K is used for C, TJ for Tsch, &c. but no rule has been exactly observed throughout. Sometimes Sh is expressed by S, at other times the importance of the H is shown by writing it in full. The chief design has been to show how by prefixes and affixes, by the dropping out of medials, and the rejection now of the first and now of the last element, an almost infinite series of changes not only can be permitted, but have actually realized themselves in the languages and dialects of the earth; how that no idea can be technically said to be expressed by man labially, or dentally, or gutturally, or nasally, seeing that the very same series of dissyllables which in one direction ends in a single labial, is sure, when followed in another direction, to end in a dental, and when followed in a third direction, to end in a guttural or nasal; while the very same simple guttural, dental, or labial, reappears in the different series as a vehicle for different ideas. To illustrate by an example or two: HAIR, from such double full forms as GURuGURu (197), CyPy' HUIR (153), tJe'RaChe'R (159), &c., passes down through one long range of changes to become a simple labial Fa (164), and through as long a range of changes in another direction, to become a simple dental oT (69). MAN passes on from similar full forms down to such simple forms as Mo, Tshu, or zoi. STONE becomes To, Ko, aL, aN, iSH and öFe. On the other hand, and to illustrate the other phase of the law, CaLGaSSen (137) means Hair,-KuDaCeS (58) means Man,—and CiT’XiN (158) means Head. MieZ (56), MeS (57), mean Man, while MaZda (171), MaZ (107), mean Hair. HaiR in English and XeiR Hand in Greek, GoiR Man and KeR Stone, cannot be distinguished philologically. Many other like instances will appeal to the eye, without further remark; and would be innumerable had we some scores of such tables made out. It follows, from facts like these, that two theories respecting the great body of monosyllables must be adopted. First, they do not belong to the organic primary sounds by which our involuntary animal nature utters itself, and so their study in that department will be a failure. It is evident that a stone or a bird cannot relate itself indifferently to all the organs of speech in turn, if that be the kind of relation by which it gets itself named. If, for instance, its original organic name, not invented but simply exasperated by all mankind unconsciously, be TO, then it could not be KO, nor could it be ISH, nor AN, nor öFe. Are these then alterations? but if that be once granted, the science of Comparative Philosophy commits suicide. Secondly, the great body of monosyllables so far from being originals are fragments. All language is a breccia, or rather it resembles the great fossiliferous lime-rocks of the coal measures, full of the parted joints of encrini, once connected into living, waving, propagating stems and flowers of stone. In the construction of charts like these one can see how the stems came to be disjointed, and the isolated discs to be so strewn hither and thither among the secondary sediments of speech, the dialects of different tribes. To illustrate this: here is one Here we have the reduplicated form of the compound guttural, labial and lingual, and the dropping away of one part after another, until nothing but the end remains. The selection of these five particular objects of speech was made because they are among the most familiar to men, and have simple or unequivocal meanings, and therefore ought to be named alike in all languages, if such a fact were possible. Yet we see how they merely play different groups of runs upon the same gamut. They were selected also as good examples of a principal or type arrangement of the elements in the full form, Ka Ba Ra Ta, the historical meaning of which I have endeavoured, in papers read before the American Association, to illustrate. There are undoubtedly many such type forms, all of which can be wrought out by this method of visible classification. The positive results to be arrived at then seem to be these-1. The same radical sound, Ba for example (modulated of course as Pa, Fa, Va, Wa, Ma), can be found in a large majority of languages, standing as a name for a majority of the objects of thought expressed by speech. 2. In the midst of this apparent wilderness of confusion, a very evident order will come to view, when all the sounds employed to represent one idea are classified in vertical columns; and this order will consist in their various groupings. Each idea is indeed expressed by all the signs known to the ear of man, but is most often expressed, or in other words is expressed by the greater number of mouths, in one kind of way, that is, by one group of analogous words larger than all the other groups. The idea will be recognised as having, so to speak, a greater run upon one set of elements or combinations. And we may hope that as Lesquerox has succeeded in recognizing each successive coal bed, not so much by any individual fossil, as by some different group of plants, the plants themselves being nevertheless found in higher and lower beds than the one so marked, we in like manner will be able to distinguish languages ethnologically by this grouping of forms of words common to all, under special ideas. 3. Charts like these prove the reality of certain facts in philology sometimes doubted; the reality, for instance, of derivative reversion; as in the Greek λoy, Hebrew hip; Go-bo-l, becomes Go-lo-ba, &c. This will be of importance in discussing the kinship of neighbouring nations with inverted names such as Dorians and Rhodians, Italians and Latins, Berbers and Arabs, &c. I have pursued my own researches for some years with this in view as an established fact, that the boustrophedon manner of writing is a reality in etymology and ethnology, as it was in mythology and common history. It made no difference to the inventor of a word whether one symbol or another came first, for he did not write to express a previously known sound (as we do), but set down the symbols of his ideas and afterwards accepted the sounds they gave him. In other words, in this department of philology letters make words and not words letters.* 4. It seems to be evident that the liquids and dentals, as a rule, replace each other not by alteration but by alternation, for none of these columns worked well until the L's and R's were put under one head and the Ts, Ds and N under another. There are, of course, many exceptional cases of true organic mutation.-In like manner it seems clear that the terminal NG of many languages is not a mere nasality, but that the G is the relic of a lost syllable beginning with a guttural. 5. The loss of consonantal elements is seen to be indicated by the presence of diphthongs or groups of vowels, and especially by the concentrated diphthongs O and U. Also, the fact appears that not only any diphthong, but any strong vowel, can in time come to replace not the labials only but any one of all the consonants; and our only salvation from this utter confusion to result from such a law-a veritable law of disorder or decomposition-is a systematic and general classification of words, not according to men's theories of etymological relationships, but in a mechanical way, as we classify fossils and * Dr. Pickering has drawn my attention to the curious adventure, reported by Hale, of certain New Zealand savages who were drifted to another and distant island, and commemorated their salvation on its shores by deliberately reversing their whole vocabulary, pronouncing every word backwards. |