Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/816

 780 PHILOLOGY islands, and that of New Zealand. Probably to these are to be added, as a third division, the Mehmesian dialects of the Melanesian Archi pelago, of which both the physical and the linguistic peculiarities would in that case be ascribed to mixture with the black Papuan races. All these languages are extremely simple in phonetic form, and of a low grade of structure, the Polynesian branch being in both respects the lowest, and some of the Malayan dialects having reached a development considerably more advanced. The radical elements are much oftener of two syllables than of one, and reduplication plays an important part in their extension and variation. Malay literature goes back as far as to the 13th century, and there are Javan records even from the early centuries of our era, the result of religion and culture introduced into that island from Brahmanic India ; but none of these have yet been utilized, as they doubtless in time will be, for tracing out the special laws of historical develop ment prevailing in the family. 11S. 8. Otlicr Oceanic Families. At least two other families, un-
 * iliau. connected with the preceding and with one another, are found

among the Pacific islands, and only there. The continental island of Australia, with its dependency Tasmania (where, however, the native tongue has now become extinct), has its own body of probably related dialects, as its own physical type. They have been but imperfectly investigated, their importance, except to the professed student of language, being nothing ; but they are not destitute of a rude agglutinative structure of their own. Still less known are the ipuan. Papuan or Negrito languages, belonging to the black race with frizzled hair inhabiting most of New Guinea, and found also in the interior of some of the other islands, having been driven from the coasts by superior intruders of the Malay race. iu- 9. Caucasian Languages. Of the existing languages of Asia sian. there remain to be mentioned only those of the Caucasian moun tains and highlands, between the Black and Caspian Seas, pressed upon the north by Slavonians and Turks, upon the south by Armenians and Kurds and Turks. Its situation makes of the Caucasus a natural eddy in all .movements of emigration between Asia and Europe ; and its linguistic condition is as if remnants of many families otherwise extinct had been stranded and preserved there. The dialects north of the principal range Circassian, Mitsjeghian, Lesghian, &c. have not been proved to be related either to one another or to those of the south. Among the latter, the Georgian is much the most widespread and important (see GEORGIA), ami, alone among them all, possesses a literature. The Caucasian dialects present many exceptional and difficult features, and are in great part of so high a grade of structure as to have been allowed the epithet inflective by those who attach special importance to the distinction thus expressed. isque. 10. Remnants of Families in Europe. The Basque people of the western Pyrenees, at the angle of the Bay of Biscay, are shown by their speech to be an isolated remnant of some race which was doubtless once much more widely spread, but has now everywhere else lost its separate identity ; as such it is of extreme interest to the ethnologist. The Basque language appears to be unrelated to any other on earth. It is of a very highly agglutinative structure, being equalled in intricacy of combination only by a part of the American dialects. Limited as it is in territory, it falls into a number of well-marked dialects, so that it also may not be refused the name of a &quot;family.&quot; rus- The only other case of the kind worth noting is that of the n. Etruscan language of northern central Italy, which long ago became extinct, in consequence of the conquest and absorption of Etruria by Rome, but which still exists in numerous brief inscrip tions (see ETRURIA). Many attempts have been made to connect the language with other families, and it has even quite recently been pronounced Aryan or Indo-European, of the Italican branch, by scholars of high rank ; yet it is altogether likely to be finally acknowledged, like the Basque, as an isolated fragment. In order to complete this review of the languages of the Old World it only remains to notice those of Africa which have not been already mentioned. They are grouped under two heads : the languages of the south and those of the centre of the continent, mtu. 11. South- African or Bantu Family. This is a very extensive and distinctly marked family, occupying (except the Hottentot and Bushman territory) the whole southern peninsula of the conti nent from some degrees north of the equator. It has been already partly described under KAFFRARIA, and will be treated more in detail under the head of ZULU). It is held apart from all other known families of language by a single prominent characteristic the extent to which it makes use of prefixes instead of suffixes as the apparatus of grammatical distinction ; its inflexion, both declensional and conjugational, is by appended elements which precede the stem or root. The most conspicuous part of this is the variety of prefixes, different in singular and plural, by which the various classes or genders (not founded on sex ; the ground of classification is generally obscure) of nouns are distinguished ; these then reappear in the other members of the sentence, as adjectives and verbs and pronouns, which are determined by the noun, thus producing an alliterative concord that runs through the sentence. The pronominal determinants of the verb, both subject and object, also come before it ; but the determinants of mode of action, as causative, &c., are mostly suffixed. The language in general is rich in the means of formal distinction. Those dialects which border on the Hottentots have, apparently by derivation from the latter, the clicks or ducking-sounds which form a conspicuous part of the Hottentot spoken alphabet. 