An Essay on the Origin of Language: Based on Modern Researches, and Especially on the Works of M. RenanJ. Murray, 1860 - 231 pages |
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ancient animals Arian articulate assert believe Bunsen catachresis Charma Chinese civilisation conception Crat Cratylus derived dialects divine English Essays existence expression fact faculty Fcap German grammar Greek Grimm guage Hebrew Herodotus Heyse History human ideas idioms Illustrations imitation Indo-European inference innate instance instinct JOHN Journal Klaproth LADY Langues Latin Lersch Letters LORD Lucretius mankind Max Müller meaning Memoir metaphor modern monosyllabic Narrative nations natural Nodier object observed onomatopoeia onomatopoeic organic origin of language philologists philology philosophers Phrygian language Plates Plato poet poetic Portrait Post 8vo primitive language Psammetichus race remarks Renan result revealed revelation of language root Sanskrit says Second Edition Semitic Semitic languages sensation sense seqq sounds speak speech Sprache supposed System der Sprachwissenschaft theory things Third Edition thought Thousand tion tongue traces triliteral truth Turanian Ursprung utterances verb vocables Vols Woodcuts words καὶ τὰ τὸ
Popular passages
Page 17 - To th' instruments divine respondence meet: The silver sounding instruments did meet With the base murmure of the waters fall: The waters fall with difference discreet, Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call: The gentle warbling wind low answered to all.
Page 115 - ... although we think we govern our words, and prescribe it well, loquendum ut vulgus, sentiendum ut sapientes ; yet certain it is that words, as a Tartar's bow, do shoot back upon the understanding of the wisest, and mightily entangle and pervert the judgment.
Page 42 - THE baby new to earth and sky, What time his tender palm is prest Against the circle of the breast, Has never thought that " this is I " : But as he grows he gathers much, And learns the use of "I, "and "me,' And finds " I am not what I see, And other than the things I touch.
Page 143 - In Wonder all Philosophy began : in Wonder it ends : and Admiration fills up the interspace. But the first Wonder is the Offspring of Ignorance: the last is the Parent of Adoration.
Page 92 - Myriads of rivulets hurrying through the lawn, The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmuring of innumerable bees.
Page 29 - And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field', and every fowl of the air', and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them ' ; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature', that was the name thereof.
Page 39 - The sum of all is, that words are the symbols of ideas both general and particular ; yet of the general, primarily, essentially, and immediately ; of the particular, only secondarily, accidentally, and mediately.
Page 69 - The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.
Page 147 - It may also lead us a little towards the original of all our notions and knowledge, if we remark how great a dependence our words have on common sensible ideas...
Page 5 - More Worlds than One. The Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian.