THE LIFE AND GROWTH OF LANGUAGE BY WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT AND COMparative PHILOLOGY IN YALE COLLEGE SECOND EDITION LONDON C. KEGAN PAUL & Co., I, PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1880 2.543 1 7 32 45 XII.-OTHER FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE: THEIR LO- XIII.-LANGUAGE AND ETHNOLOGY XIV.-NATURE AND ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE PREFACE. THE present work needs only a few words by way of introduction. That its subject calls for treatment in the series of which it forms a part, especially at this time, when men's crude and inconsistent views of language are tending to crystallize into shape, no labored argument is required to prove. Very discordant opinions as to the basis and superstructure of linguistic philosophy are vying for the favor, not of the public only, but even of scholars, already deeply versed in the facts of language-history, but uncertain and comparatively careless of how these shall be coördinated and explained. Physical science on the one side, and psychology on the other, are striving to take possession of linguistic science, which in truth belongs to neither. The doctrines taught in this volume are of the class of those which have long been widely prevalent among students of man and his institutions; and they only need to be exhibited as amended and supported, not crowded out or overthrown, by the abundant new knowledge which the century has yielded, in order to |