necessitated by phonetic laws (as, for instance, thar. mavit, instead of dharmavid), Pânini says (iii. 3, 68), that a suffix (namely, vit) is added to the root vid. But if we come to inquire what this suffix means and why it is called vit, we find (vi. 1, 67) that a lopa, i. e. a lopping off, is to carry away the v of vit; that the final is only meant to indicate certain phonetic changes that take place if a root ends in a nasal (vi. 4, 41); and that the vowel i serves merely to connect these two algebraic symbols. So that the suffix viț is in reality nought. This is certainly strict logic, but it is rather cumbersome grammar, and from an historical point of view, we are justified in dropping these circumlocutions, and looking upon roots as real words.

With us, speaking inflectional and highly refined languages, roots are primarily what remains as the last residuum after a complete analysis of our own dialects, or of all the dialects that form together the great Aryan mass of speech. But if our analysis is properly made, what is to us a mere residuum must originally, in the natural course of events, have been a real germ; and these germinal forms would have answered every purpose in an early stage of language. We must not forget that there are languages which have remained in that germinal state, and in which there is to the present day no outward distinction between a root and a word. In Chinese,1 for instance, ly means to plough, a plough, and an ox, i. e. a plougher; ta means to be great, greatness, greatly. Whether a word is intended as a noun, or a verb, or a particle, depends chiefly on the position 1 Endlicher, Chinesische Grammatik, § 123.

which it occupies as a sentence. In the Polynesian1 dialects, almost every verb may, without any change of form, be used as a noun or an adjective; whether it is meant for the one or the other must be learnt from certain particles, which are called particles of affirmation (kua), and the particles of the agent (ko). In Egyptian, as Bunsen states, there is no formal distinction between noun, verb, adjective, and particle, and a word like anh might mean life, to live, living, lively. What does this show? I think it shows that there was a stage in the growth of language, in which that sharp distinction which we make between the different parts of speech had not yet been fixed, and when even that fundamental distinction between subject and predicate, on which all the parts of speech are based, had not yet been realized in its fulness, and had not yet received a corresponding outward expression.

A slightly different view is propounded by Professor Pott, when he says: "Roots, it should be observed, as such, lack the stamp of words, and therefore their real value in the currency of speech. There is no inward necessity why they should first have entered into the reality of language, naked and formless; it suffices that, unpronounced, they fluttered before the soul like small images, continually clothed in the mouth, now with this, now with that form, and surrendered to the air to be drafted off in hundredfold cases and combinations.3

It might be said, that, as soon as a root is pronounced as soon as it forms part of a sentence

1 Cf. Hale, p. 263.

• Etymologische Forschungen, ii. 95.

2 Bunsen's Aegypten, i. 324.

it ceases to be a root, and is either a subject or a predicate, or, to use grammatical language, a noun or a verb. Yet even this seems an artificial distinction. To a Chinese, the sound ta, even when pronounced, is a mere root; it is neither noun nor verb, distinctions which, in the form in which we conceive them, have no existence at all to a Chinese. If to ta we add fu, man, and when we put fu first and ta last, then, no doubt, fu is the subject, and ta the pred icate, or, as our grammarians would say, fu is a noun, and ta a verb; fu ta would mean, "the man is great." But if we said ta fu, ta would be an adjective, and the phrase would mean "a great man." I can here see no real distinction between ta, potentially a noun, an adjective, a verb, an adverb, and ta in fu ta, used actually as an adjective or verb.

As the growth of language and the growth of the mind are only two aspects of the same process, it is difficult for us to think in Chinese, or in any radical language, without transferring to it our categories of thought. But if we watch the language of a child, which is in reality Chinese spoken in English, we see that there is a form of thought, and of language, perfectly rational and intelligible to those who have studied it, in which, nevertheless, the distinction between noun and verb, nay, between subject and predicate, is not yet realized. If a child says Up, that up is, to his mind, noun, verb, adjective, all in one. It means, "I want to get up on my mother's lap.” If an English child says ta, that ta is both a noun, thanks, and a verb, I thank you. Nay, even if a child learns to speak grammatically, it does not yet think grammatically; it seems, in speaking, to wear

the garments of its parents, though it has not yet grown into them. A child says, "I am hungry," without an idea that I is different from hungry, and that both are united by an auxiliary verb, which auxiliary verb again was a compound of a root as, and a personal termination mi, giving us the Sanskrit asmi, I am. A Chinese child would express exactly the same idea by one word, shi, to eat, or food, &c. The only difference would be that a Chinese child speaks the language of a child, an English child the language of a man. If, then, it is admitted that every inflectional language passed through a radical and an agglutinate stage, it seems to follow that at one time or other, the constituent elements of inflectional languages, namely, the roots, were, to all intents and purposes, real words, and used as such both in thought and speech.

Roots, therefore, are not such mere abstractions as they are sometimes supposed to be, and unless we succeed in tracing each word in English or in any inflectional language back to its root, we have not, traced it back to its real origin. It is in this analysis of language that comparative philology has achieved its greatest triumphs, and has curbed that wild spirit of etymology which would handle words as if they had no past, no history, no origin. In tracing words back to their roots we must obey certain phonetic laws. If the vowel of a root is i or u, its derivatives will be different, from Sanskrit down to English, from what they would have been if that radical vowel had been a. If a root begins with a tenuis in Sanskrit, that tenuis will never be a tenuis in Gothic, but an aspirate; if a root begins with an aspirate in

Sanskrit, that aspirate will never be an aspirate in Gothic, but a media; if a root begins with a media in Sanskrit, that media will not be a media in Gothic, but a tenuis.

And this, better than anything else, will, I think, explain the strong objection which comparative philologists feel to what I called the Bow-wow and the Pooh-pooh theories, names which I am sorry to see have given great offence, but in framing which, I can honestly say, I thought of Epicurus rather than of living writers, and meant no offence to either. "Onomatopœic" is neither an appropriate nor a pleasant word, and it was absolutely necessary to distinguish between two theories, the onomatopeic, which derives words from the sounds of animals and nature in general, as imitated by the framers of language, and the interjectional, which derives words, not from the imitation of the interjections of others, but from the interjections themselves, as wrung forth, almost against their will, from the framers of language. I did not think that the weapons of ridicule were necessary to combat theories which, since the days. of Epicurus, had so often been combated, and so often been defended. I may have erred in choosing terms which, while they expressed exactly what I wished to express, sounded rather homely and undignified; but I could not plead for the terms I had chosen a better excuse than the name now suggested by the supporters of the onomatopoeic theory, which, I am told, is Imsonic, from im instead of imitation, and son instead of sonus, sound.

1 Ο γὰρ Επίκουρος ἔλεγεν ὅτι οὐχὶ ἐπιστημόνως οὗτοι ἔθεντο τὰ ὀνόματα, ἀλλὰ φυσικῶς κινούμενοι, ὡς οἱ βήσσοντες καὶ πταίροντες καὶ μυκώμενοι καὶ ὑλακτοῦντες καὶ στενάζοντες. — Proclus, ad Plat. Crat. p. 9.