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THE PRIMITIVE LANGUAGE.

5. If all languages descended from a common parent, then the question which of them is the primitive language may be dismissed as unworthy of investigation.

The affiliation of languages is one thing, their parentage another. Now the older linguists, when they found certain words to be the same in two languages, concluded that one must be the parent of the other, when, in fact, they were only sister languages, moving along side by side from a common source, developing themselves under the influence of various causes found in nature and society. Instead of endeavoring to discover whether the Hebrew, or the Dutch, or some other was the primitive language, Grotius seems to have adopted the true view, namely, that the primitive language is not extant any where in a pure state, but that its remains exist in all languages.

On the supposition that all languages have a common origin, we should expect that words of prime necessity, being brought into use before the dispersion of mankind, would still, if any, be found existing in the several languages; and such is the fact. Thus, words used as numerals, and those used to express the nearest and dearest relations, like father and mother, extensively resemble each other.

DIVERSITIES IN LANGUAGES.

§ 6. While affinities among languages have to be sought with painful care, diversities are obvious, and have to be accounted for.

When men speaking the same language separate into families and tribes, causes are brought into operation which will, in the progress of time, produce a diversity of language. These causes are, 1. Difference of occupation. 2. Difference of improvement in sciences and the arts of life. 3. Difference of climate, both by bringing different classes of objects before the mind and by producing different effects upon the organs of speech. Hence it happens that, when two races of men of a common stock are placed in distant countries, the language of each begins to diverge from that of the other

by various means. 1. One will suffer one word to become obsolete and forgotten; the other will suffer the loss of another. 2. The same word will be differently applied by two distant races of men, and the difference will be so great as to obscure the original affinity. 3. Words will be compounded by two nations in a different manner. 4. The pronunciation and orthography of the same word will be different.Webster's Dictionary, Preface. These statements appear to be sustained by facts. On the authority of Rask, the ancient Scandinavian, the Danska Tunge, was, in the ninth century, the common speech in Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, where now there are great diversities. The progress of these diversities can be satisfactorily traced from that period to the present time. These diversities extend to all those features in which it is possible for one language to differ from another; viz., to words, grammar, inflections, arrangement of words in sentences. "In the various kingdoms and provinces in which it was once spoken, different portions of the parent speech have been abandoned or preserved." Hence it follows that the primitive language of Scandinavia, or "Danska Tunge," does not exist entire in any one, but is dispersed in ALL its derivative dialects, illustrating the fate of the primitive language of the world, as intimated by Grotius. See § 5.

Three opinions have existed in respect to the origin of the diversities in languages. One has just been stated. A second proceeds on the supposition that there were originally several distinct stocks of the human race, and as many distinct languages as stocks. The third is formed on the supposition that the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel, by its miraculous agency, will account for all the diversities in human language; just as the flood has by some been considered as a cause adequate to the production of certain geological irregularities which are found in the structure of the earth.

The first of these opinions is at present the current one, supported, as it seems to be, by increasing evidence. But in candor it ought to be confessed, that between certain languages and certain other languages no affinities have been discovered which indicate an original unity.

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The general topic of this section can be fitly closed by a quotation from that distinguished philosopher, William von Humboldt: "The true solution of the contrast of stability and fluctuation which we find in language lies in the unity of human nature." "No one assigns precisely the same meaning to a word which another does, and a shade of meaning, be it ever so slight, ripples on like a circle in the water through the entirety of language. The power of speech may be regarded as physiological effect; that proceeding from the individual as a purely dynamical one." "We must regard speech not so much as a dead begotten, but rather a begetting; we must abstract from what it is as a designation of objects, and a help to the understanding; on the contrary, we must go back more carefully to a consideration of its origin, so nearly connected with the subjective mental activity, and to its reciprocal action thereupon." "Even its preservation by means of writing keeps it only in an incomplete, mummy-like fashion, in which it can get vitality only by timely recitation. In itself it is not an ἔργον, but an ενέργεια.”

CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES.

§ 7. A classification of languages can be made only so far as the affinities and diversities among languages are known. In the present state of comparative philology, a full classification of all the languages spoken is out of the question. So little is known of the Chinese, the Japanese, the Tartar, the Malay, and of many other languages, that only a general classification can be expected until the study of ethnog raphy shall throw additional light upon comparative philology.

BALBI'S CLASSIFICATION.

8. I. European, subdivided into six families: 1. The Basque or Iberian, including the Basque or Escuera; 2. The Celtic, comprising the Gaelic, or Irish, or Erse, the Cymraeg, &c.; 3. The Thraco-Pelasgic, or Græco-Latin, comprising the Albanian, Etruscan, Greek, Latin, Romance, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, &o.; 4. The Germanic, comprising the old High Dutch, the modern High Dutch, or German, the Frisic, the Neider Dutch or Low Dutch of

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