were originally taken in a possessive sense, and that, therefore, what
remains after the personal terminations are removed, _sever-di_, was never
an adjective or a participle, but must have been originally a substantive
capable of receiving terminal possessive pronouns; that is, the idea
originally expressed by the imperfect could not have been “loving-I,” but
“love of me.”
How then, could this convey the idea of a past tense as contrasted with
the present? Let us look to our own language. If desirous to express the
perfect, we say, I have loved, _j’ai aimé_. This “I have,” meant
originally, I possess, and in Latin “amicus quem amatum habeo,” signified
in fact a friend whom I hold dear,—not as yet, whom I _have_ loved. In the
course of time, however, these phrases, “I have said, I have loved,” took
the sense of the perfect, and of time past—and not unnaturally, inasmuch
as what I _hold_, or _have_ done, _is_ done;—done, as we say, and past. In
place of an auxiliary possessive verb, the Turkish language uses an
auxiliary possessive pronoun to the same effect. “Paying belonging to me,”
equals “I have paid;” in either case a phrase originally possessive, took
a temporal signification, and became a past or perfect tense. This,
however, is the very anatomy of grammar, and when a Turk says “severdim”
he is, of course, as unconscious of its literal force, “loving belonging
to me,” as of the circulation of his blood.
The most ingenious part of Turkish is undoubtedly the verb. Like Greek and
Sanskrit, it exhibits a variety of moods and tenses, sufficient to express
the nicest shades of doubt, of surmise, of hope, and supposition. In all
these forms the root remains intact, and sounds like a key-note through
all the various modulations produced by the changes of person, number,
mood, and time. But there is one feature so peculiar to the Turkish verb,
that no analogy can be found in any of the Aryan languages—the power of
producing new verbal bases by the mere addition of certain letters, which
give to every verb a negative, or causative, or reflexive, or reciprocal
meaning.
_Sev-mek_, for instance, as a simple root, means to love. By adding _in_,
we obtain a reflexive verb, _sev-in-mek_, which means to love oneself, or
rather, to rejoice, to be happy. This may now be conjugated through all
moods and tenses, _sevin_ being in every respect equal to a new root. By
adding _ish_ we form a reciprocal verb, _sev-ish-mek_, to love one
another.
To each of these three forms a causative sense may be imparted by the
addition of the syllable _dir_. Thus,
I. _sev-mek_, to love, becomes IV. _sev-dir-mek_, to cause to
love.
II. _sev-in-mek_, to rejoice, becomes V. _sev-in-dir-mek_, to
cause to rejoice.
III. _sev-ish-mek_, to love one another, becomes VI.
_sev-ish-dir-mek_, to cause one to love one another.
Each of these six forms may again be turned into a passive by the addition
of _il_. Thus,
I. _sev-mek_, to love, becomes VII. _sev-il-mek_, to be loved.
II. _sev-in-mek_, to rejoice, becomes VIII. _sev-in-il-mek_, to be
rejoiced at.
III. _sev-ish-mek_, to love one another, becomes IX.
_sev-ish-il-mek_, not translatable.
IV. _sev-dir-mek_, to cause one to love, becomes X.
_sev-dir-il-mek_, to be brought to love.
V. _sev-in-dir-mek_, to cause to rejoice, becomes XI.
_sev-in-dir-il-mek_, to be made to rejoice.
VI. _sev-ish-dir-mek_, to cause them to love one another, becomes
XII. _sev-ish-dir-il-mek_, to be brought to love one another.
This, however, is by no means the whole verbal contingent at the command
of a Turkish grammarian. Every one of these twelve secondary or tertiary
roots may again be turned into a negative by the mere addition of _me_.
Thus, _sev-mek_, to love, becomes _sev-me-mek_, not to love. And if it is
necessary to express the impossibility of loving, the Turk has a new root
at hand to convey even that idea. Thus while _sev-me-mek_ denies only the
fact of loving, _sev-eme-mek_, denies its possibility, and means not to be
able to love. By the addition of these two modificatory syllables, the
numbers of derivative roots is at once raised to thirty-six. Thus,
I. _sev-mek_, to love, becomes XIII. _sev-me-mek_, not to love.
II. _sev-in-mek_, to rejoice, becomes XIV. _sev-in-me-mek_, not to
rejoice.
III. _sev-ish-mek_, to love one another, becomes XV.
_sev-ish-me-mek_, not to love one another.
IV. _sev-dir-mek_, to cause to love, becomes XVI.
_sev-dir-me-mek_, not to cause one to love.
