CHAPTER VIII.
THE POSITION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AS INDO-EUROPEAN.
[§ 145]. In each of the three preceding chapters a separate stock of languages has been considered; and it has been shown, in some degree, how far languages of the same stock differ from, or agree with, each other.
Furthermore, in each stock there has been some particular language that especially illustrates the English.
In the Gothic stock there has been the Anglo-Saxon; in the Celtic the Welsh; and in the Classical the Anglo-Norman.
Nevertheless, the importance of the languages of these three divisions is by no means equal. The Gothic tongues supply the basis of our investigations. The Celtic afford a few remnants of that language which the Anglo-Saxon superseded. The Anglo-Norman language exhibits certain superadded elements.
[§ 146]. Over and above the Gothic, Celtic, and Classical languages, there are others that illustrate the English; and some of our commonest grammatical inflections can be but half understood unless we go beyond the groups already enumerated.
The Gothic, Celtic (?),[[20]] and Classical stocks are but subordinate divisions of a wider class. Each has a sufficient amount of mutual affinities to be illustrative of each other, and each is contained, along with two other groups of equal value, under a higher denomination in philology.
What is the nature of that affinity which connects languages so different as the Gothic, Celtic (?), and Classical stocks? or what is the amount of likeness between, e.g., the
German and Portuguese, the Greek and Islandic, the Latin and Swedish, the Anglo-Saxon and Italian? And what other languages are so connected?
What other philological groups are connected with each other, and with the languages already noticed, by the same affinities which connect the Gothic, Celtic (?), and Classical stocks? Whatever these languages may be, it is nearly certain that they will be necessary, on some point or other, for the full illustration of the English.
As both these questions are points of general, rather than of English, philology, and as a partial answer may be got to the first from attention to the degree in which the body of the present work exhibits illustrations drawn from widely different languages, the following statements are considered sufficient.
[§ 147]. The philological denomination of the class which contains the Gothic, Celtic (?), and Classical divisions, and, along with the languages contained therein, all others similarly allied, is Indo-European; so that the Gothic, Celtic (?), Classical and certain other languages are Indo-European.
All Indo-European languages illustrate each other.
The other divisions of the great Indo-European group of languages are as follows:—
1. The Iranian stock of languages.—This contains the proper Persian languages of Persia (Iran) in all their stages, the Kurd language, and all the languages of Asia (whatever they may be) derived from the Zend or Sanskrit.
2. The Sarmatian stock of languages.—This contains the languages of Russia, Poland, Bohemia, and of the Slavonian tribes in general. It contains also the Lithuanic languages, i.e., the Lithuanic of Lithuania, the old Prussian of Prussia (now extinct), and the Lettish or Livonic of Courland and Livonia.
3, 4, 5. The Classical, Gothic, and Celtic (?) stocks complete the catalogue of languages undoubtedly Indo-European, and at the same time they explain the import of the term. Indo-European is the name of a class which embraces the majority of the languages of Europe, and is extended over
Asia as far as India. Until the Celtic was shown by Dr. Prichard to have certain affinities with the Latin, Greek, Slavonic, Lithuanic, Gothic, Sanskrit, and Zend, as those tongues had with each other, the class in question was called Indo-Germanic; since, up to that time, the Germanic languages had formed its western limit.
[§ 148]. Meaning of the note of interrogation (?) after the word Celtic.—In a paper read before the Ethnological Society, February 28th, 1849, and published in the Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine, the present writer has given reasons for considering the claims of the Celtic to be Indo-European as somewhat doubtful; at the same time he admits, and highly values, all the facts in favour of its being so, which are to be found in Prichard's Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations.
He believes, however, that the Celtic can only be brought in the same group with the Gothic, Slavonic, &c., by extending the value of the class.
"To draw an illustration from the common ties of relationship, as between man and man, it is clear that a family may be enlarged in two ways.
"a. A brother, or a cousin, may be discovered, of which the existence was previously unknown. Herein the family is enlarged, or increased, by the real addition of a new member, in a recognised degree of relationship.
"b. A degree of relationship previously unrecognised may be recognised, i.e., a family wherein it was previously considered that a second-cousinship was as much as could be admitted within its pale, may incorporate third, fourth, or fifth cousins. Here the family is enlarged, or increased, by a verbal extension of the term.
"Now it is believed that the distinction between increase by the way of real addition, and increase by the way of verbal extension, has not been sufficiently attended to. Yet, that it should be more closely attended to, is evident; since, in mistaking a verbal increase for a real one, the whole end and aim of classification is overlooked. The publication of Dr. Prichard's Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations, in 1831,
supplied philologists with the most definite addition that has perhaps, yet been made to ethnographical philology.
"Ever since then the Celtic has been considered to be Indo-European. Indeed its position in the same group with the Iranian, Classical, Slavono-Lithuanic, and Gothic tongues, supplied the reason for substituting the term Indo-European for the previous one Indo-Germanic.
"On the other hand, it seems necessary to admit that languages are allied just in proportion as they were separated from the mother-tongue in the same stage of its development.
"If so, the Celtic became detached anterior to the evolution of the declension of nouns, whereas the Gothic, Slavonic, Classical and Iranian languages all separated subsequent to that stage."[[21]]
This, along with other reasons indicated elsewhere,[[22]] induces the present writer to admit an affinity between the Celtic and the other so-called Indo-European tongues, but to deny that it is the same affinity which connects the Iranian, Classical, Gothic and Slavonic groups.