RELATIONS OF COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR 33 



languages, as especially exemplified in Indo-European Comparative 

 Grammar. 1 



The Relation of Comparative Grammar to the Study of an Individual 



Language 



The most intimate relation which comparative grammar sustains 

 is to the study of an individual language. No one to whom language 

 is an object of intrinsic interest, and not merely a means to an end, 

 is satisfied with purely descriptive grammar, the bare statement 

 of the facts of a given language, however essential this is as a found- 

 ation for historical investigation. And even he who believes it the 

 function of the grammarian of an individual language to state only 

 facts, and prides himself on the avoidance of anything even remotely 

 savoring of comparative grammar and there are still some eminent 

 scholars who maintain such an attitude is almost certain to deceive 

 himself as to what constitutes a fact. If in recording a form a and 

 a somewhat different form 6 appearing at another time or place with 

 the same meaning as a, he states that a becomes b, he is going beyond 

 the facts and introducing what is none the less an hypothesis because 

 it seems so obvious. Indeed, comparative grammar may furnish con- 

 clusive evidence that both a and 6 are independent inheritances from 

 the parent speech. The moment that one begins to deal with the 

 relations of facts to one another, with their historical development, 

 it becomes impossible to treat a given language as an isolated set 

 of phenomena, and to ignore the evidence of the other languages of 

 the same family. What is obscure from the point of view of a single 

 language may become clear when the evidence of the sister languages 

 is taken into account. If the comparative method is essential in the 

 history of other human institutions such as art or religion, how pre- 

 eminently is this true of language, for in no other sphere of intellect- 

 ual activity is there such continuity of development as in language, 

 which in this respect is more analogous to the biological sciences. 



1 I have employed the term Comparative Grammar throughout as the one, of 

 those in actual use, which best conforms to the classification of the sciences repre- 

 sented hi the programme of the Congress, and is the most suitable for the intended 

 subject of discussion in this Section. But as the name of what is actually the Indo- 

 Europeanist's field of interest, I prefer Indo-European Comparative Philology 

 (Indo-European Philology would be sufficient, since Indo-European implies that 

 it is comparative, but the term Comparative may well be retained hi deference to 

 the familiar Comparative Philology). It is true that Philology in the term Com- 

 parative Philology was originally intended in its narrower and secondary ap- 

 plication to purely linguistic study, so that Comparative Philology and Com- 

 parative Grammar were identical. But since Philology is also used in English, as 

 always hi German, in its wider application to the study of the whole intellectual 

 activity of a people, no matter how manifested, we may so understand it also in 

 Indo-European Comparative Philology, which will then embrace a branch of in- 

 quiry which holds a legitimate, though quite subordinate, position in the Indo- 

 Europeanist's field of interest; namely, the comparative study of Indo-European 

 institutions, to which reference will be made below. 



