Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/219

V.] upon correspondences like those here given as the result of accident is wholly preposterous: no sane man would think of ascribing them to such a cause. Nor is the hypothesis of a natural and inherent bond between the sound and the sense, which would prompt language-makers in different parts of the earth to assign, independently of one another, these names to these conceptions, at all more admissible. The existence of a natural bond could be claimed with even the slightest semblance of plausibility only in the case of the pronouns and the words for 'father' and 'mother;' and there, too, the claim could be readily disposed of—if, indeed, it be not already sufficiently refuted by the words from stranger tongues which are cited in the table. Mutual borrowing, too, transfer from one tongue to another, would be equally far from furnishing an acceptable explanation. Were we dealing with two or three neighbouring dialects alone, the suggestion of such a borrowing would not be so palpably futile as in the case in hand, where the facts to be explained are found in so many tongues, covering a territory which stretches from the mouths of the Ganges to the shores of the Atlantic. A modified form of the hypothesis of mutual borrowing is put forth by some who are indisposed to admit the essential oneness of Indo-European speech. Some tribe or race, they say, of higher endowments and culture, has leavened with its material and usages the tongues of all these scattered peoples, engrafting upon their original diversity an element of agreement and unity. But this theory is just as untenable as the others which we have been reviewing. Instances of mixture of languages—resulting either from the transmission of a higher and more favoured culture, or from a somewhat equal and intimate mingling of races, or from both together—have happened during the historical period in sufficient numbers to allow the linguistic student to see plainly what are its effects upon language, and that they are very different from those which make the identity of Indo-European language. The introduction of culture and knowledge, of art and science, may bring in a vocabulary of expressions for the knowledge communicated, the conceptions taught or prompted; but it cannot touch the most intimate fund of speech, the words