The Ohio Democrat. (Logan, O. [Ohio]) 1886-1906, 1890-07-05
ORIGIN OE LANGUAGE.
The Last or Inhectional Stage of Its DE.
yelopment,


velopment.
Before a large and interested audience
at the State normal school Prof. Primer
of the Friends school, continued his
lecture upon "The Origin of Language. "
He told of the last or inhectional stage.
This stage is the group to which our
language belongs. The Semitic and
Indo-Germanic infection supplies such
examples as the words mot, window" "
etc. Not" is derived from the particle
me" (any), and "wight," or 'ne-a.
wight" All contracted together forms
the negative mot" but this is true OF
the latest stage, for in the earlier stages
of our language it was 'naught."
particle me" "Window" is derived
from wind, land ending with ''ow," the
same as our word eye"
In order to show that the great diver
sity of language we have could come
from simple unity, the professor ex-
planned that in the early stage simple
roots were used and then he showed
that as the earth became more fully
populated each section could choose it's
own development. He then compared
the developments of two of the Ian.
guages-the Hebrew and the English
and explained the derivations of our
two verb classes. In the earliest stage
the idea of time was unknown in a verb,
and the people used the present tense
for every thing, but as soon as they ac.
quired this idea of time they began to
think of expressing it. The best way
was to. double the original root. For in
stance, ''do" was in the older form ''da. z"
In order to express past time they dou.
bled it and had dada" In the Anglo
Saxon this became died" and expressed
lished it was not necessary to duplicate
every verb. "Dide" dwindled down, in
Anglo-Saxon. to 'ede," and later, when
the endings fell away, 1t was ed" and
is now found in learned" etc. In the
Semitic system the consonants are firm.
Thus |, m, d, with vowels added, in
"learn," "larnad," ''he had learned"
'lorned," learning (present particle),
"larned," learned. OF this group the
Arabic is the only living language.
Passing to the irregular verbs the pro-
fessor stated that "hold" and ''held"
were formed in the same way as
''learned." "Hold" was originally
"hald- hald," hut according to the prin-
ciple then prevalent the sd" was
dropped; it became "ha-ld," and that
became our modern "held." Such is
the origin of our irregular verbs. The
changeableness is not UNRESTRICTED as
in tho Semitic languages, but can only
change according to regular system.
Thus ''u" can never become "a" or Sc"
it can only become So" "au," ''iu,"
''eu," 'ie."
In the most commonly accepted theory
of the root system are found the primary,
secondary and tertiary roots, and from
these the language was developed by
means of sufiixes and prefixes once
themselves words, and by internal
change of vowels. The cradle of the Indo-
Germanic family was near the sources
of the Indus and the Ganges, and the
sources of the Oxus and Yaxartes. The
first grand division was into the Slavo-
Teutonic, then into the Argo-Greeco,
and then Italico-Celtic.
He analysed several words, and stated
that the word "carpet-bagger" is his
torical. The word bridegroom" is not
In its original form, as that was "bride"
and ''guma," the latter meaning ''man,"
like the Latin ''homo." 1t existed in
its Anglo-Saxon when the endings fell
OF and the vowels were changed, and
ghe word "groomv was recognized. =
Providence Journal.