LAXOUAUK. 



LANGUAGE 



letter, and syllables Wh< 



rooe they cannot explain, are unqualified 



the removal at which cmn only be beneficial to the science, 

 are all time which assume the addition of letters or syllables 

 arc oonfeaMdry of no meaning, and to only add to the labour of 

 ' eptnlkrtii, and fmraytfft. They are habitually 



oiled in to explain the older and fuller forma of language, on the 

 strange assumption that the later, and fur that reanon more common, 

 and at the same time more corrupt, varieties are the genuine words. 

 In truth, when a word ocean in two forms it may be assumed, d priori, 

 that the fuller is the older, if only because the loss of letters is explained 

 i's general tendency to abridge his labours ; while to the doctrine 





added or inserted letters there is always opposed the difficulty of 

 the question, why one letter rather than another was 

 This objection especially applies to those CISBS where a con- 

 U said to be inserted between two Towels for the sake of 

 raiding the disagreeable proximity of vowels, kialta ritandi ratuo. 

 There to also the standing objection in all such cases, why does the 

 speaker add unnecessarily to his labour of speech f But these general 

 argument*, grounded on theory, are constantly receiving fresh con- 

 firmation from the results of historical inquiry in particular ean. 

 The phraeea, * for the nonce," " the (one, the (other," are now ex- 

 plained by the fact that the pronoun lite had older forms, (Am and ttiel, 

 the final consonant* of which have been unduly ascribed to the 

 following word. It seems too not improbable, that the forms nunrle, 

 .Y.C., NtJ, Ac., owe their first letter to a similar theft from the pro- 

 noun SUM, aa though mine muck was erroneously divided into my 

 Mtr. In the contest between the claims of a *ar< and an eft, it may 

 be difficult to come to a just decision, but " epenthesis " is wholly out 

 of the question. That an rather than a is the earlier form of our 

 so-called article b now generally admitted, and equally so that the 

 jamiliar privative of the Greek language is but a corruption 

 of an older mr. Similarly, rru>, rru+ir (for erw^rr), Atyoinrir, 

 \trfMtrtr, are the more genuine forms, which a careless pronunciation 

 reducer! to rrri, rrv+i, Aryown, Aoyoieri, and ultimately \oyoa. 

