. . ; . . 



100 



m. the relative i* habitually represented by wurds which an admit 

 tsar/ limn.' ! ~ ' in power and origin, as in our own phrase, " the 

 Mali** I saw," or. stall more simply, "lAtmaa I saw," where it is an 

 error to suppose that aar pronoun is understood. So in Greek, more 

 especially for the '> diaMOt, it is often idle to draw a distinction 

 between UM articls rew and UM relative rent . Our old poeU, too, use 

 SOT, eWs*v, with UM mull Ing of dUrv, ntnwv. Conversely in Latin 

 I Mil mini*. Midi M iN**fMst, the literal translation of quam, in 

 note of to identity ia form with UM relative, U just the same as Out 

 ef Vs> la MeUm, namely, "this," referring to the words that 

 follow. PrsoBMly ia the same way, ml. so closely connected with the 

 Latin relative that it may be regarded a* shortened form of quod 

 eunssconde for UM most part in nee with our own conjunction thai. 



A cairn eonsiderstiuo of what is meant by a relative clause wil 

 perhaps dew this anomaly of all substantial difficulty. A sentence 

 which involves a relative consists of two clauses; that which contains 

 UM rsktivs i* us*d solely for denning something, which is to be spoken 

 of In UM ssosnJ dans* ; and it is this second clause alone which carries 

 with it the news that the speaker wishes to convey. If the object to 

 be denned be |in*il, he may point to ft, and no further definition is 

 required. If otherwise, it is convenient to suppose it for the moment 

 to exbt in UM farm of anything at hand. Thus, the lawyers of Rome 

 ia conveying a distant estate in land, took up any clod of earth, and 

 treated ft M UM actual land then selling. Thus one might say, " This 

 I bought yesterday , this hone 1 will sell you for 201. ; " or in 

 , " Hunc (or quern, no matter which) eqiium heri emi, hunc tibi 

 ." Then, again, identity for the most part in form of the 

 relative sad interrogative needs not a word in proof, and the identity 

 in power is dear in the can of the indirect interrogative. Thus, " Die 

 qnis feat" (fteerit in old writers is not necessary), might be translated 

 by Show me the man who did it," saving that an t happens not 

 to be used with the relative; but this < has nothing to do with the base 

 of UM word, and indeed may at times be omitted from the interro- 

 gative itself. To translate die by "show," is simply to revert to the 

 older meaning of the word ; and between the two phrases quit fecit ! 

 and die quit /ml, to give a precedence in time to the latter, is in 

 nfmrdsnoe with the habit of language, which ever cuts down long 

 phrssM to shorter ; and in this particular case the omission of die was 

 UM more natural as it was the standing commencement of every ques- 

 tion, and therefore wholly superfluous, if the manner of the speaker 

 suggested that he was asking a question. At the dinner table, " A 

 glass of wine f " is quite intelligible without any interrogative whatever. 



