  New  Testament  with 
that  of  Plato  or  Thucydides  to  see  how  great  the  change 
could  be.  The  transference  of  the  capital  of  the  Roman 
Empire  to  Constantinople,  and  the  mixture  of  national- 
ities which  took  place  there,  gradually  produced  the 
Byzantine  Greek  of  the  Middle  Ages,  out  of  which  grew 
modern  Greek  or  Romaic,  properly  applied  to  the  edu- 
cated dialect  of  Greece  at  the  time  of  the  war  of  inde- 
pendence. By  the  side  of  this  stood  a  large  number  of 
local  varieties,  amounting,  it  is  said,  to  as  many  as 
seventy,1  one  especially,  the  Tzakonian  of  the  Morea, 
differing  from  the  literary  language  in  a  very  marked 
degree.2  Some  of  these  dialects  have  now  disappeared, 
but  several  still  remain,  especially  in  the  islands,  and 
to  such  an  extent  does  dialectic  variation  still  proceed 
that  in  Lesbos  "villages  distant  from  each  other  not 

1  Stoddart  :  "  Glossology,"  p.  33.     But  see  above,  p.  204. 

2  An  exhaustive  grammar  and  vocabulary  of  this  dialect,  in  three 
volumes,  is  being  prepared  by  Dr.  Deffner.     The  vocabulary  will 
contain   6,000  words,  with   examples.     Many  of  the  words   and 
phonetic  peculiarities  of  the  dialect  go  back  to  the  "  Laconisms  " 
recorded  by  Hesychius  and  other  ancient  lexicographers. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.  109 

more  than  two  or  three  hours  have  frequently  peculiar 
words  of  their  own  and  their  own  peculiar  pronunciation." l 
The  educated  dialect,  however,  was  but  slightly  removed 
from  the  Attic  Greek  of  classical  times,  and  the  leaders 
of  Greek  literary  fashion  have  found  it  possible  with  the 
aid  of  schools  and  newspapers  to  weed  "  Romaic "  of 
modern  forms  and  idioms,  to  restore  old  cases,  tenses 
and  words,  and  in  short  to  revive  classical  Greek.  This 
revival  is  one  of  the  most  curious  linguistic  facts  of  the 
present  century ;  even  the  dative  has  been  recovered, 
and  the  infinitive  in  -w  is  being  substituted  for  the  peri- 
phrastic va,  (  =  Iva)  with  the  conjunctive,  which  had  long 
taken  its  place.  The  conjugation,  nevertheless,  still  dis- 
plays an  analytic  tendency,  the  dual  has  disappeared, 
and  the  pitch-accent  has  been  changed  into  a  stress- 
accent,  causing  the  accented  syllable  to  be  long  and  the 
unaccented  one  to  be  short.  Modern  Greek  pronuncia- 
tion, moreover,  is  very  far  removed  from  that  of  classical 
times ;  iotacismus  is  predominant,  reducing  vowels  and 
diphthongs  to  the  common  sound  of  i,  while  the  aspirated 
consonants  have  become  surds.2 

One  group  of  Aryan  speech  is  still  left  for  notice.  The 
numerous  Romanic  tongues  which  trace  their  descent  from 
the  language  of  Rome  make  the  Italic  group  one  of 
special  importance.  These  tongues  not  only  have  a  con- 
tinuous history  of  their  own,  but  we  can  also  trace  them 


1  Max  Mtiller  :  "  Lectures,"  i.  p.  52  (8th  edition). 

2  A  Greek  dialect  is  spoken  in  eight  small  towns  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Otranto  and  Lecce.     It  changes  x  into  &>  as  in  homa 
or  huma  for  x^jwa,  reminding  us  of  the  replacement  of  the  guttural 
aspirate  by  the  simple  aspirate  in  Latin.     See  Morosi :  "  Studij  sui 
Dialetti  Greci  della  terra  a'  Otranto"  (1870). 


i io  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

back  to  a  well-known  fountain-head.  They  enable  us  to 
verify  or  correct  our  attempts  to  restore  the  parent- Aryan 
by  a  comparison  of  the  derived  languages,  as  well  as  to 
study  the  laws  of  letter-change  in  actual,  living  speech. 
But  Latin,  the  language  of  Rome,  was  but  one  out  of 
many  Italic  dialects.  Putting  aside  the  non-Aryan 
Etruscan,  we  find  in  Italy  two  great  stocks,  the  lapy- 
gian  and  the  Latino-Sabellian.  The  lapygian  is  repre- 
sented by  the  inscriptions  of  the  ancient  Messapia  in  the 
south,  which  are  as  yet  but  partially  deciphered.  They 
suffice  to  show,  however,  how  distinct  their  language  is 
from  the  other  Aryan  dialects  of  Italy ;  the  genitives 
in  -aiJd  and  -i/ii,  the  use  of  aspirated  consonants,  and 
the  avoidance  of  m  and  /  at  the  end  of  words,  connect  it 
rather  with  the  Greek  than  with  the  true  Italic  stock. 
The  latter  falls  into  two  branches,  the  Latin  and  the 
Umbro-Samnite,  comprising  the  idioms  of  the  Umbrians, 
Sabines,  Marsians,  Volscians,  and  Samnites  or  Oscans. 
Oscan,  which  is  chiefly  known  to  us  from  the  inscriptions 
on  the  bronze  tablets  of  Agnone1  and  Bantia,2  and  the 
Abella  Stone,3  was  spoken  in  Samnium  and  Campania, 
and  is,  on  the  whole,  the  most  conservative  of  the  Italic 
dialects;  while  Umbrian,  on  the  other  hand,  the  language 
of  the  north,  has  suffered  more  than  any  other  from  the 
action  of  phonetic  decay.  Our  knowledge  of  Umbrian  is 
principally  derived  from  the  bronze  tablets  known  as  the 
Eugubine  Tables,  discovered  at  Gubbio,  the  ancient 

1  Found  at  Fonte  di  Romito  in  1848. 

2  Found  at  Oppido,  on  the  borders  of  Lucania,  in  1793. 

J  Used  as  a  doorstep  till  noticed  by  Prof.  Remondini  in  1740,  and 
removed  to  the  museum  of  Nola. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL   FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH,  in 

Iguvium,  in  1446,  in  a  subterranean  chamber.  They 
relate  to  the  twelve  sacrifices  and  liturgies  to  be  per- 
formed in  honour  of  the  twelve  gods  by  various  guilds. 
Both  Umbrian  and  Oscan  differ  from  Latin  in  substitut- 
ing p  for  qu  (kw\  as  in  pis  for  quis,  in  replacing  k  before 
/  by  a  strongly  pronounced  aspirate,  as  in  Ohtavis  for 
OctaviuSj  and  in  changing  aspirated  tenues  to  f  in  the 
middle  of  a  word  where  Latin  has  b,  as  in  tefe  (tibi),  sifei 
(sibi).  Umbrian  also  developed  a  peculiar  r  out  of  an 
original  d,  and  invented  a  new  character  to  denote  it ; 
thus  runnm  answers  to  the  Latin  donum;  rere  to  the 
Latin  dedit.  It  tended  to  omit  vowels  altogether,  and 
to  reduce  diphthongs  to  simple  vowels  even  more  than 
Latin,  while  the  terminations  fell  into  the  utmost  dis- 
order. Oscan,  on  the  contrary,  preserves  the  diphthongs 
and  retains  the  organic  a  where  Latin  has  z,  as  in 
anter  by  the  side  of  the  Latin  inter ;  it  avoids  the  change 
of  s  to  r  between  vowels,  as  well  as  the  assimilation  of 
sounds  ;  kenstur,  for  instance,  corresponds  with  the  Latin 
censor  for  cens-tor.  Both  in  Oscan  and  Umbrian  the 
genitive  of  nouns  in  -a  is  -as,  that  of  nouns  in  -us,  -eis 
and  -es,  while  the  locative  is  retained,  and  the  dative 
plural  in  -bus  discarded.  Much  use,  too,  is  made  of  the 
old  infinitive  in  -urn,  and  whereas  the  Latin  future  has 
had  recourse  to  the  auxiliary/}^,  the  Oscan  Jier-est,  "he 
will  take,"  preserves  the  old  sigmatic  form.  As  Momm- 
sen  observes,  the  relation  between  Latin  and  Osco-Um- 
brian  may  be  compared  to  that  between  Ionic  and  Doric, 
Oscan  and  Umbrian  differing  from  one  another  much  as 
the  Doric  of  Sicily  differed  from  the  Doric  of  Sparta. 
But  whether  Latin,  Oscan,  or  Umbrian,  all  the  Italic 


H2  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

languages  agreed  in  throwing  back  the  accent  as  far  as 
possible,  and  thus  losing  all  trace  of  the  primitive  Aryan 
accentuation. 

The  history  of  Latin  itself  may  be  grouped  into 
three  periods, — that  of  Old  Latin,  down  to  the  Second 
Punic  war  ;  that  of  classical  Latin,  which  gradually  be- 
came the  artificial  dialect  of  a  select  literary  coterie ;  and 
that  of  Neo-Latin,  the  language  of  the  people  under  the 
Empire,  out  of  which  sprang  the  Romanic  idioms  of 
mediaeval  and  modern  Europe.  Classical  Latin  broke 
down  the  diphthongs  into  simple  vowels  (jus  for  jous, 
itnus  for  oinus,  plures  for  ploicres,  civis  for  ceivis),  reduced 
short  u  to  i  (optimus  for  optuinus,  rcgimus  for  rcgumus], 
changed  o  to  e  (verto  for  vorto]  and  e  to  i  (iiavem  for 
navim\  and  extended  the  transformation  of  s  into  r 
(arbor  for  arbos),  and  of  initial  f  into  //  (hordeum  for 
fordcum).  D  occasionally  appears  as  /,  as  in  lacrima  for 
dacruma,  odor  for  olor  (olere),  and  initial  dv  becomes 
simply  b  (bonus,  bis  for  duonus,  dvis).  The  old  ablative 
in  -d,  which  long  kept  its  place  in  official  documents,  lost 
its  characteristic  consonant,  and  sententiad  or  oquoltod\\'&& 
to  become  sententia  and  occulto,  the  locatives  in  -i  (humi, 
Romai)  were  confounded  with  the  ablative  or  the  geni- 
tive, and  the  old  dative  in  e  (-1)  as  in  populoi,  Romai,  or 
ceivei,  was  worn  away  to  populo,  Romae,  civi.  The  only 
traces  of  the  dual  are  to  be  found  in  duo,  octo,  and  ambo, 
and  of  the  first  person-ending  of  the  present  active  in 
sum  (possum]  and  inquam.  The  verb,  in  fact,  was 
thoroughly  disorganized,  new  analytic  tenses  were  intro- 
duced, formed  by  the  help  of  auxiliaries,  the  middle  voice 
almost  wholly  disappeared,  and  a  great  extension  of  use 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.  113 

was  given  to  the  supines  and  gerunds.  Here  and  there, 
it  is  true,  a  reduplicated  perfect  was  left ;  but  its  place  was 
more  usually  taken  by  a  new  compound  of  the  stem  with 
the  substantive  verbs  sum  and  fuo,  as  in  scrip-si  and 
ama-vi  (ama-fui),  and  this  compound  was  again  com- 
bined with  a  compound  tense  of  the  substantive  verb — as 
scrip  sis sem  (=  scrip-si-es-sem)  or  amav-issem — to  form 
fresh  tenses.  Other  tenses — the  imperfect  and  future 
—were  created  by  means  of  the  auxiliary  fuo,  just  as  in 
Keltic,  where  the  Old  Irish  carub  answers  to  amabit,  and 
confutes  the  view  first  started  by  Scherer,1  that  the  for- 
mative of  Latin  tenses  was  the  stem  dha  (as  in  the  Teu- 
tonic lov-(d}ed),  since  a  Keltic  b  cannot  come  from  an 
earlier  dh.  Like  Keltic,  too,  Latin  developed  a  curious 
passive  in  r,  which  was  long  considered  as  a  reflective 
voice  formed  by  the  pronoun  se,  just  as  in  Letto-Slavic, 
where  the  Lithuanian  dyvy-ju-s,  the  Church  Slavonic 
divlja-se  answers  to  the  Latin  "  miror,"  or  in  Old  Norse 
where  the  middle  is  formed  by  the  suffix  -sk,  that  is,  the 
reflective  pronoun  sik,  "self."  But  though  we  might 
bring  the  Latin  amor  from  amo-se  through  an  interme- 
diate amo-re,  it  is  impossible  to  do  so  in  Old  Irish  or 
Welsh,  where  s  does  not  change  to  r,  and  for  the  present, 
therefore,  the  origin  of  the  characteristic  of  the  Latin 
passive  must  remain  unexplained.2  Several  tenses  of  the 

i     *  "  Geschichte  der  deutschen  Sprache,"  p.  202. 

:  The  Latin  passive  r  appears  also  in  Vedic  forms,  like  the  3rd 
pi.  imper.  active  'se-r-atani,  from  'si,  and  Fick  and  Bezzenberger 
suggest  that  it  is  further  found  in  the  Greek  civ-p-o,  a  2nd  sing, 
imperative,  as  compared  with  the  plural  fovre  (Bezzenberger's  "  Bei- 
trage/'  ii.  3,  p.  270).  In  amaris,  for  ama-r-is,  it  is  suffixed  to  the 
verbal  stem,  and  not  to  the  person-endings,  as  in  the  Sanskrit  and 

II.  I 


114  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

passive,  however,  were  formed  upon  the  analytic  principle, 
the  substantive  verb  being  used  with  the  participle  active, 
while  in  both  active  and  passive  the  optative  and  con- 
junctive and  even  future  were  confounded  together. 

The  analytic  tendency  displayed  in  the  Latin  verb  has 
been  carried  out  in  the  Neo-Latin  or  Romance  languages. 
The  " vulgar"  Latin  of  the  people  necessarily  differed 
slightly  in  the  different  parts  of  the  Empire ;  the  further 
removed  a  province  was  from  the  capital,  the  greater 
was  the  chance  of  change  in  the  dialect  spoken  in  it,  and 
the  greater  also  the  influence  likely  to  be  exercised  upon 
it  by  neighbouring  languages.1  Out  of  these  varieties 
of  provincial  Latin  have  grown  the  modern  Romance 
idioms — Italian,  Spanish,  Provencal,  French,  Portuguese, 
Rumansch  and  Wallachian  or  Rumanian.  They  all 
agree  in  one  point,  that  of  retaining  the  accented  syl- 
lable of  the  Latin  word,4but  while  Italian  and  Spanish, 
geographically  the  nearest  to  the  old  language  of  Rome, 
have  made  but  few  changes  in  the  form  of  the  vocabulary, 
French  has  distinguished  itself  by  the  desire  it  has  shown 
of  throwing  away  as  many  unaccented  syllables  as  pos- 
sible, and  of  thus  suppressing  vowels  and  consonants 
alike.  No  doubt  the  process  was  aided  by  the  Frankish 
conquest ;  numberless  Teutonic  words  have  made  their 
way  into  the  French  dictionary,  and  French  idiom  has 
been  largely  affected  by  that  of  Germany.  Thus  the 
French  avenir,  that  is,  ad  venire,  has  been  formed  after 

Greek  words  just  mentioned,  and  it  is  possible  that  the  attachment 

of  it  to  the  full  forms  of  the  indicative,  in  order  to  denote  the 

passive,  was  due  to  the  false  analogy  of  the  imperative  ama-re. 

1  See  Schuchardt  :  "  Der  Vokalismus  der  Vulgarlateins  "  (1866-8). 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.  115 

the  analogy  of  the  German  zukunft,  literally  "  to  come  ; " 
contrte,  that  is  (terra)  contrata,  is  the  result  of  the  asso- 
ciation of  the  German  Gegend,  "  country,"  and  gegen, 
"  against,"  and  avaler,  from  ad  vallem,  is  a  slavish  trans- 
lation of  zu  Thai  But  there  is  another  respect  in  which 
French  and  Provengal  separate  themselves  from  Italian 
and  Spanish.  The  declension  in  the  two  latter  tongues 
has  altogether  disappeared  in  the  earliest  monuments  to 
which  we  have  access,  whereas  in  French  and  Provencal 
the  relics  of  the  old  declension  were  preserved  up  to  the 
thirteenth  century,  resulting,  as  M.  Littre  has  remarked,1 
in  a  semi-synthetic  syntax.  Old  French  distinguished 
between  the  nominative  and  the  accusative,  which  were 
li  chevals  and  le  cheval  in  the  singular,  and  li  cheval  and 
les  chevals  in  the  plural,  where  the  final  -s  preserves  the 
-us  and  -os  of  the  Latin  noun.  French  and  Provencal, 
however,  are  not  the  children  of  a  common  Neo-Latin 
language.  They  are  independent  dialects  which  have 
grown  up  on  Gallic  soil  out  of  the  provincial  Latin  once 
spoken  there,  and  modified  by  the  influence  of  foreign 
tongues.  Both  dialects,  it  is  true,  supplanted  an  earlier 
Keltic  idiom,  but  the  number  of  Keltic  words  that  have 
crept  into  their  vocabularies  is  singularly  small. 

Latin,  as  spoken  in  Gaul,  had  a  strong  affection  for 
diminutives,  a  characteristic  which  may  have  been  of 
Keltic  origin.  At  all  events,  Irish  shows  this  tendency  in 
a  marked  way,  as  in  sanctan,  "  saint-ikin,"  corrupted  into 
"  St.  Anne,"  or  squireen,  from  the  borrowed  squire.  The 
same  tendency,  however,  is  found  in  a  good  number  of 
languages  in  which  the  Court  dialect  has  become  that  of 
1  "  Dictionnaire  de  la  Langue  franchise,"  i.  p.  xlvii.  (1863). 


n6  THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

the  people,  and  we  have  the  German  Swiss  turning  every- 
thing into  a  diminutive,  down  to  Kaisar  Karli,  and  the 
Italian  using  sorella  as  a  substitute  for  soror.     Indeed,  we 
have  only  to  look  at  Diez's  Dictionary  to  see  how  fond 
the  provincials  must  have  been  of  diminutives  throughout 
the  Roman  world.     We  also  find  them  making  great  use 
of  neuter  adjectives,  like  viaticum  (voyage),  or  cetaticum 
(age),  instead  of  the  simple  substantives,  and  employing 
words  different  from  those  in  ordinary  use  in  the  classical 
speech.     Thus  villa  (ville]  took  the  place  of  urbs,  bucca 
(bonche)  that  of  as,  basiare  (baiser)  that  of  oscular  i,  cambiare 
(changer]  that  of  mutare,  andare  (alter]  that  of  ire.     Had 
it  not  been  for  a  few  lines  of  Horace  and  Juvenal  we 
should  never  have  known  of  the  existence  of  caballus 
in  literary  Latin  of  the  golden  age,   and  yet  caballus 
(chevat)  has  entirely  ousted  equiis  from  the  languages 
which  boast  of  their  descent  from  it    In  the  eighth  century 
French  was   still  the  lingua  romana  rustica  in  which 
the  clergy  preached,  and  the  glosses  found  by  Holtz- 
mann  (in  1863)  at  Reichenau  in  a  MS.  of  the  year  768, 
present  us  with  words  like  cab  anna, linciolo,  manatees  as  the 
equivalents  of  the  Latin  tuguriumt  sindones,  minas.     The 
oaths  of  Strassburg  (A.D.  842)  preserved  by  Nithard1  are 
the  next  oldest  specimens  of  French,  the  langucdo'il  as  it 
came  to  be  called.     With  the  Cantilene  de  Sainte  Eulalie 
begins  the  golden  age  of  the  Old  French  tongue,  and  of 
the  epic  poetry,  the  best  example  of  which  is  the  Chanson 
de  Roland.     It  was  with  snatches  from  this  poem  that 
the  trouvere  Taillefer  encouraged  the  Norman  soldiers  at 
the  battle  of  Hastings.     With  the  Sire  de  Joinville  the 
1  "  Historiarum,"  iii.  5  (edit.  Pertz,  1839). 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.     117 

language  entered  upon  a  new  stage  of  development. 
The  langue  d'o'il  had  four  principal  dialects,  corresponding 
with  the  principal  political  centres,  and  still  preserved  in 
the  modern  patois.  These  four  dialects  were  the  Bur- 
gundian,  the  Norman,  the  Picard,  and  the  French  of  the 
Isle  of  France,  the  present  representative  of  which  differs 
scarcely  at  all  from  the  Burgundian.  The  three  first- 
named  dialects  differ  chiefly  in  the  vowels,  as  the  following 
table  will  show  : — 

Norman.  Picard.  Burgundian. 

e  oi,  ai,  ie  oi,  ai,  ei,  ie 

ei  •  oi,  ai  oi,  ei,  ai 

u  o,  ou,  eu  o 

ui  i,  oi,  oui  ui,  oi,  eui,  oui.1 

All  three  dialects  have  contributed  towards  the  forma- 
tion of  modern  French,/^  (poids)  and  attacker  for  instance 
coming  from  Burgundy,  peser  and  attaquer  from  Nor- 
mandy and  Picardy.  The  Norman  preference  for  u  has 
been  perpetuated  in  the  sound  indicated  by  the  spelling 
of  such  English  words  as  colour  or  courage. 

Provencal  or  the  langue  d'Oc,  the  language  of  the 
troubadours,  is  the  language  of  southern  France,  and 
includes  not  only  the  dialect  of  Provence  proper,  but 
the  dialect  also  of  Languedoc,  Limousin,  Auvergne, 
Gascony,  and  part  of  Dauphiny,  to  which  it  is  advisable 
to  add  further  the  Catalonian  now  spoken  in  Catalonia, 
Valencia,  and  the  Balearic  Islands,  and  once  used  through- 
out the  territory  of  Aragon.  Its  westernmost  sub-dialect, 
the  Gascoun  of  Bayonne,  may  still  be  heard  in  the  village 
of  Anglet.2  In  some  respects  Provengal  throws  light  on 

1  Burgundian  also  changes  the  nasal  into^,  as  mjuig;  forjuin. 

2  For  a  specimen  of  this  dialect,  see  "  Podsies  en  Gascoun,"  by 


ii8  THE  SCIENCE 

the  grammatical  forms  of  its  northern  neighbour  ;  thus 
the  origin  of  the  French  dirai,  from  dicer e  kabeo,  is  fully 
shown  by  the  Provencal  future  dir  vos  ai,  "  je  vous  dirai," 
which  also  suggests  an  explanation  of  the  incorporation 
of  the  French  pronouns.  The  earliest  Provencal  poemr 
the  Song  of  Boethius,  is  not  older  than  the  tenth  century, 
but  the  best  literature  of  mediaeval  Europe  grew  up  with 
the  brilliant  but  shortlived  civilization  of  Provence,  which 
the  Church  stamped  out  by  fire  and  sword.  The  Albi- 
gensian  Crusades  prevented  the  Provengal  from  obtaining 
the  place  afterwards  held  by  the  more  fortunate  Italian 
and  French. 

The  oldest  written  monuments  of  Italian  do  not  reach 
back  beyond  the  twelfth  century.  In  fact,  literary  Italian 
was  the  creation  of  Dante,  who  adopted  it  from  the 
splendid  Court  of  Frederick  II.,  that  precursor  of  the 
Renaissance,  in  whom  the  Papacy  instinctively  felt  that  it 
had  a  deadly  foe.  Already  Frederick  himself  and  his 
Chancellor,  Pietro  della  Vigna,  had  composed  their  poems 
in  it,  and  from  the  mouth  of  Dante  it  passed  to  his 
Florentine  countrymen  and  became  the  native  tongue  of 
Tuscany.  In  his  treatise  "  De  Vulgari  Eloquentia," 
Dante  reviews  all  the  dialects  of  his  country,  reckoning 
fourteen  in  all,  and  dividing  them  into  Eastern  and 
Western.  The  more  scientific  division  of  modern  days 
arranges  them  in  three  groups — northern,  central,  and 
southern,  the  first  comprising  Genoese,  Piedmontese,  Vene- 
tian, ^Emilian  and  Lombard  ;  the  second  Tuscan,  Roman, 
and  Corsican ;  and  the  third,  Neapolitan,  Calabrian, 

P.  Th.  Lagravere  (Bayonne,  1865),  and  "  Podsies  Gasconnes,"  by 
J.  Larrebat  (Bayonne,  1868). 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.  119 

Sicilian,  and  Sardinian.  Most  of  these  dialects  differ  very 
widely  from  the  classical  Italian  ;  Sicilian,  for  instance, 
reads  like  a  new  language,  and  in  the  CJiiaja  of  Naples 
there  are  few  travellers  who  would  recognize  the  Piana 
of  Tuscan  speech. 

Spanish  departs  more  widely  from  Latin  in  both 
phonology  and  vocabulary  than  any  other  of  the  Romanic 
languages,  but  its  grammatical  forms  are  regular,  and 
when  once  the  phonetic  rules  of  the  language  are  known, 
its  similarity  to  the  parent-tongue  will  strike  the  most 
careless  student.  It  is  probable  that  the  changes  in  the 
phonology  may  have  been  due  to  Arabic  influence,  as 
the  changes  in  the  vocabulary  certainly  have  been. 
Spanish  has  driven  Catalonian  from  Aragon,  and  is  even 
now  making  way  against  Basque  in  the  north  ;  it  is  pecu- 
liarly the  dialect  of  Castile,  and  the  Andalusian  of  the 
south  differs  from  it  in  many  respects.  The  oldest  relics 
of  Spanish  are  scattered  through  the  pages  of  St.  Isidore 
of  Seville,  in  the  seventh  century  ;  its  earliest  text,  how- 
ever, belongs  to  the  middle  of  the  twelfth. 

Portuguese,  together  with  Gallician,  approaches  French 
in  several  particulars  more  nearly  than  it  does  Spanish, 
though  on  the  whole  it  must  be  classed  with  the  latter. 
It  has  lost  the  initial  /  of  the  article,  and,  in  addition  to 
the  Arabic  words  it  contains  in  common  with  Spanish,  it 
possesses  also  a  number  of  French  words,  which  it  is 
supposed  were  introduced  under  Henry  of  Burgundy  at 
the  close  of  the  eleventh  century. 

In  the  isolated  valleys  oftheRhaetianAlpsistobefound 
another  Romanic  language,  the  Rhaetian,  or  language  of 
the  Orisons,  with  its  two  dialects,  the  Romansch  or  Ru- 


120  THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

monsh  spoken  by  the  Protestants  of  the  Engadine,  and  the 
Ladin  (Latin)  spoken  by  the  Roman  Catholics  of  the  Ober- 
land.  A  religious  literature  of  the  sixteenth  century  exists 
in  Rumonsh,  but  otherwise  the  literary  productions  of  the 
language  amount  almost  to  nothing.  Ascoli  has  lately 
shown1  that  this  Rhsetian  idiom  is  allied  to  two  others 
which  have  been  erroneously  classed  with  Italian — the 
dialect  of  Friuli  used  by  more  than  400,000  persons  in 
Italy  on  the  banks  of  the  Tagliamento,  and  in  Austria  as 
far  as  Goritz,  and  the  dialect  of  the  Adige  in  the  Austrian 
Tyrol  spoken  by  about  90,000  people.  A  few  short  in- 
scriptions of  the  twelfth  century  belong  to  the  dialect  of 
Friuli. 

The  last  remaining  of  the  Neo-Latin  tongues  is  the 
Wallach  or  Rumanian  of  the  far  east.  .The  Romani,  as 
they  call  themselves,  derive  it  from  the  Latin  introduced 
by  the  Roman  legionaries  into  Dacia,  when  the  country 
was  made  a  province  by  Trajan  in  A.D.  107.  It  is  spoken 
in  Rumania  and  Moldavia,  as  well  as  in  parts  of  Hungary, 
Servia,  Transylvania,  Bessarabia,  and  even  as  far  south  as 
Thessaly.  The  Danube  divides  it  into  two  branches,  the 
northern  or  Daco-Rumanic,  and  the  southern  or  Macedo- 
Rumanic,  the  latter  of  which  abounds  with  Albanian  and 
Greek  words.  Both  dialects,  however,  have  borrowed 
largely  from  the  Slavonic,  and  it  is  possible  that  they 
may  also  contain  some  fragments  of  the  old  Dacian 
vocabulary,  of  which  our  only  information  is  derived  from 
the  botanical  names  given  by  Dioskorides.  Mussafia 
has  shown2  that  the  Latin  vowels  have  undergone  two 

1  "  Archivio  Glossologies  Italiano,"  i.  (1873). 

2  "Zur  romanischen  Vocalisation"  (1868). 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.    121 

main  modifications,  tonic  e  and  o,  on  the  one  side,  be- 
coming the  diphthongs  ea  and  oa ;  other  vowels,  on  the 
other  side,  acquiring  a  semi-nasal  sound.  We  have 
already  alluded  to  the  postposition  of  the  definite  article, 
as  in  omul  (homo  ille],  "  the  man,"  which  Rumanian  shares 
with  the  neighbouring  Albanian  and  Bulgarian.  The 
term  Wallach,  it  may  be  observed,  is  the  German  Walsch 
( Wels/i)  or  "  foreign,"  a  name  given  to  them  by  their 
Teutonic  neighbours. 

One  more  language  of  the  Aryan  family  now  remains  for 
review.  This  is  the  Skipetar  ("  Highlander")  or  Albanian, 
the  linguistic  position  of  which  is  still  unsettled.  There  is 
little  doubt,  however,  that  it  belongs  to  the  Indo-European 
stock,  and  the  opinion  has  often  been  hazarded  that  it  re- 
presents the  ancient  Illyrian  or  Thrako-Illyrian  whose 
territory  it  occupies.  A  recent  writer 1  has  even  connected 
it  with  the  ancient  Pelasgic — that  delight  of  ethnological 
paradoxers — and  sought  to  explain  the  early  proper 
names  of  Greece  by  means  of  it ;  but  his  attempt  cannot 
be  pronounced  successful.  The  vocabulary  contains  a 
large  number  of  borrowed  words,  especially  Greek,  and 
certain  phenomena  seem  to  indicate  that  it  bears  a  closer 
relation  to  Greek  than  to  any  other  member  of  the  Aryan 
family. 

This  Aryan  family  of  speech  was  of  Asiatic  origin. 
Dr.  Latham,2  indeed,  would  make  it  European,  and 
Poesche  has  lately  advocated  the  same  view  with  great 
ability  ; 3  but  there  are  few  scholars  who  have  followed 

1  Benlow  :  "  La  Grece  avant  les  Grecs"  (1877). 

2  In  his  edition  of  the  "  Germania  "  of  Tacitus,  p.  cxxxvii. 

3  "Die  Arier"  (1878). 


122  THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

them.  Their  theory  rests  upon  a  confusion  of  language 
and  race.  Poesche  assumes  that  the  Aryan  languages 
were  the  product  of  the  white  race,  whose  colour  was  due 
to  the  albinoism  caused  by  a  long  residence  in  the  marshy 
country  between  the  Niemen  and  the  Dnieper.  But  this 
is  begging  the  whole  question.  For  anything  we  know, 
the  parent-  Aryan  may  have  been  the  language  of  a  race 
essentially  different  from  that  to  which  we  belong  ;  indeed, 
it  is  highly  probable  that  it  was  spoken  by  more  than  one 
race.  We  may  appeal  by  way  of  illustration  to  the  Latin 
of  the  fifth  century,  used  as  it  was  by  varying  nation- 
alities and  different  races.  But  comparative  philology 
itself  supplies  us  with  a  proof  of  the  Asiatic  cradle  of  the 
Aryan  tongue.  Linguistic  change  greatly  depends  upon 
geography  ;  the  nearer  a  dialect  is  to  its  primary  centre, 
the  less  alteration  we  are  likely  to  find  in  it.  Now,  of  all 
the  Aryan  dialects  Sanskrit  and  Zend  may,  on  the  whole, 
be  considered  to  have  changed  least  ;  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  Keltic  in  the  extreme  west  has  changed  most. 
Hence  Pictet  made  the  Aryan  mother-country  a  point 
within  an  ellipse,  close  to  Indie  and  Iranian  on  the  one 
side,  and  at  varying  distances  from  the  languages  of 
Europe  on  the  other.1  Hovelacque,  however,  suggests 
that  the  point  might  have  been  eastward  even  of  the  Indie 
and  Iranian  groups,  and  towards  the  Chinese  frontier.2 
This,  too,  is  virtually  the  view  of  Johann  Schmidt,  who 
derives  the  several  Aryan  languages  from  dialects  of  the 


1  As  in  this  diaram  :  l&Uic 

Italic     Jfdimic 

2  "  La  Linguistique,"  p.  344. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.  123 

parent  speech,  each  of  which  lay  further  to  the  westward 
of  the  hypothetical  centre  the  more  it  had  departed  from 
the  character  of  the  primitive  tongue.1  Mr.  Douse,  on 
the  other  hand,  in  tracing  the  phenomena  of  Grimm's  law 
back  to  the  original  dialects  of  the  parent-speech,  would 
rather  make  Low  German,  High  German,  Letto-Slavic 
and  Classical,  the  latter  including  Sanskrit,  Zend,  Greek, 
and  Latin,  merely  neighbouring  dialects  grouped  round 
a  single  centre,  from  which  we  may  imagine  them  to  have 
radiated.2  In  default  of  other  evidence,  it  is  best  to  abide 
by  the  current  opinion,  which  places  the  primaeval  Aryan 
community  in  Bactriana  on  the  western  slopes  of  Belurtag 
and  Mustag,  and  near  the  sources  of  the  Oxus  and 
Jaxartes.  Here,  at  all  events,  is  the  Airyanem  vaejo, 
"  the  Aryan  seed,"  of  the  first  chapter  of  the  Vendidad, 
where  Ahuramazda  tells  Zarathusta  was  his  first  creation, 
and  whence  the  Aryans  advanced  towards  the  south-west 
through  fifteen  successive  "creations"  or  countries.  It  is 
true  that  this  legend  is  at  most  a  late  tradition,  and  applies 
only  to  the  Zoroastrian  Persians ;  the  geography,  how- 
ever, is  a  real  and  not  a  mythical  one,  and  the  position 
assigned  to  the  first  creation  agrees  with  the  little  that 
comparative  philology  has  to  teach  us  about  the  early 
Aryan  home.  Thus  we  know  that  it  was  a  comparatively 
cold  region,  since  the  only  two  trees  whose  names  agree 
in  Eastern  and  Western  Aryan  are  the  birch3  and  the 
pine,4  while  winter  was  familiar  with  its  snow  and  ice. 


1  "Die  Venvandschaftverhaltnisse  der  I-E.  Sprachen"  1872). 

-  "  Grimm's  Law  ;  a  Study,"  p.  96  (1876). 

3  Skt.  bhurjja,  Old  H.  G.  birca. 

4  Skt.  pitu-darus,  Greek  TTITVS,  Lat.  pinus. 


124  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

It  was  a  region,  moreover,  in  which  gold,  silver,  and 
bronze  were  procurable,  and  Gerland1  has  pointed  out 
that  the  universal  Aryan  myth  embodied  in  the  wander- 
ings of  Odysseus  presupposes  the  existence  of  a  large 
lake  or  sea  near  the  first  dwelling-place  of  the  Indo- 
European  family.    But  a  comparative  study  of  the  lexicon 
proves  that  though  the  primitive  Aryans  were  acquainted 
with  salt,  crabs   and  mussels,  and  boats  with  rudders, 
these  latter  were  of  a  very  rude  description  and  only  fitted 
for  lakes  and  rivers,  while  the  absence  of  a  common 
name  for  the  "  oyster  "  or  "  the  sea  "  in  Eastern  and  Wes- 
tern Aryan  is  a  fact  of  some  significance.       Humboldt 
believed  that  the  sea  of  Aral  is  the  remains  of  a  great 
inland  lake  which  once  included  the  Caspian  and  the 
Euxine,  and  this  belief  has  been  confirmed  by  recent 
researches.2     We  may  therefore  picture  the  tribes  which 
used  the  parent- Aryan  speech  as  living  on  the  slopes  of 
the  Hindu-Kush,  in  the  high  central  tableland  of  Asia,  and 
watching  the  sun  as  it  set  evening  after  evening  behind 
the  waters  of  a  great  inland  sea.     It  was  this  inland  sea 
with  the  desert  that  lay  to  the  south  of  it  which  cut  the 
Aryans  off  from  communication  with  the  civilized  races 
of  Elam  and  Babylonia,  and  forced  the  first  emigrants  to 
the  west  to  push  their  way  through  the  steppes  of  Tatary 
and  the  pass  of  the  Ural  range.     As  has  been  already 
noticed,   the  parent-speech  was  no  undivided,  uniform 
tongue ;  like  the  provincial  Latin  that  developed  into  the 
Romanic  languages  of  modern  Europe,  it  was  split  up 

1  "  Altgriechische  Marchen  in  der  Odyssee  "  (1869). 

2  See  Sporer,  in  Petermann's  "  Mittheilungen "   (1868-72),  and 
"  Nature,"  May  20th,  1875. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.  125 

into  dialects,  each  with  its  own  peculiarities,  which  have 
been  perpetuated  in  the  derived  idioms,  or  even  associated 
in  the  same  idiom,  like  the  peculiarities  of  the  Old 
French  dialects  in  the  Parisian  French  of  to-day.  Thus 
M.  Breal1  observes  that  while  the  words  which  signify 
"heart"  presuppose  a  stemghard  in  the  languages  of  Asia, 
they  presuppose  a  stem  kard  in  the  languages  of  Europe, 
though  the  compound  'srad-dha,  whence  the  verb  'srad- 
dadhami,  the  Latin  cre-do,  shows  that  the  stem  kard  itself 
is  not  a  stranger  to  the  Asiatic  idioms.  The  variant 
forms,  again,  of  Sfyot  and  dvdr,  or  the  coexistent  demon- 
stratives sa(s),  ta(s)  testify  to  the  same  fact  Artificial 
language  alone  is  free  from  dialectical  variety,  and  the 
older  and  more  barbarous  a  community  the  greater  will 
be  the  number  of  the  dialects  it  speaks. 

No  written  record  has  come  down  to  us  of  this  primi- 
tive Aryan  settlement,  where  the  languages  of  Europe 
first  began  to  be  formed,  it  may  be,  some  five  or  six 
thousand  years  ago.    But  a  fuller  and  truer  history  of  its 
life  and  thought  than  could  be  given  in  any  written  record 
may  be  read  in  the  archives  of  speech.     By  comparing 
the  dialects  of  Europe  and  Asia,  we  can  learn  what  words 
were  already  formed  and  used  before  the  period  of  Aryan 
migration  set  in.     Where  we  find  the  same  fully-formed 
word  with  the  same  meaning  in  both  Greek  and  Sanskrit, 
or  German  and  Zend,  we  are  justified  in  believing  that  it 
existed  before  the  separation  of  the  Aryan  family,  and 
that  the  object  or  idea  it  denoted  was  already  familiar 
to  our  linguistic  forefathers.     In  this  way  we  can  restore 

1  "  La  Langue  indo-europeenne,"  in  the  "  Journal  des  Savans," 
Oct.  1876.     See  above,  p.  20.  (Vol.  II.). 


126  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

the  civilization  and  history  of  the  parent  community,  can 
discover  its  mode  of  living,  can  reproduce  its  experiences, 
can  trace  its  habits  and  beliefs.  But  we  cannot  prove  a 
negative  :  we  cannot,  that  is,  infer  from  the  absence  of 
the  same  word  in  the  same  sense  in  both  Eastern  and 
Western  Aryan  that  the  idea  or  object  signified  was  un- 
known before  the  period  of  migration  ;  it  might  have 
been  known,  yet  lost  or  forgotten,  during  the  long  years 
of  wandering.  Greek  and  Sanskrit  both  possess  the  same 
term  for  "razor,"  ksliuras,  fyw  ;  nevertheless  Varro  as- 
serts that  shaving  was  not  practised  at  Rome  before  the 
third  century,  B.C.,1  and  the  assertion  is  confirmed  not 
only  by  the  peculiar  Latin  name  of  the  razor  (novacula), 
but  also  by  the  fact  that  the  small  crescent-shaped  razors 
so  plentifully  met  with  in  the  islands  of  the  Greek  archi- 
pelago, in  Attica,  Boeotia,  in  many  parts  of  Etruria,  and 
€ven  north  of  the  Alps,  have  never  been  found  in  the 
cemetery  of  Alba  Longa,  or  in  any  other  of  the  oldest 
Italic  tombs.  Nor,  again,  must  we  forget  the  possibility 
that  words  which  look  of  native  growth  may  really  have 
been  borrowed,  or  that  borrowed  words  may  exterminate 
native  ones.  In  Gaelic,  pascJia  &s\&  purpura  have  become 
caisg  and  corcur,  through  the  analogy  of  the  general  law 
that  represents  the  Kymric  p  by  the  older  c  (kw)  ;  and 
few  of  those  who  speak  of  pansy  or  dandelion,  remember 
that  they  are  the  borrowed  French  pensee  and  dent  de 
lion.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Basque  terms  for  "  knife  " 
are  all  loan-words — ganibeta  from  the  French  canif,  and 
nabala  from  the  Spanish  nabaja  (novacula)  ;  yet  we  can- 
not suppose  the  Basques  to  have  been  ignorant  of  any 

1  "DeRe  Rustica,"  ii.  11. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL   FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.   127 

cutting  instruments  whatever,  and  Prince  L-L.  Bona- 
parte has  discovered  the  native  word  haistoa  in  an  obscure 
village.  How  important  these  cautions  are  is  evidenced 
by  the  fact  that  Fick,  to  whom  we  owe  above  all  others 
the  restoration  of  the  primitive  Aryan  dictionary  and 
civilization,1  has  from  time  to  time  argued  as  if  the 
absence  of  a  common  term  in  east  and  west  Aryan 
necessarily  implied  that  a  particular  object  was  unknown 
to  the  parent-speech,  or  has  accepted  words  as  native 
because  they  conform  to  the  phonetic  peculiarities  of  the 
language,  and  have  undergone  the  regular  action  of 
Grimm's  law.  Bearing  in  mind,  therefore,  that  our  pic- 
ture of  the  primitive  Aryan  community  can  never  be 
complete,  that  we  can  never  know  how  many  further  de- 
tails, have  still  to  be  filled  in,  let  us  see  how  it  comes 
before  us  in  the  pages  of  Pick's  "  Comparative  Dic- 
tionary." 

Like  the  language,  the  civilization  of  the  community 
was  highly  advanced.  Man  was  manus,  "  the  thinker," 
and  the  society  in  which  he  lived  was  strictly  monoga- 
mous. The  family  relations,  indeed,  were  defined  with 
the  severest  precision,  and  there  were  separate  words  for 
a  wife's  sister  (sydlt),  and  the  wife  of  a  brother  (ydtaras, 
wafr^t^janitrices).  The  father,  at  the  head  of  the  family, 
exercised  the  same  patria  potestas  as  we  find  existing  at 
a  later  day  among  the  Romans  ;  he  was  \hepatis,  wong,  or 
"lord  "  of  the  household,  just  as  the  wife  was  the  patni, 
ia,  or  "  mistress."  The  community  itself  was  but  a 


1  In  his  "  Vergleichendes  Worterbuch  der  indogermanischen 
Sprachen"  (3rd  edit.  1875-6),  and  "Die  ehemalige  Spracheinheit 
der  Indogermanen  Europa's"  (1873). 


128 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


large  family,  governed  on  the  same  principle  as 
family,  by  the  vi'spati,  or  "  head  of  the  clan."  The  vi'spati, 
again,  seems  to  have  been  under  the  ragan,  or  "  king," 
who  was  assisted  by  a  body  of  councillors  consisting  of 
the  pataras,  or  "  fathers  "  of  families.  The  community, 
however,  resembled  the  Slavonic  mir,  or  the  village  com- 
munities of  India,  whose  constitution  has  been  explained 
to  us  by  Sir  Henry  Maine.  Like  the  Keltic  clan,  it  was 
a  yevos  or  ve'sas  (olxoi),  holding  in  common  the  pasturage 
and  other  lands,  which  were  redistributed  among  its 
members  from  time  to  time.  These  members,  neverthe- 
less, had  separate  possessions  of  their  own  (ap-nas,  a<pvo<;, 
res),  consisting  of  the  house  with  its  court,  its  goods,  and 
its  cattle.  The  king  or  chief,  too,  had  a  special  residence 
(rigid)  and  domain  (TE/XEVOJ),  "cut  off"  from  the  property 
of  his  neighbours.  The  house  (damas)  was  no  mere  tent 
or  cave  ;  it  was  built  of  wood,  with  a  thatched  roof,  and 
was  entered  by  a  door,  not  by  the  half-underground 
passage  of  the  Siberians.  But  the  community  itself  was 
but  part  of  a  larger  whole — the  vastu  (acnu),1  puris*  (TTQ^), 
or  "  township  ;"  and  these  townships  were  connected  with 
one  another  by  roads  (panti\  along  which  pedlars  tra- 
velled with  the  wares  of  trade.  Naturally  such  an 
organized  community  had  its  settled  customs  or  laws 
(dhdma?i,^^oi}y  like  the  Homeric  SE^O-TEJ,  or  "dooms,"  laid 
down  (dJia)  by  qualified  judges,  and  accepted  as  prece- 
dents for  the  future.  "Justice"  was  aiva,  "the  path"  of 
right,  from  z,  "  to  go  ;"  right  itself  was  yaus  (jus),  that, 
which  a  man  is  "bound"  to,  from  yu(g\  "to  join;' 
punishment  (kai-na)  was  inflicted  only  after  inqui 
1  Root  vas,  "to  dwell."  2  Root  far  (ple-o),  "  to  fill." 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.  129 


)  and  the  accused  was  called  upon  to  provide 
sureties,  those  who  "  knew  "  him  (gnd-tar).  The  com- 
munity contained  free  men  only  ;  slavery  as  yet  did  not 
exist,  and  free  labourers  worked  for  hire  (inisdha,  purQag). 
Aryan  religion  was  simple,  but,  like  the  community, 
already  organized.  It  consisted  in  a  worship  of  natural 
objects  and  phenomena,  more  especially  of  the  sun  and 
dawn,  and  other  bright  powers  of  day.  But  it  must 
be  called  henotheistic,  rather  than  polytheistic  ;  out  of 
the  many  gods  he  believed  in,  the  worshipper  prayed  to 
one  only  at  a  time  —  he  had  not  yet  room  in  his  thoughts 
for  two  co-existing  deities.  The  gods  ruled  and  guided 
the  universe;  they  were  immortal,  all-powerful,  and  holy, 
dwelling  like  a  human  family  on  an  Olympus  of  their 
own  with  the  dyauspitar  (Diespater)  or  "  father  of  heaven  " 
at  their  head.  Of  this  father,  who  was  himself  but  the 
"  bright  "  sky,  the  stars  and  moon  were  conceived  as  the 
sons  and  daughters  j1  it  was  not  until  the  old  theology 
had  begun  to  yield  to  the  nature-myths  of  a  later  age 
that  they  became  the  myriad  eyes  of  Argos,  the  "  bril- 
liant "  one.  Of  this  later  mythology,  the  hymns  already 
addressed  to  the  gods  were  a  fruitful  seedplot  ;  they 
were,  too,  the  basis  of  a  liturgy,  fragments  of  which  were 
carried  away  by  the  various  bodies  of  emigrants.  In 
these  liturgical  forms  the  gods  were  praised  as  "givers  of 
good  things  "  (ddtaras  vasudm),  were  prayed  "  to  show 
kindness  "  (vdram  bhar,  fya  QefM),  and  asked  to  bestow 
"good  courage"  or  "sense"  (^vog  w,  Zend  vohu  mananh) 
and  "undying  renown"  (sravasakshitam,K*kosa(phTov).  In 

1  Compare  the  Vedic  duhitar  divas  used  of  the  Dawn  and  other 
goddesses  with  the  Homeric  Svydrrjp  Aids  and  jcovpai  At6f 

II.  K 


130 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


addressing  them,  the  worshipper  had  to  face  the  rising 
sun,  with  his  right  hand  to  the  south  ;  hence  the  Skt. 
dakshina  (dakshina,  the  Deccari),  the  Welsh  dehau,  and 
Old  Irish  dess,  all  mean  at  once  "right  hand"  and 
"  south  ;"  it  is  only  in  the  Ghilghiti  of  Dardistan  that  the 
right  hand  is  synonymous  with  the  "  north." 

But  besides  these  bright  and  favourable  gods,  there 
were  the  evil  spirits  of  night  and  darkness,  whose  symbol, 
the  snake,  lurked  during  the  day  in  the  coverts  of  the 
woods.  Night  itself  was  the  demon  Aj-dahaka  (Astyages, 
Zohak),  "  the  biting  snake,"  ever  contending  with  day- 
light for  the  possession  of  the  world,  but  ever  worsted  in 
the  struggle.  It  was  during  his  hour  of  apparent  victory 
that  ghosts  and  vampires  prowled  about,  and  witchcraft 
could  work  its  evil  will.  At  such  a  time,  the  Aryan  felt 
a  consciousness  of  sin,  which  he  expressed  in  words  like 
the  Sanskrit  agasy  "  transgression,"  Greek  aycj,  "  guilt ;" 
and  sought  for  forgiveness  in  penance  and  self-mortifica- 
tion (compare  the  Skt.  'sramana,  "  an  ascetic,"  and  Irish 
crdibdech,  "pious,"  craibhdhigk,  "people  who  mortify  the 
flesh").1 

Cattle  formed  the  basis  of  material  existence.     In  the 
possession  of  herds  and  flocks  (pasu,  peciis)  lay  the  chief 
wealth  of  the  Aryan   community,  which  had  "  sheep- 
walks"  and  pasture  grounds   (agra,  ager\  stables  and 
sheep-cotes,  fields  and  pigsties.    The  horse  was  domesti- 
cated ;  indeed,  it  is  probable  that  the  horse,  which  the 
Accadians  of  Chaldea  called  "  the  animal  of  the  East, 
was  first  tamed  by  the  primitive  Aryans.     It  was  not 
however,  used  for  riding,  but  only,  like  the  ox,  for  draw 
1  Rhys  :  "  Lectures  on  Welsh  Philology,"  p.  13  (1877). 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.  131 

ing  carts.  The  other  domesticated  animals  were  oxen, 
sheep,  goats,  swine,  and  dogs  ;  geese  and  bees  were  also 
kept,  though  beehives  were  not  yet  invented,  and  the 
honey  was  made  into  mead  (Skt.  madJni).  But  milk 
from  the  cow,  sheep,  and  goat  was  the  chief  drink  ;  and 
flesh  was  eaten  when  baked  or  roasted.  To  eat  raw  flesh 
was  the  sign  and  characteristic  of  the  barbarians  (dmddas, 
qdofpyot).  Apples  also  were  eaten,  and  black  broth  or 
hodgepodge  (Skt.  ytis/ia,  Lat.  jus,  Greek  Cw/xof,  Old  Slav. 
jucha,  Welsh  uwdy  fromyu  "to  mix")  formed  a  principal 
staple  of  food.  Leather  was  tanned,  and  wool  shorn  and 
woven,  for  though  linen  was  also  known  it  is  probable 
that  dresses  were  mostly  made  of  these  materials.  The 
hunter  had  the  bear,  wolf,  wild  duck,  hare,  otter,  and 
beaver  to  pursue  or  trap ;  crabs  and  mussels  were  col- 
lected for  food,  and  mice  and  vermin  were  already  a 
household  plague.  Quails  and  ducks  were  further  eaten, 
and  the  future  was  divined  from  the  flight  of  birds,  espe- 
cially the  falcon. 

The  Aryans,  however,  were  mainly  a  pastoral  people. 
Agriculture  was  still  backward,  though  two  cereals  at 
least  were  grown — one  represented  by  the  Skt.  sasya, 
Zend  hahya,  "  corn,"  and  Welsh  haidd,  "barley;"1  and 
the  other  by  the  Skk.yavast  Lithuanian  javai,  Greek  £««, 
"  spelt "  (Old  Irish  eorna,  "  barley  ").  We  may  infer  that 
the  latter  grain  was  the  one  most  cultivated  from  the  old 
Homeric  epithet  of  the  earth,  ft/Say^,  "spelt-giving."  A 
kind  of  rude  plough  was  in  use ;  hay  was  cut  with  the 

1  Rhys  :  "  Lectures  on  Welsh  Philology,"  p.  9  (1877).  Dr.  Whit- 
ley  Stokes  refers  to  Pliny  N.  H.  xviii.  40  :  "  Secale  Taurini  sub 
Alpibus  (s)asiam  vocant." 


132  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

sickle  (rava),  and  the  grain  was  ground  in  the  mill,  an< 
baked  into  bread.  Straw  was  collected  for  winter  em- 
ployment, or  for  roofing  the  house  ;  and  a  few  garden 
herbs  were  grown.  Salt,  too,  was  used  as  an  article  of 
food  ;  and  the  year  was  divided  into  the  three  seasons  of 
spring,  summer,  and  winter,  while  the  moon  received  the 
title  of  "  measurer,"  from  the  lunar  month,  by  means  of 
which  time  was  reckoned.  The  dress  of  the  Aryans  shows 
that  their  country  was  far  from  being  a  warm  one.  It 
consisted  of  tunic,  coat,  collar,  and  sandals,  made  of  sewn 
and  woven  wool  or  leather. 

Gold,  silver,  and  bronze  were  the  three  metals  known, 
though  implements  of  stone  still  continued  in  use  ;  and 
even  after  their  arrival  in  Europe,  we  find  the  Teutonic 
Aryans  naming  the  "  dagger  "  sea/is,  from  the  "  stone  " 
(Lat.  saxuiit)  of  which  it  was  made.  Smelting  and  forging 
were  carried  on  by  a  special  class  of  smiths  (takshanas), 
who  occupied  a  high  position,  as  in  most  primitive  com- 
munities, and  were  even  sometimes  supposed  to  possess 
supernatural  powers.  The  axe  seems  to  have  been  the 
chief  weapon,  but  the  sword  (Skt.  asi,  Lat.  ensis]  and 
bow  were  also  employed  ;  and  wars  appear  to  have  been 
frequent. 

Surgery  and  medicine  were  in  their  infancy,1  charms 
being  mainly  relied  upon  as  a  means  of  cure ;  and  two 
diseases  at  least  had  received  names — the  tetter  (dardni) 
and  consumption  (skaya,  skiti).  Boats  fitted  for  lakes 
and  rivers  had  been  invented  ;  and  the  numerals  on  the 
decimal  system  were  known,  and  named,  at  all  events,  up 
to  one  hundred.  Baked,  and  not  merely  sun-dried,  pot- 
1  Compare  Latin  medeor  and  Zend,  madhaya. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.  133 

tery  was  in  daily  use,  consisting  of  vases,  jars,  pots,  and 
cups,  some  of  which  had  a  pointed  end  to  drive  into  the 
ground.  Since  several  words  exist  denoting  painting  and 
motley  colours,  we  may  infer  that  this  pottery  was  some- 
times ornamented.  Painting,  however,  was  not  the  only 
art  the  germs  of  which  had  already  shown  themselves. 
Music,  too,  was  already  developed  ;  and  the  Sanskrit 
tanti,  "  a  chord,"  and  tata,  "a  stringed  instrument,"  answer 
to  the  Greek  TWOS,  "  a  chord,"  and  the  Welsh  tatit,  "  a 
musical  string,"  plural  tannau,  "  a  harp." 

Even  the  names  by  which  these  old  Aryans  called  one 
another  were  organized  into  a  system.  Fick  has  shown1 
that  every  proper  name  was  a  compound  of  two  words, 
neither  more  nor  less.  Thus  we  might  have  Deva-sruta, 
"  heard  by  God,"  in  Sanskrit,  9co-&>fo$  in  Greek,  Hari- 
berht  in  Old  German,  Mils-drag  in  Servian,  Cyn-fael  in 
modern  Welsh.  The  number  of  names,  however,  by 
which  a  child  might  be  christened  was  limited ;  and  many 
of  them  could  be  doubled  by  putting  the  first  element 
last — Deva-sruta  for  instance,  being  changed  into 'Sruta- 
deva,  ©£o-3<apoj  into  Aap6-6eos.  The  second  part  of  the  name 
might  be  contracted  so  as  to  be  hardly  recognizable;  thus 
in  Greek  'Ami-yaws  becomes  Am'-ycw,  KteG-TrccTVf  Kaunas,  and 
Baunack  has  proved  that  the  Kretan  ©fe  stands  for  ©w- 
&OV*QS*  After  the  separation  of  the  Aryan  family,  a  good 
many  shorter  names  were  formed  out  of  the  old  ones  by 
omitting  one  of  their  two  elements,  and  using  the  remain- 
ing element  by  itself,  with  or  without  a  special  termina- 


1     1C 
2 


Die  griechischen  Personennamen  "  (1874). 
Curtius'  "  Studien  zur  griechischen  imd   lateinischen   Gram- 
matik,"  x.  i  (1877),  pp.  83-88. 


134  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

tion,  as  in  the  Sanskrit  Datta  from  Deva-datta,  or  the 
Greek  N«/a£,  N/XOJV  from  Nuw-/utf%Df,  N«a-fftpaT0f,  or  the  like. 
The  Latin  proper  names  fall  outside  the  Aryan  system, 
and  are  based  on  an  entirely  different  method,  which  is 
probably  due  to  Etruscan  influence.1 

Such,  then,  was  in  brief  outline  the  civilization  of  the 
early  Aryan  community,  and  it  will  be  seen  that  it  was 
no  mean  one.  Still  following  Pick,  we  may  trace  the 
Western  Aryans  after  their  departure  from  their  old 
home,  making  their  way  along  the  northern  shores  of 
the  Caspian  and  the  inhospitable  plains  of  Russia  2  to  a 
region  between  the  Baltic  and  the  Black  Sea,  but  west- 
ward of  a  line  drawn  from  Konigsberg  to  the  Crimea,  as 
is  shown  by  the  common  possession  of  a  name  for  the 
beech  by  the  European  dialects.  Here,  it  would  seem, 
they  settled  for  a  while,  before  again  breaking  up  and 
turning  now  to  the  west  to  become  Kelts  or  Teutons, 
now  to  the  south  to  become  Italians  and  Greeks.  The 
European  dialects  have  certain  marked  features  in  com- 
mon ;  such  as  the  possession  of  e  and  /,  where  the  Asiatic 
dialects  have  a  and  r,  and  a  present-stem  formed  by  the 
suffix  -ta.  If  we  compare  their  vocabularies  together  we 
shall  gather  some  idea  of  the  progress  that  had  been 
made  since  their  separation  from  their  eastern  kindred. 
Family  relationships  have  become  more  closely  defined  ; 
there  are  names  now  for  the  grandfather,  the  sister-in- 

1  At  any  rate  the  Latin  name-system  is  the  same  as  the  Etruscan, 
and  we  now  know  that  certain  proper  names  are  of  Etruscan  origin, 
Aulus,  Aulius,  or  Avilius,  for  example,  being  the  Etruscan  Avile  or 
A  vie,  from  avil,  "life." 

2  See  Sayce  :  "  Principles  of  Comparative  Philology  "  (2nd  edi- 
tion), pp.  387-94. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.  135 

law,  and  the  sister's  son,  and  terms  of  affection  for  old 
people,  such  as  and  (anus),  and  amd  (amita),  "grand- 
mother," but  not,  it  would  appear,  for  father  and  mother. 
An  advance  may  be  noted,  too,  in  civil  relations ;  the 
community  now  called  taut  a  (Goth,  thiudd)  has  become 
more  compact,  and  a  conception  has  been  formed  of  the 
citizen  or  "  civis,"  as  opposed  to  the  "  stranger  "  or  hostis. 
The  members  of  the  same  community  are  necessarily 
friends,  but  it  requires  a  special  act  to  enter  into  friendly 
relations  with  the  member  of  another  community,  and  be 
to  him  a  "  host  "  (/wspes,  Old  Slav,  gos-podt).  We  find  a 
new  term  for  "law,"  lex,  A-S.  lagu,  "what  is  laid  down," 
and  there  are  further  words  for  "  pound  "  and  "  steal." 
If  the  Greek  had  nothing  corresponding  to  lex,  hospes, 
hostis,  civis,  it  is  not  that  he  lacked  the  ideas  denoted  by 
these  words,  or  had  separated  earlier  than  the  rest  of  his 
European  brethren  from  the  old  stock,  but  because  his 
intercourse  with  the  east  and  his  maritime  pursuits  kept 
the  relations  of  civil  life  in  a  constant  state  of  mobility, 
and  displaced  old  terms  by  new  ones,  such  as  fiaaiteug, 
favaZ,  $EO$,  kpEi/f.  But  it  was  their  introduction  to  the  sea 
that  brought  the  European  Aryans  their  largest  increase 
of  knowledge  and  experience.  Not  only  were  better 
boats  built,  and  the  sea  itself  named  from  its  "barren" 
nature  (man),  but  sea  animals — such  as  the  lobster,  the 
oyster,  and  the  seal — were  caught  and  named.  New  plants 
on  the  land,  too,  became  known — the  elm,  the  alder,  the 
hazel,  the  oak,  the  Scotch  fir,  the  Vine,  the  willow,  the 
beech,  and  the  nettle,  as  well  as  new  animals — the  stag, 
the  lynx,  the  hedgehog,  and  the  tortoise,  and  new  birds 
— the  thrush  and  the  crane.  The  duck,  perhaps,  was 


136  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

added  to  the  list  of  domesticated  animals,  and  a  great 
improvement  took  place  in  agriculture,  the  old  pastoral 
life  passing  into  an  agricultural  one.  We  now  have  cul- 
tivated fields,  with  millet  (/KEA/WI),  barley  (upM,  hordeum), 
oats  (avena),  and  rye  (Old  Slav,  pyro)  ;  forks,  seed-sow- 
ing, harvesting,  and  harrowing.  Peas,  beans,  poppies, 
rape,  onions,  and  possibly  hemp  were  also  grown,  and,  as 
Fick  acutely  remarks,  bread  of  an  inferior  sort  was 
baked,  which  afterwards  gave  way  to  better  sorts,  and  so 
occasioned  the  loss  of  its  common  European  name. 
Yeast,  too,  made  its  appearance,  together  with  glue  and 
pitch  ;  leather  work  was  improved  ;  hurdles  and  wicker- 
work  began  to  be  made,  and  the  stock  of  tools  and 
weapons  was  enlarged  by  the  addition  of  hammers  and 
knives,  shields,  spears,  and  lances. 

It  was  left  to  each  branch  of  the  European  family  to 
improve  upon  the  heritage  it  had  received.  The  dictio- 
nary of  every  separate  language  is  filled  with  words  of 
peculiar  form  and  meaning,  bearing  witness  to  the  ex- 
tent to  which  this  improvement  was  carried  out.  In 
Greek,  for  instance,  we  find  new  terms  in  abundance. 
Even  the  deity  has  received  a  fresh  name,  since  in 
spite  of  every  effort  that  has  been  made  to  connect  the 
Greek  SEO'J  with  the  common  Aryan  term  that  we  meet 
with  in  the  Latin  deus,  it  still  stands  obstinately  alone, 
and  favours  the  view  of  Herodotus  and  Rodiger  x  that 
the  Greek  looked  upon  his  gods  as  "  the  placers  "  or 
"  creators  "  of  that  divinely  arranged  universe  to  which 
he  afterwards  gave  the  name  of  *o<r/noj  or  "  order."  With 
the  Greek,  too,  individualism  reached  its  highest  point ; 
1  Kuhn's  "  Zeitschrift,"  xvi.  pp.  158,  sg. 


THE   INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.  137 

oriental  monarchy  and  Hellenic  despotism  were  not  far 
removed  from  one  another,  and  consequently  we  need 
not  be  surprised  at  finding  such  peculiar  Greek  words  as 
|3acri*£i/j,  f  aval,  and  rvfawof,  or  that  -r^awog  was  of  Asiatic 
origin,  and  f  aval  the  title  of  the  Phrygian  kings.  Strength 
and  holiness,  again,  seemed  to  the  Greek  closely  allied, 
and  isp6$  (Skt.  is/iiras),  which  still  retains  its  old  meaning 
of  "  strong "  in  such  Homeric  formulae  as  Is^ov  psvog, 
came  to  signify  "sacred,"  and  so  gave  a  name  to  the 
sacrificing  priest.  The  Athenian  3>v*o$  goes  back  to  the 
root  dd,  "  to  divide,"  and  bears  witness  to  a  time  when 
there  was  still  a  communal  division  of  land  among  the 
lonians,  while  the  ayopa.  and  fauna  (a**a)  were  the  invention 
of  a  race  which  laid  special  emphasis  on  the  gift  of 
eloquence.  No/no?,  "  law,"  may  indeed  be  older  than  the 
Hellenic  age,  but  in  its  extension  to  denote  the  common 
thought  of  men  (vo/u/£«)  or  the  currency  ordained  by  cus- 
tom (VOIUO-IM),  it  is  certainly  altogether  Greek.  Nor  did 
the  Greek  pantheon  and  mythology  escape  the  influence 
of  the  Semitic  stranger.  Aphrodite  is  as  much  Phcenician 
as  Indo-European  in  her  attributes,  and  the  myth  of 
Adonis  has  now  been  tracked  back  to  the  epics  of 
primaeval  Babylonia. 

It  is  obvious,  however,  that  we  cannot  be  too  careful 
in  determining  the  relative  amount  of  civilization  pos- 
sessed by  the  fragments  of  the  Aryan  family  as  they  suc- 
cessively broke  off  from  the  larger  community.  We 
may  find  a  particular  word,  for  instance,  common  to  all 
the  European  dialects,  and  not  occurring  in  the  Asiatic 
ones  ;  and  yet  this  need  not  prove  that  it  was  unknown 
before  the  westward  emigration,  since  the  Eastern  Aryans 


138  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

may  have  once  had  it,  but  displaced  it  subsequently  by 
another  word.  On  the  other  hand,  as  Ascoli  has  ob- 
served,1 a  derivative  of  the  same  form  and  meaning  may 
develop  independently  in  two  distinct  languages.  Are 
we  to  suppose  that  the  Sanskrit  ad-ana-m  and  Greek 
id-avo-v  go  back  to  the  period  of  Indo-European  unity  or 
sprang  up  independently  in  the  two  idioms,  or  that  the 
Sanskrit  a-swapna-s,  the  Greek  a-vTrvo-s,  and  the  Latin  in- 
somnis  could  not  have  been  formed  independently  in  all 
three  tongues  ?  We  may  easily  go  too  far  in  our  attempt 
to  restore  the  past  history  and  civilization  of  a  group  of 
languages,  and  forget  the  possibilities  of  which  the  strict 
method  of  science  bids  us  take  account. 

The  reconstruction  of  the  history  of  Aryan  grammar 
is  a  safer  task  than  the  reconstruction  of  the  history  of 
its  civilization.  The  same  root  may  yield  a  derivative 
of  the  same  form  and  meaning  in  two  languages  inde- 
pendently ;  but  we  are  justified  in  holding  that  this  could 
never  be  the  case  with  grammatical  forms.  If  we  find 
asmi  in  Sanskrit  and  esmi  in  Lithuanian  serving  to  ex- 
press the  first  person  singular  of  the  present  tense  of  the 
substantive  verb,  the  reason  must  be  that  they  are  both 
relics  of  a  time  when  the  ancestors  of  the  Hindus  and  the 
Lithuanians  lived  together,  and  spoke  a  common  tongue. 
Now,  just  as  a  comparison  of  words  has  enabled  us  to 
sketch  the  history  of  Aryan  civilization,  so,  too,  a  com- 
parison of  grammatical  forms  will  enable  us  to  sketch  the 
history  of  Aryan  grammar. 

It  has  been  pointed  out  in  a  former  chapter  that  Aryan 
accent  originally  fell  mostly  on  the  last  syllable,  or  rather 
1  "  Studij  critici,"  ii.  p.  10. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.  139 

on  the  element  which  denoted  the  place  occupied  by  a 
word  in  a  sentence.  As  in  course  of  time  the  accent  was 
thrown  back,  these  final  syllables,  the  symbols  of  flection, 
became  affected  by  phonetic  decay,  and  tended  to  dis- 
appear. The  more  modern  an  Aryan  language  is,  the 
less  traces  does  it  exhibit  of  flection  ;  what  was  once 
synthetic  becomes  analytic.  The  parent-Aryan  was  a 
highly  inflected  tongue ;  its  later  history  and  modifica- 
tions are  a  record  of  a  perpetual  loss  of  flection  and  the 
growth  of  other  modes  of  grammatical  expression.  The 
primitive  noun  possessed  a  number  of  different  cases  and 
case-terminations,  which  came,  however,  to  be  limited 
now  to  one,  now  to  another  case.  The  same  case  could 
be  denoted  by  different  terminations  ;  the  genitive,  for 
instance,  was  represented  by  at  least  three  forms,  -sya 
(as  in  the  Sanskrit  siva-sya,  Homeric  8*1916(0)10),  -as,  -is, 
-os  (as  in  ^oua-ag,  generis}  and  -i  (as  in  domini).  A  large 
number  of  Sanskrit  nouns  have  eight  cases  with  different 
terminations  in  the  singular,  three  in  the  dual,  and  six  in 
the  plural ;  of  these  Latin  preserves  only  six  (and  with 
the  locative  seven),  while  Greek  reduces  them  to  five, 
though  the  latter  language  makes  occasional  use  of  other 
old  cases  in  -§sv  and  -3e,  which  must  have  existed  in  the 
parent-speech,  though  scanty  traces  of  them  are  left  in 
the  sister-dialects.  The  six  Latin  cases  were  still  further 
diminished  in  course  of  time  in  some  of  the  declensions  ; 
owing  to  the  loss  of  the  final  dental  of  the  ablative,  the 
dative  and  ablative  singular  came  to  coincide  in  the 
second  declension,  while  a  similar  confusion  was  occa- 
sioned between  the  genitive  and  dative  in  the  first 
declension.  So,  too,  in  certain  Sanskrit  nouns  the  geni- 


140 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


tive  and  ablative  singular  assumed  the  same  form,  while, 
as  we  have  seen,  only  two  out  of  the  six  Latin  cases  sur- 
vived in  Old  French,  and  even  these  have  disappeared 
in  the  modern  language.  In  Sanskrit,  again,  the  mean- 
ings of  the  cases  interchange  to  a  large  extent,  and 
Prof.  Ludwig  has  sought  to  trace  the  origin  of  this  con- 
fusion, or  rather  indefiniteness,  of  sense  to  the  Rig- Veda. 
Price  or  value  is  denoted  by  the  instrumental  in  Sanskrit, 
by  the  locative  and  ablative  in  Latin,  and  by  the  genitive 
in  Greek  and  Lithuanian  ;  the  moment  of  time  at  which 
an  event  happens  by  the  instrumental  or  locative  in 
Sanskrit,  by  the  dative  in  Greek,  by  the  ablative  in  Latin, 
and  by  the  locative  in  Lithuanian  ;  while  the  absolute 
construction  is  expressed  in  Latin  by  the  ablative  ;  in 
Sanskrit  by  the  locative,  genitive,  and  ablative  ;  in  Greek 
by  the  genitive ;  in  Lithuanian  and  Old  English  by  the 
dative,  and  in  modern  English  by  the  nominative.  The 
same  grammatical  relation  may  be  regarded  from  different 
points  of  view  according  to  its  position  in  the  sentence  ; 
and  hence  the  fluidity  of  signification  which  we  seem  to 
find  in  the  cases  of  the  primitive  Aryan  speech,  as  well 
as  the  number  of  terminations  or  flections  by  which  they 
were  symbolized. 

Modern  research  has  confirmed  the  reality  of  the 
distinction  drawn  by  the  Sanskrit  grammarians  between 
the  strong  and  the  weak  cases,  the  strong  cases  being 
the  nominative,  accusative,  and  vocative.  The  nomina- 
tive, symbolized  by  the  suffix,  represented  the  subject 
whether  active  or  passive,  no  distinction  being  made 
between  the  two  cases  as  in  some  languages,  the  Eski- 
maux  for  example.  Here  a  noun  receives  a  "subjective 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.  141 

affix  "  if  it  denotes  the  possessor  and  the  agent,  a  neutral 
affix  if  it  is  followed  by  an  intransitive  verb.  Thus 
tekhiania-p  takuva  is  "  the  fox  saw  him,"  tckJdania-q 
takuva,  "  the  fox  was  seen  by  him."  The  suffix  -s,  how- 
ever, was  mostly  confined  to  masculine  nouns  ;  feminines 
were  provided  with  other  suffixes,  and  neuters  were  really 
objective  cases  without  any  proper  nominative.  The 
accusative,  marked  by  -m  (and  -as),  expressed  the  object 
towards  which  the  action  of  the  verb  travels,  and  wherein 
it  finds  rest ;  and  since  there  might  sometimes  be  a 
double  resting-point,  that  is  to  say  a  double  object,  we 
find  verbs  used  with  two  accusatives.  Thus  the  Greek 
might  say  dtdxtncu  T>JV  (J.QWMV  ere,  which  we  can  translate, 
without  change  of  syntax,  "  I  teach  you  music."  Hence 
the  use  of  the  so-called  accusative  of  limitation,  as  in 
fetefjisvos  rou;  voda;,  "  os  humerosque  deo  similis,"  so  ab- 
surdly explained  by  classical  "  philologists  "  as  depen- 
dent on  Kara  or  sccundum  "  understood,"  the  true  expla- 
nation being  that  the  accusative  is  here  the  final  object 
by  which  the  movement  of  the  thought  is  limited. 
Hence,  too,  the  "  accusative  of  motion,"  the  end  or  place 
towards  which  the  action  is  Directed  being  naturally  ex- 
pressed by  the  objective  case.  Both  nominative  and 
accusative  were  primarily  abstracts,  masculines  in  -s  alone 
excepted,  and  their  formatives  continued  to  mark  ab- 
stracts to  the  last.1  The  vocative  was  the  mere  stem,  or 
more  properly  the  noun  deprived  of  the  -s  of  the  nomina- 
tive, and  with  its  accent  withdrawn  from  its  final  syllable.2 

1  See  above,  p.  413. 

5  This  frequently   resulted  in  shortening  the  termination,   e.g. 
£e<77rora,  or  in  thinning  the  vowel,  e.  g.  'iinre  from  ITTTTO-.    Cases 


H2  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

The  reason  of  this  was  twofold  ;  in  raising  the  voice 
call  another,  the  accent  falls  rather  on  the  beginning  than 
on  the  end  of  a  word,  and  where  there  was  no  suffix 
there  was  no  necessity  for  accentuating  the  last  syllable. 
It  was  only  the  confused  linguistic  instinct  of  later  days 
that  employed  the  nominative  for  the  vocative  as  in  pifoal, 
but  how  easy  the  transition  was  may  be  seen  from  such 
passages  as  :  "  Equitem,  Messapus,  in  armis  Et  cum 
fratre  Coras,  latis  diffundite  campis,"  *  or  "  Semper  cele- 
brabere  donis,  Corniger  Hesperidum  fluvius  regnator 

«)  9 

aquarum. 

Among  the  weak  cases  the  genitive  is  the  most  im- 
portant. We  saw,  when  we  were  dealing  with  the  mor- 
phology of  speech,  how  it  has  grown  out  of  an  adjective 
used  adverbially,  that  is  to  say,  as  a  crystallized  case, 
though  it  is  true  that  it  is  difficult  to  explain  the  geni- 
tives in  -as  and  -i.  According  to  Prof.  Friedrich  Mu'ller,3 
the  genitive  is  symbolized  by  the  vowel,  not  by  the 
sibilant,  vdk-a-sa  (vocis)  being  the  original  genitive 
in  contradistinction  to  the  nominative  vak-sa  (vox). 
Certainly  the  suffix  of  the  genitive  plural  -dm 
(=a  +  am)  shows  no  sign  of  the  sibilant,  which  only 
appears  (in  -sdm)  where  the  genitive  singular  ends  in 
-sya ;  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  we  have  no 
proof  that  either  the  genitive  -as  or  the  nominative  -s 
was  ever  followed  by  a  vowel.  In  the  partitive  use  of 
the  genitive,  as  it  is  termed,  the  genitive  merely  expresses 

like  dva  for  avaicr,  TTOI  for  TraW,  are  due  to  the  Greek  rule  of  not 
ending  a  word  with  any  consonants  except  semi-vowels. 

1  Verg.  JEn.  xi.  464. 

2  Verg.  ./En.  viii.  77. 

3  "  Grundriss  d.  Sprachwissenschaft,"  i.  p.  119  (1876). 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.  143 

the  relation  between  the  whole  and  the  part ;  what  that 
relation  is,  is  left  to  be  supplied  by  the  mind.  The  geni- 
tive is  really  an  attributive  case,  being  to  the  substantive 
what  the  object  is  to  the  verb,  defining  its  meaning  and 
limiting  its  application.  Hence  its  employment  in  Greek 
with  verbs  of  feeling,  hearing,  and  the  like,  where  it  de- 
notes the  part  of  which  there  is  perception. 

The  dative  seems  to  imply  primarily  a  reference  of  one 
object  to  another,  just  as  the  ablative  implies  the  remo- 
val of  one  object  from  another;  the  locative  its  indwelling 
in  another,  and  the  instrumental  its  employment  through 
another.  All  these  cases,  therefore,  would  have  origi- 
nally been  local  in  their  application  ;  their  temporal  and 
modal  uses  being  derivative  and  later.1  The  dative  ex- 
presses the  second  or  further  object  towards  which  the 
body  inclines  ;  hence  we  find  it  denoting  the  "  remoter 
object,"  as  well  as  the  person  interested  in  the  fact  stated. 
The  "  ethical  dative,"  in  short,  over  which  grammarians 
have  expended  so  much  needless  admiration,  merely 
represents  another  person  viewed  as  a  second  object. 
If  the  Roman  said  noces  tibiy  irascor  tibi,  it  was  only 
because  the  person  addressed  was  the  further  object  of 
thought  to  whom  the  first  object,  "hurt"  or  "anger,"  was 
extended.  The  dative  is  thus  an  attribute  of  an  attri- 
bute, standing  in  the  same  relation  to  the  object  that 
the  object  does  to  the  verb,  or  the  genitive  to  the  sub- 
stantive. In  Greek  it  has  become  confounded  with 
other  cases,  the  locative  and  the  instrumental,  but  in 
Latin  it  has  fairly  maintained  its  separate  individuality, 
though  the  progress  of  decay  has  caused  it  to  amalga- 
1  See  Hiibschmann  :  "Zur  Casuslehre"  (1875),  pp.  131,  sq. 


144  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

mate  with  the  genitive  singular  and  ablative  plural  of 
the  first  declension,  and  with  the  ablative  singular  and 
plural  of  the  second  and  third.  In  this  respect  Latin 
resembles  Vedic  Sanskrit  in  contrast  with  the  classical 
Sanskrit  of  a  later  period,  both  Latin  and  Vedic  Sanskrit 
using  the  dative  to  express  the  purpose  of  an  action,  that 
towards  which  we  look  when  doing  it.  We  may  say 
"  exitio  est  mare  nautis,"  since  nautis  is  the  "  ethical " 
dative  dependent  on  exitio,  and  exitio  is  the  final  result  of 
the  sea  so  far  as  sailors  are  concerned.  It  is  noticeable 
that  none  of  the  other  Aryan  languages  employ  the  dative 
in  this  way.  In  the  infinitive,  again,  we  have  a  crystallized 
dative,  not  a  locative,  as  has  been  sometimes  asserted. 
The  Vedic  ddvdne,  "  for  giving,"  "  to  give,"  answers  to 
the  Greek  dowou  (dbfevau),  jeshey  "  to  conquer,"  to  *£<rai, 
vayodhai,  "  to  live,"  for  vdyas-dhai,  to  •j,£uk<r-6cu,  just  as 
jtv-dse  does  to  the  Latin  amare  (ama-se),  where  the  final 
vowel  was  once  long,  as  in  fieri  (fiesei)^  Our  own  analy- 
tic infinitive  "to  give,"  is  but  a  translation  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  dative  gifanne  ("  dare  "),  whence  the  Old  English 
form  is  -en  or  -an,  which  came  to  be  spelt  -ing  or  -inge 
in  the  fifteenth  century,  and  so  to  be  confounded  with 
the  present  participle  in  -ing  for  an  earlier  -ende,  as  well 
as  with  nouns  in  -ungt  which  afterwards  became 
-ing.  Modern  English  also  lets  us  see  how  readily  a 
case  can  lose  all  its  real  relation  to  the  rest  of  the  sen- 
tence and  be  crystallized  into  an  "  absolute  "  form.  We 
say  "to  err  is  human,"  with  as  little  compunction  or 
recollection  of  the  original  meaning  of  the  preposition  as 
the  old  Roman  had  of  the  primitive  force  of  "  errar^  est 
1  Max  Muller  :  "  Chips,"  iv.  pp.  49-63. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.  145 

humanum."  In  Greek  the  infinitive  can  even  be  declined 
with  the  article  through  all  the  cases  of  the  noun.  The 
dative,  however,  was  by  no  means  the  only  case  which 
was  hardened  and  stereotyped  into  an  infinitive  or 
verbal  noun.  Thus  we  have  the  accusative,  as  in  the 
Sanskrit  datum,  "  to  give,"  Vedic  ydmam,  "  to  get,"  iden- 
tical with  the  Latin  supine,  the  instrumental,  as  in  the 
Vedic  vidmdnd,  "  by  knowledge,"  the  genitive,  ablative, 
and  locative,  as  in  the  Vedic  vilikkast  "to  draw,"  dtridas, 
"  to  strike,"  drisi,  "  to  shine,"  and  even  the  bare  stem 
formed  by  the  suffixes  -man  or  -van.  The  latter  is  the 
source  of  the  common  Greek  infinitive  of  the  present 
active,  <pep£iv,  when  compared  with  the  ^Eolic  pl^w,  and 
Doric  <pe?w,  pointing  to  an  original  $tp-(f)ev.1  Hence  the 
nineteen  Homeric  aorist  infinitives  in  -EE<V,  like  vrtsetv, 
eio-deeiv,  are  formed  by  false  analogy  from  contracted  verbs 
in  -E«,  and  indicate  a  late  and  artificial  stage  of  language. 
From  the  suffix  -man  come  the  Homeric  infinitives  in 
-/AEV,  found  only,  however,  after  a  short  vowel  with  the 
single  exception  of  ZeuyvSpsv,  as  well  as  the  ten  aorist  in- 
finitives which  terminate  in  -E//EV. 

The  locative  was  distinguished  from  the  dative  by  a 
lighter  ending,  otxoi  in  Greek  instead  of  oucw,  rurt,  Romd-l 
in  Latin  instead  of  patrei,  Roma-l.  So  in  Sanskrit  we 
find  navi,  "in  a  ship,"  instead  of  nave,  "to  a  ship,"  ysive 
(siva  +  i)  instead  of  'sivdya,  though  feminine  bases  in 
-a  have  another  locative  ending  in  -dm,  which  Dr.  F. 
Miiller  would  derive  from  an  earlier  -ans  (as  in  the  pro- 
noun ta-sm-is  for  ta-sm-ins),  and  that  again  from  -ant. 
The  loss  of  the  locative  or  its  confusion  with  other  cases 
1  Curtius  :  "  Das  Verbum,"  ii.  p.  no. 

II.  L 


146 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


in  so  many  Aryan  dialects,  is  but  an  illustration  of  the 
progress  language  is  ever  making  from  the  material  to 
the  more  abstract  ;  the  idea  of  space  tends  continually 
to  be  supplanted  by  those  of  time  and  manner. 

The  ablative  is  found  with  more  than  one  termination, 
-as,  -dhas  (as  in  the  Greek  cy{><acyo-3f[v]),  -tas  (Latin  cccli- 
tus),  and  ~ad  or  -d,  the  last  being  the  most  common.  The 
dental  was  long  in  disappearing  from  Latin  ;  gnaivod 
occurs  on  the  tombs  of  the  Scipios,  and  legal  docu- 
ments embodying  old  formulae,  and  the  adverb  antidhac 
(ante  hac)  bore  witness  to  its  former  existence.  A  con- 
siderable number  of  the  adverbs  and  adverbial  preposi- 
tions, indeed,  were  merely  old  ablatives  ;  facillnmed  is 
found  in  the  senatorial  decree  concerning  the  Bacchana- 
lian orgies,  and  the  Greek  rax^s  or  u$  stand  for  T«%EWT  and 
yat  (or  kwdt).  The  so-called  accusatives  of  the  personal 
pronouns,  med,  ted,  sed,  which  are  met  with  in  Old  Latin, 
have  been  shown  by  Prof.  Max  Miiller  to  be  really  bases, 
which  reappear  in  the  Sanskrit  mat-tas,  twat-tas.1  The 
ablative  disappeared  at  an  early  period  from  the  Teu- 
tonic idioms  as  in  Greek ;  in  Latin  it  took  the  place  of 
the  instrumental,  and  denoted  the  instrument  or  agent, 
though  ab  was  generally  employed  where  living  persons 
were  referred  to.  This  instrumental  use  was  easily 
derived  from  its  employment  to  express  origin,  a  se- 
condary sense  which  grew  out  of  its  first  signification  of 
removal  from  a  place  or  object,  but  which  caused  it  to 
be  supplanted  in  Greek  by  the  genitive.  From  its  in- 
strumental use  came  its  employment  to  represent  the 

1  Fleckeisen's  "Jahrbiicher"  (1876),  pt.  10. 


777,5:  INFLECTIONAL   FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.    147 

manner  of  an  action,  while  its  employment  to  denote 
comparison  most  probably  comes  immediately  from  its 
radical  meaning1,  mclior  vied  being  literally  "  better  away 
from  me,"  that  is  to  say,  "  when  I  am  removed,"  or  dis- 
counted. Similarly,  in  Hebrew,  comparison  may  be 
indicated  by  the  preposition  mint  "away  from."  That 
the  "  comparative  "  use  of  the  ablative  was  known  to  the 
undivided  Aryans  seems  clear  from  the  fact  that  it  is 
common  to  Sanskrit  and  Latin  as  well  as  Old  Greek 
{e.g.  xfEi<Tcuv  i/tufa). 

The  instrumental,  like  the  ablative,  was  symbolized  by 
several  different  terminations,  relics  of  which  have  sur- 
vived here  and  there.  The  most  usual  is  -d  (at  least  in 
Sanskrit),  but  we  also  find  -bhi  (as  in  the  Latin  mihi, 
tibi,  sibi,  ibi  {qu)ubi,  and  old  Greek  (SinQi),  -sma  or  -smi 
and  -ina.  The  first  termination  may  be  detected  not 
only  in  the  Greek  a^a.,  T&x,a,  «v«,  Trapa,  avra,  Travry,  but 
also  in  the  Early  English  fortht  and  forhwf,  where  ////  and 
/nut  are  instrumental  of  the  and  who.  Mr.  Peile  notes 
that  fortuity,  "  because,"  occurs  in  the  old  version  of  the 
xooth  Psalm,  in  which  the  line  "  Forwhy  the  Lord  our 
God  is  good  "  is  often  erroneously  printed  as  a  question.1 
The  suffix  -bhi  is  found  in  combination  with  a  second 
suffix  in  the  dual  nau-bhy-dm,  and  the  plural  nau-bhi-s 
and  nau-bhy-as  (navi-bus),  as  well  as  in  the  singular 
dative  tu-bhy-am  ("  tibi  "),  and  we  may  see  how  little  a 
priori  reason  there  can  have  been  for  setting  it  apart  to 
denote  a  special  case  from  its  appearance  as  a  mere  deri- 
vative suffix  in  words  like  the  Sanskrit  garda-bha-s,  "  an 


1   u 


Philology  Primer"  (1877),  p.  109. 


148  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

ass,"  vrisha-bha-s,  "  a  bull,"  or  the  Greek  £*a-<po-$, 
Kpora-Qo-s,  or  xoputpri.1  The  same  suffix  marks  the  dative 
and  locative  in  Old  Slavonic.  Misled  by  the  preposition 
abhi  or  dbhi,  our  of,  the  Latin  ab,  the  Sanskrit  gram- 
marians separated  the  plural  -bids  from  its  stem  in  the 
Pada-text  of  the  Rig- Veda;  but  this  error  was  more 
venial  than  the  attempt  of  Ennius  to  harmonize  matter 
and  metre  in  his  famous  line  "  cere-comminuit-brum."J 
The  use  of  the  instrumental  has  been  widely  extended 
in  Sanskrit,  as  also  in  Lithuanian,  which  has  so  many 
affinities  with  Eastern  Aryan.  Lithuanian,  indeed,  em- 
ploys it  to  denote  an  idea  cognate  to  that  of  the  verb, 
like  the  cognate  accusative  in  Greek  or  Latin,  as  well  as 
predicatively  after  a  verb  of  being  where  in  Latin  we 
have  a  dative.  The  Latin  ablative  of  description  (as  in 
"  vir  animo  magno  ")  is  also  replaced  in  Lithuanian  by 
the  instrumental ;  but  in  this  case  Lithuanian  seems  to 
have  preserved  the  primitive  Aryan  usage,  as  it  has  cer- 
tainly done  in  its  employment  of  the  instrumental  in  a 
sociative  sense.  It  is  possible  that  the  instrumental  and 
sociative  were  once  distinct  cases  as  they  still  are  in  Fin- 
nic or  Ugrian,  but  it  is  more  probable  that  the  sociative 
meaning  only  gradually  developed  out  of  the  instrumental 
one.  "  To  strike  with  a  sword,"  or  "  to  go  with  a  ship," 
may  be  equally  regarded  as  instrumental  or  sociative. 
We  have  seen  in  a  former  chapter  that  the  dual  is 

1  Bergaigne  :    "  Memoires    de  la    Socie'te'   de    Linguistique   de 
Paris,"  ii.  5  ;    Curtius  :   "Zur  Chronologic  der   indogermanischen 
Sprachforschung,"  p.  79  ;  Jahn's  "  Jahrbiicher,"  60,  p.  95. 

2  Such  freaks  do  not  even  imply  that  the  termination  was  felt  to 
be  separable  from  the  stem,  since  in  cerebrum  the  stem  is  ceres 
(Sansk.  'siras),  sr  becoming  br  in  Latin. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.    149 

older  than  the  plural,  and  that  the  survival  of  the  dual 
into  the  undivided  Aryan  epoch,  and  even  into  the  clas- 
sical age  of  Hindustan  and  Greece,  shows  how  hard  it  is 
for  linguistic  forms  to  die  in  a  settled  language  even  when 
there  is  no  longer  any  need  or  meaning  for  them.  Its 
various  cases,  however,  were  less  and  less  used,  and 
hence  many  of  them  came  to  be  lost  or  confounded  to- 
gether. In  Sanskrit  three  distinct  forms  only  were  pre- 
served, in  Greek  only  two,  while  the  scanty  relics  of  the 
dual  in  Latin  present  us  with  but  a  single  case. 

We  need  not  dwell  upon  those  crystallized  cases,  the 
adverbs,  and  the  prepositions  which  have  grown  out  of 
them.  The  genitive  vrapos,  the  locative  Trapau,  the  instru- 
mental Trapa,  or  the  ablative  apud,  all  tell  their  own  tale. 
Even  in  Homer,  as  in  our  own  modern  English,  we  may 
watch  the  passage  of  the  adverb  into  a  preposition. 
There  is  but  a  short  step  between  using  «V  as  an  adverb, 
the  object  being  governed  by  the  verb  as  in  OUTOV$  J*  eiffyyov 
SEIOV  SO/MOV  (Od.  iv.  43),  and  turning  it  into  a  veritable  pre- 
position,1 or  between  saying  in  English  "  what  he  told  us 
of"  and  "  of  what  he  told  us."  2 

We  can  trace  the  history  of  the  verb  with  far  greater 
completeness  and  certainty  than  we  can  the  history  of 
the  noun.  The  history  of  the  noun  is  one  of  continuous 
decay.  We  may  catch  glimpses,  indeed,  of  a  time  when 
the  cases  were  not  as  yet  sharply  defined,  when  the  stem 
could  be  furnished  with  a  number  of  unmeaning  suffixes, 

1  See  Hoffmann  :  "  Die  Tmesis  in  der  Ilias"  (1857-60). 

2  Penka,  in  his  "  Nominalflexion  der  indogermanischen  Sprachen  " 
(1878),  gives  a  useful  review  and  criticism  of  the  different  theories 
that  have  been  held  as  to  the  origin  and  meaning  of  the  Indo-Euro- 
pean cases,  but  his  own  views  on  the  subject  are  retrograde. 


