+

5

Suffice it to mention the judgments of Benfey' and of Schweizer-Sidler, who consented to revise the German translation of Ascoli's book by Bazzigher: an unwonted and deserved compliment. And to these judgments we might add that of Whitney, who regarded as much to be deplored the delay in the promised continuation of the work of Ascoli; and that of the French "Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres," which, on the 29th of July 1870, honoured with a prize the Lectures (Corsi), although as yet incomplete, of the Italian philologist. And indeed the portion of them published is indubitably, as SchweizerSidler well remarked, one of the most important works which have appeared during the last few years in the course of the historical investigation of the word. The results of the preceding researches are there seen not only collected and expounded with diligence and exactness, but also subjected to a prudent and independent criticism, and augmented by the researches of the author, at whose uncommon breadth of learning and rare power of analysis and synthesis we are again and again forced to marvel. The exposition of Ascoli puts before us not only the results of the investigation, but the entire progress of this investigation itself, portraying with a fidelity which we might call photographic, all the intellectual labour of the author, and training us to scientific research. The style and language 4 of Ascoli have been frequently, at least in private conversations of Italian scholars, made the subject of vigorous

1 Göttingische gelehrte anzeigen, 1870, i. 793-98.

2 Zeitschrift für vergleichende sprachforschung, etc., xxi. 257-66.

3 Vorlesungen über die vergleichende lautlehre des sanskrit, des griechischen und des lateinischen, etc. I. Halle, 1872.

5. The researches into the Romance dialects more recently given to the public by Ascoli in the Archivio glottologico italiano, established and conducted by him, won him two more prizes, viz., the Bopp prize in 1874, and in the following year the first prize of the Society for the

4 Rivista Europea, auno 4o, I. study of the Romance languages at

640.

Montpellier.

criticisms. It is not our intention to maintain that in the book under discussion, and in the other writings of the distinguished philologist, the form is always both clear and pure, and genuinely Italian: but it appears to us right and proper to observe that, besides the merits of exactness and thoroughness which no-one could deny, it must be especially commended as far as regards Italian linguistic nomenclature, which Ascoli has enriched by some technical terms almost all chosen and employed with the happiest daring. We cannot, and we will not, disguise the fact that Ascoli's method does not seem to us the most fitted to initiate the profane into the first studies of philology: but, when any one has begun to read the pages of Ascoli con amore, we believe it may with reason be said that he has learnt much.

Among the subjects treated by the author, one appears to us particularly worthy of attentive consideration-the history of the guttural tenuis (Lectures 2nd and 3rd, pp. 27-95). In the exposition we will follow as far as possible Ascoli himself, availing ourselves frequently of his words.' The most notable transformations of this sound in the Aryan languages may be represented by three phonological equations, of which the first is the following: Sanscrit and Zend ç= Lithu-Slavonic sz, s (Lithuanian sz, Slavonic 8) = Greek and Latin k. Example: Sanser. Zd. çata- [cento] = Lith. szìm-ta-s, Bulgarian sŭto =Gr. é-kató-v, Lat. centu-m. This equation shows us the Proto-Aryan & weakened to a sibilant in Indian, Iranic, Lithuanian, and Slavonic, but preserved exempt from such 5 alteration in the other languages of our stock.

1 For the physiological analysis of this sound, and of the cognate sounds, see the quite recent essay of Sievers, Grundzüge der lautphysiologie zur einführung in das studium der lautlehre der indogermanishen spra

As Ascoli

chen, Leipzig, 1876, pp. 59-62. We invite the attention of students also to the Phonetische streitfragen, pub. lished by Hofforg in the Zeitschr. f. vgl. sprachforsch., xxiii. 525-58.

teaches us, the Indo- Irano- Lithu-Slavonic agreement is general both with regard to the examples in which the ancient has been reduced to a sibilant sound, and with regard to those in which it has been preserved, while "to the Italic, the Greek, the Keltic and the Teutonic groups, all pro-ethnic coincidence of any one at all of their sibilants with the Indo-Iranian sibilant (c) for an original is foreign. The coincidences which nevertheless do exist, are here. manifestly accidental, due, that is, to pathological congruence (congruenza patologica), and not to historical continuity." This "special resemblance between the Indo-Iranian and the Lithu-Slavonic, which it is altogether impossible to call fortuitous," can be explained, writes Ascoli, only in two ways; either by supposing the corruption to have taken place in a period of pre-historic Indo-Irano-Lithu-Slavonic unity (a hypothesis, which certain phonetic and lexical facts seem to support, but subject to the most grave objections); or else by imagining that the original k, slightly affected by a parasitic fricative "in a definite number of instances, even from the Proto-Aryan period, afterwards freed itself, in some languages, from this corruption, and in others on the contrary by consistent development of the ancient affection, underwent consistent changes, which would represent effects similar but independent one of the other of the same cause. On this hypothesis, the word for dieci (Ital.), for example, would have

