THE 



QUARTERLY JOURNAL 



OF 



SCIENCE, LITERATURE, AND ART. 



On some Points connected with the Analysis and Structure of 

 the Greek Tongue, by William Sankey, A. M., of the 

 University of Dublin, and Extraordinary Member of the 

 Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh. 



In directing our attention to the structure of languages, as 

 compared among themselves, we are at once struck with the 

 great variety that is found to prevail amongst them, in respect 

 to what are called the inflections of speech, so that some lan- 

 guages express almost all the circumstances which modify 

 the leading ideas, as of nouns or verbs, by means of appro- 

 priate inflections, whilst other languages, using for the most 

 part distinct words to express these modifications, are little, or 

 not at all, inflected. The inflections, therefore, are obviously 

 none other than distinct words, or particles of words, which, 

 by constant use, have come to be coalesced with the word 

 expressing the leading idea, which, therefore, may be con- 

 sidered as the radix of the combined word. The permanence 

 of these combinations, or, in other words, the inflecting of any 

 language, will, therefore, not have been the effect of a high 

 degree of refinement, as is so often mistakenly asserted by 

 eulogists of the Greek tongue, but of directly the reverse, as 

 arising rather out of a rapid and indistinct mode of pronuncia- 

 tion, such as is found generally to prevail among an unlettered 

 people. This much, indeed, may be safely maintained, that 

 all these inflections must have entered into, and taken root in 

 the language, prior to its becoming a written tongue, as the 



APRIL— JUNE, 1830. Q 