ISO 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


and  when  these  suffixes  could  be  used  indifferently  to 
express  the  various  relations  of  the  sentence.  But  long 
before  the  age  of  Aryan  separation,  the  several  relations 
in  which  a  word  might  stand  within  a  sentence  had  been 
clearly  evolved,  and  certain  terminations  had  been  adapted 
and  set  apart  to  denote  these  relations.  The  creative 
epoch  had  passed  and  the  cases  and  numbers  of  the  noun 
had  entered  on  their  period  of  decay.  But  with  the  verb 
it  was  quite  otherwise.  Here  we  can  ascend  to  a  time 
when  as  yet  an  Aryan  verb  did  not  exist,  when,  in  fact, 
the  primitive  Aryan  conception  of  the  sentence  was 
much  the  same  as  that  of  the  modern  Dayak.  Most 
verbs  presuppose  a  noun,  that  is  to  say,  their  stems  are 
identical  with  those  of  nouns.  The  Greek  ^Wwu  for 
/*E*<ZV-J/U  presupposes  the  nominal  fjte^av  jusjt  as  much  as 
the  Latin  amo  for  ama-yo  presupposes  ama. 

So,  again,  the  Latin  parturio  comes  from  the  suffix  -tor, 
-tar,  which  plays  so  large  a  part  in  Aryan  inflection. 
Perhaps  the  truest  account  that  can  be  given  of  the 
relation  between  verb  and  noun  is  that  both  go  back  to 
the  same  stems,  but  that  the  verb  is  of  later  origin  than 
the  noun.  Indeed,  the  verb  has  no  special  classificatory 
suffixes  of  its  own  ;  those  which  it  possesses  are  all  bor- 
rowed from  the  noun.  The  so-called  root-verbs,  like  the 
Sanskrit  ad-mi,  which  affix  the  personal  ending  to  the 
bare  root,  are  more  probably  decayed  relics  of  older  and 
longer  forms  than  primitive  verbs.  What  characterizes 
the  verb  are  its  inflections,  and  these  inflections  may  for 
the  most  part  be  resolved  into  affixed  personal  pronouns'. 
In  Old  Egyptian  meh-a  is  "I  fi\\" pcr-a,  "my  house," 
where  no  formal  distinction  can  be  drawn  between  the 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.    151 

verb  with  its  pronominal  affix  and  the  noun  with  its  pos- 
sessive ;  in  Magyar  vdr-om  is  "  I  await  him,"  nap-om, 
"  my  day ;  "  and  so,  too,  the  .ancient  Aryan  bJiara-mi 
probably  served  equally  well  for  "I  bear,"  and  "my 
bearing."  But  there  was  this  important  difference  be- 
tween the  Aryan  and  the  Magyar  or  Old  Egyptian 
forms  :  in  Aryan  the  pronoun  was  attached  to  a  stem, 
and  this  stem  might  embody  more  than  one  suffix. 

The  precise  way  in  which  the  personal  pronouns  came 
to  be  affixed  to  these  stems  we  do  not  know.  Judging 
from  the  analogy  of  other  languages  we  should  expect  to 
find  them  affixed  rather  to  a  participle  or  a  noun  than  to 
a  stem,  and  this  participle  or  noun  moreover  constituting 
of  itself  the  third  person  singular  and  plural.  But  the 
Aryan  dialects  have  always  shown  a  strong  tendency  to 
compound  words  by  dropping  the  flection  of  the  first 
and  leaving  only  the  stem  ;  possibly  this  was  due  to 
the  loss  of  the  accent  on  the  flection-ending,  which 
was  primitively  accented.  Up  to  the  last  a  new  com- 
pound demanded  but  a  single  flection  or  relational 
affix  ;  the  Greek  had  to  pronounce  potioticucrvtoi,  the  Ro- 
man calc-fio,  just  as  we  ourselves  instinctively  say  mouse- 
trap and  not  mice's  trap.  When  the  Latin  language 
began  to  form  fresh  compound  tenses  by  the  help  of 'the 
substantive  verbs,  it  reduced  the  principal  verb  to  its 
mere  stem -or  even  root,  creating  forms  like  amavi  (ama- 
fid),  ainabo  (ama-fuc),  rexi  (reg-(e)si).  Hence  we  may 
perhaps  infer  that  when  the  parent-speech  had  come  to 
weld  noun  and  pronoun  so  closely  together  as  to  form 
but  a  single  idea,  the  distinctive  termination  of  the  noun 
disappeared,  and  the  stem  alone  remained  with  the  pro- 


152  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

noun  affixed  to  it.  However  that  may  be,  bhard-mit 
tifa-iM,  originally  signified  nothing  more  than  "  bearing 
of  me,"  "  placing  of  me,"  the  length  of  the  thematic  a 
in  bhard-mi  showing  that  it  represents  the  European  o, 
the  cc  of  Brugman  and  De  Saussure.  The  weakening  of 
ma  to  mi  may  be  due  to  the  same  striving  after  differen- 
tiation that  makes  the  Hungarian  write  nap-om,  "my 
day,"  but  var-ok,  "  I  wait ;  "  at  all  events  it  is  hard  to  ad- 
mit the  theory  which  derives  the  personal  pronouns  from 
the  verbal  terminations.  It  is  interesting  to  observe  that 
the  objective  form  of  the  first  personal  pronoun  is  used ; 
the  speaker  had  not  yet  come  to  regard  himself  as  a  sub- 
ject, and  the  nominative  agJiam  (ego)  was  not  yet  in 
existence. 

From  the  first  the  Aryan  verb  seems  to  have  denoted 
time  as  well  as  mood  and  relation.  Its  first  two  tenses 
represented  the  one  a  momentary  action,  the  other  a  con- 
tinuous or  completed  action.  The  meaning  expressed  by 
each  was  fitly  symbolized  by  the  bare  stem  or  root  and 
reduplication.  Out  of  the  first  tense  grew  what  is  termed 
the  second  aorist  in  Greek,  of  which  E-^TTO-V  is  a  type  ; 
out  of  the  second  the  perfect.  But  the  perfect  soon  as- 
sumed a  variety  of  forms  and  covered  a  variety  of  signi- 
fications. The  full  reduplication  of  the  root  might  be 
contracted  into  a  broken  one  by  phonetic  decay ;  tud- 
tud,  for  instance,  might  become  tutud.  Or  it  might  be 
replaced  by  a  lengthened  vowel,  just  asfeci  in  Latin  stands 
for  an  earlier  fcfcci;  and  thus/§>-/^,  perhaps,  passed  into 
teiTT-.  The  ideas,  again,  which  could  be  represented  by 
reduplication  were  numerous.  Not  only  might  it  mark 
past  time  or  continuous  action,  it  could  equally  express 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.    153 

completion,  intensity,  desire,  or  causality.  Thus  the 
Scotch  gang,  Gothic  gagga,  is  almost  the  sole  remnant  of 
a  reduplicated  perfect  left  in  the  Teutonic  languages  ; 
reduplication  characterizes  intensives  and  desideratives 
in  Sanskrit ;  and  the  Greek  @i-@xu  or  Latin  sldo  for  se- 
scdo  have  a  causal  force.  The  idea  of  continuous  action 
moreover  involves  not  only  that  of  completion,  but  what 
seems  quite  opposed  to  it,  that  of  present  action  as  well. 
The  present  is  divided  from  the  perfect  by  a  narrow  and 
shifting  line  ;  to  /w^been  doing  a  thing  does  not  exclude 
the  possibility  of  still  doing  it.  In  Greek  wa>  is  a  perfect 
and  o?3a  a  present ;  and  the  Latin  use  of  c&pi  or  memini 
need  not  be  referred  to.  The  present,  accordingly,  was 
developed  side  by  side  with  the  perfect,  and  like  the 
latter  required  reduplication  to  show  that  the  idea  was 
to  be  dwelt  upon.  Greek  presents  like  dSbpi  are  among 
the  oldest  relics  of  the  grammar,  though  the  reduplicated 
vowel  has  been  changed  to  distinguish  the  present  and 
perfect  tenses. 

With  the  creation  of  a  present  tense,  a  new  verbal 
stem  was  called  into  existence.  While  the  simple  stem 
or  root  was  left  to  the  aorist  and  the  reduplicated  perfect, 
a  stem  with  lengthened  vowel  seemed  requisite  to  denote 
present  time.  Hence  the  number  of  reduplicated  presents 
tended  constantly  to  decrease,  while  those  with  augmented 
vowels  tended  to  increase.  Simultaneously  new  stems 
were  taken  up  from  among  the  nouns,  and  the  person- 
endings  were  attached  to  roots  furnished  with  the  clas- 
sificatory  suffixes  nu,  na,  ta,  and  ya.  Sometimes  two  or 
more  suffixes  were  combined  together,  and  a  time  came 
when  almost  any  noun-stem  might  be  turned  into  a  verb 


154  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

by  affixing  ya — itself  a  nominal  suffix — and  the  person- 
endings.1 

Meanwhile  the  aorist  had  undergone  a  change.  A 
short  vowel,  the  so-called  temporal  augment,  was  pre- 
fixed to  it,  the  origin  and  explanation  of  which  have  been 
a  sore  puzzle.  Buttmann  and  Pott  suggested  that  it 
was  a  case  of  broken  reduplication  ;  Hoefer  identified  it 
with  the  Teutonic  ga-t  ge-  ;  Benfey  made  it  the  instru- 
mental of  a  pronominal  stem  a-,  used  like  sma  in  later 
Sanskrit  to  denote  past  time.  Then  Bopp  made  a  second 
guess,  and  supposed  it  might  be  the  same  as  the  privative 
a,  or  rather  ana,  "  he  does  it  not  (now)  "  being  equivalent 
to  "  he  did  it."  After  Scherer's  attempt  to  explain  it  from 
a,  "  in  the  neighbourhood  of,"  Bopp's  third  suggestion 
that  it  might  be  the  pronoun  a  in  the  sense  of"  that"  or 
"  there  "  was  adopted  by  Schleicher  and  Curtius,  but  this 
suggestion  too  was  far  from  satisfactory.  Whatever  may 
have  been  its  origin,  the  use  of  the  temporal  augment 
was  soon  extended  and  a  new  tense,  the  imperfect,  formed 
from  the  present-stem  on  the  model  of  the  aorist.  One 
result  which  the  augment  had  was  to  modify  the  person- 
endings.  The  increased  weight  of  the  word  at  the  be- 
ginning was  compensated  by  lightening  it  at  the  end,  and 
the  final  vowels  of  the  suffixed  pronouns,  and  sometimes 
even  the  pronouns  themselves,  altogether  disappeared. 
In  this  way  a  secondary  set  of  person-endings  was  created 

1  This  is  the  usual  theory.  But  Fick  has  gone  far  to  show  that 
the  long  stem  of  the  present  is  the  primitive  one,  out  of  which  the 
shortened  aorist-stem  has  grown  through  a  shifting  of  the  accent 
from  the  stem-syllable  to  the  final  syllables  of  the  tense  (Bezzenber- 
ger's  "  Beitra'ge,"  iv.  1878).  Benfey  was  the  first  to  notice  that  the 
aorist  is  an  old  imperfect. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.     155; 

which  characterized  the  past  tenses  quite  as  much  as  the 
augment.  While  the  primary  endings  remained  mi,  si, 
ti ;  vas,  thas,  tas ;  mas,  ta,  nti,  the  secondary  endings 
were  m  (n,  -),  s,  t  (-) ;  va,  tarn  (TGV),  tdm  (TW)  ;  ma  (mas)r 
ta  (te),  n,  (us).1 

But  new  ideas  presented  themselves,  and  new  forms 
were  needed  to  express  them.  Composition  has  always 
been  a  favourite  process  to  the  Aryan  mind,  and  nothing 
is  easier  than  to  put  two  verbs  together  when  we  want  to 
denote  a  compound  verbal  idea.  This  is  what  the  Se- 
mites did  ;  and  this,  too,  is  what  the  modern  Greeks  did 
when  they  said  SEAO/UEV  V  avax^o-o/msv,  for  "  I  will  go  ;"  and 
what  the  Romanic  peoples  did  when  they  made  amare 
Jiabco  (aimerai)  serve  for  a  future.  We  must  not  be  sur- 
prised, therefore,  at  finding  that  the  Aryans,  even  before 
their  separation,  possessed  compound  tenses.  First  of  all 
there  was  the  sigmatic  aorist,  Sanskrit  adiksham,  Greek 
f  ocila^),  formed  after  the  analogy  of  eWov  with  the  aorist 
of  the  substantive  verb  (ds-a).  Then  there  was  the  future 
(bliavishydmi,  hwu  for  hvvyu),  in  which  we  may  perhaps 
trace  the  substantive  verb  (as),  and  the  verb  of  "  going  " 
{yd}.  The  same  verb  of  "  going  "  has  also  been  detected 
in  the  optative  (bhaveyam,  siem,  fepotpt),  but  we  are  more 
probably  dealing  here  with  the  suffix  ya,  which  occurs  so 
plentifully  both  in  nouns  and  in  the  present  stem.  If 
Curtius  is  right,  the  termination  of  the  optative  which 
we  have  in  the  Greek  fspoifju  is  a  relic  of  that  early  period 
when  the  person-endings  were  still  primary.  In  Latin 
the  suffix  ya  became  2  and  e,siem  passing  into  sim  on  the 
one  side,  and  into  sem,  as  in  es-sem  or  fo-rem  (fu-sem),  on 
1  Or  rather  ur,  the  final  s  being  due  to  false  analogy. 


i56 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


the  other.  In  amem,  however,  the  vowel  is  due  to  the 
conjunction  of  i,  from  ya>  with  the  final  a  of  the  stem 
(amd).  The  optative  introduces  us  to  a  mood  as  distin- 
guished from  a  tense,  since  it  expresses  the  remote  con- 
tingency, the  possibility,  in  short,  of  an  event.  The  use 
of  the  optative  belongs  to  a  time  when  the  distinction 
between  fact  and  fancy  was  clearly  felt :  the  speaker 
knows  that  he  is  a  thinker,  a  man,  and  as  such  can  dis- 
cuss his  own  thoughts.  In  Latin  the  optative  is  fre- 
quently employed  to  denote  the  future  regarded  as  a 
possibility,  as  in  reges,  reget,  audiemns.  But  just  as  a 
fact  may  be  momentary  or  continuous,  past  or  present, 
so,  too,  contingency  may  be  near  or  remote.  By  the  side 
of  the  optative  went  the  conjunctive,  denoting  probability, 
and  symbolized  by  the  suffix  a,  which  coalesces  with  the 
final  vowel  of  the  stem  into  a.  In  classical  Sanskrit  the 
conjunctive  has  disappeared  ;  in  the  Rig- Veda,  however, 
we  find  forms  like  asani  (asami),  asasi,  asati,  or  vahdni, 
vaMsi,  vahati,  answering  to  the  Greek  topsv  with  a  short 
vowel,  and  £%£,  E;C^,  1;$,  the  Latin  veham,  vehas,  veliat, 
with  a  long  vowel.  In  the  Homeric  poems  the  conjunc- 
tive often  takes  the  place  of  the  future,  and  the  same  is 
the  case  with  the  first  person  of  the  so-called  third  and 
fourth  conjugations  in  Latin. 

Apart  from  the  imperative,  whose  second  person  sin- 
gular sometimes  ended  in  -dhi  (-&),  sometimes  in  -si  (5bV, 
Vedic  md-si),  sometimes  had  no  termination  at  all,  the 
verb  of  the  undivided  Aryan  community  possessed  no 
other  tenses  or  moods.  It  was  left  to  the  separate 
branches  of  the  family  each  to  work  out  its  verbal  sys- 
tem in  its  new  home,  and  in  its  own  way,  adding  new 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.    157 

forms,  forgetting  others,  now  amalgamating  and  now 
dissociating.  In  classical  Sanskrit,  owing,  in  large  mea- 
sure, to  the  excessive  growth  of  composition,  several  of 
the  tenses  of  the  Vedic  verb  were  lost,  such  as  modal 
forms  of  the  simple  aorist,  while  new  tenses  came  into 
use.  Among  these  may  be  noted  a  future  formed  by 
adding  the  present  of  the  auxiliary  as  to  a  derivative 
noun  of  agency  in  tar  (bkavitdsmi),  and  a  periphrastic 
perfect  like  bJuivaydm  ckakdra,  "  he  caused  to  be  "  (lite- 
rally, "he  made  a  causing-to-be  ").  In  Greek  we  meet 
with  many  additions  to  the  primitive  system  of  the  verb. 
A  pluperfect  was  formed  from  the  perfect,  after  the  ex- 
ample of  the  imperfect  from  the  present,  by  the  help  of 
the  auxiliary  as ;  but  the  Homeric  «rwg&(<r)a  passed  by 
false  analogy  into  mrtmifan,  and  was  finally  replaced  by  a 
periphrasis.  A  new  perfect  in  -*a  made  its  appearance, 
as  well  as  a  few  aorists  created  by  the  aid  of  the  same 
suffix;  while  in  other  cases  the  tendency  to  aspiration 
which  made  the  Athenians  speak  of  IWoj  (aswas,  equus) 
or  ifSwf  (iidas,  udus)  affected  the  second  consonant  of  the 
root  so  that  the  old  reruna,  became  Tsrutpa.1  Like  the  weak 
passive  future  and  optative  future,  this  aspirated  perfect 
is  not  to  be  found  in  Homer.  In  Homer,  too,  we  find 
only  one  instance  (II.  x.  365)  of  the  strong  future  pas- 

1  The  perfects  in  K  are  peculiarly  Attic.  There  are  twenty 
instances  in  Homer,  but  only  from  stems  which  end  in  a  vowel. 
This  is  also  the  rule  with  the  instances  found  in  Herodotus  (except- 
ing /cfKo/u/cwe,  ix.  115),  ^schylus,  Sophokles,  and  Thukydides.  The 
perfects  in  K  are  further  met  with  in  ^Eolic  and  Doric.  No  as- 
pirated perfect  occurs  in  Homer,  except  in  the  middle  voice  (e.g. 
cft^xa7"ai)j  nor  in  Herodotus  (except  eTrtTro/i^ff,  i.  85),  nor  in  the 
Tragedians  (except  TirpoQa  in  Sophokles),  nor  in  Thukydides  (except 


158  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

sive,  and  only  two  of  the  late  Attic  desiderative  (II.  xii. 
265,  xiv.  37).  The  paulo-post  future,  the  two  passive 
futures,  and  the  two  passive  aorists  are  all  again  products 
of  Greek  soil,  the  latter  being  formed  by  the  aid  of  the 
suffixes  ya  and  dha  (Ss),  which  may  very  possibly  be  the 
verbal  roots  we  have  in  i-re  and  r/-^-^.  The  primitive 
Aryan  verb  possessed  no  passive  voice  ;  in  fact,  the  pas- 
sive, like  the  neuter  verb,  is  a  comparatively  late  creation. 
To  the  early  intelligence  every  action  seems  to  require  an 
object,  and  to  turn  an  object  into  a  subject  needs  con- 
siderable powers  of  abstraction.  Hence  the  parent-speech 
knew  only  of  the  transitive  or  active  voice  ;  tilt  par asmai- 
fada,  or  "  words  for  another,"  as  the  Sanskrit  gram- 
marians called  it,  and  the  middle  or  deponent  voice,  the 
Atmanepada,  or  "words  for  self."  "I  am  loved"  means 
the  same  as  "  one  loves  me,"  "  I  am  fed  "  as  "  I  feed  my- 
self "  (vescor) ;  and  we  can,  therefore,  easily  understand 
not  only  that  it  was  long  before  language  needed  a  pas- 
sive, but  also  that  when  the  need  was  at  length  felt,  it 
was  readily  supplied  by  the  middle  forms.  In  Greek, 
.accordingly,  no  distinction  is  made  between  middle  and 
passive,  except  in  the  two  aorist  tenses,  and  in  Latin 
"  deponents "  have  the  same  forms  as  passive  verbs, 
while  the  second  person  plural,  amamini  (estis),  is  but 
the  middle  participle,  which  we  elsewhere  find  in  anc- 
tumnus,  vertumnus,  or  9vpy«fxsvof.  It  is  very  possible  that 

the  terminations  of  the  old  middle  voice  may  be  ex- 

' 

plained  by  the  amalgamation  of  two  personal  pronouns. 
In  Sanskrit  the  primary  person-endings  of  the  singular 
are  -i,  -se,  -te,  in  Greek  -i*ai,  -crai,  -rat,  while  the  secondary 
endings  are  -i,  -t/ids,  -tay  Greek  -pw,  -o-o,  -TO  ;  and  we  may, 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.    159 

perhaps,  resolve  these  into  ma  +  mi,  "  me-me,"  twa  +  twi 
"  thee-thee,"  and  ta  +  ti,  "  he-he  ;"  certainly  the  secondary 
termination  of  the  first  person  in  Greek  gives  consider- 
able probability  to  this  analysis.  In  Letto-Slavonic  the 
middle  is  formed  by  the  reflective  pronoun  of  the  third 
person,  as  Old  Slavonic  divlja  se,  divise  se,  "  I  admire  my- 
self," "  thou  admirest  thyself,"  or  Lithuanian  dyvyju-s,  "  I 
admire  myself,"  just  as  in  German  dialects  we  meet  with 
wir  bedanken  sicJi,  instead  of  uns,  or  in  the  dialect  of 
Mentone  the  reflective  se  takes  the  place  of  no  (nous), 
when  the  first  person  plural  is  both  subject  and  object 
(e.g.  nautre  se  flatema,  " nous  nous  flattens").1  In  Old 
Prussian  mien  and  tien  have  taken  the  place  of  the  third 
personal  pronoun  in  the  first  and  second  persons,  through 
German  influence.  In  the  Old  Norse  reflectives  and 
middle  voice  -mk  for  mik,  "  me,"  and  -sk  for  sik,  "  self," 
mark  the  first  and  third  persons  ;  "I  come,"  for  instance, 
being  (ek)  komu-mk,  "  they  love  one  another,"  thau  elska- 
sk.  The  third  person  pronoun,  however,  forced  its  way 
in  time  into  the  first  and  second  persons  also,  berju-mk, 
for  example,  becoming  ber-sk,  while  on  other  occasions  it 
coalesced  with  the  pronoun  of  the  first  person,  producing 
the  abnormal  komumsk?  Bua  in  Icelandic  signified  "  to 
build,"  "  make  ready,"  bua-sk,  "  to  make  oneself  ready  ;" 
and  from  this  comes  the  Old  English  busk,  just  as  bask  is 

1  See  Brugman  :  "  Ein   problem  der  homerischen  Textcritik " 
(1876),  p.  38. 

2  Wimmer-Sievers:  "Altnordische  Grammatik"  (1871),  pp.  135,  sg. 
In  a  Sleswig  Easter-play  of  the  fourteenth  century  we  find  wir 
woln  sich  wern  (Kehrein,  iii.  §  101),  and  many  instances  of  the 
same  use  of  the  third  person  reflective  pronoun  for  the  first  or 
second  person  in  Grimmelshausen's  "  Simplicissimus  "  (ed.  Keller). 


160  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

either  "to  bathe  oneself"  or  "to  bake  oneself."  Naturally 
enough,  the  different  Aryan  languages  did  not  always 
agree  as  to  the  idea  to  which  they  assigned  a  reflective 
or  middle  sense  ;  the  idea  of  "  taking,"  for  instance,  im- 
plies the  further  object  "self,"  for  whose  sake  a  thing  is 
taken  ;  and  in  Sanskrit,  accordingly,  labh  is  only  conju- 
gated in  the  middle  voice,  though  active  in  sense.  The 
corresponding  Greek  taquj&xiw,  however,  is  as  frequent  in 
the  active  as  in  the  middle. 

We  have  already  alluded  to  the  revolution  undergone 
by  the  Latin  verb.  The  old  reduplicated  perfect  was 
almost  extirpated  by  the  new  formatives  in  -si  (from  as) 
and  -vit  -id  (from  bhii) ;  new  pluperfects  and  futures  were 
created  by  attaching  eram  (esam),  essem,  and  ero  to  the 
perfect ;  a  new  optative  was  made  by  the  help  of  sem 
(stem},  and  a  new  imperfect  and  future  in  -bam  and  -bo 
were  derived  from  the  auxiliary  fuam,  fuo.  Scherer, 
indeed,  has  suggested  that  the  auxiliary  verb  in  the  two 
latter  instances  was  dha,  "  placing,"  on  the  ground  that 
this  was  the  source  of  the  new  Teutonic  perfect  (lag-i-day 
lai-d]  ;  but  the  suggestion  is  untenable,  not  so  much  be- 
cause the  root  dha  appears  as  do  in  condo,  abdo,  as  because 
we  find  an  Old  Irish  future  in  b  (^carn-b—ama-bo\  and 
though  a  Latin  b  may  come  from  dh,  a  Keltic  b  cannot. 
We  have  here  an  illustration  of  the  importance  of  extend- 
ing our  field  of  observation  as  widely  as  possible  before 
laying  down  philological  dogmas,  or  propounding  philo- 
logical theories.  One  of  the  most  frequent  fallacies 
committed  in  linguistic  science  is  that  of  insufficient 
induction,  a  few  leading  languages,  such  as  Sanskrit  or 
Greek,  being  assumed  as  standards  by  which  all  conclu- 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.    161 

sions  must  be  tested  and  arrived  at.     A  study  of  Keltic 
grammar  has   enabled   us  to  correct  another  error   in 
regard  to  the  Latin  verb,  which  has  been  long  and  widely 
believed,  and  is  at  first  sight  extremely  plausible.     It 
will  be  noticed  that  almost  the  whole  of  the  middle  or 
passive  voice  in  Latin  has  undergone  a  transformation, 
which  makes  it  exceedingly  unlike  the  middle  voice  of 
the  undivided  speech.     The  characteristic  of  the  Latin 
passive  is  the  letter  r,  which  Bopp  thought  might  be  ex- 
plained from  the  reflective  pronoun  se,  s  between  two 
vowels  changing  into  r  in  Latin.    In  this  case  amor  would 
stand  for  amo-se,  amari  or  amarier  for  amasi-se,  and  the 
formation  would  be  in  strict  harmony  with  that  of  Old 
Norse  or  Letto-Slavic.     But  unfortunately  it  turns  out 
that  the  characteristic  of  the  Old  Irish  passive  was  also  r, 
and  a  Keltic  r  cannot  be  derived  from  an  earlier  s.     At 
present,  therefore,  we  must  remain  without  an  explana- 
tion of  the   Latin  and  Keltic  passive,  content  only  to 
discover   how  close   a   connection   exists   between   the 
grammatical  forms  of  the  two  groups  of  tongues.1     The 
terminations  of  the   Latin  perfect  present  another  pro- 
blem which  still  awaits   a   satisfactory  solution.     Prof. 
Harkness2  has  ingeniously  suggested    that   we  should 
compare  it  with  the  Sanskrit  dsa  for  asasma.     In  this 
case  the  Old  Latin  esi,  "  I  was,"  would  stand  for  eslmi, 
and  that  for  esismi,  esit  and  esimus  would  be  similarly 
for   esist  (esisti),  and   esismtis,  while  esisti,  esistis,    and 
esisunt  (compare  dederunt,  dedisoni)  would  need  no  ex- 

1  But  see  above,  p.  113,  note  2. 

2  "  Transactions    of   the  American    Philological    Association " 

<I875). 

II.  M 


162  THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

planation.     But  the  first  link  in  the  chain  of  reasoning  is 
not  a  strong  one. 

This  sketch  of  Aryan  grammar  must  have  made  it 
clear  that  the  principle  of  flection  is  not  carried  out 
purely  and  persistently  in  our  family  of  speech.  Flec- 
tion primarily  consists  in  internal  vowel-change,  or  some 
corresponding  mode  of  symbolizing  the  relation  that 
words  bear  to  one  another  in  a  sentence.  In  the  Aryan 
family  this  symbolization  seems  to  have  been  effected  as 
often  by  vowels  or  syllables  following  the  "root"  as  by 
a  change  in  the  vowels  within  the  root  itself.  If  we  ask 
why  the  suffix  ya  should  have  been  chosen  to  mark  the 
feminine  gender,  we  can  only  reply  that  this  was  the 
grammatical  conception  of  which  it  was  made  the  sym- 
bol. M.  Hovelacque  believes  that  the  suffix  ta  denotes 
the  passive,  the  suffix  ti  the  active,  and  that  the  latter 
suffix  has  produced  a  large  number  of  active  nouns  as 
opposed  to  the  passive  and  older  forms  in  ta.  In  this 
case  the  difference  of  meaning  will  be  indicated  by  the 
final  vowel.  We  have  more  than  once  had  occasion  to 
notice  the  variation  of  signification  assigned  by  the  Greek 
language  to  the  variation  of  vowel  in  the  nominative 
oWj  and  accusative  oVaj,  where  Sanskrit  would  have  in- 
differently vacJtas  and  Latin  voces,  though  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  alpha  in  the  accusative  was  originally  due 
to  the  presence  of  a  nasal  (oVavj),  as  well  as  the  way  in 
which  the  language  seized  upon  the  difference  of  vowel 
that  had  grown  up  between  oW?  and  ETTO?,  making  the 
first  a  plural  and  the  second  an  abstract  singular.  But 
it  is  in  the  verb  that  the  principle  of  symbolism  comes 
1  "  La  Linguistique,"  p.  200. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL   FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.    163 

most  into  play.  A  slight  change  of  vowel  in  the  redu- 
plicated syllable  distinguishes  the  present  tii&yu  from  the 
perfect  d&uxa,  and  the  conjunctive  was  denoted  from  time 
immemorial  by  an  inserted  a.  No  doubt  these  variations 
of  pronunciation  were  at  the  outset  purely  phonetic,  and 
frequently  caused  by  the  accent ;  but  as  new  grammatical 
ideas  and  relationships  came  to  be  conceived,  they  were 
turned  into  flections  by  being  used  as  marks  and  sym- 
bols of  the  newly  realized  relations  of  the  sentence 
Examples  of  the  process  may  be  found  in  the  distinction 
of  gender  that  gradually  grew  up  between  major  and 
majus  or  in  the  Greek  employment  of  verbs  in  -6u  as 
transitives  and  verbs  in  -su  as  intransitives,  though  both 
terminations  alike  answer  to  the  Sanskrit  -aydmi. 

The  pattern  set  by  vowels  or  consonants  within  a 
word  was  soon  followed  by  the  hitherto  meaningless 
terminations,  or  suffixes,  as  we  term  them,  found  at  the 
end  of  words.  These,  too,  came  to  be  used  as  flections, 
though  it  not  unfrequently  happens  that  the  "  flection- 
suffix"  betrays  its  origin  by  its  identity  with  a  mere 
classificatory  suffix,  or  a  suffix  in  which  we  can  trace  no 
signification  or  symbolization  at  all.  Thus  the  same 
syllable  which  in  nod-Eg  denotes  the  nominative  plural  is 
in  Trodwv,  that  is,  grodw-wp,  at  most  but  classificatory.  We 
must  rid  ourselves  of  the  notion  that  "suffixes"  were 
ever  independent  words  like  our  "  if"  or  "  in  ;"  so  far  back 
as  our  knowledge  of  Aryan  speech  extends,  they  pos- 
sessed no  existence  apart  from  the  words  to  which  they 
belonged,  and  which,  again,  only  existed  as  words  in  so 
far  as  they  possessed  these  suffixes.  Suffixes  became 
flections  through  the  help  of  analogy. 


1 64  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

In  course  of  time,  but  still  long  before  the  separation 
of  the  family,  Aryan  speech  entered  upon  its  agglutina- 
tive stage.  A  number  of  definitely  fixed  flections  were 
in  existence,  and  the  isolated  word  had  been  clearly  dis- 
tinguished from  the  sentence  of  which  it  was  a  member. 
The  need  of  a  verb  began,  accordingly,  to  be  felt,  while 
old  words  from  constant  use  had  become  attenuated  both 
in  form  and  meaning,  and  tended  to  attach  themselves, 
like  enclitics,  to  other  better  preserved  words.  These 
attenuated  enclitics,  or  "  empty  words,"  to  adopt  the  ex- 
pressive Chinese  name,  soon  came  to  be  undistinguish- 
able  from  other  suffixes  whose  ancestry  had  been  entirely 
different,  and  along  with  the  latter  were  liable  to  be 
turned  into  flections.  Such  flections,  however,  were  by 
nature  imperfect ;  their  agglutinative  origin  never  alto- 
gether passed  out  of  the  consciousness  of  language,  and 
a  certain  dualism  was  admitted  into  Aryan  speech. 
When  the  synthetic  period  of  its  life  was  over,  there  was 
everything  to  favour  the  introduction  of  that  analytic 
spirit  so  congenial  to  the  Aryan  genius. 

It  is  not  to  the  Aryan  languages,  then,  that  we  have 
to  look  for  the  principle  of  flection  in  its  purest  form. 
This  must  rather  be  sought  in  the  Semitic  idioms. 
Here  the  fundamental  distinctions  of  grammar  are 
wholly  expressed  by  symbols.  The  verb  is  a  late  growth ; 
indeed,  the  Semitic  languages  cannot  be  said  ever  to 
have  acquired  a  verb  properly  so-called,  the  tenses  con- 
tinuing to  denote  not  time  but  mere  relation.  It  is  onl 
under  exceptional  circumstances,  and  through  the  in 
fluence  of  another  language,  that  such  Semitic  idioms  a 
Assyrian  or  Ethiopic  came  to  possess  real  tenses.  Th 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.    165 

Semitic  verb  remained  a  noun,  and  whatever  tenses  and 
moods  it  has  were  of  late  origin.  The  first  tense  was  the 
imperfect  (or  future)  formed  by  the  attachment  of  the  first 
and  second  personal  pronouns  to  an  abstract  noun,  the 
singular  of  which  was  used  without  any  suffix  for  the 
third  person  singular,  and  the  plural  for  the  third  person 
plural.  The  perfect  grew  up  similarly  by  the  agglutina- 
tion of  the  first  and  second  personal  pronouns  to  par- 
ticiples and  other  nouns  at  a  period  only  just  preced- 
ing the  separation  of  the  Semitic  languages,  and  Assy- 
rian, which  was  crystallized  into  a  literary  language  as 
early  as  B.C.  2000,  allows  us  to  trace  its  genesis  and  his- 
tory. Even  in  the  case  of  these  two  tenses,  however, 
the  principle  of  symbolization  had  full  play.  The  pro- 
noun was  prefixed  in  the  imperfect,  affixed  in  the  per- 
fect, and  so  in  accordance  with  the  Semitic  law  which 
places  the  defined  word  before  the  defining,  the  perfect 
brings  the  verbal  stem  into  prominence  and  expresses  a 
fact,  while  the  imperfect  lays  chief  stress  on  the  pronoun 
and  expresses  the  activity  underlying  a  fact.  In  dealing 
with  Semitic  flection,  therefore,  we  must  direct  our  atten- 
tion to  the  noun  out  of  which  the  verb,  such  as  it  is,  has 
grown.  Now  the  primitive  Semitic  noun  possessed  three 
cases,  nominative,  genitive,  and  accusative,  characterized 
by  the  symbolical  terminations  2im  (un,  u),  im  (ifi,  i\  and 
am  (an,  a).  The  genitive  termination  seems  a  weakened 
form  of  the  accusative,  the  latter  expressing  the  object 
towards  which  thought  is  directed.  There  were  three 
numbers,  singular,  dual,  and  plural,  the  dual  being  older 
than  the  plural  (which  originally  ended  in  -dmum,  ilmum) 
and  symbolically  represented  by  a  lengthened  vowel 


166  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

(-a'amum).  The  feminine  gender  was  distinguished  from 
the  masculine  by  the  symbol  t,  which  (along  with  tan} 
played  a  large  part  in  the  classification  of  nouns.  But 
most  of  the  leading  distinctions  of  sense  were  marked  by 
internal  vowel-change  ;  thus  kadJiala  is  "he  killed,"  ku- 
dhila,  "he  was  killed,"  kadhl,  "murderer,"  kidhl,  "enemy," 
kudhl,  "a  killing,"  kodhcl,  "killing;"  while  the  govern- 
ment of  one  noun  by  another  was  indicated  by  the  two 
being  pronounced  in  one  breath,  which  led  to  a  shortened 
pronunciation  of  the  first  and  the  eventual  loss  of  the 
case-endings.  A  time  came,  however,  when  the  Semitic 
languages  entered  upon  their  analytic  stage ;  the  old 
genitive  relation  was  replaced  by  the  insertion  of  the 
relative  pronoun  (itself  originally  demonstrative)  between 
two  nouns,  and  substantives  that  had  stiffened  into  prepo- 
sitions narrowed  the  use  of  the  ancient  cases.  To  the  last, 
nevertheless,  the  Semitic  tongues  have  remained  faithful 
to  their  characteristic  feature  of  triliteralism  ;  that  is, 
every  root  consists  of  three  consonants  or  semi-consonants, 
which  form  the  skeleton,  as  it  were,  to  which  the  vowels 
give  life  and  significancy.  Phonetic  decay  has,  of  course, 
attacked  these  roots  and  reduced  many  of  them  to  single 
or  double  consonants,  while  others  have  been  enlarged 
by  additional  letters  ;  but  in  the  main  every  Semitic 
language  is  still  characterized  by  its  triliteral  radicals. 
Many  of  them  differ  but  slightly  in  both  sound  and 
meaning,  and  we  must  regard  them  as  so  many  phonetic 
types  that  floated  unconsciously  before  the  mind  of  the 
primitive  Semite,  whose  sole  requirement  was  that  they 
should  be  capable  of  being  uttered  in  three  syllables 
Why  three  syllables  should  have  seemed  the  precis 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.    167 

phonetic  equivalent  of  a  thought  we  cannot  tell ;  we 
must  be  content  with  the  fact  that  it  was  so.  Naturally 
the  extent  to  which  flection  was  carried  in  Semitic 
speech  restricted  the  employment  of  composition,  and 
compounds,  accordingly,  have  always  been  rare  in  the 
Semitic  languages.  Where  an  Aryan  would  use  a  word 
like  ire,  "  to  go,"  with  a  preposition  ex  to  signify  "  to 
go  out,"  the  Semite  coined  a  new  root.  The  memory 
was  developed  at  the  expense  of  the  reasoning  and 
analytic  faculties. 

The  Semitic  family  may  be  divided  into  northern  and 
southern.  To  the  northern  division  belong  the  sister- 
dialects  of  Assyria  and  Babylonia,  the  sister-dialects 
known  as  Hebrew  and  Phoenician,  and  the  Aramaic  of 
Syria.  Aramaic,  however,  differs  very  widely  both  in 
phonology  and  in  grammar  from  the  other  members  of 
the  northern  division,  and  must  have  branched  off  from 
them  at  an  early  period.  It  comprises  Biblical  Chaldee, 
the  dialect  of  the  Targums,  the  Syriac  of  Christian 
writers,  and  the  Nabathean  and  Mendaite  or  Sabean 
(Zabian).  To  the  southern  group  belong  Arabic,  that  is, 
the  vernacular  of  northern  and  central  Arabia,  and  the 
idioms  of  southern  Arabia  and  Abyssinia.  Under  the 
latter  are  included  the  extinct  Himyaritic  (Sabaean), 
Minnean,  and  Ghe'ez  or  Ethiopic,  and  the  modern 
Ehkili,  Tigre  and  Tigrina,  Amharic,  and  Harrari.  The 
Semitic  dialects  form  a  compact  group  whose  original 
home  was  Arabia,  and  resemble  the  Romance  languages, 
except  that  their  mother-language  is  unknown.  The 
•close  similarity  that  consequently  exists  among  them, 
together  with  the  loss  of  their  parent-speech,  has  thrown 


168  THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

great  obstacles  in  the  way  of  their  comparative  treat- 
ment. The  Semite  has  been  a  trader  and  intermediary 
from  the  beginning ;  though  wanting  in  originality  and 
scientific  analysis,  he  has  always  been  ready  to  borrow 
from  others  and  improve  his  new  possession.  A  large 
part  of  his  earliest  culture  and  civilization  came  from 
the  Turanian  Accadians  of  Babylonia,  from  whom  he  - 
derived  not  only  the  germs  of  settled  city  life,  but  the 
elements  of  mathematics,  astronomy,  religion  and  my- 
thology, literature  and  writing.  The  cuneiform  syllabary 
of  Assyria  had  been  the  invention  of  the  primitive  Chal- 
deans, and  the  Canaanite  tribes,  when  they  migrated 
from  the  Persian  Gulf,  do  not  seem  to  have  been  ac- 
quainted with  it.  The  so-called  Phoenician  alphabet,  the 
source  of  most  of  the  alphabets  of  the  world,  was  adopted 
from  Egypt,  and  was  probably  first  used  by  the  Phoe- 
nician settlers  in  the  Delta.  De  Rouge  and  others  have 
successfully  traced  it  back  to  the  hieratic  alphabet  of 
the  Egyptians  of  the  Middle  Empire.  The  Aramaean 
traders  of  the  Gulf  of  Antioch,  who  appear  to  have 
preceded  the  Phoenicians  proper  of  Tyre  and  Sidon, 
may  have  employed  the  hieroglyphic  syllabary  of  the 
Hittites  before  the  Phoenician  alphabet  became  known 
to  them. 

The  language  of  Assyria  and  Babylonia  has  been  re- 
covered from  the  inscribed  bricks  and  monuments  of 
Nineveh,  Babylon,  and  other  cities,  only  within  the  last 
thirty  years.  The  two  countries  spoke  the  same  tongue 
with  but  slight  differences,  and  as  this  tongue  had  been 
stereotyped  for  literary  purposes  at  an  early  period,  it 
presents  us,  on  the  whole,  with  an  archaic  form  of  Semitic 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.    169 

speech.     In  fact,  Assyrian  may  justly  be  described  as 
the  Sanskrit  of  the  Semitic  idioms ;  and  its  student  has 
the  double  advantage  of  dealing  with  contemporaneous 
documents,    and  with  a  mode  of  writing  in  which  the 
vowels  as  well  as  the  consonants  are  marked.     Assyrian 
literature,  though  consisting  mostly  of  translations  from 
older  Accadian  works,  is  very  extensive,  and  only  a  tithe 
of  it  has  as  yet  been  examined.     Every  great  city  had 
at  least  one  library,  and  most  of  these  are  still  lying 
under  the  soil,  awaiting  the  spade  of  the  explorer.     The 
literature  was  partly  on  papyrus,  partly  on   clay ;  and 
though  the  papyrus  has  perished,  the  clay  tablets,  the 
laterculcz  coctiles  as  Pliny  calls  them,  with  their  minute 
writing,  have  remained  in  a  more  or  less  perfect  condi- 
tion.    It  is  with  their  help  that  we  must  reconstruct  not 
only  the  ancient  language  of  Assyria  and  Babylonia,  but 
also  the  religion  and  history,  the  culture  and  the  civili- 
zation of  oriental  antiquity.    Like  one  of  the  Himyaritic 
dialects,  Assyrian  preserves  the  initial  sibilant  which  has 
become  h  in  the  other  Semitic  tongues  (as  in  su\  "  he," 
si\  "she,"  and  a  shaphel  for  the  //^////conjugation),  but 
stands    alone   in  changing   s   to    /   before   a    following 
dental. 

Hebrew  is  but  a  local  dialect  of  the  Canaanite  group 
to  which  belong  Phoenician,  Moabite,  and  other  neigh- 
bouring idioms,  from  which  it  differs  no  more  than 
Assyrian  from  Babylonian,  or  Somersetshire  from  Dorset- 
shire English.  The  fragments  of  its  ancient  literature 
preserved  in  the  Old  Testament  are  the  only  sources  of 
our  knowledge  of  it,  and  the  language  of  most  of  these 
has  been  reduced  to  the  same  uniform  level  shortly  after 


i;o  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

the  Babylonish  captivity.  Hebrew  was  gradually  sup- 
planted by  Aramaic  as  a  spoken  language,  and  though  it 
continued  to  be  used  as  a  literary  dialect  was  more  and 
more  coloured  by  the  encroaching  idiom  of  Syria.  After 
the  Maccabean  epoch  Hebrew  became  extinct  even  as  a 
literary  dialect,  though  it  was  still  employed  for  theo- 
logical and  kindred  purposes  much  as  Latin  was  in  the 
Middle  Ages.  Modern  Hebrew  may  be  divided  into  two 
periods,  the  first  extending  to  the  twelfth  century,  with 
the  Mishna  as  its  principal  monument,  and  the  second 
taking  its  start  with  the  revival  of  Jewish  literature  in  the 
south  of  France.  Aramaic,  Greek,  and  Latin  words 
characterize  the  Hebrew  of  the  first  period,  the  words 
and  phrases  of  the  modern  European  languages,  the 
Hebrew  of  the  second.  The  square  characters  of  modern 
Hebrew  are  descended  from  the  Aramaic  branch  of  the 
Phoenician  alphabet,  and  supplanted  in  the  first  century 
before  our  era  the  old  Phoenician  letters,  such  as  we  see 
them  on  the  Moabite  Stone.  The  old  letters  are  still  re- 
tained in  a  modified  form  by  the  Samaritans,  whose 
dialect,  though  mixed  with  Aramaisms,  belongs  to  the 
Canaanite  group.  The  vowel  punctuation  of  the  Old 
Testament  was  the  invention  of  the  Massoretes  of  the 
sixth  century  A.D.,  the  text  up  to  that  time  containing 
consonants  only.  It  embodies  the  traditional  pronuncia- 
tion employed  in  Palestine  when  intoning  the  Scriptures, 
and  can  bear,  therefore,  but  a  remote  resemblance  to  the 
original  pronunciation  of  the  language  while  it  was  still 
living.  The  number  and  nature  of  the  vowel-sounds 
must  have  been  much  increased  and  changed,  and  the 
accentuation  is  due  to  the  necessities  of  monotone. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.    171 

Phoenician,  like  Assyrian,  is  known  only  from  coins  and 
inscriptions,  a  passage  in  the  "  Pcenulus  "  of  Plautus  being 
the  sole  exception.  The  "  Periplus  of  Hanno  "  and  the 
"  History  of  Sanchuniathon  "  have  come  down  to  us  only 
in  fragmentary  Greek  translations.  Of  the  inscriptions, 
that  on  the  sarcophagus  of  King  Eshmunazar  of  Sidon 
(sixth  century  B.C.)  is  perhaps  the  most  important.  The 
Punic  of  the  Tyrian  colony,  Carthage,  however,  has  left 
us  a  good  many  monuments,  and  though  the  older  Punic 
is  identical  with  the  Phoenician  of  Palestine,  the  Neo- 
Punic,  whose  chief  remains  have  been  found  in  Tunis  and 
eastern  Algeria  inscribed  in  an  alphabet  of  its  own,  differs 
from  it  considerably. 

Distinct  from  Assyrian  and  Hebrew  in  phonology, 
grammar,  and  vocabulary,  though  belonging  also  to  the 
northern  division  of  Semitic,  is  Aramaic,  now  represented 
by  a  few  Neo-Syriac  dialects  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Lake  Urumiyah.  Aramaic  was  the  dialect  of  the  Semitic 
highlands,  and  was  once  widely  diffused  over  Syria  and 
Mesopotamia.  The  mercantile  position  of  Carchemish 
(now  Jerablus)  on  the  Euphrates  caused  it  to  become  the 
lingua  franca  of  trade  and  diplomacy  from  the  eighth 
century  B.C.  downwards,  and  in  the  course  of  time  it 
succeeded  in  extirpating  Assyro-Babylonian,  Phoenician, 
and  Hebrew,  just  as  it  was  itself  afterwards  extirpated 
by  Arabic.  Syriac,  or  Christian  Aramaic,  has  no  monu- 
ments older  than  the  first  century  of  our  era,  to  which 
some  of  the  Palmyrene  inscriptions  go  back,  but  the 
Peshito  or  Syriac  translation  of  the  Bible  (made  about 
the  beginning  of  the  third  century)  laid  the  foundation 
of  an  extensive  and  important  literature,  mostly,  how- 


172  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

ever,  of  an  ecclesiastical  character.  The  Syriac  writers 
were  the  first,  it  would  seem,  to  elaborate  a  system  of  vowel 
notation  and  stops,  and  they  served  to  introduce  Greek 
science  to  the  Arabs.  In  fact,  most  of  the  early  Arabic 
translations  from  Greek  were  made  by  Syriac  writers  and 
based  on  Syriac  versions.  A  considerable  literature  also 
appears  to  have  flourished  among  the  Mendaites  of  the 
fourth  and  fifth  century,  partly  in  the  Nabathean,  partly 
in  the  Sabean  dialects.  All  we  know  of  Nabathean 
literature,  however,  is  derived  from  the  Arabic  translations 
of  Ibn  Wahshiya  (A.D.  904),  the  most  notable  work  being 
Kuthami's  "  Nabathean  Agriculture,"  and  the  medical 
fantasies  of  Tenkelusha  or  Teukros.  The  "Book  of 
Adam  "  is  the  chief  product  of  the  Sabean  dialect.  The 
Mendaite  idioms  are  remarkable  for  the  extent  to  which 
the  confusion  and  decay  of  the  gutturals  have  proceeded 
as  well  as  the  numerous  contractions  undergone  bywords. 
The  Aramaic  group  is  distinguished  by  its  tendency  to 
change  the  sibilants  into  dentals,  by  the  so-called  "  em- 
phatic aleph,"  which  is  really  a  post-fixed  article,  and  by 
its  formation  of  passive  conjugations  with  the  help  of  the 
prefix  eth. 

The  Arabic  of  Central  Arabia,  more  especially  of 
Mohammed's  tribe,  the  Koreish  of  Mecca,  may  be  classi- 
fied under  two  periods,  though  to  this  day  the  Bedouins 
of  the  interior  still  speak  a  language  which  is  not  only 
as  pure  and  unaltered  as  that  of  the  Koran,  but  even  in 
some  respects  more  archaic  than  the  Assyrian  of  Nineveh. 
The  first  period  is  that  of  the  pre-Islamitic  poems,  of  the 
Moallakat,  the  Hamasa,  the  Kitab  el  Agani,  the  Divan  of 
the  Hodheilites,  and  culminates  in  the  Koran  as  revised  by 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.    173 

the  Khalif  Othman  (A.D.  644-656).  In  the  modern  period 
the  language  has  undergone  phonetic  decay  to  a  certain 
extent,  the  case-endings  have  been  lost,  and  foreign  words 
introduced.  The  four  Arabic  dialects  of  Barbary,  Arabia, 
Syria,  and  Egypt  vary  but  very  slightly  from  one  another, 
the  dialect  of  Barbary  alone  presenting  some  grammatical 
differences.  Arabic,  or  Ishmaelite,  as  it  is  better  called, 
has,  like  Assyrian,  retained  many  of  the  features  of  primi- 
tive Semitic  grammar ;  its  phonology,  however,  in  com- 
mon with  that  of  the  other  south  Semitic  dialects,  departs 
widely  from  that  of  the  north  Semitic  group,  and  has 
developed  certain  new  sounds  (d,  tz,  zh,  hti).  The  original 
termination  of  the  case-endings  in  -m  has  become  -n,  the 
demonstrative  has  passed  into  an  article,  as  in  Hebrew, 
and  the  old  plural  has  been  almost  entirely  replaced  by 
collectives  or  "  broken  plurals,"  which  characterize  the 
whole  of  the  south  Semitic  branch.  Of  the  nineteen 
primitive  conjugations  or  forms  of  the  verb  Arabic  pre- 
serves nine,  and  its  vocabulary  is  singularly  large  and 
abounds  in  delicate  distinctions  of  meaning.  Arabic 
literature  is  enormous  and  very  varied  ;  but  we  may 
notice  its  contributions  to  science  in  the  Middle  Ages 
and  its  lyrical  poetry,  for  which  it  is  still  famous.  The 
"  mixed  "  jargons  of  Maltese  and  Mosarabic  may  be  de- 
scribed as  corrupt  Arabic  dialects ;  the  latter  was  spoken 
in  the  south  of  Spain,  and  did  not  become  quite  ex- 
tinct till  the  last  century.  The  language  of  the  Sinaitic 
inscriptions,  which  are  written  in  a  Nabathean  alphabet 
of  the  third  and  fourth  centuries,  is  also  Ishmaelite, 
though  influenced  by  Aramaic. 

The  "  Joktanite"  dialects  of  southern  Arabia  and  Abys- 


174  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

sinia  present  several  peculiar  features.    The  earliest  we 
know  are  the  two  dialects  of  Saba  and  Minna  (Ma'n),  con- 
tained in  the  Himyaritic  inscriptions,  many  of  which  are 
earlier  than  the  Christian  era.    They  have  preserved  the 
primitive  mimmation  (or  case-ending  in  -m)  of  the  Semitic 
languages,  as  well  as  the  three  cases  themselves,  and 
they  have  the  peculiarity  of  forming  a  subjunctive  from 
the  imperfect  by  affixing  n  to  the  third  person  singular, 
and  doubling  it  in  the  plural.     The  Minnean  or  Minsean 
dialect  agrees  with  the  Assyrian  in  retaining  the  older 
Shaphel  conjugation  instead  of  the  Hiphil  of  Sabaean 
and  Hebrew,  and  the  older  forms  of  the  third  personal 
pronoun  (sa,  stt,  sumu),  with  s  instead  of  //.     The  Ehkili 
dialect  of  Mahrah  is  the  modern  representative  of  the 
extinct    Himyaritic.      From   the   south   of  Arabia  the 
Joktanite  Semites  crossed  over  into  Abyssinia  under  the 
name  of  Ghe'ez  or  "  Free  Emigrants,"  carrying  with  them 
their  language   and   alphabet.    The   language   became 
known  as  the  Ethiopic,  and  the  alphabet  was  changed 
into  a  syllabary,  written  like  the  Assyrian  cuneiform  from 
left  to  right.    Two  inscriptions  in  Ethiopic  of  the  fifth  or 
sixth  century  exist  at  Axum,  and  after  the  conversion 
of  the   country  to  Christianity   in   the   fourth   century, 
Ethiopic    was  much   cultivated   as  a  literary  language, 
and  many  theological  works  as  well  as  the  Bible  were 
translated  into  it.     It  is  to  these  translations  that  we  owe 
the  Book  of  Enoch,  the  Apocalypse  of  Isaiah,  and  the 
Book  of  Jubilees  in  a  complete  form.     Ethiopic  is  now  a 
dead  language,  only  used  for  liturgical  purposes,  its  place 
having  been  taken  by  the  Amharic  in  the  south-west, 
the  Tigre  in  the  north,  and  the  Tigrina  in  the  centre. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.    175 

The  latter  dialects   have  borrowed   a  good  number  of 
words  from  the  surrounding  African  tongues.1 

Attempts  have  been  made  from  time  to  time  to  con- 
nect these  Semitic  languages  with  the  Aryan  family, 
and  as  a  necessary  commencement  of  such  an  undertaking 
to  reduce  their  tri literal  roots  to  monosyllables.  But  all 
such  attempts  have  ended  in  failure.  Roots  like  k-dh-l, 
"  to  kill,"  obstinately  refuse  analysis,  and  the  investigators 
cannot  agree  as  to  whether  the  refractory  letter  is  to  be 
sliced  off  at  the  end,  at  the  beginning,  or  in  the  middle, 
or  even  in  any  place  that  seems  most  convenient.  But 
words  are  changed  rather  by  the  action  of  phonetic  decay 
than  by  the  addition  of  new  letters,  and  the  resemblances 
that  have  been  pointed  out  between  Aryan  and  Semitic 
roots  are  in  almost  all  cases  easily  accounted  for  by  the 
imitation  of  natural  sounds.  The  number  of  parallel 
roots  that  exist  in  Semitic  of  similar  sound  and  meaning, 
such  as  katsats,  krfsas,  gazaz,  gazah,  gazam,  gaza\  gazal, 
gazar,  khadad^gadad,  kadad,gadah>guz,  khatsats,  khatsah, 
katsa\  katsar,  ccisakh,  ca'sam,  kkatsah,  all  containing  the 
idea  of  "  cutting,"  can  only  be  explained,  not  by  a  theory 
%of  addition  and  subtraction,  but  by  looking  on  particular 
sounds  as  so  many  phonetic  types  which  presented  them- 
selves before  the  unconscious  mind  as  symbols  of.  the 
conceptions  attached  to  them.  In  fact,  the  Semitic  root 
can  have  no  possible  existence  outside  the  dictionary  and 

1  The  recent  decipherment  of  the  inscriptions  of  Safa,  east  of 
Damascus,  by  M.  HaleVy,  shows  that  a  South-Arabian  population 
had  been  settled  in  this  country  from  time  immemorial,  distinct 
from  the  new  settlers  from  the  Hidjaz,  whose  presence  is  recorded 
by  the  Grseco-Arabic  inscription  of  Harran  in  Ledja  (A.D.  568), 
"Z.  D,  M.  G."xxxii.  i  (1878). 


176  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

grammar.    Before  a  combination  of  three  consonants  can 
be  pronounced  vowels  must  be  supplied,  and  the  root 
consequently  changed  into  a  word  whose  meaning  varies 
according  to  the  vowels  with  which  it  is  sounded.     But 
whether  the  Semitic  root  was  originally  "biliteral"  or 
not,  the   endeavour  to  derive   the  Semitic  and  Aryan 
families  from  a  common  ancestor  violates  all  the  axioms 
of  linguistic  science.    The  two  families  are  each  inflec- 
tional, it  is  true,  though  in  a  varying  degree  ;  but  here 
the   likeness    between    them   ends.      In   phonology,    in 
structure,  in  grammar,  and  in  vocabulary  no  two  groups 
of  speech  can  be   more  dissimilar.     Grill   contrasts  the 
"formal"  consonantalism  of  the  Semitic   root  with  the 
"  materialistic  "  vocalism  of  the  Aryan,  but  the  reason  of 
this   contrast   lies   deeper  than   he   seems  to   suppose. 
Vowels  cannot  form  the  skeleton,  as  it  were,  of  Semitic 
speech,  since   they   constitute  its   flesh  and  blood,  the 
symbols  of  those  relations  of  grammar  which  are  denoted 
in  the  Aryan  languages  by  suffixes.    Speaking  generally, 
we  may  say  that  the  part  played  by  suffixes  in  Aryan  is 
played  by  the  vowels  in  Semitic.     Hence  it  is  that  while 
composition  is  the  very  life  and  essence  of  Aryan  speech, 
it  is  thoroughly  repugnant  to  Semitic  modes  of  thought. 
With  the  Semite  the  universe  is  an  undivided  whole,  not 
a  compound   resolvable  into  its   parts.     If  we  turn  to 
phonology,  here,  too,  we  are  met  by  the  same  contrast. 
The  Aryan  velar  gutturals  (kw,  qiit  gw)  are  as  foreign  to 
the  Semitic  tongues  as  the  Semitic  'ain  and  dJteth  are  to 
the  Aryan.   The  power  of  augmenting  its  vowels  by  pre- 
fixing a  to  ay  i  and  u  (guna  and  vriddhi)  possessed  by 
the  Aryan   dialects   is  unknown  to   the   Semitic.      So, 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.    177 

again,  in  the  grammar  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  of  two 
more  opposed  points  of  view  than  those  embodied  in 
Aryan  and  Semitic.  The  Semite  has  never  developed  a 
true  verb  ;  such  verbs  as  he  has  presuppose  a  noun  just 
as  much  as  the  Aryan  noun,  on  the  contrary,  presupposes 
the  verb.  Relation,  not  time,  is  expressed  by  the  Semitic 
sentence.  As  in  Turkish,  therefore,  the  third  person 
remains  a  pure  noun,  undistinguished  by  any  pronominal 
suffix,  and  like  the  noun  admits  of  a  distinction  of  gender. 
It  is  needless  to  refer  to  other  points  of  contrast,  the 
three  cases  of  the  Semitic  noun,  for  instance,  as  opposed 
to  the  numerous  cases  of  the  Aryan  substantive,  or  the 
insertion  of  a  letter  (/)  with  modifying  force  within  the 
body  of  a  word ;  it  is  enough  to  draw  attention  to  the 
fundamentally  different  conceptions  upon  which  the 
whole  syntax  of  the  two  classes  of  speech  is  built.  In 
Aryan  the  predicate  and  governed  word  were  originally 
placed  before  the  subject  and  governing  word  ;  the  con- 
verse was  the  case  in  Semitic.  The  entire  point  of  view 
from  which  the  grammar  started  was  thus  reversed  in  the 
two  families  of  language.  It  is  true  that  with  the  lapse 
of  centuries  the  Aryan  sentence  became  complex  and 
confused,  and  though  Teutonic  English  still  says  "  good 
man,"  and  "  man's  good,"  the  Frenchman  speaks  of 
rhomme  b^nevole  and  la  beneficence  de  rhomme  ;  it  is  true, 
also,  that  Assyrian  acquired  the  habit  of  making  the  ob- 
ject precede  the  verb,  possibly  in  consequence  of  Accadian 
influence  ;  nevertheless  if  we  look  at  the  two  families  of 
speech  as  wholes,  we  shall  see  that  the  syntax  of  each 
has  remained  faithful  to  its  primitive  starting-point.  It 
is  difficult,  however,  to  compare  the  rich  development  of 
II.  N 


7 HE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

the  Aryan  sentence,  with  its  numberless  conjunctions  an< 
verbal  forms,  with  the  bald  simplicity  of  Semitic  expres- 
sion. The  Aryan  sentence  is  as  well  fitted  to  be  the  in- 
strument of  the  measured  periods  of  reasoned  rhetoric  as 
the  Semitic  sentence  is  of  the  broken  utterances  of  lyrical 
emotion. 

The  attempts,  then,  that  have  been  made  to  derive 
the  Aryan  and  Semitic  families  from  a  common  source 
must  be  pronounced  scientifically  worthless.  Mere  mor- 
phological agreement  hardly  raises  even  a  presumption 
in  favour  of  genealogical  relationship.  It  is  quite  other- 
wise, however,  with  the  endeavours  to  prove  a  connection 
between  the  Old  Egyptian  of  the  monuments,  along  with 
Coptic  and  Libyan,  and  the  Semitic  group.  A  relation- 
ship of  some  kind  certainly  exists  between  them,  since 
the  grammatical  agreement  is  most  striking,  though  the 
disagreement  in  both  structure  and  vocabulary  is  equally 
striking.  We  have  already  had  occasion  to  refer  to  this 
puzzle  of  comparative  philology,  and  to  suggest  that  at  a 
certain  period  of  growth  a  language  may  possibly  borrow 
from  the  grammar  of  another.  However  this  may  be, 
the  Old  Egyptian  which  can  be  traced  back  upon  con- 
temporaneous monuments  to  an  antiquity  of  about  six 
thousand  years  is  an  inflectional  language,  like  the  Coptic, 
which  has  sprung  from  it,  though  the  flection  is  simple 
and  imperfect.  As  in  Semitic,  the  feminine  is  denoted 
by  an  affixed  t,  which  may  also  precede  the  noun,  there 
is  a  construct  genitive,  and  the  personal  pronouns  bear  a 
remarkable  resemblance  to  the  Semitic  ones.  A  dual  (in 
-ui)  exists  as  well  as  a  plural  (in  -«),  but  no  signs  of 
case-endings  have  been  detected.  The  verbal  forms  are 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.    179 

simple  enough  ;  much  use  is  made  of  auxiliary  verbs, 
and  the  persons  are  expressed  by  suffixing  the  personal 
pronouns.     Indeed,  the  pronoun  suffixes  have  the  same 
form  whether  they  are  attached  to  a  noun  used  as  such 
or  as  a  verb,  pcr-a,  for  instance,  being  "  my  house,"  meh-a, 
"  I  fill."     There  are  several  conjugations,  four  formed  by 
partial  or  complete  reduplication  (as  kebkeb,  kekeb,  kebeb, 
and  kebek  from  keb\  one  by  the  insertion  of  t  within  the 
root  (keteb),  as  in  Semitic,  one  by  the  insertion  of  n  and 
sometimes  r  (kcneb\  one,  again,  by  prefixing  a  (akeb),  and 
another  by  prefixing  se  (sekeb).     It  is  remarkable  that 
the  last  conjugation  is  causative  like  the  Semitic  shaphel. 
A  passive  may  be  formed  by  the  postfix  tu,  ta,  or  /.    The 
subject  is  occasionally  placed  before  the  verb,  but  the 
usual  order  is  verb,  subject,  direct  object,  indirect  object, 
and  adverb.     Egyptian   literature  was  at  once  ancient 
and    extensive,    though   fragments   only   have   escaped 
destruction.     Perhaps  its  most  important  document  was 
the  "  Ritual  of  the  Dead,"  a  chapter  of  which  is  quoted 
on  the  coffin  of  Men-ke-ra  or  Mykerinus  of  the  fourth 
dynasty  (B.C.  4100),  though  additions  and  glosses  con- 
tinued to  be  made  to  it  up  to   the  Ptolemaic  period. 
During  the  long  course  of  centuries  along  which  we  can 
trace   its   history,   the   Egyptian    language    necessarily 
underwent  considerable  change,  tss  for  instance,  becoming 
first  d  and  then  t,  until  it  finally  passed  into  Coptic.  The 
Coptic  is  divided  into  three  dialects,  the  Bashmuric  in 
the  north  ;  theTheban  in  the  south  ;  and  the  Memphitic, 
which  had  the  aspirated  kky  Ih,  and  ///.    Coptic  is  a  pre- 
fix language,  the   affixes  of  the  Old  Egyptian  having 
been   exchanged  for  prefixes,   as  in   the   neighbouring 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


African  idioms.  In  the  verb,  however,  the  suffixes  may 
be  affixed  as  well  as  prefixed.  Coptic  literature  is 
Christian,  and  flourished  from  the  second  to  the  seventh 
centuries.  It  is  written  in  a  modification  of  the  Greek 
alphabet,  the  old  mode  of  writing,  whether  pictorial, 
hieratic,  or  demotic,  having  been  thought  to  savour  of 
heathenism. 

Connected  with  Old  Egyptian  is  the  Libyan  or  Berber 
group  of  tongues,  extending  from  Marocco  to  the  south 
of  Tripoli,  and  split  up  into  several  dialects,  among  which 
the  Kabyle,  the  Towareg,  and  the  Ta-mashek  may  be 
mentioned.  More  than  200  inscriptions,  some  of  them 
bilingual,  have  been  found,  which  present  us  with  an  old 
form  of  Berber  speech.1  As  in  Egyptian  and  Semitic  t 
is  the  sign  of  the  feminine  :  it  may  be  prefixed  or  affixed 
or  even  prefixed  and  affixed  at  the  same  time.  The 
personal  pronouns  are  affixed,  though  they  may  also  be 
prefixed  in  the  case  of  verbs,  and  there  are  different 
forms  for  the  dative  and  accusative.  Two  real  tenses 
have  been  developed,  one  aoristic,  as  isker,  "  he  made," 
the  other  present,  as  isdker,  "  he  makes."  The  two  forms 
correspond  most  remarkably  with  the  Assyrian  iscun, 
"  he  made,"  isacin,  "  he  makes," 'and  seem  to  bear  out  the 
view  that  the  Assyrian  distinction  of  tense  was  imported 
from  abroad.  The  causative  conjugation  is  formed  by 
the  prefix  is-,  the  passive  and  frequentative  by  the  prefix 
it-.  The  language  of  the  Guanches  or  aboriginal  inhabi- 
tants of  the  Canary  Isles  belonged  to  the  Berber  family. 

1  See  Faidherbe's  "  Collection  complete  des  Inscriptions  numi- 
diques,"  in  the  "  Mdmoires  de  la  Socie'te'  des  Sciences  etc.  de 
Lille,"  3rd  ser.  viii.  p.  361  (1870). 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.    181 

To  the  south  and  west  of  Abyssinia  lie  a  number  of 
dialects — Somali,  Galla,  Saho,  Denkali,  and  Agau,1  which 
are  classed  together  as  Ethiopian  or  Khamitic,  and  show 
striking  marks  of  agreement  with  the  Coptic  and  Berber. 
Thus  t,  whether  prefixed  or  affixed,  is  a  sign  of  the  femi- 
fine,  s  ores  the  characteristic  of  the  causative  conjugation, 
while  there  are  two  "  tenses,"  with  much  the  same  mean- 
ing as  those  of  the  Semitic  verb,  and  similarly  distin- 
guished by  prefixing  and  affixing  the  personal  pronouns. 
These  Ethiopian  dialects  lead  on  to  the  Haussa  of  the 
Soudan  between  the  Niger  and  Lake  Chad,  which,  though 
spoken  by  a  purely  negro  population,  resembles  the 
Libyan  family  in  many  of  its  grammatical  and  lexical 
details.  Thus  the  plural  may  be  denoted  by  the  termi- 
nation -una,  -anu,  -due,  shortened  to  -fi,  like  the  Egyptian 
-u  and  the  Semitic  -dnu,  -unu,  the  feminine  by  the 
termination  -nia  or  -ia,  abstracts  by  the  suffix  -ta,  and 
local  and  instrumental  nouns  by  the  prefix  ma.  A  cau- 
sative is  formed  by  the  suffix  -skie,  a  passive  by  the 
vowels  -u  and  -0,  while  the  personal  pronouns  bear  a  re- 
markable resemblance  both  to  the  Egyptian  and  to  the 
Semitic.2  The  pronominal  suffixes  are  also  used  in  the 
same  way  as  in  the  Egyptian  and  Semitic  -languages. 
Barth  believes  that  the  Haussa  represent  the  Atarantes 
of  Herodotus  (iv.  184),  whose  name  he  would  explain  as 
a-tara,  "  the  collected."  At  any  rate,  it  seems  clear  that 
the  Haussa  once  occupied  a  position  much  further  to  the 

1  The  Beja  dialect,  spoken  by  the  Haderidoas  and  some  of  the 
Beni-Amer,  north  of  Abyssinia,  also  belongs  to  the  same  group. 

2  Ara,  nl,  "  I,"  mil,  "  we,"  ka,  kai  (masc.),  ke,  kl  (fern.),  "  thou," 
ku,  "  you,"  ska,  shi,ya,  " he,"  ta,  " she,"  sft,  "they." 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

north-east  than  that  in  which  they  are  at  present  found, 
and  it  is  possible  that  while  thus  bordering  on  the  Libyan 
tribes  they  .may  have  borrowed  those  portions  of  their 
grammatical  machinery  which  have  so  Semitic  an  ap- 
pearance. 

But  whatever  may  be  the  opinion  formed  on  this  head, 
if  we  turn  our  eyes  to  the  extreme  south  of  Africa, 'we 
shall  find  a  family  of  dialects  which  Bleek  has  claimed 
for  the  inflectional  class  of  tongues.  These  dialects  are 
the  three  Hottentot  idioms,  known  as  the  Nama  or 
Namaqua  on  the  west,  the  Khora  or  Khorana  on  the 
east,  and  the  almost  extinct  Cape  Hottentot  in  the  south. 
Hottentot  possesses  twenty  simple  vowels,  and  about 
twelve  diphthongs  ;  its  consonants,  however,  are  deficient, 
and  consist  largely  of  gutturals.  These  are  eked  out  by 
four  clicks,  dental,  palatal,  cerebral,  and  lateral,  relics,  it 
may  be,  of  those  animal  cries  out  of  which  language  arose. 
There  are  also  three  tones  by  which  homonyms  are  dis- 
tinguished, as  in  Chinese ;  the  accent  usually  falls  on 
the  stem-syllable.  Suffixes  play  a  large  part  in  the 
formation  of  words,  roots  being  thus  marked  off  from 
stems  as  in  the  Aryan  languages,  and  the  verbal  stem  is 
generally  kept  distinct  from  the  nominal  stem,  though 
the  distinction  is  not  carried  far,  since  the  verb  may  drop 
its  person-ending  when  the  subject  is  a  substantive.  The 
noun  has  three  genders — masculine,  feminine,  and  neuter  ; 
three  numbers — singular,  dual,  and  plural ;  and  two  cases 
— nominative  and  accusative  :  all  marked  by  different  pro- 
nominal affixes,  which  also  denote  the  persons.  Thus 
for  the  second  person  singular  the  suffixes  are  in  the 
nominative  -ts(i)  masculine,  -s  feminine,  and  -ts  neuter, 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.    183 

in  the  accusative  -tsa,  -sa,  and  -tsa,  but  different  suffixes 
would  have  to  be  used  for  the  first  or  third  persons. 
These  suffixes  may  be  attached  one  to  another  just  as  in 
our  own  family  of  speech,  and  they  differ  from  those  of 
the  agglutinative  languages  in  frequently  being  merely 
classificatory  or  even  meaningless.  At  the  same  time  it 
must  be  allowed  that  the  flectional  instinct  cannot  be 
strong,  since  there  is  no  concord  between  the  adjective 
and  the  substantive.  As  in  so  many  other  tongues,  the 
dative  and  accusative  are  not  distinguished  from  one 
another,  but  the  genitive  may  be  denoted  by  the  demon- 
strative di.  Present,  aorist,  future,  and  perfect  tenses 
are  formed  by  the  help  of  suffixes,  as  are  also  passives, 
causals,  reciprocals,  and  similar  conjugations,  and  a  large 
number  of  postpositions  are  in  use.  We  see  from  this 
short  sketch  of  Hottentot  grammar  that  it  resembles  our 
own  Aryan  grammar  in  two  important  respects,  the  power 
of  composition  and  the  conception  of  three  genders. 
Perhaps  Bleek  is  right  in  thinking  that  the  fondness  of 
the  Hottentots,  or  Khoi'khoin,  as  they  call  themselves, 
for  sidereal  worship  and  beast  fables  is  largely  due  to  the 
character  of  their  speech,  in  which  everything  must  be 
personified  by  receiving  the  suffixes  of  gender.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  natural  home  of  the  beast  fable  seems  to 
have  been  among  the  Bushmen,  from  whom  the  Hotten- 
tots and  other  African  peoples  derived  it.  The  beast  fable 
we  must  remember  flourished  among  the  ancient  Egyp- 
tians,1 and  there  are  many  indications  to  show  that  the 

1  See  Mahaffy  :  "  Prolegomena  to  Ancient  History"  (1871),  pp. 
389-92,  who  thinks  that  the  beast-fable  made  its  first  appearance  in 
Egypt,  having  been  derived  from  "the  primitive  Africans,  who  may 


1 84 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


Hottentots  have  moved  from  the  north,  where  they  may 
once  have  been  in  near  contact  with  the  inhabitants  of 
the  Nile. 

One  more  inflectional  group  of  tongues  remains  to  be 
noticed,  the  Alarodian  of  the  Caucasus,  of  which  Georgian 
is  the  chief  living  representative.  Unlike  Hottentot  or 
Haussa,  the  inflectional  character  of  Georgian  is  beyond 
dispute  :  indeed,  morphologically,  it  is  difficult  to  distin- 
guish it  from  Aryan,  although,  genealogically,  the  two 
families  of  speech  have  nothing  in  common.  It  is  pro- 
bable that  the  cuneiform  inscriptions  of  Van  and  its 
neighbourhood  will  turn  out  to  be  written  in  an  extinct 
form  of  Alarodian  speech,  as  spoken  in  Armenia  before 
the  arrival  of  the  Aryan  immigrants.  Georgian  boasts  of 
no  less  than  eight  cases,  including  an  instrumental  and  a 
demonstrative,  and  the  personal  pronouns  have  further  a 
copulative  case.  A  locative  is  formed  by  the  post-position 
cki.  The  sign  of  the  plural,  bi  or  nit  is  inserted  between 
the  stem  and  the  case-endings,  tJiavi-sa,  the  genitive  of 
thavi,  "  head,"  for  instance,  being  thave-bi-sa  in  the  geni- 
tive plural.  The  ordinal  numbers  are  formed  from  the 
cardinals  by  the  help  of  the  prefix  me,  like  substantives 
which  denote  an  office  or  profession.  With  the  exception 
of  words  formed  by  the  preposition  sa,  "  for,"  however, 
most  of  the  Georgian  derivatives  are  created  by  the  help 
of  suffixes,  -eli,  -ulit  and  -uri  denoting  gentilic  nouns,  -oba 
or  -eba  abstracts,  -iani  adjectives,  and  -k'i  diminutives. 

have  felt  that  the  wisdom  of  the  lower  animals  was  equal  to  their 
own,  and  who  had  not  acquired  exalted  notions  of  the  inherent 
superiority  of  the  human  race."  He  notices  that  the  first  essays  in 
composition  made  by  the  Vei  Negroes  after  the  invention  of  writing 
among  them  were  fables. 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES   OF  SPEECH.    185 

The  verbal  conjugation  is  extremely  complicated  ;  there 
are  several  different  forms,  and  a  large  number  of  tenses. 
Many  of  these  incorporate  the  objective  pronouns,  and 
are  able  to  lengthen  themselves  by  the  addition  of  what 
are  now,  at  all  events,  unmeaning  suffixes.  The  native 
grammarians  are  not  far  wrong  in  considering  their  lan- 
guage as  sui  generis?  Georgian  literature  is  in  large  part 
ecclesiastical,  but  it  comprises  also  several  chronicles, 
romances,  and  poems,  such  as  the  "  Story  of  Tariel,"  in 
8,000  lines,  besides  a  dictionary  compiled  by  Prince  Sul- 
khan  Orbelian  in  the  seventeenth  century. 

We  have  no  reason  for  thinking  that  the  inflectional 
groups  of  speech  which  are  still  spoken  are  the  only 
specimens  of  this  class  of  languages  that  have  existed  in 
the  world.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  probable  that  there 
have  been  others  which  have  disappeared,  leaving  no 
traces  of  themselves  behind.  The  language  of  the  Lykian 
inscriptions  is  as  inflectional  as  Greek,  but  all  attempts 
to  connect  it  with  the  Aryan  family  have  hitherto  failed, 
and  it  is  safest  to  look  upon  it  as  a  waif  and  stray  of  an 
otherwise  extinct  family  of  speech.  A  fortunate  accident 
has  preserved  for  us  a  few  old  monuments  in  which  we 
can  study  it ;  a  still  more  fortunate  accident  has  made 
some  of  these  monuments  bilingual.  If  Lykian  continues 
resolutely  to  resist  being  forced  into  the  Indo-European 
group,  it  will  have  to  be  classed  with  the  mysterious  Etrus- 
can, as  a  relic  of  a  lost  system  of  speech  whose  kindred 
have  all  perished  without  memorial.  Etruscan  itself,  in 
spite  of  its  agglutinative  character,  wears  so  frequently 
an  inflectional  appearance  that  scholars  of  repute  have 

1  De  Brosset  :  "  Elements  de  la  Langue  gdorgienne"  (1837),  p.  v. 


1 86 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


tried  to  compare  it  now  with  Semitic  and  now  with 
Aryan.  In  this  respect  it  resembles  the  Finnic  idioms, 
where  agglutination  has  so  disguised  itself  under  the 
mask  of  inflection  as  to  tempt  a  scholar  like  Weske  to 
suggest  their  inclusion  within  the  Indo-European  family. 
In  fact,  any  distinction  that  can  be  drawn  between  the 
Finnic  and  the  Aryan  verb  is  a  purely  artificial  one ;  the 
forms  in  both  have  originated  in  agglutination,  and  be- 
come what  they  are  through  the  influence  of  phonetic 
decay.  So  far  as  form  is  concerned,  there  is  little  diffe- 
rence between  the  Ostiak  madddin,  maddn,  madd;  madau, 
maddr,  maddda,  and  the  Sanskrit  bhavdmi,  bhavasi,  bha- 
vati  ;  abhavam,  abhavas,  abJiavat.  In  the  declension,  too, 
the  postpositions  have  in  many  instances  ceased  to  be  in- 
dependent or  even  semi-independent  words  ;  indeed,  the 
marks  of  certain  of  the  cases  (the  genitive  -n(a],  the 
abessive  -ta,  the  adessive  -/,  &c.)  are  throughout  the 
Turanian  or  Ural-Altaic  world  mere  symbols,  whose 
origin  has  been  long  forgotten.  But  for  all  that  the 
Finnic  idioms  remain  agglutinative,  the  Aryan  languages 
inflectional.  The  Aryan  languages  started  with  flection, 
and  made  their  agglutinated  compounds  conform  to  the 
prevailing  analogy ;  the  Finnic  idioms  owe  the  appear- 
ance of  flection  which  they  possess  to  the  wear  and  tear 
of  time.  In  the  one  case  analogy,  in  the  other  case  pho- 
netic decay  has  worked  the  change.  The  two  groups  of 
tongues  have  met,  as  it  were,  in  the  same  spot,  after 
starting  from  opposite  quarters  ;  and  the  fact  need  not 
surprise  us  any  more  than  the  common  resemblance  in 
many  points  presented  by  English  and  Chinese.  After 
all,  languages,  however  unallied,  have  all  originated  under 


THE  INFLECTIONAL  FAMILIES  OF  SPEECH.    187 

similar  circumstances  from  men  of  similar  mould  ;  they 
are  but  varying  species  of  one  and  the  same  genus. 
Hence  that  gradual  passage  from  one  form  of  speech  to 
another,  described  in  a  former  chapter,  and  that  sporadic 
participation  of  one  form  of  speech  in  the  characteristics 
of  another.  We  may  discover  the  principle  of  flection  in 
the  agglutinative  Dravidian  of  western  India,  where  the 
Tulu  dialect  forms  the  frequentative  mdlpeve,  and  the 
causative  mdlp&vJfrom  the  active  malpuve,  "  I  do,"  or  in 
the  Ba-ntu  of  southern  Africa,  where  the  final  vowel  of 
the  noun  has  a  passive  meaning  if  it  is  -<?,  an  active  or 
causative  one  if  -z,  a  neutral  one  if  -a,1  while  in  Mpongwe 
mi  kdmba  is  "  I  speak,"  mi  kamba,  "  I  do  not  speak."  In 
the  Finnic  languages  we  can  actually  trace  a  change  of 
signification  in  a  root  accompanying  a  change  of  vowel, 
and  so  be  reminded  of  our  own  distinction  between  in- 
cense and  incense,  torment  and  torment.  Thus  karyan  is  "to 
ring  "  and  "  to  lighten ;"  kar-yun  and  kir-yun,  "to  cry,"  but 
kir-oiij  "to  curse;"  kah-isen,  koh-isen,  kuh-isen,  "to  hit"  or 
"  stamp  ;"  kah-isen,  koh-isen,  "  to  roar ;"  keh-isen,  kih-isen, 
"  to  boil." :  What  is  this  but  the  Semitic  mode  of  indi- 
cating a  change  of  signification  by  a  change  of  vowel  ? 
The  difference  between  the  two  is  that  the  one  utilizes 
the  variation  of  vowel  for  lexical,  the  other  for  gram- 
matical, purposes  ;  it  is  the  only  difference,  but,  for  deter- 
mining the  morphological  position  of  a  language,  it  is  a 
most  important  one. 

1  Bleek  :   "  Comparative  Grammar  of  the  South  African   Lan- 
guages/'p.  138. 

2  Donner  in  the  "  Z.  D.  M.  G.,"  xxvii.  4  (1873). 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE    AGGLUTINATIVE,   INCORPORATING,    POLYSYNTHE- 
TIC,   AND   ISOLATING   LANGUAGES. 

"  L'idde  de  1'infe'riorite'  des  nations  touraniennes,  de  leur  inapti- 
tude a  Tart  et  a  la  civilisation,  est  un  vieux  prej'ug^  qui  a  fait  son 
temps,  et  qui  ne  doit  gueres  son  origine  qu'aux  affirmations  vani- 
teuses,  et  surtout  intdressees  des  nations  germaniques."  -  -  FR. 
LENORMANT. 

PUTTING  aside  the  polysynthetic  dialects  of  America,  the 
majority  of  the  languages  of  the  world  belong  to  the  ag- 
glutinative class.  But  just  as  the  inflectional  families  of 
speech  differ  one  from  another,  so  also  do  the  agglutina- 
tive ;  indeed,  there  is  a  greater  difference  between  the 
rude  and  unformed  Bushman  and  the  polished  Finnic, 
with  its  semblance  of  flection,  or  the  Dravidian  of  Western 
India,  with  its  power  of  modifying  the  sense  by  internal 
vowel-change,  than  there  is  between  any  two  groups  of 
inflectional  speech.  Agglutination,  too,  may  be  of  more 
than  one  kind.  The  agglutinated  adjuncts  may  be  either 
prefixed,  as  in  Kafir,  or  affixed,  as  in  Ural-Altaic ;  or, 
again,  they  may  be  almost  wholly  dispensed  with,  as  in 
Malayo-Polynesian.  The  root  may  be  modified  in  sound 
during  the  process  of  agglutination,  or  may  remain  fixed 
and  unchangeable,  whatever  incrustations  may  attach 
themselves  to  it.  A  verbal  stem  may  exist  apart  from  a 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND   OTHER  LANGUAGES.     189 

nominal  stem,  or,  as  in  Polynesian,  a  verb  may  not  have 
emerged  into  existence  at  all.  The  root  may  influence 
the  suffixes,  producing  that  law  of  vowel  harmony  which 
assimilates  the  vowel  of  the  suffix  to  the  vowel  of  the 
root,  or  suffix  and  root  may  resemble  two  atoms  in 
close  contact  which  each  keep  their  own  unalterable 
character. 

The  important  part  played  in  history  and  civilization 
by  the  races  who  speak  the  various  dialects  of  the  Ural- 
Altaic  or  Turanian  family  makes  a  brief  review  of  the 
leading  languages  of  this  family  as  necessary  as  a  review 
of  the  Aryan  or  Semitic  families  of  speech.  From  the 
eastern  shores  of  Siberia  to  Scandinavia  and  western 
Russia  extends  a  group  of  tongues  which  can  all  be 
traced  back  to  a  common  mother  speech.  The  Finns 
and  Lapps  of  the  North,  the  Esths  and  Ugric  tribes  of 
Russia,  the  Magyars  of  Hungary,  the  Osmanlis  of  Turkey, 
the  Tatars,  the  Samoieds,  the  Mongols,  the  Mantchus, 
and  the  Tunguses  all  share  the  fragments  of  a  common 
patrimony.  Possibly  Japanese  may  have  hereafter  to  be 
added  to  the  list ;  for  the  present,  however,  it  must  re- 
main isolated  and  unclassified.  The  oldest  monuments 
of  Turanian  speech  have  been  of  late  revealed  to  us  by 
the  cuneiform  monuments  of  Babylonia  ;  the  wild  hill- 
tribes  of  Media  and  Susiania,  the  citizens  of  the  ancient 
empire  of  Elam,  and  the  primitive  population  of  Chaldea 
itself  all  spoke  cognate  languages,  which,  it  would  seem, 
must  be  assigned  to  the  Ural-Altaic  group.  Already  the  Jh^-jfiw 
same  intellectual  power  which  to-day  distinguishes  the 

VpV  Oi  r&  Ojtf^n. 

Finn  or  the  Magyar  had  begun  to  show  itself;  and  the 
Accadians  of  primaeval  Babylonia  were  the  inventors  of 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


the  cuneiform  system  of  writing,  the  builders  of  the 
great  cities  of  the  country,  the  first  students  of  mathe- 
matics and  astronomy,  and,  in  short,  the  originators  of 
the  culture  and  civilization  which  was  handed  on  to  the 
Semites,  by  whom  they  were  afterwards  conquered  and 
dispossessed.  Contemporaneous  records  prove  that 
Western  Asia  possessed  its  China  in  Turanian  Accad  at 
least  five  thousand  years  ago  ;  and  that  the  "  wisdom  of 
the  Chaldeans,"  stored  up  in  their  imperishable  libraries 
of  clay,  was  no  imaginary  dream  ,of  a  later  age,  but  a 
startling  and  solid  fact. 

Of  course  it  does  not  follow  that  the  communities 
which  now  speak  the  allied  dialects  of  the  Turanian 
family  all  belong  to  the  same  race.  The  Lapps,  in  fact, 
though  now  using  a  Finnic  idiom,  are  not  related  to  the 
Finns  in  blood,  and  it  is  more  than  doubtful  whether  we 
can  class  the  Mongols  physiologically  with  the  Turkish- 
Tatars  or  the  Ugro-Finns.  It  is  even  possible  that  the 
Mongolian  dialects  themselves  were  originally  distinct 
from  those  of.the  Turanian  group,  and  owe  their  present 
inclusion  in  the  group  to  their  common  agglutinative 
character,  and  to  a  long  and  close  contact  with  the 
Turkish-Tatar  languages,  which  have  made  them  ap- 
proximate so  nearly  to  the  latter  as  to  compel  us  to 
classify  them  together.  However  this  may  be,  the  whole 
Turanian  family  is  bound  together  by  its  structure,  its 
grammar,  its  stock  of  roots,  and  its  law  of  vocalic  har- 
mony. It  may  be  divided  into  five  branches,  the  Finn 
Ugric,  the  Turko-Tatar,  the  Samoyedic,  the  Mongolia 
and  the  Tungusian,  the  first  two  representing  the  culti 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND    OTHER   LANGUAGES.     191 

vated  members  of  the  family.  The  Accadians  of  Baby- 
lonia looked  upon  "  the  Mountain  of  the  East,"  the  pre- 
sent Mount  Elwend,  as  the  spot  whereon  the  ark  of  the 
Chaldean  Noah  had  rested,  and  as  the  cradle  of  their 
race  ;  but  it  is  very  possible  that  this  was  but  the  first 
centre  and  starting-point  of  the  extinct  Chaldeo-Elamite 
branch,  the  original  home  of  the  whole  family  really  lying 
far  to  the  north-west  among  the  slopes  of  the  Altai 
range. 

