888 REPORT— 1887. 



dialects would become the parent of numerous derived tougues. I must confess that 

 the evidence brought forward by Mr. Hale in support of his theory is not quite 

 convincing to me. It has yet to be proved that the words used by the children to 

 whom he refers were not echoes of the words used by their elders. If they were, a 

 language that originated in them would show more signs of lexical affinity to the older 

 language than is the case with one family of speech when compared with another. 

 On the other hand, the theory would tend to throw light on the curious fact that 

 the morphological divisions of language are also geographical. 



By the morphology of a language I mean its structure, that is to say, the mode 

 in which the relations of grammar are expressed in a sentence, and the order in 

 which they occur. These vaiy considerably, the chief variations being represented 

 by the polysynthetic languages of America, the isolating languages of Eastern Asia, 

 the posthxal languages of Central Asia, the prefixal languages of Africa, and the 

 inflectional languages of Europe and Western Asia. Now it will be observed that 

 each of these classes of language is associated with a particular part of the globe, 

 the isolating languages, for example, being practically confined to Eastern Asia, 

 and the polysynthetic languages to America. Within each class there are numerous 

 families of speech between which no relationship can be discovered beyond that of 

 a common structure ; they agree moiiihologically, but their grammar and lexicon 

 •show no signs of connection. If we adopt Mr. Hale's theory we might suppose that 

 the genealogically distinct families of speech grew up in the way he describes, while 

 their morphological agreement would be accounted for by the inherited tendency of 

 the children to run their thinking into a particular mould. The words and contri- 

 vances of grammar would be new, the mental framework in which they were set 

 would be an inheritance fi-om former generations. 



I have spoken of the inflectional languages as belonging to Europe and Western 

 Asia. This is true if we give a somewhat wide extension to the term inflectional, 

 and make it include not only the Indo-European group, but the Georgian and 

 Semitic groups as well. But, strictly speaking, the Indo-European, or Aryan, lan- 

 guages have a structure of their own, which difl'ers very markedly from that of either 

 the Georgian or the Semitic families. The .Semitic mode of expressing the relations 

 of grammar by changing the vowels within a framework of consonants differs as 

 much from the Aryan mode of expressing them by means of sufiixes as does the 

 Semitic partiality for words of three consonants from the Indo-European careless- 

 ness about the number of syllables in a word. Though it is quite true that the 

 Semitic languages at times approach the Indo-European by using suffixes to 

 denote the forms of grammar, while at other times the Indo-European lang-uages 

 may substitute internal vowel change for external flection, nevertheless, in general, 

 the kind of flection employed by the two families of speech is of a totally different 

 character. 



This difference of structure, coupled with a complete difference in phonology, 

 grammar, and lexion, has always seemed to me to negative the attempts that have 

 been made to connect the Aryan and Semitic families of language together. The 

 attempts have usually been based on the old confusion between language and 

 race ; both Aryans and Semites belong to the white race ; therefore it was assumed 

 their languages must be akin. As long as it was generally agreed that the primi- 

 tive home of the Aryan languages was, like that of the Semitic languages, the 

 western part of Asia, the confusion was excusable. If the earliest seats of the 

 speakers of each were in geographical proximity, there was some reason for believ- 

 ing that languages which were alike spoken by members of the white race, and 

 were alike classed as inflectional, would, when properly questioned, show signs of a 

 common origin. 



But that general agreement no longer exists. While the Asiatic origin of the 

 Semitic languages is beyond dispute, scholars have of late years been coming more 

 and more to the conclusion that Europe was the cradle of the Aryan tongues. 

 Their European origin was first advocated by our countryman Dr. Latham, and 

 was subsequently defended by the eminent comparative philologist Dr. Benfey ; but 

 it is only within the last half-dozen years that the theory has won its way to scien- 

 tific recognition. Different lines of research have been converging towards the 



