Part 29

13 Dr. Whewell classes the science of language as one of the palaitiological sciences; but he makes a distinction between palaitiological sciences treating of material things, for instance, geology, and others respecting the products which result from man’s imaginative and social endowments, for instance, comparative philology. He excludes the latter from the circle of the physical sciences, properly so called, but he adds: “We began our inquiry with the trust that any sound views which we should be able to obtain respecting the nature of truth in the physical sciences, and the mode of discovering it, must also tend to throw light upon the nature and prospects of knowledge of all other kinds;—must be useful to us in moral, political, and philological researches. We stated this as a confident anticipation; and the evidence of the justice of our belief already begins to appear. We have seen that biology leads us to psychology, if we choose to follow the path; and thus the passage from the material to the immaterial has already unfolded itself at one point; and we now perceive that there are several large provinces of speculation which concern subjects belonging to man’s immaterial nature, and which are governed by the same laws as sciences altogether physical. It is not our business to dwell on the prospects which our philosophy thus opens to our contemplation; but we may allow ourselves, in this last stage of our pilgrimage among the foundations of the physical sciences, to be cheered and animated by the ray that thus beams upon us, however dimly, from a higher and brighter region.”—_Indications of the Creator_, p. 146.

14 Gen. ii. 19.

15 St. Basil was accused by Eunomius of denying Divine Providence, because he would not admit that God had created the names of all things, but ascribed the invention of language to the faculties which God had implanted in man. St. Gregory, bishop of Nyssa in Cappadocia (331-396), defended St. Basil. “Though God has given to human nature its faculties,” he writes, “it does not follow that therefore He produces all the actions which we perform. He has given us the faculty of building a house and doing any other work; but we surely are the builders, and not He. In the same manner our faculty of speaking is the work of Him who has so framed our nature; but the invention of words for naming each object is the work of our mind.” See Ladevi-Roche, De l’Origine du Langage: Bordeaux, 1860, p. 14. Also, Horne Tooke, Diversions of Purley, p. 19.

16 D. Stewart, Works, vol. iii. p. 27.

17 History of Inductive Sciences, vol. iii. p. 531.

18 Names ending in _ic_, are names of classes as distinct from the names of single languages.

19 Lectures on the English Language, by G. P. Marsh: New York, 1860, p. 263 and 630. These lectures embody the result of much careful research, and are full of valuable observations.

20 Marsh, p. 532, _note_.

21 Marsh, p. 589.

22 Sir J. Stoddart, Glossology, p. 60.

23 Trench, English Past and Present, p. 114; Marsh, p. 397.

24 As several of my reviewers have found fault with the monk for using the genitive _neutri_, instead of _neutrius_, I beg to refer to Priscianus, 1. vi. c. i. and c. vii. The expression _generis neutrius_, though frequently used by modern editors, has no authority, I believe, in ancient Latin.

25 Castelvetro, in Horne Tooke, p. 629, _note_.

26 Bopp, Comparative Grammar, § 320. Schleicher, Deutsche Sprache, s. 233.

27 Foucaux, Grammaire Tibetaine, p. 27, and Preface, p. x.

28 Fuchs, Romanische Sprachen, s. 355.

29 Quint., v. 10, 52. Bonâ mente factum, ideo palam; malâ, ideo ex insidiis.

30 Sanskrit _s_ = Persian _h_; therefore _svasar_ = _hvahar_. This becomes _chohar_, _chor_, and _cho_. Zend, _qaņha_, acc. _qaņharem_, Persian, _kháher_. Bopp, Comp. Gram. § 35.

31 Schleicher, Beiträge, b. ii. s. 392: _dci_ = _dŭgti_; gen. _dcere_ = _dŭgtere_.

_ 32 Hui_ = _hodie_, Ital. _oggi_ and _oggidi_; _jour_ = _diurnum_, from _dies_.

33 See M. M.’s Letter to Chevalier Bunsen, On the Turanian Languages, p. 67.

34 See Marsh, p. 678; Sir John Stoddart’s Glossology, s. 31.

35 Glossology, p. 33.

36 Ibid., p. 29.

37 Nea Pandora, 1859, Nos. 227, 229. Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprachforschung, x. s. 190.

38 Grimm, Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, p. 668: Marsh, p. 379.

39 “Some people, who may have been taught to consider the Dorset dialect as having originated from corruption of the written English, may not be prepared to hear that it is not only a separate offspring from the Anglo-Saxon tongue, but purer, and in some cases richer, than the dialect which is chosen as the national speech.”—Barnes, _Poems in Dorset Dialect_, Preface, p. xiv.

40 Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, s. 833.