The  Finno-Ugric  or  Uralic  dialects  are  divided  by 
Prince  L-L.  Bonaparte  into  four  sub-families,  the  Chudic, 
the  Permian,  the  Volgic,  and  the  Uigur.  The  Chudic 
sub-family  is  again  divided  into  two  branches,  one  branch 
being  the  Finnic,  comprising  Finnish,  Vepse,  Vote  and 
Karelian,  Esthonian  and  Krevingian,  and  Livonian  with 
the  extinct  dialect  of  Salis  and  the  dialects  of  Kolken 
and  Pisen,  while  the  other  branch  is  the  Laponic,  in  which 
Lappic  holds  a  solitary  place.  The  Permian  is  spoken 
in  the  north-east  of  Russia,  and  includes  Permian  proper, 
Zyrianian,  and  Votiak.  Volgic  branches  off  into  Chere- 
missian  and  Mordvinian  (with  its  two  dialects)  on  the 
Volga,  and  Uigur  into  Ostiak,  Vogul  and  Magyar  or 
Hungarian,  once  spoken  on  the  banks  of  the  Obi.  The 
researches  carried  on  of  late  years  into  the  Uralic  lan- 
guages have  not  only  demonstrated  their  close  affinity 
and  common  origin,  but  also  a  system  of  equivalence  of 
sounds  similar  to  that  known  as  Grimm's  law.  Thus 
Riedl  has  established  the  following  table  of  consonantal 
permutations  for  the  Magyar  : — 
k  =  kh  =  Aj  h  —j;  g  —  gj;  g-=.d;  n=.n—g  —  k;  j  —  gj;  j  — 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


nj;  j  —  vj  I  —j  —  gj;  l  —  n  —  r;  t  —  d  —  l  —  t; 

M  ~"~  <T7*  '     -777  """~  *f)    •     /77/  ~~  n    *     P*]}  ~""  />    •     77/  ^^  7/   ^ 

/£•    _-«    ^    /    .        //(     ——    Is    •        It-  </     --'^    I/  j        C,  t/     — ^    •' J        *-  C/     ii  •    ii     Pf« 


—  ^y  / n jy 


The  same  method  of  comparison  which  has  been  so 
successfully  applied  in  the  case  of  the  Aryan  tongues  has 
also  revealed  to  us  the  civilization  and  migrations  of  the 
primitive  Uralic  tribes,  as  well  as  their  indebtedness  to 
their  Aryan  neighbours.  There  was  a  time  when  the  Finns 
had  not  yet  penetrated  to  the  snows  of  the  far  north,  when 
they  still  bordered  on  Slavonic,  Scandinavian,  and  Ger- 
man populations  to  whom  they  lent  some  words  and  from 
whom  they  borrowed  more.  Thus  Thomsen  has  shown 
us  that  the  Finnic  raippa,  "  rope,"  is  the  Old  Norse  reip, 
the  Swedish  rep;  the  Finnic  laukka,  "  a  leek,"  the  Old 
Norse  laukr  ;  the  Finnic  penkki,  "a  bench,"  the  Swedish 
bank;  the  Finnic  nuotta,  "  a  net,"  the  Old  Norse  not;  the 
Finnic  paita,  "a  shirt,"  the  Gothic  paidha  ;  the  Finnic 
patja,  "  a  mattress,"  the  Gothic  badi? 

Ahlqvist  has  followed  in  the  same  track  and  sketched 
the  condition  of  the  Finnic  tribes  when  they  first  settled 
in  Europe  and  learned  the  arts  of  agriculture  and  cattle- 
breeding  from  their  neighbours,  the  Teutons  and  the 

• 

1  So,  according  to  Erman,  in  Kazan  Tatar  g  becomes  /  in  Yakute. 


j'M 

55 

/  and  s 

z 

J? 

b 

sh 

55 

s 

ju 

5) 

bjii 

a 

55 

iu,  oe 

e 

55 

ui 

ui 

5> 

je 

aimen 

55 

ubiun. 

See  above,  pp.  325-6. 

a  "  Ueber   den   Einfluss   der   germanischen    Sprachen    auf  di( 
finmsch-lappischen  "  (transl.  by  Sievers,  1870). 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND  OTHER  LANGUAGES.     193 

Slavs.  Before  their  contact  with  the  latter,  they  were 
turf-cutters  rather  than  agriculturists,  numerous  words 
existing  in  the  various  dialects  which  signify  turf-cutting, 
but  none  of  native  origin  which  signify  "  a  field."  The 
plough  (aura  for  aatra)  was  borrowed,  it  would  seem, 
from  'the  Goths,  and  the  only  cereals  which  have  native 
names  are  the  barley  (phra,  otra]  and  the  turnip  (negris) . 
So,  too,  the  words  for  "cattle"  and  "swine,"  nauta  and 
sika,  come  from  the  Norsk  naut  and  sugge,  while  the 
name  of  the  "horse,"  hepo  or  hevonen,  is  the  Swedish 
kappa,  the  Danish  hoppe;  and  that  of  the  "  sheep,"  lam- 
mas,  the  German  lamm,  our  lamb.  The  names  of  the 
stallion,  the  mare,  the  cow,  and  the  bull,  on  the  other 
hand,  are  all  of  native  derivation,  and  prove  that  these 
animals  must  have  been  known  to  the  Finns  before 
their  contact  with  the  Aryans.  Like  the  other  members 
of  the  Ural-Altaic  family,  the  Finns  were  acquainted 
with  metallurgy  from  an  early  period  ;  indeed  they  seem 
to  have  used  iron  long  before  any  of  the  Aryan  tribes. 
Meteoric  iron  was  probably  the  first  worked,  and  it  is 
curious  that  the  Accadian  of  Babylon  prefixes  the  deter- 
minative of  divinity  to  the  name  of  the  metal  as  if  to 
point  out  its  heavenly  descent.  The  smiths  of  the  ancient 
legends  are  all  divine  beings,  and  the  adventures  of  the 
Finnish  Wainamoinen,  the  old  limping  smith  of  heaven 
and  earth,  and  his  friend  Ilmarinnen,  "the  divine 
blacksmith," ]  or  the  fall  of  the  Greek  Hephaestus  from 
the  sky,  appear  to  symbolize  the  origin  of  the  first 

1  M.  Fr.  Lenormant  has  very  happily  compared  Wainamoinen 
with  the  Accadian  Ea.  See  "La  Magie  chez  les  Chalde'ens," 
PP-  219-37. 

II.  O 


194  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

specimens  of  the  metal.  The  Finnic  word  for  "  copper," 
vaski,  is  identical  with  the  Magyar  vas,  and  shows  that 
this  metal  must  have  been  known  to  the  ancestors  of  the 
Finns  and  Hungarians  before  their  separation.  The 
terms  that  denote  "  silver,"  too,  are  native,  though  differ- 
ing in  the  various  dialects,  but  gold  has  received  a  Ger- 
man name  in  Finnic  and  a  Persian  name  in  Magyar. 
Since  it  seems  to  have  been  a  possession  of  the  undivided 
Ural-Altaic  community,  we  may  argue  that  a  knowledge 
of  it  was  lost  by  the  Finns  and  Hungarians  during  their 
wanderings  to  the  north  and  the  west. 

Much  advance  was  made  in  civilization  even  after  the 
Finns  had  parted  from  their  Esthonian  kindred.  The 
Esthonians  before  their  arrival  in  the  region  of  the  Baltic 
were  but  hunters  and  fishers,  making  neither  butter  nor 
cheese,  though  in  possession  of  dogs,  horses,  and  oxen. 
They  first  became  acquainted  with  the  sheep,  goat,  and  pig 
when  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  sea-coast.  Here,  too, 
wheat,  rye,  oats,  pease,  beans,  and  lentils  were  first  grown. 
In  an  earlier  age  only  barley  and  turnips  had  been  sown  on 
the  clearing  made  by  cutting  down  the  trees  and  under- 
growth for  firewood.  The  huts  of  the  people  were  built  of 
branches  laid  against  a  tree  or  rock  and  covered  with 
skins,  with  two  openings,  one  for  a  door  and  the  other  to 
let  out  the  smoke ;  their  steam-baths  (sauii)  were  con- 
structed simply  of  holes  in  the  earth,  and  their  clothes 
were  made  of  skins,  the  hair  being  turned  inside  for  the 
sake  of  warmth.  The  skins  were  stitched  together  by 
the  mistress  of  the  house  with  bone  needles,  the  threads 
being  formed  from  the  fibres  of  a  kind  of  nettle,  and 
dyes  were  used  to  colour  them.  The  husband  employed 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND  OTHER  LANGUAGES.      195 

his  time  at  home  in  making  fish-hooks,  hunting-gear, 
and  the  like  ;  the  instruments  being  generally  of  stone, 
though  copper  and  silver  were  likewise  used.  The  iron 
axe  was  first  known  on  the  shores  of  the  Baltic,  where, 
too,  the  river-boats  without  sails  were  exchanged  for 
stronger  and  more  capacious  ones.  The  reindeer,  how- 
ever, was  still  the  chief  means  of  locomotion,  as  it  had  been 
before  the  period  of  separation.  From  the  first,  too,  the 
tribes  had  lived  in  communities,  each  under  a  war-leader 
(ivanem],  who  was  elected  from  time  to  time.  Individual 
freedom  was,  however,  highly  prized,  and  the  community 
accordingly  did  not  exercise  the  despotic  power  it 
enjoyed  among  the  primitive  Aryans.  There  were 
neither  judges  nor  laws,  but  family  life  was  complete 
and  well  organized,  slavery  was  unknown,  and  skins 
(especially  those  of  the  squirrel)  formed  the  medium  of 
exchange.1  Turning  to  the  south,  we  find  a  similar  state 
of  society  among  the  ancestors  of  the  Magyars,  before 
they  had  yet  left  their  kinsmen  in  the  Ural  mountains. 
They  possessed  houses  and  villages,  but  mainly  lived  by 
hunting  and  fishing.  They  had  the  dog  and  the  horse, 
but  apparently  no  cattle.  They  could  braid,  weave,  and 
knit,  and  were  acquainted  with  gold,  silver,  lead,  zinc, 
and  iron.  Indeed,  their  goldsmiths  and  silversmiths 
were  already  of  repute.  Cobblers,  furriers,  turners, 
tailors,  wheelwrights,  harness  and  rope  makers,  with 
their  tools  and  trades,  all  have  Magyar  names,  and  beer 
was  drunk  on  holidays.  Like  the  Turks,  their  numerals 
were  based  on  a  septimal  system,  and  thirteen  months, 

1  Ahlqvist  and  Blumberg  ("  Sitzungsberichte  der  gelehrten  est- 
nischen  Gesellschaft  zu  Dorpat,"  1876,  p.  149). 


196 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


of  twenty-eight  days  each,  made  up  the  year,  at  the  end 
of  which  came  an  intercalary  day.  As  among  the  Ac- 
cadians,  the  months  were  divided  into  weeks  of  seven 
days.  It  was  from  the  Turks,  however,  that  these  primi- 
tive Ugrians  learnt  a  large  part  of  the  elements  of  civi- 
lized life.  The  names  of  the  ox,  the  calf,  the  sheep,  the 
pig,  and  the  hen,  are  of  Turkish  origin,  as  is  also  all  that 
has  to  do  with  agriculture — harvest,  stubble,  sickle, 
wheat,  barley,  apples,  sowing,  reaping,  and  grinding  in 
the  mill.  From  Turkish,  too,  are  borrowed  the  names 
for  axe,  door,  mirror,  thimble,  ring  and  pearl,  as  well  as 
words  for  demon,  witness,  wine,  and  writing.  Even  the 
Magyar  name  of  the  sea,  tenger,  comes  from  a  Turkish 
source,  from  which,  perhaps,  we  may  infer  that  the  fore- 
fathers of  the  Hungarians  lived  in  the  most  southerly 
part  of  the  district  occupied  by  the  Ugrian  tribes,  the 
rest  of  whom  have  a  common  term  for  the  sea  of  home 
growth.  The  same  fact  is  further  indicated  by  the 
Turkish  derivation  of  the  words  used  by  the  Magyars 
for  such  southern  animals  as  the  lion,  camel,  badger,  and 
bustard.  The  Turkish  dialect  laid  under  contribution, 
however,  was  not  the  Osmanli,  but  the  Shuvash,  which 
makes  it  clear  that  the  advance  in  civilization  had  been 
made  by  the  Magyars  before  they  had  settled  in  Hun- 
gary, and  probably  while  they  still  occupied  their  original 
seats.1 

We  have  yet  to  learn  what  was  the  civilization  of  the 
primitive  Turkish-Tatar  horde,  or  of  that  people  of  the  re- 
mote past,  who  spoke  the  parent-language  of  Ural-Altaic 

1  Hunfalvy  :  "  Magyarorzszdg  ethnographiaja,"  in  the  Transac- 
tions of  the  Hungarian  Academy,  1876,  pp.  221-75. 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND  OTHER  LANGUAGES.      197 

speech,  it  may  be,  before  the  Accadians  had  descended 
southwards  and  under  the  favouring  influences  of  a 
southern  sun  developed  the  civilizations  of  Elam  and 
Chaldea.  Already,  however,  it  would  seem,  the  religious 
and  poetical  tendencies  of  the  race  had  begun  to  display 
themselves.  Ural-Altaic  religion  is  essentially  Shaman- 
istic  ;  every  object  and  force  of  nature  is  believed  to  be 
inspired  by  a  spirit,  sometimes  beneficent,  sometimes 
malevolent,  but  the  spirit  can  be  approached  only  by  the 
qualified  sorcerer  or  shaman.  A  belief  in  magic  and 
witchcraft  lies  at  its  very  roots.  It  is  strange  that  by  the 
side  of  such  a  religion  there  has  existed  a  rich  mytho- 
logy, mostly  solar,  and  the  creator  of  numberless  lays 
and  epics.  The  Finnic  Kalevala  is  an  epic  worthy  of 
comparison  with  Homer  or  the  Nibelungen  Lied.  Its 
22,000  verses,  it  is  true,  were  redacted  into  a  whole  by 
Lonnrot  and  Castren  only  within  the  present  century, 
but  the  popular  lays  which  compose  it,  though  of  varying 
age,  all  refer  to  the  same  cycle  of  mythology,  to  the  same 
heroes,  and  the  same  legendary  facts.  The  adventures 
of  the  three  divine  smiths — Wainanoinen,  Ilmarinnen, 
and  Lemmakainen  or  Ahti,  their  travels  in  the  under- 
ground world  of  Pohiola,  their  final  struggle  with  Luhi, 
"  the  hostess  of  Pohiola,"  and  their  search  for  the  myste- 
rious Sampi  are  equal  in  interest  and  imagination  to  the 
best  products  of  national  genius  found  elsewhere.1  Similar 

1  The  Kalevala  has  been  edited  with  introduction  and  glossary 
by  F.  W.  Rothsen  (1870).  A.  Schiefner  has  published  a  German 
translation  (1852),  Le"ouzon-le-Duc  a  French  translation  (1868;  see 
also  his  "La  Finlande,"  1845).  Latham  has  given  an  abstract  of  it 
in  his  "  Nationalities  of  Europe,"  vol.  i.  pp.  182-209  (I863).  Cas- 
tren's  "  Vorlesungen  ueber  die  Finnische  Mythologie,"  translated 


198 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


to  the  Kalevala  is  the  Kalevipoeg  of  the  Esthonians,  which, 
however,  still  wants  its  Lonnrot  to  make  it  thoroughly 
complete.  The  groundwork  of  the  poems  which  make 
up  the  Esthonian  epic  is  identical  with  that  of  the 
Kalevala,  and  show  that  the  Finns  and  Esths  started 
with  a  common  stock  of  ancestral  myths.  The  half- 
savage  Ugric  Voguls  of  the  Ural,  too,  have  their  epic, 
consisting  of  long  poems  on  the  Creation,  the  Deluge, 
and  the  giants  of  the  ancient  world,  which  have  recently 
been  made  known  to  us  (in  1864)  by  Hunfalvy.1  It  is 
very  remarkable  to  find  these  myths  of  a  wild  secluded 
tribe  on  the  barren  slopes  of  the  Ural  strikingly  resem- 
bling those  of  the  cultivated  Accadians  of  primaeval  Baby- 
lonia. The  legends  of  the  Creation  and  the  Flood,  which 
were  translated  by  the  Semitic  Babylonians  into  their 
own  language  after  forming  part  of  a  great  national  epic, 
have  been  recovered  from  the  buried  library  of  Nineveh, 
and  show  to  what  a  vast  antiquity  these  old  Altaic  myths 
must  go  back.  Even  the  Lapps  have  their  mythical 
epic,2  in  which  they  relate  how  Pawin  parne  ("  the  Son  of 
the  Sun"),  "the  offspring  of  Kalla  "  ( ?  Kaleva),  along 
with  his  brother  giants  used  the  Great  Bear  as  his  bow, 
and  hunted  and  tamed  the  heavenly  stags — Jupiter  "the 
bright  stag,"  and  Venus,  "  the  colour-changing  hind  " — 
in  the  constellation  Cassiopeia  ;  how  Paiven  neita  ("  the 
Sun's  Daughter  ")  bestows  her  reindeer  and  all  her  goods 

into  German  and  annotated  by  Schiefner  (1853),  should  also  be 
studied. 

1  See  the  summary  of  this  "Vogul  Genesis,"  given  by  M.  Adam 
in  the  "  Revue  de  Philologie  et  d'Ethnologie,"  i.  i  (1874),  PP-  9-14- 

2  See  Donner  :  "  Lieder  der  Lappen." 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND  OTHER  LANGUAGES.     199 

on  him  who  can  catch  her  unawares ;  and  how  a  hero, 
born  after  his  father's  murder,  asks  his  mother  for  his 
father's  name,  and  slays  the  murderer  in  single  combat. 
The  myths  and  tales  of  the  Tatars  are  equally  numerous, 
and  those  who  care  to  read  Castren's  collection  of  them 
may  discover  a  reflection  of  the  Sun-god  in  most  of  their 
heroes  whose  names  are  compounded  with  the  term  for 
gold.  In  short,  throughout  the  Ural-Altaic  family  we 
find  a  rich  outgrowth  of  myth  and  legend,  and  the 
agglutinative  character  of  the  language,  and  the  conse- 
quent transparency  of  the  proper  names,  make  it  easy 
to  trace  their  original  meaning.  Ural-Altaic  poetry 
is,  like  Assyrian  and  Hebrew,  parallelistic,  and  mostly 
in  the  metre  made  familiar  to  us  by  Longfellow's 
"  Hiawatha." 

The  Turkish-Tatar  languages  may  be  classed  as 
Yakute,  Kirghiz,  Uigur,  Nogair,  and  Osmanli.  The 
Yakutes  live  in  the  midst  of  the  Tungusian  tribes  of 
North-eastern  Siberia ;  the  Kirghiz,  divided  into  the  Black 
Kirghiz  or  Burut  and  the  Kazak  Kirghiz,  in  Chinese 
Turkestan  and  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Aral ;  the 
Nogairs  or  Russian  Cossacks,  in  the  Crimea  and  the 
district  of  Astrakhan  ;  while  the  Uigur,  with  its  sister- 
dialects  of  Yagatai  and  Turkoman,  had  an  alphabet  of 
its  own  as  early  as  the  fifth  century,  and  once  produced 
a  considerable  literature.  Osmanli,  with  the  outlying 
Shuvak  south-west  of  Kazan,  is  the  tongue  of  the  domi- 
nant race  of  Turkey,  and  though  the  literary  dialect  has 
borrowed  a  large  part  of  its  vocabulary  from  Persian 
and  Arabic,  the  country  dialects  are  comparatively  pure. 
The  Turkish  verb,  like  the  Finnic,  is  exceedingly  rich  in 


200 


"HE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


forms  ;  suffix  may  be  piled  upon  suffix  so  as  to  represent 
the  most  minute  and  varied  differences  of  meaning. 
Both  root  and  suffix,  however,  always  remain  clear  and 
marked  ;  hence  the  transparency  which  characterizes  the 
conjugation  and  makes  it  so  perfect  an  instrument  of 
logical  thought.  A  periphrastic  conjugation  is  also  in 
use  in  which  various  participles  are  combined  with  the 
auxiliary  to  be,  and  the  number  of  verbal  forms  is  thereby 
greatly  increased.  Turkish  literature  is  copious  ;  but 
perhaps  the  best  known  work  is  the  "  History  of  Nasr-il- 
Din  Khoja,"  a  sort  of  Turkish  Eulenspiegel. 

Midway  between  the  Finnic  and  Turkic  idioms  may 
be  grouped  the  Samoied  dialects,  our  knowledge  of  which 
is  in  large  measure  due  to  the  self-denying  devotion  of 
Castren.  They  stretch  along  the  shores  of  the  White  Sea 
and  North-west  Siberia,  and  comprise  five  main  dialects, 
which  are,  however,  split  up  into  an  infinity  of  smaller 
ones.  Yarak  is  spoken  in  European  Russia  and  as  far  as 
the  river  Yenisei,  Yenisei  Samoied  on  the  banks  of  the 
Lower  Yenisei,  Tagwi  further  to  the  east,  Ostiak  Samoied 
on  the  Obi,  and  Kamassic  in  Southern  Siberia.  Ostiak 
Samoied  and  Yenisei  Samoied  must  be  carefully  dis- 
tinguished from  Ugrian  Ostiak  and  Yenissei  Ostiak, 
which  is  allied  to  -the  Kot  (or  Kotte),  and  with  it  forms 
a  stray  fragment  of  what  is  apparently  an  otherwise  ex- 
tinct family  of  speech.  The  Samoieds  are  perhaps  the 
most  degraded  of  all  the  members  of  the  Ural-Altaic 
family,  more  so,  certainly,  than  the  Mongols.  The  latter 
speak  three  principal  dialects — the  Eastern  or  Sharra, 
spoken  in  Mongolia  proper,  the  Western  or  Kalmuk, 
stretching  westward  into  Russia  between  the  Kirghiz 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND  OTHER  LANGUAGES.     201 

and  Nogair  Turks,  and  the  Northern  or  Buriat  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Lake  Baikal.  The  latter  is  the  most 
barbarous  of  the  Mongol  idioms,  the  others  being  more 
or  less  cultivated.  The  pronouns  in  Mongol  have  not 
amalgamated  with  the  verb,  as  they  have  in  Finnic  or 
Turkic  ;  thus  in  Buriat  bi  bis  is  "  I  am  ;"  ski  bis,  "  thou 
art ; "  ogon  bis,  "  he  is  ; "  bi  yaba,  "  I  was  ;  "  shi  yaba, 
"  thou  wast ;  "  ogon  yaba,  "  he  was  ;  "  bi  bilei,  "  I  have 
been  ; "  shi  bilei,  "  thou  hast  been  ; "  ogon  bilei,  "  he  has 
been." 

Closely  allied  to  Mongol  is  Tunguse,  in  the  centre  and 
extreme  east  of  Siberia,  divided  into  the  three  branches 
of  Mantchu,  Lamutic,  and  Tungusian.  Of  these  Mant- 
chu  has  become  the  best  known  in  consequence  of  the 
Mantchu  conquest  of  China.  The  Mantchus,  however, 
have  long  possessed  a  literature,  their  alphabet  of  twenty- 
nine  characters  having  been  originally  introduced  by 
Nestorian  Christians.  Contact  with  Chinese,  and  per- 
haps also  literary  cultivation,  have  had  the  same  effect 
upon  Mantchu  that  similar  influences  have  had  upon 
English ;  the  sign  of  number  has  been  lost,  like  the  pos- 
sessive pronoun  affixes,  and  to  find  them  we  must  look 
to  the  ruder  Lamutic  and  Tungusian.  The  harmony  of 
the  vowels,  too,  that  distinguishing  feature  of  Ural-Altaic 
speech,  is  reduced  to  small  dimensions  in  the  Mantchu 
dialect,  and  the  possessive  pronouns  are  not  affixed. 
The  adjective  simply  consists  of  a  noun  placed  before 
another  to  qualify  it,  like  our  wine  merchant,  and  properly 
speaking  there  is  no  verb  signifying  "  to  have." 

The  chief  distinguishing  feature    of  the  Ural-Altaic 
family  is  the  so-called  law  of  vocalic  harmony.     The 


2O2 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


vowels  are  divided  into  strong  and  weak,  certain  dialects 
also  possessing  neutral  ones,  the  general  rule  being  that 
all  the  syllables  of  a  word  must  have  vowels  of  the  same 
class,  that  is,  either  strong  or  weak.  This  rule,  however, 
is  not  carried  out  strictly  in  all  the  members  of  the 
family  ;  sometimes  only  the  affixes  are  affected  by  it ; 
sometimes  all  the  elements  of  a  compound  word  must 
come  under  its  operation.  In  some  dialects,  the  Vepse, 
the  Esthonian,  and  the  Votiak,  for  example,  the  law  is 
neglected  altogether  ;  but  this  must  be  regarded  as  the 
result  of  phonetic  decay,  and  not  as  a  survival  of  a  more 
primitive  condition  of  speech,  in  which  the  vocalic  har- 
mony did  not  exist,  since,  as  Donner  has  pointed  out, 
roots  of  allied  meaning  in  the  Finnic  group  are  frequently 
distinguished  from  one  another  simply  by  a  difference 
of  vowel,  thus  kah-isen,  koh-isen,  kuh-isen,  with  strong 
vowels,  mean  "  to  hit  "  or  "  stamp  ;  "  but  kdk-isen,  koh- 
isen,  with  weak  vowels,  "  to  roar."  The  classification  of 
vowels  into  strong  and  weak  must,  therefore,  have  been 
adapted  to  the  differentiation  of  meaning  at  an  early 
period.  No  doubt,  however,  when  once  the  distinction 
had  been  set  up  it  tended  to  spread  and  develop  ; 
Riedl  and  Adam  have  shown,  for  instance,  that  in  the 
oldest  Magyar  texts  anti-harmonic  forms  are  common, 
as  haldl-nek,  "at  death,"  tiszta-seg,  "purity,"  and  that 
before  the  twelfth  century  compounds  were  but  little 
subjected  to  the  law.  At  the  present  time,  in  Magyar, 
as  in  Turkish,  Finnish,  Mantchu,  and  Mongol,  the  vowels 
of  the  whole  word  must  be  brought  into  harmony, 
whereas  in  Mordvin  or  Siryanian  it  is  only  those  of  the 
last  syllable.  The  following  is  a  classification  of  the 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND  OTHER  LANGUAGES.     203 

vowels  in  the  principal  languages  of  the  Ural-Altaic 
family:1 — 

The  origin  of  this  division  of  the  vowels  is  to  be  sought 
in  the  phonetic  tendency  to  anticipate  a  following  vowel 
in  a  word  by  assimilating  an  earlier  one  to  it,  as  in  the 
German  umlaut,  or,  conversely,  to  harmonize  the  vowel 
of  the  next  syllable  with  one  that  has  just  been  uttered. 
The  latter  assimilation  would  naturally  be  adopted  by 
speakers  who  accented  their  words  at  the  beginning  in- 
stead of  the  end,  as  did  the  Aryans.  As  Sievers  suggests, 
"it  is  a  question  whether  a  connection  does  not  exist 
between  the  different  forms  assumed  by  assimilation  and 
the  accentuation  of  words.  At  all  events,  the  accentua- 
tion of  the  first  syllable  of  the  word  in  the  Ural-Altaic 
languages  would  agree  with  such  a  view." : 

Affixes,  and  not  prefixes,  characterize  Ural-Altaic 
agglutination.  The  noun  has  some  eight  cases,  the 
principal  among  them  being  marked  by  the  termina- 
tions, -;/  or  -na,  -/  or  -la,  -s  or  -sa,  the  origin  of 
which  is  rendered  obscure  by  their  antiquity.  The 
other  relations  of  the  noun  are  expressed  by  simple  or 

1  Adam  :  "  De  1'Harmonie  des  Voyelles  dans  les  Langues  uralo- 
altaiques"  (1874). 

Strong.  Weak.  Neutral. 

Finnish   .         .         .  .  u,  o,  a  it,  0,  a            e,  i 

Magyar   .         .         .  .  u,  o,  a              it,  o               e,  i 

Mordvin  .         .         .  .11,0,  a              a,  i 

Siryanian  or  Zyrianian  .       o,  a                a,  i,  e 

Turkish it,  o,  a,  e  it,  o,  e,  i 

Mongol    .         .         .  .  u,  o,  a  ii,  o,  a             i 

Buriat      .         .         .  .  u,  o,  a             ii,  <?,  a           e,  i 

Mantchu .         .         .  .  6,  o,  a                 e                u,i 

*  "  Grundziige  der  Lautphysiologie,"  p.  137. 


204 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


compound  words,  agglutinated  at  the  end  ;  and  these, 
though  amalgamated  with  the  noun  into  a  single  whole, 
by  the  action  of  vocalic  harmony,  nevertheless,  in  the 
majority  of  instances,  maintain  their  original  and  inde- 
pendent signification.  They  are,  in  fact,  other  nouns 
attached  to  the  first,  in  order  to  limit  its  meaning  and 
reference.  In  the  Finnic  idioms,  the  amalgamation  has 
become  so  complete  that  it  is  difficult  to  trace  either  the 
original  meaning  or  the  original  form  of  the  agglutinated 
nouns ;  and,  except  for  their  number  and  uses,  forms 
such  as  the  Votiak  murtly,  "  to  a  man,"  or  the  Magyar 
atyd-nak,  "  to  a  father,"  might  easily  be  taken  for  the 
cases  of  the  Aryan  declension.  In  the  verb,  too,  the 
same  amalgamation  has  taken  place,  and  it  is  difficult  at 
first  sight  to  distinguish  the  Ostiak  forms  quoted  above  T 
from  the  persons  of  the  Sanskrit  verb.  A  closer  investi- 
gation of  the  language,  however,  reveals  the  fact  that  the 
Ugro-Finnic  verb,  like  the  Ugro-Finnic  noun,  is  virtually 
based  on  the  same  principles  as  the  verb  of  Osmanli 
Turkish.  This  displays  the  analytic  genius  of  Ural- 
Altaic  speech  at  its  best.  The  forms  of  the  Turkish  verb 
are  at  once  clear,  simple,  and  minute.  Sevmek,  "  to  love," 
where  mek  is  the  sign  of  the  infinitive,  becomes  reflective 
by  the  addition  of  in  (sev-in-mek) ,  reciprocal  by  the 
addition  of  ish  (sev-ish-mek\  causative  by  the  addition  of 
dir  (sev-dir-mek],  passive  by  the  addition  of  il  (sev-il- 
mek\  and  negative  by  the  addition  of  me  (sev-me-mek) , 
and  all  these  forms  can  be  united  together,  so  that,  for 
instance,  sev-ish-dir-il-mek,  an  amalgamation  of  the  re- 
ciprocal, the  causative,  and  the  passive,  means  "  to  be 

1  Page  1 86. 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND  OTHER  LANGUAGES.     205 

brought  to  love  one  another,"  sev-in-dir-il-me-mek,  "  not 
to  be  made  to  love  oneself."  But  the  mechanism  of  the 
Turkish  verb  is  almost  equalled  by  that  of  the  ancient 
Accadian ;  thus  gar-mu  is  "  I  made,"  gar-dan-mu,  "  I 
caused  to  make,"  gar-dan-ra-mu,  "  I  caused  one  another 
to  mzke"  gar-dan-mt-mu,  "  I  did  not  cause  to  make."  In 
fact,  from  the  very  first,  the  Turanian  or  Ural-Altaic 
languages  have  been  characterized  by  a  perspicacity  and 
logical  vigour,  which  enable  us  to  understand  how  their 
speakers  could  have  been  the  originators  of  the  culture 
and  civilization  of  Western  Asia.  In  disregarding  the 
distinctions  of  gender,  in  analyzing  the  forms  of  speech, 
in  making  each  word  tell  its  own  tale,  and  in  assigning 
one  definite  signification  to  each  element  of  their  gram- 
matical machinery,  the  Turanian  languages  resemble 
English,  and  like  the  latter  mark  a  high  level  of  intelli- 
gence and  power. 

More  involved  and  delicate  is  the  mechanism  of  another 
family  of  agglutinative  speech — the  Dravidian  of  India. 
It  would  seem  that  the  Dravidians  entered  India  before 
the  Aryans,  but  by  the  same  road  from  the  north-west, 
and,  like  the  Aryans,  successfully  established  themselves 
among  the  Kolarian  and  other  aboriginal  races.  The 
Dravidian  dialects  are  twelve  in  number,  six  (Tamil,  . 
Malayalam,  Telugu,  Kanarese,  Tulu,  and  Kudagu)  being 
cultivated,  and  six  (Toda,  Kota,  Khond  or  Ku,  Gond, 
Oraon,  and  Rajmuhali)  being  spoken  by  barbarous  tribes. 
Tamil  literature  is  especially  abundant,  though  a  good 
deal  of  it  is  borrowed  or  adopted  from  Sanskrit  sources. 
It  is  mostly  in  verse,  moral  poems  and  didactic  saws 
constituting  its  most  ancient  portions,  the  lyrics,  epics, 


206  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

and  dramas  being  of  later  date.  Unlike  Telugu,  Kana- 
rese,  and  Malayalam  poetry,  Tamil  poetry  is  in  large 
measure  free  from  foreign  words.  Dravidian  phonology 
is  chiefly  distinguished  by  the  occurrence  of  cerebral 
letters,  which  Bishop  Caldwell  believes  to  have  been 
handed  on  to  the  Aryans ;  every  r,  again,  must  be  pre- 
ceded by  a  vowel,  while  a  soft  explosive  cannot  begin  a 
word,  nor  a  hard  explosive  stand  as  a  single  consonant 
in  the  middle  of  a  word.  Modifications  of  sense  are  pro- 
duced by  suffixing  the  vowels  a,  e,  i,  otherwise  the  rela- 
tions of  grammar  are  almost  entirely  expressed  by  affixes. 
The  power  of  agglomerating  these  suffixes  one  after  the 
other  into  a  single  word  far  exceeds  that  possessed  by 
the  Turanian  tongues,  and  reminds  us  of  our  own  English 
conglomerates,  such  as  "  Employers'  Liability  for  Injury 
Bill."  Thus  in  ancient  Tamil  poetry,  sarndaykku  means 
"  to  thee  that  hast  approached,"  composed  of  sdr,  "  to 
approach,"  d,  sign  of  the  past,  dyt  the  verbal  suffix  of  the 
second  personal  pronoun,  and  ku>  the  postposition  "  to." 
There  is  no  verb  "  to  be  "  or  "  to  have,"  but  any  noun  can 
easily  be  turned  into  a  verb  by  means  of  the  suffixed 
pronoun ;  the  Tamil  tevarir,  for  instance,  is  "  you  are 
God,"  tevair  being  the  honorific  plural,  and  ir  the  termi- 
nation of  the  second  person  of  the  verb.  The  verb  has 
only  three  tenses — present,  past,  and  indefinite  future,— 
and  the  indicative  is  its  sole  mood.  A  masculine  and 
feminine  gender,  however,  are  distinguished  in  nouns 
which  denote  adults,  and  the  accusative  is  marked  by  the 
termination  -ai  or  -eit  the  genitive  by  the  termination  -/;/. 
As  in  Aryan  and  Semitic  languages,  a  difference  of  sig- 
nification may  be  symbolized  by  internal  vowel-change  ; 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND  OTHER  LANGUAGES.     207 

thus  in  Tulu,  malpuve  is  "  I  do,"  but  mdlpeve  (frequenta- 
tive), "  I  often  do,"  mdlpdve  (causative),  "  I  cause  to  do," 
mdltruv/  denoting  the  intensive,  and  mdlpdvuyi  the  nega- 
tive. 

In  the  Malayo-Polynesian  group,  the  agglutinative 
elements  may  be  placed  after  the  root,  or  even  inserted 
in  the  body  of  it,  but  they  are  more  commonly  prefixed. 
Prepositions  accordingly  take  the  place  of  postpositions, 
and  a  prefixed  article  occupies  a  prominent  position. 
Reduplication,  also,  is  largely  employed  ;  thus,  in  Malay, 
it  serves  to  mark  the  plural,  as  in  Bushman,  and  through- 
out the  Polynesian  dialects  the  verb  makes  considerable 
use  of  it.  The  verb,  however,  properly  speaking,  has 
hardly  come  into  existence;  "his  house  has  many  rooms," 
for  instance,  would  be  in  Dayak  huma-e  bakaron  am, 
literally  "his-house  with-rooms  many  ;"  "thy  boat  is  very 
beautiful,"  kotok  ka-halap-e  arut-m,  literally  "  very  its- 
beauty  thy-boat."  Phonetic  decay  has  played  great 
ravages  in  the  whole  of  this  family  of  speech.  The 
alphabet  is  reduced  to  the  simplest  elements,  and  every 
consonant  must  be  accompanied  by  a  vowel.  The 
general  resemblance  pervading  the  scattered  dialects  of 
Polynesia  proves  that  this  decay  must  have  set  in  before 
the  brown  race  settled  in  the  Polynesian  islands.  The 
language  spoken  at  the  time,  however,  was  not  Malay, 
as  has  sometimes  been  supposed,  but  an  offshoot  of  the 
same  parent  speech  as  that  from  which  both  Malay  and 
the  idioms  of  the  Indian  Archipelago  are  descended. 
The  Polynesians  present  us  with  the  spectacle  of  a  race 
which  has  declined  in  civilization,  of  which  their  nume- 
rous songs  and  legends  are  a  last  relic.  The  Malays,  on 


208 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


the  other  hand,  have  enjoyed  a  considerable  culture  for 
generations.  Their  poetry,  which  comprises  epics  and 
dramas,  is  indigenous,  as  are  also  their  romances,  though 
their  philosophic  writings  are  due  to  contact  with  Hindus 
and  Arabs.  Javanese  literature  is  similarly  indebted  to 
Sanskrit,  but  its  poetry,  fables,  and  traditions  are  of  home 
growth. 

The  Ba-ntu  family  of  languages  in  Southern  Africa 
marks  the  relations  of  grammar  by  prefixes  only.  These 
were  originally  nouns,  which  in  course  of  time  became 
pronouns,  and  then  mere  classificatory  prefixes,  and  their 
number,  as  well  as  the  regular  but  delicate  phonetic 
changes  which  they  undergo,  render  the  Ba-ntu  declen- 
sion and  conjugation  at  once  rich  and  complicated.  The 
noun  is  divided  by  means  of  them  into  a  great  variety  of 
classes,  called  genders  by  Dr.  Bleek,  the  same  noun 
having  a  different  prefix  for  the  singular  and  the  plural, 
and  both  the  adjective  and  verb  with  which  it  is  construed 
being  furnished  with  the  same  prefix,  and  so  placed  in 
the  same  class.  Thus  in  Zulu  Kafir  we  should  have  in 
the  singular  u-WU-ntu  Vf-efu  o-W\3-khle  M-ya-bonakala  si- 
W-tanda,  "  man  ours  handsome  appears,  we-him-love,"  in 
the  plural  a-^^-ntu  ¥>-etu  a-^K-khle  ^^-ya-bonakala  JZ-BA- 
tanda.  Zulu  has  fifteen  of  these  classificatory  prefixes, 
while  Otyiherero  has  as  'many  as  eighteen.  As  might 
have  been  expected  in  a  group  of  tongues  which  displays 
so  acute  a  perception  of  phonetic  differences,  a  passive, 
active,  or  neutral  signification  is  frequently  given  to  nouns 
by  their  terminating  respectively  in  the  vowels  o,  z,  and  a* 

1  Bleek  :  "  Comparative  Grammar  of  the  S.  African  Languages," 
p.  138  (note]. 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND   OTHER  LANGUAGES.     209 

and  in  Mpongwe  while  tdnda  means  "  to  love,"  tdnda  is 
"not  to  love."  The  signs  of  case  are  of  course  prefixed, 
like  the  signs  of  tense  and  voice  ;  in  Zulu,  for  example, 
ng-omuntu  is  "  with  the  man,"  ng-abantu,  "  with  the 


men." 


Many  of  the  agglutinative  languages  are  more  or  less 
incorporating ;  thus  we  have  just  seen  that  the  objective 
pronoun  in  the  Zulu  si-m-tanda  comes  between  the  sub- 
ject and  the  root,  and  several  of  the  Turanian  languages 
have  an  "objective  conjugation,"  in  which  the  objective 
pronoun  is  intercalated  between  the  verb  and  its  subject 
pronoun.  In  Magyar,  for  instance,  besides  hallok,  "  I 
hear,"  hallasz,  "  thou  nearest,"  hall,  "  he  hears,"  we  have 
vdr-om,  "I  expect  him,"  vdr-od,  " thou  expectest  him," 
vdr-ya,  "he  expects  him,"  where  the  objective  pronoun 
may  be  either  singular  or  plural.  In  Mordvin  and  Vogul, 
however,  a  difference  is  made  between  the  forms  sodasa 
and  kietilem  with  the  singular  pronoun,  and  sodasa'ina 
and  kietidnem  with  the  plural.  Mordvin  and  Vogul  also 
have  special  forms  for  the  second  personal  pronoun  when 
used  as  an  object,  sodatd  and  kietilem  being  "  I  eat  thee," 
sodatdddz  and  kietanem,  "  I  eat  you." J  Mordvin  is  able 
to  go  even  yet  further  in  the  creation  of  objective  forms, 
sodasa-m-ak  being  "  thou  eatest  me,"  and  sodatamdst, 
"  thou  eatest  us."  But  these  forms  can  easily  be  decom- 
posed into  an  amalgamation  of  the  verb  with  two  per- 
sonal pronouns,  one  employed  as  object,  the  other  as 
subject,  and  so  scarcely  differ  from  the  French  je  vous 
donne,  which,  though  written  as  three  separate  words,  is 

1  Magyar  can  also  incorporate  the  objective  second  person  when 
the  subject  is  the  first  person,  as  vdr-l-ak,  "  I  await  thee." 

II.  P 


2IO 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


pronounced  as  though  it  were  one.  Still  more  analogous 
are  such  Italian  expressions  as  portandovelo,  "  carrying  it 
to  you."  There  is  nothing  in  all  this  which  reminds  us 
of  the  intercalation  of  a  word  or  syllable  into  the  middle 
of  a  root,  such  as  meets  us  in  the  Malay  k-um-akan  from 
kakan,  "to  eat,"  or  the  Sanskrit  yu-na-j-mi,  "  I  join." 
It  merely  indicates  a  peculiar  syntactical  habit,  that 
is  all. 

But  the  case  is  altered  when  we  find  this  principle  of 
incorporation  characterizing  not  only  two  or  three  isolated 
verbal  forms,  but  all  the  forms  of  the  verb,  and  admitting 
also  the  intercalation  of  a  syllable  denoting  plurality. 
The  Basque  or  Escuara  dialects  are  the  sole  living  re- 
presentatives of  a  consistently  incorporating  language. 
Four  of  these  dialects — the  Labourdin,  the  Souletin,  the 
eastern  Bas-Navarrais,  and  the  western  Bas-Navarrais— 
are  spoken  in  France  ;  four  others — the  Guipuzcoan,  the 
Biscayan,  the  northern  Haut-Navarrais,  and  the  southern 
Haut-Navarrais — in  Spain  ;  and  Prince  L-L.  Bonaparte 
further  subdivides  them  into  twenty-five  sub-dialects, 
among  which  may  be  specially  mentioned  those  of 
Roncal  and  Irun.2  The  Souletin  has  borrowed  the 
French  «  ;  elsewhere  the  vowels  are  those  of  Italian. 
R  is  not  allowed  to  begin  a  word,  and  Prince  L-L. 
Bonaparte  has  discovered  what  may  be  termed  a 
law  of  vocalic  harmony.  A  hard  final  consonant  is 
dropped  before  an  initial  soft  one,  which  then  becomes 

1  It  is  true  that  ve  (in]  is  really  the  adverb  ibi,  but  since  it  is 
used  here  pronominally  it  may  be  regarded,  so  far  as  sense  goes,  as 
genuine  a  pronoun  as  are  the  dative  pronouns  in  the  Basque  verbal 
forms  to  be  noticed  presently. 

2  "  Le  Verbe  Basque,"  p.  4. 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND  OTHER  LANGUAGES.     211 

hard ;  double  consonants  are  unknown ;  gy  d,  b,  n,  and 
soft  r  disappear  between  two  vowels,  and  k,  /,  and  p 
before  a  nasal.  The  cases  are  formed  by  postpositions 
which  may  be  added  one  to  the  other,  and  in  the  modern 
dialects 1  the  singular  is  distinguished  from  the  plural 
only  in  the  definite  declension,  where  the  postfixed  article 
is  a  in  the  singular  and  -ak  in  the  plural.  This  article  is 
still  used  as  a  demonstrative  in  Biscayan.  The  singular, 
when  used  as  a  subject,  also  takes  a  final  -k,  but  the  s'm- 
gular  jaundfc,  "the  master,"  is  distinguished  from  the 
plural/rt7/;/tf£,  "the  masters,"  by  the  position  of  the  accent. 
The  verb  constitutes  the  great  difficulty  of  Basque,  and 
made  Larramendi  entitle  his  Grammar  "  El  Imposible 
Vencido,"  "  the  Impossible  overcome  ;"  and  this  difficulty 
is  occasioned  by  the  incorporation  of  the  pronouns  which 
have  been  fused  with  the  verb-stem  into  a  compact  whole 
by  the  action  of  phonetic  decay.  Although  there  are 
practically  but  two  verbs — "  to  be  "  and  "  to  have  " — all 
other  verbs  being  generally  used  as  participles,  the 
number  of  forms  possessed  by  these  is  almost  endless. 
Not  only  is  there  a  different  form  for  each  of  the  per- 
sonal pronouns,  whether  in  the  objective  or  the  dative 
case,  but  there  are  also  different  forms  for  addressing  a 
woman,  an  equal,  a  superior,  or  an  inferior.2  Thus,  in  the 

1  The  analysis  of  the  verb  shows  that  one  way  of  forming  the 
plural  was  once  by  the  help  of  the  postfix  t(e].  See  Vinson's  "  Essai 
sur  la  Langue  basque  par  M.  Ribdry,"  p.  109.  M.  Van  Eys  by  his 
discovery  of  the  change  of  k  into  t  has  been  enabled  to  show  that 
this  postfix  t(e)  is  identical  with  the  old  symbol  of  the  plural  -k 
("Grammaire  compared  des  Dialectes  basques,"  pp.  15,  16). 

8  The  form  which  denotes  respect  incorporates  the  plural  second 
personal  pronoun  zu,  and  except  in  the  second  person  is  found  only 


212 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


indefinite  conjugation,  that,  namely,  used  when  an  equal 
is  addressed,  we  have  det,  "  I  have  it,"  ditut,  "  I  have 
them,"  nuen,  "  I  had  it,"  nituen,  "  I  had  them,"  izango 
nuke,  "  I  should  have  it,"  izango  nukean,  "  I  should  have 
had  it,"  izan  dezadan,  "  I  may  have  it,"  izan  nezan,  "  I 
might  have  it,"  izan  dezaket,  "  I  can  have  it,"  izan  neza- 
kean,  "  I  could  have  it,"  izan  nezake,  "  I  could  have  had 
it,"  aut,  "  I  have  thee,"  zaitut,  zaituztet,  "  I  have  you," 
zinduztedan,  "  I  had  you,"  dizut,  "  I  have  it  for  thee," 
dizkizut,  "  I  have  them  for  thee,"  dizutet,  "  I  have  it  for 
you,"  dizkizutet,  "  I  have  them  for  you,"  diot,  "  I  have  it 
for  him,"  dizkiot,  "  I  have  them  for  him,"  diet,  "  I  have  it 
for  them,"  diozkatet,  "  I  have  them  for  them,"  nazu,  "thou 
hast  me,"  gaituzu,  "  thou  hast  us,"  didazu,  "  thou  hast  it 
for  me,"  dizkidazu,  "thou  hast  them  for  me,"  diguzu, 
"thou  hast  it  for  us,"  dizkiguzu,  "thou  hast  them  for  us." 
When  we  examine  the  few  verbs,  other  than  the  two 
auxiliaries,  which  are  still  conjugated,  the  analysis  of 
these  multitudinous  forms  becomes  plain.  Thus,  if  we 
take  ekarri  or  ekarten,  "to  carry,"  we  shall  find  d-akar-t 
signifying  "  I  carry  it,"  d-akar-zu,  "  thou  earnest  it," 
where  it  is  clear  that  the  initial  dental  is  a  relic  of  the 
objective  pronoun,  t  and  zu  being  the  affixed  subject- 
pronouns.  So,  again,  d-akar-zki-t  is  "  I  carry  them," 
d-akar-zki-zu,  "  thou  carriest  them  ;"  where  zki  is  the 
sign  of  plurality.  Zki  appears  as  zka,  tza,  and  tzi  in 
other  dialects  ;  thus,  in  Labourdin,  d-aki-zka-t  is  "  I  know 
them,"  in  Guipuzcoan  d-aki-tzi-t,  while  Biscayan  presents 

in  the  Souletin  and  eastern  Bas-Navarrais,  which  often  substitutes 
it  for  the  form  used  when  addressing  an  equal  (Vinson's  "  Ribdry," 
p.  1 06). 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND   OTHER  LANGUAGES.     213 

us  with  the  form  d-aki-da-z,  in  which  the  plural  suffix  (z) 
occupies  a  different  place.1 

The  incorporation  of  the  pronouns  characterizes  a 
language  in  which  the  intelligence  of  the  speakers  is  still 
sluggish.  A  mere  hint  is  not  sufficient  to  convey  the 
meaning ;  the  object  as  well  as  the  subject  must  be 
emphasized  in  order  to  be  clearly  indicated.  The  em- 
phasis is  obtained  by  adding  the  pronoun  after  the  noun 
to  which  it  refers  :  it  is  not  sufficient  to  say  "John  killed 
the  snake  ;"  the  needful  definiteness  is  secured  by  saying 
"John  the  snake  he-killed-it."  The  same  usage  charac- 
terized the  Old  Accadian  of  Chaldea ;  here,  too,  as  in 
Hungary  and  Northern  Russia,  the  pronouns  could  be 
incorporated,  and  by  the  side  of  gar-tmt,  "  I  made,"  we 
find  the  more  common  gar-nin-mu,  "  I  made  it."  Even 
Semitic  was  no  stranger  to  the  practice  of  pleonastically 
repeating  the  pronoun  ;  thus  in  Assyrian  it  is  by  no 
means  unusual  for  a  noun  in  the  objective  case  to  be 
followed  by  a  verb  with  the  pronominal  suffix  -su,  "  it " 
or  "  him."  After  all,  the  incorporation  of  the  objective 
pronoun  is  only  one  step  further  than  the  incorporation 
of  the  subject  pronoun  which  meets  us  in  the  much-vaunted 
classical  languages  of  our  own  family  of  speech,  if  the 
theory  is  right  which  refers  the  termination  of  the  third 
person  of  the  verb  to  a  demonstrative  pronoun.  It  seems 
more  probable,  however,  that  the  third  person  of  the 
Aryan  verb  is  but  an  abstract  noun,  like  the  third  person 
in  Tatar-Turkish,  where  dogur,  "  he  strikes,"  is  really  the 

1  Vinson's  "  Ribdry,"  &c.,  p.  109.  For  the  analysis  of  the  verbal 
forms  and  the  origin  of  the  verbal  roots  see  W.  Van  Eys  :  "  Gram- 
maire  compare'e  des  Dialectes  basques"  (1879). 


214 


SCIENCE   OF 


iGUAGE. 


participle  "  striking,"  and  dogd,  "  he  struck,"  the  abstract 
"  a  striking,"  or  like  the  third  person  of  the  Semitic  verb, 
which  similarly  is  a  participle  in  the  perfect  and  an  ab- 
stract in  the  imperfect.1  But  even  so,  in  the  first  and 
second  persons  the  Greek  was  obliged  to  repeat  the  per- 
sonal pronouns  if  he  would  express  the  subjects  ly«  and 


<7v 


<ru 


The  Basque  vocabulary  confirms  the  inference  drawn 
from  the  structure  of  the  language.  Here,  too,  there  is  a 
poverty  of  imagination,  a  backwardness  of  intelligence. 
It  is  hardly  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  two-thirds  of  the 
lexicon  are  borrowed  from  French  and  Spanish,  or  from 
the  earlier  Latin  and  Keltic.  Abstracts  of  native  growth 
are  rare  in  the  extreme,  and  though  there  are  names  for 
various  kinds  of  trees  and  animals,  there  is  no  simple 
Basque  word  for  tree  and  animal  themselves.  This  is  the 
more  noticeable  when  we  remember  that  Basque  shows  a 
great  facility  for  composition,  and  in  some  cases  its  com- 
pounds are  welded  together,  as  in  the  polysynthetic 
languages  of  America,  by  dropping  parts  of  the  com- 
ponent elements.  Thus  illabete,  "  month,"  seems  to  be  a 
compound  of  illargi-bete,  "  full  moon,"  illargi,  "  moon," 
itself  being  composed  of  il  or  hil,  "  death,"  and  argi, 
"  light,"  and  orzanz,  "  thunder,"  is  similarly  derived  from 
orz,  "  cloud,"  and  azanz,  "  noise."  It  is  unfortunate  that 
our  knowledge  of  Basque  is  so  recent.  The  native  songs 
and  "  pastorals  "  are  of  late  date,  and  the  oldest  printed 
book,  the  poems  of  Dechepare,2  was  only  published  in 

1  Sayce  :  "  The  Tenses  of  the  Assyrian  Verb,"  in  the  "  Journal  of 
the  Royal  Asiatic  Society,"  Jan.  1877. 

2  See  the  "Edition  Cazals,"  Bayonn.e  (1874). 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND    OTHER  LANGUAGES.     215 

1545.  The  French  Basques  appear  to  have  crossed  the 
Pyrenees  since  the  Christian  era,  and  though  Wilhelm 
von  Humboldt  endeavoured  to  find  traces  of  the  Basque 
language  in  the  local  names  of  ancient  Spain,  Southern 
Gaul,  the  Balearic  Islands,  and  even  Italy,  his  facts  and 
conclusions  have  been  strenuously  controverted  by 
MM.  Van  Eys  and  Vinson.1  It  is  certain  that  the  trans- 
formations undergone  by  local  names  make  it  very  un- 
safe to  argue  from  them,  and  an  inscription  in  an  unknown 
language  found  at  Castellon  de  la  Plana,  and  written  in 
a  form  of  the  Keltiberian  alphabet  shows  no  resemblance 
to  Basque.  But  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  modern 
dialects  necessarily  wear  a  very  different  appearance 
from  their  ancestors  of  two  thousand  years  ago,  and  that 
the  name  of  the  colony  established  by  Gracchus  in 
Northern  Spain — Graccurris,  "  the  town  of  Gracchus  "  a — 
implies  that  a  language  was  even  then  spoken  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  the  Pyrenees,  which  contained  a  word 
for  "city"  resembling  the  modern  Basque  iri  or  hiri. 
The  ethnologists  have  unfortunately  brought  the  term 
Iberian  into  disrepute  by  extending  it  to  that  unknown 
race  which  occupied  Western  Europe  before  the  arrival  of 
the  Kelts ;  it  can  never  be  too  often  repeated  that 
language  and  race  are  not  convertible,  and  since  "  Iberian" 
has  now  acquired  an  ethnological  sense  it  should  be  care- 
fully shunned  by  the  philologist.  The  Iberians  of  ancient 
Spain  probably  spoke  languages  allied  to  the  dialects  of 

1  "  La  Langue  iberienne  et  la  Langue  basque,"  by  W.  Van  Eys, 
in   the   "Revue  de   Linguistique,"  vii.   i   (1874);   "La  Question 
iberienne,"  by  J.  Vinson,  in  the  "  Mdmoires   du   Congres  scien- 
tifique  de  France,"  ii.  p.  357  (1874). 

2  The  earlier  name  of  the  city,  Ilurcis,  has  a  very  Basque  ring. 


2l6 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


the  Eskuara,  but  we  have  little  proof  of  it,  and  still  less 
proof  that  all  the  tribes  called  Iberian  by  classical  writers 
shared  the  heritage  of  a  common  speech. 

The  analogy  of  some  of  the  Basque  compounds  t 
those  of  the  polysynthetic  languages  of  America  has 
just  been  alluded  to ;  but  whereas  the  principle  upon 
which  these  compounds  are  formed  appears  only  casually 
in  Basque,  it  is  the  distinguishing  feature  of  the  American 
tongues.  Polysynthesism  or  incapsulation  may  be  defined 
as  the  fusion  of  the  several  parts  of  a  sentence  into  a 
single  word,  the  single  words  composing  it  being  reduced 
to  their  simplest  elements.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  undeveloped 
sentence  of  primitive  speech,  out  of  which  the  various 
forms  of  grammar  and  the  manifold  words  of  the  lexicon 
were  ultimately  to  arise,  and  it  bears  record  to  the  earliest 
strivings  of  language  which  have  been  forgotten  elsewhere. 
The  polysynthetic  languages  of  America,  in  short,  pre- 
serve the  beginnings  of  grammar,  just  as  the  Bushman 
dialects  have  preserved  the  beginnings  of  phonetic  utter- 
ance. 

We  will  follow  Steinthal x  in  selecting  the  barbarous 
Eskimaux  of  Greenland  and  the  cultivated  Aztec  of 
Mexico  as  the  two  extreme  types  of  American  polysyn- 
thetic speech.  The  differences  between  them  are  as  great 
as  the  differences  between  Turkish  and  Kafir  ;  their  sole 
resemblance  to  one  another  lies  in  their  common  structure. 
The  Eskimaux,  like  the  natives  of  America  generally, 
knows  little  of  abstracts,  but  he  has  an  infinity  of  termi- 
nations for  expressing  all  the  details  of  an  action  and  the 


1  "  Charakteristik  der  hauptsachlichsten  Typen  des  Sprachbaues," 
pp.  202,  sqq.  (1860). 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND   OTHER  LANGUAGES.     217 

individual  objects  that  meet  his  gaze.     Thus  the  affix 
-fia  denotes  the  "place"  or  "time"  of  doing  a  thing, 
-khshuaq," largeness,"  -nguaq,  "smallness,"-zVztf^,  "merely," 
-tsiakt  "somewhat,"   -liak,  "made,"   -siak,  "possessed," 
-paitt  "  several,"  and  there  are  other  terminations  to  ex- 
press what  is  hateful,  suffering,  useless,  poor,  beautiful, 
pleasant,  monstrous,  numerous,  new,  old,  divided,  near, 
single.     So,  too,  there    are  verbal  forms    signifying   to 
intend,  to  obtain,  gradually,  futurity,  present,  past,  no 
more,  to  have  given  up,  to  seek,  to  go  or  come  for,  to 
hurry,  to  wish,  to  be  willing,  to  be  able,  to  be  capable,  to 
assist,  to  be  easily  able,  to  be  better  able,  to  be  always 
able,  to  be  no  more  able,  further,  much,  actively,  badly, 
well,  better,  merely,  thoroughly,  fully,  too  much,  singly, 
continually,     repeatedly,    nearly,     quite,    conjecturally, 
probably,  expressly,  &c.     But  practically  there  is  no  dif- 
ference between  the  noun  and  the  verb  ;  both  form  but 
parts  of  a  sentence  which  is  here  the  word,  and  hence 
the  same  word  contains  at  once  subject,  verb,  and  object- 
Thus  sialuk  is  "  rain,"  but  sialugsiokhpok,  "he  is  outside 
in  the  rain,"  Kakortok  is  the  name  of  a  place,  but  Kakor- 
tuliakhpok,  "  he  goes  to  Kakortok."    Objects  are  regarded 
as  either  the  possession  of  another  or  as  suffering  some- 
thing Trom  another,  or,  again,  as  active  and  as  possessors. 
If  the  object  is  possessed  it  requires  the  possessive  affix, 
if  a  patient  the  objective  affix.     The  agent  and  the  pos- 
sessor take  the  subjective  affix.     The  possessive  affixes 
are  themselves  of  a  twofold  kind,  since  though  the  object 
possessed  must  always  be  the  same  as  regards  its  pos- 
sessor, it  may  be  either   active   or  passive   as  regards 
another  object  or  another  action.     Thus  in  the  sentence  : 


218 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


"the  whale's  tail  touched  the  boat's  stern,"  "  tail "  and 
"  stern "  are  equally  possessed,  but  whereas  "  tail "  is 
active  as  regards  "  stern,"  <(  stern  "  is  passive.  Hence 
the  Greenlander  would  say :  akhfekhup  sarpiata  umiap 
siiyiia  agtorpd,  where  the  final  -/  denotes  that  akhfekhup, 
"  the  whale,"  is  a  subject,  -ata  that  his  "  tail  "  is  also  a 
subject  like  umia-p,  "  the  boat,"  while  the  a  of  suyua, 
"  stern,"  is  a  neutral  possessive,  and  the  a  of  agtorpa  the 
objective  suffix.  Similarly  the  Latin  distinction  between 
efus  and  situs  is  observed  in  Greenlandish.  Naturally, 
conjunctions  and  subordinate  sentences  are  unknown  ; 
instead  of  saying  :  "  I  saw  that  a  boat  came  to  you,"  the 
Greenlander  would  say  :  Kayak  ishigakha  ornik-atit,  "  a 
boat  see-I-it  coming-it-to-thee."  As  Steinthal  remarks, 
it  seems  a  waste  of  time  to  the  Greenlander  to  distinguish 
the  tenses  of  the  verb.  In  the  rudimentary  sentence  the 
element  of  time  is  unknown. 

It  will  be  noticed,  however,  that  the  Greenlander  has 
learnt  to  break  up  many  at  least  of  his  sentences  into 
words.  If  we  go  further  south,  among  the  North  American 
Indians,  we  shall  find  a  closer  adherence  to  the  original 
form  of  speech.  In  Cheroki,  for  instance,  nad-hol-i-nin 
means  "bring  us  the  boat,"  from  naten,  "to  bring," 
amokhol, "  boat," andnm,  "us ;"  in  Algonkin  amanganakh- 
kiminkhi  is  "  broad-leaved  oaks,"  from  amangi,  "great," 
nakhk,  "  the  hand,"  kim  affix  denoting  shell-fruit,  and 
akhpansi,  "  trunk,"  though  even  these  compounds  are  sur- 
passed by  the  Greenlandish  aulisariartorasuarpoky  "he 
hastened  to  go  fishing,"  from  aulisar,  "to  fish."  pear  tor, 
"to  be  engaged  in  something,"  and  pinnesuarpok,  "he 
hastens." 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND   OTHER  LANGUAGES.     219 

In  Eskimaux  and  North  American  Indian,  the  pro- 
nouns are  affixed,  kipivuttainu-akuin-ayu  in  Cree,  for 
example,  signifying  "  he  is  smothered  in  the  snow," 
where  ayil  is  the  pronoun,  akum  the  noun.  The  contrary 
is  the  case  in  Mexican.  Here  the  pronouns  are  all  pre- 
fixed. Thus  ne-o-ni-k-tsluh  is  "  I  have  done  it  "  (literally 
"  I-have-I-it-done "),  ni-sotsi-tcmoa,  "I  look  for  flowers," 
ni-mits-tsikawakd-tlasbtla,  "  I-thee-much-love."  But  like 
Greenlandish,  Mexican  has  broken  through  the  rigid  rules 
of  polysynthetic  structure.  While  in  the  sentence  ni- 
sotsi-temoa  it  "  incapsulates "  the  noun  sotsi,  it  can  also 
substitute  the  objective  pronoun  for  it,  and  use  the 
noun  as  an  independent  word.  Thus  ni-k-miktia  se- 
totolin,  "  I-it-kill  a  hen,"  differs  but  little  from  a  Basque 
sentence,  except  that  the  Mexican  attaches  the  noun 
somewhat  awkwardly  at  the  end  as  a  kind  of  after- 
thought, conscious  of  its  departure  from  the  normal 
form  of  speech.  But  it  has  gone  even  further  than  this. 
It  can  individualize  a  substantive,  treat  it,  that  is  to  say, 
as  an  independent  and  separate  word,  by  affixing  the 
termination  -//.  Thus  "  I  roast  the  flesh  on  the  fire  " 
would  be  ni-k-tle-ivatsa  in  nakatl  (  "  I-it-fire-roast  the 
flesh  "),  "  the  songs  are  sought  like'  flowers,"  sotsi-temo- 
lo  in  twlkatl,  where  lo  is  the  passive  suffix.  Reduplication 
and  vowel-change  play  a  considerable  part  in  Aztec 
grammar,  and  in  the  adaptation  of  vowel-change  to  ex- 
press a  meaning  which  lies  at  the  root  of  all  inflectional 
languages  we  may  see  how  the  different  classes  of  speech 
tend  to  overlap  one  another.  Ni-tla-saka,  for  instance, 
signifies  "  I  bring  something  along,"  ni-tla-sdsaka,  "  I 
bring  something  along  vehemently,"  ni-tla-sasaka,  "  I 


220 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


bring  something  along  vehemently  from  many  quarters 
so,  again,  kotonais  "to  cut,"  kokotona,  "  to  cut  into  many 
pieces,"  kbkotona,  "  to  cut  many  things."  Reduplication 
is  largely  used  in  forming  the  plural,  though  the  affixes 
-me  and  -tin  are  now  commonly  employed  for  the  purpose. 
In  fact,  modern  Aztec  has  changed  a  good  deal  during 
the  last  three  centuries  in  consequence  of  the  degradation 
of  its  speakers  and  their  mixture  with  the  whites.  We 
must  not  forget  that  it  was  once  a  literary  language,  and 
that  the  Aztec  civilization  which  was  destroyed  by  the 
Spaniards  and  Christianity  was,  in  spite  of  its  unlikeness 
to  the  civilizations  of  Europe,  of  no  mean  order.  The 
Mexicans,  indeed,  had  not  attained  the  developed  system 
of  writing  of  their  Maya  neighbours  in  the  South,  who 
used  characters  that  were  partly  hieroglyphic,  partly 
syllabic,  and  partly  alphabetic  ;  but  the  numerous  MSS. 
written  in  Aztec  hieroglyphics  that  existed  at  the 
time  of  the  Spanish  conquest  prove  that  the  traditions  of 
native  literary  culture  v/ere  not  without  foundation.  Few 
of  these  escaped  the  ravages  of  Spanish  bigotry,  and 
none  of  those  we  possess  seem  to  contain  any  specimens 
of  the  poetry  for  which  the  ancient  Aztecs  were  famous.1 
Of  the  Old  Maya  literature  only  three  works  remain,  the 
"  Second  Mexican  Manuscript "  in  the  National  Library 
at  Paris,  the  "Dresden  Codex,"  and  the  "Manuscript 
Troans." 

Chinese  is  naturally  the  first  example  of  an  isolating 
language  that  occurs  to  the  mind.  Chinese  civilization  and 
literature  reached  back  beyond  B.C.  2000,  how  much  be- 
yond we  shall  probably  never  know.     It  arose  in  the 
1  See  Bancroft  :  "  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific,"  ii.  ch.  xvii. 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND   OTHER  LANGUAGES.     221 

alluvial  plain  of  the  Hoang-ho  or  Yellow  River,  perhaps 
at  the  same  time  that  an  independent  civilization  was 
arising  in  the  alluvial  plain  of  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates. 
Since  those  early  days  the  language  has  changed  greatly ; 
phonetic  decay  has  been  busy  with  the  dictionary,  tones 
have  been  introduced  to  express  relations  of  grammar, 
position  and  syntax  have  been  replaced  by  "  empty 
words,"  which  have  come  to  be  mere  grammatical  sym- 
bols like  our  to  or  of,  and  the  whole  speech  has  grown 
old  and  weather-beaten.  It  is  the  Mandarin  dialect 
which  chiefly  shows  these  marks  of  ruin  ;  here  the  initial 
and  final  consonants  have  been  dropped  one  by  one  until 
every  word  save  one1  ends  with  the  same  monotonous 
nasal.  Elsewhere,  however,  the  dialects  have  displayed 
a  more  strenuous  resistance.  In  the  north,  indeed,  the 
primitive  seat  of  Chinese  power,  no  less  than  three 
final  consonants  have  been  lost,  but  along  the  southern 
bank  of  the  Yang-tsUkiang,  and  through  Chekiang  to 
Fuh-kien,  Dr.  Edkins  tells  us,  the  old  initials  are  still 
preserved.  As  has  been  noticed  in  a  former  chapter,  it 
is  partly  by  means  of  these  dialects,  partly  by  the  help 
of  the  ancient  rhymed  poetry,  partly  by  a  thorough 
investigation  of  the  written  characters  that  Dr.  Edkins 
and  Prof,  de  Rosny  have  been  enabled  to  restore  the 
original  pronunciation  of  Chinese  words,  and  to  trace  the 
gradual  decay  of  this  pronunciation  first  in  the  long  ages 
that  preceded  Confucius  (B.C.  551-477),  and  then  in  the 
centuries  that  have  followed.  As  sounds  disappeared, 
and  words  formerly  distinct  came  to  assume  the  same 
form,  a  new  device  was  needed  for  marking  the  difference' 
1  Eul,  "two "and  "ear." 


222 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


between  them.  This  was  found  in  the  multiplication  ol 
the  tones,  which  now  number  eight,  though  only  four  are 
in  common  use,  the  tones  playing  a  similar  constructive 
part  in  Chinese  to  that  played  by  analogy  in  our  own 
family  of  speech.  It  takes  about  1200  years,  says  Dr. 
Edkins,  to  produce  a  new  tone.  But  from  the  first  the 
words  of  Chinese  are  monosyllabic  ;  there  may  have 
been,  and  probably  was,  a  time  when  polysyllables  ex- 
isted, as  they  still  do  in  Tibetan,1  but  all  record  of  it  has 
perished.  In  spite,  therefore,  of  the  tones,  the  same 
word  has  often  a  great  variety  of  meanings,  as  in  Old 
Egyptian;  thus yu  is  "me;"  "agree,"  "rejoice,"  "mea- 
sure," "stupid,"  "black  ox,"  and///,  "turn  aside,"  "forge," 
•"vehicle,"  "precious  stone,"  "dew,"  "way." 

"  In  Chinese,"  says  Prof.  Steinthal,2  "  the  smallest  real 
whole  is  a  sentence,  or  at  least  a  sentence-relation,  or 
perhaps  a  group  of  roots,  which,  even  if  it  is  not  yet  a 
sentence,  or  a  sentence-relation,  is  still  something  more 
or  other  than  a  word.  Thus  while  other  languages  can 
form  words  and  sentences,  Chinese  can  form  only  sen- 
tences, and  its  grammar  really  resolves  itself  into  syn- 
tax." In  fact,  when  once  we  know  the  prescribed  order 
of  words  in  a  Chinese  sentence,  we  are  virtually  masters 
-of  its  grammar.  The  subject  always  comes  first,  the 
direct  object  follows  the  word  expressing  action,  and  the 
genitive,  like  the  attribute,  precedes  the  noun  that  governs 
it.  The  defining  word,  in  short,  stands  before  the  word 

1  See  Bohtlingk  :  "  Sprache  der  Jakuten,"  p.  xvii.  note  46,  who 
observes  that  several  Tibetan  roots  that  are  now  monosyllabic  can 
be  proved  to  have  once  been  polysyllabic. 

*  "  Charakteristik,"  p.  113. 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND   OTHER  LANGUAGES.     223 

it  defines,  the  completing  word  after  the  word  it  com- 
pletes. Nowhere  is  the  order  of  the  Chinese  sentence 
better  illustrated  than  in  the  ideographic  use  of  the 
Chinese  characters  in  Japanese,  which  are  read  as  though 
they  were  Japanese.  Thus,  in  order  to  express  the 
words,  "  but  I  shall  not  see  him  to-day,"  in  this  mode  of 
writing,  the  characters  would  follow  one  another  in  the 
order  required  in  Chinese,  "  but  not  shall  I  see  to-day 
him,"  but  they  would  be  read  by  the  Japanese  in  exactly 
the  reverse  order,  "him  shall  I  see  to-day  not  but."1  It 
must  not  be  assumed,  however,  that  the  order  of  the  sen- 
tence follows  one  hard  and  fast  rule.  We  have  just  seen 
that  while  the  genitive  and  attribute  precede  the  noun, 
the  object  follows  the  verb,  to  which  it  might  be  supposed 
to  stand  in  much  the  same  relation  as  the  attribute  to  the 
noun.  Sentences  which  express  the  purpose,  again,  fol- 
low the  principal  clause,  as  do  also  "  objective  substantival 
sentences  "  in  most  cases,  although  adjectival,  temporal, 
causal,  and  conditional  ones  precede  it.  Though  each 
word  has  its  own  fixed  place,  that  place  depends  upon 
logic  and  rhythm,  and  not  upon  a  general  law  which 
forces  every  part  of  the  sentence  into  the  same  mould. 
Literary  development  has  doubtless  had  much  to  do  with 
this  result,  and  inversions  of  the  established  order  which 
were  first  introduced  by  the  requirements  of  rhetoric 
have  now  made  their  way  into  the  current  speech.  In 
sharp  contrast  to  this  comparative  flexibility  of  Chinese 
stands  the  stereotyped  arrangement  of  the  Burmese  or 

[  The  Chinese  ideographs  are  called  koye  or  won  (Chinese  yiri), 
the  Japanese  reading  of  them,  yomi  or  kun  or  toku.  See  Hoffmann  : 
"Japanese  Grammar,"  ist  edition,  pp.  32,  46. 


224 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


the  Siamese  sentence.  Here  no  distinction  is  made  be- 
tween the  different  grammatical  relations  of  a  sentence 
or  the  different  kinds  of  sentences ;  in  Siamese  or  T'hai 
every  word  which  defines  another  must  follow  it,  in  Bur- 
man  it  must  equally  precede.  No  account  is  taken  of 
the  fact  that  the  nature  of  the  definition  cannot  always 
be  alike.  Hence  the  inability  of  these  languages  to  de- 
note the  various  turns  of  expression,  the  various  forms 
of  sentence  and  syntax,  that  we  find  in  Chinese  :  hence, 
too,  the  greater  need  of  auxiliary  or  "  empty"  words  to 
avoid  the  uncertainty  occasioned  by  the  constant  appli- 
cation of  one  unbending  law  of  position. 

Not  that  Chinese,  especially  modern  Chinese,  dispenses 
with  those  symbolic  auxiliaries  which  Prof.  Earle  has 
christened  "presentives  ;"  just  as  the  Old  English  flec- 
tional  genitive  in  -s  is  making  way  for  the  analytical 
genitive  with  "of,"  so  the  Old  Chinese  genitive  of  position 
may  now  be  replaced  by  the  periphrastic  genitive  with 
ti  or  "of."  TV,  originally  meaning  "  place,"  has  now  come 
to  be  merely  a  relative  pronoun,  marking  the  genitive, 
the  adjective  and  participle,  the  possessive  pronoun,  and 
even  the  adverb  as  well.  So,  too,  the  plural,  the  dative, 
the  instrumental,  the  locative,  and  the  like,  may  all  be 
denoted  by  particles  instead  of  by  position  only.  These 
particles  are  merely  worn-out  substantives,  twi,  for  in- 
stance, the  symbol  of  the  dative,  having  once  meant 
"opposition,"  tsung,  the  symbol  of  the  locative,  "the 
middle."  Similarly  person  and  time  may  be  expressed  by 
pronouns,  adverbs,  and  auxiliary  verbs,  not  by  syntax 
merely.  In  fact,  the  same  tendency  towards  increasing 
clearness  of  expression  which  has  shown  itself  in  the 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND   OTHER  LANGUAGES.    225 

modern  languages  of  Europe,  has  also  shown  itself  in 
Chinese.     Less  has  been  left  to  suggestion  ;  thought  has 
been  able  to  find  a  fuller  and  distincter  clothing  for  itself, 
and  requires  less  to  be  understood  by  another.     Science 
needs  to  be  precise,  and  it  is  in  the  direction  of  science, 
that  is  to  say,  of  accurate  and  formulated  knowledge,  that 
all  civilization  must  tend.     Language  is  ever  becoming  a 
more  and  more  perfect  instrument  of  thought;  the  vague- 
ness and  imperfection  that  characterized  the  first  attempts 
at  speech,  the  first  hints  of  the  meaning  to  be  conveyed, 
have  gradually  been  replaced  by  clearness  and  analysis. 
It  is  true  that  language  must  always  remain  more  or  less 
symbolic  and  suggestive  ;  it  can  neither  represent  things 
as  they  are,  nor  embody  exactly  the  thought  that  con- 
ceives them  ;  to  the  last  we  must  understand  in  speech 
more   than  we  actually  hear.    As  Chaignet  has  said,1 
"  Les  rapports  necessaires  ne  s'expriment  presque  jamais ; 
les  plus  grossiers  d'entre  les  hommes  sont  encore  des 
sages ;  ils  s'entendent  a  demi-mot ;  ils  parlent  par  sous- 
entendus;"  and  Prof.   Breal  has   emphasized    the    fact 
under   the    name    of   "  the  latent    ideas  of  language," 
calling  attention  to  the  manifold  relations  and  senses  in 
which  a  single  word  like  company  is  understood  according 
to  the  connection  in  which  it  is  found. 

Words,  and  the  ideas  which  lie  behind  them,  define 
and  explain  each  other.  It  is  by  comparison  and  limita- 
tion that  science  marches  forward  :  it  is  by  the  same 
means  that  the  dictionary  is  enlarged  and  made  clear. 
Nowhere  is  this  fact  better  known  than  in  the  isolating 

1  "  La  Philosophic  de  la  Science  du  Langage  etudie'e  dans  la 
Formation  des  Mots  "  (1875),  P-  83. 

II.  Q 


226  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

languages  of  the  far  East,  where  each  word  taken  by 
itself  may  belong  to  any  one  of  the  parts  of  speech. 
Thus  in  Siamese  Ink  mei,  "son  +  tree,"  is  "  fruit,"  ma 
nd,  "mother  +  water,"  is  "stream,"  chai plaw,  "heart  -f 
empty,"  is  "  extravagance,"  while  in  Burman  kay  khyan, 
"  rescue  +  thing,"  is  "  deliverance,"  lu  gale,  "  horse  + 
young,"  is  "boy,"  ran  prft,  "strife  +  make,"  is  "to  con- 
tend." But  it  is  in  Chinese  that  the  principle  has  been 
carried  out  to  its  fullest  extent.  Out  of  the  44,500 
words  in  the  imperial  dictionary  of  Kang-hi,  1097  begin 
with  (or  are  formed  upon)  sin,  "  the  heart."  So,  too, 
thyan,  "  the  sky,"  in  the  general  sense  of  "  time,"  serves 
to  define  a  whole  class  of  words.  Chun  thy  an  is  "spring," 
tiya  thyan,  "  summer,"  chyeu  thyan,  "autumn,"  tung  thyan, 
"  winter  ;"  tso  thyan  is  yesterday,  kin  thyan,  "  to-day.  Tsi 
by  itself  is  at  once  "  finger"  and  "  pointing,"  but  the 
combination  with  it  of  than,  "the  head,"  renders  its 
meaning  at  once  unquestionable.  No  doubt  can  arise  as 
to  the  signification  of  tau  and  lu,  which  both  mean 
"  road"  when  they  are  joined  together,  any  more  than  in 
the  case  of  such  combinations  or  compounds  as  khing 
sung,  "light-heavy,"  i.e.  "weight,"  or  fu-mu,  "father- 
mother,"  i.e.  "  parents."  Sometimes  not  only  two,  but 
six  or  seven  words  may  be  united,  and  the  whole  com- 
bination used  as  one  word  with  a  single  meaning  of 
its  own  ;  thus  in  Kiang-nan  a  man  may  say  :  phyau-tu- 
chi-chwen,  "  pleasure  +  play  +  eating  +  drinking,"  with 

1  So  in  Malagassy  reni-landy,  "  mother  +  silk,"  means  the  silk- 
worm," reni-tantely,  "  mother  +  honey,"  "  the  bee."  Van  der 
Tuuk  :  "  Outlines  of  a  Grammar  of  the  Malagassy  Language," 
p.  7- 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND   OTHER  LANGUAGES.    227 

the  common  signification  of  the  pleasures  of  life.1  Usage, 
however,  determines  the  order  and  employment  of  these 
compound  expressions ;  thus  the  phrase  just  quoted 
would  run  in  the  northern  provinces  chi-Ko-phyau-tu,  and 
it  would  often  be  incorrect  to  use  the  determinative  of  a 
certain  class  of  words  with  a  word  which  might  seem 
naturally  to  belong  to  the  same  class.  But  it  must  be 
remembered  that  it  is  as  impossible  for  an  isolating  lan- 
guage to  think  of  the  single  word  apart  from  the  sentence 
or  context  as  it  is  for  polysynthetic  language  to  do  so, 
and  Steinthal2  remarks  with  justice  that  "the  Chinaman 
never  uses  the  root  [or  rather  word]  sa  alone,  but  always 
in  conjunction  with  an  object." 

Accentual  rhythm  is  further  employed  to  help  out  the 
meaning  of  a  sentence.  Where  one  word  is  defined  by 
another,  or  accompanied  by  an  "empty"  word,  the  accent 
rests  upon  it ;  where  the  two  words  are  synonyms  or 
mutually  defining,  the  accent  rests  upon  the  second, 
though  in  some  dialects  on  the  first.  Where  four  or  five 
words  are  joined  together,  a  secondary  accent  springs  up 
by  the  side  of  the  principal  one,  resting  on  the  second 
word  should  the  principal  accent  fall  on  the  fourth  or  fifth. 

Chinese  literature  is  at  once  extensive  and  ancient,  in 
spite  of  the  destruction  of  it  ascribed  to  the  Emperor 
Chi-whang-ti  (B.C.  221),  a  destruction,  however,  that  could 
in  no  case  have  been  complete,  and  is  very  possibly  as 
legendary  as  Omar's  destruction  of  the  Alexandrine 
Library.3  At  all  events,  in  the  Shu-king,  the  classical  his- 

1  Edkins  :  "  Grammar  of  the  Mandarin  Dialect,"  p.  in. 

2  "  Charakteristik,''  p.  122. 

3  Only  works  on  medicine,  divination,  and  agriculture  are  said  to 


228  THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

tory  of  China,  we  have  a  work  of  Confucius  himself,  and 
the  nine  other  Chinese  classics,  consisting  of  the  five  clas- 
sics and  four  books,  claim  an  equal  or  greater  antiquity.1 
In  the  Shi-king  upwards  of  300  odes  have  been  preserved, 
many  of  them  in  rhyme,  a  Chinese  invention  which  was 
rediscovered  in  Europe  at  a  far  later  date,  according  to 
Nigra,  by  the  Kelts.  Besides  the  religious,  or  rather 
moral  works,  of  Confucius,  Mencius,  and  Lao-tse,  Chinese 
literature  comprised  books  upon  almost  every  conceivable 
subject,  including  the  famous  "  Tai-tsing-ye-tung-tse,"  an 
encyclopaedia  of  the  arts  and  sciences  in  200  volumes.  It 
was  published  at  the  instance  of  the  Emperor  Kien-lung 
(A.D.  1735-95),  and  is  but  one  example  out  of  many  of 
the  encyclopaedic  labours  of  the  Chinese  savans.  China 
has  long  since  entered  upon  the  period  of  its  decrepitude  ; 
the  perfection  to  which  the  examination-system  has  been 
carried  has  fossilized  its  civilization  and  dried  up  the 
springs  of  the  national  life ;  and  if  the  Chinese  people 
are  ever  to  expand  and  progress  again,  it  will  rather  be  in 
the  new  worlds  of  America  and  Australia  than  in  the 
effete  Celestial  Empire  itself.  But  we  must  not  forget 
that  the  beginnings  of  Chinese  civilization  are  lost  in  a 
fabulous  antiquity ;  when  our  own  forefathers  were  sunk 
in  abject  barbarism  or  struggling  through  the  gloom  of 
the  Dark  Ages,  China  was  building  up  the  fabric  of  an 
isolated  culture,  and  inventing  writing  and  printing,  silk 

have  been  exempted  from  the  edict  of  destruction.  A  copy  of  the 
Shu-king,  or  "  Book  of  History,"  was,  however,  discovered  sub- 
sequently in  pulling  down  an  old  house. 

1  The  earliest  of  these  is  the  "  Book  of  Changes,"  a  sort  of 
mystical  geometry,  compiled  in  prison  by  Wan-Whang  about 
1150  B.C. 


AGGLUTINATIVE  AND   OTHER  LANGUAGES.    229 

paper  and  the  compass.  In  China  we  see  a  time-worn 
and  decaying  people,  and  since -the  language  of  a  people 
is  but  the  outward  expression  of  its  spirit,  we  must  equally 
see  in  the  Chinese  language  a  time-worn  and  decaying 
form  of  speech. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

COMPARATIVE   MYTHOLOGY   AND   THE   SCIENCE  OF 

RELIGION. 

"  For  no  thought  of  man  made  Gods  to  love  or  honour 

Ere  the  song  within  the  silent  soul  began, 
Nor  might  earth  in  dream  or  deed  take  heaven  upon  her 

Till  the  word  was  clothed  with  speech  by  lips  of  man." 

SWINBURNE. 

"  Every  legend  fair 
Which  the  supreme  Caucasian  mind 
Carved  out  of  Nature  for  itself." 

TENNYSON. 

PLATO,  in  his  "  Phaedrus,"  tells  us  how  Sokrates,  as  he 
walked  along  the  banks  of  the  Ilisus,  was  questioned 
by  Phaedrus  regarding  the  local  legend  of  Boreas  and 
Orithyia.  And  the  answer  which  he  puts  into  the  mouth 
of  his  master  is  one  full  of  interest  and  suggestion.  "  The 
wise  are  doubtful,"  says  Sokrates,  "  and  if,  like  them,  I 
also  doubted,  there  would  be  nothing  very  strange  in 
that.  I  might  have  a  rational  explanation  that  Orithyia 
was  playing  with  Pharmacia,  when  a  northern  gust  car- 
ried her  over  the  neighbouring  rocks  ;  and  this  being  the 
manner  of  her  death,  she  was  said  to  have  been  carried 
away  by  Boreas.  There  is  a  discrepancy,  however,  about 
the  locality,  as  according  to  another  version  of  the  story 
she  was  taken  from  the  Areopagus,  and  not  from  this 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  231 

place.  Now  I  quite  acknowledge  that  these  explanations 
are  very  nice,  but  he  is  not  to  be  envied  who  has  to  give 
them;  much  labour  and  ingenuity  will  be  required  of 
him ;  and  when  he  has  once  begun,  he  must  go  on  and 
rehabilitate  centaurs  and  chimaeras  dire.  Gorgons  and 
winged  steeds  flow  in  apace,  and  numberless  other  incon- 
ceivable and  impossible  monstrosities  and  marvels  of 
nature.  And  if  he  is  sceptical  about  them,  and  would 
fain  reduce  them  all  to  the  rules  of  probability,  this  sort 
of  crude  philosophy  will  take  up  all  his  time."  1  The 
fantastic  world  of  mythology  confronted  the  cultivated 
Greek  of  the  age  of  Sokrates  and  Plato  in  a  way  which 
it  is  hard  for  us  to  realize,  and  there  were  few  equally 
bold  enough  to  confess  their  inability  to  explain  it.  For 
it  much  needed  explanation  ;  the  popular  mythology 
shocked  the  morality  of  the  Greeks  of  the  Sophistic  and 
philosophic  age,  as  much  as  it  offended  their  reason  and 
experience.  And  yet  this  mythology  formed  the  back- 
ground of  their  art  and  their  religion  ;  it  had  been  made 
familiar  to  them  in  their  childhood,  and  every  spot  their 
eyes  rested  on  recalled  some  ancient  myth.  It  was  not 
so  very  long  before  the  time  of  Sokrates  that  the  old 
mythology  had  exercised  a  potent  influence  upon  the 
politics  of  the  day ;  the  five  Spartan  arbitrators  had  ad- 
judged  Salamis  to  Athens,  when  Solon  had  wrested  it 
from  the  hands  of  the  Megarians,  on  the  ground  that  it 
was  to  Athens  that  the  sons  of  Ajax  had  once  migrated. 
Unless  the  Greek  was  prepared,  like  Xenophanes,  to  de- 
nounce Homer  and  Hesiod  as  the  inventors  of  his  mytho- 
logy and  the  "  lies  "  it  told  about  God,  or  to  banish  the 
1  "  Phaedrus,"  p.  229.  Jowett's  translation. 


232  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

poets  from  the  ideal  state,  like  Plato  in  his  Republic, 
and  forbid  them  to  repeat  their  legends  in  the  hearing  of 
the  young,  he  was  sorely  tried  to  harmonize  the  belief  of 
his  manhood  with  the  myths  that  had  been  bequeathed 
to  him  by  the  childhood  of  his  race. 

Theagenes  of  Rhegium  (B.C.  520)  is  said  to  have 
first  attacked  the  problem,  and  like  the  Jewish  and 
Christian  commentators  of  a  later  time  to  have  found 
the  key  in  allegory.  The  tales  of  Homer  were  but 
veiled  forms  beneath  which  the  truth  lay  hidden  to 
be  revealed  by  the  qualified  interpreter.  The  myths 
had  ceased  to  be  fairy-tales  belonging  to  another  world 
than  this,  and  constituting  no  rule  of  action  ;  their  abso- 
lute incompatibility,  when  literally  understood,  with  the 
morality  and  science  of  a  newer  age,  was  brought  out 
in  full  relief,  and  the  doctrine  laid  down  that  "  the  letter 
killeth,  but  the  spirit  giveth  life."  What,  however,  this 
spirit  was,  what  the  allegory  was  intended  to  convey, 
admitted  of  dispute,  and  led  to  the  formation  of  different 
schools  of  interpretation.  There  were  those  who  saw  in 
them  symbols  of  scientific  phenomena,  and  regarded 
the  old  poets  as  wonderful  physicists  acquainted  with 
all  the  facts  and  phenomena  of  nature  which  a  later 
age  had  to  rediscover.  Thus  we  find  Metrodorus  re- 
solving Agamemnon  and  the  other  heroes  of  the  Trojan 
Epic  into  the  elements  and  physical  agencies,  the  gods 
themselves  not  escaping  the  process  of  transmutation. 
There  were  others,  again,  like  the  Neo-Platonists,  for 
whom  the  myths  were  moral  symbols,  and  with  them 
Helen  became  the  soul  of  man,  around  which  must  fight 
the  powers  of  light  and  darkness,  the  reason  and  the 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  233 

passions,  the  strivings  after  good,  and  the  temptation  to 
evil.  Plato,  we  have  seen,  hesitated  in  his  opinion  on 
the  matter.  At  one  time  he  looks  upon  the  myths  as 
the  mischievous  products  of  the  poets,  between  whom 
and  the  philosophers  there  must  be  perpetual  war ;  at 
another  time  he  shrinks  from  pronouncing  sentence 
against  them,  and  confesses  that  they  embody  feeling 
and  religion.  The  more  practical  mind  of  Aristotle  ac- 
cepted the  facts,  and  made  no  attempt  to  explain  them 
away.  Secure  in  his  own  conception  of  the  impersonal 
reason,  of  thought  thinking  upon  itself,  he  was  content 
to  leave  to  the  multitude  their  myths  partly  as  yielding 
an  easy  and  popular  explanation  of  the  difficulties  of  life, 
partly  as  serving  to  satisfy  their  spiritual  needs  and  pre- 
vent them  from  becoming  dangerous  to  the  State.  The 
myths  themselves,  he  holds,  are  the  "  waifs  and  strays  'r 
which  have  come  down  to  us  from  those  earlier  cycles  of 
existence  through  which  the  universe  has  been  eternally 
passing  ;  though  how  they  survived  the  cataclysms  with 
which  each  cycle  ended  we  are  not  told. 

