23. What are the three arguments to prove the original unity of language? 24. Give instances of the affinities of languages. 25. Exhibit BOPP's views of philology. 26. State the three opinions which have prevailed in respect to the origin of the diversities of languages. 27. State the causes of the diversities in languages. 28. Mention the ways in which diversities of languages take place. 29. What reasons can you give for the study of language? 30. From what does a language borrow its character? 31. What relation does language bear to history? 32. What does your author say of the lost meaning of words? 33. Describe the relation of language to the laws of the human mind. 34. Describe the mutual influence of language and opinion. 35. Mention the advantages of the study of the English language. CHAPTER II. THE CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES. § 25. LANGUAGES are so numerous that a classification is absolutelely necessary in order to a convenient consideration of them. A classification can be made only so far as the affinities and diversities among them are known. In the present state of comparative philology, a full classification of all the languages. spoken on the globe is quite out of the question. So little is known of the Chinese, the Japanese, the Tartar, the Malay, and of many other languages, that only a general classification can be expected until the study of ethnography shall throw additional light upon comparative philology. SCHLEGEL'S CLASSIFICATION. § 26. The following classification, proposed by A. W. von SCHLEGEL, and adopted by Bopp, is in a high degree logical and satisfactory: I. Languages with monosyllabic roots, but incapable of composition, and, therefore, without grammar or organization. To this class belong the Chinese stock, in which we have nothing but naked roots, and the predicates and other relations of the subject are determined merely by the position of words in the sentence. II. Languages with monosyllabic roots, which are susceptible of composition, and of which the grammar and organization depend entirely on this. In this class the leading principle of the formation of words lies in the connection of verbal and prcnominal roots, which in combination form the body and the soul of the language. To this belongs the Sanscrit family and all other languages not included under I. and III., and preserved in such a state that the forms of the words may still be resolved into their simplest elements. III. Languages which consist of dissyllabic verbal roots, and require three consonants as the vehicles of their fundamental signification. This class contains the Shemitic languages only; its grammatical forms are produced not merely by composition, as is the case with the second, but also by means of a simple internal modification of roots. CLASSIFICATION ADOPTED IN THIS WORK. § 27. The common classification, founded partly on ethnological and partly on linguistical principles, is adopted in this work, as practically more convenient. I. The Chinese stock of languages. V. The American stock of languages. VI. The Oceanic or Polynesian stock of languages. It has been found that the average number of persons speaking the same language is greatest in the civilized divisions, thus indicating a tendency in civilization toward a unity of language. This tendency is strongly manifested in the most civilized nations of Europe, namely, the English, the French, the Germanic nations, inasmuch as science, religion, travel, and commerce produce extensive intercourse with each other. The ancient tendency was to diversity, the modern is to unity, of language. And if, in the early ages of the world, causes were in operation elsewhere, as well as on the plains of Shinar, which produced a confusion of tongues in the human race, we are prepared to believe that causes are now in operation which will produce an opposite result. European and American commerce is finding its way to China and Japan, and to every region where man is found, and is thus making a common medium of intercourse necessary. The missionaries of the cross, in preaching one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God as the father of all, not only are promoting the sense of universal brotherhood through the race, but also the unity of language. Thus we can believe that if "one song shall employ all nations," one language shall be the prin cipal medium of intercourse. އ THE CHINESE STOCK OF LANGUAGES. § 28. This is a type of the languages comprised in the first class given by Schlegel. The grand peculiarity of this is, that in the written language, the words or characters are not, as in our own, representatives of certain sounds, but symbols of ideas. It contains no alphabetical letters, in our sense of the term. Every written character is an entire word, and every word is a monosyllable. The written symbols may be divided into four kinds. The first class comprehends those which originally were rude pictorial representations of visible objects, though now the resemblance has been almost lost. The second class consists of symbols of complex ideas, which were formed by an ingenious combination of more elementary symbols. The third class comprises those symbols which may be termed phonetic characters, inasmuch as there is a slight analogy between them and our alphabetic system of compounding sound. The fourth class comprises those symbols which may be considered as of arbitrary formation. The absence of an alphabet has deprived the Chinese of an important means of preserving a uniformity of spoken language through any part of the empire. A native of China would be altogether unintelligible, speaking his local patois, at a distance of two hundred miles from home; and yet, like Arabic figures in Europe, the written character is every where the same throughout the whole of China, though in reading and speaking, the local pronunciation becomes, in fact, a separate language. The Chinese prefer their mode of speaking to the mind through the eye, by means of visible signs, as superior to spoken words addressed to the ear. Indeed, so far do they carry their attachment to this mode of communication, that it is not uncommon there to see men conversing rapidly together by tracing characters in the air. THE SHEMITIC STOCK OF LANGUAGES. § 29. The Shemitic languages have by philologists been long classed together, because there is an agreement among themselves, and a diversity between them and other languages. Spoken by the descendants of Shem, from which, circumstance they derive their name, they were native in Palestine, Phoenicia, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Arabia, from the Mediterranean to the Tigris, and from the Armenian Mountains to the south coast of Arabia. The Shemitic class of languages consists of three prin cipal divisions. 1. The Arabic; to this belongs the Ethiopic, as a branch of the southern Arabic. The Koran is written in this language. 2. The Aramean, in the north and northeast. It is called Syriac in the form in which it appears in the Christian Aramean, but Chaldee as it appears in the Aramean writings of the Jews. To the Chaldee is closely allied the Samaritan, both exhibiting frequent admixture of Hebrew forms. The Targums are composed in this language. 3. The Hebrew, with which the Canaanitish and Phoenician stand in connection. The sacred Scriptures are in this language. With the ancient Egyptian, from which the Coptic is derived, the Shemitic came in many ways into contact in very early times. The Coptic, therefore, which, with some others, is supposed to be of Hamitic origin, has much in common with the Shemitic. PECULIARITIES OF THE SHEMITIC LANGUAGES. § 30. Some of the peculiarities of the Shemitic class are: 1. Most of the radical words consist of three consonants. 2. The verb has only two tenses, the preterit and the future. 3. The noun has only two genders. 4. Scarcely any compounds appear in verbs or nouns except proper names. 5. Only the consonants were given in the line as real letters. Of the vowels, only the longer ones, and even these not always, were represented by certain consonants. 6. These languages, with the exception of the Ethiopic, are always written from right to left. The Shemitic languages are adapted to narration, to poetry, to the description of objective realities, but not to the exhibition of subjective experience, the deductions of logic, or the truths of philosophy. They had little to part with, and, of necessity, have handed down to suc ceeding ages what they were endowed with at starting. |