Address to the Ethnological Society of London, delivered at the anniversary meeting on the 27th May, 1853 / by Sir B.C. Brodie ; followed by a sketch of the recent progress of ethnology, by Richard Cull.

  • Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
Date:
[1853]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address to the Ethnological Society of London, delivered at the anniversary meeting on the 27th May, 1853 / by Sir B.C. Brodie ; followed by a sketch of the recent progress of ethnology, by Richard Cull. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    A characteristic of African languages is the euphonic concord which was first discovered by the Rev. W. Boyce, of the Wes- leyan Missionary Society, and published in his Grammar of the Kaffir language ; but its principles have been since more fully laid down by the Rev. John W. Appleyard in his more elaborate Grammar of that language, in which its extension to other South- African languages is exhibited. The Yoruba language, which is not a South-African one, has its euphonic concords, and that between the verb and the pro- noun is worthy of attention. The pronouns are, 1st, “ emi 2d, “ iwo 3d, “on,” in the nominative case ; but these nominatives have each two other forms which depend on the vowel of the verb. And the third person pronoun has seven forms dependent on the verb’s vowel, when used in the objective case. In this way the pronoun is always subordinated to the verb. Now, although the existence of euphonic concord connects as one link the Yoruba with other African and chiefly South-African languages, yet at present I confess I do not see the special links which will enable one to say to what group it naturally belongs. At present, however, we know but little of African philology. I need scarcely say in this Society that euphonic concords are not confined to African languages, as every one knows they are found in the Celtic. The Rev. Dr. Koelle, of the Church Missionary Society, has i lately returned from Sierra Leone with MS. vocabularies of 150 languages, and with MS. Grammars in an advanced state of com- pilation of the Bornou, and the Vei, the former of which, he informs me, has some features in common with the Ugro-Tartarian languages and some with the Semitic, the existence of which will modify our views of the Negro languages. He is now engaged in preparing this valuable contribution to our knowledge of African languages for the press. Dr. Koelle informs me that j his vocabularies do not extend to those languages spoken in the north-east of Africa. The continued lingual researches of Dr. Krapf in the dialects of the east and north-east of Africa ; those of Mr. Appleyard in the south of Africa from east to west, with the researches into the Negro languages of the western coast, seem to render the lines of demarcation between them less trenchant, and to indicate
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