Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/250

228 alphabet, though rich and very harmoniously developed, does not cover more than about two-thirds of our English system of spoken sounds; as an instrument of the expression of thought it has very serious and conspicuous defects, being inferior—especially in its handling of the verb (the soul of the sentence), in a loose and bald syntactical arrangement, and in an excessive use of compounds—not only to the Greek, but to almost every other cultivated Indo-European tongue; nor (as has been already hinted) can its literature sustain a moment's comparison with those of the classical languages. It is to be prized chiefly as a historical document, casting inestimable light upon the earliest development of the common speech of the Indo-European family, and the relations of its members. Had all its literature besides perished, leaving us only a grammar of its forms and a dictionary of its material, it would still in a great measure retain this character; were but a fragment of one of its texts saved, as has been the case with the Mœso-Gothic, it would still vindicate its right to a place at the head of all the languages of the family. It may easily be appreciated, then, what an impulse to the historical study of language, then just struggling into existence by the comparison of the tongues of Europe, was given by the discovery and investigation of this new dialect, having a structure that so invited and facilitated historic analysis, and even presented by the native grammatical science in an analyzed condition, with roots, themes, and affixes carefully separated, distinctly catalogued, and defined in meaning and office. In all researches into the beginnings of Indo-European speech, the genesis of roots and forms, its assistance is indispensable, and its authority of greatest weight. It often has been and still is wrongly estimated and misapplied by incautious or ill-instructed investigators; it is sometimes treated as if it were the mother of the Indo-European dialects, as the Latin of the modern Romanic tongues, instead of merely their eldest sister, like the Mœso-Gothic among the Germanic languages; it is unduly brought in to aid the inter-comparison of dialects of a single branch, and its peculiar developments, its special laws of euphony or construction, are sought to be forced upon