V. _sev-in-dir-mek_, to cause to rejoice, becomes XVII.
_sev-in-dir-me-mek_, not to cause one to rejoice.
VI. _sev-ish-dir-mek_, to cause them to love one another, becomes
XVIII. _sev-ish-dir-me-mek_, not to cause them to love one
another.
VII. _sev-il-mek_, to be loved, becomes XIX. _sev-il-me-mek_, not
to be loved.
VIII. _sev-in-il-mek_, to be rejoiced at, becomes XX.
_sev-in-il-me-mek_, not to be the object of rejoicing.
IX. _sev-ish-il-mek_, if it was used, would become XXI.
_sev-ish-il-me-mek_; neither form being translatable.
X. _sev-dir-il-mek_, to be brought to love, becomes XXII.
_sev-dir-il-me-mek_, not to be brought to love.
XI. _sev-in-dir-il-mek_, to be made to rejoice, becomes XXIII.
_sev-in-dir-il-me-mek_, not to be made to rejoice.
XII. _sev-ish-dir-il-mek_, to be brought to love one another,
becomes XXIV. _sev-ish-dir-il-me-mek_, not to be brought to love
one another.
Some of these forms are of course of rare occurrence, and with many verbs
these derivative roots, though possible grammatically, would be logically
impossible. Even a verb like “to love,” perhaps the most pliant of all,
resists some of the modifications to which a Turkish grammarian is fain to
subject it. It is clear, however, that wherever a negation can be formed,
the idea of impossibility also can be superadded, so that by substituting
_eme_ for _me_, we should raise the number of derivative roots to
thirty-six. The very last of these, XXXVI. _sev-ish-dir-il-eme-mek_ would
be perfectly intelligible, and might be used, for instance, if, in
speaking of the Sultan and the Czar, we wished to say, that it was
impossible that they should be brought to love one another.
_Finnic Class._
It is generally supposed that the original seat of the Finnic tribes was
in the Ural mountains, and their languages have been therefore called
_Uralic_. From this centre they spread east and west; and southward in
ancient times, even to the Black Sea, where Finnic tribes, together with
Mongolic and Turkic, were probably known to the Greeks under the
comprehensive and convenient name of Scythians. As we possess no literary
documents of any of these nomadic nations, it is impossible to say, even
where Greek writers have preserved their barbarous names, to what branch
of the vast Turanian family they belonged. Their habits were probably
identical before the Christian era, during the Middle Ages, and at the
present day. One tribe takes possession of a tract and retains it perhaps
for several generations, and gives its name to the meadows where it tends
its flocks, and to the rivers where the horses are watered. If the country
be fertile, it will attract the eye of other tribes; wars begin, and if
resistance be hopeless, hundreds of families fly from their paternal
pastures, to migrate perhaps for generations,—for migration they find a
more natural life than permanent habitation,—and after a time we may
rediscover their names a thousand miles distant. Or two tribes will carry
on their warfare for ages, till with reduced numbers both have perhaps to
make common cause against some new enemy.
During these continued struggles their languages lose as many words as men
are killed on the field of battle. Some words (we might say) go over,
others are made prisoners, and exchanged again during times of peace.
Besides, there are parleys and challenges, and at last a dialect is
produced which may very properly be called a language of the camp,
(Urdu-zebán, camp-language, is the proper name of Hindustání, formed in
the armies of the Mogul emperors,) but where it is difficult for the
philologist to arrange the living and to number the slain, unless some
salient points of grammar have been preserved throughout the medley. We
saw how a number of tribes may be at times suddenly gathered by the
command of a Chingis-khán or Timur, like billows heaving and swelling at
the call of a thunder-storm. One such wave rolling on from Karakorum to
Liegnitz may sweep away all the sheepfolds and landmarks of centuries, and
when the storm is over, a thin crust will, as after a flood, remain,
concealing the underlying stratum of people and languages.
On the evidence of language, the Finnic stock is divided into four
branches,
The Chudic,
The Bulgaric,
The Permic,
The Ugric.