been, in the period of unity, with a slight corruption of the k, dakia; whence, on the one hand, the type daka, the 6 restored type as it were, to which Greek, Italic, Keltic, and Teutonic would ascend again; and, on the other hand, the type dakya, with the intruding parasite, to which would revert the two words with the sibilant, the Lithu-Slavonic and the Indo-Iranian." 221 And this seems to the author a "safer hypothesis than the other," although he by no means disguises an objection which may be raised against it.The 2nd equation is as follows: Sanser. and Zd. l' = Gr., Lat., Lithu-Slav. k; as appears from Sanser. and Zd. ruk' = Gr. λevк(ó-s), Lat. luc(-s), from the Sanser. kak'a [hair] Bulg. kuku, etc. The complete harmony between Sanscrit and Zend in the series of the examples for primitive shows us that such points back to a pre-Indian period, or it may be to the Indo-Iranian age. "To set off against this, there is not, with respect to the phenomenon of Indo-Iranian k' for original k, any European agreement, which can be imagined to stand in genealogical connexion with this phenomenon; in other words, there is not a single fact which may induce us to believe this alteration to have been effected in an epoch anterior to the complete severance of the European branch of Aryan from the Asiatic, although there are remarkable quantitative (not qualitative) coincidences which lead us to be

=

=

lieve that the original k, afterwards becoming Indo-Iranian k', was corrupted and damaged in a definite number of examples, even from periods far more remote than the IndoIranian, but that it was not, nevertheless, as yet, in these periods distinctly altered."" And now we come to the 3rd equation: Sanser. and Zd. k=Gr.-Lat. kv=Lithu-Slav. k;

1 Ibid. pp. 56-7. 2 Ibid. pp. 48-9. Afterwards, in the table given on p. 193, the Indo-Iranian k', to which in Greek,

Latin, and Lithu-Slavonic an unaltered k corresponds, is referred to a later type ki.

we may take as an example the Sanser. K'atvar-, Zd. K'athwar-, comp. Gr. réσσapes (*kýethvar-, *rze0Fap-)1 = Lat. quatuor, Æolic Gr. Téσoupes (**pethvor-, *πε0Ƒvp-) Kymr. 7 petuar, Osc. petor-a, Umbr. petur- Lith. keturi, Irish cethir. In this example, and in four others, "we do not find, on the one hand, any certain trace of the v in the Asiatic words, nor have we, on the other hand, any reason which may lead us to assert, or at least render us inclined to believe, that the v is an etymological element, that is to say an original constituent of the word. Hence the v will here be a parasite, in kind not unlike the parasitic j, which in its proper section (§ 14) we saw to be developed in like manner after the original guttural tenuis; nevertheless it, too, will be a v of very ancient origin, and what should suffice to make us abundantly convinced of the fact is the agreement which several European languages exhibit in reverting in these same examples to an ancient kv.. To this we subjoin the very remarkable fact that they all show, in the Indo-Iranian equivalent, not the pure k, nor the which is the most frequent Indo-Iranian representative, as against the European representatives, of the original guttural tenuis, but in fact the alone, the most unusual sound (§§ 11, 12). This coincidence, supported also by other parallels convinces us that here we original k-sounds which were affected even from the Indo-European age, but in an indistinct manner, so that the development of the affection was determined afterwards in the successive ages in various ways. If, therefore, in the consideration of the sibilant which in the Indo-Iranian and in the Lithu-Slavonic branch is held as the successor of the original guttural tenuis (p. 56), we were to propose the typical example dak'a ([ten],

have to deal with

1 In Ascoli's work the z represents a sound identical with that of the French j: the answers to the

Italian se [Engl. sh], e.g. in scemo.
See pp. 13 and 22.

2 Ibid. p. 92: cf. 77, 73, 53.