Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/339

310 Westergaard and liavvlinsou had already observed that some of its ^/ramiuatical forms and vocal)ulary could be best explained by reference to the modern Georj^ian and Turkish; and De Saulcy, notwithstanding his opinion of its afllnity with Aryan, fully recognised that it had left traces in other ([uarters, including Kurd, Mongol, Armenian and the Gipsy tongue, but no- where to • a greater deizree than in Turkish. He supports his opinion with a wealth of illustration drawn from these sources that nmst ha\e fairly distracted his printer, and the indiscriminate use of the mechanism of philological dictionaries has in fact led the writer into many serious errors. He does not refer to Hincks, and notwithstanding all the resources at his command, he has fallen far short of the Irish writer whose country rectory was ill provided with these artificial appliances. De Saulcy has not, in factt, added a sintde correct value to those already known, and has failed to recognise several already established as correct. The utmost generosity caimot concede to him the possession of more than twenty-one correct vaUies and nine nearly correct, all previously known; so thai he had not more than thirty availaljle for transliteration, as opposed to the twenty-nine of Westergaard and the forty-seven of Hincks. But he introduced a host of errors that are wholly his own. He assigned no less that thirty values that are absohitely wrong, although he only attempted sixty-two out of the eiulity-two in Westeriraard's list. But it is not only in the details of deci})herment that he went astray; his error covers the whole conception of the structure of the lan^ua^c*. He lias no less tlian fifteen dillerent signs for vowels re})resenting many fantastic irradations of sound. Diflerent modifications of a and off monopoHse each three signs, besides the concession of one each for /tan and o. A simple u is not