 But perhaps the most iniiing instance of inverting tlie order of 

 time U the explanation, still often met with, that the arrhair 

 infinitive of the Latin, such as mirarier, is to be deduced from 

 the /ate form mirari by the addition of a meaningless er. As 

 regards the ( which appears as an intnulor in the French ain 

 moment's thought will show that it is but the final letter of an older 

 aimel for the Latin amat ; and similarly, to quote a parallel case, though 

 the ( is silent in II ett rrai, it assumes its full power in rtt-il-rrai f But 

 if these are matters now admitted, there still prevails the practice of 

 treating many initial vowels as added for the sake of euphony. Thus 

 the words on/to, cAaxv*, opvaau, apturav, when fully examined, will be 

 found to have in the syllables an, t\, of, of, at any rate a portion, 

 it may be the whole, of the radical element. In the case of ora^a it 

 is demonstrable that an initial 7 has been lost, the change being 

 similar to that from imrtpaf to ar6paf. Kcnrpot to ajier, KoAafxii to 

 atapa. In op-vatr-v and ap-aaa-v the syllables van and offer are 

 no more radical than in mS-wa-u and paA-<ur<r- ; while the syllable 

 A, in the sense of " little," is familiar in all the branches of the Indo- 

 European family, and not the more to be despised because it commonly 

 occupies the less important position of a suffix. Moreover it ia a fact 

 productive of suspicion, that the said euphonic vowel is usually claimed 

 in rssiis where the next adjoining consonant is a liquid, especially one 

 of the three, r, I, u, which, aa above noticed, are constantly putting 

 forward false claims to the initial place in a root. It will not 



be at variance with the principles here expressed, if it be 



rrer, iw v o |u uiiiinc* mil? ejLprtMMU, u Jl> uo 



admitted that on the importation of a foreign word commencing with 

 two consonant* difficult of pronunciation, an initial vowel is naturally 

 prefixed to aid pronunciation. In such cases as the French nomirc, 

 comole, gendre, vent/redi, or the German wochen/lich, the letters 6, </, 

 awl ( are no way insertion* of foreign matter ; they serve merely as 

 notes that the preceding liquid must be pronounced with special dis- 

 tinctness to save them from absorption under the influence of the 

 following r or I ; for whenever we produce an m or n with unusual 

 pressure of the organs, we have forthwith before us what u better 

 nennUd by mh and nd. It is on thi* principle that our own language 

 has the words kand, maid, and in the vulgar tongue youmd, in place 

 of the simple of mania, nmtu, and gotn. 



The use of the grammatical terms tmetit and diaereta is also an act 

 of anachronism. While it is the ordinary law of language to aggluti- 

 nate independent words, and to crush adjoining vowels together, no 

 doubt at times a poet may find it convenient to avail himself of earlier 

 obsolete forms which were in use before such agglutination or crushing 

 had taken place. But to treat Arp3i as deduced from ArptiSqi and 

 call the process diarroil, or to call it tmetti, when the old poet 1. 

 before the agglutination of a preposition to a verb was yet effected, 

 wrote W A7*r luumu, or when Herodotus under like rii. um- 

 alanres, wrote * *ur ifari t a-rparrrrot tills is simple pen-entity. 



Again a large amount of unsound philology is concealed undvr the 

 torn meUthtsns. Although no d..ubt there occur instances where a 

 littTetufU position in a word either through error in the person 

 * TT*** ' l - or 'T ""rt ' involuntary stuttering, as, for example 



***|^* IKn f ram 9 r > En - friiyr, from the Latin ftmltriu, as though it 

 * " n /WstHo. The interchange of si- with h is no doubt common 

 * ""fis*!*, but here the real explanation is probably that for the ears 



of many people the sounds i, or perhaps A, and t or o, are so akin as to 

 be readily interchangeable ; and thus we have had in this island the 

 names /row, frui, froth, and frog, all applied to the same reptile ; and 

 this interchange would naturally carry with it the interchange of p 

 and ft in those countries where a i is supplanted by a p. Similarly 

 when a Spaniard substitutes milagro for the Latin miracnlo, the sub- 

 Htitution of I for r, which occurs in the first syllable, was for him a 

 change of the faintest character, and this change once made encouraged 

 the converse change in the third syllable. This however is no meta- 

 thesis. Aa the erroneous doctrine here combated has established itself 

 only too firmly among philologers, it is the more important to ]-.mt 

 out the cause which has led to the error. No doubt abundant instances 

 can be found like durrlt, Germ., and our through, epaaot and Sapaos ; 

 ten, triri. Here there is an apparent passage of the vwel from one 

 ride of the liquid to the other ; but it is only apparent , the truth being 

 that in all such cases the older form was possessed of both vowels. For 

 the first pair of words just quoted, we still have the full form lH". 

 and the truth is that the word consists of two elements thor, " a door," 

 and a diminutive suffix ough. eofxroi and 9paaot are to be explained aa 

 alike corruptions of a fuller Baptur-ot, in which Bap represents the chief 

 element, being the equivalent of our dart, according to the usual law 

 that holds between the languages of a and d corresponding. The 

 second syllable cur is that so commonly found in secondary verbs of the 

 Greek language, as rap^uriru, of-aaaea. The case of (era beside Irh-i 

 and trittim in explained by the Greek rptff-ta. and better still by the 

 Latin ter-eb-ra, where the base is ter, A a suffix, seen also in frtm-eb- 

 VKtlut, f/em-eb-umiiu ; which it is the less necessary to dwell on here 

 as it will come under consideration again. What has tended to encou- 

 rage the leap-frog doctrine here assailed, is the strange coincidence, as 

 it may well appear, that the vowels should so generally be the same. 