The Chudic branch comprises the Finnic of the Baltic coasts. The name is
derived from Chud (Tchud) originally applied by the Russians to the Finnic
nations in the north-west of Russia. Afterwards it took a more general
sense, and was used almost synonymously with Scythian for all the tribes
of Central and Northern Asia. The Finns, properly so called, or as they
call themselves Suomalainen, _i.e._ inhabitants of fens, are settled in
the provinces of Finland (formerly belonging to Sweden, but since 1809
annexed to Russia), and in parts of the governments of Archangel and
Olonetz. Their number is stated at 1,521,515. The Finns are the most
advanced of their whole family, and are, the Magyars excepted, the only
Finnic race that can claim a station among the civilized and civilizing
nations of the world. Their literature and, above all, their popular
poetry bear witness to a high intellectual development in times which we
may call mythical, and in places more favorable to the glow of poetical
feelings than their present abode, the last refuge Europe could afford
them. The epic songs still live among the poorest, recorded by oral
tradition alone, and preserving all the features of a perfect metre and of
a more ancient language. A national feeling has lately arisen amongst the
Finns, despite of Russian supremacy, and the labors of Sjögern, Lönnrot,
Castrén, and Kellgren, receiving hence a powerful impulse, have produced
results truly surprising. From the mouths of the aged an epic poem has
been collected equalling the Iliad in length and completeness, nay, if we
can forget for a moment all that _we_ in our youth learned to call
beautiful, not less beautiful. A Finn is not a Greek, and Wainamoinen was
not a Homer. But if the poet may take his colors from that nature by which
he is surrounded, if he may depict the men with whom he lives, “Kalewala”
possesses merits not dissimilar from those of the Iliad, and will claim
its place as the fifth national epic of the world, side by side with the
Ionian songs, with the Mahábhárata, the Shahnámeh, and the Nibelunge. This
early literary cultivation has not been without a powerful influence on
the language. It has imparted permanency to its forms and a traditional
character to its words, so that at first sight we might almost doubt
whether the grammar of this language had not left the agglutinative stage,
and entered into the current of inflection with Greek or Sanskrit. The
agglutinative type, however, yet remains, and its grammar shows a
luxuriance of grammatical combination second only to Turkish and
Hungarian. Like Turkish it observes the “harmony of vowels,” a feature
peculiar to Turanian languages, as explained before.
Karelian and Tavastian are dialectical varieties of Finnish.
The Esths or Esthonians, neighbors to the Finns, speak a language closely
allied to the Finnish. It is divided into the dialects of Dorpat (in
Livonia) and Reval. Except some popular songs it is almost without
literature. Esthonia, together with Livonia and Kurland, forms the three
Baltic provinces of Russia. The population on the islands of the Gulf of
Finland is mostly Esthonian. In the higher ranks of society Esthonian is
hardly understood, and never spoken.
Besides the Finns and Esthonians, the Livonians and the Lapps must be
reckoned also amongst the same family. Their number, however, is small.
The population of Livonia consists chiefly of Esths, Letts, Russians, and
Germans. The number of Livonians speaking their own dialect is not more
than 5000.
The Lapps, or Laplanders, inhabit the most northern part of Europe. They
belong to Sweden and Russia. Their number is estimated at 28,000. Their
language has lately attracted much attention, and Castrén’s travels give a
description of their manners most interesting from its simplicity and
faithfulness.
The Bulgaria branch comprises the Tcheremissians and Mordvinians,
scattered in disconnected colonies along the Volga, and surrounded by
Russian and Tataric dialects. Both languages are extremely artificial in
their grammar, and allow an accumulation of pronominal affixes at the end
of verbs, surpassed only by the Bask, the Caucasian, and those American
dialects that have been called Polysynthetic.
The general name given to these tribes, Bulgaric, is not borrowed from
Bulgaria, on the Danube; Bulgaria, on the contrary, received its name
(replacing Moesia) from the Finnic armies by whom it was conquered in the
seventh century. Bulgarian tribes advanced from the Volga to the Don, and
after remaining for a time under the sovereignty of the Avars on the Don
and Dnieper, they advanced to the Danube in 635, and founded the Bulgarian
kingdom. This has retained its name to the present day, though the Finnic
Bulgarians have long been absorbed by Slavonic inhabitants, and both
brought under Turkish sway since 1392.
The third, or Permic branch, comprises the idioms of the Votiakes, the
Sirianes, and the Permians, three dialects of one language. _Perm_ was the
ancient name for the country between 61°-76° E. lon. and 55°-65° N. lat.
The Permic tribes were driven westward by their eastern neighbors, the
Voguls, and thus pressed upon their western neighbors, the Bulgars of the
Volga. The Votiakes are found between the rivers Vyatka and Kama.
