Meanwhile we must content ourselves with stating the present position of the linguistic science in refer- ence to this important topic. In the first place, the Indo-European languages have been reduced to an ac- knowledged and well-defined relationship: the}' form line of the two families included under the head of "in- riectional" in the morphological classification. The oth- er family in this class is the (so-called) Shemitic, the limits of which are not equally well defined, inasmuch as it may be extended over what are termed the sub- Shemitic languages, including the Egyptian or Coptic. The criteria of tlie proper Shemitic lamily (i. e. the AramiBan, Hebrew, Arabic, and Ethiopic languages) are distinctive enough ; but the connection between the Shemitic and the Egyptian is not definitely established. Some philologists are incUned to claim for the latter an independent position, intermediate between the Indo- European and Shemitic families (Bansen, P/iil. of' f J igt. i, 185 sq.). The agglutinative languages of Europe and Asia are combined by Prof. M. MuUer in one family named " Turanian." It is conceded that the family bond in this case is a loose one, and that the agreement in roots is very partial {Lectures, p. 290-292). Many phi- lologists of high standing, and more particularly Pott {Ungleich. d. mensch. Rassen, p. 232), deny the family re- lationship altogether, and break up the agglutinative languages into a great number of families. Certain it is that within the Turanian circle there are languages — such, for instance, as the Ural-Altaian — which show so close an afiinity to one another as to be entitled to form a separate division, either as a family, or a subdivision of a family; and, this lieing the case, we should hesitate to put them on a parity of footing with the remainder of the Turanian languages. The Caucasian group, again, differs so widely from the other members of the family as to make the relationship very dubious. The monosyllabic languages of South-eastern Asia are not included in the Turanian family by Prof. ]M. Midler i^Leclures, p. 290, 326), apparently on the ground that they are not agglutinative; but as the Chinese appears to be connected radically with the Burmese (Humboldt, Ve.rschied. p. 368), with" the Thibetan {Phil, of IJist. i, 393-39.^), and with the Ural- Altaian languages (Scliott, in Abli. Ab. Berl. 1861, p. 172), it seems to have a good j title to be placed in the Turanian family. AVith regard I to the American and tlie bulk of the African languages, we are nnal)le to say whether they can be brought un- der any of the heads already mentioned, or whether they stand l)y themselves as distinct families. 'J'he former are referred by writers of high eminence to an Asiatic or Turanian origin (Punsen, Phil, nf //is/, ii, 111; La- tham, M(i)i iinil his Micp-iit. p. 186); the latter to the Shemitic family (Latham, p. 148).
The problem that awaits solution is whether the sev- eral families above specified can be re<luced to a single family by demonstrating their radical identity. It would be unreasonable to expect that this identity should be coextensive with the vocal)ularies of the va- rious languages; it woulil naturally be confined to such ideas and objects as are common to mankind generally.
Even within this circle the difficulty of proving the identity may bo infinitely enhanced by the absence of materials. There are, indeed, but two families in which these materials are found in anything like sufficiency, viz. the Indo-European and the Shemitic, and even these furnish us with no historical evidence as to the earlier stages of their growth. We find each, at the most rentotc literary jjcriod, already exhibiting its dis- tinctive character of stem- and word-formation, leaving us to infer, as we best may, from these phenomena the processes by which they had reached that point. Ilence there arises abundance of room for difference of opinion, and the extent of the radical identity will depend very much on the view adopted as to -these earlier processes. If we could accept in its entirety the system of etymol- ogy propounded by the analytical school of Hebrew scholars, it would not be difficult to establish a very large amount of radical identity ; but we cannot regard as established the prepositional force of the initial let- ters, as stated by Delitzsch in hisJeshurun (p. 166, 173, note), still less the correspondence between these and the Initial letters of Greek and Latin words (p. 170-172). The striking uniformity of bisyllabism in the verbal stems is explicable only on the assumption that a single principle underlies the whole ; and the existence of groups of words differing slightly in form, and having the same radical sense, leads to the presumption that this principle was one not of composition, but of eupbo- nism and practical convenience. This presumption is still further favored by an analysis of the letters form- ing the stems, showing that the third letter is in many instances a reduplication, and in others a liijuid, a nasal, or a sibilant, introduced either as the initial, the medial, or the final letter. The Hebrew alphabet admits of a classification based on the radical character of the letter according to its position in the stem. The effect of composition would have been to produce, in the first place, a greater inequalit}' in the length of the words, ami, in the second place, a greater equality in the use of the various organic sounds.