interesting questions have arisen on the probable origin of language in times past, and on the possible adoption of an universal language at some future period, I propose, lastly, to offer on these what seem to me the results of reasonable conjecture. 5. It must be remembered that Glossology is necessarily an imper- Glossology an imperfect fect study, in reference to the number of languages which have study. hitherto been brought within its sphere, or to the degree of accuracy with which they can as yet be understood. Prior to the last age, few persons knew, or considered, whether the different modes of speech employed throughout the world could be reduced to any certain number; much less, whether they could be arranged and classed in any rational order. But in the early part of the present century, the elder ADELUNG estimated their number at above three thousand, viz., 587 European, 937 Asiatic, 276 African, and 1264 American, besides very many either wholly lost, or extant only among barbarous and inaccessible tribes. To this deservedly-eminent Glossologist great praise is due, not only for his Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart,' one of the most complete Dictionaries ever published in any language, but for his Mithridates,' comprehending notices of all the then known languages in the world, arranged according to their localities. It is true that, in a more advanced stage of knowledge, a much better arrangement may be devised; still it opens to our view a striking prospect of the wide extent of Glossology, and casts into shade the acquisitions of MITHRIDATES in ancient, or MEZZOFANTI in modern times; though the former is recorded to have spoken with facility twenty-two languages, and the latter, whom I heard with admiration, six-and-twenty years since, among his scholars at Bologna, was then said to have acquired thirty-five. To collect together and compare all the modifications of the art of speech must be the work of many Glossologists in successive ages; nor can it ever be performed without a perfect knowledge of those faculties of the human intellect and will, on which the science of language depends. Deprived of such guidance, all attempts to compare and classify languages, with reference to their excellences or defects, would be little better than groping in the dark. 6. Yet Glossology, in its present state, opens a wide field for General interesting research. The collections of ADELUNG, BALBI, and outline. PRICHARD,3 present general outlines of the whole subject; and the laborious and useful compilation of VATER, Litteratur der Grammatiken, Lexika, und Wörtersammlungen aller Sprachen der Erde,' with the additions of JULG (1847), points out the sources whence information is to be obtained of above two thousand two hundred Languages and Dialects, concerning which Grammars, Dictionaries, partial Vocabularies, or Treatises, have been formed. These, indeed, are merely placed by Vater in alphabetical order, and consequently make 1 Mithridates. Atlas Ethnographique, 3 Researches into the Natural History of Man. Nomenclature. no pretension to philosophical arrangement; but in combination with Adelung's great undertaking, they afford the best general view of glossological works now extant. I have therefore thrown into the Appendix (A) a Synopsis of the Mithridates,' subjoining to each article (where the works coincide) the number of the corresponding page in Julg's edition of Vater's 'Litteratur.' To suppose that any one person could so much as peruse all the productions there specified would be absurd; nor is it necessary here to offer more than a slight sketch of the materials which have been collected in the principal departments of glossological study. 7. Slight, however, as such a sketch may be, it will be scarcely intelligible unless due allowance be made for the defective state of Nomenclature and Classification in Glossology, at the present day. In regard to Nomenclature, I have elsewhere said, "it is my object to change as little as possible received modes of expression." The practice of very eminent Glossologists, however, has varied in this particular. The justly-celebrated GRIMM says, "I have abstained from all changes in grammatical terminology, whenever intelligible expressions have been generally received throughout Europe, even though some of them may have been perverted from their original signification." On the other hand, though RASK's is a name never to be mentioned without honour, it must be admitted that the writings of himself and his followers are often rendered obscure by their employing novel terms derived from languages so little known as the Islandic and Danish, and even these abbreviated. Thus, for the wellknown grammatical word "Case," they use "Fhf," meaning the Danish word "forholdsform" (form of relation): for " Accusative," they put "G," meaning the Danish "gjenstandsform" (form of the object): and from the Islandic they adopt many similar abbreviations. So KLEINSCHMIDT, in his recent very able treatise on the Greenland tongue, employs, instead of the old and well-understood word "Article," the uncommon German word "Deutewort" (pointing or indicating word). Dr. RUSH, of Philadelphia, has founded his whole system of the Philosophy of the Human Voice' on two terms, which I confess I have been unable, after much consideration, fully to comprehend. These are the Radical Movement and the Vanishing Movement, which two movements, he seems to think, belong to every articulate sound. This learned person has also introduced several other terms quite new, so far as my reading goes, to the science of Glossology; such as the Wave of the voice," the "Median Stress," "the Thorough Stress," ""the Drift of the Voice," "the Drift of the downmard vanish," "the Drift of vanishing stress," &c. His apology for these novelties in nomenclature is, "that when unnamed additions are made to the system and detail of an art, terms must be invented for them." This is undoubtedly true; but then two requisites should be observed: first, that the additions should be indisputably accurate Univ. Gram. s. 312. 2 Deutsch. Gram, vol. i. p. 29. 