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SOME 



LAWS OF PHONETIC CHANGE 



IN THE KHITAN LANGUAGES. 



BY JOHN CAMPBELL, M.A. 

 Professor in the Presbyterian College, Montreal. 



In several published ai-ticles, some of which were read before the 

 Canadian Institute, I have given comparative vocabularies illus- 

 trating the connection of the American languages with those of the 

 Old World. Among ethnologists there is a strong prejudice against 

 this mode of procedure, a prejudice arising partly from an unwilling- 

 ness to undertake the labour necessary for an appreciation of the 

 results obtained ; partly, it may be, from a suspicion that the 

 vocabulist has been too anxious to prove his point to be scrupulous 

 about the means; and, in particular, from the possibility or pi*ob- 

 ability that the resemblances exhibited are nothing more than such 

 chance coincidences as will appear more or less in comparing any 

 two languages in the world. A similar prejudice might have 

 opposed, and in many minds probably did for a time oppose, the 

 reception of the Indo-European family of languages, for the resem- 

 blances presented in their vocabularies as compared among them- 

 selves are not a whit more striking than those which characterize a 

 comparison of the languages of north-eastern Asia with those of the 

 principal native races of North and South America. This, however, 

 distinguishes the two linguistic fields ; the Indo-European is infinitely 

 better known. Now, speaking of that field, Professor Max Muller 

 tells us that, as far as etymological science is concerned, identity or 

 similarity of sound or meaning is of no importance whatever. This, 

 of course, is true when we are dealing with individual words, but to 

 apply such a rule in the case of a general comparison of vocabularies 

 would be to remove the foundation on which the classification of 

 languages has been laid and from which comparative etymology has 

 sprung. As well go to the extreme at once, and, with Schleicher, 