Aristotle  was  the  last  of  the  philosophers  who  saw  in 
the  old  myths  something  more  than  the  deliberate  fabri- 
cations of  an  interested  class  of  persons.  Such  belief 
as  still  remained  in  the  traditional  mythology  was  rapidly 
passing  away  :  the  educated  classes  had  found  a  religious 
resting-place  in  the  atheism  of  Epikurus,  while  the  masses 
were  eagerly  accepting  the  strange  and  wonder-working 
superstitions  which  were  pouring  in  from  the  East.  On 
all  sides  it  was  agreed  that,  if  the  gods  of  Hellas  existed 
at  all,  they  took  no  part  in  the  affairs  of  this  world. 
Their  holy  serenity  could  never  be  ruffled  by  the  passions 


234  THE   SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

and  the  miseries  of  human  life.  With  them,  therefore, 
the  myths  could  have  nothing  to  do,  and  the  contrary 
belief  was  but  one  of  those  worn-out  superstitions  which 
could  not  survive  the  extinction  of  Greek  freedom.  To 
Euhemerus  was  due  the  great  discovery  that  the  gods 
and  demi-gods  of  the  ancient  mythology  were  but  deified 
men  ;  men,  too,  more  immoral  and  dissolute  than  even 
the  polished  coteries  of  Alexandria  or  Pergamus.  Euhe- 
merus, it  would  seem,  threw  the  statement  of  his  doctrine 
into  the  form  of  a  romance.  In  the  words  of  Diodorus,  it 
began  by  asserting  that  "  the  ancients  have  delivered  to 
their  posterity  two  different  notions  of  the  gods ;  one  of 
those  that  were  eternal  and  immortal,  as  the  sun,  moon, 
stars,  and  other  parts  of  the  universe ;  while  others  were 
terrestrial  gods  that  were  so  made  because  they  were 
benefactors  to  mankind,  as  Herakles,  Dionysius,  and 
others."  Euhemerus  professed  to  have  derived  his  infor- 
mation from  inscriptions  in  Egyptian  hieroglyphics  on  a 
golden  pillar  in  an  ancient  temple  of  Zeus  at  Panara,  a 
town  in  the  island  of  Pankhaea,  off  the  coast  of  Arabia 
Felix.  Above  Panara  rose  a  mountain  where  Uranus 
had  once  dwelt,  and  the  inhabitants  were  named  Triphyl- 
lians,  being  three  Kretan  tribes  who  had  settled  in  the 
country  in  the  time  of  Zeus,  but  were  afterwards  expelled 
by  Ammon.  The  inscriptions  were  written  by  Hermes 
or  Thoth,  and  recorded  the  lives  and  adventures  of 

* 

Uranus,  Zeus,  Artemis,  and  Apollo. 

Such  was  the  framework  into  which  the  rationalistic 
explanation  of  mythology,  since  known  as  Euhemerism, 
was  fitted  by  its  author.  It  suited  the  spirit  of  the  time, 
and  was  transplanted  to  Rome  by  Ennius,  the  apostle  of 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  235 

Epicurean  scepticism,  where  it  found  a  ready  welcome 
among  an  unimaginative  and  rationalizing  people.  His- 
tories were  now  written  in  which  the  old  myths,  stripped 
of  all  that  was  marvellous  in  them,  and  therefore  of  their 
real  life  and  essence,  figured  side  by  side  with  the  facts 
of  contemporaneous  history.  The  primitive  condition  of 
the  human  mind,  the  character  of  the  age  in  which  the 
myths  arose,  was  grotesquely  misconceived,  and  in  de- 
stroying the  halo  of  divinity  which  encircled  its  ancient 
myths,  paganism  destroyed  itself.  The  work  begun  by 
Euhemerus  was  completed  by  the  irreverent  satire  of 
Lucian,  the  Voltaire  of  the  Roman  Empire. 

But  a  new  power  was  growing  up  in  their  midst, 
of  which  the  wits  and  sceptics  knew  and  thought 
but  little.  Christianity  was  slowly  attracting  to  itself 
all  those  who  still  felt  that  they  needed  a  religious 
creed.  And  Christianity,  not  yet  freed  from  the 
influences  of  its  Jewish  birthplace,  was  prone  to 
identify  the  deities  of  heathenism  with  the  demons  of 
Pharisaic  philosophy  and  to  turn  the  mythology  of 
ancient  Greece  into  a  record  of  demoniac  activity.  The 
Christian  \vas  quite  ready  to  accept  the  element  of  the 
miraculous  contained  in  a  myth,  but  he  referred  it  to  the 
agency  of  Satan.  In  the  hands  of  the  Christian  writers, 
therefore,  Greek  mythology  lost  all  its  beauty  and  attrac- 
tiveness ;  reminiscences  of  it  still  survived  to  mingle 
with  the  legends — Jewish,  Norse,  or  Arabic — which  satis- 
fied the  literary  cravings  of  the  Middle  Ages,  but  other- 
wise it  was  lost  and  forgotten,  or  else  looked  upon  with 
dread  and  abhorrence.  It  remained  for  the  Renaissance, 
for  the  new  birth  of  Europe  from  the  slumber  of  the 


236  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

Dark  Ages,  to  revivify  the  old  myths  of  Greece  and  with 
them  the  paganism  of  which  they  had  once  formed  part. 

But  like  most  revivals,  the  neo-paganism  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance  was  forced  and  artificial.  The  spell  exer- 
cised by  the  Greek  myths  was  due  to  their  connection 
with  Greek  literature  and  art ;  it  was  not  founded  on 
belief  and  education.  Between  the  society  of  Athens  in 
the  days  of  Sokrates  and  the  society  of  Italy  in  the  age  of 
Leo  X.,  there  was  a  great  gulf  fixed,  and  the  scholars  and 
humanists  who  believed  they  had  crossed  it  merely  de- 
ceived themselves.  The  old  Greek,  even  though  he  were 
a  follower  of  Epikurus,  started  with  the  assumption  of  the 
truth  of  his  mythology ;  the  traditions  of  childhood,  the 
social  atmosphere  around  him,  made  this  a  necessity. 
The  humanist,  on  the  other  hand,  had  to  start  with  the 
assumption  of  its  falsity ;  and  the  same  impulse,  the 
same  contempt  for  the  opinions  of  the  uninstructed,  which 
had  made  Euhemerus  a  rationalist,  made  the  humanist 
persuade  himself  that  he  was  a  believing  pagan.  His 
attempt  to  revive  a  dead  creed  was  necessarily  a  failure ; 
all  that  he  could  do  was  to  restore  to  Greek  mythology 
its  beauty  and  grace,  to  excite  once  more  the  old  ques- 
tions as  to  its  origin  and  its  nature. 

The  theories  of  modern  thinkers,  however  much  they 
may  agree  with  those  of  the  ancient  Greeks  in  method 
or  conclusions,  differ  from  them  wholly  in  one  essential 
point.  The  modern  European  knows  nothing  of  that 
feeling  of  reverence  with  which  the  myths  were  once 
approached  ;  they  are  for  him  unconnected  with  the 
affairs  of  everyday  life.  The  investigation  of  their  origin 
and  significance  is  a  purely  literary  or  scientific  question ; 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  237 

it  has  no  practical  bearing  or  importance  whatsoever.  It 
was  entered  upon,  too,  when  Europe  was  still  under  the 
dominion  of  two  ruling  ideas.  One  was  the  lingering 
belief  that  the  gods  of  the  heathen  were  devils  in  whose 
honour  and  interests  the  myths  had  been  composed  ;  the 
other  was  the  new  idea  so  fittingly  expressed  by  the 
Baconian  term  "  invention,"  which  regarded  the  whole 
universe  as  a  piece  of  clockwork  whose  secrets  were  to 
be  solved  by  discovering  how  it  had  been  artificially  put 
together.  On  no  side  was  there  any  doubt  that  the  old 
Greek  myths  were  cunningly  devised  fables  ;  the  only 
dispute  was  as  to  the  purpose  for  which  they  had  been 
devised,  and  who  had  devised  them.  The  believers  in 
the  current  theology,  the  students  of  the  classical  litera- 
ture, the  disciples  of  the  rising  school  of  inductive  science, 
all  alike  saw  in  them  artificial  products  and  deliberate 
inventions.  The  philosophers  resorted  to  the  old  alle- 
gorical method  of  interpretation,  the  theologians  pre- 
ferred the  method  of  Euhemerus,  or  else  convinced  them- 
selves that  the  mythology  of  the  ancient  world  was  but 
an  echo  and  distorted  form  of  Hebrew  tradition. 

The  allegorical  school  of  interpreters  is  best  illustrated 
by  Lord  Bacon  in  his  treatise  "  De  Sapientia  Veterum." 
Its  popularity  is  evidenced  by  the  editions  it  rapidly 
went  through,  and  by  its  translation  into  English  and 
Italian.  It  was  imagined  to  have  solved  the  problem  of 
mythology,  to  have  penetrated  into  the  inmost  meaning 
of  the  myths.  They  were  the  allegories  of  the  priests  of 
early  time  who  veiled  their  deep  knowledge  of  the  mys- 
teries of  nature  in  parables  and  similitudes  which  the 
uninitiated  multitude  interpreted  as  literal  facts.  Para- 


238  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

bles  were  employed  "  as  a  method  of  teaching,  whereby 
inventions  that  are  new  and  abstruse  and  remote  from 
vulgar  opinions  may  find  an  easier  passage  to  the  under- 
standing." "For,"  continues  Bacon,  "as  hieroglyphics 
came  before  letters,  so  parables  came  before  arguments." 
The  Egyptian  priesthood  was  credited  with  the  pro- 
foundest  wisdom,  and  in  the  Egyptian  hieroglyphics  was 
found  a  clear  proof  of  the  doctrine  of  the  allegorizers. 
As  the  figure  of  a  vulture  signified  "  maternity,"1  so 
Bacon  makes  Cassandra  a  symbol  of  plainness  of  speech, 
and  converts  the  Cyclopes  into  "  ministers  of  terror."  In 
Pan  he  sees  nature  itself,  the  shaggy  hairs  of  the  god 
being  "  the  rays  which  all  bodies  emit,"  his  biform  body 
denoting  uthe  bodies  of  the  upper  and  the  lower  world," 
his  goat's  feet,  "  the  motion  upwards  of  terrestrial  bodies 
towards  the  regions  of  air  and  sky,"  his  pipe  of  seven 
reeds,  "  that  harmony  and  concent  of  things,  that  con- 
cord mixed  with  discord,  which  results  from  the  motions 
of  the  seven  planets."  Cupid,  again,  is  the  primaeval 
atom,  "  the  appetite  or  instinct  of  primal  matter ;  or  to 
speak  more  plainly,  the  natural  motion  of  the  atom." 
His  "attribute  of  archery"  indicates  "the  action  of  the 
virtue  of  the  atom  at  a  distance,"  while  his  everlasting 
youth  means  that  "  the  primary  seeds  of  things  or  atoms 
are  minute  and  remain  in  perpetual  infancy."  Bacon,  in 
his  Essay,  unites  the  two  schools  of  allegorizers,  both 
those  who  held  that  the  myths  had  a  moral  meaning, 
and  those  who  interpreted  them  of  the  phenomena  of 
nature.  It  seems  strange  that  so  keen  an  intellect  shoul 
never  have  asked  itself  how  it  could  support  and  verify 

1  Horapollo,  i.  20. 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  239 

the  interpretation  it  put  forward.  Upon  Bacon's  principles, 
the  same  myth  could  be  explained  in  a  hundred  different 
ways  according  to  the  fancy  of  the  hierophant,  and  his 
famous  treatise  remains  a  monument  not  of  ingenuity 
merely,  but  also  of  the  ease  with  which  a  great  thinker 
will  overlook  the  most  obvious  arguments  against  the 
prevalent  ideas  of  his  own  time. 

The  Baconian  school  of  allegorizers  was  followed  by  a 
revival  of  Euhemerism.  The  rationalistic  explanation  of 
mythology  was  peculiarly  acceptable  to  an  age  which 
had  not  as  yet  formulated  the  canons  of  documentary 
criticism,  but  was  deeply  corroded  by  a  prosaic  scepticism. 
The  mechanical  theory  of  the  universe  was  in  high  favour, 
the  conception  of  development  was  still  to  be  struck  out, 
and  the  past  ages  of  the  world  were  judged  of  by  the 
standard  of  the  present.  Once  more,  therefore,  an  at- 
tempt was  made  to  extract  a  pseudo-history  from  the 
Greek  myths  by  stripping  them  of  the  supernatural  and 
ascribing  it  to  the  inventiveness  of  an  interested  priest- 
hood. The  pages  of  Lempriere's  "  Classical  Dictionary 'r 
give  a  good  idea  of  the  success  achieved  by  the  school. 
Here  we  may  read  how  Circe  was  "a  daughter  of  Sol  and 
Perseis,  celebrated  for  her  knowledge  of  magic  and 
venomous  herbs,"  how  Inachus  was  "  a  son  of  Oceanus 
and  Tethys,  father  of  lo,  and  also  of  Phoroneus  and 
^Egialeus,"  who  "founded  the  kingdom  of  Argos  and 
was  succeeded  by  Phoroneus  B.C.  1807,  and  gave  his 
name  to  a  river  of  Argos,  of  which  he  became  the  tute- 
lar deity  after  reigning  sixty  years,"  and  how  Erichtho- 
nius,  "  the  fourth  king  of  Argos,  sprung  from  the  seed  of 
Vulcan,"  after  being  placed  in  a  basket  by  Minerva, 


240  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

"reigned  fifty  years,  and  died  B.C.  1437."  The  Abbe 
Banier,  the  leading  authority  in  France  on  the  subject  of 
ancient  mythology  during  the  earlier  part  of  the  last 
century,  went  even  further.  Thus  he  tells  us  that  he  will 
"  make  it  appear  that  Minotaur  with  Pasiphae,  and  the 
rest  of  that  fable,  contain  nothing  but  an  intrigue  of  the 
Queen  of  Crete  with  a  captain  named  Taurus  ;"  and  stuff 
of  this  kind  was  translated  into  English  and  served  up 
before  the  English  public  in  six  large  volumes,  under 
the  title  of  "  The  Mythology  and  Fables  of  the  Ancients, 
explained  from  History,"  in  1737. 

The  myths,  however,  fared  no  better  at  the  hands  of 
the  theologians.  Bochart  saw  in  Saturn  the  Biblical 
Noah,  and  in  his  three  sons  Jupiter,  Neptune,  and  Pluto, 
the  three  sons  of  Noah — Ham,  Japhet,  and  Shem.1  G. 
J.  Voss,  on  the  other  hand,  identified  Saturn  with  Adam, 
with  an  equal  show  of  reason,  while  Prometheus  became 
Noah,  and  Typhon,  Og,  King  of  Bashan.c  Towards  the 
end  of  the  last  century  Bryant's  learned  book,  entitled 
"  A  New  System,  or  an  Analysis  of  Ancient  Mythology  " 
(1774-6),  made  a  considerable  stir  in  this  country,  his 
object  being  to  show  that  the  myths  of  antiquity  were 
but  distorted  echoes  of  "  the  primitive  tradition "  re- 
corded in  the  Old  Testament,  and  that  idolatry  was  but 
a  perversion  of  the  original  revelation  vouchsafed  to 
Adam  and  his  descendants.  This  theological  explana- 
tion of  mythology  is  even  now  not  quite  extinct.  Apart 
from  second-rate  theological  literature,  we  find  Mr.  Glad- 

1  "  Geographia  Sacra,"  i.  (1646). 

2  "  De  Theologia  gentili  et  Physiologia  Christiana,  sive  de  Ori- 
_gine  et  Progressu  Idolatriae,"  pp.  71,  73,  97  (1668). 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  241 

stone,  in  his  "  Studies  on  Homer,"  endorsing  the  same 
views,  and  resolving  Zeus,  Apollo,  and  Athena  into  the 
three  Persons  of  the  Trinity.  Even  the  arbitrary  expla- 
nations of  the  allegorizing  school  have  more  plausibility 
than  those  of  the  theological  interpreters  ;  at  any  rate 
they  need  fewer  assumptions,  and  do  not  come  into  con- 
flict with  the  ascertained  facts  of  history.  The  assump- 
tion of  a  primaeval  revelation,  and  of  the  preservation  of 
its  shattered  relics  in  the  religious  and  mythological 
beliefs  of  the  heathen  world,  is  a  pure  creation  of  the 
fancy  ;  while  the  mixture  of  Aryan  and  Semitic  involved 
in  the  theological  theory  is  contrary  to  all  that  has  been 
taught  us  by  modern  science  and  research. 

It  was  Grote  who  made  the  great  step  forward  in  the 
explanation  of  Greek  mythology.  He  first  pointed  out 
clearly  the  essential  character  of  a  myth,  and  the  distance 
which  separates  it  from  history.  To  mix  the  two  to- 
gether is  to  destroy  both.  The  attempt  to  find  history 
and  philosophy  in  mythology  is  to  rob  mythology  of  its 
innermost  spirit  and  kernel ;  the  attempt  to  link  history 
with  myth  is  to  turn  it  into  fable.  Myth  and  history  be- 
long to  two  different  phases  of  the  human  mind ;  what 
history  is  to  the  grown  man  and  a  cultivated  age,  that 
myth  is  to  the  child  and  the  childlike  society  of  the  early 
world.  There  is  a  gulf  between  the  two  which  cannot  be 
bridged  over  ;  deal  with  a  myth  as  we  may,  it  still  re- 
mains a  myth,  it  can  never  become  history.  And  a  myth 
must  be  dealt  with  as  a  whole ;  we  must  not  take  a  part 
of  it  only,  and  according  to  our  own  arbitrary  judgment 
determine  what  we  shall  accept  and  what  we  shall  reject. 
Those  who  would  strip  the  myth  of  the  marvellous  and 

IT.  R 


242 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


supernatural,  take  from  it,  not  merely  its  beauty  and  its 
poetry,  but  its  very  life  and  essence  as  well.  The  my- 
thical age  and  the  historical  age  stand  widely  apart  ; 
they  demand  a  different  mode  of  treatment,  a  different 

standard  of  criticism,  a  different  attitude  of  mind. 

' 

Here  Grote  was  content  to  leave  the  problem,  with- 
out making  an  attempt  to  discover  how  the  mythology 
grew  up,  or  what  was  the  origin  of  the  mythical  age. 
Some  myths,  like  the  story  of  Phcebus  or  Hyperion,  were 
plainly  symbolic,  scarcely  concealing  beneath  their  lan- 
guage of  metaphor  the  phenomena  of  nature  they  were 
intended  to  express  ;  other  myths,  Grote  allowed,  might 
be  based  on  historical  tradition,  though  without  the 
ordinary  aids  of  the  historian  it  was  impossible  to  prove 
this  ;  but  speaking  generally,  the  origin  of  mythology 
must  be  left  unexplained,  the  key  to  its  interpretation 
had  been  lost,  and  the  endeavours  made  to  find  it  had 
all  ended  in  disappointment  and  delusion. 

At  the  very  moment,  however,  that  Grote  was  thus 
writing,  the  lost  key  was  being  found,  the  solution  o 
the  problem  of  which  he  despaired  was  being  discovered. 
The  same  scientific  method  of  comparison  to  which  the 
secrets  of  nature  have  been  made  to  yield,  has  been  suc- 
cessfully applied  to  the  old  riddle  of  mythology.  The 
world  of  mythology  is  the  creation  of  language — of 
language  that  has  ceased  to  be  real  and  living,  and  has 
become  dead  and  forgotten.  A  myth,  as  a  general  rule, 
is  but  a  "faded  metaphor"  and  misinterpreted  expres- 
sion. The  living  signification  it  once  possessed  has 
perished  out  of  it,  and  a  new  and  false  signification  ha 
been  put  into  it.  Language  can  at  best  express  but  im 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  243 

perfectly  the  ideas  we  wish  to  convey.  It  is  by  sugges- 
tion and  simile,  rather  than  by  clear  and  definite  state- 
ment, that  we  understand  one  another's  meaning.  Ana- 
logy is  the  chief  instrument  by  means  of  which  the 
vocabulary  is  extended  ;  spiritual,  moral,  philosophical 
ideas  must  all  be  represented  by  words  denoting  the 
objects  of  sense.  At  first  but  little  distinction  is  drawn 
between  the  primary  sensuous  signification  of  the  word 
and  its  metaphorical  application ;  but  gradually  the 
original  sense  fades  out  of  view,  the  meaning  of  the 
word  becomes  more  scientifically  precise,  and  it  passes 
from  the  realm  of  poetry  to  that  of  sober  prose.  The 
younger  a  language,  the  more  primitive  a  society,  the 
more  numerous  will  necessarily  be  its  metaphors  and 
metaphorical  expressions,  the  less  scientific  its  phraseo- 
logy. And  these  metaphors  are  the  seeds  out  of  which 
mythology  has  grown.  When  Tennyson  writes  : — 

"  Sad  Hesper  o'er  the  buried  sun, 
And  ready,  thou,  to  die  with  him,"  1 

there  is  no  danger  of  our  understanding  the  words 
otherwise  than  as  a  poetical  metaphor,  but  in  the  early 
days  of  humanity,  before  the  birth  of  science  or  the 
growth  of  a  scientific  language,  there  was  not  only  a 
danger  but  an  inevitable  necessity  of  such  a  misunder- 
standing taking  place.  The  sensuous  imagery  in  which 
a  childlike  society  had  endeavoured  to  shadow  forth  its 
ideas  and  its  knowledge  became  a  snare  and  a  false  clue 
to  the  generations  that  followed.  The  ideas  and  know- 
ledge of  mankind  change  with  the  centuries,  and  little 

1  "  In  Memoriam,"  cxx. 


244 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


by  little  the  true  meaning  of  the  old  words  and  p] 
is  forgotten,  new  senses  are  put  into  them,  new  concep- 
tions attached,  and  false  interpretations  imagined.  We 
are  all  convinced  that  whatever  exists  must  have  a  reason 
for  its  existence.  Words  without  significance  are  but 
the  echoes  of  a  gibberish  that  fall  upon  the  inattentive 
ear,  and  as  quickly  disappear.  Such  empty  sounds  can- 
not fasten  themselves  upon  the  memory,  and  there  is  no 
reason  why  they  should.  We  assign  to  them  a  meaning 
which  they  seem  to  us  most  plausibly  to  bear,  slightly 
changing  their  pronunciation  if  need  be  to  suit  the  sense 
required.  A  housekeeper  in  one  of  the  large  mansions 
of  the  north  used  to  point  out  a  Canaletto  to  visitors 
with  the  remark  that  it  was  "  a  candle-light  picture,  so 
called  because  it  could  not  be  seen  to  best  advantage 
during  the  day;"  and  what  this  good  housekeeper  did  on 
a  small  scale,  mankind  has  always  been  doing  on  a  large 
scale.  The  heritage  of  names  and  phrases  which  has  de- 
scended to  us  invested  with  all  the  reverence  of  antiquity 
must,  we  feel,  be  preserved  ;  yet  all  natural  sense  and 
meaning  has  vanished  but  of  them,  and  the  only  sense 
we  can  attach  to  them  is  one  utterly  strange  and  unreal, 
which  needs  a  commentator  to  account  for  it.  One  part 
only  of  the  language  we  receive  from  our  fathers  ex- 
presses, however  imperfectly,  our  present  knowledge  of 
the  world  about  us  ;  the  other  part  is  the  enshrinement 
of  dead  and  forgotten  knowledge,  a  phantom-speech 
which  corresponds  with  no  reality  of  things.  Gorgeous 
as  may  be  the  colours  of  this  fairyland  of  mythology,  the 
spirit  that  we  breathe  into  them  is  the  spirit  of  our 
dreams.  It  is  true  that  with  the  increase  of  our  know- 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  245 

ledge,  the  limits  of  this  fairyland  grow  more  and  more 
contracted,  and  to  find  it  in  its  full  extent  we  must  go  to 
the  barbarians  of  the  Pacific,  or  the  children  and  the 
uneducated  of  our  own  country.  Nevertheless,  so  long 
as  language  remains  strewn  with  metaphor  and  poetry, 
so  long  as  it  is  not  reduced  into  a  jargon  of  scientific 
exactness,  so  long  is  a  certain  amount  of  mythology  in- 
evitable even  for  the  most  sceptical  and  prosaic  among 
us.  We  still  personify  "  nature  "  in  ordinary  speech,  we 
still  speak  of  the  sun  as  "rising"  and  "setting,"  of  the 
world  as  "  growing  old,"  of  "  the  spirit  of  an  age."  Lan- 
guage is  the  outward  expression  and  embodiment  of 
thought;  but  once  formed  it  reacts  upon  that  thought 
and  moulds  it  to  what  shape  it  wills. 

A  myth,  then,  cannot  arise  unless  the  true  meaning  of 
a  word  or  phrase  has  been  forgotten  and  a  false  meaning 
or  explanation  been  fastened  upon  it.  Sometimes  the 
false  meaning  has  been  the  result  of  a  simple  blunder ; 
as,  for  instance,  when  the  official  recognition  of  the  Sep- 
tuagint  translation  of  the  Pentateuch,  by  the  seventy 
members  of  the  Alexandrian  Sanhedrim,  caused  the  un- 
known author  of  the  Epistle  of  Aristeas  to  imagine  that 
the  translation  itself  was  made  by  seventy  persons.1 
Sometimes,  again,  it  has  originated  in  taking  literally 
what  was  intended  metaphorically,  as  when  the  Talmudic 
writers  found  in  two  verses  in  the  Psalms  (xxii.  21, 
cxxxii.  i,  &c.)2  a  basis  for  their  curious  legend  which 

1  Hitzig  :  "  Geschichte  des  Volkes  Israel,"  p.  341. 

-  "  Save  me  from  the  lion's  mouth  :  for  thou  hast  heard  me  from 
the  horns  of  the  unicorns  "  [wild  bulls]  ;  "  Lord,  remember  David, 
and  all  his  afflictions  :  how  he  sware  unto  the  LORD,  and  vowed 
unto  the  mighty  One  of  Jacob,"  £c. 


246 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


told  how  David  was  once  when  keeping  his  sheep  carried 
up  to  the  sky  on  the  back  of  a  monstrous  rhinoceros,  and, 
in  return  for  the  deliverance  vouchsafed  him  by  God 
through  the  help  of  a  lion,  promised  to  build  a  temple 
whose  dimensions  should  be  those  of  the  animal's  horn.1 
Sometimes  it  has  resulted  from  the  change  of  signification 
undergone  by  words  in  the  course  of  centuries.  Thus, 
the  "  silly  sheep  "  of  which  Spenser  speaks  are  objects 
not  of  compassion  but  of  envy,  silly  being,  like  its  German 
cousin  selig,  "  blessed  "  or  "  happy."  Sometimes  a  myth 
has  sprung  from  the  attempt  to  assign  a  meaning  to  an 
unintelligible  word  by  deriving  it  from  words  of  similar 
sound.  Such  myths  are  created  by  those  popular  etymo- 
logies— that  Volksetymologie  as  the  Germans  call  it— 
which  play  so  large  a  part  in  local  names.  A  gardener 
has  been  known  to  speak  of  ashes-spilt,  by  which  he  meant 
asphalt,  a  word  utterly  unintelligible  to  him.  Familiar 
instances  of  such  myths  are  the  legends  of  the  deer 
killed  by  Little  John,  or  of  the  suicide  of  Pontius  Pilate, 
which  have  grown  up  from  the  attempts  to  explain  the 
names  of  Shotover  Hill,  really  a  corruption  of  Chateau 
Vert,  "  The  Green  House,"  and  of  the  Swiss  mountain 
Pilatus,  originally  Pileatus,  so  called  from  the  "  cap  "  of 
cloud  that  often  rests  upon  it.  The  latter  .legend  is  a 
good  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  a  myth,  when  once 

1  "  Midrash  Tillim,"  fol.  21,  col.  2.  A  similar  example  may  be 
met  with  in  "  Pirke  R.  Eliezer,"  c.  45,  where  we  are  told  that  Moses 
dug  a  deep  pit  in  the  land  of  Gad,  and  confined  in  it  the  evil  angel 
Karun,  who  was  allowed  to  creep  out  of  it  and  plague  the  Israelites 
only  when  they  sinned.  The  real  source  of  the  story  is  the  fact 
that  Kan'in,  "anger,"  is  the  Arabic  form  of  the  Hebrew  name 
Korah. 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  247 

current,  will  be  believed  in  against  all  evidence  to  the 
contrary.  The  small  snow  lake  near  the  top  of  the 
mountain  was  transformed  into  a  spot  worthy  of  the 
remorseful  death  of  the  Roman  proconsul,  and  natives 
and  visitors,  in  spite  of  the  testimony  of  their  senses,  in- 
sisted upon  investing  it  with  a  fictitious  horror.  Thus 
Merian  in  1642  describes  it  as  "situated  in  a  secluded 
spot,  deep  and  fearful,  surrounded  by  dark  woods,  and 
enclosed  to  prevent  the  approach  of  man ;  its  colour 
is  black,  it  is  always  calm,  and  its  surface  is  undisturbed 
by  the  wind."  It  is  remarkable  that  a  French  range  of 
hills  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Vienne  bears. the  same  name 
as  the  Swiss  mountain,  and  from  the  same  cause.  Vienne, 
however,  was  actually  the  place  to  which  Pilate  was 
banished  ;  and  the  accidental  coincidence  is  a  striking 
example  of  the  impossibility  of  our  discovering  historic 
truth  in  a  myth,  although  we  may  know  from  other 
sources  that  it  has  accidentally  attached  itself  to  a  real 
event.  Close  to  Vienne  is  a  ruin  called  the  "  Tour  de 
Mauconseil,"  from  which,  it  is  said,  Pilate  threw  himself 
in  his  despair.  But  the  value  of  the  legend  may  be  easily 
estimated  when  we  learn  that  the  tower  is  really  a  tete- 
du-pont  built  by  Philippe  de  Valois.  The  eponymous 
heroes  from  whom  tribes  and  nations  have  been  supposed 
to  derive  their  names,  owe  their  existence  to  the  same 
popular  etymologizing,  and  are  as  little  serviceable  to 
the  historian  or  the  ethnologist  as  the  legends  of  Pilate's 
death.  Thus  Rome  had  to  be  supplied  with  a  founder  of 
the  same  name;  and  since  the  legends  hesitated  between 
two  pronunciations  of  the  word,  Remus  with  an  <?,  and  the 
diminutive  Romulus  with  an  o,  the  conclusion  was  near 


248 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


at  hand  that  Romulus  and  Remus  were  twin-brothers,  to 
both  of  whom  was  due  the  foundation  of  the  city. 

But  these  four  sources  of  misunderstanding  would  not 
by  themselves  account  for  all  the  myths  with  which  the 
early  literature  of  our  race  is  filled.  They  must  be 
combined  with  the  inability  of  language  to  express  the 
spiritual  and  the  abstract  without  the  help  of  sensuous 
imagery.  The  rich  mythology  of  Greece  and  Rome,  of 
Scandinavia  and  Germany,  has,  in  large  measure,  grown 
out  of  the  misunderstO9d  words  and  phrases  whereby 
our  primitive  forefathers  tried  to  shadow  forth  their 
knowledge  of  nature  and  themselves.  Like  the  child  and 
the  barbarian  of  to-day,  they  had  not  yet  awakened  to 
the  distinction  between  object  and  subject,  between  the 
thinker  and  that  whereof  he  thinks.  The  nominative  of 
the  first  personal  pronoun  is  later  than  the  accusative  ; 
it  was  not  ego,  aJiam,  that  was  attached  to  the  first  person 
of  the  verbal  form,  but  ma,  mi.  Hence  it  was  that  human 
action  and  human  passion  were  ascribed  to  the  forces  and 
phenomena  of  nature,  and  conversely  the  attributes  of 
inanimate  objects  to  animate  beings.  And  so  men  spoke 
of  the  sun  coming  out  of  his  chamber  like  a  bridegroom, 
and  rejoicing  as  a  giant  to  run  his  course  ;  of  the  dawn 
mounting  up  from  the  sea  with  rosy  fingers,  and  fleeing 
from  the  sun  as  he  pursued  her  with  his  burning  rays ; 
or  of  the  fire  devouring  its  victim  and  purifying  the 
hearth  of  its  suppliant.  Partly  because  of  this  childish 
confusion  between  nature  and  self,  partly  because  all 
abstract  ideas  must  be  expressed  in  the  language  of 
metaphor,  the  seeds  of  an  abundant  mythology  were  sown 
for  future  generations  to  nourish  and  mature.  The  sun 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  249 

became  a  giant,  whose  chariot  rolled  daily  out  of  his 
palace  in  the  east ;  the  dawn  was  changed  into  Daphne, 
and  her  pursuer  into  Apollo  ;  and  the  fire  was  exalted 
into  a  mighty  god  whose  adventures  were  strange  and 
manifold.  Expressions  which  had  fully  represented  the 
knowledge  and  conceptions  of  an  earlier  period  were  no 
longer  adequate  or  applicable ;  their  true  meaning,  con- 
sequently, had  come  to  be  forgotten,  and  a  wrong  meaning 
to  be  read  into  them  ;  and  all  that  remained  was  to  in- 
terpret the  new  meaning  in  accordance  with  the  beliefs 
and  prejudices  of  a  later  day.  Myths,  for  the  most  part, 
embody  the  fossilized  knowledge  and  ideas  of  a  previous 
era  forgotten  and  misinterpreted  by  those  that  have  in- 
herited them. 

Just  as  there  is  a  historic  age,  so  also  is  there  a  mytho- 
poeic  age.  When  society  becomes  more  organized,  when 
the  family  passes  into  the  tribe  or  clan,  the  fact  is  reflected 
in  the  language  of  the  community  and  the  ideas  which 
shape  and  control  it.  The  mere  animal  wonder  of  the 
savage  makes  way  for  inquiry :  "  La  maraviglia  Dell' 
ignoranza  e  la  figlia  e  del  sapere  La  madre."  And  along 
with  this  awakened  curiosity  to  understand  and  interpret 
the  outward  world,  goes  the  first  striving  of  the  intel- 
lectual instinct  which  takes  the  form  of  tales  and  legends, 
of  hymns  to  the  gods  and  songs  of  victory.  Language 
is  needed  for  something  better  than  the  mere  acquisition 
of  the  necessaries  of  life ;  the  society  it  has  knit  together 
and  created  works  out  upon  it  the  fancies  of  its  growing 
thought,  and  finds  leisure  in  which  to  gratify  its  spiritual 
and  intellectual  wants,  and  to  fill  its  vocabulary  with  new 
words  and  meanings.  Language  enters  upon  its  epithetic 


250 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


stage,  upon  the  period  when  the  newly  wakened  mind 
and  eye  seize  eagerly  upon  the  analogies  and  resem- 
blances between  things,  and  when,  accordingly,  the  same 
attribute  is  applied  to  innumerable  objects  which  agree 
together  only  in  possessing  it.  The  same  imitative  ten- 
dency that  furnished  language  with  its  first  raw  material 
is  now  busy  in  developing  it,  in  making  it  express  the 
changeful  ideas  and  feelings  of  the  human  mind.  What- 
ever could  be  called  by  a  familiar  name  seemed  thereby 
to  be  brought  within  the  bounds  of  comprehension.  We 
know  things  only  by  their  attributes,  and  to  call  a  metal 
rajatam,  argentum,  "  the  bright,"  was  to  assimilate  it  to 
the  sky  and  other  equally  well-known  "  bright "  things. 

Now,  it  is  just  this  epithetic  stage  of  language,  this 
period  when  man  was  beginning  to  question  nature,  and 
embody  his  answers  in  speech,  that  is  the  most  fruitful 
seed  plot  of  mythology.  An  epithet  tends  to  become  a 
name ;  there  were  many  more  bright  things  besides 
rajatam,  "  silver,"  but  the  term  came  in  time  to  be 
restricted  to  silver  alone.  In  other  cases,  however,  it 
might  happen  that  the  same  epithet  was  stereotyped  into 
a  name  for  two  or  more  objects  which  the  progress  of 
knowledge  showed  to  have  nothing  in  common  except 
their  first  superficial  appearance.  Or,  again,  the  same 
object  or  the  same  class  of  objects  might  acquire  two  or 
more  different  names  derived  from  different  attributes. 
Thus  the  "  sky  "  might  be  called  not  only  the  "  bright  " 
spot,  dyaus,  Z«/j,  but  also  the  "  azure,"  ccelum  ;  or,  again, 
heaven,  that  which  is  "  heaved  "  up  above  the  earth. 
Here,  then,  was  every  opportunity  for  future  confusion  ; 
and  it  was  not  long  before  the  confusion  took  place. 


COMPARATIVE   MYTHOLOGY.  251 

Synonyms  were  separated  from  one  another  and  resolved 
into  different  beings,  while  homonyms  that  really  referred 
to  widely  different  objects  were  amalgamated  into  a  single 
whole.  Thus  the  dawn  might  be  called  Ushas,  w;,  "  the 
burning-red,"  l  or  Da/iand,  Daphne,  "  the  flaming  one,"  z 
and  the  two  synonyms  after  losing  their  attributive 
meaning  and  stiffening  into  proper  names  became  two 
independent  personages,  one  the  goddess  of  the  morning, 
the  other  the  timid  maiden  whom  the  sun-god  pursues. 
But  the  dawn  was  not  the  only  object  that  could  be  called 
"  the  flaming  one  ;  "  the  same  name  was  given  by  the 
early  Greek  to  the  laurel  also,  whose  leaves  blaze  and 
crackle  in  the  fire,  and  when  the  older  application  of  the 
attributivehadcometo  be  forgotten,  the  name  Daphne  was 
confounded  with  its  homonym,  $a(p\m,  "  the  laurel,"  into 
which  the  poets  dreamed  their  Daphne  had  been  changed.3 
So,  too,  Prometheus  was  at  bottom  the  pramanthas  or 
"  fire-machine  "  of  India,  the  two  sticks  which  are  rubbed 
against  one  another  to  produce  fire  ;  but  transplanted  to 
Greek  soil  the  word  lost  its  original  significance,  and 
became  a  mythological  name  for  which  a  new  etymology 
had  to  be  sought.  And  the  new  etymology  was  readily 
found.  Though  pramanthas  in  the  sense  of  a  fire-machine 
did  not  exist  in  Greek,  the  same  root  had  given  rise  in 
that  language  to  the  verbs  ^v9xvu  and  ^do^ai  with  a  mental 
and  not  a  material  signification,  and  in  place  of  the 
Indian  compound,  the  Greek  spoke  of  Trfoprifaia,  "fore- 
thought," and  Trpo.uv^j,  "  provident."  And  so  Prometheus, 


1  Root  ush,  "  to  burn." 

'2  Sanskrit  root  dah  (—  dabK),  "  to  burn." 

3  Max  Miiller  :  "  Lectures,"  ii.  pp.  548-9. 


252 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


the  fire-bringer,  was  transformed  into  the  wise  repi 
tative  of  forethought,  who  stole  the  fire  of  heaven  for 
suffering1  but  finally  victorious  humanity,  and  had  as  his 
brother  Epimetheus,  "Afterthought."  Myths  are  the 
creation  of  language,  and  whenever  in  the  history  of 
language  expression  outstrips  thought,  we  shall  have  a 
mythopceic  age. 

The  character  of  a  myth,  consequently,  cannot  be 
uniform,  any  more  than  the  language  from  which  it  is 
born.  Language  embodies  the  ideas  and  beliefs,  the 
emotions  and  knowledge  of  the  community  that  speaks 
it,  and  will  therefore  be  as  many-sided  as  the  ideas  and 
emotions  themselves.  Hence  there  will  be  a  mythical 
geography  and  a  mythical  philosophy  as  well  as  a  mythical 
theology,  or,  if  the  phrase  may  be  allowed,  a  mythical 
history.  Man  has  to  struggle  through  myth  to  science 
and  history,  to  be  the  victim  of  his  own  speech  be- 
fore he  recognizes  that  he  is  its  master.  Just  as  tribal 
life  precedes  the  recognition  of  the  individual,  so  must 
language,  as  the  product  and  mirror  of  the  community, 
dominate  over  the  individual  until  he  has  come  to  know 
his  own  freedom  and  his  own  worth.  To  the  child  and 
the  savage  words  are  real  and  mysterious  powers ;  it 
needs  a  long  training  before  they  can  become  "  the  wise 
man's  counters."  And  so  philosophy  begins  with  its 
Eris  and  its  Eros,  its  Nestis  and  its  Ai'doneus,  as  in  the 
Epic  of  Empedokles,1  while  the  Odyssey  is  the  first  text- 
book of  European  geography.  The  religious  halo  which 
surrounds  the  larger  number  of  myths  is  mainly  due  t 

1  See  Plutarch  :  "  De  Plac.  Phil."  i.  30. 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  253 

the  prominent  place  occupied  by  religion  in  fostering  the 
earliest  intellectual  efforts  of  the  race.  Religious  myths 
differ  from  others  only  in  being  more  hallowed  and 
venerable,  and,  therefore,  in  being  more  permanent  Had 
it  not  been  for  the  religious  sanction  with  which  they 
were  handed  down,  there  are  numberless  religious  myths 
that  would  have  quickly  perished  as  soon  as  their  incom- 
patibility with  the  axioms  of  existing  knowledge  became 
manifest.  It  was  only  because  of  the  religious  truth  they 
were  supposed  to  veil  and  inculcate,  and  the  sacred  asso- 
ciations that  had  gathered  around  them,  that  they  were 
remembered  and  handed  on,  that  violent  attempts  were 
made  to  reconcile  them  with  the  beliefs  and  science  of  a 
new  generation,  and  that  no  process  of  interpretation  was 
considered  unnatural  which  proved  them  to  be  in  har- 
mony with  the  spirit  of  a  later  age. 

But  every  myth,  whether  religious  or  otherwise,  must 
have  a  setting  in  place  and  time.  The  fairy-world  to 
which  it  belongs  is  yet  a  world,  with  a  history  and  a 
geography  of  its  own.  Hence  old  myths  come  to  be 
fastened  on  persons  or  localities  that  strike  the  popular 
imagination,  and  are  made  the  centres  of  tradition. 
Around  the  founder  of  a  faith  like  'Sakya  Muni  Buddha 
or  a  king  and  conqueror  like  Charlemagne,  there  gather 
the  tales  that  have  descended  from  the  past,  and  form  a 
mythical  Buddha  and  a  mythical  Charlemagne  by  the 
side  of  the  historical  ones.  The  immemorial  story  of  the 
storming  of  the  bright  battlements  of  the  sky  by  the 
powers  of  darkness,  and  the  death  of  the  sun  at  the 
western  gate  of  heaven  in  all  the  glow  of  his  youth  and 
strength,  was  transferred  first  to  the  struggles  of  Boeotians 


254 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


and  Phoenicians  round  the  citadel  of  Thebes,  and  then  to 
the  long  contests  waged  on  the  coasts  of  Asia  Minor  by 
the  Greek  colonists  and  the  defenders  of  "  windy  Troy." 
To  look  for  grains  of  history  or  ethnology  in  such  tales 
as  these  is  like  the  search  for  gold  in  the  rays  of  the  sun. 
The  facts  of  history  must  be  collected  from  ordinary 
historical  sources,  from  monuments  and  inscriptions  and 
contemporaneous  literature  ;  the  myth  may  contain  a  his- 
torical kernel,  may  be  based  on  a  historical  tradition,  but 
we  cannot  know  this  from  the  myth  itself,  nor  can  we 
separate  from  one  another  the  elements  of  myth  and 
history.  The  one  is  a  reflection  of  objective  facts,  the 
other  of  words  and  thoughts.  Mythology  will  enable  us 
to  trace  the  growth  of  the  human  mind  ;  its  outward 
development  in  the  world  of  action  and  history  must  be 
recovered  by  other  means.  It  is  not  from  the  Homeric 
poems  but  from  the  discoveries  of  Dr.  Schliemann  at 
Mykense,  that  we  are  assured  of  the  existence  of  a  powerful 
dynasty,  and  of  a  rich  and  civilized  state  in  the  old 
Achaean  Peloponnesus ;  and  it  is  the  same  monumental 
evidence,  combined  with  similar  evidence  from  elsewhere, 
that  verifies  the  legend  which  brought  Pelops  from  Lydia 
with  the  wealth  of  the  Paktolus,  or  ascribes  the  prehistoric 
culture  of  Hellas  to  strangers  from  the  East.  The  memory 
of  the  past  perishes  quickly  from  the  minds  of  the 
untrained  and  the  uneducated  ;  the  battle  of  Minden  in 
1759,  little  more  than  a  hundred  years  ago,  is  utterly 
forgotten  by  the  peasantry  of  the  neighbourhood,  and  all 
that  Skanderbeg's  countrymen  remember  of  him  is  a 
miraculous  escape  that  never  took  place,  while  the  oldest 
Albanian  genealogy  cannot  mount  beyond  eleven  ances- 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  255 

tors.1  Sir  G.  C.  Lewis  reminds  us  of  the  game  in  which 
a  story  is  whispered  from  ear  to  ear  through  a  circle  of 
players,  and  the  first  and  last  versions,  when  compared 
together,  are  invariably  so  unlike  as  to  seem  to  have 
nothing  in  common.  What  the  uninstructed  man  re- 
members is  the  tale  told  again  and  again  round  the  fire 
in  winter,  full  of  marvels  and  prodigies,  but  reflecting  in 
every  detail  the  experiences  of  his  own  every  day  life. 
This  is  what  the  grandam  and  bard  will  hand  down 
from  generation  to  generation,  especially  if  adorned  with 
verse  or  rhythm.  From  time  to  time  a  new  incident  or 
a  new  name  taken  from  current  events  will  be  woven 
into  it,  to  mislead  the  would-be  historian  of  a  later  day, 
and  confound  once  more  the  distinction  between  history 
and  myth.  But  for  the  most  part  the  incidents  and  names 
belong  alike  to  cloudland.  It  is  not  the  unmeaning 
names  of  living  personages,  but  the  significant  epithets 
of  venerable  legend  that  imprint  themselves  upon  the 
popular  memory.  The  name  of  Cyrus,  it  is  true,  is  a 
historical  one,  but  not  so  that  of  his  opponent  Astyages, 
the  Persian  Aj-dahak  or  Zohak,  "  the  biting  snake  "  of 
night  and  darkness,  and  the  story  which  Herodotus  has 
selected  as  the  most  credible  of  the  various  ones  related 
concerning  the  birth  and  bringing  up  of  Cyrus,  is  but  the 
old  Aryan  myth  which  is  told  of  every  solar  hero.  The 
William  Tell  of  our  childhood,  who  splits  the  apple  with 
his  arrow  without  hurting  the  boy  on  whose  head  it  was 
placed,  and  successfully  arouses  "  the  three  cantons  "  of 
Uri,  Schwytz,  and  Unterwalden,  to  alliance  and  resistance 
against  the  German  Empire,  is  but  a  double  of  the  Palna- 
1  Von  Hahn  :  "  Sagwissenschaftliche  Studien,"  i.  pp.  62,  63. 


256  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

Toki  of  Norway,  and  the  William  Cloudeslee  of  English 
folklore.  William  and  Tell  are  equally  unknown  names 
in  the  Oberland  of  the  fourteenth  century,  no  Gesle'r  can 
be  found  among  the  bailiffs  of  Zurich  ;  and  when  the 
Emperor  Albert  visited  the  Swiss  he  met  with  nothing 
but  loyal  hospitality.  The  confederation  of  the  three 
Cantons  was  solely  for  defence  and  internal  organization ; 
they  were  the  steadfast  upholders  of  the  German  Empire 
in  the  person  of  Louis  of  Bavaria,  and  the  battle  of  Mor- 
garten  in  1315  was  fought  in  defence  of  the  latter  against 
the  pretensions  of  Frederick  and  the  Hapsburg  House.1 
Equally  instructive  is  the  curious  legend  of  Pope  Joan, 
which  has  been  minutely  examined  by  Dollinger  and 
illustrates  the  readiness  with  which  a  myth  will  spring  up 
among  an  ignorant  and  uneducated  multitude  even  in  the 
midst  of  contemporary  literature.  But  perhaps  the  most 
remarkable  example  is  afforded  by  the  Nibelungen  Lied, 
the  great  Epic  of  the  Germanic  nations,  since  here  history 
and  myth  seem  at  first  sight  to  have  coalesced,  and  legend 
to  have  occupied  itself  with  the  names  and  fortunes  of  his- 
torical characters.  The  story  of  the  Nibelungs  or  Cloud- 
children,  as  we  find  it  in  the  German  Epic  of  the  twelfth 
century,  can  be  traced  back  to  the  story  of  Sigurd  in  the 
Scandinavian  Edda,  and  the  old  Saxon  legend  of  Dietrich 
of  Bern.  Sigurd  is  the  Siegfried  of  the  Teutonic  version, 

1  See  Rilliet  :  "  Les  Origines  de  la  Confederation  Suisse,"  2nd 
edition  (1869)  ;  Hungerbiihler  :  "  Etude  critique  sur  les  traditions 
relatives  aux  Origines  de  la  Confederation  Suisse"  (1869);  K. 
Meyer  :  "  Die  Tellsage  "  (in  Bartsch  :  "  Germanische  Studien,"  i. 
pp.  159-70),  1872;  Vischer  :  "Die  Sage  von  der  Befreiung  der 
Waldstatte"  (1867)  ;  Liebenau  :  "Die  Tellsage  zu  dem  Jahre  1230 
historisch  nach  neuesten  Quellen  untersucht"  (1864). 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  257 

who  gains  possession  of  the  golden  sunbeams,  the  bright 
treasure  of  the  Niflungs,  by  slaying  Fafnir,  the  serpent  of 
winter,  and  after  delivering  Brynhild  from  her  magic 
sleep  is  made  by  Gunnar  to  forget  his  betrothed  and 
marry  her  daughter  Gudrun  or  Grimhild.  But  his  un- 
faithfulness is  speedily  avenged.  Sigurd  is  murdered  by 
Gudrun's  brothers,  and  Brynhild  burns  herself  on  the 
funeral-pyre  of  Sigurd,  like  Herakles,  the  Greek  sun-god, 
on  the  peak  of  (Eta.  Not  yet,  however,  has  the  fatal 
treasure  wrought  its  full  measure  of  mischief.  Atli,  the 
brother  of  Brynhild,  takes  vengeance  on  the  murderers, 
and  Swanhild,  Sigurd's  posthumous  son,  is  slain  by 
Jormunrek.  In  the  Saxon  story  Atli  is  replaced  by 
Etzel,  the  younger  son  of  Osid,  the  Frisian  king  who 
conquers  Saxony  from  King  Melias,  and  lives  in  Susat, 
now  Soest  in  Westphalia,  while  the  Nibelungs  or  Cloud- 
children  dwell  at  Worms,  and  Dietrich  rules  in  Bonn,  the 
earlier  name  of  which  was  Bern.  In  the  redacted  Epic 
of  the  twelfth  century  the  legend  has  entered  upon  a  yet 
newer  phase.  Bern  has  become  Verona,  Dietrich  Theo- 
doric,  the  famous  Gothic  conqueror  of  Italy,  and  Etzel 
Attila  the  Hun.  The  Jormunrek  of  the  Icelandic  myth 
is  transformed  into  Hermanric,  the  Gothic  king  at  Rome, 
Siegfried  himself  is  identified  with  Siegbert  of  Austrasia, 
who  reigned  from  561  to  575, married  Brunehault,  defeated 
the  Huns,  and  was  murdered  by  his  brother's  mistress 
Fredegond ;  while  Gunther,  the  Gunnar  of  the  Edda, 
assumes  tjie  character  of  the  Burgundian  Gundicar,  the 
victim  of  Attila.  The  coincidences  between  the  myth 
and  actual  history  seem  too  numerous  and  striking  to  be 
the  mere  result  of  accident.  And  yet  such  is  the  case. 
II.  S 


258  THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

The  Attila  of  history  died  in  453,  two  years  before  the 
birth  of  the  historical  Theodoric,  and  Jornandes  who 
wrote  at  least  twenty  years  before  the  death  of  the 
Austrasian  Siegbert,  was  already  acquainted  with  the 
name  and  story  of  Swanhild,  the  child  born  after  Sigurd's 
death.  If  more  were  needed,  the  Icelandic  and  Saxon 
versions  of  the  legend  would  prove  its  mythic  antiquity. 
The  historical  colouring  thrown  over  it  by  the  version 
of  a  literary  age  is  but  deceptive  ;  the  old  Teutonic 
story  of  the  waxing  and  waning  of  the  summer-sun  was 
told  and  sung  long  before  the  time  of  Gundicar  and  At- 
tila, long,  in  fact,  before  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era. 
Just  as  the  untaught  peasant  will  invent  an  etymology 
for  a  word  or  name  he  does  not  understand,  and  connect 
it  with  what  is  familiar  to  him,  so  the  literary  artist  will 
find  a  place  in  history  for  the  personages  of  mythology, 
and  identify  their  names  with  those  of  which  they  remind 
him.  No  doubt,  as  we  have  already  seen,  a  popular  myth 
will  sometimes  absorb  the  name  and  deeds  of  a  historical 
character ;  no  doubt,  too,  a  real  person  may  sometimes 
bear  a  name  famous  in  legend,  and  essay  to  emulate  the 
actions  of  his  mythical  namesake,  thereby  becoming  him- 
self in  time  a  figure  of  myth ;  but  such  cases  lie  outside 
the  sphere  of  the  historian  ;  without  other  evidence  he 
cannot  separate  the  true  from  the  false,  the  facts  of  his- 
tory from  the  creations  of  fancy. 

The  puzzle  over  which  the  philosophers  of  Greece 
laboured  in  vain  has  thus  been  solved.  Myths  originate 
in  the  inability  of  language  fully  to  represent  our 
thoughts,  in  changes  of  signification  undergone  by  words 
as  they  pass  through  the  mouths  of  successive  gene- 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  259 

rations,  and  in  the  consequent  misinterpretation  of  their 
meaning  and  the  growth  of  a  dreamland  whose  sole 
foundation  are  the  heirlooms  of  bygone  speech.  Lan- 
guage, therefore,  can  alone  explain  mythology,  and  in 
the  science  of  language  we  must  look  for  the  key  which 
will  unlock  its  secrets.  It  is  by  tracing  back  a  word  to 
its  source,  by  watching  the  various  phases  of  form  and 
sense  through  which  it  has  passed,  that  we  can  alone 
discover  the  origin  and  development  of  a  myth.  The 
work,  in  fact,  consists  in  tracking  out  the  true  etymologies 
of  words,  as  opposed  to  those  false  etymologies  which  are 
of  themselves  the  fruitful  causes  of  mythology  and  effec- 
tually prevented  the  scholars  of  the  past  from  probing 
its  mystery.  The  discovery  of  true  etymologies  has  been 
made  possible  by  comparative  philology,  and  compara- 
tive philology,  accordingly,  is  the  clue  by  the  help  of 
which  we  can  safely  find  our  way  through  the  labyrinth 
of  ancient  myth.  Without  its  aid,  it  is  unsafe  to  attempt 
the  explanation  of  even  the  simplest  myth,  and  where  its 
aid  fails  us,  the  solution  of  a  myth  is  out  of  the  question. 
It  is  only  where  the  proper  names  are  capable  of  interpre- 
tation that  the  source — the  etymology,  as  we  may  call  it 
—of  a  myth  can  be  discovered.  Where  they  still  resist 
analysis  the  myth  must  remain  like  the  words  of  which 
the  lexicographer  can  give  no  derivation. 

Like  the  lexicographer,  too,  the  mythologist  must  group 
and  compare  his  myths  together.  Just  as  a  multitude 
of  words  can  be  followed  back  to  a  single  root,  so  a 
multitude  of  myths,  differing  in  form  in  their  historical 
and  geographical  setting,  may  all  be  followed  back  to  a 
single  germ.  An  attempt  has  been  made  to  reduce  the 


260  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

manifold  myths  and  folk-tales  of  the  Aryan  nations  to 
about  fifty  originals,  and  whatever  may  be  the  value  of 
the  attempt,  it  is  certain  that  the  kaleidoscope  patterns 
which  the  imagination  of  man  has  woven  out  of  a  few 
primaeval  household  tales  are  almost  infinite. 

But  care  must  be  taken  to  compare  together  only  those 
myths  which  belong  to  the  languages  shown  by  compa- 
rative philology  to  be  children  of  a  common  mother. 
Where  language  demonstrates  identity  of  origin,  there 
will  be  identity  of  myths  ;  but  not  otherwise.  To  lump 
together  the  legends  of  Greeks  and  Romans,  of  Fins,  of 
Kafirs,  and  of  Australians,  will  lead  only  to  error  and 
confusion.  It  is  but  to  repeat  the  old  mistake  of  the 
"  philologists  "  of  the  last  century,  who  heaped  together 
words  from  the  most  diverse  languages  of  the  globe 
because  they  happened  to  be  alike  in  sound  and  sense. 
The  mind  of  primitive  man  is  similar  wherever  he  may 
chance  to  live,  and  the  circumstances  that  surround  him 
are  much  the  same  ;  his  ideas,  therefore,  and  his  ex- 
pression of  them,  will  present  what  may  seem  to  many  a 
startling  resemblance ;  the  same  problems  will  present 
themselves  to  him,  and  his  answers  will  be  of  the  same 
kind.  The  likeness  in  form  and  sentiment  between  the 
hymns  of  the  Rig- Veda  and  the  hymns  of  the  early 
Accadians  of  Babylonia  is  frequently  surprising ;  never- 
theless we  know  that  there  could  have  been  no  con- 
tact between  the  Rishis  of  India  and  the  poets  of 
Chaldea.  The  hare  is  accounted  unclean  by  the  Kafirs 
just  as  it  was  by  the  Jews  and  the  Britons  ;  but  for  all 
that  the  belief  must  have  fixed  itself  independently 
among  each  of  the  three  peoples.  It  is  not  more  strange 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  261 

to  find  a  general  likeness  between  the  adventures  of  solar 
heroes,  whether  among  Indo-Europeans,  Fins  and  Ta- 
tars, or  South  Sea  Islanders,  than  it  is  to  find  the  primi- 
tive races  of  the  world  explaining  the  phsenomena  of 
sunrise,  and  sunset  in  the  same  way.  Weeds  will  grow 
up  everywhere,  should  soil  and  climate  suit,  but  we  are 
not  obliged  to  assume  that  they  all  belong  to  one  genus 
or  one  species,  or  have  all  come  from  one  primaeval 
home.  It  is  enough  for  us  to  compare  the  myths  of  a 
single  family  of  speech  ;  to  group  together  those  of  them 
that  are  alike,  noting  the  points  in  which  they  differ,  the 
transformations  they  have  undergone,  and  the  several 
modes  in  which  they  have  been  fashioned  and  adapted. 
The  story  of  Baldyr  is  but  the  story  of  Akhilles  in  a  new 
form  ;  the  siege  of  Troy  is  but  a  repetition  of  its  earlier 
siege  by  Herakles,  or  of  the  two  sieges  of  Thebes  by 
the  seven  heroes  and  their  descendants  ;  the  legend  of 
Cyrus  and  Astyages  is  the  legend  of  Romulus  and 
Amulius,  of  Perseus  and  Akrisius,  of  Theseus  and 
/Egeus. 

Now  and  then,  it  is  true,  the  resemblances  between 
two  myths  belonging  to  unallied  families  of  speech  ex- 
tend to  details  which  may  seem  to  us  of  the  most  trivial 
character.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  they  were  so  in  the 
eyes  of  the  men  of  the  mythopceic  age.  The  same  train 
of  reasoning  from  the  same  set  of  supposed  facts  will  end 
in  the  same  conclusions,  and  a  myth,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered, embodies  the  first  childlike  knowledge  of  the 
world  about  him  possessed  by  primitive  man,  and  the 
conclusions  which  he  drew  from  it.  Coincidences  have 
been  pointed  out  between  the  story  of  Jack  the  Giant- 


262 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


Killer  and  the  Kafir  story  of  Uhlakanyana,  who  tricks 
the  cannibal  and  his  mother,  to  whom  he  had  been 
delivered  to  be  boiled,1  but  coincidences  do  not  of  them- 
selves point  to  a  common  origin.  And  the  comparative 
mythologist,  like  the  comparative  philologist,  must  al- 
ways be  on  his  guard  against  cases  of  borrowing. 
Myths  and  legends  can  be  borrowed  as  readily  as 
words,  and,  indeed,  even  more  readily.  A  large  part  of 
the  mythology  of  ancient  Greece,  we  now  know,  was 
derived  from  Babylonia,  partly  through  the  fostering 
hands  of  the  Phoenicians,  partly  along  the  great  highway 
that  led  across  Asia  Minor.  The  Babylonian  original  of 
the  myth  of  Aphrodite  and  Adonis  has  been  recovered 
from  the  clay  library  of  Nineveh,  and  the  story  of 
Herakles  and  his  twelve  labours  may  now  be  read  in 
the  fragments  of  the  great  Chaldean  epic,  which  was 
redacted  into  a  single  whole  about  two  thousand  years 
before  the  birth  of  Christ.  It  would  be  worse  than  a 
mistake  to  treat  as  a  pure  and  native  myth  the  hybrid 
conception  which  resulted  from  the  amalgamation  of 
Herculus,  the  old  Italian  god  of  enclosures,  with  the 
Greek  Sun-god  Herakles,  or  of  Saturnus,  the  patron  of 
"sowing"  and  agriculture,  with  Kronos,  who  owed  his 
existence  to  his  son  Kronion  (or  Khronion),  "the  ancient 
of  days."  Nor  is  it  so  easy  as  it  would  appear  at  first 
sight  to  distinguish  between  what  is  native  and  what  is 
borrowed.  When  once  a  myth  has  been  adopted  from 
abroad  it  is  taken  up  into  the  popular  mythology  ;  its 
foreign  features  are  gradually  lost ;  the  proper  names 

1  See  Bishop  Callaway  :  "  Nursery  Tales,  Traditions,  and  His- 
tories of  the  Zulus,"  i.  I  (1866). 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  263 

about  which  it  clusters  are  changed  or  modified  in  form. 
It  is  not  often  that  we  have  to  deal  with  so  plain  a  case 
as  the  story  of  Melikertes,  whose  name  has  remained  the 
same  as  that  of  the  Tyrian  Melkarth,  "the  city's  king," 
or  that  of  Aphrodite  and  Adonis  where  Adonis  is  still 
the  Semitic  'adonai,  the  "  lord  "  of  heaven.  Other  tests 
are  more  often  needed  for  determining  the  home-born 
origin  of  a  myth.  Does  it  harmonize  with  the  general 
character  of  the  mythology  ?  is  a  similar  tale  or  group 
of  tales  found  among  an  alien  race,  with  whose  mytho- 
logy it  is  in  better  accord  ?  can  we  trace  its  passage  from 
one  part  of  the  world  to  another  ?  These  are  the  ques- 
tions which  we  have  to  ask  ourselves.  The  story  of  the 
Kyklops  in  the  Odyssey,  adapted  as  it  has  been  in  both 
form  and  proper  names  to  the  genius  of  Greek  speech, 
yet  stands  isolated  in  Aryan  mythology.  We  seem  to 
hear  in  it  an  undertone  which  harmonizes  but  ill  with 
the  familiar  cadence  of  Aryan  myth.  And  it  is  just  this 
story  of  the  Kyklops  which  finds  its  analogues  in  the 
folklore  of  non- Aryan  tribes.1  The  one-eyed  giant  who 
lives  on  human  flesh,  and  is  finally  blinded  by  a  hero 
whom  he  entraps  into  his  cave,  but  who  escapes  under 
the  belly  of  a  sheep  or  ram,  and  then  taunts  the  mon- 
ster, reappears  among  the  Turkish  Oghuzians,  where  he 
is  called  Depe  Ghoz  or  "  Eye-in-the-Crown,"  the  hero 
himself  being  named  Bissat.2  In  the  Finnish  version  of 

1  See  W.  Grimm,  in  the  "  Abhandlungen  der  Akademie  der  Wis- 
senschaften  zu   Berlin"  (1857);   Rohde  :   "Der  griech.  Roman," 
p.  173,  note  2;  and  Sayce  :  "  Principles  of  Comparative  Philology," 
2nd  edition,  pp.  321-23. 

2  Diez  :  "  Der  neuentdeckte  oghuzische  Cyclop  verglichen  mit  d. 
homerischen"  (1815). 


264 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


the  tale  as  given  by  Bertram,  the  hero's  part  is  played 
by  Gylpho,  a  poor  groom,  the  Kammo  or  Kyklops  having 
a  horn  in  addition  to  the  one  eye  in  the  forehead,  and 
being  not  only  blinded  but  also  put  to  death,  as  in  the 
Oghuzian  tale ;  but  no  mention  is  made  of  the  hero's 
escape  by  the  help  of  the  sheep.     In  the  Karelian  legend 
reported  by  Castren,1  the  Kyklops  is  made  human  by 
having  two  eyes  assigned  to  him,  while  the  Esths  have 
Christianized  the  myth,    telling   how   a   thresher    once 
blinded  the  eyes  of  the  devil  under  the  pretext  of  curing 
them,  and,  as  in  the  Odyssey,  lost  him  the  sympathy  of 
his  friends  by  giving  his  own  name  as  Issi  or  "  Self."    In 
the  Oghuzian  version  the  story  is  amplified  by  a  magic 
ring  which  the  Kyklops  presents  to  the  hero,  and  which 
in  other  versions  clings  to  the  latter's  finger,  or  compels 
him  to  shout  out,  "I  am  here;"  and  this  addition  has 
apparently  been   rationalized   in  the    Odyssey.     If  so, 
there  can  be  little  doubt  as  to  where  we  must  look  for 
the  most   primitive  form  of  the    story,   and   when  we 
remember  that  the  Turkish  tale  is  also  found  among  the 
Finnic  members  of   the    Ugro-Altaic   family,  while    it 
stands    isolated  in   Greece,  notwithstanding   the   three 
Graiai  of  ^Eschylus  with  their  one  eye  between  them,  it 
would  seem  that  the  Greek  myth  was  a  borrowed  one, 
and  that  its  origin  must  be  sought  among  the  tribes  of 
Turan.     And  yet  a  doubt  is  cast  upon  this  conclusion 
by  our  finding  that  among  the  fastnesses  of  the  Pyre- 
nees, the  Basques,  too,  have  preserved  a  legend  of  the 
Tartaro  or  One-eyed  Kyklops,  which  seems  almost  the 
sole  fragment  of  their  existing  folklore  that  has  not  been 
1  "  Reseminnen  fran  aren"  (1833-44),  p.  87. 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  26$ 

borrowed  from  abroad.1  Among  the  forms  assumed  by 
the  legend  is  one  that  describes  how  the  man-eater  lived 
in  a  cave,  where  he  is  challenged  by  one  of  three  brothers. 
The  latter  lops  off  one  of  the  arms  of  the  Tartaro  and 
renewing  the  challenge  next  day  lops  off  his  head,  then 
kills  several  more  Tartaros,  fights  a  body  without  a  soul, 
and  delivers  the  three  daughters  of  a  king.  It  is  cer- 
tainly more  probable  that  the  traveller's  tale  recorded  by 
the  poet  of  the  Odyssey  was  received  from  races  in  the 
Western  Mediterranean,  of  whom  the  Basques  may  be  the 
last  surviving  relics,  than  that  it  came  from  the  interior  of 
Asia,  from  barren  lands  where  the  Ural-Altaic  hordes 
were  settled.  But  what  is  most  probable  is  not  therefore 
always  the  most  true.  M.  Antoine  d'Abbadie  has  met 
with  a  story  similar  to  that  of  the  Kyklops  and  the 
escape  of  Odysseus  under  the  belly  of  a  ram  among  the 
tribes  of  Abyssinia,  and  the  story  can  be  traced  back  to 
the  far  east  of  Asia  long  before  the  days  in  which  the 
Odyssey  took  its  present  shape.  Herodotus  tells  us 2 
how  Aristeas  of  Prokonnesus,  in  his  poem  of  the  Arimas- 
pea,  described  the  Arimaspi  or  "  One-eyed  men,"  who 
lived  beyond  the  Issedones  and  the  Scythians  in  the 
extreme  north-east,  where  they  bordered  on  the  gry- 
phons, whose  task  it  was  to  guard  the  hidden  treasures 
of  gold.  Now  the  Arimaspi  of  Aristeas  must  be  iden- 
tical with  the  one-eyed  men  of  the  Chinese  "  Shan  Hoi 
King,"  an  old  book  of  Monsters,  which  claims  to  have 
been  written  in  the  twelfth  century  B.C,  and  the  illus- 
trations of  which,  at  all  events,  go  back  to  the  time  of 

1  Webster  and  Vinson  :  "  Basque  Legends"  (1877). 

2  iv.  13,  27. 


266 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


the  Han  dynasty.  These  one-eyed  men  are  described  as 
living  beyond  the  western  desert  of  Gobi,  and  the  portrait 
of  one  of  them  which  is  given  exactly  represents  the 
Polyphemus  of  Greek  legend,  with  a  single  eye  in  the 
centre  of  the  forehead,  and  a  general  appearance  of  wild 
barbarism.  Along  with  this  account  of  the  Kyklops,  the 
Chinese  writer  gives  a  further  account  of  certain  small  men 
covered  with  hair  inhabiting  some  islands  to  the  east,  as 
well  as  of  diminutive  pygmies  who  come  from  the  same 
neighbourhood  as  the  Kyklops,  and  have  to  walk  arm  in 
arm  for  fear  of  being  picked  up  and  eaten  by  the  birds. 
The  hairy  men  from  the  islands  in  the  east  are  plainly 
the  Ainos  of  Japan,  not  yet  it  would  appear  colonized  by 
Japanese  when  the  "  Shan  Hoi  King "  was  composed, 
while  in  the  pygmies  we  recognize  at  once  the  pygmies 
of  the  Iliad  1  and  of  Aristotle,2  to  whom,  on  the  shores  of 
the  circumambient  Ocean,  the  cranes  "carry  slaughter 
and  death."  The  primaeval  source  of  the  two  old  Greek 
stories  thus  becomes  manifest  :  it  was  from  the  frontiers 
of  China,  through  the  medium  of  the  Scythian  caravan- 
trade,  that  the  tales  of  the  Arimaspi  and  the  pygmies 
were  brought  to  Greece,  and  just  as  the  tale  of  the  pyg- 
mies has  been  incorporated  into  the  Iliad,  so  the  tale  of 
the  Kyklops,  in  much  the  same  form  as  that  in  which 
it  has  survived  among  Turks  and  Fins,  has  been  incorpo- 
rated into  the  Odyssey.  The  tale  is  indeed  a  borrowed 
one,  but  it  was  borrowed  from  the  east  and  not  from  the 
west.  The  Basque  Tartaro,  like  the  Kyklops  of  Abys- 
sinia, would  have  come  in  all  probability  from  Asia,  pos- 
sibly through  the  hands  of  the  Greeks  themselves,  pos- 


iii.  6. 


H.  A.  viii.  12,  3. 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  267 

sibly  in  some  other  way.  The  strange  idea  of  a  body 
without  a  soul  which  has  been  embodied  in  the  Basque 
myth,  is  certainly  of  foreign  origin.  Miss  Frere,  in  her 
"  Old  Dekkan  Days,"  tells  us  that  she  has  heard  the 
story  in  Southern  India,  and  far  away  in  the  north  the 
Samoyeds  have  a  legend  of  seven  robbers  who  hung  up 
their  hearts  on  a  peg  and  were  destroyed  by  a  hero, 
whose  mother  they  had  captured,  with  the  help  of  a 
Swan-maiden,  whose  feather-dress  he  had  stolen.  A 
similar  legend  was  met  with  by  Castren  among  the 
Fins,  of  a  giant  who  kept  his  soul  in  a  snake  which  he 
carried  in  a  box  with  him  on  horseback,  and  the  Norse 
story  of  the  giant  without  a  heart  in  his  body,  given  by 
Dr.  Dasent,1  seems  to  have  been  derived  by  the  Scandi- 
navians from  their  Finnic  neighbours.  Before  we  can 
use  a  myth  to  establish  the  common  origin  of  those 
among  whom  it  is  found,  we  must  be  quite  sure  that  it  is 
not  borrowed.  Language  is  no  test  of  race,  merely  of 
social  contact,  and  so,  too,  the  possession  of  a  common 
stock  of  myths  proves  nothing  more  than  neighbourly 
intercourse. 

We  need  not  linger  long  over  the  objections  that  have 
been  raised  to  the  method  and  the  results  of  comparative 
mythology.  All  new  things  are  sure  to  be  objected  to 
by  those  who  have  to  unlearn  the  old.  It  is  hard  for 
scholars  who  have  spent  their  lives  in  extracting  profound 
lessons  of  philosophy  or  science  out  of  the  symbolic 
myths  wherein  they  had  been  wrapped  by  our  highly 
gifted  grandsires,  harder  still  for  those  who  would  dis- 
cover in  these  ancient  legends  facts  of  history  or  echoes 
1  "  Norse  Tales,"  pp.  64,  sq. 


268 


THE  SCIENCE    OF  LANGUAGE. 


of  revealed  truth,  to  admit  that  their  search  and  labour 
have  been  all  in  vain.  It  has  been  urged  on  the  one 
hand  that  the  comparative  mythologist  would  assign  too 
high  an  imagination  to  primitive  man,  whom  he  transforms 
into  a  poet  ever  busied  in  contemplating  the  ceaseless 
changes  of  nature  and  life ;  on  the  other  hand,  that  he 
makes  the  mythopceic  age  one  of  dull  stupidity  and  feeble 
imagination,  in  which  the  phaenomena  of  the  atmosphere 
engrossed  the  whole  attention  of  men  who  were  yet  too 
witless  to  understand  the  language  in  which  they  were 
described.  But  such  mutually  destructive  objections  are 
readily  answered.  The  men  who  described  the  toils  of 


the  sun  and  the  fading  of  the  dawn  in  language  that  soon 
passed  into  myth  were  endowed  neither  with  too  high  nor 
with  too  feeble  a  phantasy.  The  gods  they  worshipped  were 
the  gods  that  brought  them  food  and  warmth,  and  these 
gods  were  the  bright  day  and  the  burning  sun.  Eagerly 
did  they  watch  for  the  rising  of  the  dawn  and  the  scatter- 
ing of  the  black  clouds  of  night  and  storm,  because  "  man 
goeth  forth  unto  his  work  and  his  labour  until  the  even- 
ing," and  the  needs  of  life  have  to  be  satisfied  ere  then. 
It  was  not  stupidity,  but  the  necessities  of  his  daily  exis- 
tence, the  conditions  in  which  his  lot  was  cast,  that  made 
man  confine  his  thought  and  care  to  the  powers  which 
gave  him  the  good  gifts  he  desired.  Winter,  according  to 
the  disciples  of  Zoroaster,  was  the  creation  of  the  evil  one, 
and  among  the  first  thanksgivings  lisped  by  our  race  is 
praise  of  the  gods  as  "givers  of  good  things."  As  Von 
Hahn  has  pointed  out1  the  small  part  played  by  the  moon 
in  mythology  is  due  to  the  little  share  it  has  in  providing 
1  "  Sagwissenschaftliche  Studien,"  p.  92.  ,. 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  269 

for  human  wants.  It  is  only  among  the  Accadians  of 
Chaldea,  that  nation  of  astronomers  and  astrologers,  that 
the  moon  takes  the  place  denied  to  it  elsewhere.  Though 
Accadian  mythology,  like  all  other  mythologies,  is  largely 
solar,  it  is  also  largely  lunar.  The  Moon-god  stands 
above  the  Sun-god,  whose  father  he  is  held  to  be  ;  it  was 
from  him  that  the  royal  race  traced  its  descent,  and  to 
him  were  erected  the  lofty  towers  which  served  at  once 
as  temples  and  observatories.  What  clearer  proof  can 
we  have  that  the  character  of  a  mythology  is  determined 
by  the  material  needs  and  circumstances  of  those  that 
formed  it,  or  that  the  mythopceic  age  is  one  in  which 
those  needs  are  still  keenly  felt  ? 

The  men  of  the  mythopceic  age,  however,  were  not 
savages,  nor  were  those  who  interpreted  to  them  the 
mysteries  of  the  world  mere  stolid  boors  blind  to  the 
beauties  of  nature.  The  powers  that  seemed  to  give 
them  the  blessings  they  asked  for  were  invested  with 
human  action  and  human  feeling.  But  it  was  because 
they  could  not  do  otherwise.  The  language  in  which 
they  spoke  of  their  gods  may  appear  to  us  imaginative 
and  poetical  ;  but  it  was  the  only  language  they  could 
use.  Man  attributed  his  own  passions,  his  own  move- 
ments, to  the  forces  of  nature,  not  because  he  was  a  poet, 
but  because  he  had  not  yet  learned  to  distinguish  between 
the  lifeless  and  the  living.  He  clothed  the  deep  things 
of  the  spirit  in  sensuous  metaphor  and  imagery ;  but  it 
was  because  he  had  not  yet  realized  that  aught  existed 
which  his  senses  could  not  perceive.  The  objects  of  his 
thought  and  its  expression  were  limited,  because  the 
objects  of  his  worship  were  limited  ;  but  few  as  they  were, 


270 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


they  were  more  than  enough  for  the  rich  outgrowth  which 
reached  its  noblest  perfection  in  the  gorgeous  mythology 
of  Greece.  The  hymns  of  the  Rig-Veda,  the  oldest 
monument  of  our  Aryan  race,  which  have  founded  the 
science  of  language,  have  founded  also  its  younger 
sister,  the  science  of  mythology.  Here,  at  any  rate, 
we  have  the  touchstone  by  which  we  can  test  the 
soundness  of  our  theory  ;  here  we  may  see  the  names 
and  phrases,  not  yet  emptied  of  their  earliest  meta- 
phorical meaning,  beginning  to  pass  into  the  myths 
of  a  later  day.  As  words  and  grammatical  forms 
which  had  lost  almost  all  trace  of  their  original  sense 
in  the  idioms  of  Europe  suddenly  received  new  life  and 
significancy  when  compared  with  the  language  of  the 
Rig- Veda,  so  the  myths  and  folklore  of  Greece  and 
Rome,  of  Germany  and  Gaul  and  Slavonia,  yielded  up 
their  secrets  and  revealed  their  primitive  meaning  when 
read  in  the  light  of  the  epithets  and  utterances  which  the 
old  Hindu  bards  addressed  to  the  Sun-god  or  the  Dawn. 
Why  must  every  myth,  it  has  been  asked,  be  resolved 
into  a  solar  hero  or  a  dawn-maiden  ?  Why  this  weari- 
some monotony  of  subject,  this  vague  and  indefinite 
sameness  of  adventures  ?  The  answer  is  an  easy  one. 
Apart  from  the  fact  that  there  are  many  myths  which 
have  been  shown  by  a  scientific  analysis  to  have  nothing 
to  do  with  either  the  sun  or  the  dawn,  and  many  more 
which  as  yet  defy  our  efforts  to  analyze  them,  primitive 
man  cared  to  coin  epithets  for  none  but  those  bright 
powers  of  nature  from  whom  he  believed  his  benefits  to 
come,  and  the  Rig- Veda,  accordingly,  demonstrates  be- 
yond dispute  that  the  greater  part  of  the  myths  of  our 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  271 

Aryan  race  are  derived  from  the  faded  metaphors  applied 
to  the  sun  and  the  dawn,  and  from  no  others.  And  not 
the  Rig- Veda  only,  but  the  mythologies  of  other  nations 
when  closely  questioned  testify  to  the  same  fact.  Whether 
we  turn  to  the  myths  of  Polynesia,1  of  Fins  and  Tatars, 
or  of  ancient  Chaldea,  we  find  them  centering  round  the 
same  or  similar  phenomena  of  nature,  and  taking  upon 
them  similar  forms.  And  thanks  to  the  agglutinative 
character  of  the  languages,  the  proper  names  in  these 
cases  have  generally  remained  clear  and  transparent, 
preventing  all  mistakes  as  to  the  first  origin  and  meaning 
of  the  myths. 

But  there  is  always  a  danger  that  a  hobby  may  be 
ridden  too  hard.  The  solar  explanation  of  myths  has 
been  extended  by  some  writers  far  beyond  its  legitimate 
limits.  We  may  admit  that  a  large  part  of  the  myths 
we  can  analyze  have  a  solar  origin,  and  yet  hold  that 
there  are  many  to  which  such  an  explanation  does  not 
apply.  If  mythology  is  the  misunderstood  summary  of 
the  beliefs  and  knowledge  of  primitive  man,  it  will  include 
much  more  than  his  conceptions  of  solar  and  atmospheric 
phenomena ;  we  shall  find  it  a  record  of  all  his  ideas 
regarding  the  world  around  him.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
there  are  numberless  myths,  both  Aryan  and  non-Aryan, 
which  can  be  proved  to  have  another  origin  than  a  solar 
one.  There  are  myths  relating  to  the  storm-clouds,  to 
the  stars,  to  eclipses  of  the  moon,  even  to  the  creation  of 
the  earth  and  sea  and  living  beings,  from  which  the  solar 

1  See  the  New  Zealand  stories  of  Maui,  the  Sun-god,  in  Tylor's 
"  Primitive  Culture,"  pp.  302,  309,  arid.  Gill  :  "  Myths  and  Songs 
from  the  South  Pacific"  (1876). 


2/2  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

element  is  altogether  absent  To  confound  the  so-called 
"  Solar  Theory  "  with  comparative  mythology,  is  to  show 
an  entire  ignorance  of  the  method  and  results  of  the 
latter.  Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that  there  are  many 
myths  of  which  we  shall  never  know  the  true  source  and 
derivation.  We  may  guess  at  it  in  some  cases,  but  like 
doubtful  etymologies,  our  guesses  can  never  become 
certainties.  And  where  comparative  philology  sheds  no 
light  on  the  meaning  of  the  proper  names,  even  a  guess 
is  inadmissible. 

Two  more  objections  still  remain  to  be  dealt  with. 
On  the  principles  followed  by  comparative  mythologists, 
it  is  said,  any  story  of  life  and  death  and  marriage,  any 
tale  in  which  the  hero  migrates  from  east  to  west,  or  dies 
in  the  prime  of  his  career,  ought  to  be  received  into  the 
circle  of  solar  myths.  So  vague  and  general  are  the 
features  attributed  to  the  myth,  so  elastic  the  limits  by 
which  it  is  confined,  that  it  is  possible  to  transmute 
almost  any  individual  into  an  image  of  the  sun.  But 
here,  again,  the  objection  lies  not  against  comparative 
mythology,  but  against  a  misuse  of  it.  Comparative 
mythology  is  but  a  branch  of  comparative  philology,  and 
must  be  content  to  follow,  not  to  lead.  Only  where  a 
scientific  analysis  of  the  proper  names  reveals  their  original 
character  may  we  compare  two  or  more  myths  togethei 
within  the  same  group  of  languages,  and  determine  theii 
primary  form  and  significance.  Herakles  is  a  solar  hero, 
not  only  because  his  life  and  labours  are  those  of  other 
solar  heroes,  but  because  his  own  name  discloses  his 
derivation  from  szuara,  "  the  splendour  of  heaven,"  like 
that  of  the  goddess  Here,  while  the  names  of  those  with 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  273 

whom  he  comes  into  contact,  Augeias,  Deianeira,  lole, 
have  equally  to  do  with  celestial  phenomena. 

The  other  objection  is  based  on  the  fact  that  a  myth 
is  frequently  peculiar  to  a  single  locality,  or  met  with  only 
in  writers  of  late  date.  But  from  its  very  nature  a  myth 
will  clothe  itself  with  an  infinity  of  different  forms,  adapt- 
ing itself  to  the  conditions  of  place  and  time,  and  taking 
the  colour  of  each  country  and  age.  Just  as  some  old 
word  or  old  form  of  the  highest  value  to  the  etymologist 
may  linger  on  in  some  sequestered  corner,  so  an  early 
form  of  a  myth  may  survive  in  the  mouths  of  a  few 
illiterate  peasants  to  be  discovered  by  the  antiquarian  or 
book-maker  of  a  late  date.  The  Greek  legend  of  Kephalos 
and  Prokris  is  not  found  in  literature  before  the  time  of 
Apollodorus  and  Ovid,  and  yet  the  scientific  analysis  of 
it  shows  that  its  roots  must  go  back  to  a  hoar  antiquity. 
Prof.  Max  Miiller  has  explained  Prokris  by  the  help  of 
7r?a|,  "  a  dewdrop,"  and  the  Sanskrit  roots  prish  andflnts/t, 
"to  sprinkle,"  and  when  we  know  that  Kephalos, the  son 
of  Herse,  "  the  dew,"  is  but  an  epithet  of  the  sun,  as  is 
"  the  head  "  of  the  horse  in  the  Veda,  the  signification  of 
the  whole  story  becomes  clear.  Prokris  is  slain  uninten- 
tionally by  Kephalos  while  jealously  watching  him 
through  fear  of  her  rival  Eos,  just  as  the  dew  in  the  early- 
morning  is  parched  up  by  the  first  rays  of  the  rising  sun.1 
In  modern  Greek  folklore  we  seem  to  find  fragments  of 
tales  which  the  Greeks  brought  with  them  to  Hellas,  and 
which  yet  were  never  noticed  by  those  of  their  writers 
whose  works  have  come  down  to  us,  tales  like  the  (H/6oi, 
which  Amphitryon  advises  to  be  told  to  the  children  in 

1  Max  Miiller  :  "  Chips  from  a  German  Workshop,"  ii.  87-91. 

II.  T 


274 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


the  "  Hercules  Furens"  of  Euripides,1  or  of  which  Arist 
phanes  once  quotes  the  opening  formula.2  In  this  modern 
folklore  Kharon  is  the  god  of  death,  not  the  grim  ferry- 
man of  the  Styx,  and  when  we  remember  that  he  performs 
the  same  functions  in  the  paintings  of  the  Etruscan 
tombs,  it  becomes  probable  that  side  by  side  with  the 
literary  representation  of  him  went  another,  possibly 
more  popular,  possibly  provincial,  in  which  he  took  the 
place  of  Aides. 

If  the  mythopoeic  age  is  one  through  which  all  races 
of  men  must  pass  who  have  lifted  themselves  above  the 
lowest  savagery,  it  is  evident  that  it  cannot  be  confined 
to  those  languages  in  which  gender  and  sex  are  denoted, 
as  Dr.  Bleek  maintained.3  The  indication  of  gender  is 
an  accident  of  language,  the  creation  of  myths  a  necessity. 
No  doubt  the  process  is  largely  aided  by  the  existence  of 
gender :  personification  becomes  much  easier,  the  tran- 
sition of  an  epithet  into  a  proper  name  much  simpler.  In- 
deed, to  indicate  sex  is  of  itself  to  mythologize  ;  the  sailor 
who  speaks  of  his  ship  as  "  she,"  is  using  the  language  of 
myth.  The  very  fact  that  Prokris  was  feminine  caused 
the  word  to  be  regarded  as  a  woman's  name  when  its 
original  meaning  was  lost ;  and  Bleek  may  be  right  in 
holding  that  the  beast  fables  of  the  Hottentots  have  some 
connection  with  the  sex-denoting  character  of  their 
dialects.  But  the  connection  cannot  be  a  necessary  one, 

1  11.98-101.  See  also  Plutarch:  "  Thes."  23;  Plato:  "  Gorg." 
p.  5-27  A. 

a  "Wasps,"  1182.  Cf.  Schmidt :  " Griechische  Marchen,  Sagen 
und  Volkslieder  "  (1877),  Introd.,  especially  pp.  11-13. 

3  See  "A  Comparative  Grammar  of  South  African  Languages," 
i.  (1862),  pp.  ix.-xi.,  and  "  Report." 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  275 

since  the  Bushmen,  who  above  all  the  races  of  Southern 
Africa  are  distinguished  by  their  love  of  the  beast  fable, 
know  nothing  of  the  distinction  of  gender,  while  the 
genderless  Accadian  possessed  a  richer  and  more  developed 
mythology  than  the  Semite,  who  divided  his  nouns  into 
masculine  and  feminine.  In  fact,  we  now  know  that 
much  of  the  Semitic  mythology  was  simply  borrowed 
from  the  older  mythology  of  Accad.  Go  where  we  will, 
all  over  the  world  we  find  mythology  ;  it  is  inseparable 
from  the  growth  of  language,  whose  offspring  it  is.  The 
grammar  of  a  language  can  do  no  more  than  determine 
the  proportions  the  mythology  will  attain  and  the  exact 
forms  it  will  assume. 

Myth,  folklore,  fable,   allegory — all  these  are  related 
terms,  but  terms  to  be  kept  carefully  apart.    A  myth  is 
the  misinterpreted  answer  given  by  the  young  mind  of 
man  to  the  questions  the  world  about  him  seemed  to 
put.     It  is  the  speculation  of  a  child  which  the  grown 
man  has  treated  as  though  it  were  the  utterance  of  his 
own  mature  thought.     The  term  folklore  is  of  vaguer 
meaning.    It  embraces  all  those  popular  stories  of  which 
the  fairy  tales  of  our  nursery  are  a  good  illustration,  but 
from  which  the  religious  element  of  mythology  is  absent 
Their  proper  names,  too,  are  for  the  most  part  incapable 
of  analysis  ;  the  distance  that  separates  them  from  their 
original  source  and  centre  is  too  great  to  be  spanned  even 
by  the  comparative  philologist.      Popular   etymologies 
doubtless  abound  in  them,  but  such  etymologies  remain 
comparatively  unfruitful,  changing  or  modifying  only  an 
unessential  portion  of  the  story,  and  not  its  whole  cha- 
racter.    The  attempt  to  explain  nature  which  lies  at  the 


276 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


if 


bottom  of  a  myth  is  altogether  wanting,  or  it  it  were 
present  has  been  so  obscured  and  effaced  as  to  be  utterly 
unrecognizable.  Though  the  figures  of  mythology  may 
move  in  the  folklore  of  a  people  they  have  changed  their 
form  and  fashion ;  the  divinity  that  once  clothed  them 
is  departed  ;  they  are  become  vulgar  flesh  and  blood. 
It  is  true  that  it  is  often  difficult  to  draw  the  line  between 
folklore  and  mythology,  to  define  exactly  where  the  one 
ends  and  the  other  begins,  and  there  are  many  instances  in 
which  the  two  terms  overlap  one  another  ;  but  this  is  the 
case  in  all  departments  of  research,  and  the  broad  outlines 
of  the  two  types  of  popular  legend  stand  clearly  distinct. 
It  is  a  mere  misuse  of  the  term  to  include  myths,  as  is 
sometimes  done,  under  the  general  head  of  "  folklore."  1 

The  precise  relation  of  mythology  and  folklore  is  still 
a  disputed  question.  There  is  much  folklore  which  can 
be  traced  back  with  certainty  to  faded  myths.  The  tale 
of  the  sleeping  beauty,  for  example,  is  but  a  far-off  echo 
of  the  old  myth  which  described  the  sudden  awakening 
of  nature  at  the  approach  of  the  spring  sun,  and  the 
myth  of  the  Kyklops  can  only  be  excluded  from  the 
category  of  folklore  by  seeing  in  the  name  of  the  mon- 
ster a  living  reminiscence  of  the  sun,  "the  round  eye"  of 
heaven.  A  tale  collected  by  Schmidt  in  Zante,2  recounts 
how  an  armed  maiden  sprang  with  lance  and  helmet 

1  The  two  Grimms,  in  their  Preface  to  the  "  Deutsche  Sagen  " 
(1816),  p.  v.,  state  that  the  peculiarity ^of  a  myth  consists  "in  its 
referring  to  something  known  and  consciously  conceived,  to  some 
place  or  some  name  which  is  verified  by  history  ;  "  but  this  defini- 
tion does  not  hold  good  in  all  cases  (see  Bechstein  :  "  Deutsches 
Marchenbuch,"  ist  edition,  1847,  p.  iii.). 

