original community of life. If, for example, some languages have lost the augment, which is still possessed by others, of course it does not follow that this loss necessarily took place during the common life of these languages. It must also be admitted that identity of vocabulary (unless this appears to an overwhelming extent) cannot be used to prove an original community of life, because the possibility always remains that a word which we only find in certain languages existed also in the others, although it has been effaced by the ravages of time. Our material is sensibly diminished by these considerations, so that, strictly speaking, we have as conclusive evidence only those new formations which are developed in common. Under this head were ranked until recently the division of the unitary Indo-European k into k and s (sz) in both the Asiatic and Slavo-Lithuanian families; the e of the European languages; the in the middle and passive of Italic and Celtic; and the m in the Slavo-Lithuanian and Germanic dative plural. But another explanation for these facts has very recently presented itself. It is often assumed (as remarked above) that these cases are not examples of new formations in the individual languages, but that the manifoldness must be traced back to the primitive spcech. FICK took the lead with his paper on the linguistic unity of the Indo-Europeans of Europe (Die Spracheinheit der Indogermanen Europa's, Göttingen, 1873), in which, following ASCOLI, he showed that the two sounds of the Asiatic and Slavo-Lithuanian which were previously supposed to have originated from k were really the regular representatives of two different Indo-European k's (v. above, page 52). Then followed the very probable theory (also referred to above) that e belonged to the primitive speech; further, that the of the middle and passive in Italic and Celtic may possibly stand in connection with the r of the Indian -re, -rate etc. (cf. WINDISCH, Beiträge von Kuhn und Schleicher, 8, page 465, note); and that the m of Slavonic and Germanic perhaps belonged originally not to the bh-suffix, but to another.

If, now, this whole mode of reasoning is justified (as I assume), then from such differences as these, which reach back into the primitive speech, no conclusions can be drawn

respecting the successive ramifications of the Indo-European languages, and it is necessary to adopt a skeptical position with regard to all the groupings hitherto attempted, with the single exception of the Asiatic group, which is held together by the common change of the old e into a.

In fact, I consider this stand-point the correct one at the present stage of investigation, and accordingly I think that our assertions in regard to the whole question of the mutual relation of the separate Indo-European languages must be reduced to the following. It is very probable that the primitive speech was not entirely homogeneous, as there was formerly an inclination to suppose. For if we are right in assuming that this speech passed through a development of centuries, the primitive race must have been very numerous at the time the inflection was fully perfected, and therefore differences in speaking must have already begun to manifest themselves within its limits, as described in general terms above (pages 52 and 59). These differences are the germs of some of the differences which we observe in the Indo-European languages. Others were added to these, after the primitive speech had divided into various individual languages. It is possible that the forefathers of the later Greek, Italic and Celtic nations were formerly settled beside each other in the way we are led to suppose from their present geographical position; but it is also possible that great displacements of the races have occurred, which render their former situation obscure. We will therefore content ourselves for the moment with acknowledging an original community of the Indo-European languages, but must abstain from classifying them into groups, with the exception of the Indo-Iranian.

This is true with regard to the Greco-Italic unity so often assumed. It is impossible to affirm with certainty that this unity did not exist, but it is equally impossible to assert that it can be demonstrated. Of the reasons adduced in its favor 1)

1) SCHMIDT has very properly not introduced the word-comparisons of MOMMSEN, as they prove nothing. For a part of the words in question can also be found in other languages (as MOMMSEN himself acknowledges in the later editions of his Roman History), and the others (like milium, rapa, vinum) are possibly or probably borrowed words.

(SCHMIDT, page 19), the only ones which concern us in the present state of investigation are the two following: the fact that Greek and Latin are the only languages which have feminines of the second declension; and the agreement in the accentuation. However, if it is true, as I have tried to prove in Synt. Forsch., 4, page 6 seq., that the masculines in -va of the first declension were transferred from feminines to masculines only in the independent life of the Greek language, then an analogous process may be suspected for the abovementioned class of words; and in regard to the laws of accent, it is a question whether it is not possible to find traces of an older accentuation in Italic, which prevented the "three-syllable law" from gaining the supremacy in a pre-Italic period. At all events, a hypothesis of such significance as that of an original Greco - Italic unity cannot be founded upon a questionable assumption.

Whether the future will attain to more definite results, remains to be proved. In the mean time, it will be well for historical investigators to abstain from making use of such linguistic and ethnological groups as the Greco-Italo-Celtic, Slavo-Germanic etc.

INDEX.