Page:An introduction to Indonesian linguistics, being four essays.djvu/256

244 languages into East Germanic and West Germanic. But Kluge, “Urgermanisch”, § 146, bases this division not upon a single criterion, but upon a whole series of them, and yet the classification is not accej)ted by all scholars. That sort of thing ought to make IN scholars wake up; either they must discover additional criteria or abandon their classification of the IN languages.

Note. — The classification of the IN languages on the basis of one single linguistic phenomenon would only be reasonable if it were proved that it was the most important, significant, and characteristic, of all linguistic phenomena. But no such proof has been given, either in support of the phenomena of final sounds or of the position of the genitive. For my own part, I do not see why the phenomena of final sounds should be deemed more important than those that affect sounds in the interior of words (see §§ 193 seqq.), or the position of the genitive in relation to the principal word more important than (e.g.) that of the predicate in relation to the subject. In the last few years IN research has devoted an undue amount of attention to the genitive.

II. Conversely, the results of IN linguistic research may also be applied with profit to IE study. For example, in Meyer-Lübke's “Historische Grammatik der französichen Sprache”, I, § 43, the word tante , “aunt” , is explained as having been formed under the influence of the principles of infantile repetition from an older form ante ᐸ Latin amita. This explanation finds its parallel and confirmation in the IN phenomena of our § 22.

III. Students of linguistic psychology make use of IN material, often in fact they seem to prefer it, as a basis for their inferences. But as their own training has been IE, they will be enabled to feel their way with greater certainty into the sphere of IN linguistic phenomena, if these are presented to them accompanied by IE parallels. For I have shown clearly enough in a former monograph how" even the most