 The answer is to be found in the law above-mentioned, that in the 

 composition of words there is ever a strong tendency to bring dis- 

 cordant vowels into harmony. Thus the Greek verbs rap-curir-w, 

 tf-toa-a, f lA-HW-w, op-vaa-, have in truth a common suffix, which takes 

 the several varieties of vowel to please the preceding syllable. Another 

 interesting case of the game principle is seen in the series of words, all 

 one in origin : TroAAcur- " a young man,' Lat. petite- " a young woman," a 

 euphuism for a concubine, Eng. fllie " a young mare ; " iraiAo- " a foal," 

 Scotch pollock " a young fish or crab," pvllo- (nom. pullut) " a foal " or 

 "a chicken," where the first syllable seems to denote "yoiin^ 

 the suffix is of diminutival power, BO that the words in themselves 

 merely signify " a little young one." 



The other figures, such aa apharait " the cutting off the head of a 

 word," tyneope " the compression of the interior of a word," ,i, 

 " the cutting off the tail of a word," together with the terms cnuit 

 tynaloephe and tyneretit, which deal with the compression of adjoining 

 vowels, tell no untruth, and go may be left to. the use of those who 

 have an affection for hard words. The one general principle under 

 which they fall, and this alone is df moment, is, that words ara ever 

 subject to diminution. No doubt false analogies may occasionally lead 

 to a violation of this general principle. Thus our island and *<,< 

 as now written, have letters in them to which they ore no way ent 

 through a mistaken reference of them to the old French iWc (f/- 

 the word rtii/H or rn/iium. A more justifiable form would h.i\. 

 il'iml (like the German ei-land), and oiraa (Ital 



To trace language through all its varieties of declination, conjugation, 

 &c., would far exceed our fitting limits. Some two or three qu, 

 of leading moment can alone bo considered, and we may justly give a 

 precedence to the doctrine of diminutives on various grounds. They 

 play an important part in the formation of verbs, substantives, and 

 adjectives alike; once formed, they are apt to usurp the place of tin 

 primitive, and so cause the utter disappearance of that primitive 

 by a natural consequence, when thus acting the \tnrt of primitives, they 

 suggest occasion for the formation of new diminutives. N.< 

 process is sometimes repeated again and again; and 

 venture to say that a large percentage of language is made up of 

 diminutival elements. As examples of diminutives wholly supplanting 

 primitives we may quote the Italian fralella and W/, the only terms 

 in that language for brother and sister ; the French *</ il and I,,* 

 the English. tcea-rl iSi-oK-h i<-<irr),il<*l-iny (Shakspere ttucl;, ai " With 

 a linen rinrl- on one leg, and a kersey boot-hose on the other." 'T 

 of the Shrew,' iii. 1 :nd Irani; the German ttel, frrkd, and 



tchenktl ; the Latin ornlw anil tjHtrgere ; the Greek ocutrv^, 

 K^oA )r in all which cases we must pass over into cognate languages, 

 or search for obsolete forms, before we find evidence of the si 

 words from which they have been deduced. Another in 

 arises from the variety of form which even the same suffix t-,i 

 the less surprising, because the affix being often of uo pi., 

 M for that reason more carelessly pronounced. In our Iinl,,- 

 l-:uro]H-.in stock tho diminutival suffixes may perhaps be re.li 

 t,, ,'iiginal elements, r/, and something like art, or .//. Hut tli. ,/, 

 as regards its consonant, easily slips into er on the one hand. . 

 on the other; and by an easy change of the rowel the Latin employs 

 nl, and in or I'M, rather than el or en ; while the Greek seci 

 pve a pref. r. T]. , t,> an a, as in /tryoAq, /u)xwt), KI/OUOI. Tin , i 

 nijh or ach is, however, the m, .re fertile suffix, and it* varieties are all but 

 endless. In the Gaelic (and we purposely quote from one of the lan- 

 guages which have preserved more readily the guttural viu 