41 Pliny, vi. 5; Hervas, Catalogo, i. 118.

42 Pliny depends on Timosthenes, whom Strabo declares untrustworthy (ii. p. 93, ed. Casaub.) Strabo himself says of Dioscurias, συνέρχεσθαι ἐς αὐτὴν ἐβδομήκοντα, οἱ δὲ καὶ τριακόσια ἔθνη φασίν οἴς οὐδὲν τῶν ὄντων υέλει (x. p. 498). The last words refer probably to Timosthenes.

43 Du Ponceau, p. 110.

44 S. F. Waldeck, Lettre à M. Jomard des environs de Palenqué, Amérique Centrale. (“Il ne pouvait se servir, en 1833, d’un vocabulaire composé avec beaucoup de soin dix ans auparavant.”)

45 Catalogo, i. 393.

46 Turanian Languages, p. 114.

47 Ibid., p. 233.

48 Turanian Languages, p. 30.

49 Quintilian, ix. 4. “Nam neque Lucilium putant uti eadem (s) ultima, cum dicit Serenu fuit, et Dignu loco. Quin etiam Cicero in Oratore plures antiquorum tradit sic locutos.” In some phrases the final _s_ was omitted in conversation; _e.g._ _abin_ for abisne, _viden_ for videsne, _opu’st_ for opus est, _conabere_ for conaberis.

50 Marsh, Lectures, pp. 133, 368.

51 “There are fewer local peculiarities of form and articulation in our vast extent of territory (U. S.), than on the comparatively narrow soil of Great Britain.”—_Marsh_, p. 667.

52 Marsh, Lectures, pp. 181, 590.

53 The Gothic forms _sijum_, _sijuth_, are not organic. They are either derived by false analogy from the third person plural _sind_, or a new base _sij_ was derived from the subjunctive _sijau_, Sanskrit _syâm_.

54 Some excellent statistics on the exact proportion of Saxon and Latin in various English writers, are to be found in Marsh’s Lectures on the English Language, p. 120, _seq._ and 181, _seq._

55 “En este estado, que es el primer paso que las naciones dan para mudar de lengua, estaba quarenta años ha la araucana en las islas de Chiloue (como he oido á los jesuitas sus misioneros), en donde los araucanos apénas proferian palabra que no fuese española; mas la proferian con el artificio y órden de su lengua nativa, llamada araucana.”—_Hervas, Catalogo_, t. i. p. 16. “Este artificio ha sido en mi observacion el principal medio de que me he valido para conocer la afinidad ó diferencia de las lenguas conocidas, y reducirlas á determinadas classes.”—_Ibid._, p. 23.

56 Colebrooke, Miscellaneous Essays, i. 32. The following verses are pronounced by Vâch, the goddess of speech, in the 125th hymn of the 10th book of the Rig-Veda: “Even I myself say this (what is) welcome to Gods and to men: ‘Whom I love, him I make strong, him I make a Brahman, him a great prophet, him I make wise. For Rudra (the god of thunder) I bend the bow, to slay the enemy, the hater of the Brahmans. For the people I make war; I pervade heaven and earth. I bear the father on the summit of this world; my origin is in the water in the sea; from thence I go forth among all beings, and touch this heaven with my height. I myself breathe forth like the wind, embracing all beings; above this heaven, beyond this earth, such am I in greatness.’ ” See also Atharva-Veda, iv. 30; xix. 9, 3. Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iii. pp. 108, 150.

57 Sir John Stoddart, Glossology, p. 276.

58 The Turks applied the Polish name _Niemiec_ to the Austrians. As early as Constantinus Porphyrogeneta, cap. 30, Νεμέτζιοι was used for the German race of the Bavarians. (Pott, Indo-Germ. Sp. s. 44. Leo, Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprachforschung, b. ii. s. 258.) Russian, _njemez’_; Slovenian, _nĕmec_; Bulgarian, _némec_; Polish, _niemiec_; Lusatian, _njemc_, mean German. Russian, _njemo_, indistinct; _njemyi_, dumb; Slovenian, _nĕm_, dumb; Bulgarian, _nêm_, dumb; Polish, _njemy_, dumb; Lusatian, _njemy_, dumb.

59 Leo, Zeitschrift für Vergl. Sprachf. b. ii. s. 252.

60 Humboldt’s Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 141.

61 This shows how difficult it would be to admit that any influence was exercised by Indian on Greek philosophers. Pyrrhon, if we may believe Alexander Polyhistor, seems indeed to have accompanied Alexander on his expedition to India, and one feels tempted to connect the scepticism of Pyrrhon with the system of Buddhist philosophy then current in India. But the ignorance of the language on both sides must have been an insurmountable barrier between the Greek and the Indian thinkers. (Fragmenta Histor. Græc., ed. Müller, t. iii. p. 243, _b._; Lasson, Indische Alterthumskande, b. iii. s. 380.)

