them were originally predicative, that they entered into composition with the principal predicative root, and then dwindled down to mere suffixes. Thus scape in landscape, and the more frequent ship in hardship, are both derived from the same root which we have in Gothic,1 skapa, skôp, skôpum, to create; in Anglo-Saxon, scape, scop, scôpon. It is the same as the German derivative schaft, in Gesellschaft, &c. So again dom in wisdom or christendom is derived from the same root which we have in to do. It is the same as the German thum in Christenthum, the Anglo-Saxon dôm in cyning-dôm, Königthum. Hood, the Anglo-Saxon hâd, means state or rank; but in man-hood, child-hood, brother-hood, neighbour-hood, it becomes a mere abstract suffix.2

The same holds good with regard to more ancient languages. Thus in Sanskrit maya is used as a secondary suffix to form words such as asmamaya, made of stone, mrinmaya, made of earth or loam, and its original meaning is hardly felt. Yet there can be little doubt that maya comes from the root mâ, mîyate, to measure, to make, and was originally an independent word, like mita, or vimita, made of. This we see more clearly in gomaya, which means not only bovinus, but cow-dung. In Greek a trace of

1 Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik, b. ii. s. 521.

2 Spenser, Shepheard's Calender, Februarie (ed. Collier, i. p. 25):— Cuddie, I wote thou kenst little good

So vainly t'advaunce thy headlesse hood: '

(for thy headlessness; hood, the German heit, is a termination denoting estate, as manhood.-T. Warton.)

In Old High-German deoheit and deomuat mean the same thing; in modern German we have only Demuth, lit. servant-hood, humility. See also infra, p. 394, note 3.

the same suffix has been preserved in ἀνδρό-μεος, originally made of men, but used in the sense of human, e. g. Od. ix. 297, ἀνδρόμεα κρέ ̓ ἔδων, eating human flesh; Il. xi. 538, öμiλov åvòpóμeov, a crowd of men.1

We have necessarily confined ourselves in our analysis of language to that family of languages to which our own tongue, and those with which we are best acquainted, belong; but what applies to Sanskrit and the Aryan family applies to the whole realm of human speech. Every language, without a single exception, that has as yet been cast into the crucible of comparative grammar, has been found to contain these two substantial elements, predicative and demonstrative roots. In the Semitic family these two constituent elements are even more palpable than in Sanskrit and Greek. Even before the discovery of Sanskrit, and the rise of comparative philology, Semitic scholars had successfully traced back the whole dictionary of Hebrew and. Arabic to a small number of roots, and as every root in these languages consists of three consonants, the Semitic languages have sometimes been called by the name of triliteral.

To a still higher degree the constituent elements are, as it were, on the very surface in the Turanian family of speech. It is one of the characteristic features of that family, that, whatever the number of prefixes and suffixes, the root must always stand out in full relief, and must never be allowed to suffer by its contact with derivative elements.

There is one language, the Chinese, in which no analysis of any kind is required for the discovery of 1 Pân. v. 4, 21.

its component parts. It is a language in which no coalescence of roots has taken place; every word is a root, and every root is a word. It is, in fact, the most primitive stage in which we can imagine human language to have existed. It is language comme il faut; it is what we should naturally have expected all languages to be.

There are, no doubt, numerous dialects in Asia, Africa, America, and Polynesia, which have not yet been dissected by the knife of the grammarian; but we may be satisfied at least with this negative evidence, that, as yet, no language which has passed through the ordeal of grammatical analysis has ever disclosed any but these two constituent elements.

The problem, therefore, of the origin of language, which seemed so perplexing and mysterious to the ancient philosophers, assumes a much simpler aspect with us. We have learnt what language is made of; we have found that everything in language, except the roots, is intelligible, and can be accounted for. There is nothing to surprise us in the combination of the predicative and demonstrative roots which led to the building up of all the languages with which we are acquainted, from Chinese to English. It is not only conceivable, as Professor Pott remarks, 'that the formation of the Sanskrit language, as it is handed down to us, may have been preceded by a state of the greatest simplicity and entire absence of inflections, such as is exhibited to the present day by the Chinese and other monosyllabic languages'; it is absolutely impossible that it should have been

otherwise.

THE

CHAPTER X.

MORPHOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION.

Families and Classes of Languages.

HE analysis of human speech given in the preceding chapter ought to teach us two things: first, that in families of language, held together by genealogical ties, there may be more near and more distant degrees of relationship; secondly, that languages which can claim no genealogical relationship whatever, may still be classified morphologically, that is, according to the manner in which their constituent elements, the predicative and demonstrative roots, have been combined. Both these lessons will be useful to us in treating of the languages which are neither Aryan nor Semitic.

Strictly speaking, the Aryan and Semitic are the only families of speech which fully deserve that title. They both presuppose the existence of a finished system of grammar, previous to the first divergence of their dialects. Their history is from the beginning a history of decay rather than of growth, and hence the unmistakeable family-likeness which pervades every one even of their latest descendants. The language of the Sepoy and that of the English soldier are, in one sense, one and the same language. They are both built up of materials which were definitely shaped before the Teutonic and Indic branches

separated. No new root has been added to either since their first separation; and the grammatical forms which are of more modern growth in English or Hindustani are, if closely examined, new combinations only of elements which existed from the beginning in all the Aryan dialects. In the termination of the English he is, and in the inaudible termination of the French il est, we recognise the result of an act performed before the first separation of the Aryan family, the combination of the predicative root as with the demonstrative root ti; an act performed once for all, and continuing to be felt to the present day.

It was the custom of Nebuchadnezzar to have his name stamped on every brick that was used during his reign in erecting his colossal palaces. Those palaces fell to ruins, but from the ruins the ancient materials were carried away for building new cities; and, on examining the bricks in the walls of the modern city of Bagdad on the borders of the Tigris, Sir Henry Rawlinson discovered on each the clear traces of that royal signature. It is the same if we examine the structure of modern languages. They too were built up with the materials taken from the ruins of the ancient languages, and every word, if properly examined, displays the visible stamp impressed upon it from the first by the founders of the Aryan and the Semitic empires of speech.

Distant Relationship.

The relationship of languages, however, is not always so close, and they may nevertheless have to be