106 PRINCIPLES OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE. 



done, even with the aid of contemporary related dialects only, toward pene- 

 trating their common hit^tory, bccausso one will be found to have preserved one 

 part, another auolhcr, of their ances^trul tongues; but conclusions so reached 

 will be inferior both in copiousness and in certainty to those which are derived 

 from a comparative study of older and younger dialects, which illustrate the 

 laws of change in their progress, and trace, as it were, currents and coui-ses of 

 development whose direction Ave can follow backward with confidence. This 

 advantage we enjoy, to the highest known degree, in the Indo-European lan- 

 guages. In the Germanic branch we have several different lines of linguistic 

 descent, extending through a period of 1,500 years ; the English going back to 

 the Anglo-Saxon of the seventh century ; the German nearly or quite as far ; 

 the Scandinavian to a somewhat less remote period; while the venerable Gothic 

 of the fourth century (oldest of all) helps notably to bridge over the interval to 

 the primitive language of the family. Celtic literature is much less rich, and 

 also less ancient, carrying us up. to or beyond the tenth century. The oldest 

 of the numerous Slavonic dialects, the ancient Bulgarian, has monuments a 

 thousand years old. The Lithuanic is of much more recent date, but in many 

 of its forms more antique and primitive than any of the languages hitherto 

 referred to. The Romanic languages, through their mother, the Latin, take 

 us up to a few centuries beyond the Christian era; the Greek to toward a 

 thousand years before Christ. The varied series of Persian tongues comes 

 down from an antiquity nearly equalling the Greek; and the Sanscrit, the 

 sacred language of ancient India, exceeding all the rest in age, and yet more in 

 its preservation of primitive material and forms, reaches in its oldest records an 

 epoch lemoved nearly 4,000 years from our own day. 



In investigating this rich and varied body of kindred tongues, the new 

 science of language elaborated its processes and deduced its general laws, ap- 

 plicable, with such modifications as the separate cases require, to other families 

 also. The general method of study is everywhere the same, being conditioned 

 by the nature of language itself, as a thing of historic growth, and by the 

 capacity of related languages to cast light upon each other's history. Historic 

 analysis, by the aid of an extensive and careful comparison of kindred forms, is 

 the grand means of research. From this its fundamental method, the science, 

 in its growing stage, bore for some time the familiar name of "comparative 

 philology." The comparison must be made in a scientific and orderly manner, 

 proceeding from the nearer to the more remotely connected, from the clearer to 

 the more obscure; but, finally, all language is brought within its sphere, and 

 the full meaning of each linguistic fact is read in the light of every other, 

 diverse as well as correspondent. 



The history of Indo-European speech has been more carefully read, and is 

 better understood, than that of any other grand division of human language — 

 imperfect as is still our comprehension of much that concerns it, partly owing 

 to the incomplete analysis of evidence still preserved, but partly also to the 

 irreparable loss of evidence. Some of the principal facts in that history are 

 worthy of further attention. 



The chief processes in the growth of the languages of our family have been 

 shown to be the combination of old material into new words, with accompany- 

 ing corruption and mutilation of phonetic form and independent meaning. 

 These processes may go on in the future to an indefinite extent, with constant 

 evolution from each form of speech of another slightly differing from it, until 

 the descendants of every existing dialect shall be so unlike their ancestors 

 that their relationship shall be scarcely discoverable. The question arises, 

 whether there has been the same indefinite progress in the past, without 

 traceable sign of an actual beginning. This inquiry is to be answered in the 

 negative ; the evidence of language points distinctly back to an earliest con- 

 dition, or commencement of history ; our analysis brings us fiuAlly to elements 



