149 



modes of action, passion, &c. by change of termination, 

 preposition, or interposition.* 



The posterity of Javan gradually descended from the 

 plains of Shinaar, to. the opposite coasts of Lesser Asia, 

 on the Egean sea; and, from them, the whole country 

 was denominated Ionia; as Josephus attests, Antiq. Lib. I. 

 cap. 6. But, in process of time, they grew too numerous to 

 remain together ;i and, being also pressed upon by the neigh- 

 bouring barbarians, they passed into many of the islands of 

 the Egean sea, and thence into Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, 

 and Epire. Moses expressly tells us, that the islands of 

 the nations were peopled by them. Genesis, x. 4. And 



not 



* Barrow's, Travels in China, 270. L'Eveque, Hist. Russ. Vol. VI. p. 282. 

 The difference of languages consists, either in the dillerence of sounds, de- 

 noting the same object; or of constitution, or of utterance. The same sounds 

 may differ in tone, or duration; or in the abundance or defect of vowels, 

 their arrangement and aspiration. The difference of constitution consists, in 

 the various methods by which relations are indicated ; namely, by abstract 

 signs, pr.xfixes, interposition, alteration of termination, or the order of posi- 

 tion. The difference of utterance arises, from the difference of the organs 

 by which the sounds are principally emitted; as, the guttural, the oral, and 

 the nasal. The oral is either palatal, dental, sibilant, or labial. Those, that 

 agree in the signification of a great number of words, and have a similar 

 fundamental constitution, or nearly so, are, more or less remote, kitidred 

 languages, and frequently hybrid, at least, one of them is often so; as, the 

 Englisli and German; tlie French, Spanish, and Italian: the three last are 

 certainly mi.'ied or h3brid languages. When the radical words agree in 

 signification, and have the same, or nearly the same constitution, but dif- 

 fer only in termination or utterance, they are called dialects of the same 

 common language. Thus, the affinity or discrepance of languages, even 

 their pedigree, may often be traced, even when- history is silent. 



