The problem, therefore, of the origin of language, which seemed so perplexing and mysterious to the ancient philosophers, assumes a much simpler aspect with us. We have learnt what language is made of; we have found that everything in language, except the roots, is intelligible, and can be accounted for. There is nothing to surprise us in the combination of the predicative and demonstrative roots which led to the building up of all the languages with which we are acquainted, from Chinese to English. It is not only conceivable, as Professor Pott remarks, that the formation of the Sanskrit language, as it is handed down to us, may have been preceded by a state of the greatest simplicity and entire absence of inflections, such as is exhibited to the present day. by the Chinese and other monosyllabic languages.' It is absolutely impossible that it should have been otherwise. After we have seen that all languages must have started from this Chinese or monosyllabic stage, the only portion of the problem of the origin of language that remains to be solved is this: How can we account for the origin of those predicative and demonstrative roots which form the constituent elements of all human speech, and which have hitherto resisted all attempts at further analysis? This problem will form the subject of our next two lectures.

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LECTURE VIII.

MORPHOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION.

WE finished in our last lecture our analysis of

language, and we arrived at the result that predicative and demonstrative roots are the sole constituent elements of human speech.

We now turn back in order to discover how many possible forms of language may be produced by the free combination of these constituent elements; and we shall then endeavour to find out whether each of these possible forms has its real counterpart in some or other of the dialects of mankind. We are attempting in fact to carry out a morphological classification of speech, which is based entirely on the form or manner in which roots are put together, and therefore quite independent of the genealogical classification which, according to its very nature, is based on the formations of language handed down ready-made from generation to generation.

Before, however, we enter on this, the principal subject of our present lecture, we have still to examine, as briefly as possible, a second family of speech, which, like the Aryan, is established on the strictest principles of genealogical classification, namely, the Semitic.

The Semitic family is divided into three branches, the Aramaic, the Hebraic, and the Arabic1.

1 Histoire générale et Système comparé des Langues Sémitiques, par Ernest Renan. Seconde édition. Paris, 1858.

The Aramaic occupies the north, including Syria, Mesopotamia, and part of the ancient kingdoms of Babylonia and Assyria. It is known to us chiefly in two dialects, the Syriac and Chaldee. The former name is given to the language which has been preserved to us in a translation of the Bible (the Peshito) ascribed to the second century, and in the rich Christian literature dating from the fourth. It is still spoken, though in a very corrupt form, by the Nestorians of Kurdistan, near the lakes of Van and Urmia, and by some Christian tribes in Mesopotamia; and an attempt has been made by the American missionaries, stationed at Urmia, to restore this dialect to some grammatical correctness by publishing translations and a grammar of what they call the Neo-Syriac language.

2 Peshito means simple. The Old Testament was translated from Hebrew, the New Testament from Greek, about 200, if not earlier. Ephraem Syrus lived in the middle of the fourth century. During the eighth and ninth centuries the Nestorians of Syria acted as the instructors of the Arabs. Their literary and intellectual supremacy began to fail in the tenth century. It was revived for a time by Gregorius Barhebræus (Abulfaraj) in the thirteenth century. See Renan, p. 257.

3 Messrs. Perkins and Stoddard, the latter the author of a grammar, published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. v.

4 The following extract, from Allon's Memoir of Sherman, will show how easily even intelligent persons deceive themselves, or are deceived by others, with regard to languages and their relationship: I shall never forget Mr. Sherman's delight when he found that Dr. Nolan, speaking in native Irish, and Asaad y' Kijatt from Beyroot, speaking in Syro-phenician, could understand each other, so as to hold conversation. It seemed to settle the longdisputed point as to Ireland having been first peopled by dispersed Phenician mariners.' P. 215.

The name of Chaldee has been given to the language adopted by the Jews during the Babylonian captivity. Though the learned among the Jews always retained a knowledge of their sacred language, they soon began to adopt the dialect of their conquerors, not for conversation only, but also for literary composition. The book of Ezra contains fragments in Chaldee, contemporaneous with the cuneiform inscription of Darius and Xerxes, and several of the apocryphal books, though preserved to us in Greek only, were most likely composed originally in Chaldee, and not in Hebrew. The so-called Targums again, or translations and paraphrases of the Old Testament, written during the centuries immediately preceding and following the Christian era, give us another specimen of the Aramaic, or the language of Babylonia, as transplanted to Palestine. This Aramaic was the dialect spoken by Christ and His disciples. The few authentic words preserved in the New Testament as spoken by our Lord in His own language, such as Talitha kumi, Ephphatha, Abba, are not in Hebrew, but in the Chaldee, or Aramaic, as then spoken by the Jews.

After the destruction of Jerusalem the literature of the Jews continued to be written in the same

5 Renan, pp. 214 seq., 'Le chaldéen biblique serait un dialecte araméen légèrement hébraïsé.'

6 Arabic, tarjam, to explain; Dragoman, Arabic, tarjamân.

7 The most ancient are those of Onkelos and Jonathan, in the second century after Christ. Others are much later, later even than the Talmud. Renan, p. 220.

8 Renan, pp. 220-222.

dialect. The Talmud of Jerusalem of the fourth, and that of Babylon of the fifth, century exhibit the Aramean, as spoken by the educated Jews settled in these two localities, though greatly depraved and spoiled by an admixture of strange elements. This language remained the literary idiom of the Jews to the tenth century. The Masora1o, and the traditional commentary of the Old Testament, was written in it about that time. Soon after the Jews adopted Arabic as their literary language, and retained it to the thirteenth century. They then returned to a kind of modernised Hebrew, which they still continue to employ for learned discussions.

It is curious that the Aramaic branch of the Semitic family, though originally the language of the great kingdoms of Babylon and Nineveh, should have been preserved to us only in the literature of the Jews, and of the Christians of Syria. There must have been a Babylonian literature, for the wisdom of the Chaldeans had acquired a reputation which could hardly have been sustained without a literature. Abraham must have spoken Aramaic before he emigrated to Canaan. Laban spoke the same dialect, and the name which he gave to the heap of stones that was to be a witness between him and Jacob (Jegar-sahadutha), is Syriac, whereas Galeed,

9 Talmud (instruction) consists of Mishna and Gemara. Mishna means repetition, viz. of the Law. It was collected and written down about 218, by Jehudá. Gemara is a continuation and commentary of the Mishna that of Jerusalem was finished towards the end of the fourth, that of Babylon towards the end of the fifth century.

10 First printed in the Rabbinic Bible, Venice, 1525.