Northwards follow the Sirianes, inhabiting the country on the Upper Kâma,
while the eastern portion is held by the Permians. These are surrounded on
the south by the Tatars of Orenburg and the Bashkirs; on the north by the
Samoyedes, and on the east by Voguls, who pressed on them from the Ural.
These Voguls, together with Hungarians and Ostiakes, form the fourth and
last branch of the Finnic family, the Ugric. It was in 462, after the
dismemberment of Attila’s Hunnic empire that these Ugric tribes approached
Europe. They were then called Onagurs, Saragurs, and Urogs; and in later
times they occur in Russian chronicles as Ugry. They are the ancestors of
the Hungarians, and should not be confounded with the Uigurs, an ancient
Turkic tribe mentioned before.
The similarity between the Hungarian language and dialects of Finnic
origin, spoken east of the Volga, is not a new discovery. In 1253, Wilhelm
Ruysbroeck, a priest who travelled beyond the Volga, remarked that a race
called Pascatir, who live on the Yaïk, spoke the same language as the
Hungarians. They were then settled east of the old Bulgarian kingdom, the
capital of which, the ancient Bolgari, on the left of the Volga, may still
be traced in the ruins of Spask. If these Pascatir—the portion of the
Ugric tribes that remained east of the Volga—are identical with the
Bashkir, as Klaproth supposes, it would follow that, in later times, they
gave up their language, for the present Bashkir no longer speak a
Hungarian, but a Turkic, dialect. The affinity of the Hungarian and the
Ugro-Finnic dialects was first proved philologically by Gyarmathi in 1799.
A few instances may suffice to show this connection:—
Hungarian. Tcheremissian. English.
Atya-m atya-m my father.
Atya-d atya-t thy father.
Atya atya-se his father.
Atya-nk atya-ne our father.
Atya-tok atya-da your father.
Aty-ok atya-st their father.
DECLENSION.
Hungarian. Esthonian. English.
Nom. vér werri blood.
Gen. véré werre of blood.
Dat vérnek werrele to blood.
Acc. vért werd blood.
Abl. vérestöl werrist from blood.
CONJUGATION.
Hungarian. Esthonian. English.
Lelem leian I find.
Leled leiad thou findest.
Leli leiab he finds.
Leljük leiame we find.
Lelitek leiate you find.
Lelik leiawad they find.
A Comparative Table of the NUMERALS of each of the Four Branches of the
FINNIC CLASS, showing the degree of their relationship.
1 2 3 4
Chudic, Finnish yksi kaksi kolme neljä
Chudic, Esthonian iits kats kolm nelli
Bulgaric, Tcheremissian ik kok kum nil
Bulgaric, Mordvinian vaike kavto kolmo nile
Permic, Sirianian ötik kyk kujim ujoli
Ugric, Ostiakian it kat chudem njeda
Ugric, Hungarian egy ket harom negy
5 6 7
Chudic, Finnish viisi kuusi seitsemän
Chudic, Esthonian wiis kuas seitse
Bulgaric, Tcheremissian vis kut sim
Bulgaric, Mordvinian väte kóto sisem
Permic, Sirianian vit kvait sizim
Ugric, Ostiakian vet chut tabet
Ugric, Hungarian öt hat het
8 9 10
Chudic, Finnish kahdeksan yhdeksan kymmenen
Chudic, Esthonian kattesa üttesa kümme
Bulgaric, Tcheremissian kändäxe endexe lu
Bulgaric, Mordvinian kavsko väikse kämen
Permic, Sirianian kökjâmys ökmys das
Ugric, Ostiakian nida arjong jong
Ugric, Hungarian njolcz kilencz tiz
We have thus examined the four chief classes of the Turanian family, the
Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, and Finnic. The Tungusic branch stands lowest;
its grammar is not much richer than Chinese, and in its structure there is
an absence of that architectonic order which in Chinese makes the
Cyclopean stones of language hold together without cement. This applies,
however, principally to the Mandshu; other Tungusic dialects spoken, not
in China, but in the original seats of the Mandshus, are even now
beginning to develop grammatical forms.
The Mongolic dialects excel the Tungusic, but in their grammar can hardly
distinguish between the different parts of speech. The spoken idioms of
the Mongolians, as of the Tungusians, are evidently struggling towards a
more organic life, and Castrén has brought home evidence of incipient
verbal growth in the language of the Buriäts and a Tungusic dialect spoken
near Nyertchinsk.
