The Origin of Language 517 



written Beitrage zu einer Kritik der Sprache 1 give some reason to 

 hope that, on one side at least, the future may be better than 

 the past. 



Where Charles Darwin's special studies came in contact with the 

 Science of Language was over the problem of the origin and develop- 

 ment of language. It is curious to observe that, where so many fields 

 of linguistic research have still to be reclaimed many as yet can 

 hardly be said to be mapped out, the least accessible field of all 

 that of the Origin of Language has never wanted assiduous tillers. 

 Unfortunately it is a field beyond most others where it may be said 



that 



Wilding oats and luckless darnel grow. 



If Comparative Philology is to work to purpose here, it must be on 

 results derived from careful study of individual languages and groups 

 of languages. But as yet the group which Sir William Jones first 

 mapped out and which Bopp organised is the only one where much 

 has been achieved. Investigation of the Semitic group, in some 

 respects of no less moment in the history of civilisation and religion, 

 where perhaps the labour of comparison is not so difficult, as the 

 languages differ less among themselves, has for some reason strangely 

 lagged behind. Some years ago in the American Journal of Philo- 

 logy Paul Haupt pointed out that if advance was to be made, it 

 must be made according to the principles which had guided the 

 investigation of the Indo-Germanic languages to success, and at last 

 a Comparative Grammar of an elaborate kind is in progress also for 

 the Semitic languages 2 . For the great group which includes Finnish, 

 Hungarian, Turkish and many languages of northern Asia, a beginning, 

 but only a beginning, has been made. It may be presumed from the 

 great discoveries which are in progress in Turkestan that presently 

 much more will be achieved in this field. But for a certain utterance 

 to be given by Comparative Philology on the question of the origin 

 of language it is necessary that not merely for these languages but 

 also for those in other quarters of the globe, the facts should be 

 collected, sifted and tabulated. England rules an empire which con- 



forsehung, Strassburg, 1901, with a rejoinder by Wundt, Sprachgeschichte and Sprach- 

 psychologie, Leipzig, 1901 ; L. Siitterlin, Das Wesen der Sprachgebilde, Heidelberg, 1902 ; 

 von Kozwadowski, Wortbildung und Wortbedeutung, Heidelberg, 1904; 0. Dittrich, 

 Grundzuge der Sprachpsychologie, Halle, 1904 ; Ch. A. Sechehaye, Programme et methodes 

 de la linguistique thtorique, Paris, 1908. 



1 In three parts : (i) Sprache und Psychologie, (ii) Zur Sprachwissenschaft, both 

 Stuttgart 1901, (iii) Zur Grammatik und Logik (with index to all three volumes), Stutt- 

 gart and Berlin, 1902. 



- Brockelmann, Vergleichende Grammatik der semitischen Sprachen, Berlin, 1907 ff. 

 Brockelmann and Zimmern had earlier produced two small hand-books. The only large 

 work was William Wright's Lectures on the Comparative Grammar of the Semitic 

 Languages, Cambridge, 1890. 