62 On the supposed travels of Greek philosophers to India, see Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, b. iii. s. 379; Brandis, Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, b. i. s. 425. The opinion of D. Stewart and Niebuhr that the Indian philosophers borrowed from the Greeks, and that of Görres and others that the Greeks borrowed from the Brahmans, are examined in my Essay on Indian Logic, in Thomson’s Laws of Thought.

63 See Niebuhr, Vorlesungen über Alte Geschichte, b. i. s. 17.

64 The translation of Mago’s work on agriculture belongs to a later time. There is no proof that Mago, who wrote twenty-eight books on agriculture in the Punic language, lived, as Humboldt supposes (Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 184), 500 B. C. Varro de R. R. i. 1, says: “Hos nobilitate Mago Carthaginiensis præteriit Pœnica lingua, quod res dispersas comprehendit libris xxix., quos Cassius Dionysius Uticensis vertit libris xx., Græca lingua, ac Sextilio prætori misit: in quæ volumina de Græcis libris eorum quos dixi adjecit non pauca, et de Magonis dempsit instar librorum viii. Hosce ipsos utiliter ad vi. libros redegit Diophanes in Bithynia, et misit Dejotaro regi.” This Cassius Dionysius Uticencis lived about 40 B. C. The translation into Latin was made at the command of the Senate, shortly after the third Punic war.

65 Ptolemæus Philadelphus (287-246 B. C.), on the recommendation of his chief librarian (Demetrius Philaretes), is said to have sent a Jew of the name of Aristeas, to Jerusalem, to ask the high priest for a MS. of the Bible, and for seventy interpreters. Others maintain that the Hellenistic Jews who lived at Alexandria, and who had almost forgotten their native language, had this translation made for their own benefit. Certain it is, that about the beginning of the third century B. C. (285), we find the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek.

66 Plin. xxx. 2. “Sine dubio illa orta in Perside a Zoroastre, ut inter auctores convenit. Sed unus hic fuerit, an postea et alius, non satis constat. Eudoxus qui inter sapientiæ sectas clarissimam utilissimamque eam intelligi voluit, Zoroastrem hunc sex millibus annorum ante Platonis mortem fuisse prodidit. Sic et Aristoteles. Hermippus qui de tota ea arte diligentissime scripsit, et vicies centum millia versuum a Zoroastre condita, indicibus quoque voluminum ejus positis explanavit, præceptorem a quo institutum disceret, tradidit Azonacem, ipsum vero quinque millibus annorum ante Trojanum bellum fuisse.”—“Diogenes Laertius Aristotelem auctorem facit libri τὸ Μαγικόν. Suidas librum cognovit, dubitat vero a quo scriptus sit.” See Bunsen’s Egypten, Va, 101.

67 M. M.’s History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 163.

68 ἄρθρον προτασσόμενον, ἄρθρον ὑποτασσόμενον.

69 Suidas, s. v. Διονύσιος. Διονύσιος Ἀλεξανδρεός, Θρᾷξ δὲ ἀπὸ πατρὸς τούνομα κληθεὶς, Ἀριστάρχου μαθητὴς, γραμματικὸς ὁς ἐσοφίστευσεν ἐν Ῥώμη ἐπὶ Πομπηιοῦ τοῦ Μεγάλου.

70 Quintilian, i. 1, 12.

71 See Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, b. i. s. 197. “The Latin alphabet is the same as the modern alphabet of Sicily; the Etruscan is the same as the old Attic alphabet. _Epistola_, letter, _charta_, paper, and _stilus_, are words borrowed from Greek.”—_Mommsen_, b. i. s. 184.

72 Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, b. i. s. 186. _Statera_, the balance, the Greek στατήρ; _machina_, an engine, μηχανή; _númus_, a silver coin, νόμος, the Sicilian νοῦμμος; _groma_, measuring-rod, the Greek γνώμων or γνῶμα: _clathri_, a trellis, a grate, the Greek κλῆθρα, the native Italian word for lock being _claustra_.

_ 73 Gubernare_, to steer, from κυβεονᾶν; _anchora_, anchor, from ἀγκῦρα; _prora_, the forepart, from πρῶρα. _Navis_, _remus_, _velum_, &c., are common Aryan words, not borrowed by the Romans from the Greeks, and show that the Italians were acquainted with navigation before the discovery of Italy by the Phocæans.