12. Central African Languages. The remaining languages of Central Africa form a broad band across the centre of the continent, between African, the Bantu on the south and the llamitic on the east and north. They are by no means to be called a family, but rather a creat mass of dialects, numbering by hundreds, of varying structure, as to the relations of which there is great discordance of opinion even among the most recent and competent authorities. It is no place here to enter into the vexed questions of African linguistics, or even to report the varying views xipon the subject ; that would require a space wholly disproportioned to the importance of African speech in the general sum of human language. There is no small variety of physical type as well as of speech in the central belt ; and, partly upon the evidence of lighter tint and apparently higher endowment, certain races are set oif and made a separate division of; such is the Nuba-Fulah division of F. M tiller, rejected by Lepsius. The latter regarded all the varieties of physical and linguistic character in the central belt as due to mixture between pure Africans of the south and Hamites of the north and east ; but this is at present an hypothesis only, and a very improbable one, since it implies modes and results of mixture to which no analogies are quotable from languages whose history is known ; nor does it appear at all probable that the collision of two races and types of speech should produce such an immense and diverse body of trans itional types. It is far from impossible that the present promi nence of the South-African or Bantu family may be secondary, due to the great expansion under favouring circumstances of a race once having no more importance than belongs now to many of the Central-African races, and speaking a tongue which differed from theirs only as theirs differed from one another. None of the Central-African languages is a prefix-language in the same degree as the Bantu, and in many of them prefixes play no greater part than in the world s languages in general ; others show special forms or traces of the prefix -structure ; and some have features of an extraordinary character, hardly to be paralleled elsewhere. One group in the east (Oigob, &c. ) has a gender distinction, involving that of sex, but really founded on relative power and dignity : things disparaged, including women, are put in one class ; things extolled, including men, are put in the other. This is perhaps the most significant hint anywhere to be found of how a gender- distinction like that in our own Aryan languages, which we usually regard as being essentially a distinction of sex, wliile in fact it only includes such, may have arisen. Common among the African languages, as among many other families, especially the Ameri can, is a generic distinction between animate beings and inanimate things. 13. American Languages. With these the case is closely the Ameri- same as with the Central-African languages : there is an immense can. number of dialects, of greatly varied structure, of which as yet even the nearer groupings are only in part made out, while the grade and kind of relationship between the groups, if such there exist, is wholly unclear. Some general statements respecting American languages have been given under AMERICA, and a detailed list and classification of them in the article INDIANS ; hence it is un necessary to go over the subject again in this place. What we most need to note is the very narrow limitation of our present knowledge. Even among neighbouring families like the Algonquin, Iroquois, and Dakota, whose agreement in style of structure (poly- synthetic), taken in connexion with the accordant race -type of their speakers, forbids us to regard them as ultimately different, no material correspondence, agreement in words and meanings, is to be traced ; and there are in America all the degrees of polysynthetism, down to the lowest, and even to its entire absence. Such being the case, it ought to be evident to every one accustomed to deal with this class of subjects that all attempts to connect American languages as a body with languages of the Old World are and must be fruitless ; in fact, all discussions of the matter are at present unscientific, and are tolerably certain to continue so through all time to come. Literature. Many of the theoretic points discussed above are treated by the writer with more fulness in his Language and the Study of Language (1807) and Life and Growth of Lan guage (1875). Other English works to consult are M. Muller s Lectures on the Science of Language ; Farrar s Chapters on Language ; Wedgwood s Origin of Language ; Sayce s Principles ofl hilology and Introduction to the Science of Language, &c. In German, see Paul s J rindpien der Sprnctige- schichte (Halle, 1S80); Delbriick s Einltitung indasSprachstudium(Lelpalc, 1880; there is also an English version) ; Schleichcr s Deutsche Sprache ; also the works of W. von Humboldt and of H. Steinthal. As to the classification and relation ships of languages, see Hovelacque s La Linguistitjue (Paris, 1876), and F. Miiller s Grundriss der fiprachwissenschaft (Vienna, still in progress). As to the history of the study, see Lcrsch s Sprachphilosophfa der Alien (1840); Stein- thal s Geschichte der fprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen und Jlomern (1801!) ; Benfey s Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft und Orientalitchen J hilolnijie in Deutschland (1869). (W. 1). W.)