Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/287

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

VII.]

OF INFLECTIONAL GROWTH.

265

monosyllabism like that to which the linguistic analyst is conducted by his researches among the earliest representatives of Indo-European language; and he finds no more difficulty in distinguishing the one from the other, and recognizing the true character of each, than does the geologist in distinguishing a primitive crystalline formation from a conglomerate, composed of well-worn pebbles, of diverse origin and composition, and containing fragments of earlier and later fossils. If the English were strictly reduced to its words of one syllable, it would still contain an abundant repertory of developed parts of speech, expressing every variety of idea, and illustrating a rich phonetic system. The Indo-European roots are not parts of speech, but of indeterminate character, ready to be shaped into nouns and verbs by the aid of affixes; they are limited in signification to a single class of ideas, the physical or sensual, the phenomenal, out of which the intellectual and moral develop themselves by still traceable processes; and in them is represented a system of articulated sounds of great simplicity. It will be not uninstructive to set down here, for comparison with the spoken alphabet of our modern English, already given (see p. 91), that scanty scheme of articulations, containing but three vowels and twelve consonants, which alone is discoverable in the earliest Indo-European language; it is as follows:

	a		$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$ Vowels.
i		u
	l, r		Semivowel.
	n	m	Nasals.
h^[1]			Aspiration.
	s		Sibilant.
g	d	b	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$ Mutes.
k	t	p

↑ The aspiration is not found as a separate letter, but only in close combination with the mutes, forming the aspirated mutes gh, dh, bh, and (probably by later development) kh, th, ph. These aspirates, though historically they are independent and important members of the system of spoken sounds, I have not given separately in the scheme, because phonetically they are compound, containing the aspiration as a distinctly audible element following the mute.

[1] The aspiration is not found as a separate letter, but only in close combination with the mutes, forming the aspirated mutes gh, dh, bh, and (probably by later development) kh, th, ph. These aspirates, though historically they are independent and important members of the system of spoken sounds, I have not given separately in the scheme, because phonetically they are compound, containing the aspiration as a distinctly audible element following the mute.

[1]