PHILOLOGY (Lat. philologia, from Gk. cii‘Xo)o-yia, love of literature and learning, love of language and history, from 0/X0s, philas, dear + .X6-yos, logos, word). In modern English usage, the science of comparative linguistics. As speech may be studied either in its expression or in its origin, philology may occupy itself with linguistic expression, with literature, or with the genesis and laws of language. French and German scholars usually employ the word in the former sense, and many English scholars prefer to un derstand by philology the study of literary ex pression, even including all that is revealed through literature. Nevertheless, although this is perhaps the more legitimate use of the word, yet the tendency of the day, even among French scholars, and still more among English-speaking people, is to confine philology to the study of lan guage, and to divide this study into (a) lin guistics proper, including phonetics, and (h) comparative philology, the study of language by a comparison of different languages in the same family. Languages may be divided roughly, and merely for convenience without scientific accu racy, into several types. Of these the most im portant are the isolating or monosyllabic, the agglutinative, with its subdivision the incorpo rating or synthetic, the inflectional, and the an alytic. The isolating group, formerly supposed to be represented by Chinese. is characterized by invariable monosyllabic roots. The opinion which once considered this group to be the most primitive is now rejected by many who hold that the type represents, on the contrary, the culmina tion of a long linguistic evolution. The tinative type, which includes the majority of languages, such as the Dravidian, Alalayo-I'oly nesiaI, Um-Altaic, and African, is marked by the addition of prefixes, suffixes, and infixes to the so-called root (q. v.) or base. These tions have, at least at first. distinct meanings of their own. but in course of time the meaning, become obscured. the particles themselves become fused in signification with the base. and lose their individuality. The result is the type of language called inflectional. (See INFLECTION.) In the incorporating or polysynthetic languages, represented by the American Indian groups, the verb absorbs the name. pronouns, adjectives, and adverbs, thus marking a higher degree of ag glutination than the agglutinative languages themselves. The analytic languages are a de velopment of the infieetional. In time the inflections tend to become weakened in force. and to require the help of pronouns, prepo sitions, and auxiliary verbs. When the in flections have in the main disappeared, and their places have been taken by individual words. the language is termed analytic. To this group be long such languages as English. French, Italian, Persian. and Hindustani. us distinguished from the inflectional groups represented by the Semitic and Indo-European families, which include He brew. Arabic, Sanskrit. Greek. Latin. and Ger man. It is. however, customary to confine com parative philology to the study of the group of Indo-European languages. though there is no reason why the term should not be applied to any other group as well. The different aspects of philology thus outlined are treated under dif ferent heads, to which the reader is referred for special discussion. See the articles on LANGUAGE, for the psychology of language: ALDANIAN. AR MENIAN, INDO-IRANIAN. etc.. for special branches; and for classical philology, see the articles on GREEK LANGUAGE and ITALIC LANGUAGES.
llfsronv or COM I'. %, ItAyn E PH I.OLOGY„ the disco% t•I'V of Sanskrit no comparative loba.v was flashily. Sir \\ Jones in 1 a111 Schlegel 18OS connected Sanskrit with (;neck and Latin: but Franz Bopp (q.v.) first correlated the facts observed by founded the science. Approaching the subject from the philosophical side, Bopp devoted Mon ,IV to glottogonie problems, his chief aim being to discover phonetic laws and the genesis of forms, lie was at first influenced by Friedrich Schlegel, and opposed the doctrine of mechanical affixes (called agglutination), holding rather to an inner inflection as the index of different re lations, though lie admitted into the root (in the ;wrist, etc.) the abstract verb as, 'be.' But this view ( 1S16) was 50011 changed, and Bopp in 1 S 19 himself opposed this philosophy of language and taught that verbal endings, -11 for example, are really pronominal in origin. In his Conjugations sstrin and l'erylcieliende Graintnalik (1833) he went still further, assuming a pronominal origin for ease-endings as well as verbal endings (-s of the nominative being so, 'he,' etc.). It is unnevessary to give in detail the mixture of fact and fancy which from a later point of view, alter nately adorns and disfigures this first exhaustive attempt to create a seience of grammar. His monumental work was followed by the equally inqmrtant Gesehichie der 1»"Cl eh e (1848) of Jakob Grimm (q.v.), who with Hask (q.v.) extended the comparison of forms and dis covered phonetic. laws of change (see below.). After Grimm, the Etymoiogische Purse/it/quit (18:3G) of Putt (q.v.) established a rationalized system of etymology for the whole group of ludo European languages. Bopp, Grimm, and Pott may justly be called the creators of the compara tive study of language. Agglutination, monosyl labic roots, a, i, u, as the three essential vowels, and a mother-language, these characterize the belief of the first period of the study represented by them. This period extends to the appearance of Sehleicher's (q.v.) Compendium (18G2), which systematized the views of his predecessors, while adding to them his own more stringent but false conception of language as a living organism, which in his opinion should he studied by the methods of natural science. An increasing re spect for `phonetic law' (q.v.) 111 arks the close of this period, in which the names of Schleicher and Georg Curtins (q.v.), the latter being one of the first to insist on phonetic regularity, are most prominent. Different languages now began
