In a subsequent part of this work I shall deal with the tripartition as representing three successive stages in the development of such languages as our own (the nacheinander of Schleicher), and try to show that Schleicher’s view is not borne out by the facts of linguistic history, which give us a totally different picture of development.
From both points of view, then, I think that the classification here considered deserves to be shelved among the hasty generalizations in which the history of every branch of science is unfortunately so rich.
III.—§ 6. Reconstruction.
Probably Schleicher’s most original and important contribution to linguistics was his reconstruction of the Proto-Aryan language, die indogermanische ursprache. The possibility of inferentially constructing this parent language, which to Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, etc., was what Latin was to Italian, Spanish, French, etc., was early in his thoughts (see quotations illustrating the gradual growth of the idea in Oertel, p. 39 f.), but it was not till the first edition of his Compendium that he carried it out in detail, giving there for each separate chapter (vowels, consonants, roots, stem-formation, declension, conjugation) first the Proto-Aryan forms and then those actually found in the different languages, from which the former were inferred. This arrangement has the advantage that the reader everywhere sees the historical evolution in the natural order, beginning with the oldest and then proceeding to the later stages, just as the Romanic scholar begins with Latin and then takes in successive stages Old French, Modern French, etc. But in the case of Proto-Aryan this procedure is apt to deceive the student and make him take these primitive forms as something certain, whose existence reposes on just as good evidence as the forms found in Sanskrit literature or in German or English as spoken in our own days. When he finds some forms given first and used to explain some others, there is some danger of his forgetting that the forms given first have a quite different status to the others, and that their only raison d’être is the desire of a modern linguist to explain existing forms in related languages which present certain similarities as originating from a common original form, which he does not find in his texts and has, therefore, to reconstruct. But apart from this there can be no doubt that the reconstruction of older forms (and the ingenious device, due to Schleicher, of denoting such forms by means of a preposed asterisk to distinguish them from forms actually found) has been in many ways beneficial to historical grammar. Only it may be questioned whether Schleicher did not go too far when he wished to base the whole grammar of all the Aryan languages on such reconstructions, instead of using them now and then to explain single facts.
Schleicher even ventured (and in this he seems to have had no follower) to construct an entire little fable in primitive Aryan: see “Eine fabel in indogermanischer ursprache,” Beiträge zur vergl. sprachforschung, 5. 206 (1868). In the introductory remarks he complains of the difficulty of such attempts, chiefly because of the almost complete lack of particles capable of being inferred from the existing languages, but he seems to have entertained no doubt about the phonetic and grammatical forms of the words he employed. As the fable is not now commonly known, I give it here, with Schleicher’s translation, as a document of this period of comparative linguistics.
AVIS AKVASAS KA
Avis, jasmin varna na ā ast, dadarka akvams, tam, vāgham garum vaghantam, tam, bhāram magham, tam, manum āku bharantam. Avis akvabhjams ā vavakat: kard aghnutai mai vidanti manum akvams agantam.
Akvāsas ā vavakant: krudhi avai, kard aghnutai vividvantsvas: manus patis varnām avisāms karnanti svabhjam gharmam vastram avibhjams ka varnā na asti.
Tat kukruvants avis agram ā bhugat.