2  "  Griechische  Marchen,"  &c.,  p.  77. 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  277 

from  the  swollen  calf  of  an  unmarried  king,  and  in  this 
we  cannot  refuse  to  see  a  survival  of  the  story  which 
made  Athena,  the  dawn-goddess,  spring  from  the  head  of 
Zeus.  But  there  are  many  other  nursery  tales  which  can 
be  forced  into  a  connection  with  known  myths  only  by 
arbitrary  and  unscientific  theorizing.  And  among  these 
nursery  tales  we  find  the  same  resemblance,  the  same 
apparent  bond  of  union,  as  among  the  myths  by  which 
they  are  accompanied.  Not  only  can  the  same  kind  of 
likeness  be  pointed  out  in  the  folklore  of  allied  languages 
and  dialects,  but  also  in  that  of  unallied  families  of 
speech.  The  fact  which  the  comparative  method  has 
shown  to  hold  good  of  mythology,  holds  good  of  folklore 
also.  And  the  fact  has  to  be  explained  in  the  same  way 
as  in  the  case  of  mythology.  When,  for  instance,  we 
find  Kafir  legends  of  Uhlakanyana  which  present  nume- 
rous points  of  analogy  with  the  story  of  Jack-the-Giant- 
killer,  or  when  we  come  across  tales  among  Eskimos, 
Mongols,  and  the  Karens  of  Further  India  which  re- 
semble what  the  Greeks  told  of  the  Symplegades,  or  of 
Kharybdis  and  Skylla,  we  must  remember  how  much 
alike  are  the  minds  of  half-civilized  men,  and  the  cir- 
cumstances amid  which  they  live.  When,  again,  we  find 
a  compact  body  of  folklore  existing  among  the  scattered 
members  of  the  Aryan  family,  and  by  its  close  agreement 
pointing  to  a  common  origin,  we  are  justified  in  holding 
that  it  must  have  grown  up  before  the  division  of  the 
Aryans,  and  been  carried  by  them  far  and  wide  into  their 
new  settlements.1  But  as  in  mythology,  so  in  folklore, 

1  For  arguments  in  favour  of  the  priority  of  nursery  tales  to 
myths,  see  A.  Lang  in  the  "  Fortnightly  Review,"  May,  1873. 


278 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


we  must  be  on  our  guard  against  assuming  that  to  b< 
native  and  original  which  is  really  borrowed.  Benfey, 
indeed,  has  gone  too  far  in  affirming  that  almost  all  the 
folklore  of  modern  Europe  has  migrated  from  India  since 
the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era,  and  the  existence  in 
the  eighth  century  of  the  romance  of  SS.  Barlaam  and 
Josaphat,  the  latter  of  whom  is  but  Buddha  in  Western 
disguise,  has  obliged  him  to  modify  his  first  theory,  which 
placed  the  introduction  of  it  as  late  as  the  tenth  century 
and  the  closer  contact  of  the  Mahommedans  with  India.1 
Some  portion  at  all  events  of  the  tale  of  Love  and 
Psyche  in  Apuleius,  which  Friedlander  has  successfully 
compared  with  modern  German  and  Hindu  tales  of  the 
same  kind,2  must  go  back  beyond  the  time  when  there 
was  any  intercourse  between  India  and  the  Mediter- 
ranean. Nevertheless,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
folklore  travels  more  easily  than  mythology,  and  that  the 
literature  of  the  nursery,  and  we  may  also  add  of  the 
monasteries,  was  largely  enriched  by  the  Crusades.  The 
"  Gesta  Romanorum  "  or  the  "  Romance  of  Dolopathos," 
translated  from  a  Latin  work  of  John  the  Monk  into 
Latin  verse  about  1225  A.D.,  will  illustrate  the  extent  to 
which  the  borrowing  went  on,  and  the  "  Decamerone  "  of 
Boccaccio,  like  the  Fables  of  La  Fontaine,  bear  on  almost 
every  page  the  stamp  of  their  eastern  origin.3  The  fables 

1  See  his  Preface  to  the  translation  of  the  "  Panchatantra"  (1859), 
pp.  xxii.  sq. 

2  "  Dissertatio  qua  fabula  Apuleiana  de  Psyche  et  Cupidine  cui 
fabulis  cognatis  comparatur,"  in  two  University  Theses  (Konigsberg, 
1860). 

3  See  Max  Muller :  "  On  the  Migration  of  Fables,"  in  "  Chip; 
from  a  German  Workshop,"  iv.  pp.  145-209. 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  279 

of  the  Hindu  Panchatantra  or  "  Pentateuch,"  a  collection 
which  owed  its  existence  in  the  first  instance  to  the 
Buddhist  teachers,  and  is  at  least  as  old  as  the  third 
century  of  our  era,  have  been  carried  not  only  into 
Europe,  but  also  into  Tibet  and  Mongolia,  among  Tatars 
and  Ugric  tribes.  The  "  Basque  Legends,"  published  by 
Webster  and  Vinson,  are  equally  for  the  most  part  im- 
portations from  abroad.  There  are  few  among  them 
which  we  cannot  recognize  in  a  more  primitive  form 
among  the  inhabitants  of  Southern  France,  the  Slavs  of 
Eastern  Europe,  or  even  the  Keltic  population  of  the 
Western  Highlands.  The  readiness  with  which  a  folk- 
lore passes  from  country  to  country,  is  a  fresh  proof  of 
the  avidity  with  which  the  mind  of  the  uninstructed  man 
seizes  upon  such  intellectual  food,  and  the  fidelity  with 
which  it  remains  stored  up  in  his  memory.  What  "  a 
good  story"  is  to  the  lounger  in  the  clubs,  a  nursery 
tale  is  to  the  untaught  peasant.  Like  "  good  stones," 
nursery  tales,  of  course,  are  modified  by  those  who 
borrow  and  repeat  them.  They  have  to  adapt  them- 
selves to  their  new  abode,  to  catch  the  colour  of  the 
scenery  and  the  life  in  the  midst  of  which  they  find 
themselves.  The  elephant  of  the  Indian  tale  becomes  a 
horse,  the  founder  of  Buddhism  a  Christian  saint. 

The  fables  of  the  Panchatantra  have  been  necessarily 
included  under  the  head  of  folklore.  But  there  are  many 
fables  which  could  not  be  so  included,  and  in  any  case  fables 
constitute  a  class  of  popular  tales  apart  by  themselves. 
It  is  only  when  the  fable  is,  so  to  speak,  unconscious, 
when  it  has  not  been  composed  with  the  deliberate  pur- 
pose of  conveying  a  lesson,  that  it  ought  strictly  to  be 


2  SO 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


regarded  as  a  part  of  folklore.  The  consciously  devised 
fable  is  a  curious  product,  which  stands  on  the  very 
threshold  of  the  literary  age,  or  else  is  the  form  of 
political  satire  most  conveniently  resorted  to  under  a 
despotic  government.  But  the  consciously-devised  fable 
is  an  aftergrowth,  an  imitation  ;  it  is  but  the  later  adap- 
tation of  an  aboriginal  species  of  popular  tale.  The  fable, 
in  fact,  differs  from  other  popular  legends  at  the  outset 
in  nothing  save  its  introduction  of  brute  beasts  as  speak- 
ing and  acting  like  men.  It  is  only  by  degrees  that  its 
didactic  usefulness  becomes  manifest,  and  it  is  made  "  to 
point  a  moral  or  adorn  a  tale."  The  most  primitive 
beast-fables,  such  as  those  of  the  Bushmen  and  the  Hot- 
tentots, rarely  have  any  more  didactic  purpose  than  an 
ordinary  myth.  Human  attributes  are  assigned  to  the 
brute  creation  for  the  same  reason  and  in  the  same  way 
that  they  are  to  the  objects  of  inanimate  nature  ;  indeed, 
no  distinction  is  drawn  in  the  South  African  fables  be- 
tween the  animals  and  the  celestial  bodies  ;  the  same 
peculiar  pronunciation  is  ascribed  alike  to  the  moon,  the 
anteater,  and  the  hare.  Elsewhere,  as  among  the  Poly- 
nesians1 and  the  Australians,2  the  heavenly  bodies  are 
turned  into  beasts,  and  the  word  Zodiac,  "  the  circle  of 
animals,"  perpetuates  the  same  confusion  of  ideas  even 
among  ourselves.  But  the  cause  of  the  confusion  is  the 
cause  which  underlies  all  mythology.  The  only  way  in 
which  primitive  man  could  account  for  the  motions  of 
the  sun  and  moon  and  stars,  was  by  endowing  them  with 

1  Gill :  "  Myths  and  Songs  from  the  South  Pacific,"  pp.  40-51. 

2  Ridley  :   "  Kdmilaroi  and  other  Australian  Languages  "  (2nd 
edition,  1875),  PP-  J4i>  J42. 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  281 

his  own  life  and  powers.  As  yet  no  distinction  was 
drawn  between  the  object  and  the  subject ;  nor  could  it 
be  until  the  mythopceic  age  had  passed  away.  Hence  it 
was  that  the  brute  animals  were  made  to  talk  and  behave 
like  man  himself,  and  the  same  tendency  which  gave  to 
the  myths  of  one  race  a  physical  character,  threw  the 
myths  of  another  race  into  the  form  of  beast-fables.  It 
is  not  a  little  curious  that  the  chief  home  of  the  beast- 
fable  should  be  Africa,  and  especially  those  backward 
tribes  of  Southern  Africa  whose  languages  contain  in 
their  clicks  the  bridge  that  marks  the  passage  of  inarticu- 
late cries  into  articulate  speech.  It  seems  as  if  the  same 
conservatism  which  has  preserved  the  animal  sounds  out 
of  which  language  was  developed,  has  preserved  also  a 
sympathy  with  the  animal  world,  a  memory  of  the  close 
ties  which  unite  us  with  it.  Professor  Mahaffy  has  sug- 
gested that  Africa,  pre-eminently  the  land  of  animal- 
worship,  was  the  first  birthplace  of  the  fable,  and  he 
reminds  us  that  the  first  literary  essays  made  by  the  Vei- 
negroes  after  Doalu's  invention  of  a  syllabary,  were  fables 
about  beasts.1  But  the  Vei-negroes  are  not  alone  in  their 
employment  of  them.  Go  where  we  will  among  the 
native  races  of  Africa  we  shall  find  the  beast-fable  occu- 
pying a  peculiar  and  almost  isolated  place.  Such  litera- 
ture as  they  possess  consists  almost  wholly  of  beast- 
fables.  Beast-fables  were  known  among  the  Egyptians 
at  least  as  early  as  the  reign  of  Ramses  III.,  and  used  by 
them  to  satirize  the  government  and  caricature  the  kings. 
But  it  is  possible  that,  like  the  clicks,  the  beast-fable 
also  radiated  from  one  source — the  race  now  known  as 
1  "Prolegomena  to  Ancient  History,"  p.  391. 


282 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


Bushmen.  It  is  among  them  that  it  exists  in  its  fullest 
and  most  original  form,  and  it  is  among  them,  too,  that 
the  art  of  drawing  animals  with  considerable  skill  has  been 
cultivated  from  time  immemorial,  as  is  evidenced  by  the 
rock  paintings  of  Southern  Africa.  Even  with  the  im- 
perfect materials  we  possess  at  present,  it  is  possible  to 
trace  the  diffusion  of  certain  fables  from  a  primitive 
Bushman  source.  Thus  the  hare  plays  much  the  same 
part  in  these  African  fables  that  the  fox  does  in  our 
European  ones,  and  fables  that  illustrate  the  superior 
cunning  of  the  hare  can  be  traced  from  the  Bari  of  Cen- 
tral Africa  l  through  Malagasy,  Swahili,  Kafir,  and  Hot- 
tentot back  to  the  Bushmen,  where  he  is  associated  with 
what  Dr.  Bleek  calls  "  a  most  unpronounceable  click," 
not  otherwise  found  in  the  language.  But  though  we 
may  regard  the  Bushmen  as  disseminators  of  the  beast- 
fable  through  the  continent  of  Africa,  it  is  impossible  to 
doubt  that  it  has  grown  up  independently  elsewhere  also. 
Thus  among  the  remains  of  the  library  of  Nineveh  are 
fragments  of  fables,  one  of  which  represents  the  conver- 
sation of  a  horse  and  an  eagle ;  and  these  fragments 
mount  back  to  the  Accadian  epoch.  The  Hindu  fables, 
again,  cannot  be  connected  with  Africa,  and  when  we 
compare  the  collection  of  the  Panchatantra  with  the 
fables  of  ^Esop,  it  becomes  probable  that  the  Aryans 
were  acquainted  with  this  class  of  fictitious  composition 
before  the  age  of  their  separation.  All  over  the  world 
indeed,  we  find  animals  endowed  with  the  language  and 

1  See  the  specimen  given  by  Mitterrutzner  :  "  Die  Sprache  der 
Bari  in  Central- Afrika,"  p.  10. 

2  "  Second  Report  concerning  Bushman  Researches"  (1875), p.  6. 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  283 

powers  of  men.  Thus  among  the  Polynesian  myths  col- 
lected by  Mr.  Gill,  we  are  told  of  a  shark  that  speaks 
and  acts  like  a  human  being,1  and  an  Australian  legend 
reported  by  Mr.  Ridley  ascribes  human  speech  and 
action  to  the  pelican  and  the  musk-duck.2  The  fable  is 
an  integral  part  of  mythology  ;  it  is  not  until  we  reach 
the  literary  age  that  it  ceases  to  be  the  spontaneous 
utterance  of  a  childlike  people  and  becomes  the  vehicle 
of  a  moral  or  a  satire.  As  we  shall  see,  there  is 
no  necessary  connection  between  totemism  and  the 
fable. 

Allegory  and  parable  are  the  products  of  an  era  of 
cultivation.  We  have  left  the  childhood  of  mankind 
behind  us  ;  we  have  passed  to  the  time  of  conscious  reflec- 
tion and  religious  or  moral  propagandism.  Artificiality  is 
the  essential  characteristic  of  both.  The  parable  is  the 
germ  of  the  romance.  It  draws  an  analogy  between  some 
truth  the  speaker  would  press  home  and  a  story  framed 
from  the  occurrences  of  simple  everyday  life.  The  allegory 
is  more  elaborate.  Its  language  is  consciously  ambiguous ; 
its  form  is  longer  than  that  of  the  parable ;  it  describes, 
not  some  simple  event  of  ordinary  life,  but  a  strange  and 
often  bizarre  history,  filled  it  may  be  with  the  marvellous 
and  the  supernatural.  Quite  different  is  the  deliberate 
fiction,  such  as  the  monk  of  the  Middle  Ages  palmed  off 
as  bygone  history.  In  the  silence  of  his  cell  he  could  not 
distinguish  between  the  real  and  the  imaginable,  and 
tissues  of  fiction  like  the  history  of  the  Trojan  kings  of 
Britain  or  the  Iberian  monarchs  of  Spain  deceived  their 

1  "  Myths  and  Songs  from  the  South  Pacific,"  p.  92. 
*  "  Kamilaroi,"  &c.,  pp.  143,  144. 


284 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


inventor  as  much  as  they  deceived  his  readers.1  But 
though  we  may  acquit  the  monkish  chroniclers  of  moral 
guilt  in  thus  forging  fictitious  history,  it  is  of  the  utmost 
importance  not  to  confound  such  curious  specimens  of 
morbid  imagination  with  the  early  myths  of  young  and 
healthy  humanity. 

Mythology  is  so  closely  bound  up  with  religion  that 
the  comparative  philologist  cannot  escape  from  the  study 
of  those  religions  and  religious  systems  which  have  their 
root  in  the  mythopceic  age.  Side  by  side  with  the  science 
of  mythology,  stands  the  new  science  of  religion  or  Dog- 
matology.  Like  the  science  of  mythology,  the  science 
of  religion  is  comparative,  comparing  the  history  and 
dogmas  of  the  various  religions  of  the  world  ;  and  like  the 
science  of  mythology,  too,  it  has  to  turn  for  help  at  almost 
every  step  to  comparative  philology.  Roughly  speaking 
the  religions  of  man  may  be  divided  into  two  broad  classes ; 
those  that  have  been  organized  into  a  system,  and  those 
that  have  not.  Those  of  the  second  class  rest  upon 
mythology,  and  the  same  key  that  has  to  be  applied  to 
mythology  has  also  to  be  applied  to  them ;  those  of  the 
first  class  are  supported  upon  sacred  books,  written  in 
sacred  and  extinct  languages,  the  meaning  of  which  has 
to  be  recovered  by  comparative  philology,  though  they, 
too,  have  for  the  most  part  a  background  of  myth.  Com- 
parative mythology  and  the  science  of  religion,  therefore, 
are  the  twin  offspring  of  the  science  of  language.  Lan- 
guage is  a  record  of  the  past  thoughts  and  yearnings  of 
society,  and  the  strongest  of  these  yearnings,  the  deepest 


1  An  account  of  many  of  these  will  be  found  in  Buckle 
•of  Civilization,"  i.  ch.  vi. 


History 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  285. 

of  these  thoughts,  are  those  which  have  to  do  with  reli- 
gion. As  we  restore  the  old  sense  and  life  of  a  myth  by 
discovering  the  first  meaning  and  import  of  its  key  words, 
so  we  can  trace  step  by  step  the  phases  through  which  a 
creed  has  passed,  and  determine  the  germs  out  of  which 
its  dogmas  have  developed,  by  ascertaining  the  exact  sig- 
nificance of  the  language  wherein  they  were  expressed. 
The  application  of  the  scientific  method  has  shown  that 
the  Rig- Veda  knows  nothing  of  a  priestly  hierarchy,  of  a 
system  of  caste,  of  the  burning  of  widows,  and  that  the 
introduction  of  all  these  things  was  the  slow  work  of  later 
centuries.  We  have  only  to  examine  the  language  in 
which  a  dogma  of  the  Christian  Church  has  been  embodied 
at  different  periods,  and  ascertain  its  exact  meaning  to 
those  who  employed  it,  to  see  how  strangely  it  has 
changed  and  shifted,  how  continuous  has  been  that 
"Development  of  Christian  Doctrine,"  which  Dr.  Newman 
has  described.  What  misery  and  hatred  would  have  been 
avoided  had  men  known  how  vague  and  shifting  were  the 
words  and  phrases  over  which  they  fought,  how  coloured 
by  the  ages  through  which  they  passed  and  the  know- 
ledge of  the  men  who  used  them  !  It  is  with  this  outward 
shell,  this  external  form  of  religion  that  its  scientific 
student  is  concerned  ;  with  "  the  letter  that  killeth,"  not 
with  "  the  spirit  that  giveth  life."  Questions  of  orthodoxy 
and  heresy,  of  the  truth  or  falsity  of  particular  religions, 
must  be  handed  over  to  the  theologian.  That  intuition 
of  the  Divine,  whether  we  call  it  the  religious  instinct, 
the  sense  of  the  Infinite,  or  the  grace  of  God,  which  is  the 
soul,  the  life  and  the  preserver  of  all  real  religion,  nay, 
of  all  real  mythology  also,  lies  outside  the  sphere  of  the 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


science  of  religion.    The  object  of  the  latter  is  to  compare 
and  classify  the  faiths  of  the  human  race,  to  trace  their 
growth  collectively  and  severally,  to  analyse  the  changes 
they  have  undergone  and  the  shapes  they  have  assumed, 
and  to  restore  the  first  sense  and  meaning  to  their  sacred 
books.     The  work  is  a  vast  one,  and  it  will  need  the 
labour  of  many  minds  and  many  years  before  it  can  be 
completed.     But  already  something  has  been  done.     We 
are  even  now  beginning  to  see  that  there  is  no  faith, 
however  degraded,  which  does  not  contain  some  ray  of 
light  and  truth ;  no  creed,  however  pure  and  exalted,  which 
has  not  passed  through  many  phases  of  existence,  and 
gathered  to  itself  additions  of  which  it  may  well  be  rid. 
A  religion,  even  if  revealed,  must  be  communicated  to 
man,  and  handed  down  through  human  channels  ;  its 
outward  form,  therefore,  will  be  shaped  and  moulded  by 
the  changing  years,  and  be  subject  to  all  the  conditions 
of  growth  and  decay.     It  will  be  conformed  not  only  t© 
the  necessities  of  time  and  place,  but  also  to  the  character 
and  instincts  of  the  races  by  whom  it  is  professed.     The 
Christianity  of  the   Negro  is  not,   and  cannot  be,  the 
same  as  the  Christianity  of  the  Englishman,  so  far  as  its 
outward  form  and  fashion  is  concerned,  and  the  various 
shapes  assumed  by  Christianity  in  different  ages  and  in 
different  countries,  are  not  more  remarkable,  more  seem- 
ingly  incongruous,   than    the   various   shapes   similarly 
assumed  by  Buddhism.     All  organized  religions  have  a 
history,  and  that  history  is  written  in  the  languages  they 
have  used. 

But  an  organized  religion,  like  an  organized  State,  is  a 
late  product,  an  outward  sign  and  symbol  of  advanced 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  287 

civilization  and  literary  culture.  It  presupposes  long  ages 
of  previous  preparation,  beliefs  and  prejudices,  ideas  and 
imaginings,  which  are  worked  upon  by  the  founder  or  the 
founders  of  the  new  creed.  Buddhism  was  but  a  reaction 
against  the  tyranny  of  the  Brahmanic  priesthood,  whose 
first  principles  and  philosophy  it  accepted,  and  the  dualism 
of  the  Zend  Avesta  can  be  traced  back  to  the  concep- 
tions which  lie  latent  in  the  Rig-Veda  of  India.  What 
Buddhism  is  to  Brahmanism,  Christianity  may  in  one 
sense  be  said  to  be  to  Judaism,  and  just  as  the  tenets  of 
early  Christianity  have  been  ascribed  to  Essenes,  so  Mr. 
Thomas  would  now  ascribe  the  tenets  of  early  Buddhism 
to  Jains.  Nor  does  the  parallel  end  here  :  Buddhism 
started  with  being  an  Aryan  religion,  and  has  ended  with 
being  extirpated  from  its  birthplace  and  becoming  the 
faith  of  non- Aryan  races,  just  as  Jewish  Christianity  was 
merged  in  Gentile  Christianity  and  driven  from  its  first 
home  in  Palestine.  The  great  council  which  settled  the 
creed  of  Buddhism  was  convened  by  A'soka,  the  first 
royal  convert,  about  three  centuries  after  the  Buddha's 
death,  as  the  Council  of  Nikaea,  which  drew  up  the 
Nicene  Creed,  was  summoned  by  Constantine  in 
A.D.  325.  The  sublime  morality  and  simple  life  and 
teaching  of  the  first  Buddhist  missionaries  are  not  more 
widely  separated  from  the  elaborate  ritual,  the  worship  of 
saints  and  relics,  the  praying-machines  and  rosaries,  the 
priestly  hierarchy,  and  the  Lama-Pope  of  the  modern 
faith,  than  are  the  precepts  and  history  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment from  the  constitution  and  practices  of  the  Latin 
Church.  And  as  Zoroastrianism  was  a  protest  against 
the  Polytheism  of  the  Veda,  so  did  Mahommedanism  pro- 


288 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


fess  to  be  a  protest  against  the  Christian  idolatry  of  the 
sixth  century.  Indeed,  there  is  much  in  common  between 
these  two  great  Puritan  religions  of  the  Aryan  and 
Semitic  world. 

The  variety  and  many-sidedness  of  the  religions  which 
are  not  yet  organized  might  seem  to  defy  classification 
and  record.  Even  here,  however,  it  is  possible  to  bring 
order  and  arrangement  into  the  apparent  chaos,  and  to 
sketch  in  broad  outline  the  development  of  religion  and 
the  religious  consciousness.  Man  shares  with  the  animals 
the  instinct  of  imitation  and  conservatism  ;  and  in  the 
most  developed  forms  of  faith  we  may  often  detect  sur- 
vivals which  go  back  to  a  remote  past.  Some  phase  of 
religious  thought  through  which  a  people  may  have 
passed  millenniums  ago,  may  be  fossilized  in  words  and 
phrases,  the  key  to  the  original  meaning  of  which  is  fur- 
nished by  comparative  philology.  Few  of  us  when  we 
speak  of  Deity  think  that  the  word  bears  witness  to  a 
time  when  our  forefathers  looked  up  to  the  "bright 
heaven  "  as  the  source  and  giver  of  all  good  things,  and 
the  Welsh  crefydd,  "  religion,"  the  Irish  craibhdhigh, 
"people  who  mortify  the  flesh,"  when  compared  with 
'sram,  "to  chastise  oneself,"  and  'srdnta,  "asceticism," 
point  to  the  practice  of  self-inflicted  penance.1 

The  existence  in  any  religion  of  beliefs,  practices,  or 
customs  which  are  no  longer  in  harmony  with  the  religion 
itself  is  as  clear  a  proof  of  their  having  preceded  that 
religion  as  are  the  names  we  give  to  the  days  of  the  week 
of  the  gods  worshipped  by  our  heathen  ancestors.  If  we 
find  ancestor-worship  or  fetishism  prevailing  among  a 

1  Rhys  :  "  Lectures  on  Welsh  Philology,"  pp.  14,  15  (ist  edition). 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  289 

people,  we  may  assume  that  ancestor-worship  or  fetishism 
are  stages  of  religious  thought  in  the  past  history  of  the 
people.  Now,  a  comparison  of  the  various  religious 
beliefs  and  customs  of  mankind  shows  that  there  are  no 
less  than  six  forms  in  which  the  religious  consciousness 
of  man  has  endeavoured  to  embody  itself  before  the  rise 
of  organized  religions,  or  the  conception  of  the  Unity  of 
God.  These  are  ancestor-worship,  fetishism,  totemism, 
shamanism,  henotheism,  and  polytheism.  If  these  six 
forms  can  be  proved  to  have  been  successive  stages  of 
growth,  or  if  a  relation  can  be  pointed  out  between  them, 
we  shall  have  gone  far  towards  sketching  the  history  and 
development  of  unrevealed  religion.  But  as  yet  our 
materials  are  too  scanty  and  imperfect  for  such  a  work, 
and  though  attempts  have  been  made  from  time  to  time 
to  accomplish  it,  they  are  all  more  or  less  open  to  criti- 
cism. The  theory  that  fetishism  is  the  first  in  the  chain 
of  development  started  by  De  Brosses  in  the  last  century 
has  been  rudely  shaken  by  Prof.  Max  Miiller,1  and  can 
never  again  be  maintained  in  its  old  form.  The  fetish,  so 
called  from  the  Portuguese  feitiqo,  "an  amulet,"  the  Latin 
factitius,  implies  a  belief  in  the  divine  or  the  superhuman, 
and  hence  to  regard  fetishism  as  the  starting-point  of 
religion  is  like  making  the  husk  of  a  seed,  and  not  the 
kernel  within,  the  primal  germ  of  a  tree.  Nevertheless 
the  nature  of  fetishism,  coupled  with  the  fact  that  its  pre- 
sence always  marks  a  degraded  condition  of  mind  and 
religion,  tends  to  show  that  it  belongs  to  the  childhood  of 
religious  thought.  The  Christianity  of  modern  Spain  may 
be  disfigured  by  fetish-worship,  but  that  is  because  the 

1  "  Hibbert  Lectures,"  ii.  (1878). 
II.  U 


290 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


religious  and  mental  state  of  the  fetish-worshippers  n 
presents  that  of  the  first  men. 

Ancestor-worship  would  seem  to  be  the  first  form  in 
which  the  religious  instinct  struggled  to  clothe  itself.  The 
State  came  before  the  individual,  the  tribe  before  the 
State,  and  the  family  before  the  tribe.  The  individual 
had  no  existence  as  such  apart  from  the  family  or  clan 
to  which  he  belonged.  His  religion  in  its  outward  form 
was  made  up  of  rites  and  ceremonies  which  could  only  be 
performed  collectively,  and  it  is  a  curious  proof  of  the 
deep-rootedness  and  antiquity  of  this  belief  that  it  lingered 
on  into  the  historic  age  of  Greece  and  Rome.  Each 
member  of  a  family,  like  the  bee  in  a  hive,  was  but  part  of 
a  single  whole,  and  in  its  relations  to  every  one  and  every- 
thing outside  the  family,  that  whole  alone  could  originate 
and  act.  But  the  family  consisted  of  the  dead  as  well  as 
of  the  living.  The  savage  could,  and  can,  draw  no  clear 
distinction  between  his  waking  realities  and  the  images 
of  his  dreams.  Like  children,  the  first  men  wondered 
whether  they  slept  or  wakened,  and  the  unpractised 
memory  could  give  them  no  reply.  The  figures  of  dream- 
land were  to  it  as  real  and  vivid  as  the  events  of  the  day 
before.  And  in  his  dreams  the  dead  appeared  to  the 
sleeper  once  more  living  and  clothed  in  corporeal  form. 
There  was  but  one  explanation  of  the  fact  which  could 
suggest  itself  to  him.  Man  had  two  lives,  one  hi  the 
world  of  lights  and  shadows,  the  other  in  a  world  which 
we  should  name  the  spiritual. 

The  conception  of  this  reflected  life  once  obtained,  it 
was  not  difficult  to  find  traces  of  it  even  in  the  world  of 
objects  itself.  The  voluntary  or  involuntary  fasts  of  the 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  291 

savage  produced  visions  indistinguishable  from  the  dreams 
of  night,  while  the  shadows  thrown  by  the  things  about 
him  were  so  many  immaterial  second  "  selfs."  The  con- 
ception of  a  continued,  superhuman  life  enjoyed  by  dead 
ancestors  combined  with  these  to  create  the  conception 
of  spirits  or  ghosts ;  and  with  this  new  conception 
the  religious  instinct  took  a  new  departure.  The  dream 
or  waking  vision  had  portrayed  the  disembodied  ances- 
tor sometimes  as  a  friend,  sometimes  as  an  enemy, 
sometimes  bringing  benefit  and  blessing,  sometimes 
disease  and  pain ;  and  the  human  passions  thus  reflected 
in  him  were  now  transferred  to  the  new  conception  of 
ghost  or  spirit.  But  just  as  every  object  has  its  shadow, 
so,  too,  the  spirit  may  take  up  its  abode  in  animals  and 
material  things.  The  Hurons  of  North  America  believe 
that  the  souls  of  the  departed  turn  into  turtle-doves  ;  the 
Zulus  see  the  spirits  of  their  ancestors  in  certain  green 
and  brown  harmless  snakes,  and  accordingly  offer  them 
sacrifices.  The  worship  of  ancestors  passes  by  insensible 
degrees  into  the  worship  of  animals  and  trees.  And  pre- 
eminently among  animals,  the  serpent,  the  most  subtle 
of  all  the  beasts  of  the  field,  attracted  the  fear  and  the 
adoration  of  man.  The  crawling  serpent,  the  solitary 
occupant  of  tombs  and  empty  houses,  seemed  the  natural 
habitation  the  dead  had  chosen  for  himself,  and  the  Py- 
thagorean saying  that  the  human  marrow  after  death  is 
changed  into  a  snake,  is  but  a  later  form  of  the  old  idea. 
The  terror  inspired  by  this  venomous  foe  of  man  was 
another  potent  cause  that  brought  about  the  wide  pre- 
valence of  serpent-worship. 

For  necessity  is  the  mother  not  of  invention  merely, 


292 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


but  also  of  religious  ceremonies.  We  have  already  seen 
how  the  character  of  a  mythology  is  the  work  of  the 
daily  needs  of  man  ;  and  it  was  the  same  daily  needs  that 
were  the  source  of  his  earliest  adoration  and  prayer.  It 
was  for  the  sake  of  earthly  good  and  success,  or  to  avert 
a  threatened  evil,  that  his  offerings  were  spread  to  the 
manes  of  the  dead  and  the  spirits  that  moved  about  him. 
The  angry  ghost  he  had  seen  in  his  dreams,  or  whose 
gnawings  he  felt  in  his  aching  tooth,  had  to  be  propitiated 
and  appeased.  "  The  Redskin,"  says  Carver,1  "lives  in 
continual  apprehension  of  the  unkind  attacks  of  spirits, 
and  to  avert  them  has  recourse  to  charms,  to  the  fantastic 
ceremonies  of  his  priest,  or  the  powerful  influence  of  his 
manitous.  Fear  has  of  course  a  greater  share  in  his 
devotions  than  gratitude,  and  he  pays  more  attention  to 
deprecating  the  wrath  of  the  evil,  than  securing  the  favour 
of  the  good  beings."  Fear  of  pain  and  the  desire  of  food 
were  the  two  main  motives  that  drove  men  to  the  practice 
of  religion,  and  the  sense  of  their  dependence  on  a  power 
beyond  themselves. 

Out  of  ancestor- worship  would  grow  fetishism  as  soon, 
as  the  conception  of  an  indwelling  spirit  in  material 
objects  had  been  formed  and  the  idea  of  worship  been 
associated  with  the  desire  of  satisfying  man's  daily  wants, 
or  warding  off  sickness  and  other  ills.  Fetishism  is  a 
worship  of  stocks  and  stones  ;  the  inanimate  objects 
which  minister  to  human  needs  are  invested  with  a  tran- 
si-ent  divinity,  and  adoration  is  paid  to  them  so  long  as 
they  excite  terror  or  satisfy  desire.  The  spiritual  is 
localized  in  the  bow,  the  spear,  or  the  fruit-tree  ;  but  it  is 

1  "  Travels,"  p.  388. 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  293 

localized  only  so  long  as  these  objects  are  of  use  to  the 
worshipper.  An  amulet  loses  all  its  virtue  as  soon  as 
the  owner  believes  that  it  will  no  longer  shield  him  from 
harm  ;  the  Indians  of  Columbia  beat  their  idols  when 
any  one  is  ill,  "  and  the  first  which  loses  a  tooth  or  claw 
is  supposed  to  be  the  culprit."1  Like  the  Palladium  of 
Troy,  the  Bam/W  or  Beth-els  of  the  Semite,  or  the  Ephe- 
sian  "  stone  which  fell  down  from  heaven,"  the  wand  of 
Hermes,  the  arrows  of  Apollo,  and  the  other  symbols  of 
the  Greek  divinities  are  but  the  survivals  of  a  primitive 
fetishism. 

In  Shamanism,  so  called  from  the  Shaman  or  Siberian 
sorcerer,  who  is  himself  but  a  transformed  'srdmana,  or 
Buddhist  missionary  priest,  we  rise  to  a  higher  concep- 
tion of  religion.  All  the  objects  and  forces  of  nature  have 
alike  their  indwelling  spirit,  who  is  no  longer  the  tran- 
sient creation  of  self-interested  superstition,  but  represents 
the  permanent  substance,  "the  thing-in-itself  "  of  German 
philosophers,  believed  to  reside  in  things  and  produce  their 
phenomena.  It  is  no  longer  in  the  power  of  man  to  make 
and  destroy  his  deity  ;  the  innumerable  spirits  by  whom 
he  is  surrounded  have  a  world  of  their  own,  and  can  only 
be  approached  by  a  special  class  of  persons  who  stand 
between  them  and  the  rest  of  mankind.  But  these  spirits 
are,  after  all,  the  mere  reflections  of  the  objects  and  forces 
to  which  they  belong,  and  like  the  objects  and  forces  of 
nature  are  either  beneficial  or  harmful  to  man.  The 
work,  therefore,  of  the  Shaman,  or  Angekok,  as  he  is 
termed  in  Greenland,  is  to  neutralize  the  action  of  the 

1  Dunn  :  "  Oregon,"  p.  125,  quoted  by  Lubbock  :  "  On  the  Origin 
of  Civilization"  (ist  edition),  p.  246. 


294 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


evil  spirits  and  to  compel  the  action  of  the  good  spirits  by 
various  incantations  and  magic  ceremonies.  Of  course 
the  same  spirit  may  be  at  different  times  mischievous  and 
beneficial,  like  the  object  or  phenomenon  it  represents, 
and  the  Shaman  can  not  only  avert  evil  from  one  man, 
but  bring  it  down  upon  the  head  of  another.  Shamanism 
is  the  form  specially  assumed  by  the  religious  instinct 
among  the  tribes  of  the  Ural-Altaic  family,  and  even  the 
cultivated  Accadian  of  ancient  Chaldea  continued  to  be 
under  its  influence  long  after  the  development  of  a  con- 
siderable civilization. 

Quite  distinct  from  shamanism  is  totemism,  which 
bears  the  same  relation  to  the  Indians  of  North  America 
that  shamanism  does  to  the  nations  of  the  Ural-Altaic 
stock.  The  totem,  which  is  generally  an  animal,  is  the 
symbol  or  badge  of  a  tribe,  and,  consequently,  the  object 
of  worship  to  every  member  of  that  tribe.  Totemism  is 
therefore  tribal ;  it  is  defined  by  Sir  John  Lubbock  as 
"  the  deification  of  classes,"  which  correspond  to  the  tribes 
they  symbolize  and  protect.  The  same  sort  of  rational- 
istic explanation  has  been  given  of  totemism  as  was 
given  of  mythology  in  the  last  century.  It  has  been 
said  that  the  totem  was  originally  the  name  of  some 
animal  applied  to  an  individual  from  his  supposed  resem- 
blance to  it ;  the  name  then  became  the  surname  of  his 
descendants,  while  the  animal  it  denoted  was  invested 
with  a  sacred  character.  But  such  an  explanation  forgets 
that  the  individual  does  not  precede  but  follow  the  family 
and  the  tribe ;  it  is  only  at  a  later  time  that  the  indivi- 
dual founds  a  family  and  hands  on  his  name  to  those  that 
come  after  him.  The  eponymous  heroes  of  antiquity  are 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  295 

the  creations  of  a  systematizing  mythology.  It  is  simpler 
to  trace  totemism  to  that  embodiment  of  the  dead  ances- 
tor's spirit  in  some  living  animal  of  which  we  spoke 
above.  Here,  perhaps,  we  may  see  the  germ  out  of 
which  it  grew.  There  is,  however,  a  close  connection 
between  totemism  and  mythology.  The  tribal  age  is 
also  the  epithetic  age  of  language,  the  age  when  epithets 
are  coined  and  handed  down  to  future  generations.  It 
was  only  needful  for  the  objects  of  tribal  worship  to  be 
compared  to  animals  for  the  animals  first  to  be  substi- 
tuted for  them,  and  then  to  be  worshipped  in  their  stead. 
Dr.  Brinton1  tells  us  of  Michabo,  "the  Great  Hare,"  from 
whom  the  various  branches  of  the  Algonkin  family,  from 
Virginia  and  Delaware  to  the  Ottawas  of  the  North,  traced 
their  descent.  But  Michabo  was  really  a  solar  hero,  like 
Quetzalcoatl  of  Mexico  or  Huayna  Capac  of  Peru.  His 
home  was  on  the  marge  of  the  east,  whence  he  sent  forth 
the  lights  of  heaven  on  their  daily  journey,  and  his  iden- 
tification with  the  hare  was  simply  due  to  the  ambiguity 
of  the  word  ivabos,  which  enters  into  the  composition  of 
his  name,  and  properly  means  "  white,"  and  thence  on 
the  one  side  "  morning,"  "  east,"  "  day  "  and  "  light,"  and 
on  the  other  side  "  the  hare."  But  the  adoration  which 
was  intended  for  "  the  great  light "  of  sun  and  day  would 
never  have  been  extended  to  "  the  Great  Hare,"  had  not 
the  way  been  prepared  by  an  earlier  cult  of  animals  and 
the  old  belief  in  their  embodying  the  souls  of  the  dead. 

It  is,  however,  with  polytheism,  and  what  Professor 
Max  Miiller  has  christened  henotheism,  that  mythology 
stands    in    the    most    intimate    relation.      Polytheism 
1  "  Myths  of  the  New  World,"  pp.  161,  sq. 


296 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE, 


and  henotheism  are  but  two  phases  of  the  same 
form  of  religious  faith,  the  two  sides,  as  it  were, 
of  the  same  prism.  It  matters  little  whether  a  mul- 
titude of  gods  are  worshipped  together,  or  whether 
the  worshipper  addresses  but  one  of  them  at  the  time, 
making  him  for  the  moment  the  supreme  and  single  ob- 
ject of  his  religious  reverence.  In  either  case  we  have  a 
plurality  of  deities,  confessed  explicitly  in  polytheism, 
implied  in  henotheism.  And  these  deities  are  necessarily 
suggested  by  nature  :  the  variety  of  nature  overpowers 
in  an  infantile  state  of  society  the  unity  for  which  the 
mind  of  man  is  ever  yearning.  Gradually,  however,  the 
attributes  applied  to  the  objects  and  powers  of  nature 
take  the  place  of  the  latter ;  the  sun  becomes  Apollo, 
the  storm  Ares.  Deities  are  multiplied  with  the  multi- 
plication of  the  epithets  which  the  mythopceic  age 
changes  into  divinities  and  demi-gods,  and  side  by  side 
with  a  developed  mythology  goes  a  developed  pantheon. 
The  polytheism  which  the  infinite  variety  of  nature  made 
inevitable  continues  long  after  the  nature-worship  that 
underlay  it  has  grown  faint  and  forgotten.  A  time  at 
last  comes  when  even  abstract  names  have  to  submit  to 
the  common  process  ;  temples  are  raised  to  Terror  and 
Fear,  to  Love  and  Reverence ;  and  the  doom  of  the  old 
polytheism  of  nature  is  at  hand.  When  once  the  spirit 
of  divinity  has  been  breathed  into  abstractions  of  the 
human  mind,  it  cannot  be  long  before  their  essential 
unity  is  recognized,  and  they  are  all  summed  up  under 
the  one  higher  abstraction  of  monotheism. 

But  the  gods  have  first  been  clothed  with  human  form. 
The  worship  of  man,  with  all  his  crimes  and  meanness, 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  297 

by  his  brother-man,  is  impossible  so  long  as  the  element 
of  divinity  is  not  abstracted  from  the  original  object  of 
worship.  But  as  soon  as  polytheism  makes  it  possible 
to  dissociate  the  god  from  the  image  and  symbol  that 
enshrine  or  represent  him,  there  arises  the  cult  of  man 
himself,  the  apex  and  crown  of  created  nature.  The 
human  attributes  with  which  the  gods  have  been  en- 
dowed assume  concrete  shape  ;  Vishnu  is  provided  with 
arms  and  legs,  Merodach  with  the  form  of  an  armed 
warrior.  At  first  idealized  humanity  is  supra-human 
humanity  as  displayed  in  Titanic  strength  or  superna- 
tural wisdom  ;  it  is  only  in  the  hands  of  the  Greek  artist 
that  it  becomes  idealized  human  beauty.  As  the  doctrine 
of  force  is  older  than  the  doctrine  of  art,  the  ascription  of 
the  attributes  of  strength,  of  swiftness  or  of  wisdom  to 
the  divine  is  older  than  the  ascription  of  beauty.  Philip 
of  Krotona  was  deified  by  the  Greeks  of  Egesta  because 
of  his  beauty;1  elsewhere  it  has  been  other  qualities 
that  have  gained  for  men  apotheosis  or  saintship. 

In  bringing  the  gods  down  to  earth  in  the  likeness  of 
men  it  was  inevitable  that  the  men  should  in  turn  be 
raised  up  to  heaven  in  the  likeness  of  gods.  Anthropo- 
morphic polytheism  is  almost  invariably  accompanied  by 
the  deification  of  men.  The  relics  of  ancestor-worship 
that  still  survived  would  at  first  cause  the  deification  to 
take  place  after  death,  and  it  is  curious  to  find  in  the 
practice  of  the  Roman  Church  the  same  echo  of  the 
influence  once  exercised  by  the  worship  of  the  Manes  as 
in  the  superstition  that  forbids  us  to  "  speak  evil  of  the 
dead."  But  in  course  of  time  the  apotheosis  took  place 

1  Ht.  v.  47. 


298 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


during  a  man's  life.  As  might  have  been  expected,  this 
first  occurs  in  the  case  of  the  Chaldean  and  Egyptian 
monarchs  who  lived  apart  from  the  mass  of  their  sub- 
jects, and  were  to  them  like  invisible  and  beneficent 
gods.  The  apotheosis  of  the  Roman  Emperors  was  due 
to  a  variety  of  mixed  causes,  and  rested  primarily  on  the 
fact  that  each  was  supposed  to  represent  the  unity  and 
omnipotence  of  the  State.  As  Mr.  Lyall  has  pointed  out 
in  an  interesting  article,  we  can  still  watch  the  process  of 
deification  among  certain  of  our  Indian  fellow-subjects.1 
Not  long  ago,  for  instance,  the  Bunjaras  turned  General 
Nicholson  into  a  new  god,  to  be  added  to  the  many- 
existing  soldier-divinities  at  whose  tombs  sacrifices  and 
worship  were  regularly  offered.  It  is  clear  that  deifica- 
tion cannot  be  without  influence  upon  the  mythology  in 
the  midst  of  which  it  is  found.  Deified  heroes  and  their 
deeds  will  become  blended  with  the  heroes  and  deeds  of 
myth  ;  and  the  natural  course  of  a  myth  may  thus  be 
interrupted  and  turned  aside.  The  same  disturbing  con- 
sequences that  accompany  the  localization  of  an  ancient 
myth,  and  its  attachment  to  a  figure  of  history,  will  ac- 
company its  intermixture  with  the  name  and  adventures 
of  a  deified  English  general  or  a  canonized  Christian 
saint. 

Like  the  Zeus  of  its  poets,  polytheism  gives  birth  t 
its  own  destroyer.     The  further  it  is  removed  from  its 
original  basis  in  outward  nature,  the  more  spiritualized 
and  reflective  it  becomes,  the  more  does  it  tend  to  pan- 
theism on  the  one  side  and  monotheism  on  the  other. 

1  "  Religion  of  an  Indian  Province,"  in  the  "  Fortnightly  Review," 
xi.  pp.  121-40  (1872). 


COMPARATIVE  MYTHOLOGY.  299 

Its  deities  cease  to  be  more  than  mere  abstractions,  and 
these  abstractions  are  soon  resolved  into  a  higher  unity. 
Already  in  the  days  of  the  Accadian  monarchy  the 
religious  hymns  of  Chaldea  speak  of  "  the  One  God,"  : 
and  even  before  them  the  Egyptian  priests  had  been 
busy  in  proving  that  the  manifold  gods  of  the  people 
were  but  manifestations  of  one  and  the  same  Divine 
Essence.  Xenophanes  asserts  that  "  God  is  one,  greatest 
among  gods  and  men,  in  no  wise  like  unto  men  in  form 
or  thought,"  and  the  language  of  ^Eschylus  is  full  of  the 
same  faith.2  With  Aristotle  the  Divine  becomes  vow$ 
voYi<reu;,  thought  thinking  upon  itself,  that  Impersonal 
Reason  which  Averrhoes  essayed  to  harmonize  with  the 
clearly-cut,  sharply-defined  God  of  Mahommed.  As  the 
generations  pass,  our  conception  of  the  Godhead  becomes 
more  abstract,  more  worthy';  and  though  we  may  not 
acquiesce  in  the  definition  of  the  modern  writer  who 
declares  it  to  be  "  that  stream  of  destiny  whereby  things 
fulfil  the  law  of  their  being,"  we  may  yet  learn  from  the 
science  of  religion  and  the  study  of  comparative  philology 
what  strangely  different  meanings  men  have  read  into 
the  terms  they  use  to  express  the  centre  of  their  highest 
hope  and  faith,  and  how,  stage  by  stage,  their  thoughts 
"  have  widened  with  the  process  of  the  suns." 

1  W.  A.  I.  iv.  1 6,  i,  7,  8. 

2  Compare   "Prom.  Vinct."   49,   50;   "Ag."   160-78;   "  Suppl." 

574- 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE,  AND  THE  RELATION  OF 
THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE  TO  ETHNOLOGY, 
LOGIC,  AND  EDUCATION. 

"  Der  Mensch  ist  nur  Mensch  durch  Sprache  ;  urn  aber  die 
Sprache  zu  erfinden,  miisste  er  schon  Mensch  sein." — W.  von 
Humboldt. 

"  One  might  be  tempted  to  call  language  a  kind  of  Picture  of  the 
Universe,  where  the  words  are  as  the  figures  and  images  of  all  par- 
ticulars."— Harris  ("Hermes,"  p.  330). 

"  Es  ist  ein  Factum  der  Monumente,  dass  die  Sprachen  im  unge- 
bildeten  Zustande  der  Volker,  die  sie  gesprochen,  hochst  ausgebildet 
geworden  sind,  dass  der  Verstand  sich  sinnvoll  entwickelnd  aus- 
fiihrlich  in  diesen  theoretischen  Boden  geworfen  hatte." — Hegel. 

"  Das  Leben  eines  Volks  bringt  eine  Frucht  zur  Reife ;  denn 
seine  Thatigkeit  geht  dahin,  sein  Princip  zu  vollfiihren." — Hegel. 

To  understand  a  thing  aright  we  must  know  its  origin  and 
its  history.  Thanks  to  the  comparative  method  of  science, 
we  can  now  trace  with  tolerable  fulness  the  history  and 
life  of  language  ;  will  the  same  method  enable  us  to  dis- 
cover its  origin  also  ?  Can  we  follow  language  up  to  its 
first  source,  and  set  before  us  the  processes  whereby  man 
acquired  the  power  of  articulate  speech  ?  No  single 
science,  indeed,  can  reveal  the  origin  of  the  facts  and 
phaenomena  upon  which  it  is  based  ;  these  it  has  to  take 
for  granted  and  content  itself  with  discovering  the  rela- 
tions they  bear  one  to  another,  the  laws  which  govern 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  301 

them,  the  transformations  which  they  undergo.  But  the 
single  sciences  are  subordinated  one  to  the  other,  and  it  is 
the  province  of  one  to  explain  the  origin  of  the  facts  from 
which  another  has  to  start.  Comparative  philology  may 
be  powerless  of  itself  to  dispel  the  mystery  which 
envelops  the  first  beginnings  of  articulate  speech ;  with 
the  aid  of  the  master-science  of  anthropology,  however, 
the  mystery  ceases  to  be  insoluble,  and  the  origin  and- 
exercise  of  the  faculty  of  speech  become  as  little  mys- 
terious as  the  origin  and  exercise  of  the  other  facul- 
ties of  civilized  man. 

We  have  already  reviewed  in  the  first  chapter  the 
various  attempts  that  have  been  made  in  ancient  and 
modern  times  to  solve  the  riddle  of  language,  and  have 
seen  how  each  fresh  attempt  has  advanced  the  solution 
in  a  greater  or  less  degree.  False  explanations  have  been 
gradually  eliminated,  approximately  true  ones  have  been 
corrected  and  defined.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  no  single 
key  will  suffice  to  turn  the  lock ;  language  is  the  product 
not  of  one  cause,  but  of  a  combination  of  several.  Gram- 
mar has  grown  out  of  gesture  and  gesticulation,  words 
out  of  the  imitation  of  natural  sounds  and  the  inarticulate 
cries  uttered  by  men  engaged  in  a  common  work,  or 
else  moved  by  common  emotions  of  pleasure  and  pain. 
Language,  in  fact,  is  a  social  creation ;  we  may  term  it 
if  we  like,  a  human  invention,  but  we  must  remember  that 
it  is  no  deliberate  invention  of  an  individual  genius,  but 
the  unconscious  invention  of  a  whole  community.  It  is, 
as  Professor  Whitney  has  observed,  as  much  an  institu- 
tion as  is  a  body  of  unwritten  laws  ;  and  like  these  it  has 
been  called  forth  by  the  needs  of  developing  society. 


302 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


Nowhere  has  the  old  proverb  that  "  Necessity  is  th 
mother  of  invention  "  received  a  better  illustration  than  in 
the  history  of  speech  ;  it  was  to  satisfy  the  wants  of  daily 
life  that  the  faculty  of  speech  was  first  exercised,  and  the 
cries  which  were  as  natural  to  man  as  songs  to  birds, 
first  adapted  to  the  expression  of  articulate  language. 
The  clicks  of  the  Bushman  still  survive  to  show  us  how 
the  utterances  of  speechless  man  could  be  made  to  embody 
and  convey  thought.  And  the  same  process  that  slowly 
transformed  the  beast-like  cries  of  our  earliest  ancestors 
into  articulate  sounds,  slowly  transformed  the  vague  and 
embryonic  thought  enshrined  in  them  into  grammatical 
sentences.  Like  the  beehive  community  to  which  modern 
research  refers  the  first  beginnings  of  society,  the  first 
essays  at  language  were  undifferentiated  units,  out  of 
which  the  various  parts  of  the  sentence  were  eventually 
to  come.  The  whole  precedes  its  parts  historically,  if  not 
logically,  and  it  was  only  by  setting  sentence-word  against 
sentence-word  that  the  relations  of  grammar  were  deter- 
mined, and  means  found  in  the  existing  material  of  speech 
for  expressing  them. 

But  in  speaking  of  the  origin  of  language  we  must  be 
careful  to  distinguish  between  the  origin  of  the  faculty  of 
speech  and  the  origin  of  the  exercise  of  it.  So  far  as  the 
origin  of  the  exercise  of  it  is  concerned,  it  is  not  more 
difficult  to  explain  than  the  origin  of  the  exercise  of  our 
faculty  of  locomotion.  We  walk  because  we  have  the 
muscular  power  to  do  so,  and  this  power  must  be  exer- 
cised if  we  would  satisfy  our  healthy  desire  to  move  the 
limbs  and  would  supply  the  needs  of  our  daily  existence. 
The  question  as  to  origin  of  the  faculty  of  speech  falls 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  303 

under  the  province  of  biology,  and  M.  Broca  speaking  in 
the  name  of  biology  has  endeavoured  to  answer  it.1 
Whether  the  endeavour  has  been  successful  must  be 
decided  by  future  observation  and  experiment. 

According  to  his  researches  the  faculty  of  speech  is 
localized  in  "  a  very  circumscribed  portion  of  the  [two] 
cerebral  hemispheres,  and  more  especially  of  the  left." 
These  hemispheres,  into  which  the  brain  or  cerebrum  is 
divided,  are  distinguished  on  their  under  side  into  three 
lobes — the  posterior,  overlapping  the  cerebellum,  on  which 
the  cerebrum  partly  rests,  the  middle,  and  the  anterior, 
the  two  latter  being  separated  from  one  another  by  the 
Sylvian  fissure.     Below  this  fissure  is  a  triangular  pro- 
tuberance called  the  island  of  Reil,  marked  by  small,  short 
convolutions  or  gyri  operti,  which  are  among  the  first  to 
be  developed,  and  are  surrounded  by  a  large  convolution 
forming  the  lips  of  the  Sylvian  fissure.     It  is  on  the 
upper  edge  of  the    Sylvian   fissure,   and   opposite  the 
island  of  Reil,  that  M.  Broca  places  the  seat  of  the  faculty 
of  speech  in  the  posterior  half  of  the  third  frontal  con- 
volutions of  the  right  or  left  hemispheres.     Aphasia,  he 
finds,  is  invariably  accompanied  by  lesion  or  disease  of 
this  portion  of  the  brain.     The  lesion  occurs  in  .the  left 
hemisphere  in  about  nineteen  out  of  twenty  cases,  and 
though  the  faculty  of  speech  is  sometimes  not  affected 
even  by  a  serious  lesion  of  the  right  hemisphere,  it  "  has 

1  See  the  "  Bulletins  de  la  Socie'te'  anatomique,"  1861,  63  ;  "  Bul- 
letins de  la  Socie'te'  de  Chirurgie,"  1864;  "Bulletins  de  la  Socie"t£ 
d'Anthropologie  de  Paris,"  1861,  63,  65,  66  ;  Proust  :  "Alterations 
de  la  Parole,"  in  the  "  Bulletins  de  la  Socie'td  d'Anthropologie  de 
Paris,"  1873  ;  and  " De  1'Aphasie,"  in  the  "Archives  ge'ne'rales  de 
Medecine,"  1872. 


304 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


never  been  known  to  survive  in  the  case  of  those  whose 
autopsy  has  disclosed  a  deep  lesion  of  the  two  convolu- 
tions "  of  the  right  and  left  hemispheres. 

The  greater  importance  of  an  injury  to  the  left  hemi- 
sphere seems  due  to  the  fact  that  the  convolutions  of  this 
hemisphere  develop  at  an  earlier  period  than  those  of 
the  right.  To  the  same  fact  may  also  be  ascribed  the 
tendency  of  most  persons  from  childhood  to  use  the 
right  rather  than  the  left  hand,  the  movements  of  the 
right-hand  members  of  the  body  depending  on  the  left 
hemisphere.  Left-handedness  is  the  exception,  like  the 

* 

early  development  of  the  convolutions  of  the  right  hemi- 
sphere of  the  brain.  So,  too,  the  localization  of  the 
faculty  of  speech  in  the  right  hemisphere  is  equally  the 
exception,  language  which  is  learnt  in  infancy  naturally 
calling  into  exercise  the  most  developed  of  the  two  por- 
tions of  the  brain.  But  like  the  left  hand,  the  right 
hemisphere  may  in  time  acquire  a  certain  control  over 
language,  and  in  most  cases,  accordingly,  lesion  of  the 
'  left  hemisphere  produces  merely  aphasia,  that  is,  inability 
to  use  words  rightly,  not  inability  to  understand  what  is 
said  by  another.  It  is  possible  that  the  fluency  and 
readiness  of  expression  which  distinguish  certain  speakers 
result  from  a  simultaneous  development  of  the  frontal 
convolutions  in  both  hemispheres  of  the  brain. 

The  faculty  of  speech,  whether  exercised  or  unexer- 
cised,  is  the  one  mark  of  distinction  between  man  and  the 
brute.  All  other  supposed  marks  of  difference — physio- 
logical, intellectual,  and  moral — have  successively  disap- 
peared under  the  microscope  of  modern  science.  But 
the  prerogative  of  language  still  remains,  and  with  it  the 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  305 

possession  of  conceptual  thought  and  continuous  reason- 
ing. Though  numberless  instances  may  be  brought 
forward  which  prove  the  possession  of  rudimentary  reason 
and  intelligence  by  the  brute  beasts,  though  instinct  itself 
is  but  a  kind  of  hereditary  reason,  thought  in  the  true 
sense  of  the  word  is  impossible  without  language  of  some 
kind.  The  power  of  forming  concepts,  of  summing  up 
generalizations  under  single  heads  which  form  the  start- 
ing points  of  fresh  generalizations,  depends  upon  our 
power  of  expressing  them  in  short-hand  notes  or  symbols 
like  the  words  of  articulate  speech  or  the  conventional 
signs  of  the  mathematician.  Language,  it  is  true,  is  the 
embodiment  of  thought,  but  it  is  equally  true  that  without 
language  there  can  be  no  thought.  The  Tasmanian,  with 
his  poorly  organized  language,  had  no  general  terms  ;  the 
New  Caledonian  is  unable  to  understand  such  primary 
ideas  as  "to-morrow"  and  "yesterday,"  and  the  speech- 
less child  has  not  yet  reached  the  level  of  intelligence 
displayed  by  the  dog  or  the  elephant. 

But  the  child  is  capable  of  acquiring  language,  which 
the  dog  and  the  elephant  are  not,  and  this  capability  is 
sufficient  to  mark  him  off  as  a  member  of  the  human 
family.  The  faculty  of  speech  may  lie  dormant  and  un- 
exercised,  but  wherever  it  exists  we  have  man.  The 
deaf-mute,  whose  deafness  has  prevented  him  from  learn- 
ing to  speak,  or  the  mute  whose  diseased  vocal  organs 
refuse  to  utter  the  sounds  he  desires  to  form,  are  alike 
men,  able  to  share  in  the  possession  of  language  as  soon 
as  the  physical  difficulties  which  stand  in  their  way  are 
removed.  Even  the  idiot  or  the  patient  suffering  from 
aphasia  cannot  be  compared  with  the  parrot  and  other 

II.  X 


3o6  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

talking  birds,  since  his  misuse  of  thought  and  speech  can 
be  traced  back  to  a  diseased  condition  of  the  brain,  while 
the  chattering  of  the  parrot  remains  a  mere  mimicry  to 
which  neither' sense  nor  meaning  is  attached. 

We  must  further  remember  that  language  does  not 
necessarily  depend  on  the  production  of  vocal  sounds. 
We  can  converse  by  means  of  signs  and  gestures  as  well 
as  of  modulations  of  the  voice.  Wherever  and  in  what- 
ever way  a  meaning  may  be  conveyed  to  another,  we 
have  language.  What  the  precise  symbols  are  whereby 
the  meaning  is  conveyed  is  a  secondary  matter  ;  the  im- 
portant fact  is  whether  the  meaning  is  so  conveyed  at  all. 
Vocal  language  is  more  perfect  than  any  other  kind  of 
language  ;  the  sounds  we  utter  are  more  infinitely  various 
than  the  signs  we  could  make  with  our  hands,  and  there- 
fore better  adapted  to  symbolize  the  manifold  ideas  of 
the  growing  intelligence ;  but  the  experience  of  travel- 
lers shows  that  we  could  get  on  well  enough,  so  far  as 
the  necessaries  of  life  are  concerned,  with  a  language  of 
signs.  Such  a  language  would  sufficiently  express  the 
needs  and  thoughts  of  a  savage  or  barbarous  community, 
however  inadequate  it  might  be  to  express  those  of  a 
civilized  one.  The  language  of  signs  used  by  the  North 
American  traders  in  their  intercourse  with  the  natives 
quite  sufficed  for  all  the  purposes  for  which  it  was  de- 
vised. Thus  James1  gives  a  list  of  104  signs  employed 
by  the  Indians  in  the  place  of  words,  and  adds  another 
list  published  by  Dunbar,  which  differs  from  his  own  in 
several  respects.  Darkness,  for  instance,  was  indicated 

1  Long's  "  Expedition  to  the  Rocky  Mountains,"  vol.  i.  Appendix 
B,  pp.  271-88  (1823). 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  307 

by  extending  the  hands  horizontally  forwards  and  back 
upwards,  and  passing  one  over  the  other  so  as  to  touch 
it  once  or  twice  ;  a  man  by  a  finger  held  up  vertically  ; 
truth  by  pointing  with  the  forefinger  from  the  mouth  in 
a  line  curving  a  little  upward,  the  other  fingers  being 
carefully  closed  ;  good  by  holding  the'  hand  horizontally 
and  describing  a  horizontal  curve  outwards  with  the 
arm  ;  running  by  first  doubling  the  arm  upon  itself,  and 
then  throwing  the  elbow  backwards  and  forwards  ;  no 
and  not  by  waving  the  hand  outwards  with  the  thumb 
pointed  upward.  In  Dunbar's  list,  on  the  contrary,  the 
indication  of  the  negative  consists  in  holding  the  hand 
before  the  face,  with  the  palm  outward,  and  vibrating  it 
to  and  fro  ;  while  man  is  denoted  in  a  somewhat  com- 
plicated way  by  extending  the  forefinger,  the  rest  of  the 
hand  being  shut,  and  drawing  a  line  with  it  from  the  pit 
of  the  stomach  down  as  far  as  can  be  conveniently 
reached. 

A  similar  language  of  signs  was  employed  in  the 
monasteries  where  the  rule  of  silence  was  strictly  en- 
joined. Thus  giving  was  denoted  by  opening  the  hand, 
taking  by  shutting  it.  One  forefinger  laid  across  the 
other  represented  a  brother ;  blindness  was  indicated  by 
placing  the  hands  over  the  eyes,  shame  by  placing  them 
over  the  eyes  obliquely,  day  and  daylight  by  forming  a 
ring  with  the  thumb  and  finger  and  holding  them  before 
the  face.1  Similarly  the  North  American  Indians  repre- 

1  Leibnitz:  "Collectanea  Etymologica,"  ch.  9  (1717).  Compare 
Tylor  :  "Early  History  of  Mankind  and  the  Development  of  Civili- 
zation," ch.  iii.  iv.  v.,  and  Kleinpaul  :  "  Zur  Theorie  der  Geberden- 
sprache,"  in  SteinthaPs  "  Volkerpsychologie,"  &c.,  vi.  pp.  352-75. 


308  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

sented  the  sun  by  forming  a  circle  with  the  thumb  an< 
finger  and  holding  them  up  towards  the  sun's  track,  the 
time  of  day  being  marked  by  extending  the  hand  in  an 
eastward  direction  and  then  raising  it  gradually.  Had 
the  hands  not  been  wanted  for  other  purposes,  it  is  pos- 
sible that  the  mouth  might  never  have  been  used  to 
communicate  ideas. 

The  possibility  of  a  language  of  signs  suggests  the 
question  whether  the  possession  of  speech  is  so  distin- 
guishing a  characteristic  of  man  as  has  just  been  laid  down. 
That  animals  can  communicate  with  one  another  by 
means  of  signs  and  gestures  admits  of  no  doubt,  how- 
ever limited  and  imperfect  such  communication  may  be. 
Nay  more,  in  many  cases  they  can  communicate  with 
one  another  by  the  help  of  cries,  and  the  six  sounds 
uttered  by  the  cebus  azarcs  of  Paraguay  excite  definitely- 
corresponding  emotions  in  other  members  of  the  same 
species.  The  barking  of  the  dog  and  the  mewing  of 
the  cat  are  said  to  be  attempts  to  imitate  the  human 
voice,  and  it  is  often  not  difficult  to  guess  the  feeling  or 
the  desire  implied  by  either.  When  we  remember  the 
inarticulate  clicks  which  still  form  part  of  the  Bushman's 
language,  it  would  seem  as  if  no  line  of  division  could 
be  drawn  between  man  and  beast  even  when  language 
itself  is  made  the  test. 

But  the  difficulty  is  only  the  old  one  that  meets  us 
wherever  we  try  to  draw  a  hard  and  fast  line  of  division 
between  two  groups  which  yet  belong  to  very  definite 
and  distinct  types.  Such  germs  of  language  as  the 
beasts  possess  remain  but  rudimentary ;  man  alone  has 
developed  them  into  the  wonderful  outgrowth  of  speech. 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  309 

Were  the  beast  to  do  the  same,  he  would  become  man. 
The  difference  between  the  beginnings  of  language  which 
we  detect  in  animals  and  the  first  attempts  at  speech  of 
early  man  is  but  a  difference  of  degree  ;  but  differences 
of  degree  become  in  time  differences  of  kind.  The 
speechless  child  cannot  be  distinguished  from  the  un- 
conscious younglings  of  the  herd  ;  but  whereas  the 
youngling  of  the  herd  can  become  at  best  the  owner 
of  a  faint  intelligence,  the  child  may  develop  into  a 
Caesar  or  a  Newton. 

Accordingly  the  followers  of  Darwin  and  Haeckel, 
with  whom  accumulated  differences  of  degree,  aided  by 
natural  and  sexual  selection,  become  eventually  diffe- 
rences of  kind,  hold  that  language  presents  no  greater 
obstacle  to  their  theory  than  do  the  details  of  the  physical 
structure.  Just  as  the  rudiments  of  conscience  and  will 
exist  in  animals,  so  also  do  the  rudiments  of  speech. 
Physiologically  there  is  a  greater  chasm  between  the 
monkey  and  the  chimpanzee  than  there  is  between  the 
chimpanzee  and  man,  and  the  moral  and  intellectual 
interval  that  divides  "  the  supreme  Caucasian  mind " 
from  the  Tasmanian  or  the  smileless  Veddah,  seems  at 
least  as  great  as  that  which  divides  the  latter  from  the 
anthropoid  apes.  Only  the  fact  remains  that  no  anthro- 
poid ape  has  ever  raised  himself  to  the  level  of  articulate- 
speaking  man. 

Between  the  ape  and  man,  therefore,  the  evolutionist 
has  inserted  his  homo  alalus,  "  speechless  man,"  whose 
relics  may  yet  be  discovered  in  Central  Africa,  or  in  the 
submerged  continent  of  the  Indian  Ocean.1  Wherever 

1  See  Haeckel :  "  History  of  Creation,"  Engl.  tr.  by  Ray  Lan- 


310  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

the  conditions  were  favourable,  homo  alalus  develope< 
into  homo  prinrigenius,  whose  first  records  are  the 
unworked  flints  of  countless  ages  ago.  Where  the 
conditions  were  unfavourable,  there  was  retrogression 
instead  of  progress,  and  homo  alalus  became  the  pro- 
genitor of  the  gorilla,  the  chimpanzee,  the  gibbon,  and 
the  orang-otang.  Such  is  the  theory  which  post-tertiary 
geology  can  alone  verify  or  confute. 

Its  adherents,  however,  can  appeal  with  considerable 
justice  to  the  experiences  of  childhood.  The  race,  we 
may  presume,  must  have  passed  through  the  same  stages 
of  mental  and  moral  growth  as  the  individual  now  com- 
presses into  a  few  years.  The  unconsciousness  of  the 
child  reflects  the  early  unconsciousness  of  mankind.  The 
same  labour  the  child  has  now  to  undergo  in  learning  its 
mother-tongue  mankind  had  once  to  undergo  in  learning 
speech.  With  this  difference,  however,  that  primitive 
man  was  a  grown  child  who  painfully  elaborated  a  lan- 
guage for  himself,  whereas  the  individual  child  has  but 
to  acquire  a  language  already  formed,  and  with  it  the 
accumulated  experiences  and  ideas  of  former  generations. 
What  the  European,  with  hereditary  instincts  and  apti- 
tudes, now  learns  in  two  or  three  years,  is  the  slow  and 
laborious  creation  of  many  minds  and  many  centuries. 
The  child's  memory  is  exercised  rather  than  his  reason 
or  his  imagination. 

Nevertheless,  we  may  gain  many  important  hints  and 

kester,  vol.  ii.  pp.  293-333  (1876).  Haeckel  makes  homo  primigenius 
precede  homo  alalus  or  pithecanthropus,  who  originates  the  still 
speechless  woolly-haired  and  straight-haired  men,  and  is  himself 
derived  from  the  catarrhine  or  flat-nosed  quadrumana. 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  311 

suggestions  as  regards  the  origin  of  language  by  watch- 
ing the  first  attempts  made  by  the  child  to  speak.  Like 
primitive  man,  he  is  moved  partly  by  the  innate  love  of 
imitation,  partly  by  the  necessity  of  making  his  wants 
known,  partly,  too,  by  the  healthy  desire  to  exercise  his 
lungs.  As  long  ago  as  the  reign  of  Psammitichus,  an 
endeavour  was  made  to  discover  the  origin  of  speech  by 
observing  the  earliest  utterances  of  children  ;  and  the 
Egyptian  king  believed  that  he  had  found  in  Phrygian 
the  oldest  language  of  the  world,  since  the  first  utter- 
ance of  the  two  infants  he  had  brought  up  in  speechless 
solitude  was  bekos,  the  Phrygian  term  for  "  bread."  1  But 
the  number  of  scientifically  trained  observers  who  have 
carefully  noted  the  development  of  a  child's  conscious- 
ness and  power  of  speech  is  extremely  small,  and  we  are 
consequently  much  in  want  of  accurate  phonological  and 
psychological  facts  bearing  upon  the  subject.  M.  Taine 
gives  the  following  account  of  the  observations  he  made 
in  the  case  of  one  of  his  own  children.2  This  was  a  little 
girl,  of  whom  he  notes  that  "  the  progress  of  the  vocal 
organ  goes  on  just  like  that  of  the  limbs;  the  child  learns 
to  emit  such  or  such  a  sound  as  it  learns  to  turn  its  head 
or  its  eyes — that  is  to  say,  by  gropings  and  repeated  at- 
tempts." "At  about  three  and  a  half  months,  in  the 
country,  she  was  placed  on  a  carpet  in  the  garden ;  lying 
there  on  her  back  or  stomach  for  hours  together,  she  kept 
moving  about  her  four  limbs,  and  uttering  a  number  of 

1  Hdt.  ii.  2.    Bekos  has  the  same  root  as  our  bake,  the  Greek 
0wyw,  0o£6c,  the  Sanskrit  bhaj.     If  the  story  has  a  basis  of  fact,  the 
sound  uttered  by  the  unfortunate  children  may  be  considered  an 
attempt  to  imitate  the  cry  of  goats. 

2  "  Revue  Philosophique,"  i.  (January  3,  1876). 


312  THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

cries  and  different  exclamations,  but  vowels  only,  no  con- 
sonants ;  this  continued  for  several  months.  By  degrees 
the  consonants  were  added  to  the  vowels,  and  the  excla- 
mations became  more  and  more  articulate.  It  all  ended 
in  a  sort  of  very  distinct  twittering,  which  would  last  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  at  a  time,  and  be  repeated  ten  times  a 
day."  She  took  delight  in  this  twitter  "  like  a  bird,"  but 
the  sounds,  whether  vowels  or  consonants,  were  at  first 
very  vague,  and  difficult  to  catch.  Her  first  clearly 
articulated  sound  was  mn,  made  spontaneously  by  blow- 
ing through  the  lips.  The  discovery  amused  her  greatly, 
and  the  sound  was  accordingly  repeated  over  and  over 
again.  The  next  sound  she  formed  was  kraaau,  a  deep 
guttural  made  in  the  throat,  like  the  gutturals  so  charac- 
teristic of  Eskimaux ;  then  came papapapa.  These  sounds, 
which  were  at  the  outset  her  own  inventions,  were  fixed 
in  her  memory  by  being  repeated  by  others,  and  then 
imitated  many  times  by  herself.  As  yet,  however,  she 
attached  no  meaning  to  any  of  the  words  she  uttered, 
though,  like  the  dog  or  the  horse,  she  already  understood 
two  or  three  of  the  words  she  heard  from  the  lips  of  those 
about  her.  Thus  from  the  eleventh  month  onward  she 
turned  to  her  mother  at  the  words  "  where  is  mamma  ?  " 
which,  be  it  observed,  is  a  polysyllabic  sentence.  But  a 
month  later  the  great  step  was  made  which  divides  articu- 
late-speaking man  from  the  brutes.  The  word  bebe  had 
now  come  to  signify  for  her  a  picture,  or  rather  "  some- 
thing variegated  in  a  shining  frame."  During  the  next 
six  weeks  her  progress  was  rapid,  and  she  made  use  of 
nine  words,  each  with  a  distinct  though  wide  and  general 
meaning.  These  were  papa,  mama,  tet^  "nurse;"  oua-oua 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  313 

" dog  ;"  koko,  "chicken;"  dada,  "horse"  or  "carriage;"  mia, 
"  puss;"  kaka,  and  tern.  Besides  these  bebe  also  continued 
to  be  employed,  though  its  meaning  was  enlarged  so  as 
to  signify  "  whatever  wets."  It  will  be  noticed  that  most 
of  these  words  are  reduplications,  that  only  one  of  them 
is  monosyllabic,  and  that  three  at  least  are  imitations  of 
natural  sounds.  They  were  used,  too,  as  general  terms, 
not  in  the  sense  of  a  single  individual  only,  but  of  all  other 
individuals  which  seemed  to  the  child  to  resemble  one 
another.  M.  Taine  observed  that  the  guttural  cry  of  the 
chicken,  koko,  was  imitated  with  greater  exactness  than 
was  possible  for  grown-up  persons.  The  word  tern  was 
probably  a  natural  vocal  gesture,  though  it  might  have 
been  a  rude  representation  of  tiens.  In  any  case  it  was 
used  in  the  general  sense  of  "give,"  "take,"  "look;"  in 
fact,  it  signified  a  desire  to  attract  attention.  It  had  been 
first  used  for  a  fortnight  as  a  mere  vocal  toy,  without  any 
meaning  being  attached  to  it,  and  after  a  time  was  left 
off,  no  other  word  taking  its  place.  Meanwhile,  by  the 
seventeenth  month,  several  new  words  had  been  learned, 
including  Jiamm,  which  the  child  employed  to  signify 
"  eat  "  or  "  I  want  to  eat."  This  word  was  her  own  in- 
vention, the  merely  natural  vocal  gesture  of  a  person 
snapping  at  something.  But  the  guttural  and  labial 
force  with  which  it  was  pronounced  gradually  disap- 
peared and  the  word  was  finally  reduced  to  the  nasalized 
am. 

Equally  interesting  observations  were  made  by  Mr. 
Charles  Darwin  on  a  little  boy,1  whose  first  utterance,  da, 

1  "Mind,"  7  (July,  1877) ;  also  in  private  communications  to  the 
author. 


3 H  THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

was  heard  at  the  age  of  five  and  a  half  months.  No 
sense,  however,  was  attached  to  it.  "  When  a  little  over 
a  year  old  he  used  gestures  to  explain  his  wishes,"  and  at 
the  age  of  twelve  months  had  already  invented  the  word 
mum  (or  mm)  to  signify  "  food  "  or  "  I  want  to  eat."  The 
imitative  origin  of  this  word  is  as  clear  as  that  of  hamm, 
used  in  a  similar  way  by  M.  Taine's  little  girl.  The  boy 
soon  came  to  attach  it  to  all  articles  of  food,  sugar,  for 
instance,  being  called  shu-mum.  When  asking  for  food, 
the  word  was  uttered  in  a  highly  interrogatory  tone,  and 
five  months  before  its  invention  the  child  understood  its 
nurse's  name.  Greater  difficulty  was  experienced  in  pro- 
nouncing the  consonants  than  in  pronouncing  the  vowels, 
a  fact  which  agrees  with  that  observed  by  M.  Taine,  who 
found  that  his  little  girl's  first  cries  consisted  of  vowels 
only.  According  to  Mr.  Pratt,  in  his  "  Samoan  Gram- 
mar," the  Polynesians  distinguish  words  almost  entirely 
by  their  vocalic  elements ;  at  all  events,  consonants  may 
be  changed  and  transposed  at  will  among  them,  without 
preventing  a  word  from  being  understood,  whereas  a 
change  in  the  vowels  at  once  makes  it  unintelligible. 
Children,  too,  seem  to  recognize  words  by  the  vowels 
they  contain,  rather  than  by  their  consonants.  Prof. 
Holden,1  however,  states  that  ease  of  pronunciation  far 
more  than  the  complexity  of  the  ideas  expressed,  appears 
to  determine  their  adoption  of  a  word.  In  one  case, 
where  a  child  of  two  years  of  age  had  acquired  the  large 
vocabulary  of  483  words,  there  were  53  words  beginning 
with  b,  but  only  16  beginning  with  /.  In  another  case, 

1  "  On  the  Vocabularies  of  Children  under  two  years  of  age,"  in 
the  "  Proceedings  of  the  American  Philological  Association,"  1877. 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  315, 

399  words  had  been  acquired  at  the  same  age,  while  in  a 
third  the  vocabulary  amounted  to  no  more  than  172.  In 
fact,  children  vary  a  good  deal  as  to  their  quickness  of 
perception  and  skill  in  reproducing  sounds.  While  one 
child  begins  to  speak  at  the  age  of  twelve  months,  or 
learns  to  pronounce  words  with  ready  accuracy,  another 
seems  to  be  dumb  up  to  the  age  of  two  or  even  three 
years,  or  acquires  a  correct  pronunciation  with  the 
greatest  possible  difficulty  and  slowness.  Indeed,  in- 
some  cases,  a  correct  pronunciation  is  never  acquired 
throughout  life,  not  from  any  defect  in  the  vocal  organs, 
but  from  mental  or  cerebral  imperfection.  It  seldom 
happens,  however,  that  the  child  fails  to  understand  the 
meaning  of  what  is  said  to  him,  even  though  unable  to 
reproduce  it  in  turn.  Like  the  dog  or  horse,  which  under- 
stands the  words  and  tones  of  its  master,  or  the  cat 
which  comes  when  called  by  name,  he  soon  learns  to  asso- 
ciate sounds  and  ideas,  and  instinctively  catches  the  sense 
of  an  order  or  a  prohibition.  No  doubt  inherited  apti- 
tudes have  much  to  do  with  the  facility  with  which  the 
sense  is  thus  instinctively  caught. 

The  relation  of  linguistic  science  to  ethnology  has 
already  been  touched  upon  in  an  earlier  chapter.  Lan- 
guage belongs  to  the  community,  not  to  the  race;  it  canr 
therefore,  testify  only  to  social  contact,  never  to  racial 
kinsmanship.  Tribes  and  races  lose  their  own  tongues, 
and  adopt  those  of  others ;  and  while  the  Jews  of  Austria 
and  Turkey  regard  the  Spanish  of  the  fifteenth  century 
as  their  sacred  language,  the  Spaniards  themselves  have 
forgotten  that  any  other  language,  whether  Iberian,  Kel- 
tic, or  Teutonic,  ever  existed  in  Castile  besides  Latin. 


3i6  THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

The  Kelts  of  Cornwall  speak  English ;  the  non-Aryan 
population  of  Wales  and  Ireland  either  Keltic  or 
"Saxon."  The  Jews  have  adopted  the  manifold  lan- 
guages of  the  countries  they  inhabit,  like  the  provincials 
of  the  Roman  Empire,  who  borrowed  the  speech  of  their 
conquerors,  or  the  natives  of  northern  Africa  and  western 
Asia,  among  whom  Arabic  has  become  a  mother  tongue. 
The  modern  theory  of  nationalities,  so  far,  at  least,  as  it 
is  based  on  the  existence  of  a  common  language,  is  but 
the  cry  of  political  intriguers  :  race  in  physiology  and 
race  in  philology  are  two  totally  different  things.  Races 
physiologically  as  distinct  as  Mongols  and  Turks  maybe 
found  speaking  allied  tongues ;  while  races  physiologi- 
cally related,  like  the  Jews  of  Europe  and  the  Bedouins 
of  Arabia,  may  be  found  speaking  unallied  ones.  It  is 
questionable,  indeed,  whether  any  race  in  this  age  of  the 
world  can  even  physiologically  be  called  pure  and  un- 
mixed ;  but  it  is  at  any  rate  quite  certain  that  language 
can  throw  no  light  on  the  matter.  Language  is  a  social 
product,  not  a  racial  one ;  it  grew  up  to  allow  the  mem- 
bers of  a  community  to  communicate  one  with  another, 
not  to  bind  together  the  members  of  a  race.  The  mem- 
bers of  a  community  may  have  belonged  to  different 
tribes  and  races  ;  nay,  in  early  times,  when  women  were 
taken  from  abroad,  and  captives  were  used  as  slaves,  they 
must  have  done  so,  but  the  language  in  which  they  ad- 
dressed each  other  was  the  same.  Here  and  there  there 
might  have  been  a  woman's  language,  or  a  language  of 
the  nursery,  testifying,  in  some  instances,  to  the  foreign 
origin  of  the  wife,  and  separate  from  the  language  of  the 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  317 

men ;  but  even  in  these  cases  one  or  other  language  came 
in  time  to  prevail.  Philology  and  ethnology  are  not  con- 
vertible terms.1 

Identity  or  relationship  of  language,  therefore,  can 
prove  nothing  more  than  social  contact.  The  fact  that 
the  Kelts  of  Cornwall  now  speak  English  shows  plainly 
under  what  social  influence  they  have  been  brought.  The 
Jews  of  Austria  would  never  have  put  Spanish  in  the 
place  of  Hebrew  had  they  not  once  have  lived  in  close 
contact  with  the  natives  of  Castile.  Language  is  an  aid 
to  the  historian,  not  to  the  ethnologist.  So  far  as  ethno- 
logy is  concerned,  identity  or  relationship  of  language  can 
do  no  more  than  raise  a  presumption  in  favour  of  a 
common  racial  origin.  Where  all  else — physical  charac- 
teristics, habits  and  customs,  religious  beliefs  and  prac- 
tices— indicate  that  two  populations  belong  to  the  same 
race,  similarity  of  language  will  furnish  additional  and 
subsidiary  evidence,  but  not  otherwise.  If  ethnology  de- 
monstrates kinship  of  race,  kinship  of  speech  may  be  used 
to  support  the  argument;  but  we  cannot  reverse  the  pro- 
cess, and  argue  from  language  to  race.  To  do  so,  is  to 
repeat  the  error  of  third-hand  writers  on  language,  who 
claim  the  black-skinned  Hindu  as  a  brother,  on  the 
ground  of  linguistic  relationship,  or  identify  the  white 
race  with  the  speakers  of  the  Aryan  tongues.  All  man- 
kind may  be  descended  from  a  single  pair  of  ancestors,, 
and  yet  the  languages  they  speak  be  derived  from  diffe- 
rent centres ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  we  may  trace  the 

1  See  Sayce  on  "Language  and  Race,"  in  the  "Journal  of  the 
Anthropological  Institute,"  1875. 


3i8  THE   SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

languages  of  the  globe  back  to  a  common  source,  and  yet 
believe  that  the  several  races  of  the  world  have  had  a 
diversity  of  origin. 

Language,  in  fact,  is  not  one  of  the  characteristics  of 
race,  not  one  of  those  fixed  and  permanent  features  which 
distinguish  the  different  ethnological  types  of  man.  It  did 
not  grow  up  until  man  had  become  a  "  social  animal,"  and 
had  passed  from  the  merely  gregarious  stage  of  existence 
into  that  of  settled  communities.  While  the  characteris- 
tics of  race  remain  definite  and  unalterable,  language  is 
ever  shifting  and  changing,  ever  in  the  condition  of  the 
Herakleitean  flux.  A  Chinaman  may  exchange  his  own 
language  for  an  Aryan  one,  but  he  cannot  at  the  same 
time  strip  off  the  characteristics  of  race.  The  Ethiopian 
cannot  change  his  skin,  however  easily  he  may  change  the 
tongue  he  speaks.  Language,  in  short,  was  not  created 
until  the  several  types  of  race  had  been  fully  fixed  and 
determined.  The  xanthocroid  and  the  melanocroid,  the 
white  albino  and  the  American  copperskin  existed  with 
their  features  already  fixed  and  enduring,  before  the  first 
community  evolved  the  infantile  language  of  mankind. 

Does  the  science  of  language,  we  may  ask,  throw  any 
light  upon  the  age  to  which  we  may  assign  this  event  ? 
Does  it  help  us  to  answer  the  question  of  the  antiquity  of 
man  ?  The  answer  must  be  both  yes  and  no.  On  the 
one  side  it  declares  as  plainly  as  geology  or  prehistoric 
archaeology  that  the  age  of  the  human  race  far  exceeds 
the  limit  of  six  thousand  years,  to  which  the  monuments 
of  Egypt  allow  us  to  trace  back  the  history  of  civilized 
man  ;  on  the  other  side  it  can  tell  us  nothing  of  the  long 
periods  of  time  that  elapsed  before  the  formation  of 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  319 

articulate  speech,  or  even  of  the  number  of  centuries 
which  saw  the  first  essays  at  language  gradually  de- 
veloping into  the  myriad  tongues  of  the  ancient  and 
modern  world.  All  it  can  do  is  to  prove  that  the 
antiquity  of  man,  as  a  speaker,  is  vast  and  indefinite. 
When  we  consider  that  the  grammar  of  the  Assyrian 
language,  as  found  in  inscriptions  earlier  than  B.C.  2000, 
is  in  many  respects  less  archaic  and  conservative  than 
that  of  the  language  spoken  to-day  by  the  tribes  of 
central  Arabia ;  when  we  consider  further  that  the 
parent-language  which  gave  birth  to  Assyrian,  Arabic, 
and  the  other  Semitic  dialects  must  have  passed  through 
long  periods  of  growth  and  decay,  and  that  in  all  proba- 
bility it  was  a  sister  of  the  parent-tongues  of  Old 
Egyptian  and  Libyan,  springing  in  their  turn  from  a 
common  mother-speech,  we  may  gain  some  idea  of  the 
extreme  antiquity  to  which  we  must  refer  the  earliest 
form  we  can  discover  of  a  single  family  of  speech.  And 
behind  this  form  must  have  lain  unnumbered  ages  of 
progress  and  development,  during  which  the  half-articu- 
late cries  of  the  first  speakers  were  being  slowly  matured 
into  articulate  and  grammatical  language.  The  length  of 
time  required  by  the  process  will  be  most  easily  con- 
ceived if  we  remember  how  stationary  the  Arabic  of 
illiterate  nomads  has  been  during  the  last  four  thousand 
years,  and  that  the  language  revealed  by  the  oldest 
monuments  of  Egypt  is  already  decrepit  and  outworn, 
already  past  the  bloom  of  creative  youth. 

An  examination  of  the  Aryan  languages  will  tell  the 
same  tale,  although  the  process  of  change  and  decay  has 
been  immeasurably  more  rapid  in  these  than  in  the 


320  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

Semitic  idioms.  But  even  among  the  Aryan  languages 
the  grammatical  forms  of  Lithuanian  are  still,  in  many 
cases,  but  little  altered  from  those  used  by  our  remote 
forefathers  in  their  Asiatic  home,  and  in  one  or  two 
instances  are  more  primitive  and  archaic  than  those  of 
Sanskrit  itself.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  rate  of 
change,  however,  it  is  impossible  to  bring  down  the 
epoch  at  which  the  Aryan  tribes  still  lived  in  the  same 
locality,  and  spoke  practically  the  same  language,  to  a 
date  much  later  than  the  third  millennium  before  the 
Christian  era.  A  long  interval  of  previous  development: 
divides  the  language  of  the  Rig- Veda,  the  earliest  hymns 
of  which  mount  back,  at  the  latest,  to  the  I4th  century 
B.C.,  and  that  of  the  oldest  portions  of  the  Homeric 
poems,  and  yet  there  was  a  time  when  the  dialect  that 
matured  into  Vedic  Sanskrit,  and  the  dialect  which 
matured  into  Homeric  Greek  were  one  and  the  same. 
Whether  or  not  Herr  Poesche  is  right  in  believing  that 
Aryan  dialects  were  spoken  by  the  cave-men  whose 
skulls  have  been  found  at  Cannstadt,  Neanderthal,  Cro- 
magnon,  and  Gibraltar,  and  who  have  left  behind  them 
memorials  of  their  skill  in  the  shape  of  carved  bones  and 
horns,1  at  all  events  the  age  of  the  first  Aryan  settle- 
ments in  Europe  must  be  tolerably  remote.  And  it 
must  be  remembered  that  the  parent- Aryan  itself  was 
as  developed  and  highly  inflectional  a  language  as 
Sanskrit  or  Greek ;  its  first  stage  of  growth  had  been 
left  far  behind,  much  more  that  primaeval  era  when  it  was 
first  being  elaborated  out  of  the  rude  cries  and  grammar- 
less  utterances  of  a  barbarous  community.  It  must  also 
1  "Die  Arier,"  pp.  54,  55  (1878). 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  321 

be  remembered  that  this  parent-Aryan  was  but  one  out 
of  many  allied  dialects  or  languages  which  have  else- 
where perished,  and,  could  we  follow  its  history  far 
enough  back,  may  possibly  claim  relationship  with  some 
other  family  of  speech,  such  as  the  Alarodian,  be- 
tween which  and  it  there  now  remains  not  a  trace  or 
link  of  connection  and  kinship.  Phonetic  decay  had 
already  stamped  its  grammar  and  vocabulary ;  words  like 
dwaram,  "door,"  survive  as  the  last  relics  of  otherwise 
extinct  groups,  and  the  primarily  sensuous  meaning 
has  faded  out  of  terms  which  express  moral  or  spiritual 
or  abstract  ideas.  Even  the  ease  and  rapidity  with 
which  our  children  acquire  their  mother-tongue,  point  to 
long  ages  during  which  this  hereditary  aptitude  was 
being  formed  and  accumulated.  If  it  has  taken  two 
thousand  and  more  years  to  elaborate  those  mathe- 
matical conceptions  which  a  school-boy  now  learns  in  a 
few  months  we  must  measure  the  period  by  aeons  which 
has  witnessed  the  growth  of  our  European  idioms  with 
all  the  complexity  and  wealth  of  words  which  a  help- 
less infant  learns  in  an  even  shorter  time. 

The  Ural-Altaic  family  of  languages  bears  similar 
testimony.  To  find  a  common  origin  for  Uralic,  Turkish,, 
and  Mongol,  we  must  go  back  to  an  indefinitely  great 
antiquity.  The  Accadian  of  Chaldea  is  an  old  and 
decaying  speech  when  we  first  discover  it  in  inscriptions 
of  3000  B.C.,  a  speech,  in  fact,  which  implies  a  previous 
development  at  least  as  long  as  that  of  the  Aryan 
tongues ;  and  if  we  would  include  Accadian,  or  rather 
the  Protomedic  group  of  languages  to  which  Accadian 
belongs,  in  the  Ural-Altaic  family,  we  shall  have  to 

II.  Y 


322  THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

measure  the  age  of  the  parent-speech  by  thousands  of 
years.  The  Mongols,  moreover,  are  physiologically  dif- 
ferent in  race  from  the  Ugro-Tatars,  and  it  is  difficult 
to  estimate  the  length  of  time  required  for  the  complete 
displacement  of  the  original  dialects  of  Mongols,  Mant- 
chus,  and  Tunguses,  by  those  of  a  foreign  stock.  But  it 
was  at  any  rate  considerable. 