As the meanings, then, run all into one another, the chief question 

 remaining U as to identity of form. Now it will be found that an 

 initial thin guttural is found in 7111 and 71114, in the Greek KOV, xartpas, 

 in our own old qurhat, qurhere. Then, again, for the demonstrative, 

 we have in the Latin eu, citra, eiterior, tui. ; in the Greek K<O>OS, or 



niw ; in the Tuscan qut/lo, quetlo, mini, cotli : and in a question of 

 this kind, the Tuscan stands on equal ground with the Latin, fur we 

 know that the language of Tuscany, even in the days of Roman supre- 

 macy, abounded in gutturals. As for the other consonants which are 

 seen at the commencement of third person pronouns, all surprise at the 

 change must fail away when we look to ww supplanting KOV in Greek, 

 filpif supplanting qmieyud in Latin, while the Latin OHM is the ana- 

 logue of the Greek ta, just as 711*, " and," is of T, " and." Ami if an 

 f is seen ia the Latin >, Eng. to and >rA, and the compound vkoto, 

 we have what ii iperfectiy parallel in the Greek <r>rrf , <n&<fo, for 

 rvTft, THuptr. Then, again, the mere aspirate of t, $, beside TO, and 

 of At, 4, *, f the Latin kit, tc., and our own he, herr, heart, is just the 

 letter which is constant!* superseding, now an *, now at Or if the 

 loss of UM pirate iteelf in it, ra, id, be pressed, we have only to call 

 to mind that what is now written U by ourselves was formerly written 

 A./, and i* still Art in Dutch. A guttural is of all letters most likely 

 to U corrupted, and hence, if there be reason to suspect that the thinl 

 of one origin, as in sense they might well have 





* has a stronger claim by far than any of the others, ;.. t , t, A, 

 Tb.n, as to the end of the word, it will be found that on 

 very aid* a final nal presents iUell. The Greek exhibits such a letter 

 in ri* (n. TII) ; the Latin in -<fc. aHaqmut ; the Spanish in quit* ; the 



in *; UM Swedish in a nom. Airrm. gen. Aiwsu; the 

 Dutofc ia a gen. *nu ; the English in **e*-et (old lotam-ei). The 

 fientkrit grammarians, again, Insist that the base of their relative is 

 i,, not In ; and beyond the limit* of our family, as usually defined, 

 UM Flan has fa. for tberelativ* as well as r. . and the Turfctt l-, m \ 

 Than, again, for the forms which prefer an , 

 rm ; the Danish SMI, still retained in our own 

 UM Slavonic forms for ' this " or " that " are 

 m in Russian. The Norse, for its personal 

 . *, ac Aaum gen. Awu, dat. Ao*t ; and 

 article the same language has a final in the nom. 

 . t cm, and evrls. this . into every oblique of all genders and both 

 WW. this evidence so strongly .converging to one point,- 



USM cannot MM answer that our own obsolete latin the 



" ^JL" y^^ """k* ^ " * whkh u bert fi i 



to bsUMorfai of demonstrativ* pronouns. The on* difficulty is era 

 w establish the antiquity of this verb I Something has beeii lalreS 

 ^onthispoint. It h-U Iracrf to theLato and G^ekaTth. 



root of guano, gnori, aynitia, ooynitnt. But it also occurs as a particle 

 in Latin, but of course in a reduced shape ; for when verbs are 

 degraded to such an office they are always reduced, as in our own la, 

 for loot. The particles alluded to are en, " behold,' and the suffix ft, 

 attached exclusively, as it well might be, to demonstratives, as to Ai-, 

 illi-t, isfi-e, ti-f. HUM-?, I***, or, in fuller form, AMA-CC, hi-fi-He. Lastly, 

 for the antiquity and wide extent of the verb ken, we need but add, 

 that it exists in Chinese with the very sense desired. It has bean 

 thought right to enter into these details in order to establish a point 

 so utterly opposed to. the doctrine of pronominal roots as taught by 

 Bopp, and too readily adopted by his followers ; and by way of 

 enlivening a subject which to many may appear dull, it may be noticed 

 that occasionally the force of a Latin sentence is brought out more 

 vividly by recurring to the primary meaning of hie and ille. Thus, in 

 Terence, Hant.' 8, 1, 1, Lucitcit hoe torn "It is getting light, look, 

 already;" and in * Virg.', 5, 457, Pradpitrmgue Daren anlem agit 

 (ration Mo, jVuM dextra iityeminan* ietut, unite ille tiaittra ' Now 

 with his right redoubling blows, now, loot, loot, with his left." 



The classification of the language* of the world is ss yet in a very 

 imperfect condition, as might be expected from the fact that a very 

 small portion of them have yet come fairly within the reach of science. 

 Of the great majority, we possess but short vocabularies, and those 

 obtained under circumstances which justify a strong doubt of their 

 value. It is therefore a matter of but ordinary prudence to abstain 

 from all definite theories as to languages of which so little is known. 

