OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 165 



The subjoined communication was received from Mr. Hal- 

 deman : — 



" On some Points in Linguistic Ethnology ; ivlth Illustrations, chiefly 

 from the Aboriginal Languages of North America. By S. S. 

 Haldeman, a. M.* 



" Every fact in relation to language must be worthy of considera- 

 tion in an ethnologic point of view ; and as speech is the natural 

 representative and vehicle of thought, its laws, as exhibited in com- 

 parative grammar, must afford great aid in investigating the science 

 of reason. 



" The chief points, in the phonetic examination of a language, are 

 the number and nature of its vocal elements, their order and replace- 

 ment in speech, the greater or less frequency of certain contacts, and 

 of phases like surd and sonant, lene and aspirate. Thus we should 

 know the proportion in a given language of p to t, p to b, to/, or to m. 

 T may be taken as the typical representative and most common of 

 the consonants, and A {m far) of the vowels. 



" The classification of the elements is of great importance in the 

 study of language, and I am convinced that a distribution of the con- 

 sonants into contacts, as proposed by the Abbe Sicard, is the only 

 proper mode. These, as proposed by me, in the year 1846, are 

 essentially five, the labial, dental, palatal, guttural, and glottal. 

 There are, however, some intermediate ones, or subcontacts, and the 

 order of the whole may be represented thus : — 



1. P; 2. F; 3. Th ; 4. T; 5. S ; 6. Sh ; 7.—; 8. K; 9.—; 10. Q. 



"The number of elements in each contact is usually eight, but this 

 number may be doubled, so that, if all the contacts and subcontacts 

 were full, there would be 160 consonants, some of which being sub- 

 ject to variation, (as the cerebrals,) the theoretical number may be 



* This paper was intended in part as a review of a work entitled, — Tlie Essen- 

 tials of Phonetics; containing the Theory of a Universal Mpliahet, togetlier with its 

 Practical .Application as an Ethnical .Alphabet to the Reduction of all Languages, 

 written and unwritten, to one uniform System of Writing ; with numerous Exam- 

 ples ; adapted to the Use of Phoneticians, Pliilologists, Etxjmolo gists, Ethnograph- 

 ists, Travellers, and Missionaries, in Lieu of a Second Edition of the " Alphabet of 

 JVature." By Alexander John Ellis, B. A., Fellow of the Cambridge Philosoph- 

 ical Society, and formerly Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge. London, 

 1848. 250 pages. Printed in phonotype. 



