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Tiemarks upon the General Principles of Philological Classifica- 

 tion and tlie Value of Groupes, with particular reference 

 to the Languages of the Indo-European Class. By R. G. 

 Latham, M.D. Communicated by the Ethnological So- 

 ciety.* 



In respect to the languages of the Indo-European class, it 

 is considered that the most important questions connected 

 with their systematic arrangement, and viewed with refer- 

 ence to the extent to which they engage the attention of the 

 present writers of philology, are the three following : — 



1. The question of the Fundamental Elements of certain 

 Languages. The particular example of an investigation of 

 this kind is to be found in the discussion concerning the ex- 

 tent to which it is a language akin to the Sanskrit, or a 

 language akin to the Tamul, which forms the basis of certain 

 dialects of middle and even northern India. In this is involved 

 the question as to the relative value of grammatical and glos- 

 sarial coincidences. 



2. The question of the Independent or Subordinate Cha- 

 racter of certain Groupes. Under this head comes the in- 

 vestigation, as to whether the Slavonic and Lithuanic tongues 

 form separate groupes, in the way that the Slavonic and 

 Gothic tongues form separate groupes, or whether they are 

 each members of some higher group. The same inquii'y ap- 

 plies to the languages (real or supposed) derived from the 

 Zend, and the languages (real or supposed) derived from the 

 Sanskrit. 



3. The question of Extension and Addition. It is to this 

 that the forthcoming observations are limited. 



Taking as the centre of a group, those languages which 

 have been recognised as Indo-Eui*opean (or Indo-Germanic), 

 from the first recognition of the group itself, we find the 

 languages derived from the ancient Sanskrit, the languages 

 derived from the ancient Persian, the languages of Greece and 

 Rome, the Slavonic and Lithuanic languages, and the lan- 



• Kead before the Society, 28th February 1849. 



