LANGUAGES OF THE INDO-EUKOPEAN FAMILY. 283 



eluding the Semitic tongues, "denotes the secondary intentions of 

 meaning bj the addition of a word, which may by itself signify plu- 

 rality, past time, what is to be in the future, or other relative ideas 

 of that kind." Bopp shows us that neither this division, nor that of 

 Augustus Schlegel, into "languages without grammatical structure, 

 lajiguages that employ affixes, and languages with inflections," are 

 valid, inasmuch as the inflections meant do not necessarily exist in, 

 nor are characteristic of, the Indo-European languages, which repre- 

 sent the latter class. Bopp's own classification is into three classes. 

 First, "languages with monosyllabic roots, without the capability of 

 composition, and hence without organism, without grammar." This 

 includes the Chinese. Secondly, "languages with monosyllabic roots, 

 which are capable of combination, and obtain their organism and 

 grammar nearly in this way alone." Here the Indo-European and 

 so-called Turanian languages are found. Thirdly, "languages with 

 dissyllabic verbal roots, and three necessary consonants as single 

 vehicles of the fundamental meaning." The Semitic languages alone 

 make up this class, "which produces its grammatical forms not simply 

 by combination, but by a mere internal modification of the roots. "^ 

 In this latter definition of his third class, Bopp falls into the opposite 

 extreme to that for which he blames Friedrich and Augustus Schlegel. 

 Internal modifications of the root are common to both the Semitic 

 and Indo-European languages, and thus peculiar to neither. The 

 best classification is that of Prof. Max Mtiller into languages in the 

 Monosyllabic, Terminational, and Inflectional stages. The first still 

 includes the Chinese; the second, in which one of the roots uniting 

 to form a word loses its independence, embraces the Turanian lan- 

 guages ; and the third, in which both of two roots uniting to form a 

 word, lose their independence, contains the Indo-European and the 

 Semitic families.* The author of this last classification, however, 

 states "that it is impossible to imagine an Aryan language derived 

 from a Semitic, or a Semitic from an Aryan language. The gram- 

 matical framework is totally distinct in these two families of speech." 

 Ernest Renan goes much farther, and says, in his Histoire Generale 

 et Systeme Compare des Langues Semitiques, "We must give up the 

 search for any connection betAveen the grammatical systems of the 



2 A Comparative Grammar of tlie Sanscrit, Zend, &c.. Languages, by Prof. F. Bopp. Trans- 

 lated from the German by E. B. Eastwick, F.R.S., &c. 2nd edition. London, 1856; vol. i, 

 p. 99-103. 



• Lectures on the Science of Language ; series 1 ; lecture viii. 



