Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1873-05-23
PRESIDENT HrcknAN's LECTURE

man began To feel an interest in his history
There have been two methods Of cOnductin!
these researches. The earlier metho
began with inquiries into language i
general. Whence came it? Was it a eli
or an lnvention2 There are nearly a thou
sand living languages, branching out int
nearly four times that number of dialects
( Down To the beginning of the present cen
fury, these questions were connect e,
! with thcoloF, zeal research. Their treat
ment at the hands of the theologians wa
unscienti6 g. Instead Of certifying tn
/ sacred record by facts. theologians en-
| deayorec. to ascertain the facts of Language
/ by the ,Jible, by the same fatal peryersiol
which arrayed the clergy Of the middle age
again t astronomy. An assumed revelation
was considered the bar to a reasonable inves-
| LEGATION. They declared that God invented
| language and gave it to Adam that tn,
or ginal language was Hebrew. and by tn,
| confusion Of tongues at Babel God origina.
ted diversity of languages. Now. all thi,
II bare assumption. From beginning to END
1t Is nowhere said or implied in the Bible
| that tod gave language ready-made to
! Adam. The contrary Is in fact implied Ii
| Is said that God brought the creatures to
Adam. - u see what he would call them,
and Adam gave names. etc. The assumption
| that Hebrew was the original language is
no less acGacious than the more recent
assertion that the language of Paradise
must have been Dutch
1.-THE theological explanation of the origin
OF language was unsatisfactory. the meta
physical was no less 80. Maintaining that Ian
suage was an invention, the metaphysicianS
undertook TO develop language " out of the
depths of their inner consciousness to tell
how 1t was invented. by imagining how it
might have been Invented. They declared
what the earliest thoughts and consequently
earliest words Of the first men must have
been. One was sure that the first words
We're nouns, names of the things he saw
around him. such a. caves, trees, sun, stars.
&c. Another contended that the natural
language OF gesture was the first, and that
the first speech was in warning of danger. as
lt comes, /. E., that the first words were
verbs. ! third insisted that the earliest
speech was interjections
IL i too early to say that the science of
language has satisfactorily answered any of
tine great questions concerning the origin of
language. But the methods Of the new
phllology are strictly scientific. Ii can
already point to results which give promise
OF the most brilliant triumphs in the future
Its first impulse came from the researches
made by the scholarly missionaries of the
18th Century into the tongues Of the heather
races. The science owes its origin to the
efforts Of practical Christianity rather than
to the speculations Of theologians.
The first individual who gave an impulse
to the science was the philosopher Leibnitz,
about the year ITO. Leibnitz caused to be
collected specimens of the known languages. |
the remote and obscure as well as the we'll |
known. He did not live to carry out his |
project. But the great event. the spark |
which Tired the train Of research. was the |
discovery OF the Sanscrlt, the ancient Ian |
guage of the Hindoos. and the literary
language Of the Brahmins. 1t had long |
)een known that such a language existed.
)ut 1t had never been made subject Of in
'estgatlon until, under Sir VIM. Jones. the
tartlng discovery was made that this old
anguage-older than the Greek of Homeror
Hebrew OF David-b0re striking reSemb-
anee to the creek and Latin. All existing |
heorleS were overthrow by this discovery.
y lille some doubted and some sneered.
cholars set themselves diligently to the
ask which was thus forced upon them.
hen followed the labors of Bonn. Pott
TASK, Schlegel, Grimm, and the large corps
l living men, who are laboriOusly pushing
heir way into new fields. The old wav was
consider only the forms of words. If two
'ords -lppen 10 resemble each other in any
~o languages, no matter how widely Sc
arated, these languages were assumed to be
)nnected with each other This practice
Injected phllologists to well-deserved ridi- |
lle- Noltaire's definition of the old phil
iogy was that science in which the con.
'hanis were OF little Importance and the ;
)welS OF none at all The lecturer gave
me amusing illustrations of attempts to
srYe one word from another, as the de-
yatiOI Of the proper name PENN from
ne name Oscar-the latter by yarions
Ranges being resolved into diaper that
ITO napkin, from which the process to
epln was simple and easy. Many of the :
'udItleS OF the old processes are illustrated
the first edition of NeAster's Dictionary
I'd the successive editions of that work
rniSh good measure of the advance of
e science.
Bat careful investigation revealed the
ct that when one root took different forms
different languages, there was a definite
" which governed these changes. This
", laid down in Grimm'S Scaleof Phonetic
lulvalents, Is called Grimm 5 Law. Here
e lecturer gave examples of this law, tax
9 words and tracing them in their changes
rough the different Aryan languages.
But the great triumph of modern philol-
Is Comparative Grammar. Modern
llology maintains that all infections were
SInally separate words, which finally
ileSeed with the word to which they were
ned. The basis Of all language consists
monosyllablc roots, unaffected. The
gree OF conference separates languages
o the Agglutinative. in which words are
ided together, not fused, and the Inflec- Z
nal, in which the parts have become so =
sely Joined as TO lose their identity.
Imperative grammar has succeeded in -
the composite nature of the
%. through all the modes. lenses and
ces. The lecturer proceeded to show the
7lty OF the old idea that a highly in
ted language was necessarily the best.
tins principle, some languages in Africa
uld be superior to Greek and Latin. ~,
at our language has gained since Chau-
time by dropping the infections. no i!
will deny. For poetry, or diplomacy.
the speeches Of a candidate before cleo
D, give Us, said President b., highly
eeted language like the Greek but for
anguage which shall make a man tell
'rly what he knows, give us one with
modern improvements, like the Eng
Is one of the fundamental principles | -
similarity OF grammatical structure is
more Importance than mere similarity of
nd IN words. Comparative grammar is ,
more Importance than comparative lexi- !
'gy. Bearing this in mind. we find two
lcipal families OF speech. First. that
wn as the Aryan, Indo-Europcan. or
o-Germanic, including, first, the Sans
+. not the parent, but the sister of the =
+; second, the Zend; taird, the Greek Ne
/ Its dialects; fourth, Roman, also the \
brian and Oscan; fifth, the Romance on tiol
lanesque languages, including the
nish, French and other modern Ian
ges derived from the Latin: sixth. the
ic seventh, the Slavonic: eighth. the III
tonic, including the English. The re- IL
IN between these is proved by the SINH =,
J OF their roots and identity of their or, a
inology. And yet no one can claim on
paternity. Sanserit is the Oldest but NV
OF the Others have older forms. show lou
that all are derived from some older mad
uage. app
he OF the most interesting features is the, ticr
ny thus supplied, of an unknown people 9TH
unknown age. For five find any root s,
ing throug h all the family, it is fair to
ne that that root and the thing de-
oy 1t We're the possession of the race ~
which al sprang. Such investigation ~.
US OF time when the race consisted Of fAn