Comparative  philology  thus  agrees  with  geology,  pre- 
historic archaeology  and  ethnology  in  showing  that  man 
as  a  speaker  has  existed  for  an  enormous  period,  and 
this  enormous  period  is  of  itself  sufficient  to  explain  the 
mixture  and  interchanges-  that  have  taken  place  in 
languages,  as  well  as  the  disappearance  of  numberless 
groups  of  speech  throughout  the  globe.  The  languages 
of  the  present  world  are  but  the  selected  residuum, 
the  miserable  relics,  of  the  infinite  variety  of  tongues 
that  have  grown  up  and  decayed  among  the  races 
of  mankind.  Since  language  is  a  social  creation,  the 
first  languages  will  have  been  as  numerous  as  the 
first  communities.  Wherever  there  was  a  community, 
there  also  was  necessarily  a  language.  Language  is 
the  creator  as  well  as  the  creation  of  society,  and 
though  it  is  true  that  it  is  made  and  moulded  by  society, 
it  is  equally  true  that  without  language  society  cannot 
exist.  The  various  species  of  languages  that  have  sprung 
up  since  human  thought  was  first  clothed  in  speech 
must  have  been  as  numberless  as  the  species  of  plants 
and  animals  that  have  flourished  on  the  earth,  and  just 
as  whole  genera  and  species  of  plants  and  animals  have 
become  extinct,  so  also  has  it  fared  with  the  genera  and 
species  of  language.  In  some  cases  the  languages  of 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  323 

two  or  more  communities  formed  independently  under 
similar  conditions,  climatic  and  otherwise,  may  -have 
coalesced  into  a  single  group ;  more  often  the  single 
group  has  split  itself  into  numerous  dialects  which  in 
time  become  distinct  languages. 

But  the  attempt  made  in  the  infancy  of  linguistic 
science  to  reduce  these  groups  to  a  mystical  triad  has 
long  since  been  abandoned  by  the  scientific  student.  To 
lump  the  manifold  languages  of  the  world,  agglutinative, 
incorporating,  isolating,  and  polysynthetic  under  a  com- 
mon heading  of  "Turanian  "  or  "  Allophylian "  is  as  un- 
scientific as  to  refer  Aryan  and  Semitic  to  one  ancestor. 
It  has  been  shown  in  a  former  chapter  that  the  number 
of  separate  families  of  speech  now  existing  in  the  world 
which  cannot  be  connected  with  one  another  is  at  least 
seventy-five  ;  and  the  number  will  doubtless  be  increased 
when  we  have  grammars  and  dictionaries  of  the  numerous 
languages  and  dialects  which  are  still  unknown,  and  better 
information  as  regards  those  with  which  we  are  partially 
acquainted.  If  we  add  to  these  the  innumerable  groups  of 
speech  which  have  passed  away  without  leaving  behind 
even  such  waifs  as  the  Basque  of  the  Pyrenees,  or  the 
Etruscan  of  ancient  Italy,  some  idea  will  be  formed  of 
the  infinite  number  of  primaeval  centres  or  communities 
in  which  language  took  its  rise.  The  idioms  of  mankind 
have  had  many  independent  starting-points,  and  like  the 
Golden  Age,  which  science  has  shifted  from  the  past  to 
the  future,  the  dream  of  a  universal  language  must  be 
realized,  if  at  all,  not  in  the  Paradise  of  Genesis,  but  in 
the  unifying  tendencies  of  civilization  and  trade. 

While   linguistic   science   thus  shows    that  the  com- 


324  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

munities  in  which  man,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  won 
first  existed  were  numerous  and  isolated,  it  is  quite  evi- 
dent that  it  can  throw  no  light  on  the  ethnological 
problem  of  the  original  unity  or  diversity  of  the  human 
race.  The  characteristics  of  race  were  fixed  before  the 
invention  of  speech,  and  to  determine  whether  or  not  we 
are  of  the  same  blood  as  the  negro  and  the  Mexican, 
whether  the  Darwinian  is  justified  in  tracing  Jiomo  alalus 
to  a  single  pair  of  apes  or  to  several  different  species 
is  the  task  of  the  ethnologist,  not  of  the  student  of 
language. 

It  is,  therefore,  with  man  as  he  appears  in  history  and 
not  as  he  appears  in  nature  that  comparative  philology 
has  to  do.  It  is,  as  we  have  seen,  essentially  a  historical 
science,  dealing  with  the  historical  growth  and  evolution 
of  consciousness  as  preserved  in  the  records  of  speech.  Its 
laws,  indeed,  must  be  noted  and  verified  by  physiology  on 
the  one  hand  and  by  psychology  on  the  other,  but  its 
results  and  conclusions  have  to  be  brought  before  the 
bar  of  history.  The  research  which  finds  a  Norman- 
French  element  in  the  English  language  is  confirmed  by 
the  recorded  facts  of  history,  and  the  existence  of  the 
Romanic  tongues  is  explained  by  the  long  domination 
of  the  Roman  Empire.  The  non-Aryan  forms  and 
words  which  show  themselves  in  the  Keltic  grammar  and 
vocabulary  are  in  accord  with  the  testimony  of  history 
and  archaeology  to  the  presence  of  a  prae-Keltic  and  prae- 
Aryan  population  in  western  Europe.  And  just  as  the 
conclusions  of  comparative  philology  can  be  verified  or 
refuted  by  the  historian,  so  conversely  the  historian  can 
fill  up  the  breaks  in  his  record  by  the  help  of  comparative 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  325 

philology.  The  contact  of  tribes  in  prae-historic  times 
can  be  proved  by  the  similarity  of  their  dialects,  and 
the  foreign  names  given  to  objects  enable  us  to  determine 
the  source  from  which  they  were  derived,  and  the  rela- 
tions that  existed  between  the  lender  and  the  borrower. 
Similarity  of  language  has  shown  that  the  Hungarians 
were  once  the  neighbours  of  the  savage  Voguls  of  the 
Ural,  and  the  Semitic  origin  of  such  Greek  words  as 
alpha  and  beta,  &ATOJ  "  a  writing  tablet,"  and  <pvxo$  "  dye," 
indicates  that  writing  and  the  purple  trade  came  to 
Greece  from  Phoenicia.1  Where  contemporaneous  litera- 
ture fails  us  we  can  fall  back  upon  the  surer  and  more 
enduring  evidence  of  language.  The  history  and  migra- 
tions of  the  Gipsies  have  been  traced  step  by  step  by 
means  of  an  examination  of  their  lexicon.  The  wild 
speculations  of  older  writers  who  saw  in  them  wandering 
Egyptians  or  Tatars,  or  even  the  ancestors  of  the  com- 
panions of  Romulus,  have  had  to  make  way  for  exact 
and  minute  history.  The  grammar  and  dictionary  of  the 
Romany  prove  that  they  started  from  their  kindred,  the 
Jats,  on  the  north-western  coast  of  India,  near  the  mouths 
of  the  Indus,  not  earlier  than  the  tenth  century  of  the 
Christian  era ;  that  they  slowly  made  their  way  through 
Persia,  Armenia,  and  Greece,  until  after  a  sojourn  in 
Hungary  they  finally  spread  themselves  through  western 
Europe,  penetrating  into  Spain  on  the  one  side  and  into 
England  on  the  other.  Though  the  determination  of 
the  ethnic  features  and  relationships  of  the  Gipsies  must 
be  left  to  the  physiologist,  comparative  philology  has 

1  See  A.  Miiller  :  "  Semitische  Lehnworte  im  alteren  Griechisch.," 
in  "  Bezzenberger's  Beitrage,"  i.  pp.  273-301  (1877}. 


326  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

shown  itself  quite  competent  to  determine  their  historical 
origin  and  fortunes. 

Perhaps  the  chief  triumph  of  comparative  philology 
in  the  field  of  historical  reconstruction  has  been  the 
recovery  of  the  history  of  the  Aryan  nations  in  ages 
about  which  history  and  legend  are  alike  silent.  Who 
could  have  suspected  a  few  years  back  that  we  should 
ever  be  able  to  describe  the  external  and  internal  history 
of  our  remote  ancestors,  their  migrations  and  beliefs,  their 
culture  and  civilization,  with  greater  certainty  and  minute- 
ness than  is  possible  in  the  case  of  the  Saxons  of  the  Hep- 
tarchy or  even  the  Hebrews  of  the  Davidic  era  ?  Where 
other  records  fail,  the  record  of  language  remains  fresh 
and  unimpaired.  The  ideas  and  beliefs,  the  struggles 
and  aims  of  a  community  are  enshrined  in  the  language 
it  speaks,  and  if  we  can  once  more  make  this  language  a 
living  one,  can  discover  the  meaning  assigned  to  its 
words  at  the  time  they  were  first  coined  and  used,  the 
facts  and  thoughts  that  it  enshrines  will  lie  revealed 
before  us.  While  the  other  sources  of  historical  truth, — 
architectural  monuments  and  inscriptions,  skulls  and 
artistic  remains,  objects  of  household  use,  and  even 
contemporaneous  annals, — can  tell  us  only  of  the  out- 
ward fortunes  and  history  of  a  people,  language,  when 
rightly  questioned,  can  tell  us  of  the  far  more  precious 
history  of  mind  and  thought.  As  the  fossils  of  the  rocks 
disclose  to  the  palaeontologist  the  various  forms  of  life 
that  have  successively  appeared  upon  the  globe,  so,  too, 
the  fossils  of  speech  disclose  to  the  scientific  philologist 
the  various  stages  that  have  been  reached  in  the  growth 
of  human  consciousness.  In  the  pages  of  Pick's  Die- 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  327 

tionary  of  the  parent-Aryan  we  may  read  the  religion, 
the  morality,  the  culture  and  the  civilization  of  rude 
tribes  who  lived  and  died  long  before  the  first  hymn  of 
the  Rig- Veda  was  composed,  long  before  the  first 
Hellene  had  reached  the  shores  of  Greece,  or  the  first 
Indo-European  word  had  been  written  down.  Armed 
with  the  comparative  method,  we  can  revivify  the  older 
strata  of  speech,  and  thereby  also  the  older  phases  of  a 
community's  life.  History,  in  fact,  is  living  language, 
just  as  myth  is  dead  language ;  it  describes  the  past 
actions  and  ideas  of  a  society  in  words  which  represent 
them  as  they  actually  were. 

History  is  not  the  only  department  of  study  which  has 
derived  unexpected  help  from  comparative  philology. 
Logic,  too,  deals  with  language,  and  its  disciples  will 
never  escape  the  dangers  of  confusion  and  logomachy 
until  they  recognize  that  formal  logic  is  based  on  lan- 
guage and  must  therefore  be  secured  against  a  false 
analysis  and  interpretation  of  that  language.  As  yet, 
however,  the  recognition  has  not  been  made.  The 
philosophy  of  speech,  in  the  hands  of  the  Greeks,  suf- 
fered from  the  introduction  of  logic  into  grammar,  and 
revenge  was  taken  by  grounding  logic  upon  the  defi- 
nitions of  an  imperfect  grammar.  The  Greek  gram- 
marians with  all  their  acuteness  were  unable  to  avoid 
the  mistakes  inevitable  in  those  who  know  but  a  single 
language,  and  Aristotelian  logic,  which  has  continued 
practically  unchanged  up  to  the  present  day,  starts  with 
the  rules  and  deductions  of  the  Greek  grammarians. 
The  latest  attempt  to  improve  upon  it  by  establishing 
a  distinction  between  " connotative "  and  "denotative" 


328  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

terms  has  been  shown  by  Mr.  Sweet  to  rest  upon  a  mere 
accident  of  Indo-European  grammar,  proper  names  which 
are  said  to  be  purely  denotative  really  connoting  at 
least  two  attributes  "  human "  and  "  male,"  and  "  con- 
notative "  words  like  "  white  "  being  as  much  abstract 
names  as  "  whiteness,"  and  like  it  signifying  attributes 
without  any  reference  to  the  things  that  possess  the 
attributes.1  It  is  difficult  to  eradicate  the  belief  that  the 
forms  in  which  we  think  are  identical  with  the  thoueht 

o 

itself,  and  it  is  only  linguistic  science  that  enables  us  to 
see  that  many  of  the  forms  of  grammar  which  we 
imagine  necessary  and  universal  are  after  all  but  acci 
dental  and  restricted  in  use.  The  cases  of  Latin  and 
Greek  do  not  exist  in  the  majority  of  languages  ;  the 
Polynesian  dialects  have  no  true  verbs ;  and  the  Eski- 
maux  gets  on  well  enough  without  "  the  parts  of  speech  " 
that  figure  so  largely  in  our  own  grammars.  The  dis- 
tinction made  by  writers  on  logic  between  such  words  as 
redness  and  red  is  a  distinction  that  would  have  been 
unintelligible  to  the  Tasmanian  ;  "  red,"  in  fact,  has  no 
sense  unless  we  supply  "colour,"  and  "red  colour"  is 
really  the  same  as  "  redness." 

Formal  logic  is  founded  on  Aristotle's  analysis  of  the 
proposition  and  the  syllogism.  Hegel  long  ago  pointed 
out  that  the  analysis  was  an  empirical  one  dependent  on 
the  observation  of  the  individual  thinker,  and  the  criticism 
of  Hegel  is  supplemented  by  the  teaching  of  compara- 
tive philology.2  The  division  of  the  sentence  into  two 

1  "  Words,  Logic,  and  Grammar,"  in  the  "  Transactions  of  the 
Philological  Society,"  1876,  pp.  18,  19. 

2  See  Hermann  :  "  Die  Sprachwissenschaft  nach  ihrem  Zusam- 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  329 

parts,  the  subject  and  the  predicate,  is  a  mere  accident ; 
it  is  not  known  to  the  polysynthetic  languages  of 
America,  which  herein  reflect  the  condition  of  primaeval 
speech.  Even  in  Greek  and  Latin  we  meet  with  com- 
plete sentences  like  rfarei  and  amat  where  the  subject  is 
not  expressed,  and  may  therefore  be  either  "he,"  "she," 
or  "  it ;  "  and  the  Aryan  verb  was  originally  compounded 
with  the  objective  and  not  the  subjective  pronoun,  bha- 
vdmi  being  "  existence  of  me  "  and  not  "  I  exist."  As 
Mr.  Sweet  observes,1  "the  mental  proposition  is  not 
formed  by  thinking  first  of  the  subject,  then  of  the 
copula,  and  then  of  the  predicate  :  it  is  formed  by 
thinking  of  the  two  simultaneously."  Consequently  "the 
conversion  of  propositions,  the  figures,  and  with  them 
the  whole  fabric  of  Formal  Logic  fall  to  the  ground." 
So  far  as  the  act  of  thought  is  concerned,  subject  and 
predicate  are  one  and  the  same,  and  there  are  many  lan- 
guages in  which  they  are  so  treated.  Had  Aristotle 
been  a  Mexican,  his  system  of  logic  would  have  assumed 
a  wholly  different  form.  Even  the  logical  analysis  of 
the  negative  proposition  is  incorrect.  The  negation  is 
not  part  of  the  act  of  comparison  between  subject  and 
predicate,  that  is,  is  not  included  in  the  copula,  but 
belongs  to  the  predicate,  or  rather  attribute,  itself. 
"  Man  is  not  immortal,"  is  precisely  the  same  as  "  man 
is  mortal,"  "  mortal "  and  "  not  immortal  "  being  equiva- 
lent terms,  and  had  Aristotle's  successors  spoken  lan- 

menhange  mit   Logik,   menschlicher    Geistesbildung  und   Philo- 
sophic" (1875).     He  notices  that  logical  fallacies  arise  not  from 
ignorance   of  the   syllogistic   form,  but  from  ambiguities   of  the 
thoughts  as  conveyed  in  words  and  sentences. 
1  Z.  c.  pp.  20,  21. 


330  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

guages,  which,  like  those  of  the  Ural-Altaic  family, 
possess  a  negative  conjugation,  they  would  not  have 
overlooked  the  fact. 

The  progress  even  of  the  science  of  language  itself 
has  been  checked  by  the  evil  influence  of  formal  logic. 
The  compilers  of  the  "  Universal  Grammars  "  or  "  Gram- 
maires  raisonnees "  of  the  last  century  exercised  an 
unconscious  influence  upon-  the  founders  of  comparative 
philology.  It  was  tacitly  assumed  that  the  analyses  of 
logic  were  embodied  in  language,  and  that  if  we  could 
penetrate  far  enough  back  into  the  history  of  speech  we 
should  find  it  a  simple  representation  of  the  logician's 
analysis  of  thought.  That  which  is  logically  prior  must,  it 
was  supposed,  be  historically  so  too.  Hence  came  the 
false  theories  that  have  been  put  forward  in  regard  to 
the  origin  of  language,  the  nature  of  roots,  and  the 
priority  of  the  word  to  the  sentence.  It  was  the  old 
error  of  confounding  that  which  seems  simplest  and 
most  natural  to  us,  with  that  which  seems  simplest  and 
most  natural  to  savage  and  primitive  man. 

A  right  conception  of  logic,  however,  is  of  less  prac- 
tical importance  than  a  right  conception  of  grammar, 
since  for  one  who  is  instructed  in  the  principles  of  formal 
logic  there  are  twenty  who  are  instructed  in  the  principles 
of  grammar.  And  the  grammar  that  is  taught,  as  well 
as  the  method  of  teaching  it,  is  essentially  unsound. 
Whatever  may  be  the  revolution  effected  by  comparative 
philology  in  the  study  of  logic,  the  revolution  it  has 
already  effected  in  the  study  of  grammar  is  immeasur- 
ably greater.  The  grammars  we  have  inherited  from 
Greece  and  Rome  are  largely  founded  on  false  theories, 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  331 

and  filled  with  imaginary  facts  and  false  rules.  We  can- 
not know  the  true  nature  of  things  except  by  contrast  and 
comparison,  and  opportunity  to  contrast  and  compare  was 
wanting  to  the  authors  of  our  school-grammars.  "  The 
definition  of  the  noun,"  says  Mr.  Sweet,  "  applies  strictly 
only  to  the  nominative  case.  The  oblique  cases  are 
really  attribute -words,  and  inflexion  is  practically 
nothing  but  a  device  for  turning  a  noun  into  an 
adjective  or  adverb."  This  fact  comes  clearly  into 
view  when  we  trace  the  Aryan  case-endings  to  their 
origin,2  or  consider  that  "  man's  life  "  and  "  human  life  " 
mean  one  and  the  same  thing.  In  "  flet  noctem,"  "he 
weeps  all  night,"  noctem  and  "  night "  are  simply  adverbs 
of  time.  The  accusative  is  but  the  attribute  of  the 
predicate,  "  he  drinks  wine "  being  equivalent  both  to 
"  he  is  drinking  wine"  and  to  "he  is  a  drinker  of  wine  " 
or  "  a  wine-drinker,"  where  the  qualificatory  character  of 
"  wine"  becomes  at  once  manifest.  Mr.  Sweet  remarks 
with  justice  that  "  as  far  as  the  form  goes,  '  king '  in  '  he 
became  king,'  '  he  is  king,'  may  be  in  the  accusative." 
In  Danish  det  er  mig  is  the  sole  representative  of  "  it  is 
me,"  the  French  c'est  moi.  As  for  the  cases  with  which 
English  grammars  were  once  adorned,  they  were  but 
part  of  the  attempt  to  force  all  grammars  alike  into  the 
traditional  form  of  Latin  grammar,  without  regard  for 
the  real  and  living  facts  of  language.  It  was  difficult 
for  those  who  had  been  taught  to  look  upon  Latin  as 
the  model  of  all  speech,  and  Latin  grammar  as  the 
normal  type  to  which  every  other  grammar  must  con- 

1  "  Words,  Logic,  and  Grammar,"  p.  24. 
'2  See  above,  ch.  v. 


332  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

form,  to  conceive  of  languages  like  the  American  or  the 
Chinese,  or  even,  we  may  add,  the  English,  which  did 
not  possess  any  cases  at  all. 

Adjectives,  again,  embrace  a  good  many  words  which 
the  grammarians  ordinarily  class  as  substantives  and 
pronouns.  In  "cannon  ball"  "cannon"  is  as  much  an 
adjective  as  "black,"  and  such  pronouns  as  "  some," 
"  this,"  "  that,"  "  one,"  and  the  derived  articles  "  the  "  and 
"  a  "  ought  really  to  be  classed  as  adjectives.  Pronouns  in 
the  true  sense  of  the  word  are  always  relative,  that  is 
they  always  relate  to  some  one  or  something  that  has 
gone  before.  "  He,"  for  instance,  is  at  bottom  identical 
with  "  who,"  and  where  we  should  say  "  this  is  the  man 
who  loves,"  the  Polynesian  would  say  "  this  is  the  man : 
he  loves."  As  has  been  pointed  out  previously,  the  so- 
called  relative  pronoun  was  originally  a  demonstrative. 
Even  the  distinction  of  gender  in  the  pronouns  is  a  mere 
accident  of  speech.  The  same  word  serves  the  agglu- 
tinative tongues  for  "  he,"  "  she,"  and  "  it,"  and  the  little 
need  that  really  exists  for  the  distinction  may  be  seen 
from  the  obliteration  of  it  in  the  polished  and  cultivated 
Persian,  as  well  as  in  the  dialect  of  the  Austrian  Tyrol. 
When  a  preposition  is  added  to  a  pronoun  or  a  noun  we 
have  a  compound  attribute,  the  preposition  itself  being 
modified  attributively  by  the  noun,  and  the  two  together 
constitute  an  attribute  of  some  other  word.1 

Such  are  some  of  the  grammatical  facts  that  we  can 
observe  as  soon  as  the  influence  of  those  Latin  and 
Greek  and  English  grammars  which  are  still  taught  in 
hundreds  of  schools  has  been  shaken  off.  We  have  not 

1  Sweet  :  /.  c.  p.  30. 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  333 

to  go  far  to  discover  how  full  such  "  text-books  "  are  of 
statements  which  comparative  philology  has  shown  to 
be  either  false  or  inadequate.  The  very  idea  of  a  verb 
"  governing"  a  case  is  an  absurdity,  and  the  phrase  can 
only  be  maintained  on  the  same  principle  as  that  on 
which  we  still  speak  of  the  sun  "rising"  and  "setting." 
The  locative  case  is  ignored  both  in  Latin  and  Greek, 
and  a  rule  of  syntax  lays  down  that  "  every  verb  admits 
a  genitive  case  of  the  name  of  a  city  provided  it  be  of 
the  first  or  second  declension,  and  of  the  singular  num- 
ber ;  but  if  the  name  be  of  the  plural  number  only,  or 
of  the  third  declension,  it  is  put  in  the  ablative."  The 
matter  is  no  better  when  we  turn  to  the  verb.  Here 
the  conjunctive  regain  or  audiavi  is  confounded  with  the 
optative  ameni  and  sim,  while  the  optative  reget,  audiet 
is  called  a  future  ;  the  accusative  amatum  and  dative 
amatu(i)  are  termed  supines  ;  and  a  verb  in  -a  is  made 
the  normal  type  of  the  Greek  conjugation.  It  is  needless 
to  refer  to  the  many  impossible  or  non-existent  forms  a 
boy  is  forced  to  learn  by  heart,  or  to  the  doctrine  ground 
into  him  that  a  word  is  inadmissible  in  Latin  and  Greek 
which  does  not  occur  in  the  extant  fragments  of  a  few 
literary  men. 

In  fact,  the  current  system  of  teaching  grammar  is 
destructive  of  all  true  conception  and  appreciation  of 
what  language  really  is.  Language  is  no  artificial  pro- 
duct, contained  in  books  and  dictionaries  and  governed 
by  the  strict  rules  of  impersonal  grammarians.  It  is  the 
living  expression  of  the  mind  and  spirit  of  a  people,  ever 
changing  and  shifting,  whose  sole  standard  of  correctness 
is  custom  and  the  common  usage  of  the  community. 


334 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


What  is  grammatically  correct  is  what  is  accepted  by 
the  great  body  of  those  who  speak  a  language,  not  what 
is  laid  down  by  the  grammarian.  To  extract  certain 
rigid  rules  from  the  works  of  a  selected  number  of 
writers,  and  treat  everything  which  does  not  conform  to 
these  rules  as  an  exception  or  a  mistake,  is  to  train  up 
the  young  to  a  radically  wrong  notion  of  speech.  The 
first  lesson  to  be  learnt  is  that  there  is  no  intrinsic  right 
or  wrong  in  the  use  of  language,  no  fixed  rules  such  as 
are  the  delight  of  the  teacher  of  Latin  prose.  What  is 
right  now  will  be  wrong  hereafter,  what  language  rejected 
yesterday  she  accepts  to-day.  The  exception  is  often  a 
survival  of  what  was  once  the  prevailing  usage,  the  cur- 
rent form  may  be  the  creation  of  a  false  analogy.  There 
are  no  golden  and  silver  ages  in  grammar,  whatever  may 
be  the  case  in  literature,  and  to  confound  the  analysis 
of  an  arbitrarily  limited  literature  with  the  knowledge  of 
a  language  is  to  put  the  shadow  for  the  substance,  the 
frigid  maxims  of  the  schoolmen  for  the  pure  spring  of 
living  speech. 

A  literature  guides  us  to  the  knowledge  of  a  dead 
tongue,  but  it  cannot  do  more.  To  know  what  that 
tongue  actually  was  when  spoken  and  not  merely  written 
down,  what  were  the  changes  it  underwent,  what  par- 
ticular period  or  periods  in  its  history  its  literature  repre- 
sents, and  how  fully  it  does  so,  we  must  turn  to  historical 
philology.  In  no  other  way  can  we  learn  its  true  nature 
and  development,  can  understand  its  grammar  and 
observe  the  stages  of  growth  or  decay  through  which  it 
has  passed.  It  is  not  the  least  practical  benefit  conferred 
by  comparative  philology  that  it  has  dissipated  the  old 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  335 

idea  of  a  fixed  and  stationary  standard  in  language,  and 
shown  that  the  forms  of  grammar  in  which  thought 
expresses  itself  are  but  variable  accidents  dependent 
on  the  conditions  which  surround  a  people  or  an  age. 

But  while  thus  sweeping  away  the  rules  and  maxims 
elaborated  by  the  ancient  grammarians,  comparative 
philology  has  substituted  for  them  the  scientific  concep- 
tion of  law.  Language,  like  nature,  is  ever  changing, 
but  its  changes  take  place  in  accordance  with  fixed,  in- 
violable law.  There  is  nothing  arbitrary  and  capricious 
about  them.  They  are  the  result  of  certain  uniform 
sequences  which  we  generalize  and  sum  up  under  the 
name  of  scientific  laws.  It  is  well  to  impress  this  fact 
deeply  upon  our  minds.  We  are  ready  enough  to  admit 
the  action  of  law  in  the  realm  of  material  nature  ;  it  is 
otherwise,  however,  wherever  the  element  of  volition 
comes  into  play.  Language,  standing  as  it  does  upon 
the  confines  of  both  the  material  and  the  mental  worlds, 
touching  physiology  on  the  one  side  and  psychology  on 
the  other,  might  seem  at  all  events  partially  removed 
from  the  influence  of  scientific  laws.  It  is,  therefore,  of 
the  highest  moment  that  it  should  be  studied  in  such  a 
way  as  to  show  that  this  is  not  the  case.  It  is  becoming 
recognized  that  the  minds  of  the  young  should  be  accus- 
tomed from  the  first  to  the  conception  of  the  universal 
prevalence  of  law,  and  efforts  are  being  made  to  replace 
the  study  of  language  by  that  of  physical  science  upon 
this  very  ground.  But  it  is  only  the  study  of  language 
as  carried  on  according  to  exploded  and  antiquated 
methods,  that  is  open  to  the  charge  of  misleading  and 
perverting  the  growing  intelligence ;  carried  on  accord- 


336  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

ing  to  the  principles  of  scientific  philology  it  becomes 
the  surest  means  of  impressing  on  the  mind  the  great 
fact  of  the  universality  of  law  amid  all  the  change  and 
development  of  nature. 

What  is  wanted,  then,  is  that  grammars  should  be 
written  in  accordance  with  the  method  and  results  of 
comparative  philology,  and  when  written  should  be 
taught  and  studied.  Much  has  already  been  accom- 
plished in  this  direction.  The  Greek  Grammar  of  G. 
Curtius,  the  Latin  grammars  of  Schweitzer- Sidler, 
Schmitt-Blanck,  Miiller- Lattmann,  and  Roby,  the 
Sprachwissenschaftliche  Einleitung  in  das  Griechische 
and  Lateinisclie  of  Ferdinand  Bauer ;  the  German 
grammars  of  Scherer,  Vilmar,  and  Heyse;  the  French 
grammars  of  Brachet,  Meissner,  and  Ayer ;  and  the 
English  grammar  of  Morris,  in  spite  of  their  inevitable 
imperfections,  have  placed  the  study  of  the  languages 
with  which  they  deal  on  a  wholly  new  footing.  It  is 
time,  therefore,  that  they  should  supersede  the  grammars 
now  in  use  in  the  majority  of  schools,  though  the 
teachers  in  most  instances  will  probably  have  first  to 
be  themselves  taught.  As  Breymann  observes  : *  "  Edu- 
cation according  to  the  new  method  implies  three  ele- 
ments— memory,  reason  and  insight ;  whereas  education 
according  to  the  old  method  was  almost  wholly  confined 
to  that  of  memory,"  and  as  it  is  more  desirable  to  de- 
velop three  sides  of  a  man  than  one  side  only,  there  can 
be  little  hesitation  as  to  which  mode  of  education  is  the 
best.  No  doubt  the  memory  is  chiefly  exercised  in 
young  children,  but  the  mere  fact  that  a  child  can  learn 
1  "  Sprachwissenschaft  und  neuere  Sprachen,"  p.  23  (1876). 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  337 

to  speak  its  mother-tongue,  and  sometimes  other  tongues 
as  well,  proves  that  it  also  possesses  reason  and  insight, 
which  may  be  drawn  out  by  judicious  instruction.  It 
must  do  a  child  intellectual  good  to  understand  what 
it  learns,  besides  assisting  the  process  of  learning ;  and 
to  understand  was  the  last  thing  that  the  old  school- 
grammars  enabled  the  learner  to  do.  In  teaching  Latin 
and  Greek,  it  is  true,  there  will  still  be  much  which  must 
be  learnt  by  heart  as  now ;  but  a  boy  will  gain  much  if 
he  is  made  to  see  that  Latin  and  Greek  are  not  mere 
collections  of  arbitrary  symbols  or  Chinese  puzzles,  but 
languages  like  his  own,  undergoing  similar  transforma- 
tions, and  subject  to  similar  laws.  It  is  said  that  we 
never  really  know  a  language  until  we  think  in  it,  and  it 
is  impossible  to  think  in  a  language  which  we  have  learnt 
after  the  fashion  of  a  parrot. 

But  the  question  arises :  Can  we  ever  learn  to  think  in 
a  dead  tongue  ?  can  we  ever  clothe  the  dry  bones  with 
flesh  and  make  Latin  and  Greek  become  to  us  as  German 
or  French  ?  Here,  again,  comparative  philology  helps  us 
to  a  practical  answer.  The  method  alike  of  science  and 
of  nature  is  to  proceed  from  the  known  to  the  unknown  ; 
and  if  we  are  to  study  language  to  any  purpose  we  must 
follow  the  same  method.  The  traditional  system  of  edu- 
cation in  our  boys'  schools  is  the  haphazard  growth  of  a 
time  whose  needs  and  opportunities  were  essentially  dif- 
ferent from  those  of  our  own.  Latin  was  taught  because 
it  was  the  common  language  of  the  church  and  the  law, 
and  for  an  ambitious  youth  it  was  as  necessary  to  know 
Latin  as  it  was  to  know  his  own  language.  The  Re- 
naissance placed  Greek  on  an  equal  footing  with  Latin. 

II.  z 


338 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


Modern  Europe  had  as  yet  but  little  literature  ;  and  that 
little  reflected  the  .beliefs  of  a  discredited  Church.  For  the 
new  ideas  which  were  to  mould  the  Europe  of  the  future, 
for  the  masterpieces  of  human  thought  and  eloquence, 
the  scholars  of  the  Renaissance  had  to  turn  to  the  writers 
of  ancient  Rome  and,  more  especially,  of  ancient  Greece. 
Latin  and  Greek  naturally  took  their  places  as  the  indis- 
pensable foundation  of  a  gentleman's  education. 

All  this  is  now  changed.  Modern  literature  is  larger 
than  the  ancient  classics,  and  at  least  as  valuable,  while 
science  with  its  myriad  paths  of  inquiry  has  made  it  im- 
possible for  a  single  man  to  master  the  whole  circle  of 
knowledge.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  a  division  of  labour  is 
demanded  ;  if  we  are  to  follow  up  one  line  of  research  with 
success,  most  other  lines  must  be  forsaken.  But  before  thus 
setting  out  on  the  chosen  path  of  life,  l<  a  general  educa- 
tion" is  required.  And  the  object  of  this  general  educa- 
tion is  twofold.  Our  mental  faculties  have  to  be  shar- 
pened and  expanded,  and  a  stock  of  knowledge  to  be 
acquired  which  will  serve  us  in  our  dealings  with  the 
world  or  in  the  department  of  study  we  pursue.  In  order 
that  these  two  objects  may  be  attained  with  the  greatest 
possible  thoroughness  during  the  short  years  of  our 
general  education,  we  must  be  careful  that  the  subjects 
of  study  chosen  for  the  sake  of  the  one  should  be  suit- 
able for  the  other  also.  To  teach  a  boy  useless  or 
spurious  knowledge  for  the  sake  of  sharpening  his  intel- 
lect is  a  crime.  We  of  the  nineteenth  century,  "  when 
every  hour  must  sweat  her  sixty  minutes  to  the  death," 
cannot  afford  to  be  crammed  with  what  we  have  here- 
after to  forget  or  unlearn,  while  there  is  so  much  that  we 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  339 

must  know  if  we  are  not  to  be  handicapped  in  the  race 
of  life.  If  we  can  arrive  at  the  same  end  by  two  ways, 
one  short  and  the  other  long,  the  teacher  ought  not  to 
hesitate  as  to  which  he  should  prefer. 

Instead  of  beginning  with  the  extinct  languages,  which 
we  can  know  only  indirectly,  education  should  begin  with 
those  living  idioms  from  which  alone  we  can  learn  the 
true  nature  of  actual  speech.  Language  does  not  con- 
sist of  letters,  but  of  sounds ;  and  until  this  fact  has 
been  brought  home  to  us,  our  study  of  it  will  be  little 
better  than  an  exercise  of  memory.  We  must  start  with 
the  sentence,  the  real  unit  of  speech,  and  not  with  the 
isolated  word  ;  we  must,  in  short,  adopt  the  same  method 
in  learning  another  tongue  that  we  adopted  in  infancy  in 
learning  our  own.1  There  is  consequently  but  one  way 
of  acquiring  a  true  knowledge  of  a  foreign  speech  and 
of  coming  to  understand  what  language  actually  is.  This 
is  by  first  learning  to  speak  the  language  in  question,  and 
afterwards  translating  its  living  sounds  into  the  arbitrary 
symbols  of  written  letters.  When  once  we  have  been 
taught  to  think  in  two  or  more  different  languages,  and 
have  thus  discovered  the  independence  of  ideas  and  their 
expression,  it  will  be  comparatively  easy  to  pass  to  the 
acquisition  of  other,  and  it  may  be,  extinct  tongues.  To 
have  realized  that  all  languages,  whether  living  or  dead, 
are  at  bottom  the  same,  governed  by  the  same  general 
laws,  and  designed  for  the  same  general  purposes,  is  to 
have  penetrated  into  the  secret  of  speech,  and  made  the 
study  of  language  take  its  rightful  place  as  a  valuable 

1  See  L.  J.  V.  GeVard  :  "  On  the  Comparative  Method  of  learning 
Foreign  Languages,"  (Leicester)  1876. 


340 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


instrument  for  training  the  mind.  In  the  passage  from 
the  modern  to  the  ancient  languages,  comparative  philo- 
logy will  lead  the  way.  It  will  show  us  how  the 
forms  of  modern  French  presuppose  those  of  ancient 
Latin,  how  German  or  English  grammar  does  but  repeat 
under  new  forms  the  principles  and  conceptions  of  Greek 
grammar,  and  how  the  changes  undergone  by  letters  in 
the  classical  tongues  are  explained  by  the  changes  that 
are  being  undergone  by  sounds  under  our  own  eyes. 
With  a  system  of  education  like  this,  following  as  it  does 
the  method  of  nature  and  science,  time,  brains  and  energy 
will  be  saved,  and  a  truer  and  deeper  knowledge  of  Latin 
and  Greek  will  be  gained  than  was  ever  possible  upon 
the  old  plan.  At  the  same  time  the  study  of  languages 
will  cease  to  be  a  mere  mental  gymnastic,  or  the  gratifi- 
cation of  an  idle  curiosity,  to  be  laid  aside  and  forgotten 
at  the  first  convenient  opportunity ;  the  boy  will  have 
obtained  an  art  of  the  utmost  value  to  him  in  after  life,  the 
art,  namely,  of  speaking  and  writing  modern  languages, 
while  the  insight  he  has  gained  into  the  nature  of  speech, 
and  the  training  he  has  had  in  catching  and  reproducing 
unfamiliar  sounds,  will  enable  him  to  acquire  other  lan- 
guages and  detect  differences  in  pronunciation  with  an 
ease  and  readiness  which  would  else  have  been  impos- 
sible. The  current  system  of  education,  like  the  old- 
fashioned  "  scholarship  "  on  which  it  rests,  is  a  thing  of 
the  past,  the  product  of  chance  and  not  of  science  ;  and 
it  justly  deserves  Montaigne's  reproach:  "C'est  un  bel 
et  grand  adgencement  sans  doubte  que  le  grec  et  le 
latin,  mais  on  1'achete  trop  cher  .  .  .  .  et  cette  longueur 

1  "Essais,"i.  25. 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  341 

que  nous  mettons  a  apprendre  ces  langues  est  la  seule 
cause  pourquoi  nous  ne  pouvons  arriver  a  la  grandeur 
d'ame  et  de  cognoissance  des  anciens  Grecs  et  Romains." 
Friedlander,1  Bratuscheck,2  Ostendorf  and  Breymann, 
all  agree,  from  the  point  of  view  of  scientific  philology, 
in  urging  that  the  study  of  the  classical  tongues  should 
be  preceded  by  that  of  the  modern  ones.  As  Ostendorf 
remarks,3  "  a  satisfactory  organization  of  a  higher  system 
of  education  in  schools  is  inconceivable  so  long  as  in- 
struction in  foreign  languages  in  gymnasia  and  poly- 
technic schools  of  the  first  rank  has  to  begin  with  Latin." 
The  whole  question  was  fully  discussed  at  a  conference 
held  under  the  presidency  of  Councillor  Wiese  at  Dres- 
den in  the  autumn  of  1873,  and  answered  on  the  side  of 
science  and  reason. 

The  teaching  of  Latin  and  Greek  must  itself  be  re- 
formed, not  only  in  the  matter  of  grammar,  but  still  more 
in  the  matter  of  pronunciation.  Our  insular  pronuncia- 
tion of  Latin  is  at  once  incorrect,  inconsistent,  and  per- 
plexing. By  the  help  of  comparison  and  induction,  the 
pronunciation  of  Latin,  as  observed  by  the  upper  classes 
of  Rome  under  the  Emperors,  has  been  recovered,  and 
Corssen's  great  work  on  the  "Aussprache,  Vokalismus 
und  Betonung  der  lateinischen  Sprache,"  contains  a  full 
account  both  of  it  and  of  the  mode  in  which  it  has  been 
restored.  The  pronunciation  of  ancient  Greek  is  a  matter 
of  greater  difficulty,  and  we  know  that  it  changed  very 

1  "  Ueber  die  Reformbestrebungen  auf  dem  Gebiete  des  hoheren 
Schulwesens  fur  die  mannliche  Jugend  in  Deutschland"  (1874). 

2  "  Ueber  den  Unterricht  in  der  franzosischen  Grammatik." 

3  "  Mit  welcher  Sprache  beginnt  zweckmassiger  Weise  der  fremd- 
sprachliche  Unterricht"  (1873). 


342  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

considerably  between  the  age  of  Plato  and  that 
Dionysius  Thrax.  In  the  time  of  the  latter,  for  instance, 
9,  £  and  %  had  become  single  sounds,  whereas  their 
compounded  character  appears  plainly  in  the  works  of 
the  tragedians  where  T  and  K  before  an  aspirated  vowel 
become  S  (that  is,  t  +  k)  and  x,  (k  +  /i).  During  the  cen- 
turies of  political  decay  and  disruption  that  followed, 
changes  in  pronunciation  went  on  rapidly,  and  there  can 
be  little  doubt  that  in  some  respects  even  our  English 
way  of  pronouncing  Greek  is  more  correct  than  that  of 
the  modern  Greeks,  who  confound  most  of  the  vowels 
and  diphthongs  together  under  the  same  monotonous 
sound  of  e  (z).  Nevertheless,  since  Greek  is  still  a  spoken 
language,  and  the  classical  revival  at  Athens  has  made  it 
possible  for  an  English  scholar  to  converse  freely  with  a 
Greek  when  once  the  obstacle  of  a  divergent  pronuncia- 
tion is  overcome,  it  is  desirable  that  we  should  forego  our 
own  prejudices  and  adopt  that  pronunciation  which  would 
allow  us  to  turn  to  practical  use  the  long  hours  and 
labours  we  have  spent  at  school  over  the  Greek  tongue. 
The  same  difficulty  does  not  meet  us  in  the  case  of  Latin. 
Here  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  us  from  employing  the 
pronunciation  which  is  approximately  the  right  one,  and 
it  is  much  to  be  hoped  that  the  movement  in  favour  of 
a  reformed  pronunciation  will  speedily  spread  and  pre- 
vail. At  present,  it  is  impossible  for  the  comparative 
philologist  in  England  to  lecture  upon  Latin  without  the 
help  of  a  black  board  and  chalk.  When  he  speaks  of  i 
in  Sanskrit  or  other  tongues,  the  ordinary  student  thinks 
of  e  (as  in  English);  when  he  refers  to  e  and  ai  the 
audience  writes  down  a  and  i ;  and  so  long  as  agis  and 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  343 

cecidi  are  pronounced  ejis  and  sesldai,  it  is  impossible  to 
show  that  they  have  any  connection  with  ago  and 
cadere. 

But  the  reform  of  Latin  and  Greek  pronunciation, 
which  is  one  of  the  practical  results  of  a  more  extended 
acquaintance  with  comparative  philology,  would  be  in- 
complete without  the  more  crying  reform  of  our  own 
English  mode  of  spelling.  It  is  needless  to  enlarge  here 
upon  the  practical  evils  of  this  curious  system  of  symbolic 
expression,  which  obliges  a  child  to  learn  by  heart  the 
spelling  of  almost  every  separate  word  in  the  dictionary, 
the  consequence  being  that  at  least  forty  per  cent,  of  the 
children  educated  in  our  board-schools  leave  school 
unable  to  spell,  and  so,  little  by  little,  neglect  to  read  or 
write  at  all,  and  fall  back  into  the  condition  of  their 
illiterate  forefathers.  Dr.  Gladstone  calculates  that  the 
money  cost  of  teaching  this  modicum  of  learning  in  the 
elementary  schools  "  considerably  exceeds  ;£  1,000,000 
per  annum,"  and  that  in  Italy,  where  the  spelling  is 
phonetic,  a  "  child  of  about  nine  years  of  age  will  read 
and  spell  at  least  as  correctly  as  most  English  children 
when  they  leave  school  at  thirteen,  though  the  Italian 
child  was  two  years  later  in  beginning  his  lessons."  l  Nor 
need  we  do  more  than  allude  to  the  vicious  moral  train- 
ing afforded  by  a  system  that  makes  irrational  authority 
the  rule  of  correctness,  and  a  letter  represent  every  other 
sound  than  that  which  it  professes,  or  to  the  difficulty 
thrown  in  the  way  of  learning  to  speak  a  foreign  lan- 
guage by  the  dissociation  between  sound  and  symbol  to 

1  See  his  excellent  little  book  on  "  Spelling  Reform  from   an 
educational  point  of  view''  (1878),  pp.  14,  20. 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

^^^•^M 

which  the  child  has  been  accustomed  from  his  earliest 
years.  The  language  of  the  ear  has  to  be  translated  into 
the  language  of  the  eye  before  it  is  understood,  and  this 
it  is  which  makes  the  English  and  the  French  notoriously 
the  worst  linguists  in  Europe.  The  inadequacy  of  Eng- 
lish spelling  is  exceeded  only  by  that  of  Gaelic,  and  in  the 
comparative  condition  of  the  Irish  and  Scotch  Gaels  on 
the  one  side  and  the  Welsh  Cymry  on  the  other,  we  may 
read  a  lesson  of  the  practical  effects  of  disregarding  the 
warnings  of  science.  Welsh  is  phonetically  spelt,  the 
result  being  that  the  Welsh,  as  a  rule,  are  well  educated 
and  industrious,  and  that  their  language  is  maintained  in 
full  vigour,  so  that  a  Welsh  child  has  his  wits  sharpened 
and  his  mind  opened  by  being  able  to  speak  two  lan- 
guages, English  and  Welsh.  In  Ireland  and  Scotland, 
on  the  contrary,  the  old  language  is  fast  perishing  ;  and 
the  people  can  neither  read  nor  write,  unless  it  be  in 
English.1 


1  The  following  books  and  papers  may  be  consulted  on  the  sub- 
ject of  the  reform  of  English  spelling  : — A.  J.  Ellis  :  "  Three  Lec- 
tures on  Glossic  ; "  "  Pronunciation  for  Singers  ;  "  "  Orthography 
in  relation  to  Etymology  and  Literature  ; "  "  Early  English  Pro- 
nunciation ;  "  Bikkers  :  "  The  Question  of  Spelling  Reform  ;  "  J.  H. 
Gladstone  :  "  The  Spelling  Reform  ; "  "  Spelling  Reform  from  an 
educational  point  of  view;"  Hadley :  "Is  a  Reform  desirable  in 
the  Method  of  Writing,"  in  "  Philological  and  Critical  Essays  ; " 
Haldeman  :  "  Analytic  Orthography  ;  "  E.  Jones  :  "  Spelling  and 
School-boards  ;"  "The  Revision  of  English  Spelling  a  National 
Necessity ; "  "  The  Pronouncing  Reader  on  the  Anglo-American 
System  ; "  Latham  :  "  A  Defence  of  English  Spelling ;  "  Fleay  : 
"  English  Sounds  and  English  Spelling ; "  March :  "  Orthography," 
in  the  "  Cyclopaedia  of  Education  and  Yearbook  of  Education, 
1877;"  "Opening  Address  before  the  International  Convention 
for  the  Reform  of  English  Orthography;"  Max  Miiller  :  "Spell- 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  345 

But  the  practical  evils  of  our  present  spelling  must  be 
left  to  others  to  deal  with.  To  the  scientific  philologist 
it  is  at  once  an  eyesore  and  an  incumbrance.  What  he 
wants  to  know  is,  not  how  words  are  spelt,  but  how  they 
are  pronounced.  His  object  is  to  trace  the  gradual 
changes  that  sounds  undergo,  and  so  determine  the  laws 
which  they  obey.  A  corrupt  or  antiquated  spelling  only 
misleads  and  confuses.  The  whole  fabric  of  comparative 
and  historical  philology  is  based  on  the  assumption  that 
Hindus,  Greeks,  Romans,  Goths,  and  others,  spelt  their 
words  pretty  much  as  they  pronounced  them.  The  ob- 
jection that  a  reformed  spelling  would  destroy  the  con- 
tinuity of  a  language  or  conceal  the  etymology  of  its 
words,  is  raised  only  by  ignorance  and  superficiality. 

ing"  (reprinted  from  the  "  Fortnightly  Review,"  April,  1876) ;  Pit- 
man :  "A  Plea  for  Spelling  Reform"  (a  series  of  tracts  compiled 
from  periodicals,  &c.,  recommending  an  enlarged  alphabet  and  a 
reformed  spelling  of  the  English  Language)  ;  Sweet  :  "  A  Hand- 
book of  Phonetics  ;  "  Whitney  :  "  How  shall  we  Spell,"  and  "  The 
Elements  of  English  Pronunciation,"  in  "  Oriental  and  Linguistic 
Studies,"  2nd  series  ;  Withers  :  "  The  Spelling  hindrance  in  Ele- 
mentary Education  ;  "  "  Alphabetic  and  Spelling  Reform  an  Edu- 
cational Necessity  ; "  "  The  English  Language  Spelled  as  pro- 
nounced ; "  "  On  Teaching  to  Read  ; "  the  "  Proceedings  of 

the  American  Philological  Association,"  1874-8  (containing  Ad- 
dresses by  March,  Trumbull,  and  Haldeman)  ;  Burns's  "  Spelling 
Reformer  ;  "  Pitman's  "  Phonetic  Journal ; "  "  The  Bulletin  of  the 
Spelling  Reform  Association"  (1877-9);  Ellis,  Sweet,  and  Sped- 
ding  in  the  "Academy,"  Feb.  24,  March  3,  March  10,  March  17, 
June  2,  June  9,  June  16,  June  23,  and  July  9,  1877  ;  Skeat  in  the 
"Athenaeum,"  April  29  and  May  27, 1876  ;  Spedding  in  the  "  Nine- 
teenth Century,"  June,  1877  ;  "Report  of  the  Conference  held  in 
London,  May  29,  1877."  For  Spelling  Reform  in  Germany  see 
"  Reform,"  published  monthly  at  Bremen  (1877-9),  an<^  the  "Ver- 
handlungen  der  Konferenz  zur  Herstellung  grosserer  Einigung  in 
derdeutschen  Rechtschreibung,"  Jan.  1876. 


346  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

The  continuity  of  a  language  consists  in  its  sounds,  not 
in  its  letters  ;  in  the  history  of  the  modifications  of  pro- 
nunciation through  which  it  has  passed,  not  in  a  fossilized 
and  deceitful  spelling.  As  for  (etymology,  our  present 
spelling,  the  invention  of  printers  and  prae-scientific 
pedants,  is  as  often  false  as  right.  Could,  for  instance, 
the  past  tense  of  can,  has  an  /  inserted  in  it,  because 
should,  the  past  tense  of  shall,  has  one ;  rime  is  spelt 
rhyme  as  though  derived  from  the  Greek  pu9/M$ ;  and  it  is 
not  so  long  since  lantern  was  written  lanthorn,  as  sweetard 
is  still  written  sweetheart.  But  in  a  very  large  proportion 
of  words  the  spelling  no  longer  suggests  even  a  false 
etymology  ;  while  to  make  the  spelling  of  every  word 
declare  its  own  origin  is  to  attempt  a  sheer  impossibility. 
A  different  spelling  of  words  which  are  pronounced  in 
the  same  way  is  no  assistance  to  the  reader,  but  a  mere 
burden  upon  the  memory ;  apart  from  the  fact  that  no 
difficulty  is  experienced  in  distinguishing  the  sense  of 
different  words  written  in  the  same  way,  such  as  box  or 
scale,  or"  that  words  of  identical  origin  and  sound,  like 
queen  and  quean,  are  sometimes  written  differently,  we 
never  find  ourselves  at  a  loss  to  understand  homophonous 
words  when  we  hear  them  spoken,  although  in  conversa- 
tion we  have  not  the  same  leisure  and  power  of  knowing 
the  end  of  a  sentence  that  we  have  in  reading.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  however,  etymology  is  the  province  of  the 
professed  philologist,  not  of  the  amateur,  and  the  absurd 
paradoxes  and  lucubrations  upon  language  that  even 
now  teem  from  the  press  are  the  result  of  a  belief  that 
anyone  who  has  a  smattering  of  Latin  and  Greek  is 
qualified  to  pronounce  upon  the  nature  and  origin  of 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  347 

words.  In  astronomy  or  any  other  of  the  physical 
sciences  such  a  presumption  is  now  almost  inconceivable  ; 
that  it  should  still  be  possible  in  linguistic  science  shows 
what  need  there  is  of  impressing  its  facts  and  method 
upon  the  minds  of  the  young.  One  who  has  been, 
properly  trained  in  the  principles  of  comparative  philo- 
logy will  at  least  have  learnt  that  the  etymology  even 
of  English  words  is  not  to  be  taken  up  hastily  and  with- 
out preparation,  but  that  it  is  a  difficult  and  delicate  task, 
which  demands  all  the  resources  of  the  practised  student 
of  phonology  and  the  philosophy  of  speech. 

To  speak  of  spelling  reform,  however,  is  really  to  speak 
inaccurately.  What  is  wanted  is  not  a  reformed  spelling, 
which  though  it  may  approximately  represent  our 
present  pronunciation,  would  become  an  antiquated 
abuse  in  the  course  of  a  generation  or  two,  but  a 
reformed  alphabet.  For  practical  use,  an  alphabet  of 
forty  characters  would  sufficiently  represent  the  principal 
varieties  of  sound  heard  in  educated  speech,  each  cha- 
racter, of  course,  denoting  a  distinct  sound,  and  one  dis- 
tinct sound  only.  The  scientific  philologist  would  have 
his  own  alphabet,  whether  Prince  L-L.  Bonaparte's,  Mr. 
Melville  Bell's,  Mr.  A.  J.  Ellis's,  or  Mr.  Sweet's,  for 
marking  the  minute  shades  of  difference  in  English 
sounds,  as  well  as  those  sounds  which  do  not  occur  in 
the  "  Queen's  English,"  or  in  any  form  of  English  at  all. 
But  the  practical  phonetic  alphabet,  of  which  Mr.  Pit- 
man's, notwithstanding  certain  imperfections,  may  well 
serve  as  a  model,  would  prove  an  inestimable  benefit 
both  to  the  educator  and  to  the  philologist.  The  child, 
on  the  one  hand,  would  have  to  commit  to  memory 


348 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


only  forty  symbols  and  their  values  in  order  to  know  how 
to  read  and  write,  while  the  philologist  would  be  able  to 
discover  the  peculiarities  of  individual  and  dialectal  pro- 
nunciation, as  well  as  the  changes  undergone  by  sounds 
in  a  given  number  of  years.  With  a  practical  alphabet 
of  this  kind,  too,  it  would  be  found  that  the  pronuncia- 
tion, and  consequently  the  spelling,  of  the  educated 
classes  throughout  the  country  did  not  differ  much  more 
than  the  spelling  of  certain  words  by  different  printing- 
presses  at  the  present  time.  Adults  accustomed  to  the 
current  alphabet  would  have  no  greater  difficulty  in 
learning  the  additional  characters  than  they  have  in 
learning  the  Greek  or  German  letters  ;  and  they  would 
at  any  rate  have  the  satisfaction  of  feeling  that  they 
were  approximating  towards  the  civilized  condition  of 
the  ancient  Hindu,  who  had  an  alphabet  of  forty-nine 
characters,  each  standing  for  a  single  distinct  sound,  and 
were  correspondingly  receding  from  the  condition  of 
such  semi-barbarous  populations  as  the  Tibetans,  the 
Burmese,  or  the  Gaelic,  among  whom  spelling  and  pro- 
nunciation agree  as  little  as  in  English  itself. 

No  doubt  the  printers  would  suffer  at  first  by  a  change 
in  our  spelling,  and  the  change,  therefore,  would  have  to 
be  introduced  gradually,  perhaps  by  means  of  transitional 
modes  of  spelling.  But  a  time  would  come  when  the  whole 
current  English  literature  would  be  published  in  the  new 
type,  our  present  books  presenting  no  greater  difficulties 
to  the  ordinary  reader  than  the  poems  of  Spenser  do 
now.  Indeed,  the  difficulties  would  be  far  less,  since  they 
would  contain  no  obsolete  and  unknown  words,  such  as 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  349 

make  the  task  of  studying  the  works  of  Spenser  or 
Chaucer  doubly  hard.  A  page  of  Pitman's  "  Phonetic 
Journal "  is  not  hard  to  decipher,  even  without  a  know- 
ledge of  the  alphabet  in  which  it  is  written. 

But  in  order  that  a  reformed  alphabet  may  have  the 
support  of  the  scientific  philologist  it  is  necessary  that  it 
should  be  international,  that  is  to  say  should  assign  to  the 
symbols  of  the  vowels  (and  wherever  possible  of  the  con- 
sonants also)  the  phonetic  powers  they  possess  in  the 
ancient  Latin  alphabet,  and,  generally  speaking,  in  the 
modern  continental  alphabets  as  well.  The  comparative 
philologist  will  gain  but  little,  if  any,  help  from  an 
alphabet  in  which  a,  for  instance,  continues  to  have  the 
value  given  to  it  in  mane,  or  i  the  value  given  to  it  in  /. 
The  reformed  alphabet  must  be  based  on  a  scientific  one. 
Then,  and  then  only,  too,  will  there  be  a  chance  of  our 
realizing  the  dream  of  linguistic  science, — a  Universal 
language.  It  is  towards  this  end  that  the  comparative 
philologist  works,  this  is  the  practical  object  to  which 
his  eyes  are  turned.  And  when  once  the  needless 
stumbling-block  of  a  corrupt  spelling  is  removed,  every- 
thing seems  to  point  to  English  as  destined  to  be  the 
common  tongue  of  a  future  world.  Not,  perhaps,  Eng- 
lish as  it  is  now  spoken,  with  a  few  relics  .of  primitive 
inflection  still  clinging  to  it,  but  such  an  English  as  the 
Pigeon-English  of  China  which  Mr.  Simpson  has  pro- 
phesied will  become  the  language  of  mankind.1  English 
may  be  heard  all  over  the  world  from  the  lips  of  a  larger 

1  "  China's   Place   in   Philology,"   in   "  Macmillan's   Magazine," 
Nov.  1873. 


350 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


number  of  persons  than  any  other  form  of  speech  ;  it 
rapidly  becoming  the  language  of  trade  and  commerce, 
the  unifying  elements  of  our  modern  life.     Science,  too, 
is  beginning  to  claim  it  for  her  own,  and  it  is  not  long 
ago  that  a  Swedish  and  a  Danish  writer  on  scientific  sub- 
jects each  chose  to  speak  in  English  rather  than  in  their 
own  idioms  for  the  sake  of  gaining  a  wider  audience. 
Little  by  little  the  old  dialects  and  languages  of  the 
earth  are  disappearing  with  increased    means  of  com- 
munication, the  growth  of  missionary  efforts,  and  let  us 
add  also,  the  spread  of  the  English  race,  and  that  lan- 
guage has  most  chance  of  superseding  them  which,  like 
our   own,   has   discarded    the    cumbrous   machinery  of 
inflectional  grammar.      The  great  Grimm  once  advised 
his  countrymen  to  give  up  their  own  tongue  in  favour 
of  English,  and  a  time  may  yet  come  when  they  will 
follow  the  advice  of  the  founder  of  scientific  German 
philology.      That    a   universal   language   is    no    empty 
dream  of  "an  idle  day"  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the 
civilized  western  world  once  possessed  one.     Under  the 
Roman  empire  the  greater  part  of  Europe  was  bound 
together  by  a  common  government,  a  common  law,  a 
common  literature,  and,  as  a  necessary  consequence,  a 
common  speech.    When  the  darkness  of  barbarism  again 
swept  over  it,  and  the  single  language  of  civilized  Rome 
was  succeeded  by  linguistic  anarchy  and  barbarism,  the 
Church  and  the  Law,  the  sole  refuges  of  culture,  still 
preserved  the  tradition  of  a  universal  tongue.     It  was 
not  until  the  Reformation   shattered  Europe   into   an 
assemblage  of  hostile  nationalities  that  language,  as  th 


THE  ORIGIN  OF  LANGUAGE.  351 

expression  of  the  highest  spiritual  wants  and  feelings  of 
man,  became  finally  disunited  and  disuniting.  Diplo- 
macy, indeed,  the  one  attempt  to  harmonize  the  rival 
members  of  "the  European  family,"  had  its  common 
speech ;  but  diplomacy  was  powerless  against  the 
stronger  passions  which  were  shaping  the  Europe  of  a 
later  day.  Now,  however,  there  are  signs  that  religion 
is  at  last  ceasing  to  be  an  element  of  disunion,  and 
becoming  instead  a  bond  of  sympathy  and  common 
action  among  all  educated  men.  The  mischievous  cry 
of  nationalities,  which  found  support  in  the  crude  and 
misunderstood  theories  of  immature  philology,  is  dying 
away ;  we  are  coming  to  perceive  that  language  and 
race  are  not  synonymous  terms,  and  that  language  is 
but  the  expression  of  social  life.  Whatever  makes  for 
the  unity  and  solidarity  of  society  makes  equally  for  the 
unity  and  solidarity  of  language.  The  decaying  dialects 
of  the  world  may  be  fostered  and  wakened  into  artificial 
life  for  a  time ;  but  the  stimulus  soon  disappears,  and  the 
natural  laws  of  profit  and  loss  regain  their  sway.  By 
clearing  away  old  prejudices  and  misconceptions,  by 
explaining  the  life  of  language  and  the  laws  which  direct 
its  growth  and  decay,  the  science  of  speech  is  silently 
preparing  the  ground  for  the  unhindered  operation  of 
those  tendencies  and  movements  which  are  even  now 
changing  the  Babel  of  the  primaeval  world  into  the 
"  Saturnia  regna  "  of  the  future,  when  there  will  be  a 
universal  language  and  a  universal  law.  Genius  is  pre- 
dictive, and  the  outlines  of  a  philosophical  language 
which  Leibnitz  designed,  and  the  universal  language 


352 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


which  Bishop  Wilkins  actually  composed,1  may  after  all 
be  something  more  than  the  ideal  of  a  literary  enthusiast 
or  the  dream  of  an  unpractical  philosopher. 


1  "  Essay  towards  a  Real  Character  and  a  Philosophical  Lan- 
guage" (1668).  See  Max  M  tiller's  analysis  in  "Lectures  on  the 
Science  of  Language,"  ii.  pp.  50-65. 


SELECTED    LIST    OF    WORKS    FOR    THE 

STUDENT. 

The  Science  of  Language. 

K.  W.  Heyse  :  System  der  Sprachwissenschaft.     Berlin,  1856. 

E.  Renan  :  De  1'Origine  du  Langage.     Paris,  1858. 

F.  Max  Miiller  :  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language.     London, 

1861-4  (8th  edition  1875). 

R.  Latham  :  Elements  of  Comparative  Philology.     London,  1862. 
W.  D.  Whitney  :  Language  and  the  Study  of  Language.     London, 

1867  (Enlarged  German  translation  by  Jolly,  Munich,  1874). 
Life  and  Growth  of  Language.     London,  1875. 

G.  Curtius  :  Sprache,  Sprachen  und  Volker.     Leipzig,  1868. 

Aug.  Boltz  :  Die  Sprache  und  ihr  Leben.      Offenbach  am  Main, 

1868. 
H.  Steinthal  :  Der  Ursprung  der  Sprache.     Berlin,  1858. 

Charakteristik  der  hauptsachlichsten  Typen  des  Sprachbaues. 

Berlin,  1860. 

Abriss  der  Sprachwissenschaft  I.     Berlin,  1871. 
L.  Benlcew:  Apercu  ge'ne'ral  dela  Science  comparative  des  Langues. 

Paris,  1872. 
J.   Braun  :   Die  Ergebnisse  der   Sprachwissenschaft  in  popularer 

Darstellung.     Cassel,  1872. 
D.   Pezzi  :    Introduction   a  1'Etude    de  la   Science   du   Langage 

(French  translation  by  V.  Nourrisson).    Paris,  1875.    An  excel- 
lent abstract  of  the  subject. 
A.  Hovelacque  :  La  Linguistique.     Paris,  1876.     (Translated  into 

English  under  the  title  of  "  Science  of  Language,"  by  A.  H. 

Keane.     London.  1877. 
J.  Peile  :  Philology.     London,  1877. 

Fr.  Miiller  :  Grundriss  der  Sprachwissenschaft.     Vienna,  1876-9. 
A.  F.  Pott :  W,  von  Humboldt  ueber  die  Verschiedenheiten  des 

II.  A  A 


354  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 

menschlichen   Sprachbaues.     With    an    introduction.     Berlin, 
1876. 

See  also  the  introductions  to  Pott :  Etymologische  Forschungen 
auf  dem  Gebiete  der  indo-germanischen  Sprachen.  Lemgo- 
Detmold,  1833-36  (2nd  edition,  1859-73). 

Critical. 

A.  H.  Sayce  :  Principles  of  Comparative  Philology.  London,  1874 
(2nd  edition,  1875). 

Comparative  Aryan  Philology. 

F.  Bopp:  VergleichendeGrammatik  des  Sanskrit, Zend,  Griechischen, 
Lateinischen,  Litauischen,  Gothischen  und  Deutschen.  Berlin, 
1833-52  ;  2nd  and  enlarged  edition,  1857-61  (translated  into 
French  with  valuable  introductions  by  Breal,  Paris,  1866-72). 

A.  Schleicher  :  Compendium  der  vergleichenden  Grammatik  der 
indo-germanischen  Sprachen.  Weimar,  1 861-60  (3rd  edition, 
1870.  Translated  into  English  by  H .  Bendall.  London,  1874). 
4th  edition,  1876. 

W.  Scherer  :  Zur  Geschichte  derdeutschen  Sprache.  Berlin,  1868, 
2nd  edition,  1878. 

F.  G.    Eichhoff :    Grammaire  ge'nerale  indo-europe'enne.      Paris, 
1867. 

G.  I.  Ascoli  :  Corsi  di  glottologia.     Vol.  i.   Turin  and  Florence, 
1870. 

G.  Curtius  :  Zur  Chronologic  der  indo-germanischen  Sprachfor- 
schurig.  Leipzig,  1867  (2nd  edition,  1873)  (translated  into 
French  by  Bergaigne.  Paris,  1869). 

A.  Fick  :  Vergleichendes  Worterbuch  der  indogermanischen 
Sprachen.  Gottingen,  1874  (3rd  edition,  1876). 

Die  ehemalige  Spracheinheit  der  Indogermanen  Europas. 
Gottingen,  1873. 

Die  griechischen  Personennamen.     Gottingen,  1874. 

R.  Westphal  :  Vergleichende  Grammatik  der  indogermanischen 
Sprachen.  Jena,  1873. 

J.  Schmidt  :  Zur  Geschichte  des  indogermanischen  Vocalismus. 
Weimar,  1871-75. 

F.  de  Saussure  :  Mdmoire  sur  le  Systeme  primitif  des  Voyelles  dans 
les  Langues  indo-europe'ennes.  (Leipzig,  1878.  Saussure  repre- 
sents Brugman's  a3  by  A  which  generally  appears  as  a  in  Greek 
and  Latin,  as  in  cado  and  \a9elv,  but  in  Slavonic  and  German 


LIST  OF   WORKS.  355 

becomes  «2  (Greek  and  Latins).  Long  a  is  analyzed  into  al  (e) 
+  A  (a)  or  0,1  (o)  +  A  ;  /3a/*a  :  /3a>/n6g  rz  Ksp/ia  :  /cop/«6g.  Every 
root  contains  «,  which  may  be  changed  into  a^  ;  and  every 
weakening  of  a  syllable  implies  the  dropping  of  at.  The  a 
sound,  which  does  not  essentially  differ  from  A,  and  appears  in 
Sanskrit  as  z  or  f,  under  certain  circumstances  combines  with  a 
preceding  z,  u,  or  vocalized  r,  n,  and  m  to  lengthen  these  latter 
sounds.) 

[See  also  H.  Osthoff  in  Kuhn's  "  Zeitschrift,"  24.  4  (1878),  pp. 
417-426.  Osthoff  denies  that  either  £  or  o  has  been  developed  in 
Greek  out  of  the  sonant  nasal  or  vocalized  «,  and  endeavours  to 
explain  away  contrary  instances.  Nevertheless,  it  would  seem  that 
f  really  does  sometimes  take  the  place  of  a  in  such  cases.  Osthoff 
shows  that  while  an  original  unaccented  sonant  nasal  is  represented 
in  Greek  by  a  (dv)  and  in  Gothic  by  un,  an  accented  one  is  repre- 
sented by  a  (dv)  in  Greek  and  in  (as  in  the  German  sincf]  in  Teu- 
tonic. The  two  forms  of  the  sonant  nasal  are  not  distinguished  in 
the  other  European  Aryan  languages.] 

A.  Ludwig  :  Agglutination  oder  Adaptation?     Prague,  1873. 

B.  P.  Hasdeu  :  Principie  de  Filologia  comparative.  Ario-Europea. 
Vol.  i.  (Istoria  Filologiei  comparative).     Bucarest,  1875. 

See  Kuhn's  Zeitschrift  fur  vergleichende  Sprachforschung.  Berlin, 
from  1851. 

Kuhn's  Beitrage  zur  vergleichenden  Sprachforschung.  Berlin, 
from  1858. 

Bezzenberger's  Beitrage  zur  Kunde  der  indogermanischen 
Sprachen.  Gottingen,  from  1877. 

Hovelacque's  Revue  de  Linguistique  et  de  Philologie  com- 
paree.  Paris,  from  1868. 

Me'moires  de  la  Socie'te'  de  Linguistique  de  Paris.  Paris, 
from  1868. 

The  Proceedings  and  Transactions  of  the  Philological 
Society.  London,  from  1842. 

Benfe/s  Orient  und  Occident.     Gottingen,  from  1862. 

The  Transactions  of  the  American  Philological  Association, 
from  1868. 

Sematology. 

A.  Chaignet  :  La  Philosophic  de  la  Science  du  Langage  e'tudie'e 
dans  la  Formation  des  Mots.  Paris,  1875.  (To  be  read  with 
caution.) 


356 


THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


H.  Chave'e  :  Ideologic  lexiologique  des  Langues  indo-europe'ennes. 

Paris,  1878.    (To  be  read  with  caution.) 
M.  Brdal :  Les  Ide*es  latentes  du  Langage  in  Melanges  de  Philologie 

et  de  Linguistique.     Paris,  1878. 
Heerdegen  :  Untersuchungen  zur  lateinischen  Semasiologie.     E 

langen,  1875-78. 

F.  Brinkmann  :  Die  Metaphern.     Bonn,  1878. 
F.  Bechtel :  Ueber  die  Bezeichnungen  der  sinnlichen  wahrnehmun- 

gen  in  der  indogermanischen  Sprachen.     Weimar,  1879. 

Origin  of  Language. 

H.  Steinthal  :  Der  Ursprung  der  Sprache  in  Zusammenhange  mit 

den  letzten  Fragen  alles  Wissens.     Berlin,  1851  (3rd  enlarged 

edition,  1877). 
W.  H.  J.  Bleek  :  On  the  Origin  of  Language.     Translated  by  T. 

Davidson.     New  York,  1869. 
A.  Geiger  :  Ursprung  und  Entwickelung  der  menschlichen  Sprache 

und  Vernunft.     Stuttgart,  1869. 
L.    Noire*  :    Der   Ursprung   der   Sprache.     Mainz   (and   London), 

1877- 
P.  Schwartzkopff :  Der  Ursprung  der  Sprache  aus  dem  poetischen 

Triebe.     Halle,  1875. 
W.  Wackernagel  :  Ueber  den  Ursprung  und  die  Entwickelung  der 

Sprache  (2nd  edition).     Basel,  1876. 


History  of  Scientific  Philology. 


. 


L.  Lersch  :  Die  Sprachphilosophie  der  Alten.     Bonn,  1838-41. 
Aug.  Grafenhan  :  Geschichte  der  klassischen  Philologie  im  Alter- 

thum.     Bonn,  1843. 
N.  M.  S.  Se"guier  :    La  Philosophic  du  Langage  exposee  d'apres 

Aristote.     Paris,  1838. 

Deutschle  :  Die  Platonische  Sprachphilosophie.     Marburg,  1852. 
Th.  Benfey  :  Ueber  die  Aufgabe  des  platonischen  Dialogs  Kratylos. 

Gottingen,  1866. 
H.  Steinthal  :  Geschichte  der  Sprachwissenschaft  bei  den  Griechen 

und  Romern  mit  besonderer  Rticksicht  auf  die  Logik.     Berlin, 

1863. 
G.  F.  Schomann  :  Die  Lehre  von  den  Redetheilen  nach  den  Alten 

dargestellt.     Berlin,  1862. 


LIST  OF  WORKS.  357 

K.  E.  A.  Schmidt :  Beitrage  zur  Geschichte  der  Grammatik  des 
Griechischen  und  des  Lateinischen.  Halle,  1859. 

G.  I.  Ascoli  :  Studij  oriental!  e  linguistic!.     Milan,  1854. 

Th.  Benfey  :  Geschichte  der  Sprachwissenschaft  und  orientalischen 
Philologie  in  Deutschland.  Munich,  1869. 

R.  von  Raumer  :  Geschichte  der  germanischen  Philologie.  Munich, 
1870. 

D.  Pezzi  :  Glottologia  aria  recentissima.     Turin,  1877.   (Translated 
into  English  by  E.  S.  Roberts  under  the  title  of  "Aryan  Philology 
according  to  the  most  recent  researches,"  1879.)    An  excellent 
supplement  to  Benfey's  great  work. 

Phonetics.  . 

A.  Melville  Bell  :  The  Principles  of  Speech  and  Vocal  Physiology. 

Revised  edition.     London,  1863. 
R.  Lepsius  :  Standard  Alphabet  for  reducing  unwritten  Languages 

and  foreign  graphic  systems  to  a  uniform  orthography  in  Euro- 
pean letters,  2nd  edition.     London,  1863. 
M.  Miiller :   Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language,  8th  edition. 

London,  1875. 
C.  L.   Merkel  :  Physiologic  der  menschlichen  Sprache.     Leipzig, 

1866. 
A.  J.  Ellis  :  On  Early  English  Pronunciation.     London,  1869-1875. 

(Parts  v.  and  vi.  in  preparation.) 

Practical  Hints  on  the  Quantitative  Pronunciation  of  Latin. 

London,  1874. 

On  the  English,  Dionysian,  and  Hellenic  Pronunciation  of 

Greek.     London,  1877. 

Pronunciation  for  Singers.     London,  1877. 

J.  N.  Czermak:  Populare  physiologische  Vortrage.     Vienna,  1869. 
See  also  papers  by  the  same  in  the  Vienna  "  Sitzungsberichte," 
xxiv.  4-9  (1857),  xxviii.  575~578  (1858),  xxix.  173-176,  557-584  (1858), 
lii.  2,  623-641  (1866). 

E.  Briicke  :  Diephysiologischen  Grundlagen  der  neuhochdeutschen 
Verskunst.     Vienna,  1871. 

See  also  papers  by  the  same  in  the  Vienna  "  Sitzungsberichte," 
ii.  182-208  (1849),  xxviii.  63-92  (1858),  xxxiv.  307-356  (1860),  and  the 
Zeitschrift  fur  die  osterr.  Gymn.  viii.  749-768  (1857),  ix.  689-701 
(1858). 

F.  C.  Bonders  :  De  physiologic  der  Spraakklanken^  in  het  bijzonder 
van  die  der  nederlandsche  taal.     Utrecht,  1870. 


358  THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

H.  Helmholtz  :  Die  Lehre  von  den  Tonempfindtmgen  (3rd  edition). 

Brunswick,  1870.  (Translated  into  English  by  A.  J.  Ellis,  under 

the  title  of  "  Sensations  of  Tone  as  a  physiological  Basis  for  the 

Theory  of  Music,"  1875.) 

O.  Wolf:  Sprache  und  Ohr.    Brunswick,  1871. 
G.  I.  Ascoli  :    Vorlesungen  liber  die  vergleichende  Lautlehre  des 

Sanskrit,  des  Griechischen   und   des  Lateinischen,   I.     Halle, 

1872. 
H.  M  oiler  :  Die  Palatalreihe  der  indogermanischen  Grundsprache 

im  Germanischen.     Leipzig,  1875. 
W.  D.  Whitney  :  Oriental  and  Linguistic  Studies,  II.     New  York, 

1874. 
J.  Winteler  :  Die  Kerenzer  Mundart  in  ihren  Grundziigen  darge- 

stellt.     Leipzig,  1876. 
H.  Sweet  :  History  of  English  Sounds.     London,  1876. 

Handbook  of  Phonetics.     Oxford,  1877. 
E.  Sievers  :  Grundztige  der  Lautphysiologie.     Leipzig,  1876. 


Comparative  Mythology. 

Max  Miiller  :  Chips  from  a  German  Workshop,  4  vols.     London., 

1868-75. 
A.  Kuhn  :   Die   Herabkunft  des   Feuers    und   des   Gottertranks. 

Berlin,  1859. 

Ueber  die  Entwickelungsstufen  der  Mythenbildung.    Berlin, 

1860. 
M.  Bre*al  :  Melanges   de   Mythologie  et  de   Linguistique.      Paris, 

1878. 

F.  L.  W.  Schwartz  :  Der  Ursprung  der  Mythologie.     Berlin,  1860. 
J.  Fiske  :  Myths  and  Myth-makers.     London,  1873. 

G.  W.  Cox  :  The  Mythology  of  the  Aryan  Nations.    London,  1870. 
(To  be  read  with  caution.) 

A.  de  Gubernatis  :  Zoological  Mythology.     London,  1872. 
Mythologie  des  Plantes.     Paris,  1878. 
Letture  sulla  mitologia  vedica.     Florence,  1874. 
I.  Goldziher  :  Mythology  among  the  Hebrews,  Engl.  translation  by 

R.  Martineau.     London,  1877. 

J.  Grimm  :  Deutsche  Mythologie.     2nd  edition,  1844. 
G.  W.  Dasent :  Popular  Tales  from  the  Norse.     Edinburgh,  1859. 
J.  F.  Campbell :  Popular  Tales  of  the  West  Highlands.   Edinburgh, 
1860-62. 


LIST  OF   WORKS.  359 

R.  Hunt  :  Popular  Romances  of  the  West  of  England.     London, 

1865. 
W.  ,R.  S.  Ralston  :  The  Songs  of  the  Russian  People.     London, 

1872. 

Russian  Folklore.     London,  1873. 
R.  H.  Busk  :  Folklore  of  Rome.     London,  1874. 
B.    Schmidt  :     Griechische    Marchen,     Sagen,    und    Volkslieder. 

Leipzig,  1877. 
J.  G.  Von  Hahn  :  Griechische  und  albanesische  Marchen.    Leipzig, 

1864. 

Sag.wissenschaftliche  Studien.     Jena,  1871-6. 
Th.  Benfey  :  Pantschatantra.     Leipzig,  1859. 
W.  Webster  and  J.   Vinson  :    Basque   Legends.      London,    1877 

(2nd  edition,  1879). 
Bp.  Callaway  :    Nursery  Tales,  Traditions,   and   Histories  of  the 

Zulus.     Natal  and  London,  1866-68. 

The  Religious  System  of  theAmazulu  (Tradition  of  Creation, 

Ancestor- Worship,  Divination).    Natal,  Capetown,  and  London, 

1868-70. 
W.  H.  I.  Bleek  :  A  brief  Account  of  Bushman  Folklore.    Capetown, 

London,  and  Leipzig,  1875. 

A.  B.  Mitford  :  Tales  of  Old  Japan.     London,  1871. 
W.  W.  Gill  :  Myths  and  Songs  from  the  South  Pacific.     London, 

1*76. 

D.  G.  Brinton  :  Myths  of  the  New  World,  2nd  edition.    New  York, 
1876. 

M.  A.  Castre"n  :  Ethnologische  Vorlesungen  iiber  die  altaischen 
Volker  nebst  samojedischen  Marchen  und  tatarischen  Helden- 
sagen,  edited  by  Schiefner.  St.  Petersburg,  1857. 

Vorlesungen   iiber  die   fmnische   Mythologie.      Edited  by 
Schiefner.     St.  Petersburg,  1853. 
See  the  "  Folklore  Record,"  vol.  i.     London,  1879. 

"  The  Folklore  Journal,"  edited  by  the  working  Committee 
of  the  South  African  Folklore  Society.     Capetown,  from  1879. 
T.  F.  Crane  in  "The  International  Review/'  vi.  4  (April,  1879). 

The  Science  of  Religion. 

E.  B.  Tylor  :  Primitive  Culture.     London,  1871. 

E.  Burnouf  :  La  Science  des  Religions.  Paris,  1872.  (To  be  read 
with  caution.) 


360 


THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


F.  Max  Miiller  :  Introduction  to  the  Science  of  Religion.    London, 

1873- 

Lectures  on  the  Origin  and  Growth  of  Religion  as  illustrated 

by  the  Religions  of  India.     London,  1878. 
S.  Johnson  :    Oriental  Religions  and  their  relation  to  Universal 

Religion.   Vol.  i.    India.   Boston,  1873.   Vol.  ii.   China.   Boston, 

1878. 

T.  W.  Rhys  Davids  :  Buddhism.    Published  by  the  Society  for  Pro- 
moting Christian  Knowledge,  1877. 
A.  Kuenen  :  The  Religion  of  Israel.     Translated  into  English  by 

A.  H.  May.     London,  1874-5. 
Denis  :  Histoire  des  theories  et  des  ide*es  morales  dans  Tantiquite". 

Paris,  1856. 
L.  F.  A.  Maury  :  Histoire  des  religions  de  la  Grece  antique.    Paris, 

1857-59. 
E.  Renan  :  Etudes  d'histoire  religieuse.     Paris,  1857. 

Language  and  Ethnology. 

Wedewer  :  Ueber  die  Wichtigkeit  und  Bedeutung  der  Sprache  fiir 

die  tiefere  Verstandniss  des  Volkscharakters.     Frankfurt,  1859. 
A.   F.   Pott :   Die   Ungleichheit  menschlicher    Rassen.      Lemgo- 

Detmold,  1856. 

Anti-Kaulen,  oder  mythische  Vorstellungen  vom  Ursprunge 

der  Vb'lker  und  Sprachen.     Lemgo-Detmold,  1863. 
A.  Pictet :  Les  Origines'  indo-europeennes  ou  les  Aryas  primitifs. 

Paris,  1859  ;  2nd  edition,  1878. 
A.  Hovelacque  :  Langues,  races,  nationality.    2nd  edition.     Paris. 

1875. 
Th.   Waitz :    Anthropologie  der   Naturvolker.      Leipzig,   1860-72. 

2nd  edition,  by  G.  Gerland.     Leipzig,  1877. 
Th.  Poesche  :  Die  Arier.     Jena,  1878. 

See  Lazarus  and  SteinthaPs  Zeitschrift  fiir  Volkerpsychologie 
und  Sprachwissenschaft.     Berlin,  from  1859. 

Anthropological  Review,  and  Journal  of  the  Anthropological 
Institute.     London,  from  1863. 

Comparative  Philology  in  Classical  Education. 

G.  Curtius :    Die   Sprachvergleichung  in   ihrem   Verhaltniss    zur 
classischen  Philologie.     Berlin,  1845.     (Translated  into  English 
by  F.  H.  Trithen,  under  the  title  of  "  The  Results  of  Compara- 


LIST  OF  WORKS.  361 

tive  Philology  in  reference  to  Classical  Scholarship."    Oxford, 

1851.) 
Schenkl :  Werth  der  Sprachvergleichung  fur  die  classische  Philo- 

logie.     Gratz,  1864. 
M.  Breal  :  Quelle  place  doit  tenir  la  grammaire  compare'e  dans 

1'enseignement  classique  ?     Paris,  1873. 
J.  Lattmann  :  Die  durch  die  neuere  Sprachwissenschaft  herbeige- 

fiihrte  Reform  des  Elementarimterrichts  in  den  alten  Sprachen. 

Gottingen,  1873. 

J.  Jolly  :  Schulgrammatik  und  Sprachwissenschaft.     Munich,  1874. 
Perthes  :  Zur  Reform  des  lateinischen  Unterrichts  auf  Gymnasien 

und  Realschulen.     Berlin,  1873-4. 


Comparative  Syntax. 

B.  Delbriick :  Ablativ  Localis  Instrumentalis  in  Altindischen, 
Lateinischen,  Griechischen  und  Deutschen.  Berlin,  1864. 

G.  Autenrieth  :  Terminus  in  quern.     Erlangen,  1868. 

B.  Delbriick  &  E.  Windisch  :  Syntaktische  Forschungen.  I.  Der 
Gebrauch  des  conjunctivs  und  optativs  im  Sanskrit  und 
Griechischen.  Halle,  1871.  II.  Altindische  Tempuslehre. 
Halle,  1876. 

J.  Jolly  :  Ein  Kapitel  vergleichender  Syntax  :  der  conjunctiv  und 
optativ  und  die  Nebensatze  im  Zend  und  Altpersischen  in  ver- 
gleich  mit  dem  Sanskrit  und  Griechischen.     Munich,  1872. 
Geschichte  des   Infinitivs   im  indogermanischen.     Munich, 

1873. 

H.  Hiibschmann  :  Zur  casuslehre.     Munich,  1875. 
Fr.  Holzweissig  :  Wahrheit  und  Irrthum  der  localistischen  Casus- 

theorie.     Leipzig,  1877. 
A.  Drager  :  Historische  Syntax  der  lateinischen  Sprache.     Leipzig, 

1874-76. 
Tobler  :  Ueber  die  Wortzusammensetzung  nebst  einem  Anhange 

iiber  die  starkenden  Zusammensetzungen.     Berlin,  1868. 
Meunier  :  Les  composes  syntactiques  en  grec,  en  latin,  en  frangais 

et  subsidiairement  en  zend  et  en  indien.     Paris,  1872. 
R.  Schroder  :  Ueber  die  formelle  Unterscheidung  der  Redetheile  im 

griechischen  und  lateinischen  mit  Beriicksichtigung  der  Nominal- 

composita.     Leipzig,  1874. 
A.  Rohr :  Einige  Bemerkungen  iiber  Wesen,  Aufgabe  und  Ziele 

einer  vergleichenden  Syntax.     Bern,  1876. 


362  THE  SCIENCE   OF  LANGUAGE. 


Latin  and  Greek. 

C.  Hirzel  :  Grundziige  zu  einer  Geschichte  der  classischen  Philo- 
logie.  Tiibingen,  1873. 

F.  Baur  :  Sprachwissenschaftliche  Einleitung  in  das  griechische  und 
das  lateinische  fur  obere  Gymnasial- Classen.     Tubingen,   1874. 
(Translated  into  English  by  C.  Kegan  Paul  and  E.   D.   Stone, 
under  the  title   of  "  Philological    Introduction   to   Greek  and 
Latin."     London,  1876,  2nd  edition,  1879.) 

E.  Herzog :  Untersuchungen  iiber  die  Bildungsgeschichte  der 
griechischen  und  lateinischen  Sprache.  Leipzig,  1871. 

Leo  Meyer  :  Vergleichende  Grammatik  der  griechischen  und  latein- 
ischen Sprachen.  Berlin,  1861-5. 

G.  Curtius  :  Griechische  Schulgrammatik,   loth  edition.     Prague, 
1873;  and  Erlauterungen.    Prague,  1863.    (Translated  into  Eng- 
lish  by   E.   Abbot,   under  the  title   of  "  Elucidations   of  the 
Student's  Greek  Grammar,"  by  Prof.  Curtius.     London,  1870.) 

Das  Verbum  der  griechischen  Sprache.     Leipzig,  1873-6. 
R.  Westphal  :  Methodische  Grammatik  der  griechischen  Sprache. 
A.  Bailly  :  Manuel  pour  TEtude  des  Racines  grecques  et  latines. 

Paris,  1869. 
G.    Curtius  :  Grundziige   der  griechischen  Etymologie  (1858,   4th 

edit.   1874.)      (Translated  into  English  by  A.  S.  Wilkins  and 

E.   R.  England,  under  the  title  of  "  Principles  of  Greek  Ety- 
mology."   London,  1876.) 
H.  L.  Ahrens  :  De  Graecae  linguae  Dialectis.     Gottingen,  1839.     (A 

new  edition  may  be  shortly  expected.) 
J.  Peile  :  Introduction  to  Greek  and  Latin  Etymology.     London, 

1869.     2nd  edition,  1876. 
W.  Pape  :  Worterbuch  der  griechischen  Eigennamen,  3rd  edition, 

edited  by  G.  E.  Benseler.     Brunswick,  1863-70. 
H.  Ebeling  :  Lexicon  Homericum.     Leipzig,  1873-78. 
A.  Vanicek  :  Griechisch-lateinisches  etymologisches  Worterbuch. 

Leipzig,  1877. 
Seb.  Zehetmayr  :  Analogisch-vergleichendes  Worterbuch  iiber  das 

Gesammtgebiet  der  indogermanischen  Sprachen.    Leipzig,  1879. 
S.  Th.  Aufrecht  &  A.  Kirchhoff:  Die  umbrischen  Sprachdenkmaler. 

Berlin,  1849-51. 
P.  E.  Huschke  :  Die  iguvischen  Tafeln.     Leipzig,  1859. 


LIST  OF   WORKS.  363 

H.  Bruppacher  :  Versuch  einer  Lautlehre  der  oskischen  Sprache. 
Zurich,  1869. 

E.  Enderis  :  Versuch  einer  Formenlehre  der  oskischen  Sprache. 
Zurich,  1871. 

M.  Bre"al  :  Les  Tables  eugubines.     Paris,  1875. 

Th.  Mommsen  :  Die  unteritalischen  Dialekte.     Leipzig,  1850. 

A.  Fabretti  :  Corpus  inscriptionum  italicarum.    Turin,  1867.    Three 

supplements,  1872,  1874,  1878. 
W.   Corssen  :  Ueber  Aussprache,  Vokalismus  und  Betonung  der 

lateinischen  Sprache.     Leipzig,  1868-70. 

Beitrage  zur  italischen  Sprachkunde.     Leipzig,  1876. 
H.  J.  Roby  :  A  Grammar  of  the  Latin  Language.     London,  1872-4. 

F.  Neue  :  Formenlehre  der  lateinischen  Sprache.     Mitau- Stuttgart, 
1866-77. 

H.  Schuchardt :  Der  Vokalismus  des  Vulgarlateins.    Leipzig,  1 866-8. 
Merguet  :    Die    Entwickelung    der    lateinischen    Formenbildung. 

Berlin,  1870. 
R.  Westphal :  Die  Verbalflexion  der  lateinischen  Sprache.     Jena, 

1873- 
W.  Brambach  :  Die  Neugestaltung  der  lateinischen  Orthographic. 

Leipzig,  1868. 
J.  Wordsworth  :  Fragments  and  Specimens  of  Early  Latin.    Oxford, 

1876. 
D.   Pezzi  :  Grammatica   storica   comparativa  della  lingua  latina. 

Turin- Florence,  1872. 
W.  Studemund  :  Studien  auf  dem  Gebiete  des  archaischen  Lateins. 

Berlin,  1873. 

See  Curtius'  Studien  zur  griechischen  und  lateinischen  Grammatik. 
Leipzig,  from  1868  to  1878. 

Rheinisches  Museum  fur  Philologie,  from  1827. 
Neue  Jahrbiicher  fur  Philologie  und  Padagogik.     Leipzig, 
from  1831. 

Fleckeisen's  Jahrbiicher  fur  classische  Philologie.     Leipzig, 
from  1855. 

Neue  Jahrbiicher,  &c.,  from  1875. 
Hermes,  from  1868. 

The  American   Philological  Association  Proceedings  from 
1869. 


INDEX. 