66 and necessary; and secondly, that the new terms should, as far as possible, be analogous to those previously applied to the art m question. tion. 8. The Classification of Languages, Dialects, or Idioms, with a Classifica view to their scientific arrangement in Glossology, may be said to be as yet in its infancy. Dr. LATHAM, in his very able and popular work on 'the English Language,' divides all the actual modifications of Speech into Tribes, each tribe into Stocks, each stock into Branches, each branch into Divisions, each division into Languages, and certain languages into Dialects. Thus, according to him, the natives of Somersetshire speak a dialect of the English language; which language is a Low-German division of the Teutonic branch of the Gothic stock of the Indo-European Tribe. With sincere respect for the abilities of this eminent Glossologist, I must confess that I cannot entirely acquiesce in this classification, at least as a definitive scheme. Languages, dialects, &c., are here to be taken as matters of fact, which may be classed according as they fall under more or less general definitions or descriptions, in like manner as Linnæus distributed all the objects of natural history into Kingdoms, Classes, Orders, Genera, Species, and Varieties. But to each of these gradations he gave its appropriate definition, or description, so framed that the higher designation should include the whole of the lower; and also, that "the genus should be found whole and entire in the species, and the species whole and entire in the individual." It would therefore be necessary, were the above-mentioned classification adopted, that some clear and precise definition should be given of a Tribe of languages, a Stock, a Branch, &c., and that each definition should be framed in the manner just stated; which, perhaps, in the present imperfect state of Glossology, would be scarcely possible. 9. I confess, too, that the terms chosen by Dr. Latham to express Tribe, the various gradations in his scheme do not appear to me to be alto- family, &c. gether suited to that purpose. The word "Tribe" is from the Latin Tribus, which is derived by some from tres, three, and supposed to relate to a threefold division of the Roman People in early times into Ramnes, Titienses, and Luceres.2 But both the etymology and the fact are disputed; for some authors derive the word from a Celtic root, answering to the Latin terra, land; and the Tribus was certainly at first a geographical division. Others, again, contend that, in the earliest ages, the Roman Tribes were only two; and, in fact, we know nothing of them distinctly before A. U. C. 259, when Livy says they were twenty-one,3 immediately prior to which time Niebuhr conjectures that they had been thirty. The name "Tribe" may perhaps have been adopted by Dr. Latham in reference to Noah's three sons, Japhet, Shem, and Ham; but that the languages of their descendants were divided by any characteristics, which can now be traced, it Univ. Gram. s. 177. 2 Liv. Hist. x. 6. would be premature to assert in the present state of glossological science. In modern times, the word "Tribe" has generally been given either to a certain division of a known nation, as the Twelve Tribes of the Jewish People, or else to some smaller bodies of men, such as the North American Tribes, vaguely supposed to be derived from one or more original sources. Upon the whole, therefore, the word Tribe seems unfit to stand at the head of a classification of languages. Some authors employ the word "Family" in nearly a similar manner; but neither the one nor the other of these expressions has ever received a clear definition. Much the same may be said of the terms Stock and Branch. All these words are merely figurative, and, if used at all, can only be taken in loose and popular senses. Indeed, whatever classification may be adopted at present, the different gradations will be found to be intermixed and connected with each other by such various analogies, that any positive arrangement of them would be liable to perpetual disturbance. For these reasons, although, in an advanced stage of glossological science, a more philosophical arrangement than by localities may reasonably be expected, yet, in the following sketch, I shall keep in view the divisions of Adelung into the Asiatic, European, African, and American tongues, with occasional reference to Vater and other sources. (7) CHAPTER I. OF LANGUAGES. 10. In drawing up a sketch, which must necessarily be slight, of European the various languages which it is the province of Glossology to inves- languages tigate, I begin with the European; not only as the best known and most likely to interest the generality of my readers, but because the general connection of those tongues may be at once seen in the ingenious map prefixed to Dr. BOSWORTH'S interesting work on 'The Origin of the English, German, and Scandinavian Languages' (1848). He distinguishes them into, 1st, the Basque, Iberian, or Euskarian ; 2nd, the Finnish, Jotune, or Ugrian; 3rd, the Celtic, comprehending the Welsh, Gaelic, Erse, and Breton; 4th, the Latin and Greek, with their offspring, the Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and modern Greek; 5th, the Western branch of the Germanic, Teutonic, or Gothic, including High and Low German, Frisic, Anglo-Saxon, and English; 6th, the Northern branch, or Scandinavian, comprising the Islandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish; 7th, the Sclavonic, viz., Russian, Illyrian, Polish, Wendish, &c.; and 8th, the Turkish. Greek. 11. In reviewing these, the classical Latin and Greek seem to Latin and claim the first notice; but it will be unnecessary to dwell much on them, as the literary discussions to which they have for several centuries given rise are well known. It is equally known that each of their derivative tongues has been separately treated with great ability by numberless Glossologists; but it is only of late years that the comparative Grammar of them all, including the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Provençal, Daco-Romanic (or Wallachian), and Rhætish, has been brought into one general view by RAYNOUARD' and DIEZ.2 3 Scandinavian 12. The two great branches specially treated of by Dr. Bosworth, German and the German and Scandinavian, were first brought under comparative examination in the last century by HICKES, WACHTER,* and IHRE, with much industrious research into the older European dialects, but without that knowledge of the Asiatic tongues which has contributed to the more accurate views of recent Glossologists, particularly of GRIMM, GRAFF,7 KALTSCHMIDT, and DIEFFENBACH. 13. The Celtic branch has been illustrated by many writers, both of Celtic. the last and present century. Among the former, we may particu1 Gram. comp. des Lang. de l'Europe Latine. 1821. 2 Grammatik der Roman. Sprachen. 1836. 3 Ling. Vet. Septentr. Thesaurus. 1705. 1769. 5 Diction. Sueo-Gothic. |