74 Mommsen, i. 154.

75 Ibid. i. 408.

76 Mommsen, i. 165.

_ 77 Sibylla_, or _sibulla_, is a diminutive of an Italian _sabus_ or _sabius_, wise; a word which, though not found in classical writers, must have existed in the Italian dialects. The French _sage_ presupposes an Italian _sabius_, for it cannot be derived either from _sapiens_ or from _sapius_.—_Diez, Lexicon Etymologicum_, p. 300. _Sapius_ has been preserved in _nesapius_, foolish. _Sibulla_ therefore meant a wise old woman.

78 Mommsen, i. 256.

79 Ibid. i. 425, 444.

80 Ibid. i. 857.

81 Mommsen, i. 902.

82 Mommsen, i. 892.

83 Ibid. i. 843, 194.

84 Ibid. i. 911.

85 Mommsen, ii. 407.

86 Mommsen, ii. 410.

87 Ibid. ii. 408.

88 Ibid. ii. 437, _note_; ii. 430.

89 Zeno died 263; Epicurus died 270; Arcesilaus died 241; Carneades died 129.

90 Mommsen, ii. 417, 418.

91 Ibid. i. 845.

92 Ibid. ii. 415, 417.

93 Mommsen, ii. 413, 426, 445, 457. Lucius Ælius Stilo wrote a work on etymology, and an index to Plautus.—_Lersch_, _Die Sprachphilosophie der Alten_, ii. 111.

94 Lersch, ii. 113, 114, 143.

95 Lersch, iii. 144.

96 Mommsen, iii. 557. 48 B. C.

97 Lersch, ii. 25. Περὶ σημαινόντων, or περὶ φώνης; and περὶ σημαινομένον, or περὶ πραγμάτων.

98 Beiträge zur Geschichte der Grammatik, von Dr. K. E. A. Schmidt. Halle, 1859. Uber den Begriff der γενικὴ πτῶσις, s. 320.

99 In the Tibetan languages the rule is, “Adjectives are formed from substantives by the addition of the genitive sign,” which might be inverted into, “The genitive is formed from the nominative by the addition of the adjective sign.” For instance, _shing_, wood; _shing gi_, of wood, or wooden: _ser_, gold; _ser-gyi_, of gold, or golden: _mi_, man; _mi-yi_, of man, or human. The same in Garo, where the sign of the genitive is _ni_, we have; _mánde-ní jak_, the hand of man, or the human hand; _ambal-ní ketháli_, a wooden knife, or a knife of wood. In Hindustání the genitive is so clearly an adjective, that it actually takes the marks of gender according to the words to which it refers. But how is it in Sanskrit and Greek? In Sanskrit we may form adjectives by the addition of _tya_. (Turanian Languages, p. 41, _seq._; Essay on Bengálí, p. 333.) For instance, _dakshiņâ_, south; _dakshiņâ-tya_, southern. This _tya_ is clearly a demonstrative pronoun, the same as the Sanskrit _syas_, _syâ_, _tyad_, this or that. _Tya_ is a pronominal base, and therefore such adjectives as _dakshiņâ-tya_, southern, or _âp-tya_, aquatic, from _âp_, water, must have been conceived originally as “water-there,” or “south-there.” Followed by the terminations of the nominative singular, which was again an original pronoun, _âptyas_ would mean _âp-tya-s_, _i.e._, water-there-he. Now, it makes little difference whether I say an aquatic bird or a bird of the water. In Sanskrit the genitive of water would be, if we take _udaka_, _udaka-sya_. This _sya_ is the same pronominal base as the adjective termination _tya_, only that the former takes no sign for the gender, like the adjective. The genitive _udakasya_ is therefore the same as an adjective without gender. Now let us look to Greek. We there form adjectives by σιος, which is the same as the Sanskrit _tya_ or _sya_. For instance, from δῆμος, people, the Greeks formed δημόσιος, belonging to the people. Here ος, α, ον, mark the gender. Leave the gender out, and you get δημοσιο. Now, there is a rule in Greek that an ς between two vowels, in grammatical terminations, is elided. Thus the genitive of γένος is not γένεσος, but γένεος, or γένους; hence δημόσιο would necessarily become δήμοιο. And what is δήμοιο but the regular Homeric genitive of δῆμος, which in later Greek was replaced by δήμου? Thus we see that the same principles which governed the formation of adjectives and genitives in Tibetan, in Garo, and Hindustání, were at work in the primitive stages of Sanskrit and Greek; and we perceive how accurately the real power of the genitive was determined by the ancient Greek grammarians, who called it the general or predicative case, whereas the Romans spoiled the term by wrongly translating it into _genitivus_.