ABSTRACT  and  spiritual  ideas,  as 
spirit,  virtue,  intellect,  of  sen- 
suous origin ;  at  the  outset 
only,  words  for  the  visible  and 
sensuous,  till  the  mind  em- 
ployed metaphor  to  express  the 
higher  imaginations  of  the 
soul ;  metaphors  still  neces- 
sary in  dealing  with  abstract 
subjects  and  in  philosophic 
reasoning ;  add  a  charm  to 
poetry ;  the  creations  of  mytho- 
logy mainly  the  work  of  meta- 
phor ;  modern  science  accepts 
a  "  nature "  which  clothes  it- 
self with  the  attributes  of  hu- 
manity and  sex  ;  the  power  in 
language  of  rising  from  the 
concrete  to  the  abstract  made 
Hieroglyphic  writing  possible, 
and  enables  the  Chinaman  to 
adapt  his  system  to  new  ideas, 
i.  103-4. 

Abstracts  a  good  gauge  of  the 
development  of  language  ;  le- 
gend of  Pythagoras  summing 
up  Eastern  and  Greek  thought 
on  law  and  order  observed  in 
the  world,  and  naming  it  kos- 
mos j  indebted  to  Anaxagoras, 
Herakleitus,  and  Xenophanes 
for  our  ideas  of  mind,  motion, 


and  existence  ;  but  the  idea  of 
natural  selection  belongs  to  the 
present  generation,  and  is  a 
higher  glory  than  the  conquests 
of  a  Caesar,  i.  102-3. 

Accadian  language  ceased  to  be 
spoken  before  seventeenth  cen- 
tury B.C.,  i.  3-4. 

Accent  in  Aryan  chiefly  on  the 
last  syllable  ;  for  centuries 
thrust  back  in  Latin  and  the 
ALolic  dialects  of  Greece,  and 
is  still  proceeding  in  modern 
European  tongues  ;  Polish  ac- 
cents the  penultima  and  Bohe- 
mian the  first  syllable  ;  in  Se- 
mitic the  penultima  primarily 
received  the  accent,  and  the 
Arabic  which  agrees  with  the 
English  is  a  later  innovation, 
i.  176-7  ;  accent  alone  able  to 
resist  phonetic  decay  ;  its 
shifting  a  yielding  to  decay, 
ib.  202. 

Accidental  coincidences  in  the 
likeness  of  words  in  different 
languages,  i.  148-9. 

Achaemenian,  or  Old  Persian, 
dialect  recovered  from  the 
cuneiform  inscriptions  of  Da- 
rius Hystaspis  and  his  succes- 
sors, ii.  81. 


366 


INDEX. 


Advancing  civilization,  signs  of; 
division  of  labour  differen- 
tiated organization,  analysis  of 
thought  and  its  expression,  i. 

377- 

Affected  English  plurals  termini 
and  fungi,  and  the  genitive 
arid  dative  Christian^.  Christo; 
introduction  of  Chinese  cha- 
racters' into  Japan  by  the 
learned  class,  i.  174. 

Age  of  a  language  marked  by 
phonetic  decay  as  in  the  Old 
Egyptian  and  Accadian;  some 
languages  more  affected  than 
others ;  examples  of  words 
from  the  Basque,  Yakute 
Turkish  and  Chinese,  i.  197-8. 

Agglutinativelanguagesand  near 
approach  of  many  to  the  in- 
flectional ;  our  own  both  ag- 
glutinative and  isolating  ;  the 
French  je  voiis  donne  an  in- 
stance of  incorporation  ;  Chi- 
nese agglutinative,  with  much 
that  resembles  inflection,  while 
the  polysynthetic  languages  of 
North  America  retain  their 
primaeval  character,  i.  1 30 ; 
no  sharply  defined  line  of 
division  of  the  various  families 
of  speech  ;  but  species  and 
classes  really  exist,  each  with 
its  own  type  and  characteris- 
tics based  upon  its  own  con- 
ception of  the  sentence  and  its 
parts  ;  the  sentence  the  start- 
ing-point of  philology  and  key 
to  classification,  ib.  131 ;  their 
differences  reviewed  ;  impor- 
tant part  played  in  history  and 
civilization  by  the  races  who 


spoke  the  various  dialects  of 
the  Ural-Altaic ;  the  oldest 
monuments  of  Babylonia,  the 
cuneiform  inscriptions  have 
shown  that  the  wild  hill  tribes 
of  Media  and  Susiania,  the 
Elamites  and  Chaldeans  all 
spoke  cognate  languages,  ii. 
188-190 ;  communities  now 
speaking  allied  dialects  of  the 
Turanian  appear  to  belong  to 
different  races,  ii.  190-191  ; 
many  agglutinative  languages 
are  now  more  or  less  incorpo- 
rating^ Zulu,  Magyar,  Mord- 
vin,  and  Vogul ;  these  forms 
easily  decomposed  into  an 
amalgamation  of  the  verb  with 
two  personal  pronouns,  and 
are  almost  analogous  to  the 
French  je  vous  donne  and  the 
Italian  portandvelo,  ib.  209- 
210;  further  incorporation  af- 
fecting all  the  forms  of  the 
verb,  and  the  intercalation  of 
a  syllable  in  the  Basque  or  Es- 
cuara  dialects,  ib.  210-213  ;  the 
incorporation  of  the  pronouns 
found  in  Old  Accadian,  as  in 
Hungary  and  Northern  Rus- 
sia ;  the  pronoun  repeated 
pleonastically  in  Semitic  and 
Greek,  ib.  213-4. 

Agreement  of  numerals  and 
words  in  common  use  a  pre- 
sumption that  languages  are 
related,  i.  1 53 ;  pronouns  a  less 
reliable  criterion,  ib.  153-4. 

Alarodian  an  inflectional  group, 
difficult  to  distinguish  mor- 
phologically from  Aryan,  hav- 
ing nothing  genealogically  in 


INDEX. 


367 


common  ;  Georgian  the  chief 
living  representative  of  the 
family,  and  its  literature  largely 
ecclesiastical,  with  some  chro- 
nicles, romances,  and  poems, 
ii.  184-5. 

Alexandria  the  birthplace  of 
classical  philology,  i.  14. 

Alphabets,  scientific  ;  "  Stan- 
dard "  and  "  Missionary "  of 
Lepsiusand  Max  Miiller;  pro- 
posed alphabets  of  Ellis,  Prince 
L-L.  Bonaparte  and  Sweet,  i. 

.    333- 

Analogists  and  Anomalists,  two 
contending  Alexandrine  fac- 
tions, i.  15  ;  ib,  23. 

Analogy,  influence  of;  changed 
the  current  forms  of  English, 
Latin,  Greek,  and  Sanskrit,  i. 
178-9 ;  sometimes  alters  the 
whole  structural  complexion  of 
a  language,  as  in  the  Coptic, 
ib.  1 80  ;  influence  on  English 
flection ;  power  of  changing 
and  extending  meaning  of 
words ;  new  object  or  idea 
named  from  something  fami- 
liar ;  Kuriak,  Russian,  and 
English  examples,  ib.  181  ; 
sometimes  wrong,  as  the  term 
whale-fishery  and  the  name 
guinea-pig;  fair  and  legiti- 
mate when  applied  to  a  new 
object  in  relation  to  something 
familiar,  as  the  French  canard, 
Low-Latin  canardus,  German 
kahn,  a  small  "  boat,''  then  a 
duck,  which  was  frequently 
used  to  decoy  other  birds, 
ended  in  signifying  a  mere 
empty  cry  to  deceive,  ib.  182. 


Ancestor-worship  seems  to  have 
been  first  developed  ;  lingered 
on  into  the  historic  age  of 
Greece  and  Rome  ;  the  family 
consisted  of  the  dead  and  the 
living  ;  savages  unable  to  dis- 
tinguish between  waking  reali- 
ties and  dreams  ;  led  to  infer 
that  man  had  two  lives ;  visions 
produced  by  voluntary  or  in- 
voluntary fasts  with  the  con- 
ception of  the  continued  exis- 
tence of  dead  ancestors  led  to 
the  belief  in  spirits  or  ghosts  ; 
the  souls  of  ancestors  some- 
times regarded  as  friendly  and 
at  others  unfriendly,  and  sup- 
posed to  reside  in  animals  and 
material  things  as  among  the 
Hurons  and  Zulus  ;  the  latter 
see  their  ancestors  in  green 
and  brown  snakes  and  offer 
sacrifices  to  them  ;  ancestral 
worship  passes  insensibly  into 
the  worship  of  animals  and 
trees  ;  specially  through  fear 
into  the  wide-spread  adoration 
of  the  serpent,  ii.  290-291  ; 
offerings  spread  to  the  manes 
of  the  dead  to  avert  evil ;  man's 
daily  needs  the  source  of  his 
earliest  adoration  and  prayer; 
dread  of  evil  spirits  and  use 
of  charms  among  the  Red 
Indians,  ib.  ii.  292. 

Anticipations  of  a  universal  Ian- . 
guage  ;  signs  of  religion  be- 
coming a  common  bond  of 
sympathy  and  action  among 
all  educated  men  ;  the  mis- 
chievous cry  of  nationalities 
dying  out ;  the  perception  of 


368 


INDEX. 


language  as  the  expression  of 
social  life  ;  clearing  away  old 
prejudices  and  misconcep- 
tions ;  tendency  and  move- 
ments in  progress  for  turning 
the  Babel  of  the  primaeval 
world  into  the  "  Saturnia 
regna  "  of  the  future,  and  the 
realization  of  the  views  of 
Leibnitz  and  Bishop  Wilkins, 
ii.  351-2. 

Antiquity  of  man  proved  by  the 
science  of  language ;  age  of 
Egyptian  and  Assyrian  civili- 
zation ;  far  earlier  date  of  the 
parent-language  of  the  As- 
syrian, Arabic,  and  other  Se- 
mitic dialects ;  time  required 
shown  by  the  slight  changes 
in  Arabic  during  the  last  four 
thousand  years,  whilst  the  lan- 
guage on  the  oldest  Egyptian 
monument  is  decayed  and  out- 
worn, ii.  318-19  ;  changes  and 
decay  more  rapid  in  Aryan 
than  in  the  Semitic  idioms  ; 
grammatical  forms  of  Lithu- 
anian in  one  or  two  instances 
more  primitive  and  archaic 
than  Sanskrit ;  language  of  the 
Rig- Veda  and  Homeric  poems 
originally  the  same ;  Aryan 
dialects  believed  by  Herr 
Poesche  to  have  been  spoken 
by  the  cave  men  at  Cannstadt, 
Neanderthal,  Cromagnon,  and 
Gibraltar;  vast  period  required 
for  the  development  and  growth 
of  the  parent  Aryan  from  the 
rude  cries  of  barbarians  ;  pho- 
netic decay  and  word  survivals, 
ib.  319-321;  Ural-Altaic  family 


bears  a  similar  testimony  to 
an  indefinitely  high  antiquity; 
Accadian  a  decaying  speech 
three  thousand  years  B.C., 
and  implies  a  long  period  of 
previous  development ;  the 
Mongols  and  Ugro-Tatars ; 
agreement  of  comparative  phi- 
lology, geology,  pre-historic 
archaeology,  and  ethnology,  in 
proclaiming  the  enormously 
long  period  of  man's  existence 
on  the  earth ;  necessary  to 
explain  the  phaenomena  of 
language,  ib.  322-3  ;  further 
corroborated  by  the  number 
already  ascertained  of  existing 
separate  families,  and  others 
like  the  Basque  and  Etruscan, 
of  which  scarcely  a  vestige 
remains,  ib.  323. 

Apollonius  Dyskolus  and  his  son 
Herodian,  two  famous  Alex- 
andrine grammarians;  part  of 
the  former's  "  Syntax "  still 
extant ;  their  labours  ended 
the  controversy  between  the 
Analogists  and  Anpmalists  ; 
Greek  and  Latin  school  gram- 
mars inherited  from  this  old 
dispute,  confound  thinking  and 
speaking,  and  introduce  formal 
logic ;  result  of  comparison 
with  other  languages,  i.  23,  24. 

Apothegm  modern  on  Speech 
and  Silence,  only  a  partial 
truth  ;  the  prophet  the  har- 
binger of  a  higher  cult  and 
civilization  than  the  seer ; 
estimate  of  the  poet  of  the 
Rig- Veda  ;  haphazard  etymo- 
logy abandoned,  but  the  pic- 


INDEX. 


369 


ture  retained  of x  "  winged  j 
words "  inspired  by  Hermes 
and  the  Muses  ;  language  the 
bond  of  society,  and  the  boun- 
dary between  man  and  the 
brute,  i.  1-2. 

Apotheosis  and  its  causes  ;  first 
due  to  worship  of  ancestors 
after  death,  as  in  the  Manes 
of  the  Roman  Church,  but  in 
Chaldea  and  Egypt,  kings 
were  deified  while  living,  and 
also  the  Roman  Emperors  for 
State  reasons  ;  deification  of 
heroes  still  common  among 
the  Bunjaras,  who  recently 
made  General  Nicholson  into 
a  new  god  ;  natural  course  of 
a  myth  affected  in  this  way 
and  also  by  the  canonization 
of  Christian  saints,  ii.  297-8. 
Arabic  language,  dialects,  and 

literature,  ii.  173-178. 
Aramaic  a  Semitic  dialect,  dis- 
tinct from  Assyrian  and  He- 
brew in  phonology  and  gram- 
mar ;  once  widely  diffused 
over  Syria  and  Mesopotamia ; 
became  the  lingua  franca  of 
trade  from  the  eighth  century 
downwards,  in  time  extirpating 
Assyrio  -  Babylonian,  Pheni- 
cian,  and  Hebrew,  just  as  it 
was  itself  by  Arabic  afterwards, 
ii.  171-2. 

Arbitrary  element  small  in  ges- 
ture-language compared  with 
spoken,  consisting  of  a  few 
interjections  and  onomato- 
poeic sounds,  i.  95-6;  the  same 
sounds  used  for  different  ideas; 
no  necessary  connection  be- 
ll. B  B 


tween  an  idea  and  the  word 
that    represents    it  ;    natural 
sounds  differently  understood, 
as  in  the  attempts  to  imitate 
the  note  of  the  nightingale  in 
various  languages  ;  first  words 
of  children  according  to  Psam- 
mitikhus    and     the    Papyrus 
Ebers,  i.  95-6  ;  no  reason  in 
the  nature  of  things  why  the 
word  book  should  be  applied 
to  the  present  volume  in  pre- 
ference  to    koob,    biblion,    or 
liber,   id.  97  ;    essential    that 
language  be  an  instrument  for 
the     communication    of    our 
thoughts  to  others ;   Aristotle 
on   thought  and  communica- 
tion ;    the  voiceless  Yogi  of 
India,    and    the     Bernardine 
nuns  of  southern  France,  re- 
semble   the    untrained    deaf- 
mute,  id.  97  ;  the  name  Slav 
assumed  by  our  Aryan  kins- 
folk signifies  "  the  speaker,"  in 
opposition  to  the  dumb  and 
unintelligible  German — just  as 
the    Assyrians    are   called    a 
people     "  of    a     stammering 
tongue  ; "  Man  from  the  root 
man,  "  to  think ;  "  derivatives 
explained,  id.  97-8  ;  language 
the  prerogative  of  man  and  the 
bond  of  society  ;  a  social  pro- 
duct ;  springing  up  with  the 
first    community,    developing 
with  the  increasing  needs  of 
culture  and  civilization,  id.  98; 
reason  for  calling  the  present 
volume  a  book;  new  words  come 
into  use  for  new  objects  and 
ideas;  unintentional  changes; 


INDEX. 


new    words    and    derivatives 
must  be  accepted  by  society 
before  they  form  a   part    of 
living  speech;  fate  of  proposed 
new  words,  ib.  99-100. 
Aristarchus  the  Homeric  critic, 
a  strict  Analogist,  endeavoured 
to  remove  all  exceptions,  and 
to  determine  the  genitive  and 
dative  of  Zeus,  i.  15. 
Aristophanes  ridiculed  the  pe- 
dantry of  artificial  rules,  i.  10. 
Aristotle  on  digestion,  i.  8  ;  op- 
posed the  theory  of  the  natural 
origin   of  speech ;   held   that 
words    had    no    meaning    in 
themselves,  and  made  no  clear 
distinction  between  words  and 
language  ;  his  ten  categories 
a    mixture   of  grammar   and 
logic ;  his  logical  system  em- 
pirical  and   based   solely  on 
Greek  ;  only  capable  of  cor- 
rection by  comparative  philo- 
logy ;  injury  to  logic  by  his 
method   compensated  by  the 
additions  to  Greek  grammar, 
ib.    11-12;   on   the   logos  ^   ib. 
122. 

Armenia  regarded  by  the  Acca- 
dians  as  the  cradle  of  their 
race  ;  afterwards  the  home  of 
the  Aryan  Medes,  i.  307. 
Armenian  literature  ;  classic 
period  begins  with  the  forma- 
tion of  the  alphabet  by  Mesrop 
in  the  fifth  century  of  our  era ; 
and  the  works  of  Moses  of 
Chorene,  Lazar  of  Pharp, 
Eznib  of  Kolb,  and  others  ; 
leading  phonetic  feature  of  the 
language  the  interchange  of 


hard  and  soft  explosives,  while 
original/  becomes  h,  ii.  83. 
Article  definite,  postfixed  by  the 
Albanians,  Bulgarians,  Scan- 
dinavians and  Aramaeans,  i. 
1 24 ;  wanting  in  the  majority  of 
languages  and  wherever  found 
can  be  traced  back  to  the  de- 
monstrative  pronoun   and  is 
identical  with  it  in  German ;  has 
the  same  function  as  the  adjec- 
tive or  genitive,  but  not  the 
same  position  in  the  sentence  ; 
it  precedes  the  noun  in  English, 
German,  Hebrew,  Arabic,  and 
Old  Egyptian  where  the  adjec- 
tivefollowsit;  in  Scandinavian, 
Wallach,  Bulgarian,  and  Al- 
banian placed  after  its  noun  ; 
reason  of  this  irregularity ;  not 
found  in  Ethiopic  or  Assyrian, 
except  in  the  latest  period  of 
the  latter ;  among  the  Aryan 
dialects  ;   Russian  and  other 
Slavonic    idioms    (Bulgarian 
excepted)  have  no  article,  the 
Greek  being  very  inadequately 
represented    by    the   relative 
pronoun  in  the  old  Slavonic  ; 
Sanskrit  without,  though  the 
demonstrative   sa   sometimes 
takes  its  place  as  sa  purusha, 
like  tile  vir  in  Latin  ;  neither 
Finnic  nor  the  Turkish-Tatar 
have  an  article  ;  Osmanli  Tur- 
kish occasionally  follows  the 
Persian  and  expresses  it  by  a 
kezra  (z)  or  hemza  (') ;  Hun- 
garian  through    German   in- 
fluence has  turned  the  demon- 
strative   az    into    a    genuine 
article ;    the    objective    case, 


INDEX. 


37i 


called  by  Bohtlingk  "casus- 
definitus  "  formed  by  an  affix 
in  Turkish-Tatar,  Mongol, 
and  Tibetan,  often  answers 
exactly  to  the  use  of  a  de- 
finite article  with  a  noun,  i. 
423 ;  nearly  similar  use  of  an 
affix  in  Ostiak,  Hindustani, 
Persian,  and  Chinese  ;  while 
the  Algonkins  and  Othomis 
prefix  the  article,  ib.  i.  423-4  ; 
reason  of  this  opposite  usage ; 
opinions  of  Max  Miiller  and 
M.  Benlow,  ib.  i.  424-5  ;  posi- 
tion of  the  qualifying  word  in 
the  primitive  Aryan  sentence, 
according  to  M.  Bergaigne 
before  the  subject  and  govern- 
ing word  ;  place  of  the  article 
in  Semitic,  German,  Wallach, 
Bulgarian,  Scandinavian,  and 
Icelandic  ;  Aramaic  alone  as- 
signs it  a  natural  position  ; 
late  appearance  in  Hebrew 
and  Arabic  and  different  con- 
structions, ib.  i.  426-7  ;  agree- 
ment of  the  Old  Egyptian  in 
placing  the  determining  word 
and  prefixing  the  article,  ib. 
i.  427-8. 

Articulate  sounds  fully  inves- 
tigated by  Ellis,  Bell,  Sweet, 
Helmoz,  and  Prince  Lucien 
Bonaparte ;  the  physical  laws 
of  utterance  have  been  deter- 
mined and  etymology  become 
to  a  large  extent  a  physical 
science ;  difference  between 
phonology  and  language ;  their 
mutual  relation  ;  confusion  and 
dispute  about  change  of  pro- 
nunciation and  meaning ;  in- 


flection been  attributed  to 
phonetic  decay ;  the  Schlegels 
on  the  growth,  divisions,  and 
development  of  languages,  i. 
59-61. 

Articulate  utterances  of  speech 
classed  with  musical  notes,  i. 
237. 

Aryan  or  Indo-European  results 
of  inquiry,  the  starting-point 
for  the  investigation  of  other 
families  of  speech  ;  the  com- 
parative method  applicable  to 
all ;  the  study  of  Semitic  by 
Gesenius,  Ewald,  and  Renan 
soon  proved  that  the  laws 
derived  from  Aryan  were  not 
universal ;  that  each  group  and 
language  possesses  its  own 
linguistic  laws  and  peculiari- 
ties ;  Aryan  language  the 
parent  speech  of  a  highly 
civilized  race,  and  highly  in- 
flectional ;  its  exceptional  cha- 
racter, i.  55-6. 

Aryan  or  Indo-European  family 
of  languages  variously  named 
by  scholars  ;  Indo-European, 
perhaps,  the  most  favoured  ; 
Indo-Germanic  chosen  by 
Bopp,  widely  known  among 
Germans  ;  Sanskritic  now  dis- 
carded, and  Japhetic  objec- 
tionable, as  the  ethnological 
table  in  Genesis  is  really  geo- 
graphical ;  Caucasian  inappli- 
cable, as  only  the  little  colony 
of  the  Iron  or  Ossetes  belong 
to  the  Aryan,  ii.  69-70  ;  Arya 
occurs  frequently  in  the  Rig- 
Veda  as  a  national  name,  and 
a  name  of  honour ;  derived 


372 


INDEX. 


from  arya,  perhaps  "  plough- 
man "  or  "  cultivator  ;  "  the 
great  recommendation  of  Ar- 
yan, its  shortness  and  general 
adoption  ;  being  Sanskrit  the 
word  requires  some  limitation, 
ib.  70-1  ;  subdivisions  and  dis- 
persion of  the  family,  ib.ji-2 ; 
Vedic  and  Post-Vedic  poor  in 
vowels,  but  rich  in  consonants  ; 
euphonic  laws  strict  and  deli- 
cate ;  syntax  comparatively 
simple,  but  grammatical  forms 
full  and  clear  ;  often  preserved 
archaic  forms  obscured  else- 
where ;  Latin  and  Greek  some- 
times more  primitive ;  rise  and 
spread  of  the  dialects,  ib.  73-5  ; 
the  modern  Aryan  of  India 
including  the  Rommany  of  the 
Gipseys,  ib.  75-6. 
Aryan  Dictionary  and  civiliza- 
tion restored  by  Fick,  who  has 
argued  from  time  to  time  as  if 
the  absence  of  a  common  term 
in  East  and  West  necessarily 
implied  that  the  object  was 
unknown,  ii.  127  ;  advanced 
civilization  and  the  state  of 
society  apparent  from  the 
terms  denoting  family  relation- 
ship, dwellings,  rule,  and 
settled  customs,  ib.  127-9  '•> 
religion  simple,  the  worship  of 
natural  objects  and  pheno- 
mena, especially  the  sun  and 
dawn,  and  other  bright  powers 
of  the  day  ;  worshipper  only 
prayed  to  one  god  at  a  time  ; 
attributes  of  the  gods ;  nature- 
myths  of  a  later  age,  and  hymns 
to  the  gods  a  fruitful  source  of 


mythology,  and  the  basis  of  a 
liturgy  of  which  fragments 
were  carried  away  by  the 
various  bodies  of  emigrants  ; 
belief  in  evil  spirits  of  night 
and  darkness,  ib.  129-130. 

Aryan  distinctions  of  the  vowels  d, 
e,  o,  lost  by  the  Asiatic  branch 
of  the  family;  changes  of  roots 
in  Finnic,  i.  189-190,  note. 

Aryan  mother-country;  views  of 
Latham  and  Poesche  untena- 
ble ;  objections  to  Poesche's 
theory ;  comparative  philo- 
logy affords  proof  of  the  Asia- 
tic cradle  of  the  race ;  depen- 
dence of  linguistic  change  on 
geography  ;  position  accord- 
ing to  Pictet,  Hovelacque, 
andjohann  Schmidt;  Douse's 
theory,  ii.  122-3  5  current  opi- 
nion places  it  in  Bactriana  on 
the  western  slopes  of  Belurtag 
and  Mustag,  ii.  123;  here  is 
the  airyanem  vaejo  of  the 
Vendidad ;  the  legend  only 
a  late  tradition,  and  applies 
to  the  Zoroastrian  Persians, 
but  the  geography  is  real  and 
agrees  with  comparative  phi- 
lology about  the  early  Aryan 
home ;  further  evinced  by 
climate,  natural  history,  and 
productions,  ib.  123-4;  Hum- 
boldt's  view  that  the  Sea  of 
Aral,  the  Caspian,  and  Eux- 
ine  formed  at  one  time  a 
great  inland  lake,  confirmed 
by  recent  researches  ;  this 
inland  sea,  with  the  desert  to 
the  south,  cut  the  Aryans  off 
from  the  civilized  races  of  Elam 


INDEX. 


373 


and  Babylonia,  and  forced  the 
first  emigrants  to  the  west  to 
push  their  way  through  the 
steppes  of  Tatary  and  the 
pass  of  the  Ural  range  ;  the 
parent  speech  no  uniform 
tongue,  was  split  up  into  dia- 
lects and  perpetuated,  ib.  124-5. 

Aryan  words  in  use  before  the 
separation  of  the  family  into 
Eastern  and  Western,  how 
ascertained,  ii.  125-6. 

Aryan  grammar  reconstructed  ; 
mode  of  accentuation ;  the  pa- 
rent language  highly  inflected, 
afterwards  modified,  ii.  138-9. 

Aryan  myths  and  folk-tales  sup- 
posed to  have  been  derived 
from  about  fifty  originals,  ii. 
259-260. 

Aryan  proper  names  shown  by 
Fick  to  be  compounded  of 
two  words  and  analogous 
names  in  Greek,  Old  German, 
Servian,and  Welsh;  the  second 
part  liable  to  contraction  as  in 
Greek  and  Kretan  ;  after  the 
separation  of  the  family  many 
shorter  names  formed  by  leav- 
ing out  one  of  the  elements  ; 
later  names  based  on  an  en- 
tirely different  method,  proba- 
bly due  to  Etruscan  influence, 

ii-  133-4- 

Aryan  route  westward,  settle- 
ments and  breaking  up  again 
to  people  other  countries,where 
their  knowledge  of  natural  pro- 
ductions would  be  largely  in- 
creased,animals  domesticated, 
and  agriculture  improved,  ii. 
134-6. 


Aryans  a  pastoral  and  agricultu- 
ral people,  acquainted  with 
gold,  silver,  and  bronze ;  had 
some  knowledge  of  medicine, 
surgery,  arithmetic,  music, 
pottery,  and  other  useful  arts, 
ii.  130-3. 

Assamese,  an  apparently  Aryan 
language,  inserts  the  plural 
affix  (bilak}  between  the  noun 
and  the  case  ending,  i.  173-4. 

Assur-bani-pal's  Library,  con- 
tents of;  Assyrian  dictionaries, 
grammars,  reading  -  books  ; 
translations  interlinear  and 
parallel  from  the  old  Accadian, 

i-  3-4- 

Assyrian  account  of  Chaos,  i. 
103. 

Assyrians  and  Babylonians,  the 
first  grammarians,  i.  4  ;  lan- 
guage nearly  the  same  ;  re- 
covered within  the  last  thirty 
years  from  the  inscribed 
bricks  and  monuments  of  Ni- 
neveh, Babylon,  and  other 
cities,  ii.  168  ;  familiarized 
with  the  distinction  between 
present  and  past  through  their 
knowledge  of  Accadian,  ib. 

175- 

Attempts  to  connect  the  Semitic 
languages  with  the  Aryan  fa- 
mily, or  derive  them  from  a 
common  source,  scientifically 
worthless,  ii.  175  ;  their  rela- 
tionship, ib.  178-182. 

Attempts  to  divide  languages 
morphologically  by  Schlegel, 
Pott,  Bopp,  Schleicher,  and 
Max  M tiller,  i.  368  ;  all  so  far 
as  founded  in  fact  based  on 


374 


INDEX. 


the  conception  of  the  sentence 
by  various  races ;  views  of 
Bopp,  Schlegel,  and  Pott  self- 
contradictory  ;  Steinthal  first 
pointed  out  that  the  sentence 
rather  than  the  word  was  the 
basis  of  morphological  ar- 
rangement, and  in  dealing 
with  grammar  and  structure 
two  related  words  are  neces- 
sary ;  his  division  of  languages, 
ib.  369-70. 

Bacon  (Roger)  on  Greek,  He- 
brew, and  Latin  as  separate 
and  independent  languages  ; 
noticed  the  existence  of  French 
dialects,  i.  25  and  note;  amus- 
ing etymologies  by  scholars 
of  his  day  ;  Jacobus  de'Vora- 
gine  and  the  Vulgate,  ib.  26-7. 

Ba-ntu  languages  of  South 
Africa  prefix  the  same  noun 
to  each  of  the  related  words  in 
a  sentence,  i.  129;  mark  the 
relations  of  grammar  by  pre- 
fixes only  ;  delicate  phonetic 
changes  render  the  declensions 
and  conjugations  rich  and  com- 
plicated, ii.  208 ;  compared 
with  Zulu  Kafir,  ib.  208-9. 

Barbarism  and  its  effects  on  the 
civilized  language  of  Rome  in 
producing  linguistic  anarchy 
over  the  greater  part  of  Eu- 
rope ;  conservative  influence 
of  the  Church  and  Law,  till 
the  Reformation  roused  Eu- 
rope into  hostile  nationalities 
with  their  different  tongues,  ii. 

35°- 
Basque  said  to  have  only  two 


verbs,  "  to  be  "  and  "  to  have/ 
whilst  many  languages  want- 
ing these,  i.  129;  vocabulary 
mostly  borrowed  from  the 
French  and  Spanish,  or  earlier 
Latin  and  Keltic  ;  abstracts  of 
native  growth  rare  ;  names  for 
various  kinds  of  trees  and 
animals,  but  no  simple  word 
for  tree  or  animal;  shows  a 
facility  for  composition  ;  our 
knowledge  of  the  language 
of  recent  date  ;  Humboldt's 
views  on  Basque  ancient  local 
names,  controverted  by  MM. 
Eys  and  Vinson,  i.  214-5  ; 
analogy  of  Basque  compounds 
to  the  polysynthetic  languages 
of  America  only  casual,  id.. 
216. 

Beast-fables  common  among  the 
Hottentots,  Bushmen, and  Vei- 
negroes,  ii.  280-1;  used  by  the 
ancient  Egyptians  during  the 
reign  of  Ramses  III.  for  satire 
and  caricature;  in  greatest  per- 
fection among  the  Bushmen, 
and  widely  disseminated  by 
them  ;  fragments  of  Accadian 
fables  found  among  the  re- 
mains of  the  Library  at  Nine- 
veh ;  used  by  the  Hindus,  and 
probably  known  to  the  Aryans 
before  their  separation;  found 
also  among  the  Polynesians 
and  Australians,  ib.  282-3. 

Bedouin  of  Central  Arabia, 
through  want  of  intercourse 
with  their  neighbours,  said  to- 
speak  a  more  archaic  language 
than  those  of  Nineveh  and  Je- 
rusalem 3,oooyears  ago,  i.  201. 


INDEX. 


375 


Benfey  on  the  physical  accesso- 
ries of  speech  in  putting  sense 
and  significancy  into  sounds 
expressive  of  the  emotions,  i. 
8 1 -2  ;  objection  to  Geiger's 
theory,  ib.  82  ;  note  on  com- 
munication between  men  and 
animals,  ib.  82  ;  carried  on 
the  labours  of  Bopp  and  Pott 
with  some  modification,  but 
failed  to  reduce  Aryan  and 
Semitic  to  one  stem ;  lan- 
guages require  to  be  studied 
minutely  ;  Grimm  followed  by 
Rask,  Burnouf,  Lassen,  Haug, 
Spiegel,  Juste,  and  others,  ib. 

52-3. 
Bergaigne  on  the  old  adjectival 

suffix  bha  (bhf)  in  our  own 
family  of  speech,  i.  119. 

Bleek  derived  speech  from  the 
cries  of  the  anthropoid  apes  ; 
on  articulate  and  inarticulate 
language ;  imitation  of  in- 
stinctive sounds  by  man  and 
its  results  in  connecting  with 
the  outward  utterance  an  in- 
ward signification  ;  language 
considered  interjectional  in 
its  origin,  aided  by  instinct 
which  in  development  created 
and  moulded  thought,  i.  77. 

Bopp  (Francis),  the  true  founder 
of  comparative  philology,  ac- 
quired Sanskrit  while  on  a 
visit  to  England  ;  his  nume- 
rous works  between  1816  and 
1854;  attempted  to  include 
the  Polynesian  dialects  and 
the  Georgian  in  the  Indo- 
European  family,  i.  49-50 ; 
confined  his  work  to  the  scien- 


tific and  inductive  side  of  the 
science  ;  while  the  metaphy- 
sical was  ably  expounded  by 
Alexander  von  Humboldt,  who 
sketched  the  outlines  of  a  true 
philosophy  of  speech,  and 
threw  out  suggestions  of  great 
value  to  later  scholars,  ib.  50  ; 
Bopp's  division  of  languages 
into  three  groups  ;  his  mis- 
takes ;  assumption  that  the 
laws  of  Aryan  philology  held 
good  of  all  human  speech, 
and  that  Aryan  was  the  primi- 
tive language;  treated  ag- 
glutination as  an  earlier  stage 
of  inflection,  and  confounded 
roots  with  words,  ib.  62-3  ;  his 
views  of  Chinese,  Polynesian, 
and  Caucasian  ;  regarded  lan- 
guage as  an  organism  passing 
through  a  series  of  necessary 
changes  ;  this  view  assailed 
by  Pott,  who  maintained  there 
was  no  necessity  in  language 
to  develop  as  an  organism 
like  the  seed  into  the  tree,  or 
the  chrysalis  into  the  butter- 
fly, than  in  thought  itself,  ib. 
63 ;  his  analysis  of  Aryan 
grammar  and  analysis  of 
flection  rejected  by  Scherer, 
Westphal,  and  Ludwig,  ib.  83 ; 
protest  against  his  analysis  in- 
discriminating,  ib.  84. 
Borrowed  languages  and  words  ; 
English  a  superstructure  of 
Norman,  French,  and  Latin 
on  an  Anglo-Saxon  founda- 
tion, and  nine-tenths  of  the 
Hindi  is  Sanskrit ;  influence 
of  neighbours  in  the  inter- 


376 


INDEX. 


change  of  words,  as  meet- 
ing, comfortable,  naive,  eclat  j 
words  show  geographical  and 
social  relationships  as  Boome- 
rang, the  Dutch  pude,  puye, 
Latin  podiitm;  while  words 
like  maize,  hammock,  -canoe, 
and  tobacco  from  the  Haytian 
through  the  Spanish  show  that 
the  Spaniards  were  the  dis- 
coverers of  America ;  and 
that  the  Teutons  inhabited  the 
Baltic  provinces  when  the 
Romans  received  amber  from 
them  under  the  name  of  glee- 
sum;  Professor  Thomsen  has 
proved  that  the  Finns,  Scan- 
dinavians, and  Teutons  were 
neighbours  two  thousand  years 
ago  from  the  number  of  bor- 
rowed words  in  the  Finnish 
language,  i.  170-1. 

Borrowed  sounds,  idioms,  suf- 
fixes, and  grammatical  forms, 
i.  172-3. 

Borrowed  or  loan  words  in 
various  languages,  ii.  126. 

Boult's  derivation  of  city,  count, 
and  custom,  i.  21-2,  note, 

Brasenose  College,  Oxford,  ori- 
gin and  corruption  of  name,  i. 
343-4- 

Breal's  qualified  approval  of  the 
essential  part  of  Schleicher's 
theories,  i.  76  ;  on  primitive 
man  and  the  formation  of  new 
words,  ii.  6. 

Briicke  on  the  utterance  of  high- 
pitched  vowels,  i.  261. 

Brugman  and  his  critics  on  the 
three  primitive  vowels,  a,  e,  o, 
309-310,  note. 


Buschmann  on  pa  or  ta,  and  ma, 
the  roots  of  "  father "  ancl 
"  mother,"  ii.  7. 

Bushman  and  Hottentot  clicks 
mere  inarticulate  sounds  or 
noises,  i.  242  ;  folk-lore  and 
speeches  of  animals,  242-3, 
note  j  the  most  unpronounce- 
able click,  not  found  in  any  of 
the  dialects,  put  into  the  mouth 
of  animals  in  Bushman,  but 
wanting  in  the  Hottentot 
language,  i.  283-4 ;  ii.  282. 

"  Cabalistic  Grammar,"  pub- 
lished at  Brussels,  and  "  Au- 
dacious Grammar  "  at  Frank- 
furt, a  monument  of  "  caba- 
listic "  dreams  and  "auda- 
cious" folly,  i.  100. 

Caramuel,  a  Spanish  bishop  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  au- 
thor of  262  works,  containing 
a  vast  amount  of  jargon,  un- 
able to  bequeath  one  of  his 
coinages  to  posterity,  i.  100. 

Carib  women  of  the  Antilles 
used  a  different  language  from 
their  husbands ;  while  the 
Eskimaux  women  of  Green- 
land turn  k  into  ng,  and  /  into 
n;  custom  of  tapu  among  the 
South  Sea  Islands  respecting 
the  use  of  a  syllable  or  word 
occurring  in  the  reigning 
sovereign's  name,  i.  205  ;  simi- 
lar custom  among  the  Chinese, 
and  nearly  the  same  among 
the  Kafirs  and  Abipones  ;  old 
European  superstition  seen  in 
the  Greek  calling  his  left  hand 
the  better  one,  and  the  Roman 


INDEX. 


377 


change  of  the  name  Maleven- 
tum  into  Beneventum ;  be- 
lief in  the  power  of  words,  ib. 
206-7. 

Carlyle  on  worn-out  and  forgot- 
ten metaphors,  i.  103. 

Cat  introduced  into  Egypt  from 
Nubia  during  the  eleventh  or 
twelfth  dynasty,  and  called 
Miau,  the  name  still  common 
in  China  ;  the  French  and 
German  equivalents,  and  the 
unmelodious  ending  of  kats 
borrowed  by  the  latter,  i.  107. 

Ceremonial  dialects  and  lan- 
guages common  in  Java,  the 
larger  Polynesian  islands, 
Japan,  China  ;  among  the 
Latins,  Hungarians,  Germans, 
French,  and  Basques,  i.  207-8. 

Changes  in  the  quantity  of  Latin 
and  Greek  words  and  termi- 
nations, i.  1 77 ;  cause  of  change, 
the  desire  of  clearness  and 
emphasis  ;  French  cutting  off 
its  final  consonants,  English 

.  softening  the  hard  letters,  and 
Classical  Italian  with  its  pe- 
dantic pronunciation  inca- 
pable of  being  spoken  rapidly ; 
omission  of  the  negative  by 
Frenchmen  when  using  pas, 
point,  janiais,  while  English- 
men strengthen  the  negative 
by  repeating  it,  like  most  early 
languages,  i.  185-6. 

Changes  in  language  through 
least  effort,  or  Phonetic  Decay 
conspicuous  in  almost  every  j 
word  spoken,  but  will  not 
account  for  the  development 
of  fresh  mental  views;  reasons 


and  illustrations  in  the  mean- 
ings of  words  from  the  Latin 
and  German,  i.  193-6. 

Changes  in  Anglo-Saxon  ;  the 
inflections  almost  lost,  i.  196  ; 
phonetic  decay  as  in  Latin 
and  French  words  ;  words  of 
different  origin  assume  the 
same  form,  while  others  of 
the  same  origin  appear  dif- 
ferent ;  unwarranted  attempt 
to  reduce  triliteral  Semitic 
roots  to  biliterals,  ib.  201-2. 

Changes  of  language  among  wan- 
dering savages  ;  the  Indians 
of  Central  America  ;  the  Os- 
tiaks  and  Hurons  ;  the  Ger- 
man colony  of  Pennsylvania 
when  cut  off  from  frequent 
communication  with  Europe, 
i.  208-210. 

Changes  of  pronunciation  in  dif- 
ferent branches  of  the  same 
family  generally  slow  and 
gradual ;  remarkable  instance 
of  rapid  change  amongst  the 
Samoans,  i.  308-9. 

Changes  in  allied  languages  not 
so  marked,  e.  g.  the  Indo- 
European,  the  Romance,  and 
Semitic  compared ;  reasons 
of  slight  changes  in  Semitic 
phonology  ;  difference  in  Ma- 
layo-Polynesian,  and  laws  of 
equivalence;  extensive  changes' 
in  Ugro-Finnic  and  the  whole 
Turanian  family  so  far  as  in- 
vestigated by  M.  de  Ujfalvy  ; 
laws  of  sound-change  dis- 
covered by  Bleek  in  the  Ba- 
ntu or  Kafir  family,  i.  325-7  ; 
advantage  over  its  Aryan 


378 


INDEX. 


analogue  in  dealing  with  ac- 
tually existing  sounds,  whilst 
the  pronunciation  of  Greek, 
Latin,  and  Gothic  has  to  be 
assumed  ;  comparative  philo- 
logy began  with  the  allied 
forms  of  the  languages  of 
India  and  Europe  ;  the  as- 
sumption easily  seen  by  the 
Italian  and  German,  appears 
unnatural  to  the  Englishman 
from  the  spelling,  ib.  327-8  ; 
the  spelling  of  English  ably 
discussed  by  Ellis,  Pitman, 
and  others  ;  the  sounds  ana- 
lyzed by  A.  J.  Ellis  ;  systems 
of  Sweet,  Jones,  the  American 
Philological  Association,  and 
works  of  their  predecessors, 
ib.  330-2 ;  changes  in  Dutch 
spelling,  Spanish,  and  Ger- 
man ;  great  improvements  in 
the  last  by  Schleicher,  Frikke, 
and  others,  ib.  332-3. 

Charm  of  the  English  Version 
of  the  Bible  due  to  the  use  of 
equivalents  to  Greek  and 
Hebrew  words  from  Romanic 
and  Teutonic  sources,!.  187-8. 

Cheroki  language  contains  thir- 
teen verbs  with  many  forms 
to  denote  particular  kinds  of 
"  washing,'3  but  no  single  word 
for  "  washing  "  in  general,  i. 
120  ;  ii.  5. 

Chief  agents  in  the  manufacture 
of  speech,  the  breath,  respira- 
tory organs,  throat,  and  mouth, 
i.  247. 

Children's  speech  a  type  of 
man's  early  acquisition  of 
language,  i.  104  ;  difficul- 


ties in  learning  a  foreign 
language ;  use  of  gestures  ; 
travellers'  mode  of  drawing 
up  vocabularies  and  phrase- 
books  of  unknown  idioms  ; 
gestures  bridge  over  the  gulf 
between  inarticulate  and  arti- 
culate speech,  and  are  the 
means  of  communication  for 
deaf-mutes,  ib.  105. 

Childlike  inability  to  distinguish 
sounds,  due  to  two  different 
causes  ;  example  of  a  child 
substituting  n  for  /,  i.  31 1,  and 
note. 

Chinese  and  Burman  compared; 
all  the  isolating  possibilities 
of  Chinese  worked  out ;  its 
pronunciation  more  than  2,000 
years  ago  restored  by  Dr. 
Edkins  ;  changes  in  the  out- 
ward form  of  the  cultivated 
language  and  introduction  of 
tones  ;  probable  cause  of  pho- 
netic decay  ;  its  ideographic 
system  nearly  similar  to  the 
ancient  Accadian,  i.  373-4. 

Chinese  vocabulary  multiliteral ; 
detected  by  Dr.  Edkins  and 
M.  de  Rosny  ;  the  same  word 
used  as  a  noun,  verb,  adverb, 
or  the  sign  of  a  case ;  illus- 
trates the  early  days  of  speech; 
effect  of  contact  and  contrast, 
i.  119-120. 

Chinese  words  "to  be  hurt"  and 
"autumn"  explained,  i.  119  ; 
smallest  real  whole,  a  sen- 
tence, or  a  sentence  relation ; 
the  same  true  of  other  lan- 
guages ;  words  only  signifi- 
cant when  they  stand  in  rela- 


INDEX. 


379 


tion  to  each  other,  ib.  122  ; 
pronunciation  of  Mandarin 
Chinese  ascertained  as  it  was 
4,000  years  ago,  ii.  9-10. 

Chinese,  rise  of  civilization  on 
the  Hoang-Ho,  about  the 
same  period  as  that  on  the  Ti- 
gris and  Euphrates  ;  changes 
of  the  language,  and  multi- 
plication of  the  tones  ;  modes 
of  expression  compared  with 
Japanese  ;  contrasted  with 
Burmese  and  Siamese,  ii.  222- 
4  ;  tendency  to  clearness,  ib. 
224-5  »  words  and  the  ideas 
behind  them  similar  to  Sia- 
mese and  Burmese,  ib.  225-7  ; 
accentual  rhythm  and  its  use ; 
literature  extensive  and  an- 
cient ;  the  destruction  ascribed 
to  the  Emperor  Chi-wang- 
ti,  possibly  as  legendary  as 
Omar's  of  the  Alexandrian 
Library  ;  extent  of  literature 
preserved,  ib.  227-9. 

Civilization  of  Athens,  Egypt, 
Babylonia,  and  modern  Japan 
superior  in  many  things  to  our 
own,  ii.  66. 

Civilization  of  China,  Babylonia, 
and  Egypt  now  generally  be- 
lieved to  have  been  indepen- 
dent and  self-evolved  ;  appa- 
rent from  their  mode  of  writ- 
ing ;  Egypt  6000  years  ago  at 
the  height  of  her  culture  whilst 
surrounded  on  all  sides  by 
barbarous  tribes  ;  the  civiliza- 
tion on  the  Euphrates  and 
Hoang-Ho  were  also  similarly 
situated  ;  geographical  bar- 
riers cut  off  tribes,  races,  and 


languages  from  each  other, 
and  thus  preserve  racial  and 
linguistic  types  ;  the  grammar 
of  the  Eskimaux  a  relic  of  a 
bygone  era  of  speech,  i.  381-2. 

Civilization  •  and  culture  render 
language  uniform  and  station- 
ary, i.  204 ;  counteract  the 
tendency  to  multiply  dialects, 
and  create  a  common  medium 
of  intercourse ;  the  Macedo- 
nian Empire  made  Greek  the 
language  of  the  East,  and  the 
Roman  made  Latin  that  of 
the  West ;  steps  in  linguistic 
unity ;  languages  of  trading 
nations  must  finally  prevail ; 
extinction  of  the  weaker  lan- 
guages only  requires  time  ; 
reason  of  Bishop  Wilkins' 
failure  to  invent  a  universal 
language,  ib.  211-12  ;  why  the 
same  Arabic  dialect  prevails 
in  the  East ;  history  of  a  lan- 
guage traced  by  a  comparison 
of  its  dialects  ;  progress  of 
civilization  and  the  diminution 
of  languages  and  dialects  ; 
the  Basque,  those  of  the  Cau- 
casus, the  Etruscan,  and  Ly- 
kian  waifs  of  extinct  families, 
ib.  214-15. 

Classification  of  existing  lan- 
guages, ii.  33-64. 

Classical  philology  reared  by  the 
Alexandrines  on  the  ruins  of 
Hellenic  culture  and  origina- 
lity; the  decay  of  Greek  men- 
tal activity  caused  the  dialect 
of  the  Attic  tragedians,  histo- 
rians, and  Homeric  poems  to 
become  obscure,  i.  14. 


38o 


INDEX. 


Claudius  the  Roman    Emperor 
endeavoured    to    reform    the 
alphabet,  and  introduced  three 
new  letters,  i.  23. 
Clement  V.  exhorted  the  great 
Universities  of  Europe  to  es- 
tablish two  Chairs  of  Hebrew, 
Arabic,  and  Chaldee,  i.  25. 
Clicks    in    South  African    lan- 
guages ;   three  of  the  easiest 
borrowed  by  the  Kafirs  from 
the  Hottentots,  and  these  in 
turn  from  the  primitive  Bush- 
men ;  the  labial  and  compound 
dental  wanting  in  the  Hotten- 
tot, and  the  "unpronounceable 
click "  found  in  the  Bushman 
fables  of  hare,  ant-eater,  and 
the  moon,  i.  283-4  and  notes. 
Coincidences   of  sound   in    the 
Ouicha  words  inti,  munay,  and 
the   Sanskrit   indra^ 
Avipula j  theMand- 
shu  shun  and  sengi,  and  the 
Latin    sanguis  j   the     North- 
American  Indian£><9/<9';;/<2r,  and 
the  Greek  potomos,  i.  148-9. 
Comparative  method  of  investi- 
gation  explained ;   reason   of 
the  failure  of  the  old  method 
when  applied  to  Latin,  Greek, 
and  Hebrew,  i.  133. 
Comparative  philology  furnished 
materials  for  investigating  the 
origin  of  language,  nature  of 
roots,  and  flection  ;   compara- 
tive  and  historical  grammar 
in  their  various  relations  ;  old 
sense   of    philology  and    the 
modern  use,  i.    135  ;  method 
of  Harris  and   Stoddart  ;  the 
science,  variously  named,  deals 


with  real  words  and  sentences 
either  in  living  speech  or 
written  record,  or  such  as 
are  capable  of  restoration  by 
sound  comparison  with  exist- 
ing words,  i.  135-6  ;  divisible 
into  phonology,  sematology, 
and  morphology ;  each  de- 
scribed, ib.  141. 

Comparison  of  languages  as  the 
instruments  of  thought ;  ideal 
of  perfection,  like  that  of 
beauty,  very  different  amongst 
different  peoples  ;  as  amongst 
the  Eskimaux,  Greeks,  Ro- 
mans, and  English,  i.  374-5 ; 
grammatical  relation,  flec- 
tion, and  polysynthetism,  ib. 

375-7- 

Comparison  the  life  of  inductive 
science,  i.  132. 

Comparison  of  words  and  sen- 
tences ;  the  subject  defined, 
i.  141  ;  roots  and  not  deriva- 
tives, as  a  rule,  must  be  com- 
pared ;  changes  in  the  form  of 
words,  ib.  152  ;  captive,  caitiff, 
and  sound  explained  ;  the 
American  potomac  a  com- 
pound, the  Greek  pdtomos 
from  po  found  in  pino  and 
potos,  in  the  Sanskrit  pdnam, 
and  English  potion  ;  monkey 
from  the  Italian  monichio,  a 
derivative  of  monna,  and  that 
a  contraction  of  madonna,  mea 
domince;  the  Gothic  fimf,  Latin 
quinque,  Lithuanian  penki  be- 
long to  the  period  when  the 
Aryans  of  Europe  and  Asia 
were  still  undivided ;  formed 
by  reduplication,  but  no  con- 


INDEX. 


nection  with  the  Semitic  kha- 
mesh,  ib.  152-3. 

Composition,  a  species  of  declen- 
sion and  conjugation  ;  Latin 
and  Greek  words  of  the  same 
meaning  ;  difference  between 
"  good-for-nothing?  and  "  he 
is  good  for  nothing?  i.  390; 
power  of  composition  in  some 
languages  greater  than  in 
others  ;  polysynthetic  sen- 
tences present  the  appearance 
of  gigantic  compounds  ;  com- 
position as  rare  in  Semitic  as 
it  is  common  in  Aryan,  ib. 
391-2  ;  a  fruitful  source  of 
grammatical  flection  and 
"  word-building  ;  "  person- 
endings  of  Aryan  verbs  pro- 
bably personal  pronouns  as 
in  Aramaic ;  Latin,  Gothic, 
French,  Italian,  also  com- 
pounds, ib.  392-3  ;  many  suf- 
fixes not  inflections  ;  idea  of 
past  time  denoted  by  redupli- 
cation, which  served  other 
purposes  in  the  history  of 
Aryan  speech  ;  many  suffixes 
coeval  with  Aryan  speech,  ib. 
395  ;  some  never  applied  to  a 
purely  flectional  purpose  as  in 
knowledge  and  wedlock ;  the 
same  also  found  in  other  lan- 
guages ;  classificatory  or  for- 
mative suffixes  may  be  due  to 
composition,  but  many  cannot 
be  traced  back  to  independent 
words ;  changes  through  false 
analogy  and  phonetic  decay  in 
Sanskrit,  Latin,  and  Greek,  ib. 
395-401  ;  epithetic  stage  of 
language,  far  advanced,  and 


implies  poetic  imagination, 
culture,  civilization,  and  the 
germs  of  a  mythology ;  newly 
coined  words  follow  the  old 
rule  ;  classificatory  suffixes 
due  to  composition,  and  imply 
those  of  an  earlier  kind  of 
origin,  ib.  402  ;  secondary 
suffixes  explained  ;  combina- 
tion of  two  in  English  song- 
stress /  secondary  suffixes  in 
Aryan,  their  use  and  influence, 
ib.  402-4  ;  suffix  ya  in  Greek 
words  a  mark  of  the  feminine; 
gender  unknown  in  agglutina- 
tive and  isolating  languages  ; 
the  Eskimo,  Chocktaw,  Mush- 
tagee,  and  Caddo,  divide1  ob- 
jects into  animate  and  inani- 
mate ;  the  Ba-ntu  nouns  sepa- 
rated into  classes  by  prefixes  ; 
agreement  of  the  pronoun, 
adjective,  and  verb  shown  by 
the  use  of  the  same  prefix  ; 
examples  from  the  Kafir,  ib. 
405;  many  indications  that  the 
parent  Aryan  or  its  ancestor 
had  no  sign  of  gender  ;  Latin 
and  Greek  also  the  same  at 
onetime;  influence  of  analogy; 
the  idea  of  gender  suggested 
by  the  difference  between  man 
and  woman,  by  the  meanings 
of  the  words ;  e.g.,  the  Hidacho 
use  different  words  for  the 
masculine  and  feminine  either 
alone  or  added  ;  the  Sonorian 
add  words  signifying  man  or 
woman  ;  the  primitive  Aryan 
transferred  to  himself  the 
actions  and  attributes  of  inani- 
mate objects,  and  his  own  to 


382 


INDEX. 


them,  endowing  them  with  a 
life  similar  to  his  own  ;  growth 
of  mythology  and  distinction 
of  gender  coeval ;  awoke  to  a 
higher  consciousness,  saw  the 
essential    difference    between 
himself  and  the  objects  around; 
formation   of  the  nominative 
for  the  first  personal  pronoun, 
andthe  conception  of  abstracts, 
ib.     406-8  ;    origin   of  gender 
only   learnt  by  careful   com- 
parison of  dialects  and  families 
of   speech,   ib.  409-410 ;    the 
conception    of   number    very 
limited  in  uncivilized  language ; 
form  of  Hidatsa  nouns  alike 
in   singular    and    plural  ;    in 
Sonorian    the     simple    word 
stands  for  both  ;  distinguished 
by  the   Othomi  by  prefixing 
the  article  na  and  ya,  and  the 
Amara  of  Africa  can  only  say 
fiirusn  ayuhu,  ib.  410-11  ;  the 
Tumuli  denote  the  plural  by 
postfixing    da  /    reduplication 
serves  as  a  plural  with  many 
savages  ;     ideas     of   number 
among  the  aborigines  of  Vic- 
toria,   the     puris     of    South 
America,  and  the  New  Hol- 
landers ;  Aryan  /;•/,  three,  and 
the   Sankskrit   tar-6-mi ;   the 
dual  regarded  by  Mr.  Tylor  as 
a  survival,  or  a  relic  of  a  by- 
gone speech  ;  many  languages 
possess  a  trinal  number ;  one 
of  the  Melanesian  idioms  and 
the  F"ijian  a  quadruple  num- 
ber, $.412- 1 3 ;  different  modes 
of    forming    the    plural,    ib. 
4I3-I4. 


Conquest  and  mixture  powerful 
aids  in  dialect-making,  i. 
205. 

Consonants  the  skeleton  of  arti- 
culate utterance  ;  wanting  in 
many  Polynesian  words  ;  dif- 
ferences between  words  often 
marked  by  children  by  the 
vowels  ;  preponderance  of 
vowels  a  sign  of  phonetic  de- 
cay ;  consonants  apt  to  be 
dropped,  as  in  the  Greek  mer- 
meros  and  the  Latin  memor 
from  the  Sanskrit smar  "to  re- 
member;" the  sounds  of  a  lan- 
guage simplified  by  use  ;  the 
primitive  Aryan  alphabet  must 
have  once  resembled  those  of 
barbarous  or  semi-barbarous 
tribes,  and  included  a  large 
variety  of  consonants,  i.  269- 
270 ;  division  of  consonants 
into  hard  and  soft,  or  surd  and 
sonant ;  further  into  liquids, 
gutturals,  dentals,  palatals, 
labio-dentals  ;  labials  and 
Sanskrit  linguals  or  cacumi- 
nals,  ib.  270-1  ;  the  liquids,  ib. 
271-4  ;  the  nasals,  ib.  274-5  ; 
the  labials,  ib.  275-6  ;  the  den- 
tals and  palatals,  ib.  276-8  ; 
the  gutturals  and  sibilants,  ib. 
278-282. 

Constant  state  of  changes  in  lan- 
guage ;  three  great  causes  of, 
imitation,  emphasis,  and  lazi- 
ness, i.  166;  marvellous  facility 
of  imitation  among  savages 
possessing  only  a  scanty  vo- 
cabulary ;  morbid  mania 
among  the  Maniagri,  the  Rus- 
sians, and  Yakutes  of  Siberia; 


INDEX. 


383 


also  in  the  Philippine  Islands 
and  Java,  ib.  i.  67-8. 
"  Construct   state "   in   Semitic, 
really  an  instance  of  composi- 
tion, i.  390-1. 

Controversy  on  roots  begun 
before  the  Nirukta  of.  Yaska 
was  composed  ;  arguments 
on  both  sides  summarized, 
ii.  2  ;  how  revived  in  our  o\vn 
day  ;  the  term  and  its  con- 
ception familiar  to  the  scho- 
lars of  the  West  from  their 
Arab  and  Hebrew  teachers  ; 
difference  between  the  Sans- 
krit and  the  Semitic  root ; 
perceived  that  roots  had  his- 
tory, and  that  Latin,  Greek, 
and  English  could  not  be  com- 
pared before  their  oldest  forms 
had  been  discovered  ;  roots, 
the  elements  out  of  which  the 
material  of  speech  was  formed, 
must  not  be  confounded  with 
verbs  or  any  other  constituent 
of  living  speech  ;  roots  of  lan- 
guage compared  to  the  roots 
of  a  tree;  called  by  Max  M  tiller 
phonetic  types,  the  moulds 
into  which  we  pour  a  group  of 
words  allied  in  sound  and 
meaning,  ib.  3-4  ;  nature  of 
Semitic  roots  and  mode  of 
forming  words,  ib.  4. 

Coptic  once  a  postfix  language, 
now  a  prefix  one,  i.  372. 

Cost  of  spelling  in  elementary 
schools  according  to  Dr.  Glad- 
stone, ii.  343. 

Creation  of  dialects,  causes  of ; 
dialectic  differences  in  Eng- 
land and  America,  i.  202-3  ; 


growth  of  dialects  in  savage 
and  barbarous  communities  ; 
Malayan  andPolynesian  trace- 
able to  a  common  source;  Mi- 
lanesian  almost  innumerable ; 
the  Manipureans  of  forty  fa- 
milies unintelligible  to  their 
nearest  neighbours  ;  great  va- 
riety in  South  America,  An- 
cient Greece,  and  the  Basques, 
ib.  203-4. 

Credo,  its  history  and  relation 
to  Sanskrit  and  Greek,  ii.  19- 
20. 

Cult  of  man,  how  it  became  pos- 
sible ;  idealized  humanity  at 
first  represented  strength  or 
wisdom,  but  became  beauty 
with  the  Greek  artists  ;  Philip 
of  Krotona  deified  at  Egesta 
on  account  of  his  beauty,  ii. 
296-7. 

Czermak's  experiments  on  the 
velum  petidulum  changes  for 
the  pronunciation  of  a,  e,  o,  u, 
and  z,  i.  261. 

Dante,  after  comparing  the  dia- 
lects of  Italy,  selected  the  "  Il- 
lustrious, Cardinal,  and  Court- 
ly "  of  Sicily  for  the  language 
of  his  "  Divina  Commedia,"  i. 
25. 

Dardistan,  a  small  country  north 
of  Afghanistan,  the  language 
Indian  rather  than  Iranian, 
contains  a  number  of  interest- 
ing dialects  discovered  by  Dr. 
Leitner,  ii.  77-8. 

Danvin's  "Expression  of  the 
Emotions  in  Men  and  Ani- 
mals/' i.  81. 


INDEX. 


Democracy  of  Buddhism  broke 
down  caste,  raised  inferior  dia- 
lects to  a  level  with  Sanskrit, 
and  conduced  largely  to  the 
success  of  the  Hindu  gramma- 
rians, i.  38. 

De  Sacy's  "Axioms  of  Uni- 
versal Philology,"  and  views 
of  comparative  grammar,  i. 

33- 
Devanagari  alphabet,  a  splendid 

monument  of  phonological  ac- 
curacy, i.  38. 

Dialectic  regeneration  best  seen 
in  a  period  of  social  revolution 
like  the  Norman  Conquest, 
when  the  literary  language 
loses  the  support  of  the  edu- 
cated classes ;  the  unwritten 
languages  of  savages  and  bar- 
barians in  a  constant  state  of 
change  ;  old  words  and  ex- 
pressions have  to  make  way 
for  new  ones;  the  slang  of 
schoolboys,  the  cant  of  thieves 
and  costermongers  exemplify 
the  same  fact,  i.  191. 

Diez  created  Romance  philology 
by  the  publication  of  his  "Com- 
parative Grammar," and"  Dic- 
tionary ,"i.  53. 

Difference  between  true  and  fal- 
setto notes  explained,  i.  247, 
and  notes. 

Difference  in  English  and  French 

modes  of  speaking,  and  the 

reason  ;    ludicrous  mistake  in 

feu  andfou  in  the  story  of  an 

English  gentleman,  i.  200. 

Difference  in  the  isolating  dia- 
lects of  China  and  Further 
India  explained,  i.  129. 


Different  conception  of  the  sen- 
tence in  the  main  and  sub- 
classes of  speech;  the  psycho- 
logical peculiarity  which  ori- 
ginated each  form  became 
continually  more  definite  and 
unalterable,  i.  129-30. 

Diokles,the  manumitted  slave  of 
Cicero's  wife,  author  of  a  trea- 
tise "  On  the  Derivation  of  the 
Latin  Language  from  Greek/' 
i.  24. 

Diphthongs  and  their  formation; 
ai  and  ait  when  sung  to  a  long 
note  give  a  distinct  i  and  u  at 
the  end  of  each ;  Sanskrit 
grammarians  discovered^  and 
6  were  combinations  of  a  +  / 
and  a  +  u,  i.  266. 

Diplomacy  powerless  against  the 
passions  that  shattered  "the 
"European  Family  "with  its 
common  speech,  and  shaped 
modern  Europe,  ii.  351. 

Distinction  of  strong  and  weak 
cases  by  the  Sanskrit  gram- 
marians confirmed  by  modern 
research,  ii.  140-8. 

Distinction  of  vowels  and  conso- 
nants rests  on  a  difference  of 
function,  i.  246. 

Division  of  words  in  a  sentence 
unnecessary  in  writing  or 
speaking  ;  the  French  je  le 
vois  as  much  a  single  group  of 
sounds  as  the  Basque  dakust 
or  the  Latin  amatur ;  the  sen- 
tence in  the  polysynthetic  lan- 
guages of  America  as  inca- 
pable of  being  split  up  into  its 
elements  as  an  ordinary  com- 
,  pound  in  Greek  or  German  ; 


INDEX. 


385 


mode  of  treating  the  several 
words  of  a  sentence  by  the 
ancient  Hindu  grammarians 
illustrated,!.  113;  law  of  ac- 
cent, ib.  113-14;  division  of 
speech  into  formal  and  mate- 
rial, both  defective  and  mis- 
leading; articulate  sounds  may 
be  called  the  matter,  but  only 
become  words  when  thought 
and  significancy  have  been 
breathed  into  them  ;  signifi- 
cancy relative  and  of  two  kinds; 
belongs  to  sematology  and 
grammar  ;  in  going  back  to 
the  sentence  word  the  distinc- 
tion must  be  observed  between 
the  material  sounds,  the  mean- 
ing and  form  when  used,  ib. 
114. 

Donatus  the  grammarian,  in  the 
fourth  century,  adopted  the 
views  of  Herodian,  i.  24. 
Dravidians  entered  India  before 
the  Aryans  and  settled  among 
the  aboriginal  races  ;  speech 
agglutinative,  and  consists  of 
twelve  dialects — six  cultivated, 
and  the  rest  spoken  by  bar- 
barous tribes  ;  Uravidian  pho- 
nology ;  vowels  a,  e,  i  placed 
at  the  end  to  modify  the  sense ; 
and  other  relations  of  gram- 
mar by  affixes  ;  the  verb  only 
one  mood  and  three  tenses,  ii. 
205-7. 

Dual  number  older  than  the 
plural  ;  in  Sanskrit  three  dis- 
tinct forms  preserved,  two  in 
Greek,  and  a  single  case  in 
Latin,  ii.  148-9. 

Dyskolos,  "the  difficult,"  a  name 
II.  C 


given  to  the  Alexandrine  gram- 
marian Apollonius  from  his 
special  devotion  to  Syntax,  i. 

23- 

Edkins,  Dr.,  on  Mandarin 
Chinese  as  a  decayed  speech, 
and  the  time  required  to  create 
a  new  tone,  i.  293. 
Eg°i  egon,  the  Sanskrit  aham,  a 
far  later  creation  than  the  ob- 
jective me  or  md,  marks  the 
epoch  when  the  "me "  became 
an"I,"i.  407-8. 

Ellis  on  English  pronunciation 
since  Shakespeare's  time,  i. 
199. 

Emphasis,  use  of ;  acts  upon  the 
outward  sound  of  words,  and 
tends  to  build  up  new  forms  ; 
the  varying  quality  of  vowel, 
an  apparent  exception  to 
Grimm's  laws,  explainable  on 
the  principle  of  emphasis  by 
Greek  Sanskrit  and  Old  High 
German  words  ;  enriches  the 
vocabulary  by  introducing 
synonyms  to  give  clearness 
and  intelligibility  to  thought, 
i.  186-7. 

English  contractions  7Y/,  7W, 
won't  and  cant  scarcely  dis- 
tinguishable from  Basque 
forms,  i.  200. 

English  fitted  to  become  a  uni- 
versal language,  i.  377. 
English  forcing  back  of  the  ac- 
cent illustrated  by  the  word 
balcony  and  line  from  Milton, 
i.  176. 

English  etymologists  neglected 
the  labours  of  continental 


386 


INDEX. 


scholars  on  the  philosophy  of 
grammar,  i.    37 ;   Dr.   Murray 
held  that  all  the  languages  of 
the  world  were   derived  from 
one,  consisting  of  a  few  mono- 
syllables ;  pointed  out  the  re- 
lationship   of     Sanskrit     and 
Persian  to  the  Aryan  dialects 
of  Europe,   and    affinities    of 
Scythian  words  ;  Whiter  in  his 
"  Etymologicum  Magnum"  ex- 
ceeded Murray,  mixed  up  im- 
partially English,  Greek,  Latin, 
French,    Irish,   Welsh,    Scla- 
vonic, Hebrew,  Arabic,  Gipsey, 
and  Coptic,  &c.  ;  examples  of 
his  derivations,  ib.  37-8. 
English   spelling ;    its   practical 
evils   and  defects  ;   compared 
with    Italian  ;    inadequacy   of 
English  spelling  only  exceeded 
by  the   Gaelic,  ii.  343-4;   the 
condition   of   the     Irish    and 
Scotch  Gaels  compared  with 
the  Welsh  Cymry,  ib.  343-4  ; 
list  of  works  and  papers  on 
the  Reform  of  English  Spell- 
ing, ib.  344-5  and  notes ;  want 
of   the    scientific    philologist 
and  object  in  tracing  changes 
of  sound  ;  objections  to  spell- 
ing   reform    answered;    ety- 
mology, changes   in  spelling, 
and  homophonous  words  ;  a 
reformed  alphabet  needed,  one 
of  40  characters  sufficient  for 
practical    purposes ;    its    ad- 
vantages   and  easy   acquire- 
ment;   approach  to  the  civi- 
lized condition  of  the  ancient 
Hindu,  who  had  an  alphabet 
of  49  characters,  ib.  347-8. 


Epicureans  in  their  inquiries  on 
language  explained  everything 
in  accordance  with  the  theory 
of  atoms  ;  held  that  language 
was  natural  to  man,  and  the 
different  sounds  in  different 
languages  for  the  same  object 
were  due  to  circumstances, 
climate,  social  condition,  con- 
stitution and  physique,  as  the 
cries  of  animals,  i.  13. 

Epithetic  stage  of  language  the 
most  fruitful  source  of  mytho- 
logy ;  tendency  of  epithets  to 
become  names,  and  several 
applied  to  the  same  object 
from  different  attributes,  as  in 
the  words  for  "silver,"  "sky," 
"azure,"  and  "heaven,"  ii. 
250  ;  synonyms  were  resolved 
into  different  beings,  and 
homonyms  amalgamated ;  the 
dawn  called  Ushas,  Eos,  or 
Dahand,  Daphne,  became  two 
separate  deities  ;  Daphne,  Pro- 
metheus, and  Epimetheus,  ib. 
251-2. 

Eponymous  heroes  and  popular 
etymologizing ;  Remus  and 
Romulus,  ii.  247-8. 

Eskimaux,  the  supposed  de- 
scendants of  the  cave-dwellers 
in  Southern  France,  have  pre- 
served their  old  habits  of 
thought,  and  yet  our  class  of 
speech  differs  less  from  theirs 
and  the  Algonquin  than  the 
dialects  of  China  and  the  jar- 
gon of  the  Mongols  and  Turks, 
i.  126. 

Etruscan  from  its  agglutinative 
character    and  appearances  of 


'INDEX. 


387 


flection  has  led  scholars  to 
compare  it  with  Aryan  and 
Semitic,  ii.  185-6. 
Etymologists  must  know  not  only 
the  laws  of  phonology  and 
sematology,  and  be  able  to 
trace  words  back  to  their  early 
forms,  but  also  to  construct 
many  in  the  same  way  a  palae- 
ontologist reconstructs  a  fossil 
animal,  i.  345-6  ;  difficulties 
and  mode  of  meeting  them, 
ib.  346  ;  Max  Miiller's  four 
facts  in  etymology  summarized 
and  explained,  ib.  347-50. 

Faculty  of  speech,  its  origin  and 
exercise  ;  where  located,  ac- 
cording to  M.  Broca,  ii.  302- 
3  ;  the  grand  distinction  be- 
tween man  and  the  brute,  ib. 

304. 

Faidherbe  endeavoured  to  bridge 
over  the  gulf  between  man 
and  the  ape  by  pointing  to  the 
clicks  of  the  Bushman,  and 
the  cries  of  the  cebus  azarce 
of  Paraguay,  when  excited,  i. 
76-7. 

Falsetto  notes,  how  produced,  i. 
247,  and  notes. 

Families  of  speech  peculiar ; 
three  oases  in  Asia  and  Europe 
where  before  the  beginning  of 
history  language  became  per- 
manent and  traditional ;  fami- 
lies made  up  of  dialects  with 
a  common  grammar  and  stock 
of  roots;  hypothetical  "parent 
speech  ;"  Fick's  Dictionary 
andSchleicher's  "restoration" 
of  the  Parent  Aryan  forms  ; 


allied  dialects  ;  Dr.  Murray's 
nine  primaeval  roots,!.  215-17  ; 
advance  of  culture  tends  to 
ideal  unity ;  anticipation  of  a 
time  when  hope  and  faith  will 
find  utterance  in  one  language, 
ib.  219. 

Fetishism,  origin  of;  the  worship 
of  stocks  and  stones,  or  ob- 
jects which  satisfied  man's 
daily  wants,  or  warded  off 
evils, — investing  them  with 
divinity  whilst  useful  ;  custom 
of  the  Indians  of  Columbia  ; 
the  Palladium  of  Troy,  the 
Bethels  of  the  Semite,  the 
Ephesian  "stone,"  wand  of 
Hermes,  arrows  of  Apollo,  and 
other  symbols  of  Greek  divini- 
ties, only  the  survivals  of  a 
primitive  fetishism,  ii.  292-3. 

Fick  on  the  derivation  of  Wes- 
tern and  Eastern  Aryan  from 
two  parent  stems  ;  these  again 
from  a  primitive  speech ;  proof 
of  their  original  unity ;  dialects 
of  Asia  Minor  and  Armenia  ; 
his  conclusion  confirmed  by 
the  cuneiform  inscriptions,  i. 
306-7. 

Fifth  declension  in  Latin  the 
result  of  unconscious  blunders, 
i.  179. 

Finnic  idioms  nearly  inflectional 
have  suggested  their  relation- 
ship to  Aryan,  but  have  never 
cleared  the  border  between 
flection  and  agglutination,  i. 

131- 

Finnic  Kalevala,  an  epic  worthy 
of  comparison  with  Homer,  or 
the  Nibelungen  Lied  ;  adven- 


388 


INDEX. 


tures,  travels,  final  struggle 
with  Luhi,  and  search  for  the 
mysterious  Sampi ;  similarity 
of  the  Esthonian  Kalevipoeg  ; 
the  ground  of  the  poems  shows 
that  Esths  and  Finns  started 
with  a  common  stock  of  an- 
cestral myths  ;  the  Ugric 
Voguls  have  their  epic  on  the 
Creation  and  Deluge,  and  the 
giants  of  the  ancient  world, 
strikingly  similar  to  the  le- 
gends of  the  Accadians,  and 
show  the  high  antiquity  of 
these  old  Altaic  myths,  ii. 
197-8  ;  the  Lapps  have  their 
mythical  epic,  and  the  myths 
and  tales  of  the  Tatars  are 
equally  numerous  ;  the  agglu- 
tinative character  of  the  lan- 
guage, and  transparency  of  the 
proper  names,  make  it  easy  to 
trace  their  original  meaning, 
ii.  197-9. 

Finno-Ugric  dialects  divided  by 
Prince  L-L.  Bonaparte  into 
four  sub-families  ;  their  settle- 
ments, arts,  and  modes  of  life, 
ii.  191-6. 
First  utterances  of  mankind  were 

probably  polysyllabic,  i.  118. 
Flection  found  in  its  purest  form 
in  Semitic,  i.  127-8  ;  how  As- 
syrian or  Ethiopic  came  to 
possess  real  tenses  ;  the  former 
crystallized  into  a  literary  lan- 
guage, B.C.  2000 ;  in  Semitic 
the  verb  formed  out  of  the 
noun  ;  the  three  cases  of  the 
noun  and  their  relations,  ii. 
164-6. 
Foreign  speech  maybe  forced  on 


a  people  by  a  paternal  govern- 
ment, but  must  be  borrowed  ; 
French  compulsorily  used  at 
Oxford  in  the  time  of  the 
Plantagenets  and  Latin  during 
the  Commonwealth  ended  in 
failure,  i.  100. 

Fox  maintained  that  Bordeaux 
should  be  pronounced  Bordox, 
i.  178. 

French  Encyclopaedia  devoted 
six  volumes  to  Grammar  and 
Literature  ;  divided  grammar 
into  general  and  particular  ; 
the  principles  enunciated 
largely  worked  out  by  Gott- 
fried Hermann  and  G.  M. 
Roth  ;  families  of  speech  and 
morphology  of  language  then 
unknown ;  the  school  gram- 
mars of  Greece  and  Rome, 
with  the  categories  of  modern 
philosophical  systems,  defec- 
tive ;  truer  conception  by  F. 
Bernhardi  of  the  nature  and 
relationship  of  speech;  defined 
language  as  an  allegory  of  the 
understanding  ;  sought  a  con- 
nection between  the  sound  and 
the  object  ;  and  discussed  the 
relation  of  language  to  poetry 
and  science,  i.  35-6. 

French  in  the  eighth  century 
still  the  lingiia  roniana  rustica 
in  which  the  clergy  preached  ; 
its  equivalents  of  Latin  words, 
ii.  1 1 6 ;  oath  of  Strassburg  pre- 
served by  Nithard  ;  the  golden 
age  of  epic  poetry  and  the 
Chanson  de  Roland ;  new 
stage  of  development  began 
with  Sire  de  Joinville  ;  four 


INDEX. 


389 


principal  dialects,  differing 
chiefly  in  the  vowels,  con- 
tributed to  the  formation  of 
Modern  French,  ib.  116-17. 
Fluency  and  readiness  of  expres- 
sion of  some  speakers,  probable 
cause  of,  ii.  304. 

Galton's  whistle  as  a  test  of  the 
number  of  vibrations  in  audible 
sound,  i.  231,  note. 

Geiger  on  the  origin  of  roots  or 
words  ;  each  the  symbol  of  an 
action  ;  all  roots  traced  back 
by  him  to  verbs,  i.  Si. 

Genitive  case  still  wanting  in 
groups  of  languages  like  the 
Taic  or  Malay ;  the  Latin  ob- 
jective genitive  and  subjective 
genitive  ;  place  of  the  genitive 
in  Aryan  and  Semitic  different, 
i.  414-15  ;  apposition  used  in- 
stead ;  F.  Miiller's  view ;  place 
of  the  defining  noun  in  Hot- 
tentot, Chinese,  Malay,  and 
Semitic ;  the  predicative  and 
genitival  relation  ;  office  of  the 
adjective  and  genitive  the 
same,  ib.  416-7  ;  formation  of 
adjectives  in  Tibetan ;  genitive 
in  Hindustani ;  Greek  adjec- 
tives and  the  Sanskrit  genitive, 
ib.  418  ;  the  close  connection 
of  the  adjective  and  genitive 
in  the  Ba-ntu  languages  ;  Zulu 
sentence  ;  Semitic  distinctions 
with  Assyrian  and  Hebrew  ex- 
amples, ib.  419-20  ;  the  oldest 
Accadian  inscriptions  contain 
a  genitive  by  position  ;  a  post- 
position found  throughout  the 
Ural-Altaic  family  ;  peculia- 


rities of  the  Accadians,  Finns, 
and  Semites  ;  use  of  preposi- 
tions like  de,  of,  or  von  in 
modern  analytic  languages  ; 
varying  aspect  worn  by  the 
genitive  in  the  different  families 
of  speech,  ib.  420-1. 

Germans  eagerly  pursued  the 
study  of  Sanskrit  soon  after 
its  discovery ;  Schlegel  the 
poet  first  laid  down  the  great 
fact  that  the  languages  of 
India,  Persia,  Greece,  Italy, 
Germany,  and  Slavonia  formed 
but  one  family  ;  his  work  the 
foundation  on  which  Bopp 
reared  the  science  of  language, 
i.  48-9. 

Gestures  and  the  instinctive  play 
of  the  features  denoting  plea- 
sure or  pain,  and  their  dif- 
ference ;  the  latter  common  to 
man  and  the  brutes,  whilst 
gestures  implying  a  rational 
element  are  peculiar  to  man,  i. 
106  ;  often  a  poor  resource  and 
fail  to  express  the  meaning  in- 
tended by  children  and  travel- 
lers, ib.  106-7. 

Giovanni  de  Balbis,  author  of  a 
Latin  Dictionary,  i.  25. 

Gipsies  penetrated  Europe  in 
the  twelfth  or  thirteenth  cen- 
tury ;  Miklosich  endeavoured 
to  trace  their  line  of  march 
and  the  countries  passed 
through  by  a  careful  examina- 
tion of  their  vocabulary,  ii.  76. 

Glottology  includes  a  knowledge 
of  the  general  laws  and  con- 
ditions of  language,  i.  134-5. 

Gods  human  in  form  and  attri- 


390 


INDEX. 


butes  ;  Vishnu  with  arms  and 
legs,  Merodach  as  an  armed 
warrior,  ii.  297. 

Grammar  and  the  method  of 
studying  it  essentially  un- 
sound ;  the  grammars  of 
Greece  and  Rome  largely 
founded  on  false  theories, 
imaginary  facts,  and  false 
rules,  ii.  330-1  ;  the  noun  and 
oblique  cases ;  Aryan  case- 
endings  ;  the  Danish  det  er 
mig  and  French  c'est  mot; 
cases  in  English  derived  from 
the  Latin  ;  nature  and  func- 
tions of  adjectives,  pronouns, 
and  verbs  ;  rules,  exceptions, 
and  survivals,  ib.  331-4;  pro- 
vince of  literature  and  histori- 
cal philology  ;  forms  of  gram- 
mar variable  and  the  causes  ; 
recent  improvements  in  the 
method  of  Greek,  Latin,  Ger- 
man, French,  and  English 
grammars,  ib.  334-7  ;  reasons 
formerly  prevalent  for  teach- 
ing Latin  and  Greek,  ib.  337-8. 

Grammar  studied  practically  by 
the  Romans ;  Julius  Caesar 
composed  a  work  entitled 
"  De  Analogia,"  and  invented 
the  term  ablative  j  Cato  learnt 
Greek  in  his  old  age  in  order 
to  teach  his  son  ;  the  study  of 
the  problems  of  grammar 
made  Latin  the  vehicle  of 
law  and  oratory,  i.  18-19. 

Grammar  the  guide  to  the  rela- 
tionship of  languages  ;  with 
structure  the  clue  to  direct 
comparative  philological  re- 
search; existence  of  the  Aryan 


family  of  speech  proved 
their  grammatical  forms  ;  Sir 
W.  Jones,  Adelung,  and  Va- 
ter's  lists  of  words  mere 
curiosities,  i.  150-1  ;  oldest 
forms  must  be  noted  from 
books  and  monuments  or  ex- 
isting dialects,  ib.  151. 

Grammarians  of  India  next  to 
those  of  Assyria  and  Baby- 
lonia in  order  of  time  ;  the 
rise  of  Buddhism  and  the 
elevation  of  popular  dialects 
to  the  rank  of  literary  lan- 
guages, caused  the  language 
of  the  Veda  to  become  anti- 
quated, and  compelled  the 
educated  Hindu  to  study  and 
compare  its  earlier  and  later 
forms,  i.  4-5. 

Greek  contact  with  Persia  sti- 
mulated Themistokles  to  ac- 
quire a  fluent  knowledge  of 
Persian ;  overthrow  of  the 
empire  of  Cyrus  and  Darius, 
impressed  the  Greeks  with 
contempt  for  the  Asiatic,  and 
infused  a  belief  in  the  innate 
superiority  of  their  own  lan- 
guage and  literature,  which 
proved  the  bane  of  classical 
philology  till  recent  times,  1.8-9.. 

Greek  contempt  for  the  "bar- 
barian" led  them  to  neglect 
the  investigation  of  the  dia- 
lects of  Asia  Minor ;  Plato 
noticed  the  resemblance  only 
to  draw  a  wrong  conclusion  ; 
and  maintained  many  Greek 
words  had  been  borrowed  by 
the  Phrygians,  i.  8. 

Greek  grammar,  technical  terms: 


INDEX. 


391 


of,  misunderstood,  mistrans- 
lated, and  confounded  by  the 
Romans,  i.  22. 

Greek,  or  Hellenic,  the  most  im- 
portant branch  of  the  Aryan 
family  in  its  vowel  system  and 
the  perfection  of  grammatical 
forms,  ii.  101-9. 

Greek  researches  into  language 
divided  into  three  periods,  viz. 
before  Sokrates,  the  Sophists, 
and  Alexandrine  gramma- 
rians ;  labours  of  the  Sophists 
Herakleitus  and  Demokritus  ; 
rise  of  the  so-called  science  of 
Etymology  ;  derivation  of  lu- 
cus  a  non  lucendo  ;  follies  of 
the  pretended  science  en- 
shrined in  the  "  Etymologi- 
cum  Magnum,"  and  the  "Ono- 
mastikon  "  of  Pollux  ;  two  of 
its  rules  illustrated,  i.  7-8. 

Greek  school  grammar  by  Dio- 
nysius  Thrax,  published  at 
Rome  in  the  time  of  Pompey, 
still  extant ;  divided  into  six 
parts  ;  spread  and  added  to 
the  absurd  etymologizing  of 
the  Greeks  ;  Lucius  yElius 
gave  lectures  on  Latin  litera- 
ture and  rhetoric  about  100 
B.C.,  and  Marcus  Terentius 
Varro  wrote  five  books,  "  De 
Lingua  Latina,"  which  served 
as  the  basis  of  the  "science" 
of  Latin  Etymology  ;  Roman 
vagaries  only  excelled  by 
Junius  and  the  author  of 
"  Ereuna,"  i.  20-1,  and  notes. 

Greek,  Roman,  and  North- 
American-Indian  mode  of 
forming  compounds  ;  the  last 


exhibits  the  primitive  condi- 
tion of  speech ;  the  Cheroki, 
out  of  six  or  eight  thousand 
verbal  forms,  has  no  single 
word  for  the  verb  separately  ; 
examples  of  the  forms,  i.  120. 

Greek  word  demos  from  da,  "  to 
divide,"  shows  private  property 
in  Attica  originated  in  the 
allotment  of  land  as  amongst 
the  Slavs  at  present,  i.  161. 

Grimm  adopted  Bopp's  method, 
but  devoted  himself  to  the 
minute  and  scientific  study  of 
one  branch  of  languages  ;  his 
Deutsche  Grammatik  ushered 
in  a  new  epoch  in  comparative 
philology,  i.  51  ;  studied  the 
ancient  through  modern  and 
living  languages  ;  his  method 
ably  applied  by  Curtius  to 
Greek,  who  availed  himself  of 
the  labours  of  Lobeck,,  Gott- 
fried Hermann,  Passow,  D6- 
derlein,  and  Philipp  Buttmann, 

•  while  nearly  a  similar  advance 
had  been  made  in  Latin  by 
Corssen's  predecessors,  ib. 
54  ;  compared  the  science  of 
language  with  that  of  natural 
history,  and,  like  Goethe, 
thought  mankind  had  sprung 
from  several  separate  pairs,  ib. 
70 ;  his  view  of  the  develop- 
ment of  language,  and  the 
origin  of  the  first  words  from 
Aryan  roots,  giving  a  particu- 
lar meaning  to  each  separate 
vowel  and  consonant,  unveri- 
fied assumptions,  ib.  70-1  ;  his 
failure  prepared  the  way  for 
Schleicher,  ib.  71-2. 


392 


INDEX. 


Grimm's  laws  of  the  interchanges 
of  sound  in  Aryan  speech,  the 
result  of  wide  observation  and 
comparison  ;  English  th  and 
its  relation  to  t  in  Latin  and 
Greek  words,  i.  154;  his  laws 
affected  by  others,  as  noted  by 
Verner  in  Teutonic  ;  every 
change  in  strict  accordance 
with  phonetic  law  and  capable 
of  explanation  ;  diversification 
of  Teutonic,  Latin,  Romanic, 
and  modern  English,  ib.  313  ; 
causes  of  change,  ib.  314; 
transition  of  g,  d,  b,  into  £,  /, 
and  b  in  German,  and  growth 
of  an  aspirate  ;  action  of  one 
sound  upon  another,  and  assi- 
milation explained,  ib.  315-16 ; 
metathesis,  and  the  insertion 
and  omission  of  vowels;  Swara- 
bhakti  incompatible  with  the 
acute  accent,  ib.  317;  pros- 
thesis, or  prothesis,  and  epen- 
thesis  illustrated  by  words  from 
various  languages,  ib.  318-20; 
different  languages  have  diffe- 
rent phonetic  tendencies,  but 
Grimm's  law  never  "  sus- 
pended," or  allows  exceptions, 
unless  interfered  with  by  others 
which  happen  invariably  under 
certain  conditions  ;  borrowed 
words  necessarily  undergo  the 
same  changes  ;  words  some- 
times altered  in  form  so  as  to 
disguise  the  etymology,  as 
Shotover  from  Chateau  vert  j 
generalizations  and  uniformity 
of  Grimm's  law,  ib.  322-3. 

Growth  and  development  of  lan- 
guage    through     civilization  ; 


the  language  of  Chaucer  com- 
pared with  that  at  the  disposal 
of  a  modern  writer,  i.  100-1  ; 
dialects  of  savages  a  type  of 
what  all  languages  were  origi- 
nally; the  condition  of  theTas- 
manians,  New  Caledonians, 
Veddahs  of  Ceylon,  and  the 
Dammaras  of  South  Africa, 
ib.  10 1 -2. 

Harar  language,  apparently  Se- 
mitic, uses  postpositions,  and 
reverses  the  Semitic  order  of 
the  words  in  the  genitive,  i. 
174. 

Harris  stimulated  inquiry  and 
attention  to  the  framework 
of  school  grammars  by  his 
"  Hermes  ; "  and  was  followed 
by  Home  Tooke's  "  Diversions 
of  Purley,"  which  revived  the 
old  mistake  of  the  Greek  Ana- 
logists,  i.  34-5. 

Hebrew,  a  local  dialect  of  the 
Canaanite  group,  together  with 
the  Phoenician,  Moabite,  and 
neighbouring  idioms,  ii.  169- 
70. 

Helmholtz  detected  the  exact 
form  of  many  compound  tones 
by  applying  the  microscope  to 
the  vibrations  of  different  musi- 
cal instruments ;  confirmed  his 
own  and  Bonders'  discovery 
that  the  sounds  articulated  by 
the  human  voice  have  their 
own  special  shape,  i.  234. 

Helve'tius  followed  Anaxagoras 
and  asserted  that  we  became 
men  through  the  possession  of 
hands,  i.  95. 


INDEX. 


393 


Henotheism  and  Polytheism  but 
two  phases  of  the  same  form 
of  religious  faith  ;  plurality  of 
deities  suggested  by  the  variety 
of  nature  overpowers  man's 
yearning  for  unity  ;  gradually 
attributes  applied  to  the  objects 
and  powers  of  nature  take  the 
place  of  the  latter ;  the  Sun 
becomes  Apollo,  and  the  Storm 
Ares ;  deities  are  multiplied 
in  the  mythopceic  age  when 
epithets  are  changed  into  divi- 
nities and  demi-gods  with  a 
developed  mythology ;  ab- 
stract names  follow  the  com- 
mon process,  and  temples 
reared  to  Terror  and  Fear,  to 
Love  and  Reverence ;  and 
these  are  ultimately  followed 
by  the  higher  abstraction  of 
Monotheism,  ii.  295-6. 

Herakleitus  advocated  the  doc- 
trine of  the  innate  and  neces- 
sary connection  between  words 
and  objects,  i.  6. 

Herder  substituted  the  idea  of 
development  for  that  of  uni- 
form sequence  ;  his  "  Treatise 
on  the  Origin  of  Speech  "  dis- 
sipated the  theory  that  lan- 
guage was  a  miraculous  gift, 
i.  48. 

Herder  and  Lessing  the  leaders 
of  a  new  era  of  thought  and 
philosophy  ;  the  "  Ideal  of 
Speech"  followed  by  Jenisch's 
Berlin  Academy  prize  essay, 
the  "  Ideal  of  a  perfect  Lan- 
guage ; "  his  four  marks  of 
superiority  ;  Herder  had  pre- 
viously laid  down  in  his 


"  Ideen "  that  in  each  lan- 
guage the  understanding  and 
character  of  its  speakers  re- 
flects itself,  i.  32. 

