The disorders of speech.

  • Wyllie, John, 1914-
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The disorders of speech. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    meaning of to plough, he finds it in the Latin ar-are ; the Greek ar-oun; the Irish ar; the Lithuanian ar-ti; the Russian or-ati; the Gothic ar-jan; the Anglo-Saxon er-jan ; and in the modern English to ear. Shakespeare says (Richard II., iii. 2), to ear the land that has some hope to grow. And in Dent. xxi. 4 we read, A rough valley which is neither eared nor sown. He further traces this root into the words signifying the plough, or the instrument of earing; such as the Latin ara-trum; the Cornish aradar; the Welsh arad; and many other derivatives. Even the word earth, the Gothic airtha, the Anglo-Saxon eorthe, must have been taken originally in the sense of ploughed or cultivated land. Taking again the word respectable, he separates from it its root spac, to look or see, and demonstrates the presence of this root in a vast number of words of the various languages, ancient and modern, which constitute the great Aryan group. These are but two of the numerous examples of roots in the Aryan languages which are given by Professor Muller. He shows that after the most careful analysis of any one of the more highly developed languages of mankind, four or five hundred of such roots are what remain in the crucible; and that from these the thousands of words composing the language are essentially formed. He is very emphatic in his assertion that these roots are predicative, and the signs of general ideas:—Thus the root ni& in Sanscrit means to measure, from which is derived moon, the measurer; man, a derivative root, means to think, and as a noun it therefore means the thinker; the sun is the begetter; the root ga means going; stha, standing; sad, sitting; da, giving ; mar, dying; 7,-ar, walking; kar, doing. He has some interesting remarks about the struggle for existence which has to be carried on among these roots, when language is being developed. He shows that in the earlier stages of development a language is always very rich in synonyms; for example,—In common San- scrit dictionaries, we find five words for 'hand/ eleven for 'light,' fifteen for 'cloud,' twenty for 'moon,' twenty-six for 'snake,' thirty-three for 'slaughter,' thirty-five for 'fire,' and thirty-seven for 'sun.' The sun might be called the bright, the warm, the golden, the preserver, the destroyer, the wolf, the lion, the heavenly eye, the father of light and life. Hence the superabundance of synonyms in ancient dialects, and hence that struggle for life