THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE. 103 



the confusion of speech which followed the conquest of Latin Europe 

 by the Teutonic barbarians, the southern dialects remained radictilly 

 Latin, but many inflections, as, for example, the cases of nouns, dis- 

 appeared altogether. The Latin future was also lost ; but the need 

 of this tense Avas so strongly felt, that a new one was formed by 

 uniting the auxiliary verb "have" with the principal vei'b. Thus 

 the Spanish provincial, instead of amabo, amabis, amabit, learned to 

 say amar he, amar has, amar ha, literally, I have to love, thou hast 

 to love, he has to iove ; and these expressions were easily compressed 

 into the modern forms amare, amards, amard. * It is well known 

 that the Latin tense itself is (in the first and second conjugations) of 

 a similar secondary formation, replacing an early Aryan future. 



Thus in every instance, where any record exists, we are led back 

 from these secondary formations to an earlier stage of the language ; 

 and the natural and indeed inevitable inference is that, in all lan- 

 guages of every stock, the same general law prevails. The various 

 dialectical forms, either of words or of grammar, are in general mere 

 corruptions or replacements of elements which existed in the original 

 speech. 



At this stage of our argument it becomes necessary to consider 

 with some care an important question which has already been inci- 

 dentally alluded to— that of the difference between synthetic and 

 analytic languages. The fact that dui-ing the historic period the pro- 

 gress of language has in general been from the more to the less com- 

 plex form is unquestionable. The process which strikes us in the rise 

 of the Romanic languages on the ruin of the Latin is repeated in the 

 Teutonic countries, in Grreece, in Pei'sia, in India, and in Ai'abia. In 

 all these regions many inflected and composite forms have disappeared, 

 and have given place to simpler and more analytic methods. Preposi- 

 tions an<l auxiliary verbs have, to a greater or less extent, superseded 

 the case-forms, tenses, and moods of the primitive tongues. This has 

 Vjeen regarded as a progress from synthesis to analysis ; and, as has 

 been already shown, some emiuent wiiters have been led to maintain 

 that this pi-ogress represents the natural and necessary advance 

 which a language makes, with the development of intellect and of 

 cultuie in those who speak it. Some have even gone so far as to 

 ^ Marsh : " Lectures on the English Lanjifuage: Lect. XV7. 



