2. Agglutinate.
3. Amalgamate.
The first class comprises the primitive Chinese, and probably the originals of several of the second. Of the second class, the Nigritian and Turanian, using the latter term in the restricted sense to be soon mentioned, are instances. To the third class belong the great Semitic and Iranian fami lies. Although it is perfectly evident that the monosyllabic and agglutinate classes belong to barbarism or semi-barbarous civilisation, and the amalgamate to high civilisation, this distinction may be illusory as bearing upon the supposed de velopment of language, for the difference of race is far more distinct than that of civilisation. Tbe speakers of Nigritian sometimes approach, and those of Turanian often far surpass, the civilisation in which nations speaking pure Iranian languages have remained for centuries.
The classification according to relations is now usually held to divide languages into three great groups—Semitic, Iranian, and Turanian. The relation of the Semitic and Iranian languages is unquestionable, that of the so-called Turanian far less clearly established. The first and second groups are constructed by positive evidence, the third by negative. All that is not Semitic or Iranian is held to be Turanian, although the evidence of relation is very slender. Instead of the strong family likeness that is seen both in the general form and in the minute characteristics of every member of the Semitic group, and in the general form, though not as markedly in details, in every member of the more widely-spread Iranian group, the only point at which the discordant Tu ranian groups—the Turanian proper for instance, and the Malaic—are connected together so as to form a family, is in their common characteristic of agglutination. As reasonable would it be to hold the Semitic and Iranian to be a single family be cause their languages are unlike all others in being strictly amalgamate. We prefer, therefore, to range the families which Bunsen and Prof. Max Muller, with many other distinguished philologers, call Turanian under one great class, the Barbaric, reserving all opinion as to their relation.
flaying thus established the existence of three great groups of languages—the Semitic, Iranian, and Barbaric—two families, and either a third, or, as we prefer to consider it, a class containing several fami lies ; it is possible to ask whether these groups grew up and lived side by side, or whether the seemingly less developed languages are really ancestors of those which have the aspect of the greatest development ? The Egyptian language has been regarded as offer ing the means of solving this problem. It is found in remote antiquity, with characteristics partly Bar baric partly Semitic, seeming to some to bridge across the otherwise impassable chasm between those different kingdoms of human speech. But it may be that, as on the confines of the solar system the radical difference we certainly find may be the be ginning of another set of laws, so here in Egyptian we may see, not the suddenly arrested develop ment of primseval Semitism, but the phenomenon of a mixed language existing on the boundary-line of Shemites and Nigritians, and so presenting a union of their linguistic peculiarities. The connec
tion of Egyptian and Semitic must be thoroughly studied. Bunsen is no doubt right in unflinchingly facing the problem. The likeness of the two is far too marked not to indicate a step in the progress of development, if Semitic grew out of a mono syllabic stage. If we place primitive Chinese or any pure monosyllabic language at one end of the scale, and Hebrew at the other, we tnust give Egyptian an intermediate place ; its Semitic ma chinery is too complete to be ignored.
The theory that Semitic had a monosyllabic stage has been studied and supported with much ingenuity, independently of the theory that it grew out of Egyptian. Semitic roots are mainly tri literal, of three principal letters besides vowels : many of these triliteml roots are, however, as now pointed, monosyllabic, and it is quite as reason able, prima facie, to suppose that all may have been monosyllabic as that the latter are formed by a coalescence of vowel sounds and consonants. Those who hold that all languages must have gone through a long course of growth argue for the former theory. Fiirst and Delitzsch, by a supposed philosophical law of language, derive all the Semi tic triliteral roots from biliterals with prefixes or suffixes, but they do not explain how these forma tions lost their power after their first use. Hupfeld supposes that the triliteral stage was developed from the biliteral. Dietrich and Boetticher hold that this process was analogous to that by which deri vatives are formed from the triliteral roots, and this theory certainly has some strong internal evidence of correctness. But it may be a question whether these theories do not depend upon the strength of certain radicals and the weakness of others, rather than upon any fixed system of development. It is obvious, when we see how easily the weak letters, such as the gutturals, are eliminated, and how difficult it is to reduce a root consisting of three strong letters, that there may be a confusion in such theories between change and development ; what is taken for de velopment may be a mere euphonic change. The Hebrew yarad, 'he placed,' may be reasonably compared with the Sanskrit sad, our sit,' as the y' is a weak letter ; but is this loss of such a letter, supposing the roots to be the same, enough to prove that the Hebrew form was originally with out that letter ? But supposing, for the sake of argument, that the Semitic languages can be reduced to a primitive monosyllabism of biliteral roots, is this the same as Egyptian monosyllabism ? Is Egyptian, in fact, an example of Semitic in a state of arrested develop ment before it had reached the historical condition ? The Egyptian monosyllables are not always bi literal ; and even if we consider the expressed vowels not to be equivalent (though they are essen tially) to certain of the Hebrew gutturals, we have still triliteral roots of three consonants.