osophies;
but to a large extent philology remains in the hands of the
metaphysicians, and subjective methods of thought are used in the
explanation of the phenomena observed. If philology is to be a science
it must have an objective philosophy composed of a homologic
classification and orderly arrangement of the phenomena of the languages
of the globe.
Philologic research began with the definite purpose in view to discover
in the diversities of language among the peoples of the earth a common
element from which they were all supposed to have been derived, an
original speech, the parent of all languages. In this philologists had
great hopes of success at one time, encouraged by the discovery of the
relation between the diverse branches of the Aryan stock, but in this
very work methods of research were developed and doctrines established
by which unexpected results were reached.
Instead of relegating the languages that had before been unclassified to
the Aryan family, new families or stocks were discovered, and this
process has been carried on from year to year until scores or even
hundreds, of families are recognized, and until we may reasonably
conclude that there was no single primitive speech common to mankind,
but that man had multiplied and spread throughout the habitable earth
anterior to the development of organized languages; that is, languages
have sprung from innumerable sources after the dispersion of mankind.
The progress in language has not been by multiplication, which would be
but a progress in degradation under the now well-recognized laws of
evolution; but it has been in integration from a vast multiplicity
toward a unity. True, all evolution has not been in this direction.
There has often been degradation as exhibited in the multiplicity of
languages and dialects of the same stock, but evolution has in the
aggregate been integration by progress towards unity of speech, and
differentiation (which, must always be distinguished from
multiplication) by specialization of the grammatic process and the
development of the parts of speech.
When a people once homogeneous are separated geographically in such a
manner that thorough inter-communication is no longer preserved, all of
the agencies by which languages change act separately in the distinct
communities and produce different changes therein, and dialects are
established. If the separation continues, such dialects become distinct
languages in the s
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