of students by the daring hypothesis which he conceived in 77 order to explain the origin of the Indo-European speechforms, and which he first propounded here and there in the Philosophisch-historische grammatik der deutschen sprache, afterwards in the Methodische grammatik der griechischen sprache, and in the Vergleichende grammatik der indogermanischen sprachen. In our remarks on Westphal's system we shall frequently make use of the critical observations of Tobler and of G. Curtius. We hope further that, when regard is had to the novelty, the power of philological imagination (for so we may be allowed to term it), the extent of the investigations which we find in the works of Westphal above mentioned, and especially the profound difference which separates his doctrine on the origin of the Aryan forms from the theory of Bopp, our readers will not be inclined to blame us if we discuss the audacious but often attractive hypotheses of Westphal in a somewhat more minute manner than we have done, and intend to do, with respect to certain other investigations which, as far as concerns the scope of this book, seem to us of less importance.

To understand properly the grounds of Westphal's morphological system we consider the following preliminary remarks almost necessary. In order to explain the genesis of the personal endings, in other words, of the

1 Jena, 1869: see especially pp. 89-198.

' Jena, 1870. . . .: see part 2nd (Semasiologie und syntax, etc., section 1st, v-xl, 53-280).

3 Erster theil: Das indogermanische verbum nebst einer übersicht der einzelnen indogermanischen sprachen und ihrer lautverhältnisse, Jena, 1873: see principally vii.-xxxix. 97128, 134-8, 138-43, 231-44, 24449, 581-2, 589-600, 600-8, 609-12,

6

643-53, and, in the Appendix, pp.

56-98.

4 In the review of the Phil.-hist. gramm. d. deutschen spr. (Zeitschrift für völkerpsychologie, etc. vi. 482-8).

5 Das verbum der griechischen sprache seinem baue nach dargestellt, i. Leipzig, 1873, pp. 19-34.

6 Westphal, Meth. gramm, d. gr. spr., part 2nd, Preface.

87 verbal flexion of the Aryan languages, Bopp used the same means which others had adopted to explain the origin of such endings in the Semitic dialects, in which the connexion had already been noticed between the suffixes of the first two persons of the verb and the personal pronouns, and the result was that these persons were even then regarded as compounded of the verbal stems with the pronouns in question. This opinion, chiefly through Bopp's instrumentality, not only prevailed in the doctrine of the terminations of the verb of Aryan stock, but spread to almost all the suffixes of this stock, although, to tell the truth, it is not all the most learned and distinguished inquirers who have cheerfully acquiesced in this hypothesis. And in fact it was not favoured either by the two brothers Schlegel or by Lassen. Three arguments were opposed to it by Westphal:-1st, the necessity of admitting, even in Proto-Aryan, phonetic corruptions which we have no right to attribute to it, among which deserve to be mentioned at all events the mutilations which we are constrained to suppose must have taken place in the forms of the middle if we wish to remain faithful to the doctrine generally followed; 2nd, the impossibility of explaining the meaning of certain endings, especially in nominal inflexion, if with the followers of Bopp, we recognise in them only pronominal stems; 3rd, if only Semitic, and not Aryan, availed itself of phonetic symbolism, the use of which in the former stock is manifest, evidently Aryan would be less rich than Semitic in means of expressing the determinations of ideas, and hence, in the great realm of languages, would occupy an inferior position, a conclusion which modern philology would reject. According to Westphal, therefore, the theory of phonetic symbolism should be introduced also into Indo-European 79 philology,' especially since the most recent investigations

1 Our own Ascoli, too, in the letter to A. Kuhn, above quoted, af

་

into the Semitic inflexions have established the fact that the fuller, richer forms of the ancient Arabic are not at all to be considered as inventions of the national grammarians, but rather as an original inheritance of the Semitic languages, better preserved by the Arabic than by the cognate languages, and that such forms are explained only by attributing to them a symbolic meaning. Turning to account the results of such researches, Westphal attempted with rare courage a vast and profound innovation in Aryan morphology, which he set about reconstructing by the aid of criteria and a method derived from the latest works of the Semitists, and by showing how, starting from the same principles, and making use in various ways of substantially the same means, Semitic and Aryan have reached that stage of their formation to which belong the most ancient records of these two great linguistic stocks.

