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Show I \ \, \ 148 EARLY HISTORY OF .MANKIND. have appeared chimerical. Even our own la.nguage may sometimes receive lio-ht fro1n the study of distant mem• hers of our family. Where, for instance, are ~e to se~k for the root of our comparative better_'! . Certa1?ly no~ In its positive, good, no~ in the Te~ton1c dialec.ts In which the same anon1aly ex1sts. But In the P~rsian we have precis~ly !he s~me con1parative, b~htet, ~~th exactly t?,; same sio-nificahon, regularly from Its pos1hve beh, good. The ~econd O'reat family if3 the Syro·Phmnician, com· prising t~e. Hebr~w, Syro-.Chalda~c, .Arabic.' and Gheez or Abyssnuan, being localized pnnc1pal_ly In the coun· tries to the west and south of the Mediterranean. Beyond them, again, is the Africa~ f~mily, which, as far as research has gone seems to be In hke manner marked by common features,' both verbal and grammatical. The fourth is the Polynesian family, extending from Madagascar on t.he ~est through all ~he Indian Archipe~ago, besides talnng In the Mal~yan d1alec~ from the .continent of India, and comprehendl'ng Au.stra.ha an~ the I.slands of the western portion of the Pacific. Th1s family, however bears such an affinity to that next to be described, that 'nr. Levden and some others do not give it a distinct place as ~ family o~ 'languag~s. . The fifth family IS the Chwese, embracing a large part of China, and most of the regions of Central and North- ,. Wiseman's Lectures on the Connexion between Science and Revealed Religion, i., 44. The Celtic has ~een established ~s a member or group of the Indo-European famtly, by the work ot Dr. Prichard, on the Easte1·n Origin of the Celtic Nations. "'First,'' says Dr. Wisemen, "l~e has examined the lexical resemblance.s, and shown that the primary and most simple words are the same m both, as well as the numerals and elementary verbal roots. Then follows a minute analysis of the verb, directed to show its analo· gies with other languages, and they are such as manifest no casual coinciden~e, bnt an internal structure radically the same. T!te verb substantive, which is minutely analyzed, present! more stnk· ing analogies to the Persian verb than perhaps any other language of the family. But Celtic is not thus become a mere mc~ber of this confederacy, but has brought to it most important rud _; for from it alone can be satisfactoril:;; explained some of the c<?nJuga· tiona] endings in the other languages. For instance, the tlurd per• son plural of the Latin. Pers1an, Greek, and Sanscrit ends in nt, nd, vrl, vro, nti, or nt. No,:~:, supposing: w1th most gram~arians, that the inflections arose from the pronouns of the respective pe.r. sons, it is only in Celtic that we find a pronoun that can explam this termination; for there, too, the same person ends in nt, and thus corresponds exactly, as do the others, with its 1ronoun J,ewunt, or ynt." ., EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. J49 ern t\S~a. The leading features of the Chinese ar 't cons1stlng altogether of monosyllables and beino- de, ~ · s tute of all gramma~icLtl forJ?s, ex~ept certain a~Ta~s ~= ments an rl itC . .-l-'t~tuahons, which vary the sense of ·tf.? _ ular wot·lJ-; . . lt 1s ~lso deficient in some of the confo~a~~s most COl1::>p1cuous Ill other lano-uao-es b d r v d th t h · 1 o o ' , , , , an z ; so a t. 1s peop e c~n sca.r<:ely pronounce our speech in sue~ a way as to be I~telhgible: for example, the word Chnstus they call Kuizss-ut-oo-suh. The Chinese stran to s~y~ ~ho~gh they early attained to a remarkabl~ deoT~: of CIVIhzah?n, and hav.e prec~ded the Europeans in m0any of the most Important. Inventwns, have a ·language which resembles that of children, or deaf and dumb p 1 Th~ sente!lce ·of short, simple, unconnected wor~~'p t~ ~vh1eh an Infa!lt ~mongst us attempts to express some of Its wants .and 1ts Ideas-the equally broken and difficult terms :whwh the ~eaf and dumb express by signs, as the .follow1n9 pas~age In the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father h~aven In, vn~h your n~me respect, wish your soul'; kingdom p:ov!~ence arn ve, wi~h your will do heaven earth equality, &c.-these are hke the discourse of the refined people of the so-called Celestial Empire. An attempt was made ~y the. Abbe Sicard to teach the deaf an.~ ~umb grammatical s1~n~; but ~hey persisted in restnch~ g themselves to. the s1mple sigi1s of ideas, leaving the sh uct~re undeter~med by any but the natural order of connexwn. Such 1s exactly the condition of the Chi nese language. . Crossing the Pacific, we come to the last great family ~n the languages of the aboriginal Americans which lave ~11 of them features in common, proving 'them to constitute _a. group by themselves, without any regard to t~e very differ~nt degrees of civilization which these nations had attmned at. t~e time of the discovery. The c~mmon. resemblance IS In the grammatical structure as wei~ as. In words, and the grammatical structure of this f~nuly Is of a verY: pec~liar and complicated kind. The general c~1aracter In t!us respect has caused the ten\1 Polysynthehc to be applied to ~he American languages. A lon.g many-syllabled word IS used by the rutle Alo-onquins and Delawares to express a whole sentence~ for e.x~mpl~ a. woman of the latter nation, playing with a little doo 01 cat, would perhaps be heard sayi'no- "k z· t 7. • , . . b' u ~- ga sc us, meaning, "give me your pretty little pav.r ;" |
