1898-99. | THE USE AND ABUSE OF PHILOLOGY. 93 
As I have said, the place of these varying and relatively unimportant 
forms may change with the linguistic group of which the radical may be 
characteristic. They constitute the desinence of the words in the Aryan 
languages. A few examples will, I think, be of use as a means of illus- 
trating the above propositions. Here are a few words with an identical 
radical followed by different desinences. 
Latin. Spanish. Italian. English. French. 
Lacon-icus -ico -ico -ic —ique 
Confl-ictus ~icto -itto ~ict -it 
Prodig—iosus —ioso -ioso —ious —ieux 
Declamat-orius -orio -—orio —ory -oire 
Ard-or -or -ore —our -eur 
Barbar-ismus —ismo —~ismo -ism -isme 
Confus-io -ion ~ione -ion -ion 
Atten-tio -cion —zione —tion —tion 
Paral-ysis ; -1S1S -isia -ysis -ysie 
Leg~-alis -al -ale -al -al 
Sensib-ilis -le —ile -le -le 
Principal-iter -mente —mente —ly —ement 
This list could, of course, be almost indefinitely extended, especially 
if we were to make it comprise some words the real root part of which 
is slightly altered in a few dialects as, for instance, CONsZans : Italian, 
COStante ; VIRtus: French, VERZw, etc. Here then we have words the 
initial part of which is identical in all the languages represented, while 
the desinence varies with the dialect. It is unnecessary to observe that 
the essence of the word is contained in the former, the 7éZe of the latter 
being simply to differentiate the dialect. My reason for associating the 
English forms with the above will become more apparent when it is 
remembered that that idiom, though more generally ranked within the 
germanic subdivision of the Aryan linguistic group, nevertheless contains 
an almost complete vocabulary of Italic or Romance words, from among 
which all the above are selected. Practically, there are as many Latin 
words with unchanged radical and desinential forms digested, as it were, 
and assimilated according to the requirements of the peculiar organism 
of each dialect. 
But the radical part of a word is not always so easily discernible. Its 
place and characteristics may vary according to the linguistic family— 
not the particular dialect—to which the word belongs. It is the task of 
the philologist to discover and locate this radical and, in such cases 
mere superficial studies would naturally prove inadequate to ensure suc- 
cess, inasmuch as it happens that this immutable element has no fixed 
place in the structure of words of even the same dialect. Thus in 
