legitimate into proper and improper. But it is not easy to conceive with exactness and to mark in a few words the differences alluded to. We are therefore constrained to pass them over in silence as also some brief disquisitions, of very slight importance for our object, with which the second section concludes. The subject of the third is composition logically and psychologically considered. Then come two fresh divisions, of which it will suffice to describe summarily the first. I. Relation of reciprocal complement, co-ordination: 1st, the two members are generally species of one and the same genus, and therefore there is between them 142 an antithesis, but they appear united together exceptionally to form a new unity (ex. avdpoyúvns); 2ndly, the two members are in a certain manner varieties of the same species, hence the one is not opposed to the other (a rarer case, еx. KaλоKayalós). II. Relation of unilateral complement, subordination: 1st, the second member stands to the first actually as genus to species (ex. kɩтρóμŋλov); 2ndly, the second member is considered as a genus relatively to the whole; the grammatical relation of the second to the first element of these compounds may be (a) attributive (in a narrow sense), (b) a relation of case. We will pass over as foreign to the nature of this book the three psychological forms of composition which are noted by Tobler and to which he attempted, without complete success (as he himself was ready to admit), to make the logical and the grammatical forms of it correspond. Whence it appears, observes Steinthal, that in spite of the acute use of copulative composition, but only the Indian abuse of it that we must condemn. It is the most sensible, poetic, forcible form of composition it was afterwards lost or corrupted by the increase of the power of abstraction. : 1 The critic quoted above by no means approves the method followed by Tobler in this subject: a better plan would have been to trace the type of composition from the study of linguistic tendencies; then by comparing with it the various compounds, to determine the degree of meaning peculiar to each of them. investigations and speculations of the author, the first attempt to found on a psychological basis the doctrine of composition has not met with great success.' § 25. Let us consider now whether in stem-formation, in inflexion, in composition, traces have been discovered of a common origin of the Aryan and the Semitic languages. F. Müller, in his work on this subject before quoted, attempts to demonstrate that both the constitution of the word, and the various categories of it, and the structure of the compounds separate the Aryan stock from the Semitic. The former in word-formation employs only suffixes: the latter suffixes and prefixes. Aryan possesses 143 three categories of gender, Semitic only two, but the latter marks it also in the pronoun of the 2nd person and in the 2nd and 3rd person of the verbs; in the oldest language of the Aryans we find eight cases, in that of the Semites not more than three; with the full development of the Indo-European verb is contrasted, under the head of the expression of the tenses, the Semitic conjugation restricted to two forms only with a temporal force, that is, to signifying by suffixes completed action, by prefixes action in process of completion. Nor again can it be said that the variety of composition belongs to Semitic which we have seen in Aryan; moreover in the former the determinant always follows the determinate, while on the contrary it 1 We will here further mention in a note three works, which, although they do not concern the entire Aryan stock, may nevertheless be of no slight help to any one who studies composition in the Indo-European linguistic unity. Meunier, Les composés syntac. tiques en grec, en latin, en français et subsidiairement en zend et en indien, Paris, 1872.- Schröder, Über die formelle unterscheidung der redetheile im griechischen und lateinischen mit berücksichtigung der nominalcomposita, Leipzig, 1874.-Clemm, Die neusten forschungen auf dem gebiet der griechischen composita (from the 7th volume of the Studien edited by G. Curtius). 2 Indogermanisch und semitisch, etc., pp. 11-5. constantly precedes in Indo-European compounds; lastly Semitic can attach the object, if it be a pronoun, immediately to a verbal form.