Herodian's  views  taken  up  by 
yElius,  Donatus,  and  Priscian ; 
their  grammatical  labours,  i. 
24. 

Heyse,  a  follower  of  Humboldt 
from  Hegel's  point  of  view, 
professed  to  base  his  theory 
on  the  results  of  comparative 
philology  ;  held  that  language 
was  spiritualized  sound,  i.  66  ; 
his  ideas  of  internal  develop- 
ment mystical  and  contrary  to 
fact ;  his  assertions  respec- 
ting the  soul  sheer  mythology; 
evolution  of  the  various  forms 
of  speech  not  necessary  ;  lan- 
guage originated  from  the 
need  of  intercommunication, 
and,  as  Heyse  emphasizes  it, 
was  the  work  of  reasonable, 
thinking  beings,  ib.  67-8. 

High  and  Low  German,  their 
formation  exactly  in  accor- 
dance with  Grimm's  law  ;  and 
the  rise  of  a  new  language  in 
historical  times,  i.  307-8. 

Hindu  grammarians  first  inves- 
tigated the  language  of  the 
Rig- Veda,  i.  38-9  ;  laid  the 
foundation  of  modern  scientific 
philology;  their  mode  of  treat- 
ing words,  i.  113  ;  long  before 
the  Greeks  in  their  phonolo- 
gical labour,  and  far  more 
scientific  ;  some  of  their  trea- 
tises will  compare  favourably 
with  those  of  the  present  day ; 
their  names  of  the  various 


394 


INDEX. 


sounds  and  groups  of  letters 
from  their  formation,  i.  244-6. 

Historians  of  a  later  age  only  able 
to  trace  the  causes  of  events 
of  a  particular  era,  ii.  65  ;  the 
greatest  thinkers  not  free  from 
the  prejudices  and  habits  of 
their  times,  as  Aristotle  on 
Slavery,  Bacon  and  Raleigh 
on  Astrology ;  apt  to  over- 
estimate the  culture  and  civili- 
zation of  modern  Europe ; 
Anglo-Indian  contempt  of  the 
descendants  of  Manu  and 
Vikramaditya,  ib.  66. 

Historical  growth  and  evolution 
of  consciousness  ;  the  exis- 
tence of  Non-Aryan  and  pre- 
Keltic  populations  in  western 
Europe  ;  contact  of  tribes  in 
prehistoric  times ;  Hungarians 
and  Voguls  once  neighbours  ; 
Greek  words  borrowed  from 
Phoenicia  ;  original  home  and 
migrations  of  the  Gipsies,  ii. 
324-6. 

History  culled  from  monumental 
evidence,  from  the  discoveries 
of  Schliemann  and  others,  not 
from  the  Homeric  Poems ; 
Mykenae,  Pelops,  and  the  cul- 
ture of  Hellas,  ii.  254. 

History  of  the  Aryan  nations 
recovered ;  their  migrations 
and  beliefs,  culture  and  civili- 
zation better  known  than  the 
history  of  the  Saxons  of  the 
Heptarchy,  or  the  Hebrews  of 
the  Davidic  era ;  how  pre- 
served and  traced  by  Fick 
before  the  first  Hymn  of  the 
Rig- Veda  was  composed,  the 


Hellenes  reached  Greece,  or 
the  first  Indo-European  word 
had  been  written  down,  ii. 
326-7. 

Holden,  Professor,  on  ease  of 
pronunciation  in  the  adoption 
of  words  ;  and  numbers  of 
words  acquired  by  children 
two  years  of  age  in  particular 
instances,  ii.  314-15. 

Homeric  Poems,  estimation  of 
by  the  Greeks  ;  numerous  dis- 
cordant copies  gave  rise  to 
literary  criticism  amongst  the 
Alexandrines ;  a  minute  inves- 
tigation and  comparison  of 
the  older  and  later  forms  of 
the  language  followed,  over- 
shadowed by  metaphysics,  i. 
14-15  ;  the  old  dispute  about 
the  origin  of  words  assumed  a 
new  form,  ib.  15. 

Horace's  lines  on  the  primitive 
condition  of  man  and  the  evo- 
lution of  speech,  i.  13. 

Hovelacque  on  the  organ  of  lan- 
guage and  its  position  ;  his 
work  on  the  origin  of  language 
exhibits  the  defects  of  Schlei- 
cher's  theory,  and  contains 
little  more  than  a  catalogue  of 
the  various  families  of  speech 
with  their  characteristics,  i. 
76. 

Humanists  the  older,  bowed 
before  classical  antiquity,  and 
only  aimed  at  writing  and 
speaking  Latin  correctly ; 
Switheim  on  government ;  "  to 
govern"  a  legacy  by  the  school- 
men, unknown  to  Priscian,  but 
found  in  Consentius ;  outdone 


INDEX. 


395 


by  the  orthodox  in  the  "  errors" 
of  the  Vulgate,  i.  26-7. 
Human  speech  ;  the  problem  of 
its  reproduction  more  success- 
fully approached  from  the 
physical  and  acoustic  side  than 
the  physiological ;  instruments 
most  exactly  constructed  to 
represent  the  vocal  organs 
failed  to  produce  anything  like 
human  speech  ;  the  mind  the 
creator  of  speech  by  giving  sig- 
nification to  articulate  sounds, 

i-  335-6. 

Human  throat  a  marvellous  in- 
strument for  the  production  of 
manifold  sounds ;  its  structure; 
the  most  perfect  wind  instru- 
ment of  infinite  pliability  and 
power  of  change,  and  in  con- 
stant sympathy  with  the  other 
harmonies  of  the  other  organs 
of  speech,  i.  236. 

Humboldt's  (Wilhelm  von) 
great  work  on  the  Kawi  lan- 
guage published  after  his 
death ;  followed  by  Steinthal's 
journal,  conducted  with  the 
help  of  Lazarus,  has  proved  a 
treasury  of  suggestive  thought 
to  linguistic  scholars,  i.  50-1  ; 
ib.  64  ;  confounded  the  two 
senses  of  the  word  language  ; 
his  theory  reflects  Kant's  dual- 
ism ;  erred  in  following  the  a 
priori  method  rather  than  the 
a  posteriori;  but  his  work  of 
great  value  to  scholars,  ib.  66 ; 
classed  Chinese  with  the  in- 
flectional languages  of  Europe; 
assumed  that  all  language 
follows  a  regular  course  of 


development  from  the  isolat- 
ing stage  to  the  inflectional,  ib. 
370-1. 

Idea  of  a  universal  grammar  due 
to  logic  and  the  unmethodical 
comparison  of  ancientand  mo- 
dern languages,  and  a  revival 
of  old  Greek  theories,  i.  33-4. 

Identity  of  language  the  result 
of  contact,  or  social  influence ; 
a  presumption  in  favour  of  a 
common  racial  origin  of  popu- 
lations ;  kinship  of  race  and 
language;  descent  of  mankind 
and  origin  of  languages,  ii. 
317-18. 

Imitation  in  childhood  and 
amongst  a  community  ;  love 
of  imitation  sometimes  causes 
a  community  to  adopt  the  lan- 
guage of  its  neighbours,  as  the 
Kelts  of  Cornwall,  Wends  of 
Prussia,  Huns  of  Bulgaria,  Ne- 
groes of  Hayti,  Lapps,  and  the 
aborigines  of  America,  i.  168  ; 
difficulties  and  limit  of  the 
power  of  imitation  amongst  the 
South  American  Indians  and 
Negroes  ;  disparity  of  culture 
a  barrier  ;  Chinese  attempts  to 
imitate  English,  ib.  169-70 ; 
changes  form  and  meaning,  ib. 
175  ;  false  analogy  and  ten- 
dency to  exclude  the  irregu- 
lar ;  uniformity  in  modern 
Greek  declension,  ib.  176. 

Imperfections  of  speech,  lisping 
and  stammering,  mainly  due 
to  nervous  disease,  and  too 
high  a  palate  another  cause  of 
irregular  utterance,  i.  252. 


396 


INDEX. 


Importance  of  the  mouth,  or 
chamber  of  resonance,  in  the 
creation  of  articulate  speech  ; 
many  sounds  owe  their  origin 
to  it ;  others  formed  in  the 
throat  are  modified  in  their 
passage  through,  the  vowels 
first,  then  the  gutturals  and 
dentals,  and  lastly  the  labials 
undergo  change,  i.  253. 

Inability  to  distinguish  sounds 
due  to  two  very  different  causes, 
i.  311,  and  note. 

Inflectional  families  of  speech 
not  numerous,  but  the  literary 
and  historical  importance  of 
two  exceeds  that  of  any  other 
group  ;  inflectional  character 
of  Hottentot,  maintained  by 
Bleek,  is  denied  by  Friedrich 
Miiller,  ii.  68-9. 

Inspiration  of  the  Vulgate  ac- 
cording to  Gallandia  and 
Smaragdus,  i.  27. 

Intensity  of  sound,how  produced; 
whispering  by  less  intensity 
but  quite  as  distinct  as  loud 
voice ;  three  kinds  of  the  latter, 
and  action  of  the  organs,  also 
in  sighing  and  groaning,  i. 
248-9. 

Interjectional  cries,  like  the  play 
of  the  features,  common  to  all 
men;  express  emotions,  not 
ideas ;  some  like  Agh  (acti)  in 
Aryan  seem  to  have  become 
roots ;  many  modern  interjec- 
tions had  once  a  full  concep- 
tual meaning ;  instinctive  cries 
of  men  engaged  in  a  common 
work  may  be  considered  inter- 
jections ;  sense  of  life  and 


power  that  makes  the  child 
shout,  the  bird  sing,  and  is  the 
ultimate  motive  of  human 
speech,  causes  us  to  beat  time 
by  the  help  of  rhythmical 
utterances,  becomes  a  symbol 
of  the  action  to  all  who  have 
taken  part  in  it  and  passes  into 
a  word,  i.  109-10. 

Inward  sense,  the  essence  of  lan- 
guage, how  ascertained,  i. 
164-5. 

Iron  another  form  of  Aryan,  a 
name  due  to  Max  Miiller.  ii.  70. 

Isolating  dialects  of  China  and 
Further  India  differ  from  each 
other,  i.  129. 

Italian  oldest  written  monuments 
do  not  go  back  beyond  the 
1 2th  century  ;  literary  Italian 
created  by  Dante;  his  fourteen 
dialects  ;  now  more  scientifi- 
cally reduced  to  three  groups, 
Northern, Central,  and  Middle; 
wide  differences  between  them, 
ii.  118-19. 

Kafir  woman's  reason  for  coining 
the  word  angoca  for  water  in 
the  song  of  Tangalimlibo,  ii. 

17- 

Katal,  a  Semitic  root,  explained, 
and  its  derivatives,  ii.  4. 

Kautsa  and  the  early  Hindu 
grammarians  ;  origin  and  ex- 
tent of  their  labours  ;  the  lan- 
guage of  the  Rig- Veda  had 
become  so  obsolete  in  the  fifth 
or  sixth  century  B.C.,  as  to 
be  understood  with  difficulty  ; 
the  Prati'sakhyas,  the  oldest 
production  of  the  grammatical 


INDEX. 


397 


school,  far  superior  to  the  most 
advanced  labours  of  the  Greeks 
in  the  same  direction  ;  the 
Nighantavas  contain  a  list  of 
rare  Vedic  words,  and  perhaps 
started  the  controversy  on  the 
origin  of  nouns  between  Saka- 
/ayana  and  Gargya  and  their 
followers ;  a  Sanskrit  Dic- 
tionary formed  and  the  doc- 
trine of  roots  clearly  enuncia- 
ted, i.  41-2  ;  labours  of  Yaska 
and  Panini  ;  the  Nirukta,  or 
Etymology  of  the  former,  a 
model  of  method  and  con- 
ciseness, and  the  grammar  of 
the  latter,  the  crowning  work 
of  Hindu  scholarship  in  the 
fourth  century,  ib.  42-3. 

Keltic  language  the  westernmost 
of  all  the  Aryan,  still  spoken 
in  Wales,  Brittany,  Ireland, 
and  the  Scottish  Highlands  ; 
peculiarities  and  changes  of 
letters,  ii.  83-4 ;  Welsh,  Cor- 
nish, Breton,  and  Irish  lite- 
rature ;  Scotch  Gaelic  the 
most  corrupt  of  all  the  Keltic 
tongues,  ib.  87-8. 

Keltic  philology  placed  on  a 
scientific  footing  by  Pritchard, 
Zeuss,  and  Stokes,  i.  53. 

Kephalos  and  Prokris,  Greek 
legend  of,  traceable  to  a  high 
antiquity  ;  explained  by  Max 
Miiller,  ii.  273. 

Knowledge  defined ;  the  result  of 
comparison,  i.  132-3. 

Krates  of  Mallos  regarded  "ano- 
maly" as  the  leading  principle 
of  language ;  defended  the 
right  of  usage  ;  author  of  the 


first  Greek  grammar  ;  tried  to 
reform  orthography  ;  Appius 
Claudius  Csecus  had  written 
on  grammar  and  Spurius  Car- 
vilius  had  substituted  g  for 
z,  so  that  Krates  found  a  ready 
audience  for  his  "lectures" 
upon  the  study  of  Greek,  B.C. 
156;  almost  all  Roman  culture 
borrowed  from  the  Greeks, 
boys  learnt  Greek  before  Latin, 
and  it  was  generally  under- 
stood ;  the  first  Roman  history 
written  in  Greek  by  Fabius 
Pictor,  B.C.  200 ;  speech  of 
Tiberius  Gracchus  at  Rhodes; 
a  native  literature  sprang  up 
under  the  influence  of  Greek 
teachers,  and  Latin  was  trained 
as  the  instrument  of  communi- 
cation between  the  polished 
nations  of  antiquity  and  their 
Roman  masters,  i.  15-8. 

Language  a  social  product,  the 
creation  and  creator  of  society; 
independent  of  individual  ca- 
price and  control ;  changes 
assumed  referable  to  general 
laws,  i.  133-4. 

Language  ever  shifting,  and  not 
a  characteristic  of  race  ;  may 
be  exchanged  ;  when  created, 
ii.  318. 

Language  of  man  like  the  song 
of  birds,  instinctive  and  neces- 
sary, i.  83  ;  significant  sound, 
the  outward  embodiment  and 
expression  of  thought,  ib.  132. 

Language  of  the  mythopceic  age 
only  apparently  imaginative 
and  poetical,  ii.  269. 


398 


INDEX. 


Language,  origin  of,  cannot  be 
revealed  by  any  single  science, 
but  by  the  sciences  subordi- 
nated to  each  other  ;  failures 
of  the  early  attempts  to  solve 
the  mystery,  ii.  300-1  ;  the  pro- 
duct of  a  combination  of  causes ; 
a  social  creation  by  a  whole 
community,  ib.  301  ;  faculty  of 
speech  natural  to  man  ;  nature 
of  his  first  utterances  and  how 
moulded  into  articulate  sounds 
to  convey  embryonic  thought, 
2^.302;  where  localized  accord- 
ing to  M.  Broca,  and  the  re- 
sults of  full  and  defective 
development,  ib.  303-4 ;  the 
one  mark  of  distinction  be- 
tween man  and  the  brute ; 
the  possession  of  conceptual 
thought  and  continuous  reason- 
ing contrasted  with  the  rudi- 
mentary reason  and  intelli- 
gence of  animals,  ib.  304-6  ; 
language  not  necessarily  de- 
pendent on  vocal  sounds  ;  use 
of  signs  and  gestures  by  travel- 
lers and  savages  ;  James  and 
Dunbar's  account  of  the  signs 
used  by  the  North  American 
Indians,  ib.  306-7  ;  signs  used 
in  monasteries  where  silence 
was  strictly  enjoined  ;  North 
American  Indian  signs  for 
the  sun's  path  and  the  time  of 
day,  ib.  307-8  ;  the  cries  of 
animals  expressing  feeling  or 
desire  always  remain  rudimen- 
tary, and  never  develop  into 
speech,  ib.  309  ;  views  of  Dar- 
win, Haeckel,  and  their  fol- 
lowers ;  no  anthropoid  ape 


ever  raised  to  the  level  of  ar- 
ticulate speaking  man;  theory 
of  the  evolutionist  on  his  homo 
alalus  and  homo  primigenius 
left  to  post-tertiary  geology  to 
verify  or  confute,  ib.  310  ;  un- 
consciousness of  childhood 
and  the  early  condition  of  man- 
kind compared ;  experiments 
of  Psammitichus  on  two  infants 
brought  up  in  solitude,  -ib. 
310-1 1  and  note;  result  of  Mr. 
Taine's  observations  on  one 
of  his  own  children  described, 
ib.  311-13  ;  Darwin's  observa- 
tions on  a  little  boy's  first 
utterances ;  Mr.  Pratt  on  Poly- 
nesian distinctions  by  vocalic 
elements ;  Professor  Holden 
on  ease  of  pronunciation  in 
the  adoption  of  words,  ib. 
313-15  ;  age  at  which  children 
generally  begin  to  speak  ; 
defects  in  pronunciation  and 
their  causes,  ib.  315. 

Language,  science  of,  created  a 
science  of  comparative  mytho- 
logy, and  a  science  of  religion; 
the  subject  defined ;  each 
necessary  to  understand  the 
others,  i.  57-8  ;  familiar  forms 
of  Greek  myths  traced  back  to 
the  Vedic  hymns  ;  value  of 
Max  Miiller's  labours  in  these 
new  sciences,  ib.  58. 

Language,  science  of,  related  to 
ethnology ;  language  belongs 
to  the  community,  not  to  the 
race ;  its  changes  amongst 
tribes  and  races  enumerated  ; 
foreign  influence  through  wives 
and  captives,  i.  316-17. 


INDEX. 


399 


Language,  the  bond  of  society, 
includes  every  means  of  com- 
municating the  thoughts  and 
feelings  to  others  ;  the  deaf 
mutes  gifted  with  speech ; 
savages  still  use  gestures 
largely,  and  the  Grebos  indi- 
cate persons  and  tenses  of 
verbs  in  this  way,  i.  2  ;  one  of 
the  earliest  subjects  of  reflec- 
tion ;  inquiry  into  the  nature 
of  language  seems  to  have 
originated  in  Babylonia  on 
account  of  its  mixed  races  and 
languages  ;  the  Tower  of  Ba- 
bel believed  to  be  the  cause 
of  the  diversity  by  the  Confu- 
sion of  Tongues  ;  fragments  of 
the  native  legend  found  in  As- 
sur-bani-pal's  library,  closely 
resemble  the  account  in  Gene- 
sis, ib.  3 ;  the  Greek  logos  an 
expression  of  the  close  relation- 
ship between  thought  and 
words ;  the  question  attempted 
to  be  solved,  and  at  the  bottom 
of  all  linguistic  science  ;  con- 
troversy on  free-will  and  neces- 
sity ;  its  importance  to  lan- 
guage and  grammar ;  the 
Greek  perceived  that  language 
was  the  outward  embodiment 
of  thought,  but  failed  to  dis- 
cover its  nature  and  laws,  ib. 
4-6. 

Languages,  four  of  the  most  im- 
portant groups  examined ; 
Malay- Polynesian  by  W.  von 
Humboldt,  Buschmann,  Von 
de  Gabelentz,  and  F.  Miiller  ; 
the  Ba-ntu  by  Bleek ;  the 
Athapasian  and  Sonorian  by 


Buschmann;  the  Ural-Altaic, 
also  called  Ugro-Altaic  or 
Turanian;  the  philology  of  the 
Finnic  group  almost  as  ad- 
vanced as  Aryan  ;  limits  of  the 
Ural-Altaic  not  quite  settled, 
nor  the  Chinese  and  Mongol, 

i-  55-7- 

Latin  language,  three  periods  of 
Old  Latin  down  to  the  Second 
Punic  War  ;  Classical  Latin  ; 
and  Neo-Latin,  the  language 
of  the  people  under  the  Em- 
pire, out  of  which  sprang  the 
Romanic  idioms  of  Mediaeval 
and  modern  Europe  ;  their 
relative  use  and  differences,  ii. 
112-14. 

Latin  spoken  in  Gaul  had  a  strong 
affection  for  diminutives  ;  the 
same  tendency  in  Irish,  Ger- 
man, Swiss,  and  Italian;  also 
among  the  provincials  of  the 
Roman  world,  ii.  115-16. 

Law,  universal  prevalence  of,  in 
language ;  nothing  arbitrary  or 
capricious  amid  all  the  changes 
or  development,  ii.  335. 

Laws  of  consonantal  change  laid 
down  for  Latin  and  Greek,  for 
Sanskrit  and  Zend,  for  Keltic 
and  Old  High  German,  verified 
and  explained  by  the  modern 
Romance  dialects  ;  whilst  the 
study  of  savage  idioms  has 
yielded  invaluable  facts  for 
linguistic  science  ;  difficulties 
of  treating  an  extinct  literary 
language  scientifically,  i.  1 57. 

Laws  of  speech,  primary  or  em- 
pirical ;  their  nature  and  rela- 
tions ;  applicable  to  words  and 


400 


INDEX. 


sentences  of  any  period ;  Eng- 
lish, Sanskrit,  and  Latin,  equi- 
valent letters  ;  our  linguistic 
ancestors  able  to  count  one 
hundred  before  their  separa- 
tion into  two  branches,  one  to 
conquer  India  and  the  other  to 
occupy  Europe,!.  138-9;  words, 
like  fossils,  enabled  us  to  trace 
the  past  history  of  our  race  ; 
laws  require  to  be  verified  by 
experiment  and  observation  ; 
the  phonautograph  and  pho- 
nograph show  the  waves  of 
air  set  in  motion  by  each  sound 
we  utter  ;  psychology  confirms 
the  conclusion  of  glottology 
that  the  concrete  precedes  the 
abstract ;  words  common  in 
Spanish  and  Arabic  due  to 
contact,  id.  140-1. 

Laziness  an  active  cause  in 
changing  the  harder  sounds 
into  weaker  ;  Mr.  Douse's  at- 
tempt to  explain  the  pheno- 
mena of  Grimm's  Law  by 
Reflex  Dissimilation,  i.  196-7. 

Leblanc,  a  young  man  whose 
larynx  was  completely  closed, 
was  only  able  to  utter  a  and  <?, 
i.  261. 

Legend  of  Boreas  and  Orythia 
explained  by  Sokrates  to  his 
disciple  Phaedrus,  ii.  230-1. 

Leibnitz  overthrew  the  belief  that 
Hebrew  was  the  primaeval  lan- 
guage ;  set  Missionaries  to 
compile  vocabularies,  gram- 
mar and  phrase-books  ;  im- 
plored Witsen  to  procure  spe- 
cimens of  the  Scythian  lan- 
guages, Samoyedes,  Siberians, 


Bashkirs,  Kalmucks,  Tungu- 
sians  and  others  ;  his  Disser- 
tation on  the  Origin  of  Nations, 
and  method  of  inquiry  ;  found 
an  illustrious  convert  in  Ca- 
therine of  Russia  ;  works  of 
the  Jesuit  Don  Lorenzo  Her- 
vas,  the  Mithridates  of  Ade- 
lung  and  Vater  due  to  his 
influence ;  his  efforts  seconded 
in  another  direction  by  Herder, 
i.  47-8. 

Lengthening  of  vowels  by  way  of 
compensation  in  Greek  and 
Latin  for  loss  of  a  consonant, 
i.  320-21. 

Letto-Slavic  languages,  their 
variety  and  grammatical  com- 
plexity, i.  94-100  ;  the  Lettic 
group  comprises  Lithuanian 
and  Lettish;  Lithuanian  litera- 
ture, chiefly  "  national  songs  " 
and  prose  tales  ;  its  phonology 
strikingly  agrees  in  some  re- 
spects with  the  Indie,  but  Let- 
tish has  undergone  further 
modification,  ib.  100-1. 

Literary  dialects  and  languages 
less  subject  to  decay  than  un- 
written, as  seen  in  the  Tuscan 
of  Dante  and  the  dialect  of 
Bologna  or  Naples  ;  the  Latin 
of  Cicero  declined  with  the 
Empire,  and  the  Anglo-Saxon 
with  the  Norman  Conquest ; 
whilst  the  language  of  the 
Assyrian  inscriptions  remained 
almost  unaltered  2,000  years  ; 
the  character  of  Hebrew  and 
how  influenced  by  its  sister 
tongues,  i.  198-9. 

Lithuanian  language  spoken  by 


INDEX. 


401 


the  least  progressive  member 
of  European  Aryans,  subject 
to  Phonetic  Decay  from  want 
of  intercourse  with  its  neigh- 
bours, i.  200  ;  compared  with 
the  Bedouin  of  Central  Arabia, 
ib.  201. 

Livius  Andronicus  translated  the 
"Odyssey"  into  Latin,  i.  17. 

Logic,  formal,  based  on  lan- 
guage ;  introduced  into  gram- 
mar by  the  Greeks  ;  Aristote- 
lian logic  and  the  latest  at- 
tempt to  improve  it  shown  by 
Mr.  Sweet  to  rest  upon  the 
mere  accidents  of  Indo-Euro- 
pean grammar,  ii.  327-8  ; 
cases  of  the  Latin  and  Greek 
wanting  in  the  majority  of 
languages  ;  no  true  verbs  in 
the  Polynesian  dialects,  and 
the  Eskimaux  lack  some  of 
"  the  parts  of  speech  ; "  Aris- 
totle's analysis  of  the  proposi- 
tion and  the  syllogism  ex- 
amined by  Hegel  and  Sweet, 
ib.  328-9  ;  progress  of  the 
science  of  language  retarded 
by  the  evil  influence  of  formal 
logic  and  of  "  Universal  Gram- 
mars "  or  Grammaires  Raison- 
nees  ;  right  conception  of  logic 
less  important  than  that  of 
grammar,  ib.  330. 

Luthvig's  views  of  flection  adop- 
ted by  some  French  philolo- 
gists; supported  by  Bergaigne's 
researches  on  the  case-suf- 
fixes, i.  84-5  ;  his  theory 
fails  when  applied  to  the 
verb  ;  the  advocates  of  agglu- 
tination meet  the  same  diffi- 
II.  D 


culty  in  the  stem-suffixes,  ib. 
85. 

Lykian  inscriptions,  some  bi- 
lingual, but  cannot  yet  be  de- 
ciphered, or  connected  with 
the  Aryan  family,  ii.  185. 

Mahn's  three  periods  of  speech 
and  their  characteristics,  i. 

32-3- 

Malayan  and  Polynesian  dia- 
lects, their  resemblances  and 
differences,  i.  137. 

Malayo-Polynesian  group  ;  va- 
ried position  of  the  agglutina- 
tive elements  ;  place  the  pre- 
position and  article  at  the 
end  ;  ravages  of  phonetic  de- 
cay ;  inference  from  the  gene- 
ral resemblance  of  the  Poly- 
nesian dialects ;  race  declined 
in  civilization  apparent  from 
their  numerous  songs  and  le- 
gends :  Malays  have  long  en- 
joyed culture,  possess  epics, 
dramas,  and  romances;  their 
philosophic  writings  due  to 
contact  with  the  Hindus  and 
Arabs,  ii.  207-8. 

Manchus,  conquerors  of  China 
indebted  to  the  Nestorian 
Christians  for  their  alphabet 
of  29  characters :  effect  of 
contact  with  the  Chinese  and 
literary  culture;  the  possessive 
pronouns  not  affixed  ;  the  ad- 
jective merely  a  noun  placed 
before  another  to  qualify  it, 
ii.  201. 

Man's  intellectual  creations  pro- 
gressive, not  like  the  unvary- 
ing processes  of  nature  always 


D 


402 


INDEX. 


the  same;  development  of 
thought  conditioned  and  vary- 
ing, i.  163-4. 

Mechanism  of  speech  settled 
by  the  labours  of  Ellis,  Mel- 
ville Bell,  Helmholtz,  Czermak, 
Briicke,  Sweet,  and  others  ; 
the  main  facts  ascertained 
and  explained  ;  the  real  na- 
ture and  causes  of  the  phonetic 
elements  of  speech  under- 
stood, i.  246. 

Membranous  tongues  like  our 
own  chorda  vocales,  act  as 
tense  cords,  i.  233. 

Memory  of  past  events  soon  lost 
by  uneducated  persons  ;  the 
battle  of  Linden  utterly  for- 
gotten by  the  peasantry  of  the 
neighbourhood,  and  Albanian 
genealogies  cannot  be  traced 
beyond  eleven  ancestors,  ii. 

254-5- 

Metaphorical  expressions  the 
work  of  analogy;  three-fourths 
of  our  own  language  said  to 
be  worn-out  metaphors  ;  the 
source  of  terms  for  the  spiri- 
tual and  abstract  growth  of 
knowledge  ;  the  only  abstract 
notion  attained  by  the  Tas- 
manians  was  that  of  resem- 
blance, i.  181-2. 

Miklosich  and  Schleicher  ex- 
plained Slavonic  philology  ; 
and  the  latter  gave  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  whole  Indo-Euro- 
pean family  of  languages,  and 
included  the  science  of  lan- 
guage among  the  physical 
sciences,  i.  53. 

Mixed  languages,  specimens  of, 


Maltese,  i.  219-20;  Creolese 
(or  broken  Danish) ;  Surinam 
Negro-English  (or  rather  Ne- 
gro-English Dutch),  ib.  221-2.; 
Negro  Spanish  of  Curagoa, 
ib.  222-3;  Indo-Portuguese%  ib. 
223-4 ;  Negro-Portuguese  and 
Negro-French,  ib.  224-5. 

Monboddo,Lord,  a  sounder  critic 
than  Dugald  Stewart,  con- 
vinced by  Wilkins  "  that  San- 
skrit was  a  richer  and  in  every 
respect  a  finer  language  than 
even  the  Greek  of  Homer  ; " 
his  theory  of  the  descent  of 
mankind  from  two  tailless 
apes,  and  all  languages  from 
the  Osirian  of  Egypt ;  ad- 
duced numerals  and  gram- 
matical forms  to  prove  the 
relationship  of  the  classical 
languages  of  Europe  and 
India  ;  not  far  in  1795  from 
discovering  the  Indo-Euro- 
pean family  of  speech,  the 
foundation  of  the  science  of 
language,  i.  46-7. 

Mongol  dialects  ;  that  spoken 
near  Lake  Baikal  the  most 
barbarous,  ii.  200-1. 

Moreover,  the  modern  word,  ap- 
pears as  overmore  in  the  Pas- 
ton  letters,  and  is  an  instance 
of  the  variation  of  words  from 
age  to  age,  i.  371-2. 

Morphology  treats  of  the  various 
forms  under  which  thought 
expresses  itself ;  different 
modes  of  thought  and  ex- 
pression in  Chinese  and  Eng- 
lish ;  peculiar  characteristics 
and  temperament  form  race  ; 


INDEX. 


403 


how  peculiarities  become  per- 
manent features,  i.  364-5  ; 
languages  classed  morpholo- 
gically, ib.  365  ;  meaning  of 
race  ;  the  European  Jew 
adopts  the  language  of  the 
country  in  which  he  is  settled; 
modern  mixed  languages  ; 
types  of  languages  strongly 
marked,  but  the  dividing  lines 
almost  imperceptible  ;  pecu- 
liarities of  Finnic,  English, 
and  French,  ib.  366  ;  results 
of  contact ;  the  minds  of  most 
men  cast  in  the  same  mould, 
and  tendency  to  produce  com- 
mon forms  ;  approach  of  dif- 
ferent types  to  each  other, 
and  the  consequences,  ib.  367; 
relation  of  the  parts  of  the 
sentence  to  one  another, 
grammatical  forms  and  struc- 
ture, ib.  382-4  ;  390. 

Miiller's  (Max)  theory  of  lan- 
guage ;  position  respecting 
dialects  ;  account  of  the  ori- 
gin of  the  myths  of  Greece 
and  Rome ;  his  views  midway 
between  Schleicherand  Stein- 
thai,  i.  77-9  ;  on  etymology 
and  sound,  ib.  149;  cites  au- 
thorities to  prove  that  k  and  t 
are  not  distinguished  amongst 
the  Sandwich  I  slanders,  2^.310; 
on  the  Latin  accusative  and 
infinitive,  z#.  429-31  ;  on  roots, 
ii.  3-4. 

Murray's  (Dr.)  nine  primaeval 
roots  and  their  meanings,  i. 
217  and  Notes. 

Mythology  largely  based  on 
metaphors  employed  in  ex- 


plaining the  phenomena  of 
nature,  which  were  afterwards 
understood  literally  as  apply- 
ing to  beings  of  a  superhuman 
world  ;  myths  of  Eos  and  of 
Phcebus  Apollo  ;  mythology  a 
misunderstanding  of  the  me- 
taphors and  a  misconception 
of  the  analogical  reasoning  of 
our  early  ancestors,  i.  182-3. 
Mythology  of  the  Greeks  in  the 
time  of  Sokrates  and  Plato 
inexplicable  and  wanting  in 
morality ;  connected  with  their 
art  and  religion  ;  familiar  to 
them  from  childhood,  every 
spot  associated  with  some 
ancient  myth ;  influence  on 
politics  ;  difficulty  of  belief 
among  the  educated  ;  myths 
resolved  into  allegory  by 
Theagenes ;  others  like  Me- 
trodorus  saw  in  Agamemnon 
and  the  Trojan  heroes  and  the 
gods,  the  elements  and  physi- 
cal agencies  ;  the  Neo-Plato- 
nists  regarded  them  as  moral 
symbols ;  conduct  of  Plato 
and  Aristotle  ;  the  educated 
accepted  the  atheism  of  Epi- 
kurus,  whilst  the  masses 
eagerly  embraced  the  wild 
superstitions  of  the  East,  ii. 
231-3  ;  common  opinion  that 
the  gods  took  no  notice  of 
human  affairs  ;  views  of  Eu- 
hemerus  readily  received  at 
Rome ;  irreverent  satire  of 
Lucian,  ib.  234-5  ;  spread 
and  influence  of  Christianity ; 
proneness  of  the  Christians  to 
refer  everything  marvellous  to 


404 


INDEX. 


the  agency  of  Satan,  ib.  235  ; 
Neo-Paganism      short-lived  ; 
difference     between     modern 
thinkers     and     the     ancient 
Greeks  ;    Bacon    on    Mytho- 
logy ;  revival  of  Euhemerism, 
and  attempt  to  extract  history 
from  Greek  Myths;  Lempriere 
and  the  Abbe"  Banier,  ib.  236- 
40  ;     opinions     of     Bochart, 
Bryant,    and    Gladstone,   ib. 
240-41  ;  Crete's  views  on  the 
essential   character  of  myths 
and    history,     and     different 
mode  of  treating  them;  the  key 
found  for  solving  the  problem; 
formation  of  myths  ;  preser- 
vation   of  names   when    the 
natural  sense  has  vanished  ; 
false  interpretations  ;  mytho- 
logy rife  in  the  islands  of  the 
Pacific  ;    personification    and 
metaphors  in   common    use  ; 
myths  traced  to  false  mean- 
ings and  mistakes  ;  ignorant 
attempts  to  explain  them,  ib. 
241-6 ;    chief  causes  of    the 
rich  mythology  of  Greece  and 
Rome,  Scandinavia,  and  Ger- 
many, ib.  248-9. 

Mythopceic  age;  awakened  curi- 
osity to  understand  and  inter- 
pret the  outward  world  ;  the 
first  strivings  of  the  intellect 
manifested  in  the  form  of  tales 
and  legends,  hymns  to  the 
gods,  and  songs  of  victory 
epithets  a  fruitful  source  of 
mythology,  and  several  applied 
to  the  same  object  from  dif- 
ferent attributes,  ii.  249-50. 
Myths  different  in  form,  histori- 


cal and   geographical  setting 
may  be  traced  back  to  a  single 
germ,  like  many  words  to  a 
single  root,  ii.  259  ;  those  of 
the  same  family  of  languages 
to  be  compared ;  resemblances 
in  allied  and  unallied  families, 
ib.  260- 1 ;    borrowed  and  va- 
riously modified,  ib.  262-7. 
Myths  from  attempts  to  explain 
names   as  Chateau   Vert  and 
Pileatus,  ii.  246  ;  Eponymous 
heroes  owe  their  existence  to 
the    same    popular    etymolo- 
gizing   which     ascribed     the 
foundation    of  Rome   to   the 
twin     brothers     Remus    and 
Romulus,    ib.    247-8 ;    myths 
vary  in  character  according  to 
the  language  from  which  they 
are  derived  ;  many-sided  ;  re- 
ligious more  hallowed  and  per- 
manent; old  myths  fastened  on 
persons  and  places  made  the 
centres  of  tradition  ;  'Sakhya 
Muni  Buddha,  Charlemagne  ; 
storming  the  battlements  of  the 
sky  transferred  to  the  sieges 
of  Thebes  and  Troy,  ib.  252-4 ; 
Cyrus  and  Astyages,  ib.  255. 

Nasal  vowels  how  produced  ;  no 
French  nasalized  i  or  u,  and 
the  cause  of  this  deficiency ;  a 
nasal  i  occurs  in  Portuguese 
and  probably  in  the  Sanskrit 
simha,  "lion,"  i.  261-2, 

Natural  selection  at  work  in  the 
use  of  English,  French,  and 
Latin  words,  i.  345. 

Nature  and  laws  of  pronuncia- 
tion only  discoverable  in 


INDEX. 


405 


modern  languages ;  must  work 
back  in  the  study  of  an  extinct 
speech  ;  success  of  Ellis  and 
Sweet  in  early  English  due  to 
the  abundance  of  data  ;  great 
difficulty  in  restoring  the  pro- 
nunciation of  Latin  and  Greek, 
i.  155-6. 

Nature  and  objects  of  linguistic 
science  ;  language  provision- 
ally defined;  sounds  and  mean- 
ing ;  thoughts  indirectly  re- 
presented by  writing,  which 
directly  symbolizes  sound ;  de- 
fects of  hieroglyphics  in  clear- 
ness and  certainty  of  expres- 
sion, i.  90-1  ;  picture-writing 
intelligible  everywhere ;  ges- 
tures sufficient  for  indicat- 
ing ordinary  wants,  but  not 
those  of  a  civilized  community, 
id.  92  ;  many  gestures  stand 
for  the  same  ideas  everywhere; 
Burton  on  their  use  among  the 
Arapahos,  Fisher  on  the  Co- 
manches,  and  James  on  the 
Kiawa-Kashia  Indians,  ib.  93; 
instinctive,  and  may  be  prior 
to  the  acquisition  of  language; 
how  excited  speakers  are 
readily  understood  ;  different 
styles  of  address  suited  to  dif- 
ferent classes ;  Abyssinian 
Galla  mode  of  punctuation  of 
his  speech;  motions  of  the  lips 
used  among  the  deaf  and 
dumb,  imply  a  previous  spoken 
language,  ib.  94. 

Necessity  of  studying  the  idioms 
of  modern  and  actual  speech 
before  the  dead  languages  ; 
how  to  acquire  a  foreign  lan- 


guage, ii.  339  ;  utility  of  com- 
parative philology  in  showing 
that  all  languages  are  governed 
by  the  same  general  laws  ; 
how  modern  French  presup- 
poses Latin,  and  how  Ger- 
man and  English  repeat  under 
new  forms  the  principles  and 
conceptions  of  Greek  grammar, 
with  analogous  letter-changes; 
agreement  of  continental  scho- 
lars, and  conference  at  Dres- 
den in  1873,  "•  34°- 1- 
Need  of  reform  in  our  pronuncia- 
tion of  Latin  and  Greek  ;  by 
comparison  and  induction  Cor- 
sen  has  restored  the  pronun- 
ciation of  Latin  as  observed 
by  the  upper  classes  under 
the  Emperors  ;  changes  in 
Greek,  and  reasons  for  accept- 
ing the  modern  pronunciation, 

".  341-3- 

Neo-Hebrew  under  the  Kimchi; 
the  Christian  scholars  of  the 
Reformation  devoted  them- 
selves to  Semitic  with  the  same 
energy  and  success  as  the 
Stephenses  and  Scaligers  to 
classical  philology  ;  Hebrew 
grammar  cast  in  a  classical 
mould,  Latin  and  Greek  words 
derived  from  Hebrew  roots, 
and  a  new  etymological  sys- 
tem sprang  up  quite  as  gro- 
tesque as  its  predecessors  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  i.  30-1. 

New  words  and  derivations ; 
gas  and  bias  by  van  Helmont; 
od,  Baron  von  Richenbach ; 
liberalize,  the  Marquis  of 
/,  Isaac 


406 


INDEX. 


Disraeli ;  incuriosity  Mon- 
taigne ;  urbanite  and  seriositi, 
Balzac;  bienfaisance,  the  Abb£ 
de  Saint  Pierre ;  devouloir, 
Malherbe  ;  and  Burke,  Lite- 
rator,  i.  99-100  ;  Gas,  ghost, 
and  yeast,  ii.  4. 

Nibelungen  Lied,  the  great  Epic 
of  the  German  nations,  seems, 
at  first,  a  fusion  of  history  and 
myths  ;  the  story  can  be  traced 
back  and  its  variations  at  dif- 
ferent periods,  and  the  chief 
actors;  its  Icelandic  and  Saxon 
versions  prove  its  mythic  an- 
tiquity, ii.  256-8. 

Noire"  regarded  the  cries  of  men 
engaged  in  a  common  work  as 
intelligible  symbols  of  that 
work  to  them,  and  forming  the 
roots,  or  the  germs  out  of 
which  all  future  language 
sprang ;  his  explanation  of 
Aryan  frequently  contravenes 
scientific  etymology  ;  but  his 
theory  explains  much  in  lan- 
guage, does  not  exclude  Ono- 
matopoeia, and  clears  up  the 
origin  of  that  part  of  speech 
hitherto  considered  the  most 
difficult,  i.  82-3. 

Nominative  case  of  the  first  per- 
sonal pronoun  later  than  the 
accusative  ;  human  action  and 
passions  ascribed  to  the  forces 
and  phenomena  of  nature,  and 
the  attributes  of  inanimate  ob- 
jects to  animate  beings,  formed 
the  groundwork  of  mytho- 
logy for  future  generations,  ii. 
248-9. 

Number  of  forms  assumed  by 


waves  of  sound  limited  in  kind ; 
nature  of  peculiar  tone  illus- 
trated by  comparison  with 
spectrum  analysis  ;  sympa- 
thetic vibrations  by  the  violin, 
piano,  and  wind  instruments, 
i.  235-6. 

Nursery  names  for  the  cat,  cow, 
the  name  given  to  the  dog  by 
the  natives  of  the  north-east 
coast  of  Papua,  i.  107. 

Object  and  scope  of  the  science 
of  language  defined;  the 
science  has  to  do  with  all  the 
forms  of  significant  utterance, 
but  cannot  pass  the  barrier  of 
roots  ;  other  sciences  neces- 
sary to  explain  what  lies  be- 
yond and  gave  rise  to  articu- 
late speech,  i.  160. 

Object  of  general  education  un- 
folded ;  the  need  of  right  me- 
thod and  choice  of  subjects, 
ii.  338-9. 

Object  of  the  science  of  language 
threefold;  divisions  of  thesub- 
ject  and  summary,  i.  137-141. 

Objection  to  Dr.  Bleek's  view  of 
confining  the  mythopoeic  age 
to  those  languages  in  which 
gender  and  sex  are  denoted, 
ii.  274-5. 

Objections  to  the  results  of  com- 
parative mythology  stated  an< 
answered,  ii.  267-74. 

Ogyrven  or  roots,  according  t( 
Welsh  writers,  "  the  sever 
score  and  seven  parent- words' 
from  which  all  other  words  ai 
derived  ;  the  Hindoos  nearl} 
2,000  years  ago  held  similar 


INDEX. 


407 


views,  and  traced  the  manifold 
words  of  their  language  to  cer- 
tain phonetic  forms  termed 
"  elements,"  ii.  I  ;  the  Prati 
'sakhya  of  Katyayana  calls  the 
verb  a  dhdtu  or  root,  ib.  1-2. 

Onomatopoeia  and  its  impor- 
tance in  the  formation  of  lan- 
guage ;  roots  formed  by  its 
help ;  use  among  the  Papuans; 
natural  sounds  very  differently 
represented  by  different  per- 
sons as  shown  in  the  words 
given  as  the  equivalent  of  the 
note  of  the  nightingale,  i.  107-8; 
works  on  Onomatopoeia,  ib. 
109  note. 

Order  of  words  in  a  sentence 
constantly  liable  to  change ; 
the  definite  article  postfixed  in 
some  and  prefixed  in  others 
of  the  Aryan  family,  i.  371-2. 

Origin  and  development  of  myths 
among  the  different  races,  ii. 
258-267. 

Origin  and  nature  of  mythology, 
and  the  history  of  religion  as- 
certained by  the  comparative 
method  of  investigation  ap- 
plied to  language,  i.  161. 

Origin  of  language  to  be  sought 
in  gestures,  onomatopoeia,  and 
interjectional  cries;  the  first 
rude  modes  of  communication; 
formation  of  sentences  by  ono- 
matopoeic words  and  gesticu- 
lation ;  the  whole  sentence, 
the  only  possible  unit  of 
thought  ;  work  of  the  lexico- 
grapher ;  use  of  accent ;  the 
Greek  logos,  the  complete  act 
of  reasoning,  i.  111-12  ;  rela- 


tion of  the  word  to  the  sen- 
tence, and  how  words  may  be 
divided ;  sounds  must  have 
a  meaning,  and  represent 
thought,  before  they  constitute 
language,  ib.  112-13. 
Osmanli,  the  tongue  of  the  do- 
minant race  in  Turkey  ;  the 
literary  dialect  ;  a  large  part 
of  the  vocabulary  borrowed 
from  Persian  and  Arabic,  while 
the  country  dialects  are  com- 
paratively pure,  ii.  199. 

Palatals  described;  interchanges 
and  equivalents  in  various 
languages,  i.  277-8. 

Palatals  and  gutturals  closely 
connected  with  the  sibilants 
in  German,  Icelandic,  modern 
Greek,  and  Swiss  dialects,  i. 
282-3. 

Pashtu,or  Pakhtu  of  the  Afghans 
considered  an  Indian  dialect, 
and  forms  a  sort  of  stepping- 
stone  between  the  Indian  and 
Iranian  divisions,  ii.  77;  has 
borrowed  its  whole  system  of 
pronominal  suffixes;  and  is 
also  called  Patan  and  Siyah- 
Push,  ib.  77. 

Pehlevi  language,  a  curious  mix- 
ture of  Aryan  and  Semitic 
formed  in  the  courts  of  the 
Sassanian  princes  of  Persia 
and  confined  to  the  literary 
class,  i.  174  ;  known  from 
translations  of  the  Zend-avesta, 
the  "  Bundehesh,"  coins,  and 
inscriptions,  ii.  81-2. 

Persian,  or  Iranian  nearly  akin 
to  Sanskrit  ;  more  archaic 


INDEX. 


than  the  Vedic-Sanskrit;  Zend- 
avesta,  the  Bible  of  the  Zoroas- 
trian  faith,  of  recent  date  ;  his- 
tory of  the  Iranian  group  may 
be  traced  through  successive 
and  long-continued  periods  re- 
presented by  Zend,  Old,  or  Ac- 
haemenian  Persian,  Huzvaresh 
or  Pehlevi,  Parsi,  and  Neo- 
Persian,  ii.  78. 

Personal  and  possessive  pro- 
nouns affixed  to  nouns  in  the 
Zaza  dialect ;  the  Hoopah 
and  Navaho;  the  vocabularies 
from  river  Uapes,  and  amongst 
the  English  Gipsies,  i.  121. 

Philology,  a  new  science  and 
still  divided  on  certain  points; 
has  made  greatest  progress  on 
the  phonological  side  ;  review 
of  its  various  phases,  and  vast 
importance  in  the  history  of 
the  human  mind,  and  the 
riddle  of  mythology ;  it  en- 
ables the  student  to  read  the 
thoughts  and  beliefs  of  the 
earliest  ages  with  greater  cer- 
tainty and  minuteness  than  if 
they  had  been  recorded  by 
the  historian,  i.  87-9;  the  com- 
parative philologist  able  to 
test  and  rectify  such  deriva- 
tions as  some  of  Butmann  and 
K.  O.  Miiller's from  the  Greek; 
dependence  on  specialists  and 
the  reason,  ib.  158-9  ;  Bopp 
the  father  of  the  science  of 
comparative  philology,  not  a 
specialist  in  any  of  the  Aryan 
languages;  his  errors  correc- 
ted by  special  students  in  va- 
rious languages,  ib.  159-60. 


Phoenician,  like  Assyrian,  only 
known  from  coins,  inscriptions, 
and  a  passage  of  the  "  Pcenu- 
lus  "  of  Plautus,  with  fragmen- 
tary Greek  translations  from 
Hanno  and  Sanchuniathon,  ii. 
171. 

Phonautographs  constructed  by 
Scott  and  Konig  delineate  the 
forms  of  the  waves  of  sound, 
on  a  plate  of  sand,  in  the 
flickering  of  a  gas-flame,  or  in 
the  movements  of  a  writing- 
pencil,  and  the  microscope 
shows  the  impressions  of  ar- 
ticulate sounds  in  the  tinfoil 
of  the  phonograph,  i.  234-5; 
instruments  described  ;  the 
phonograph  unable  at  present 
to  reproduce  the  sibilants  ; 
proves  that  all  sounds  may  be 
reproduced  backwards  by  be- 
ginning with  the  last  forms 
indented  on  the  tinfoil;  socia- 
bility becoming  ytilibaishos ; 
diphthongs  and  double  conso- 
nants reversed  with  equal 
clearness ;  and  also  shows 
that  ch  of  cheqiie  is  really  a 
double  letter,  i.  335. 

Phonetic  expression  of  the  verbal 
copula  long  left  to  be  supplied 
by  the  mind ;  and  still  want- 
ing in  many  Polynesian  lan- 
guages; illustrations  from  the 
Dyak,  i.  117-8. 

Phonetic  law  of  the  English  th 
representing  /  in  Sanskrit, 
Latin,  and  Greek,  i.  137. 

Phonetic  utterances,  nature  of; 
phonology  and  sematology  ex- 
plained in  their  relation  to* 


INDEX. 


409 


each  other;  priority  of  sounds, 
words,  and  dialects,  and  their 
dependence  on  the  structure 
of  the  organs  of  speech  ;  hard 
and  soft  sounds ;  laws  of  equi- 
valence and  interchange  in  a 
group,  i.  226-7  5  intimately  con- 
nected with  physics  and  his- 
tory, ib.  228-29. 

Phonology,  and  its  importance 
in  tracing  the  nature  and 
working  of  the  laws  of  speech; 
relation  of  the  English  h  and 
d  to  Sanskrit  k  (}s)  and  /,  and 
the  Aryan  conception  of  one 
hundred;  relative  position  of 
phonology  and  sematology; 
thought  conditioned  ;  sounds 
and  ideas  ;  structure  only  one 
element  in  classification;  pho- 
nology the  key  of  modern  lin- 
guistic science,  i.  142-4;  pho- 
nological laws  of  Aryan  and 
permissible  variations;  Prince 
Lucien  Bonaparte's  enumera- 
tion of  the  number  of  sounds 
in  modern  European  lan- 
guage ;  formation  of  the  vocal 
organs  due  to  various  causes 
and  inherited  aptitudes,  ib. 
145;  Polynesian  pronunciation 
of  David,  Samuel,  London, 
and  Frederick;  Chinese  repre- 
sentative of  Christ;  Japanese, 
Bengalese,  and  English  mis- 
pronunciations ;  variations  of 
sounds  in  different  languages; 
the  palatals  in  Aryan  origi- 
nally gutturals  ;  in  Malayan, 
dentals,  ib.  145-8. 

Phonology  and  glottology,  their 
functions     and    relationship ; 


the  connection  between  sense 
and  sound,  i.  165. 

Plato  and  Aristotle  the  connect- 
ing link  between  the  Sophistic 
and  Alexandrine  periods  ;  re- 
new' the  old  contest  between 
the  followers  of  Herakleitus 
and  Demokritus  ;  their  theo- 
ries of  little  scientific  value,  i. 
10. 

Plato's  derivation  of  Theoi, 
"  gods  ; "  problem  of  the 
"  Kratylus "  and  the  con- 
clusion, i.  7-10. 

Plural  everywhere  preceded  by 
the  dual  ;  formed  by  redupli- 
cation in  many  tongues  ;  some 
have  only  yet  reached  the  idea 
of  duality,  as  the  Puris  dialect 
of  South  America ;  time  when 
only  one  and  two  were  known 
in  the  Aryan,  i.  137-8. 

Polysynthetic  languages  of  North 
America  an  interesting  sur- 
vival of  primitive  forms  of 
speech  which  have  elsewhere 
perished,  i.  125;  the  two  ex- 
treme types  the  Eskimaux  and 
Aztec ;  contrast  and  gram- 
matical peculiarities  ;  Aztec 
civilization  destroyed  by  the 
Spaniards  ;  Mexican  system 
of  writing  inferior  to  the 
Maya ;  no  specimen  of  an- 
cient Aztec  poetry  left,  ii.  219- 
20. 

Polytheism  and  its  tendencies 
when  spiritualized  to  panthe- 
ism and  monotheism  ;  its 
deities  cease  to  be  mere  ab- 
stractions, and  are  resolved 
into  a  higher  unity  ;  the  Chal- 


4io 


INDEX. 


dean  Hymns  speak  of  "  the 
One  God,"  and  the  Egyptian 
priests  taught  that  the  nume- 
rous deities  were  but  mani- 
festations of  the  same  divine 
Essence  ;  opinions  of  Xeno- 
phanes,  ^Eschylus,  Aristotle, 
and  Mohammed;  growth  of 
more  worthy  conceptions  of 
deity,  ii.  298-9. 

Popular  etymologies  sometimes 
attempted  in  ignorance  and 
mistakes  ;  many  instances  in 
proper  names  and  legends,  as 
Burgh  de  Walter,  Widder 
Fjord,  Madrid,  Lepontii,  Kir- 
gisez,  Athens,  Krisa  ;  epony- 
mous heroes,  false  analogy, 
and  in  the  Homeric  Poems,  i. 
183-4. 

Portuguese  and  Gallician  closely 
approach  French  in  some  par- 
ticulars ;  lost  the  initial  /  of 
article,  but  acquired  a  num- 
ber of  Arabic  and  French 
words,  ii.  119. 

Pott  probably  unequalled  for  his 
knowledge  and  insight  among 
students  of  language  ;  great 
value  of  his  works  in  checking 
unifying  haste,  i.  51  ;  assailed 
Bopp's  view,  advocated  origi- 
nal diversity,  and  endeavoured 
to  found  a  science  of  Semato- 
logy,  ib.  63-4;  applied  Grimm's 
method  to  the  whole  Indo- 
European  languages,  ib.  64. 

Priscian  compared  Latin  with 
Greek,  especially  the  ^Eolic 
dialect  ;  followed  Tyrannic  or 
Diokles,  i.  24. 

Pronunciation  affected  by  ana- 


logy ;  the  Frenchman  "  gal- 
licizes,"  just  as  the  English- 
man "  anglicizes,"  borrowed 
words,  i.  178  ;  basis  of  the 
pronunciation  of  English, 
Holstein,  Lower  Hesse,  and 
Saxon  dialects,  ib.  268. 
Provencal  the  language  of  the 
troubadour sjpw$QX\y  of  South- 
ern France,  Catalonia,  Valen- 
cia, the  Balearic  Islands  and 
Arragon ;  throws  light  upon 
the  grammatical  forms  of  its 
northern  neighbours  ;  earliest 
poems  ;  short-lived  civiliza- 
tion of  Provence  arrested  by 
the  Church,  ii.  117-8. 

Reason  of  man  in  the  mytho- 
pceic  age  attributing  his  own 
passions  and  movements  to 
the  forces  of  nature,  ii.  269-70. 

Reduplicated  words,  Sir  John 
Lubbock's  calculation  of  the 
proportion  in  English,  French, 
German,  Greek,  and  some  of 
the  barbarous  languages  of 
Africa,  America,  and  the 
Pacific,  i.  388. 

Reduplication  one  of  the  oldest 
contrivances  of  speech  ;  and 
most  important  for  denoting 
the  relations  of  grammar  and 
expression  of  the  inward  emo- 
tions, i.  388-9. 

Reformed  Alphabet  and  its  re- 
quisites ;  Prince  L-L.  Bona- 
parte's by  A.  J.  Ellis,  and 
H.  Sweet's  narrow  Romic  al- 
phabet and  list  of  symbols, 
i.  353-361  ;  chance  of  a  uni- 
versal language,  probably  the 


INDEX. 


411 


kind  of  English  prophesied  by 
Mr.  Simpson  ;  prevalence  of 
English  all  over  the  world  ; 
lately  used  by  a  Danish  writer 
on  science  to  gain  a  wider 
audience  ;  Grimm's  advice  to 
his  countrymen  to  give  up 
their  own  tongue  in  favour  of 
English ;  anticipations  of  the 
prevalence  of  a  universal  me- 
dium of  intercourse  among 
mankind,  ii.  349-52. 

Related  terms — myths,  folklore, 
fable,  and  allegory,  and  their 
several  meanings,  ii.  275- 
284. 

Relations  of  grammar  denoted 
by  prefixes,  affixes,  infixes,  and 
change  of  vowel ;  examples 
from  Sanskrit,  Greek,  and 
other  languages  ;  numerals  si- 
milarly distinguished  in  some; 
the  Grebo  pronouns  "  I  "  and 
"thou,"  "we"  and  "you," 
solely  by  intonation  ;  internal 
change  of  consonants  in  Bur- 
man,  position  in  Chinese  and 
Taic  ;  reduplication  common 
to  all  languages,  expresses 
very  different  ideas  ;  illustra- 
tions from  various  sources, 
i.  384-8. 

Religion  and  religious  systems 
of  the  mythopceic  age  divi- 
sible broadly  into  two  great 
classes,  and  how  characte- 
rized ;  the  phases  of  their 
growth  traceable  in  the  Rig- 
Veda,  and  the  dogmas  of  the 
Christian  Church,  ii.  284-5  5 
nature  of  the  science  of  re- 
ligion, ib.  285-6 ;  some  ray 


of  light  and  truth  in  the  most 
degraded  faith,  and  defects  in 
the  purest  ;  religion  moulded 
in  transmission, by  time,  place, 
and  in  the  instincts  of  its  pro- 
fessors, as  Christianityamongst 
Englishmen  and  Negroes,  and 
the  variations  of  Buddhism,  ib. 
286  ;  organized  religion  a  late 
product,  due  to  civilization 
and  culture  ;  parallels  ;  creed 
of  Buddhism  settled  by  Asoka, 
and  the  Nicene  by  Constan- 
tine  ;  the  earlier  and  later 
forms  of  each  contrasted  ; 
Zoroastrianism,  a  protest 
against  the  Polytheism  of  the 
Veda,  and  Mohammedanism 
against  the  Christian  idolatry 
of  the  sixth  century,  ib.  287-8; 
unorganized  religions  classi- 
fied and  described  ;  compari- 
son of  various  religious  be- 
liefs and  customs  shows  the 
forms  religious  consciousness 
assumed  before  the  rise  of 
organized  systems,  ib.  288-9. 
(See  ancestor  worship,  fetish- 
ism, totemism,  shamanism, 
henotheism  aud  polytheism.) 

Rhaetian,  with  its  two  dialects, 
one  spoken  by  Protestants  and 
the  other  by  Roman  Catholics, 
has  been  shown  by  Ascoli  to 
be  allied  to  two  others  which 
have  been  erroneously  classed 
with  Italian,  ii.  119-20. 

Rhetoric  and  its  use  among  the 
Sophists,  i.  9. 

Rig-Veda,  collection  of  hymns 
and  poems,  some  of  very 
ancient  date ;  the  whole 


412 


INDEX. 


ascribed  to  the  fourteenth 
or  fifteenth  century,  B.C.  ; 
rigid  theory  of  its  inspira- 
tion ;  growth,  divisions,  and 
uses  ;  ritual  assigned  to  dif- 
ferent classes  ;  number  of 
hymns,  verses,  and  syllables, 
according  to  'Saunaka,  the 
same  as  in  the  present  texts  ; 
the  Pada  text  formed  and  be- 
came the  basis  of  a  scientific 
phonology,  i.  39-41  ;  language 
nearly  obsolete  in  the  time  of 
Kautsa,  although  the  exact 
recital  of  the  hymns  was  con- 
sidered indispensable  in  the 
performance  of  religious  ser- 
vice, ib.  41. 

Roman  interest  in  grammar  and 
etymology  confined  to  Greek 
and  their  own  language  ;  their 
boasted  descent  from  ./Eneas 
and  the  Trojans,  led  them  to 
neglect  the  dialects  of  Asia 
and  the  Etruscan  language  ; 
even  Caesar  failed  to  compare 
the  language  of  Gaul  with  the 
Latin,  i.  23. 

Romanic  tongues  traced  to  a 
well-known  fountain  -  head  ; 
enable  us  to  verify  and  correct 
our  attempts  to  restore  the 
parent  Aryan,  by  a  compari- 
son of  the  derived  languages, 
as  well  as  to  study  the  laws  of 
letter-change  in  actual,  living 
speech  ;  their  various  forms 
explained,  ii.  109-12. 

Roots,  fierce  controversy  on, 
before  the  Nirukta  of  Yaska 
was  composed,  ii.  1-2  ;  their 
nature  and  how  discovered  ; 


distinctive  character  of  each 
particular  family,  according 
to  Pott,  the  unconscious 
working  of  analogy,  ib.  7-8  ; 
Semitic  roots,  and  Finno- 
Ugrian  dialects  ;  roots  given 
by  lexicographers  merely  re- 
present the  oldest  known  forms 
of  words  ;  Old  Chinese  re- 
cently traced  by  Dr.  Edkins 
and  M.  de  Rosny,  ib.  9-10  ; 
existence  of  a  primitive  "  root- 
period  "  pointed  out  by  Bre'al 
in  the  Dictionaries  of  Fick 
and  Curtius,  ib.  11-12;  roots 
differ  as  the  language  to  which 
they  belong  in  being  mono- 
-  syllabic  or  polysyllabic  ;  dif- 
ference in  Polynesian,  Aryan, 
Semitic,  and  Chinese ;  the 
sentence  words  of  the  primi- 
tive Aryan,  Chinese,  Taic,  and 
Bushman  ;  all  attempts  to  re- 
duce Semitic  roots  to  single 
syllables  have  failed  ;  Boht- 
lingk  on  Tibetan  words  now 
monosyllabic  ;  the  Ba-ntu 
family  and  others  ;  in  some 
languages  both  monosyllabic 
and  polysyllabic  roots  are 
found,  as  Old  Egyptian  ;  the 
Hindus  reduced  their  roots 
to  single  syllables,  ib.  12-13  > 
at  one  time  the  roots  of  Aryan 
were  necessarily  the  same ; 
Latin,  Greek,  and  Sanskrit 
words  compared  ;  the  noun 
and  verb  co-existent ;  nominal 
and  verbal  stems,  ib.  14-15  ; 
parallel  roots  ;  new  words 
coined  by  savages,  ib.  16-17; 
simple  and  compound  roots,  ib. 


INDEX. 


413 


17-18;  views  of  Pott  and  Curtius 
on  secondary  roots  ;  amalga- 
mation and  reduplication,  ib. 
19-21  ;  Latin  deus  and  divus 
referred  to    div  ;  Zeus    and 
Jupiter  to  dyn ;    roots   divi- 
sible into  classes  ;  their  cha- 
racteristics,  ib.   22-7;    agree- 
ment of  allied   languages  in 
their    roots     and    grammar ; 
borrowed   words   changed  in 
being  naturalized,  as  the  Latin 
histriOy    nepos,     and    Aldus, 
from    the    Etruscan ;    maize 
and  hammock    from    Hayti  ; 
creative  powers  of  language 
seen  in  Pierre  Riviere's  enna- 
pharer  and  calibene,  ib.  28  ; 
the  name  Plon  Plon  given  to 
Prince  Napoleon,  and  curious 
origin  Qifalbala;  additions  by 
natural  science  as  gas,  sepal, 
sulfite,    sulfate,    and    ellagic 
acid ;     word-making    among 
theological  enthusiasts,  ib.  29- 
30  ;   vocabularies  of  savages 
constantly      changing,      and 
words    coined    by   them   not 
roots,   as   the  Kafir  woman's 
angoca,  ib.  31 ;  basis  of  genea- 
logical classification  ;   test  of 
linguistic   kinship,   and    pro- 
bable number  of  families  ac- 
cording to  F.   Miiller  ;  great 
number  of  extinct  languages  ; 
cause  of  the  preservation  of 
those  of  the  Caucasus  and  the 
Basque  of  the  Pyrenees  ;  re- 
cent extinction  of  four  Tasma- 
nian  dialects  ;  and  Etruscan 
only  known  from  about  3,000 
short  inscriptions,  ib.  32-5. 


Samoied  dialects,  midway  be- 
tween Turkic  and  Finnic, 
consist  of  five  main  and  an 
infinity  of  smaller  ones  ;  the 
people,  perhaps,  the  most  de- 
graded branch  of  the  Ural- 
Altaic  family,  ii.  200. 

Sanskrit,  discoveryof  by  Western 
scholars,  ended  the  play  with 
words,  and  created  the  science 
of  language,  i.  38  ;  numerals 
and   other   words    compared 
with  Italian  by  Philippe  Sas- 
seti ;  the  missionary  Roberto 
de  Nobili  transformed  himself 
into  a  Brahman,  learnt  Tamil, 
Telugu,  and  Sanskrit,  adopted 
the  cord,  marks,  garb,  diet, 
and   submitted   to   caste,  ib. 
43-44 ;    one   of   his   converts 
thought   to    have    composed 
the  Ezur,  a  pretended  fourth 
Veda  ;  fifty  years  later,  Hein- 
rich  Roth  disputed  with  the 
Brahmansin  Sanskrit;  in  1740, 
Pere  Pons,  a  Frenchman,  sent 
home  a  report  on  Sanskrit  lite- 
rature ;    first  Sanskrit  gram- 
mar published  in  Europe  by 
two  German  friars  at  Rome  ; 
some  years  before  Coeurdoux 
and  Barthelemy  had  written 
to  the   French   Academy  on 
the  relationship  of  Sanskrit, 
Greek,   and   Latin,  but  their 
letter    was    not    printed    till 
1808  ;  their  opinion  fully  con- 
firmed by  English  and  German 
scholars  ;    formation    of   the 
Asiatic    Society   at    Calcutta, 
the   labours    of  Halhed  and 
Sir  William  Jones   gave   an 


414 


INDEX. 


impetus  to  the  study  of  San- 
skrit and  its  related  idioms, 

ib.  44-5- 

Schlegel  (Friedrich),  the  poet, 
first  laid  down  the  fact  that 
the  languages  of  India,  Persia, 
Greece,  Italy,  Germany,  and 
Slavonia  formed  one  family  ; 
his  work,  the  foundation  on 
which  Bopp  reared  the  science 
of  language,  i.  48-9. 

Schleicher  and  Hovelacque  re- 
garded the  science  of  lan- 
guage as  belonging  to  the 
physical  sciences  ;  compared 
it  with  natural  history,  i.  70 ; 
summary  of  Schleicher's  theo- 
ries and  false  assumptions,  ib. 
72-4  ;  defects  of  Hovelacque's 
work,  ib.  76. 

Schott  on  the  affix  of  the  Persian 
dative  and  accusative,  i.  174. 

Sematology  laws  far  less  dis- 
tinct and  invariable,  and  can- 
not be  reduced  to  fixed  rules 
like  those  of  Phonetic  change; 
the  phenomena  complicated 
and  dependent  on  psycholo- 
gical conditions  ;  social  in- 
fluence and  education  give  the 
same  general  idea  to  words, 
i.  336-37  ;  French  juste  and 
English  just;  their  general 
correspondence  and  different 
associations  ;  "  genealogies  of 
words,"  growth  and  decay  of 
ideas  ;  analogy  and  njetaphor 
impart  new  senses  to  words, 
as  in  the  Latin  animus,  "  the 
mind,"  or  "  soul,"  which  origi- 
nally denoted  the  "  wind  "  or 
"  breath  ;  "  proper  significa- 


tion of  "  impertinent "  lost, 
*&  338-9  ;  Whitney  and  Pott  • 
on  significant  change  ;  how 
words  are  more  accurately 
defined  shown  by  Latin,  Greek, 
and  German  examples  ;  in- 
fluence of  metaphor  ;  Tas- 
manians  who  had  no  general 
terms  perceived  the  resem- 
blance of  things  ;  sensuous 
origin  of  Divus,  deus,  and 
soul;  the  various  meanings 
of  post,  the  work  of  analogy 
and  metaphor,  ib.  339-40  ; 
causes  of  the  variations  of 
meaning  ;  introduction  of 
new  words ;  old  meanings 
forgotten,  and  new  ones 
evolved  ;  the  cause  of  many 
myths  and  mythological  be- 
ings as  Prometheus  and  Epi- 
me'theus ;  legends  connected 
the  distorted  names  of  locali- 
ties, ib.  341-3;  rise  of  several 
from  one  original  with  different 
meanings  ;  "  natural  selec- 
tion "  in  language,  ib.  344-5. 

Semite,  from  the  earliest  times 
a  trader,  borrowed  his  culture 
and  civilization  largely  from 
the  Turanian  Accadians  of 
Babylonia,  with  the  germs  of 
settled  city  life,  the  elements 
of  mathematics,  astronomy, 
religion,  mythology,  literature, 
and  writing,  ii.  168. 

Semites  of  Assyria  and  Baby- 
lonia the  first  grammarians, 
i.  27  ;  but  the  Jewish  schools 
produced  nothing  worthy  of 
the  name  till  the  sixth  century; 
Syriac  grammar  compiled  by 


INDEX. 


415 


Jacob  of  Edessa  became  the 
model  of  all  succeeding  works; 
followed  by  those  of  Ella's  of 
Nisibis  and  John  Barzugbi ; 
Arabic  grammar  composed  by 
Abul-Aswed  about  the  end  of 
the  seventh  century,  almost 
perfected  by  Sibawaih,  who 
speaks  of  2,500  famous  gram- 
marians; labours  of  the  Sabo- 
reans  and  Masoretes  for  the 
Old  Testament  the  same  as 
the  Alexandrine  Greeks  for 
Homer,  the  Arabs  for  the 
Koran,  and  the  Hindus  for 
the  Veda;  the  Jews  formed 
the  first  comparative  gram- 
mar;  chief  authors,  ib.  28-30. 

Semitic  languages,  original 
home,  leading  characteristics, 
grammatical  peculiarities,  and 
sub-divisions,  ii.  164-77. 

Sentence  the  unit  of  significant 
speech  ;  words  conceptual  or 
presentative,  and  pronominal 
or  representative  ;  meanings 
of  the  words  and,  because,  me- 
morandum, explained  ;  judg- 
ments implie'd  in  the  words 
humanity  and  gravitation; 
the  terms  of  a  proposition, 
i.  114-15  ;  formation  of  words, 
Taic  or  Siamese  examples  ; 
sentence  words  in  different 
relations  ;  Semitic  kdtal  and 
its  meanings  ;  the  exact  mean- 
ing of  the  Grebo  sounds 
ni  ne,  derived  from  the  con- 
text and  gestures,  ib.  116- 
17  ;  the  Greek  termination 
ize  or  ise  in  English  words,  ib. 
117;  the  sentence  the  only 


sound  basis  for  classifying 
speech,  ib.  122  ;  forms  of  sen- 
tences in  various  languages ; 
Chinese,  Burmese,  and  Turk- 
ish examples,  ib.  123-4 ; 
foreign  influence  in  Hunga- 
rian ;  position  of  the  objective 
pronoun  in  French,  Basque, 
and  Accadian  ;  polysynthetic 
fusion  of  a  sentence  into  a 
single  word,  as  the  Algonkin 
wilt-  ap  -pe-  sit  -  ink  -  qifs-  sun- 
noo- weht-unfi-quoh,  ib.  1 24-25 ; 
the  sentence  made  up  of  two 
factors,  external  sound  and 
internal  thought,  ib.  1 32  ;  sen- 
tence first  conceived  as  a 
whole;  application  of  gestures; 
grammatical  relations  evolved 
by  comparison  ;  sentence 
word  varied  by  the  Chinaman, 
Mongol,  and  Hindu,  ib.  378  ; 
American  tongues  alone  pre- 
served the  primitive  type  of 
all  speech ;  Eskimaux  and 
Mexican  ;  savages  unable  to 
distinguish  the  particular  from 
the  universal ;  curious  fact  re- 
vealed by  a  morphological  re- 
view of  languages;  local  types, 
ib.  379-81. 

Serpents,  why  capable  of  pro- 
ducing only  hissing  sounds, 
i.  237,  note. 

Shamanism,  the  religion  of 
the  Ural-Altaic  or  Turanian 
family ;  every  object  and  force 
in  nature  believed  to  be  in- 
spired by  a  spirit  good,  or  bad, 
that  could  only  be  approached 
by  a  sorcerer,  ii.  197  ;  a  higher 
conception  of  religion  than 


INDEX. 


fetishism  ;  work  of  the  Sha- 
man to  neutralize  the  action 
of  evil  spirits,  and  influence 
the  good  by  incantations  and 
magic  ceremonies  ;  belief  in 
Shamanism  retained  by  the 
cultivated  Accadians  after  the 
development  of  a  considerable 
civilization,  ib.  293-4. 
Sinhalese  religion  and  literature 

derived  from  India,  ii.  76-7. 
Skipetar  ("  Highlander"),  or  Al- 
banian, a  member  of  the 
Aryan  family  ;  large  number 
of  Greek  words  in  the  vocabu- 
lary ;  theory  of  Latham  and 
Poesche  respecting  its  origin, 
ii.  12.1-2. 

Sokrates,  the  greatest  of  the 
Sophists,  gave  an  impetus  to 
Greek  thought,  and  was  em- 
ployed by  Plato  to  support  his 
conclusion  in  the  "  Kratylus," 
i.  10. 

Solar  explanation,  inapplicable 
to  many  myths ;  some  relate 
to  the  storm  clouds,  stars, 
eclipses,  creation  of  the  earth, 
sea,  and  living  beings  ;  the 
"  Solar  Theory"  not  to  be  con- 
founded with  comparative  phi- 
lology, ii.  271-2. 
Sonants  and  non-sonants,  and 

their  modifications,  i.  265. 
Sound  and  sense ;  their  intimate 
connection  in  etymological  re- 
search, i.  154-5. 

Sound  defined ;  difference  be- 
tween sound  and  musical 
tones  ;  length  of  the  funda- 
mental note,  with  its  octave, 
fifth  and  fourth,  known  to  the 


Pythagoreans,  i.  229-30 ;  Max 
Miiller  on  the  highest  and 
lowest  tones,  ib.  231  ;  pitch, 
vibration,  length,  and  depen- 
dence on  the  thickness  and 
tension  of  the  cords  or  rods  ; 
sound  of  a  stringed  instrument 
and  trombone  each  peculiar  to 
itself,  ib.  232-3. 

Sounds  formed  by  inspiration 
used  in  Swiss  dialects,  and  in 
South  African  clicks,  i.  283., 
and  note. 

Sounds  represented  by  the  same 
letter  of  the  alphabet  not  really 
identical ;  Sanskrit  cha  com- 
pared with  English  ch,  in 
church  ;  European  scale  of 
three  short  vowels,  a,  e,  <?,  and 
the  Indie  single  a,  in  which 
three  distinct  vowel-sounds 
have  coalesced ;  changes  of 
Greek  in  passing  into  Latin, 
i.  309. 

Sounds  roughly  and  imperfectly 
distinguished  by  the  Greeks, 
i.  244-5. 

South  African  dialects  said  by 
Bleek  to  be  inflectional ;  use 
of  suffixes  in  the  formation  of 
words,  as  in  Aryan,  ii.  182-4. 

Spanish  widely  different  from 
Latin  in  phonology  and  vo- 
cabulary ;  regular  in  its  gram- 
matical forms ;  probable  cause 
of  its  changes  in  phonology, 
ii.  119. 

Spiegel  on  the  influence  of  Se- 
mitic grammar  in  Zend,  i.175. 

Steinthal  on  Humboldt's  incon- 
sistencies and  dualism  ;  his 
account  of  the  origin  of  Ian- 


INDEX. 


417 


guage;  need  of  a  psychological 
ethnology  to  penetrate  "the 
inner  forms  of  language,"  or 
"  apperception,"  described  by 
Lazarus  as  a  "  condensation 
of  thought  ;"  his  writings  sug- 
gestive, but  deficient  in  clear- 
ness ;  his  confused  views  and 
ambiguous  use  of  terms  ; 
questionable  metaphor;  mis- 
led by  a  false  conception  of 
language,  i.  69-70. 

Stoics  perfected  Aristotle's  gram- 
matical system  ;  their  labours 
and  those  of  the  Epicureans  ; 
line  of  Horace  on  the  primi- 
tive condition  of  man,  and  the 
evolution  of  language;  speech 
created  instinctively,  i.  12-13. 

Stewart's  (Dugald)  absurd  at- 
tempt to  prove  that  the  Sanskrit 
language  and  literature  were 
the  work  of  the  Brahmans, 
formed  on  Greek  and  Latin 
models  to  deceive  European 
scholars,  i.  45-6. 

Syllable,  its  nature  and  forma- 
tion ;  open  syllables  and  words 
pronounced  either  backwards 
or  forwards  by  the  phono- 
graph ;  views  of  Ellis,  Sweet, 
and  Kudelka,  on  stress  and 
glides,  i.  286-9  5  difference  of 
syllables  in  pitch  or  tone,  stress 
and  quantity ',  ib.  289-301  ;  in- 
fluence of  climate  in  causing 
phonetic  variety ;  effect  of 
savage  customs  ;  correspond- 
ing sounds  of  the  same  words 
in  allied  dialects,  ib.  301-3  ; 
Grimm's  great  law  amended 
and  amplified,  ib.  304 ;  table 
II.  E 


of  equivalent  Aryan  sounds  ; 
early  date  of  some  of  the 
changes ;  theories  of  Fick  and 
Schmidt ;  second  home  of  the 
Aryan  race,  ib.  305-6. 

Synonyms  and  homonyms  con- 
founded, and  the  former  re- 
solved into  the  names  of  dif- 
ferent beings  in  the  epithetic 
stage  of  language,  as  in  Ushas, 
Eos,  Dahand,  and  Daphne  j 
Pramanthas,  transplanted  to 
Greece,  became  Prometheus, 
and  had  for  his  brother  Epi- 
metheus,  ii.  251-2. 

Syntax,  or  the  arrangement  of 
words  in  a  sentence,  according 
to  Professor  Erie  ;  study  of 
comparative  accidence  in  ad- 
vance of  comparative  syntax  ; 
labours  of  Jolly,  Bergaigne, 
and  others,  i.  428-9  ;  position 
of  words  and  varied  develop- 
ment of  the  germs  of  syntax  of 
each  family ;  growth  of  Aryan ; 
Latin,  Greek,  and  Sanskrit 
forms  and  usages,  ib.  429-32  ; 
agreement,  and  want  of  agree- 
ment, in  families  ;  pele-mele 
order  of  Latin  words  in  a  sen- 
tence ;  place  of  the  verb ;  Ber- 
gaigne on  the  position  of  the 
Aryan ;  apparent  violations  of 
the  rule ;  Greek  and  Latin,  ib. 
433-4  ;  false  analogy  ;  proper 
names  Damasippas  and  Hip- 
podamas;  Agathos  and  Dai- 
mon;  curious  use  of  the  article 
in  Greek ;  proper  names  com- 
pounded with  Forum  and 
Portus,  ib.  435  '•>  order  of  words 
in  the  primitive  sentence  illus- 


4i8 


INDEX. 


trate  the  Latin  credo  and  San- 
skrit 'sraddadhdmi;  reason  for 
placing  the  verb  at  the  end  ; 
changed  in  English,  Scandi- 
navian, and  the  Romanic  dia- 
lects ;  the  infinitive,  its  depen- 
dence, place,  and  government ; 
preposition ;  simple  and  com- 
pound sentences  ;  connection 
and  fusion  in  Aryan  opposed 
to  Semitic  ;  defects  of  both  ; 
contrast  of  Greek  with  its 
manifold  particles,  subtle  ana- 
lysis of  thought,  and  delicacy 
of  expression  during  the  po- 
lished period  of  their  mental 
activity,  ib.  439. 

Tell  (William),  the  Swiss  hero, 
a  double  of  the  Palna-Toki  of 
Norway,  and  the  English  Wil- 
liam Cloudeslee,  ii.  255-6. 

Teutonic  group  of  languages,  the 
Gothic,  Norse,  Low  and  High 
German  ;  their  range  and  re- 
lation to  each  other,  ii.  88-94. 

Three  main  conditions  for  the 
production  of  every  vowel 
sound  ;  differences  of  action 
in  quick  and  lively  utterances, 
and  weak  exspiration  ;  the 
spiritus  lenis  and  asper  ex- 
plained, i.  262-3. 

Totemism  distinct  from  Sha- 
manism; bears  the  same  re- 
lation to  the  Indians  of  North 
America  as  Shamanism  to 
the  Ural-Altaic  stock ;  the 
totem,  generally  an  animal,  is 
the  symbol  and  object  of  wor- 
ship to  every  member  of  a 
tribe ;  rationalistic  explana- 


tion defective,  ii.  294  ;  epony- 
mous heroes,  and  the  close 
connection  between  totemism 
and  mythology ;  Michabo"\h& 
great  hare,"  from  whom  the 
Algonkin  family  claim  their 
descent,  really  a  solar  hero, 
like  Quetzalcoatl  of  Mexico,  or 
Huayna  Capac  of  Peru,  proved 
by  his  epithets  and  attributes, 
ib.  295. 

Transitional  modes  of  spelling, 
and  the  use  of  new  type,  ii. 

348-9. 
Tri  nairgunatwamapannai  r  b  a  d  - 

hyante,  analysis  of,  i.  113. 

Tripthongs,  existence  of,  dis- 
puted, i.  267. 

Tunguse  closely  allied  to  Mon- 
gol, is  divided  into  three 
branches,  ii.  201. 

Turkish-Tatar  languages,  and 
where  spoken,  ii.  193. 

Turkish  verb,  like  the  Finnic, 
rich  in  forms  ;  by  means  of 
suffixes  represents  the  most 
minute  and  varied  differences 
of  meaning  ;  Turkish  litera- 
ture copious,  ii.  199-200. 

Tylor  on  survivals  in  language, 
i.  118. 

Type  of  literary  excellence  varies 
with  race  ;  the  Chinaman  pre- 
fers his  own  language  and 
style  to  that  of  Plato  or  Shake- 
speare; and  Montezuma  would 
probably  have  preferred  an 
Aztec  poem  to  the  works  of 
^Eschylus  and  Goethe,  ii.  68. 

Uigur  language  in  the  fifth  cen- 
tury had  an  alphabet,  and  pro- 


INDEX. 


419 


duced   a   considerable  litera- 
ture, ii.  199. 

Ural-Altaic  family  of  languages ; 
their  chief  distinguishing  fea- 
ture, the  law  of  vocalic  har- 
mony ;  division  of  the  vowels 
into  strong,  weak,  and  neutral ; 
the  rule  not  common  to  all  the 
members ;  neglected  by  some  ; 
and  in  the  oldest  Magyar  texts 
anti-harmonic  forms  are  com- 
mon; origin  of  this  division 
of  the  vowels,  ii.  202-3 ;  their 
classification  in  the  principal 
languages,  note,  203;  use  of 
affixes ;  other  relations  of  noun 
and  verb  denoted  by  amalga- 
mation, 204;  languages  from 
the  first  characterized  by  per- 
spicacity and  logical  vigour, 
fitted  the  speakers  to"  become 
the  originators  of  the  culture 
and  civilization  of  Western 
Asia  ;  compared  with  the 
English,  ib.  205. 

Value  of  Pitman's  phonetic  al- 
phabet, ii.  347. 

Vanity  of  race  and  language, 
the  consequences  of;  inflection 
regarded  as  the  highest  stage 
in  the  development  of  speech  ; 
reasons  for  the  wide-spread 
opinion,  ii.  66-7  ;  work  of 
comparative  philology  in  cor- 
recting false  notions,  ib.  67-8. 

Variations  in  the  first  and  last 
versions  of  a  whispered  story 
when  compared  have  little  in 
common,  ii.  255. 

Varying  forms  of  the  same  words 
when  slightly  changed,  sepa- 


rate and  acquire  totally  diffe- 
rent meanings  ;  Latin,  Greek, 
Sanskrit,  Umbrian,  Oscan, 
and  Gothic  examples,  i.  188- 
9  ;  vocalic  difference  utilized 
by  the  Greeks  for  grammatical 
purposes  ;  uses  of  reduplicated 
syllables;  Greek  and  Sanskrit 
verbal  forms  compared  ;  Se- 
mitic case  endings  ;  Negro 
Dinkamode  of  forming  certain 
plurals,  and  the  Chinese  tones, 
alike  due  to  emphasis,  ib. 
188-91. 

Vater  on  the  nature  and  origin 
of  speech  ;  assumed  that  the 
first  men  spoke  logically,  i.  33. 

Veddahs  of  Ceylon  unable  to  re- 
member the  names  of  their 
wives  unless  present,  i.  101  ; 
never  seen  to  laugh,  ib.  106. 

Verb,  history  of,  traced  back 
with  greater  certainty  than  the 
noun;  continuous  decay  of  the 
latter  ;  both  apparently  refer- 
able to  the  same  stems,  ii. 
149-50;  inflection  the  charac- 
teristic of  the  verbs  mostly  by 
affixed  pronouns  ;  Old  Egyp- 
tian noun  and  verb  compared, 
ib.  150-1  ;  way  in  which  pro- 
nouns came  to  be  affixed  to 
stems  not  known,  ib.  151;  the 
Aryan  verb  from  the  first 
seems  to  have  denoted  time 
and  mood,  ib.  152-3;  other 
relations  indicated  by  flection, 

ib.  153-63- 

Vicious  pronunciation,  English,, 
French,  Setshuana,  North 
German,  and  Armenian,  1.310- 
ii. 


420 


INDEX. 


Vocabularies  of  children  widely 
different,  ii.  314-15. 

Vocal  organs  of  animals  ;  the 
human  organism  compared 
with  that  of  the  lower  animals; 
the  quadrumana,  birds,  ser- 
pents, insects,  and  fish,  i. 

350-3- 

Voice  of  two  kinds,  true  and  fal- 
setto ;  how  produced,  and 
causes  of  their  difference,  i. 
247  and  note;  numberless 
varieties  and  peculiarities  of 
voice  enable  the  blind  to  dis- 
tinguish males  from  females 
and  recognize  their  friends; 
extreme  range,  from  the  deep- 
est male  to  the  highest  female 
voice  nearly  5^-  octaves  ;  the 
different  notes  produced  by  the 
differences  of  tension  in  the 
vocal  chords  ;  Madam  Mara's 
2,000  changes,  ib.  249-50; 
chief  varieties  of  voice  ;  diffe- 
rences in  the  organs  ;  nature 
of  ventriloquism  not  quite  un- 
derstood ;  character  of  the 
voice,  and  how  modified,  ib. 
251-2. 

Voice,  organs  of ;  their  structure 
and  functions ;  inarticulate 
sounds  the  stepping-stones  to 
real  language,  i.  237-41  ;  na- 
tural cries  of  man  and  animals; 
children's  attempts  to  speak, 
and  their  resemblance  toman's 
first  efforts  to  create  a  language 
for  himself,  ib.  242-3 ;  hard 
and  soft  breathings  of  the 
Greeks  and  Danish  glottal 
catch;  why  the  rough  breath- 
ing cannot  be  sung,  ib.  243-4. 


Voltaire's  pun  on  etymology,!.  60. 

Vowel  sounds,  how  produced  ; 
the  quality  of  the  voice  neces- 
sarily the  same,  as  the  throat  is 
a  musical  instrument  with  its 
own  peculiar  tone,  i.  253;  par- 
tial tones  and  their  influence ; 
Donders  and  Helmholtz  on 
characteristic  pitch  of  vowels  ; 
number  of  possible  vowel 
sounds  almost  infinite  from 
the  variable  forms  of  the  vocal 
organs ;  Prince  L-L.  Bona- 
parte's alphabet  contains  75 
vowels ;  Italian  pronunciation 
of  vowels  adopted  in  phono- 
logy, ib.  253-5  ;  fundamental 
vowel  sounds  a,  /,  and  u;  rela- 
tive effort  required  for  their  ar- 
ticulation, and  the  organs  em- 
ployed,/^. 255-7;  endless  modi; 
fication  of  the  primary  vowels 
by  slight  changes  in  the  posi- 
tion of  the  organs ;  places  of 
e  and  o  and  their  variations; 
other  vowel  sounds ;  increase 
of  neutrals  in  English  pronun- 
ciation, ib.  257-9;  capability 
of  modification  of  vowel 
sounds,  ib.  260. 

Waitz  contends  that  the  sen- 
tence is  the  unit  of  language, 
not  the  word  ;  and  that  the 
incorporating  languages  of 
America  are  a  survival  of  its 
primitive  condition  every- 
where, i.  85-6  ;  on  agglutina- 
tion and  flection  ;  his  idea  of 
the  Chinese  harmonizes  with 
its  antiquity;  Friedrich  Miiller 
agrees  with  him  that  the  sen- 


INDEX. 


421 


tence  "  is  the  shortest  expres- 
sion of  thought ; "  musas  and 
amas  explained,  ib.  87. 

Wallach  or  Rumanian  a  Neo- 
Latin  tongue  introduced  into 
Dacia  by  the  Roman  legion- 
aries ;  divided  into  two 
branches,  the  northern  and 
southern  ;  the  latter  abounds 
with  Albanian  and  Greek 
words;  the  Latin  vowels  modi- 
fied and  the  definite  article 
postfixed,  ii.  120-1. 

Weber  on  the  Latin  et,  Greek 
eti,  Zend  aiti^  and  Sanskrit 
ati,  i.  114,  note. 

Westphal's  views  fail  to  explain 
the  phenomena  of  language  ; 
on  the  evolution  of  the  verb 
and  curious  return  to  the 
kinesis  of  Aristotle,  i.  84. 

Whistling,  how  and  where  pro- 
duced, i.  252. 

Whitney's  theory  of  the  speech 
of  primitive  man  summarized, 
i.  79-80;  his  views  require  too 


many  assumptions  and  are 
beset  with  difficulties  and  in- 
superable objections,  ib.  81-2; 
ii.  4-5. 

Words  like  English  door,  Latin 
fores,  &c.,  not  traceable  to  any 
root,  ii.  7. 

Words,  peculiar,  found  in  the 
dictionary  of  every  separate 
language  ;  common  to  Euro- 
pean and  Asiatic  dialects,  ii. 
136-8. 

Zend  and  Zend-avesta,  first  Eu- 
ropean knowledge  of,  obtained 
by  Duperron  from  some  Parsi 
priests  at  Surat,  who  returned 
to  France  in  1762  with  over  a 
hundred  MSS.,  which  enabled 
Burnouf  (Eugene)  to  correct 
his  translation  of  the  Zend- 
avesta  and  the  uncritical 
teaching  he  had  received  in 
the  East ;  the  Zend-avesta  de- 
scribed, and  the  relative  age 
of  its  parts,  ii.  78-80. 


CHISWICK    PRESS  I— C.    WHITTINGHAM,    TOOKS   COURT,    CHANCERY  LANE. 


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