When does it imply this, and when does it merely denote commercial or social intercourse? We can measure the phænomena of languages and exhibit the results numerically. Thus the percentage of words common to two languages may be 1, 2, 3, 4–98, 99, or any intermediate number. But, now comes the application of a maxim. Ponderanda non numeranda. We ask what sort of words coincide, as well as how many? When the names of such objects as fire, water, sun, moon, star, hand, tooth, tongue, foot, &c. agree, we draw an inference very different from the one which arises out of the presence of such words as ennui, fashion, quadrille, violin, &c. Common sense distinguishes the words which are likely to be borrowed from one language into another, from those which were originally common to the two.
There are a certain amount of French words in English, i. e. of words borrowed from the French. I do not know the percentage, nor yet the time required for their introduction; and, as I am illustrating the subject, rather than seeking specific results, this is unimportant. Prolong the time, and multiply the words; remembering that the former can be done indefinitely. Or, instead of doing this, increase the points of contact between the languages. What follows? We soon begin to think of a familiar set of illustrations; some classical and some vulgar—of the Delphic ship so often mended as to retain but an equivocal identity; of the Highlander’s knife, with its two new blades and three new handles; of Sir John Cutler’s silk-stockings degenerated into worsted by darnings. We are brought to the edge of a new question. We must tread slowly accordingly.
In the English words call-est, call-eth (call-s), and call-ed, we have two parts; the first being the root itself, the second a sign of person, or tense. The same is the case with the word father-s, son-s, &c.; except that the -s denotes case; and that it is attached to a substantive, instead of a verb. Again, in wis-er we have the sign of a comparative; in wis-est that of a superlative degree. All these are inflexions. If we choose, we may call them inflexional elements; and it is convenient to do so; since we can then analyse words and contrast the different parts of them: e. g. in call-s the call- is radical, the -s inflexional.
Having become familiarized with this distinction, we may now take a word of French or German origin—say fashion or waltz. Each, of course, is foreign. Nevertheless, when introduced into English, it takes an English inflexion. Hence we say, if I dress absurdly it is fashion’s fault; also, I am waltz-ing, I waltz-ed, he waltz-es—and so on. In these particular words, then, the inflexional part has been English; even when the radical was foreign. This is no isolated fact. On the contrary, it is sufficiently common to be generalized so that the grammatical part of language has been accredited with a permanence which has been denied to the glossarial or vocabular. The one changes, the other is constant; the one is immortal, the other fleeting; the one form, the other matter.
Now it is imaginable that the glossarial and grammatical tests may be at variance. They would be so if all our English verbs came to be French, yet still retained their English inflexions in -ed, -s, -ing, &c. They would be so if all the verbs were like fashion, and all the substantives like quadrille. This is an extreme case. Still, it illustrates the question. Certain Hindu languages are said to have nine-tenths of the vocables common with a language called the Sanskrit—but none of their inflexions; the latter being chiefly Tamul. What, then, is the language itself? This is a question which divides philologists. It illustrates, however, the difference between the two tests—the grammatical and the glossarial. Of these, it is safe to say that the former is the more constant.
Yet the philological method of investigation requires caution. Over and above the terms which one language borrows from another, and which denote intercourse rather than affinity, there are two other classes of little or no ethnological value.
- 1. Coincidences may be merely accidental. The likelihood of their being so is a part of the Doctrine of Chances. The mathematician may investigate this: the philologist merely finds the data. Neither has been done satisfactorily, though it was attempted by Dr. T. Young.
- 2. Coincidences may have an organic connexion. No one would say that because two nations called the same bird by the name cuckoo, the term had been borrowed by either one from the other, or by both from a common source. The true reason would be plain enough. Two populations gave a name on imitative principles, and imitated the same object. Son and brother, sister and daughter—if these terms agree, the chances are that a philological affinity is at the bottom of the agreement. But does the same apply to papa and mama, identical in English, Carib, and perhaps twenty other tongues? No. They merely show that the infants of different countries begin with the same sounds.
Such—and each class is capable of great expansion—are the cases where philology requires caution. Another matter now suggests itself.
To be valid a classification must be real; not nominal or verbal—not a mere book-maker’s arrangement. Families must be in definite degrees of relationship. This, too, will bear illustration. A man wants a relation to leave his money to: he is an Englishman, and by relation means nothing more distant than a third cousin. It is nothing to him if, in Scotland, a fifth cousinship is recognised. He has not found the relation he wants; he has merely found a greater amount of latitude given to the term. Few oversights have done more harm than the neglect of this distinction. Twenty years ago the Sanskrit, Sclavonic, Greek-and-Latin, and Gothic languages formed a class. This class was called Indo-Germanic. Its western limits were in Germany; its eastern in Hindostan. The Celtic of Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man was not included in it. Neither was it included in any other group. It was anywhere or nowhere—in any degree of isolation. Dr. Prichard undertook to fix it. He did so—well and successfully. He showed that, so far from being isolated, it was connected with the Greek, German, and Sclavonic by a connexion with the Sanskrit, or (changing the expression) with the Sanskrit through the Sclavonic, German, and Greek—any or all. The mother-tongue from which all these broke was supposed to be in Asia. Dr. Prichard’s work was entitled the ‘Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations.’ Did this make the Celtic Indo-Germanic? It was supposed to do so. Nay, more—it altered the name of the class; which was now called, as it has been since, Indo-European. Inconveniently. A relationship was mistaken for the relationship. The previous tongues were (say) second cousins. The Celtic was a fourth or fifth. What was the result? Not that a new second cousin was found, but that the family circle was enlarged.
What follows? Dr. Prichard’s fixation of the Celtic as a member of even the same clan with the German, &c. was an addition to ethnographical philology that many inferior investigators strove to rival; and it came to be current belief—acted on if not avowed—that tongues as like the Celtic as the Celtic was to the German were Indo-European also. This bid fair to inundate the class—to make it prove too much—to render it no class at all. The Albanian, Basque, Etruscan, Lap, and others followed. The outlier of the group once created served as a nucleus for fresh accumulations. A strange language of Caucasus—the Irôn or Ossetic—was placed by Klaproth as Indo-Germanic; and that upon reasonable grounds, considering the unsettled state of criticism. Meanwhile, the Georgian, another tongue of those same mysterious mountains, wants placing. It has undoubted Ossetic—or Irôn—affinities. But the Ossetic—or Irôn—is Indo-European. So therefore is the Georgian. This is a great feat; since the Caucasian tongues and the Caucasian skulls now agree, both having their affinities with Europe—as they ought to have. But what if both the Irôn and Georgian are half Chinese, or Tibetan, i. e. are all but monosyllabic languages both in grammar and vocables? If such be the case, the term ‘Indo-European’ wants revising; and not only that—the principles on which terms are fixed and classes created want revising also. At the same time, the ‘Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations’ contains the most definite addition to philology that the present century has produced; and the proper compliment to it is Mr. Garnett’s review of it in the ‘Quarterly;’ the first of a series of masterly and unsurpassed specimens of inductive philology applied to the investigation of the true nature of the inflexions of the Verb. But this is episodical.