-As F. Müller brought out clearly the differences existing between the two stocks, so Ascoli both in the Letters to A. Kuhn and to F. Bopp' and in the Studj ârio-semitici with that vastness of knowledge and that acuteness of intellect which we admire in him, attempted to trace and set forth what appeared to him indications of primitive affinity between the languages of the Aryans and the Semites. The grave differences observed by other philologists are not sufficient to shake his faith. He admits that symbolism is much more frequent in Semitic than in Aryan flexion, but does not regard it as such a characteristic of the former as to be able to separate it absolutely from the latter. He admits that the Aryan word is formed only by suffixes, while the Semitic word exhibits both suffixes and prefixes; but he does not think himself bound, by reason of this 144 difference, to regard as impossible the affinity of the two stocks; "the division must have taken place before the true verb had come into existence from the close union of the pronoun with the nomen agentis." Our readers are already familiar with Ascoli's comparison of the Aryan present-stems with the supposed Semitic radicals:3 the one and the other we should regard as roots with suffixes of the agent, 'nomina agentis,' from which nouns, by means of intimate connexion with pronouns, both the Aryan and the Semitic conjugation have derived their origin, but "the one independently of the other." Ascoli also considers as common to the two great families of languages two suffixes of comparison and several of nominal flexion. These comparisons of Ascoli were criticised Politecnico, xxi. 190-216; xxii. 121-51. 2 Memorie del R. Istituto lom bardo, etc., cl. di lettere, etc., x. 1-12, 13-36. 3 See above, pp. 63-4. perhaps too severely by F. Delitzsch in the book of which we have spoken.'-After the works of Ascoli on the difficult subject which we are treating, we are very sorry to be obliged to mention a book by Raabe, far inferior to them in scientific worth. The author teaches us that by his book "an affinity is proved between the two stocks of language: but an affinity like this has not yet been discovered between languages of any sort." In Raabe's work one might look in vain for a phonology and a syntax; among the Aryan languages for the most part advantage is taken only of the languages of the Indo-Iranic section; to numerous and considerable lacunæ (especially in the theory of conjugation) are added incredible caprices this work therefore by no means furnishes us with a demonstration, not even an exclusively morphological one, of the supposed affinity between Aryan and Semitic. We think it therefore useless to speak of it 115 at greater length, nor is it more worth our while to pay attention to the few and unimportant considerations of Schultze on words and principally on grammatical gender in the little work mentioned above, Indo-germanisch, semitisch und hamitisch. We may therefore proceed at once from morphological investigations to the syntactical researches made during the last decade by several philologists of the historico-comparative school with a success for the most part not unworthy of the noble laboriousness which they have devoted to it. § 26. In the introduction to a book which we shall have to notice again3 Jolly sketched briefly the history of these studies, mentioning the researches of J. Grimm, of Micklosich, of Diez on the syntax of the Teutonic, 1 See above, pp. 39, 43-4, 65-7. 2 Gemeinschaftliche grammatik der arischen und der semitischen sprachen, etc., Leipzig, 1874. 3 Ein kapitel vergleichender syntax, etc., München, 1872, pp. 3 sqq. the Slavonic, and the Neo-Latin families; describing how, among the foremost, L. Lange as early as 1852 demonstrated the possibility and the necessity of a historicocomparative investigation of the syntactical phenomena over the whole field of the Aryan languages; setting forth the reasons why, with the exception of two short monographs of Schweizer-Sidler on the ablative and the instrumental in the Rig-veda (1846-7) and the remarks of Régnier also on Vedic syntax (1855), no work of any importance on the subject of which we are speaking has been published until the last decade; noticing, lastly, the very remarkable treatises of Delbrück and Windisch aud other philologists. And, as far as concerns especially the meaning of the forms of nominal flexion, Hübschmann, in the first part of a very recent work of his1 of which we shall speak soon, traced in a detailed and critical exposition the develop146 ment of the syntax of the cases, studying it first in the ancient grammar (which in his opinion begins with the investigations of the Greek philosophers on the subject of language and reaches to G. Hermann2 inclusive), afterwards in the school of philology to which the powerful genius of Wilhelm von Humboldt gave impulse, lastly in the historico-comparative science of language. The opinions manifested by distinguished investigators on the subject of the original meaning of the cases have also been set forth and examined by Holzweissig3 in a very recent work. But the zealous reader may learn from the two works above mentioned the history of the long intel 1 Zur casuslehre, München, 1875 (erster theil: zur geschichte der casuslehre, pp. 1-146). 2 With regard to this great scholar see also Freund, Triennium philologicum oder grundzüge der philologischen wissenschaften, etc., i., Leipzig, 1874, pp. 80-81. 3 Wahrheit und irrthum der localistischen casustheorie : ein beitrag zur rationellen behandlung der griechischen und lateinischen casussyntax auf grund der sicheren ergebnisse der vergleichenden sprachforschung, Leipzig, 1877, pp. 1-24. |