ON ETHNOLOGY. 
275 
of the declining: Roman language, the native tongue of Italy for ages, and 
introduced into tiie other countries by military colonization. This language 
had been adopted by the Celtic population imperfectly, but to such an extent 
that they gradually forgot their own language, not being gifted with sufficient 
tormative capacity to master and incorporate the intruding element. The ener¬ 
getic and conquering German tribes did possess this capacity, and gradually 
made the mixed Gerraano-Latin language the badge of their young nationality. 
the remodelmg cause ol the formation of those languages was therefore 
bermame. Ihe element upon which it worked was tin. Latin tongue, re¬ 
printed by a decaying Homan nationality, which (with the exception of 
Itoly proper) had l>een eugrafteU in the .South upou a Celtic, and in Vala- 
ebia upon a Slavonic population. The active moveaient of the Germanic 
mind, operating upon the subject Roman population, dissolved, and as it 
were burst the compact structure of the Latin tongue. Thus Germanic 
words were first substituted for Latin, but only in refepccl to the nouns and 
verbs. As for the particle* and the degenerate inHexional forms, the old 
ones were superseded by the subsiitutioii of periphrastic forms, derived how¬ 
ever from the Latin and not from the Germanic stem. Thus the words cis 
(originally uU) disaj'peared. The Jraliun says, a/ di qtia, al di Id ; 
the trench, an (en) dild, nu {par) de/d, which gives, as the original form, 
the Latin words, ad illnd de qua {parte), and de iUo otper illud de illd. In 
the same way doriyuimnt replaces a/dtinc. To undcrstuuil the origin of this 
phrase we must reduce it to the barbaric periphrasis, de horn m ab ante. 
the most palpable proof that conjunctions represent a whole sentence is the 
Italian rmctosMecosache instcwl of quarntpium, literally, ctm hoc sit causa 
qma. ^lo gradual decay and disappeurance of the neuter gender in the 
substantive* may ho traced iu the popular dialect from the third century to 
the year 1000 of our era, when the utmost confusion prevailed among the 
fuins of the magmficent language of ancient Home, and nowhere more than 
in Home itsoll and its neighbourhood. The cases of tbu noun gave way to 
uecleusioiis formed by two prejmsUions, tut and de, taken from the J.atin stock, 
and coalescing with the wreck of the pronoun iUe, which became the article 
ot the Ilomamc languages, the first part in Italian, the second in French, 
to the same way the Latin conjugation disappeared more or less under the 
inUuence of a periphrastic formation, by tho help of esse and habere thus 
Here also the elenuMits wore taken from tlio Latin sii-m, And it is worthy 
0 remark, that the Ctcrmanlc nations batl tUemselvcs as complete inflexional 
declensions as the Latin; they also possessed the article like the Greek; 
hut their conjugation of the past and future tensea was decidedly defective, 
ana waa tberetore necessarily supplied by the periphrastic mm of the verbs 
• an to have. In both cases we see how tlie mnodeling element in- 
Hueoced the new formation* from the Latin. Still the ehange which took 
place was only mdirectly effeetod by the Gcrnians; dircctlv it waa the work of 
toe Latin nations, mixed wiUi Uiose Genouna who hud destroyed the old world 
ot Greepe and Rome, upon a language, the ilecay of which had followed the 
(loclino and fall ol the Empire. Thus tho languages of southern Europe have 
all X.atm grammatical forms and particles, with a strong admixture of Ger¬ 
man words (bci^ides the Celtic, and in .‘'pain luoreowr the Arabic), nouns 
and verbs introduced by the conquering mec, which adopted the established 
language, strengthened by literature ami the liturgy. 
We find absolutely the same phcrjonionon iu the furaiation of the modem 
lemau and tbe lurkish, Hoth formations were lufluenced by the language 
and civilization of the leading Mahouiumdau nation, the Arabs. The gram¬ 
matical forms with the pronouns and other particles are from the original 
T 2 