The first problem which Westphal puts forward is the following:-What are the momenta of linguistic development anterior to inflexion ?1 We cannot follow him in this inquiry without wandering too far from the subject of the present chapter, and we shall therefore content ourselves with noting the first results of his study. After remarking the necessity of indicating species and individuals, he observes that the most general idea of species is that of motion (mover, moved), and is the first that requires to be externally denoted. And the being conceived as in movement, man expresses by a motion proceeding from himself, by the motion of the vocal organs, that is, by the sound of his own voice. The first effect of

this action was the vowel, a or i or u according to the varying aperture of the lips. The vocal sound was

firms that the principle of symbolic means excluded from this last.

inflexion is more active in Semitic
than in Aryau, but it is by no

1 Vgl. gramm. d.indogerm. sprach. en. i. pp. 56-98 of the Appendix.

immediately preceded or followed for the most part by a so motion of the lips, the tongue, the palate hence the consonants. We have thus, to use the words of Tobler,

an easy system of original sounds, relatively few (the vowels a, i, u, the nasals m and n, the dental which easily changes to th and 8), and these sounds occupy physiologically a definite position in the combination of the organs of speech and with respect to each other, and consequently are called upon to assume corresponding psychological functions in the expression of the most elementary categories of spoken thought. The selection, which on each occasion takes place, of one of those sounds for a definite end depends, on the one hand, on the nearness or remoteness, physiologically, of that sound to the organ of speech (in other words, on the greater ease or difficulty of producing it);' on the other hand, on the nearness or remoteness, psychologically, of the category in question (that is to say, on its constituting a more or less urgent necessity for the thought which is developed in the language)." Hence, to the category which, psychologically, it is more necessary to denote, corresponds that sound of which, physiologically, the pronunciation is easier, and vice versa. Starting from these principles the author begins by explaining the origin of the root, distinguishing afterwards a primary root from a secondary root, and going on to nominal stems. Up to this point, observes Westphal, we have only the expression of existence in and for itself. But the thinking ego penetrates into the world of things conceived by the thought, and contrasts itself with such things as with an external reality. This reality is then defined according to its relations with the

1 On this idea, it is well to note, with G. Curtius, the whole system of Westphal is founded. Now, if this author, as seems evident, in speaking of sounds which are more

or less near to the organs of speech, meant to express the more or less easy production of them, he ought to have given us a strict physiological demonstration of his assertions.

s

thinking ego. The forms of speech expressing these new definitions, so Westphal teaches us, are the verbal

forms.

In the development of these he distinguishes three si momenta, the first of which arises from the formation of the personal endings. The verbal root to which belongs the function of representing motion with respect to identity with the thinking ego, becomes more concrete, and is therefore expanded also in its form, in the Aryan languages by the nasal (dental or labial), in the Semitic by n, t, k. On the other hand, the indication of motion in its primitive generality, in its absence of relations with the thinking ego, in other words, the third person, has no need to be accompanied by an expansion of the root; hence, in Semitic, we have the root devoid of a suffix; but, in the Aryan stock, in contrast to the positive definiteness of the first person, the third acquires, so to speak, a negative definiteness, and as the former was marked by n, so the latter is expressed by means of t, these being sounds which, in respect of the organs of speech, bear the same relation to each other as the two persons mentioned, that is, the relation of antithesis But the non-ego, to which the word is directed, is altogether different from the other of whom merely the word is spoken to represent the former (the second person) the Aryans have added the vowel u to the suffix-t of the third,' while the Semites expanded by an a two of the phonetic elements which we find in the first (hence -ta, -ka). From the preceding remarks we see clearly

1 Any one who pays attention to the dental nature of the one and the other, and to the relations between them which phonology reveals to us in numerous examples, will not, perhaps, feel himself very much inclined to accept this doctrine of Westphal.

2 It is hardly necessary to observe that no account can be taken here of the phonetic corruptions of the suffixes noticed, and of those which we shall notice, but only of what, according to our author, were their original forms,