 The Indo-European family is in a very different position. Belonging 

 for the most part to highly civilised societies, each member of this 

 family has at least a dictionary and grammar; and having been long 

 under the scrutiny of men of science, they have severally yielded 

 results of value. Vet even here a too hasty generalisation has been 

 made. It was long before the Keltic branch was admitted to its full 

 rights as a member ; and philologers of the German school still draw 

 a line of absolute division between this family and other languages, 

 the accuracy of which the unfettered inquirer must be permitted to 

 doubt. The Finn and Lapp family, for example, are found to have 

 affinities with the Indo-European stock, which are not to be explained 

 by their being so closely in contact with the Scandinavian races, for 

 over and above those importations which are sure to take place where 

 barbarism borders on civilisation, there are coincidences which this con- 

 tiguity will not explain, such for example as between the Lapp mornm, 

 locum, tocum, and the equivalent forms in the Latin mecum, tecum, 

 Kcum, for pronouns and simple prepositions are precisely the sort of 

 articles which are never imported. Again in Norse the negative is ri, 

 fiyi, in Danish itte ; and in Finn ri, eiti. The personal endings of a 

 Lapp verb also bear a close resemblance to those of our Indo-European 

 family. Thus the plural of the verb molto " change " runs, mo/tmmen, 

 moltoite, motsom. The interrogative and relative in Finn have gene- 

 rally the form en, with suitable affixes for the cases, ftc. Again the 

 verb latten, " let go," and its diminutival form latkelen, " let go by little 

 and little," exhibit both in the main syllable and in the suffix el, what 

 s strikingly like words in the great European family. I-astly, as the 

 Latin by adding the particle que to the relative creates quifr/ue, so in 

 Finn the addition of a syllable not unlike que to the rektiv, 

 yo (so like the Sanskrit i/o) produces joca, " every one." In truth a 

 community of pronouns with the Indo-Teutonic family may justly be 

 claimed for several languages which lie for outside the limits as yet 

 issigned to it To hint at a connection between our family and the 

 Semitic, would shock the ears of most German philologers; ami it 

 must be admitted that a sad amount of rubbish in this way affords 

 some excuse for the prevalent dogmatism ; yet the two Hebrew 

 numerals AA and sA<6' for "six " and "seven," raise, to say the least, 

 strong suspicion of some affinity, though, no doubt, it must be a most 

 listant affinity. Be this as it may, the Chinese exhibits so man 

 lences of identity in important words with the Indo European family, 

 wo examples of which have been here given, that some relatiV 

 must assuredly exist; and to connect two such remote families is 

 irtually to draw into the circle many others. 



In this problem of comparing languages for the purpose of testing 



lationship, the first duty is to carefully analyse the words 



under comparison, so as to separate the essential from the non-essential, 



secondly to study the laws of letter-change which must subsist 



wtween the languages, if any close affinity exist. A mere identity of 



orm, even with identity of moaning, may be the result of mere 



accident. On the other hand a real identity often exists when the 



words have apparently nothing in common. Thus, our English much, 



andSp. mwAo have the same meaning, yet are nttnr/unooimeoted . ir 



the law of letter-change leaves not a doubt that mucho is the Latin 



Hiilin, Italian molln, a word intimately connected with the Greek voVv, 



ToAAoi, and so with r\fior, *\ior, /Jut, as well as with the English till 



' : jnrt as the Spanish ruchillo is the Latin cullctto ; whereas the 



Inglish mic A and its diminutive mtu&fc or mirl-le represent may of the 



Alin mag-no- and the Greek fttyoL\rj. Very different in the position of 



our inch, and its Latin equivalent tali-. Here, utterly different as 



are the forms, the words are one in origin, ucA being a corruption of 



alck, as seen in the German tulther, and this a compression from to- 



iel- ; while tali-, like so many Latin words, has lost a final guttural, 



nd *o represents ta-lit. Thus, the only serious difference lies in the 



liter-change of > and t, a question already considered for the pronouns. 