100 See M. M.’s History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 158.

101 The following and some other notes were kindly sent to me by the first Chinese scholar in Europe, M. Stanislas Julien, Membre de l’Institut.

The Chinese do not decline their substantives, but they indicate the cases distinctly—

A. By means of particles. B. By means of position.

1. The nominative or the subject of a sentence is always placed at the beginning.

2. The genitive may be marked—

(_a_) By the particle _tchi_ placed between the two nouns, of which the first is in the genitive, the second in the nominative. Example, _jin tchi kiun_ (hominum princeps, literally, man, sign of the genitive, prince.)

(_b_) By position, placing the word which is in the genitive first, and the word which is in the nominative second. Ex. _koue_ (kingdom) _jin_ (man) _i.e._, a man of the kingdom.

3. The dative may be expressed—

(_a_) By the preposition _yu_, to. Ex. _sse_ (to give) _yen_ (money) _yu_ (to) _jin_ (man).

(_b_) By position, placing first the verb, then the word which stands in the dative, lastly, the word which stands in the accusative. Ex. _yu_ (to give) _jin_ (to a man) _pe_ (white) _yu_ (jade), _hoang_ (yellow) _kin_ (metal), _i.e._, gold.

4. The accusative is either left without any mark, for instance, _pao_ (to protect) _min_ (the people), or it is preceded by certain words which had originally a more tangible meaning, but gradually dwindled away into mere signs of the accusative. [These were first discovered and correctly explained by M. Stanislas Julien in his Vindiciæ Philologicæ in Linguam Sinicam, Paris, 1830.] The particles most frequently used for this purpose by modern writers are _pa_ and _tsiang_, to grasp, to take. Ex. _pa_ (taking) _tchoung-jin_ (crowd of men) _t’eou_ (secretly) _k’an_ (he looked) _i.e._, he looked secretly at the crowd of men (hominum turbam furtim aspiciebat). In the more ancient Chinese (_Kouwen_) the words used for the same purpose are _i_ (to employ, etc.), _iu_, _iu_, _hou_. Ex. _i_ (employing) _jin_ (mankind) _t’sun_ (he preserves) _sin_ (in the heart), _i.e._, humanitatem conservat corde. _I_ (taking) _tchi_ (right) _wêï_ (to make) _k’iŏ_ (crooked), _i.e._, rectum facere curvum. _Pao_ (to protect) _hou_ (sign of accus.) _min_ (the people).

5. The ablative is expressed—

(_a_) By means of prepositions, such as _thsong_, _yeou_, _tsen_, _hou_. Ex. _thsong_ (ex) _thien_ (cœlo) _laï_ (venire); _te_ (obtinere) _hou_ (ab) _thien_ (cœlo).

(_b_) By means of position, so that the word in the ablative is placed before the verb. Ex. _thien_ (heaven) _hiang-tchi_ (descended, _tchi_ being the relative particle or sign of the genitive) _tsaï_ (calamities), _i.e._, the calamities which Heaven sends to men.

6. The instrumental is expressed—

(_a_) By the preposition _yu_, with. Ex. _yu_ (with) _kien_ (the sword) _cha_ (to kill) _jin_ (a man).

(_b_) By position, the substantive which stands in the instrumental case being placed before the verb, which is followed again by the noun in the accusative. Ex. _i_ (by hanging) _cha_ (he killed) _tchi_ (him).

7. The locative may be expressed by simply placing the noun before the verb. Ex. _si_ (in the East or East) _yeou_ (there is) _suo-tou-po_ (a sthúpa); or by prepositions as described in the text.

The adjective is always placed before the substantive to which it belongs. Ex. _meï jin_, a beautiful woman.

The adverb is generally followed by a particle which produces the same effect as _e_ in bene, or _ter_ in celeriter. Ex. _cho-jen_, in silence, silently; _ngeou-jen_, perchance; _kiu-jen_, with fear.

Sometimes an adjective becomes an adverb through position. Ex. _chen_, good; but _chen ko_, to sing well.

102 See some criticisms on this division in Marsh’s Lectures on the English Language, p. 48.

103 “Goddspell onn Ennglissh nemmnedd iss God word, annd god tiþennde, God errnde,” &c.—_Ormulum_, pref. 157.

“And beode þer godes godd-spel.”—_Layamon_, iii. 182, v. 29, 507.

104 Diez, Lexicon Comparativum. Columella, vii. 8.

105 Strabo, viii. p. 833. Τὴν μὲν Ἰάδα τῇ παλαιᾷ Ἀτθίδι τὴν αὐτὴν φαμέν, τὴν δὲ Δωρίδα τῇ Αἰολίδι.