to be studied more care hilly, each for itself, and the laws of each more strictly established. New problems arose, such as that of the parent lan guage and primitive voealisni, but Schleicher stood on the platform of his predecessors as re gards the old problems. The parent speech Sfhleieher represented as the root of a tree, with trunk, branches, and twigs representing descend ant languages and dialects (the so-ealled stunim kauni-Theurie). Like Curtius, he held that the simpler vocalism of Sanskrit was more antique than the variation shown in Europe, and believed that Sanskrit a was older than Greek a, e, Ten years later, in 1872, Johannes Schmidt (q.v.) published his Venraiultschaftsrerkiinnisse der indogermanisehen Sprnehrn, which put the interrelation of the different Indo-European i guagesin a new light. instead of a family-tree with its organic growth and dialect-twigs, Schmidt set forth the Walcatlicorie, according to which the different languages had rolled away like waves from a common centre. This view re placed Schleicher's and in a somewhat modified form has been adopted by Leskien, Schrader, and other scholars of the present day. According to it, certain words and forms are explained as be ing common to one section till that splits up and so leaves the contiguous peoples in possession of a common linguistic property, while those dwelling farther apart possess linguistic property' which, although originally practically identical, has become so differentiated as frequently to be mutually unintelligible. The obvious objection is that some wave-segments may have lost material formerly possessed and others made for themselves what is also found in other segments. This change of view is paralleled by that in regard to vocalism. Instead of assuming that the primitive language had only a, i, u, and that Sanskrit a was an older phase as com pared with Greek a, e, o, the scholars of the sec ond period, which began about 1862, Brugmann, Gsthoff, Collitz, and others, showed that the varied phase was older. During this period, as for a dozen years previously, much of the best effort of philologists was directed toward indi vidual languages, the publication of texts, lexi eons and grammars, which gave much new material in many directions, notably in the Indo Iranian field. Benfey, Roth, Batlingk, Westphal, Curtius, and Max Miiller thus furthered the cause of general comparative philology. Moreover, new languages were added to the group, such as Al banian, Armenian, and Phrygian. At this time also began to be discussed afresh the problem of new formations. The answer to this was given in Whitney's enunciation of the theory of analogy (q.v.). By imitation of the old, the new is pro duced. But especially were the scholars now calling themselves young grammarians insistent upon one principle which became a shibboleth. This was the invariability of phonetic law (q.v.). In the seventies and eighties the various philo logists of note in Germany were more or less split up into cliques headed by Georg Curtitts, Fick, Schmidt, Brugmann, and others, but this was due less to a radical difference than to per sonal feeling and may be passed over. In Amer ica, Whitney centred his attention upon the fun damental question of the origin and growth of language, and in so doing came into conflict with Max Muller. Milner claimed that language gives conceptions which could not exist without speech. Thought and word were, in his view. convertible terms. Whitney held, on the other that words are only signs associated with conceptions, and that every language known to us is a body of conventional signs for ideas. Muller denied that any man can change a lan guage; Whitney maintained that individuals initiate changes subsequently accepted by the community, which makes the changes parts of its language by the simple employment of them. To Miller, language-study was a physical science, even in his final revision of the views first ex pressed in 1862. In all this, Muller showed that he was of the school of Schleicher, whom. indeed, he cited as his chief authority in teaching that the study of language is a physical science. Lan guage is, however, a hmnan institution, not a physical science, and the failure to recognize this fact undermines thy foundation of Mailer's view. MilIler further held that no new roots have ever been made since the original root making period, and lie treated these primitive roots as if they were necessarily non-derivative forms. In point of fact, many of the 'roots' of the primitive tongue may be reductions from compound words comparable to 'preach' and `cost' in English. (See ROOT.). Such primitive roots inIler's opinion, however, are ultimate facts, the nuclei in a chaos of interjectional or imitative sounds. Whitney upheld the view that language was composed of a body of con ventional signs originally of depletive character of any sort, onomatopoetic or not. In one re spect only was there an advance in N filler's sys tem on Schleicher. He accepted the 'physical science' view of language, but lie rejected the no tion of a primitive Indo-European language from which Sanskrit, Greek, Latin. Germanic. Slavonic, and Celtic were derived. though even here lie spoke of the mother-language of the whole family. At the same time he argued that where in two dia lectic forms of one word there are two different consonantal sounds they must go back to an in distinct pro-ethnic consonant capable of developing into either, which is, in the premises, an impos sible assumption. it is remarkable that German scholarship added little to the discussion of these fundamental questions. An exception, how ever, must be made in favor of Paul, whose Prin zipicu (ISSO) discussed at length and acutely the causes leading to phonetic and morphologic changes. On the other hand, all the great dis coveries of comparative philology have been made by Continental scholars.