This is, however, only a small beginning, if compared with the profusion
of grammatical resources displayed by the Turkic languages. In their
system of conjugation, the Turkic dialects can hardly be surpassed. Their
verbs are like branches which break down under the heavy burden of fruits
and blossoms. The excellence of the Finnic languages consists rather in a
diminution than increase of verbal forms; but in declension Finnish is
even richer than Turkish.
These four classes, together with the Samoyedic, constitute the northern
or Ural-Altaic division of the Turanian family.
The southern division consists of the Tamulic, the Gangetic
(Trans-Himalayan and Sub-Himalayan), the Lohitic, the Taïc, and the Malaïc
classes.(305) These two divisions comprehend very nearly all the languages
of Asia, with the exception of Chinese, which, together with its
neighboring dialects, forms the only representative of radical or
monosyllabic speech. A few, such as Japanese,(306) the language of Korea,
of the Koriakes, the Kamchadales, and the numerous dialects of the
Caucasus, &c., remain unclassed; but in them also some traces of a common
origin with the Turanian languages have, it is probable, survived, and
await the discovery of philological research.
Of the third, or inflectional, stage, I need not say much, as we have
examined its structure when analyzing in our former Lectures a number of
words in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, or any other of the Aryan languages. The
chief distinction between an inflectional and an agglutinative language
consists in the fact that agglutinative languages preserve the
consciousness of their roots, and therefore do not allow them to be
affected by phonetic corruption; and, though they have lost the
consciousness of the original meaning of their terminations, they feel
distinctly the difference between the significative root, and the
modifying elements. Not so in the inflectional languages. There the
various elements which enter into the composition of words, may become so
welded together, and suffer so much from phonetic corruption, that none
but the educated would be aware of an original distinction between root
and termination, and none but the comparative grammarian able to discover
the seams that separate the component parts.
If you consider the character of our morphological classification, you
will see that this classification, differing thereby from the
genealogical, must be applicable to all languages. Our classification
exhausts all possibilities. If the component elements of language are
roots, predicative and demonstrative, we cannot have more than three
combinations. Roots may either remain roots without any modification; or
secondly, they may be joined so that one determines the other and loses
its independent existence; or thirdly, they may be joined and be allowed
to coalesce, so that both lose their independent existence. The number of
roots which enter into the composition of a word makes no difference, and
it is unnecessary, therefore, to admit a fourth class, sometimes called
_polysynthetic_, or _incorporating_, including most of the American
languages. As long as in these sesquipedalian compounds, the significative
root remains distinct, they belong to the agglutinative stage; as soon as
it is absorbed by the terminations, they belong to the inflectional stage.
Nor is it necessary to distinguish between _synthetic_ and _analytical_
languages, including under the former name the ancient, and under the
latter the modern, languages of the inflectional class. The formation of
such phrases as the French _j’aimerai_, for _j’ai à aimer_, or the
English, _I shall do_, _thou wilt do_, may be called _analytical_ or
_metaphrastic_. But in their morphological nature these phrases are still
inflectional. If we analyze such a phrase as _je vivrai_, we find it was
originally _ego_ (Sanskrit _aham_) _vivere_ (Sanskrit _jîv-as-e_, dat.
neut.) _habeo_ (Sanskrit _bhâ-vayâ-mi_); that is to say, we have a number
of words in which grammatical articulation has been almost entirely
destroyed, but has not been cast off; whereas in Turanian languages
grammatical forms are produced by the combination of integral roots, and
the old and useless terminations are first discarded before any new
combination takes place.(307)
At the end of our morphological classification a problem presents itself,
which we might have declined to enter upon if we had confined ourselves to
a genealogical classification. At the end of our genealogical
classification we had to confess that only a certain number of languages
had as yet been arranged genealogically, and that therefore the time for
approaching the problem of the common origin of all languages had not yet
come. Now, however, although we have not specified all languages which
belong to the radical, the terminational, and inflectional classes, we
have clearly laid it down as a principle, that all languages must fall
under one or the other of these three categories of human speech. It would
not be consistent, therefore, to shrink from the consideration of a
problem, which, though beset with many difficulties, cannot be excluded
from the science of language.
Let us first see our problem clearly and distinctly. The problem of the
common origin of languages has no necessary connection with the problem of
the common origin of mankind. If it could be proved that languages had had
different beginnings, this would in nowise necessitate the admission of
different beginnings of the human race. For if we look upon language as
natural to man, it might have broken out at different times and in
different countries among the scattered descendants of one original pair;
if, on the contrary, language is to be treated as an artificial invention,
there is still less reason why each succeeding generation should not have
invented its own idiom.