The Future Of Philology [pp. 698-714]

THE FUTURE OF PHILOLOGY.
teach grammar and the science of language without uiing any
technical termns. These attempts miscarry. The talk is pleasant
often to those who understand the subject, and sometimes deludes those who do not understand it into a belief that they do;
but it really conveys no exact ideas. What should be done is
to make the technical terms grateful to the cultivated literary
sense, and welcome them as we do a happy revival of a word
in Chaucer, or a cunning grace of novel application in Tennyson
or Emerson. To illustrate further: the common formation of
an Indo-European word is by combining one root syllable with
a number of affixes. The root syllable denotes some single
prominent quality of the object; the prefixes and suffixes mark
its various relations. The languages of the Aborigines of
America on the other hand designate objects by many qualities
or descriptive traits. They do not abstract but accumulate
clusters of qualities, weaving many words into one, by selecting
a syllable from eaelh-a polysynthetic, incorporative process.
In the technical designations of objects in modern science it is
found necessary to combine many adjectives. The full name of
a plant or a chemical compound, or a quantity in mathematics,
is often as long as that of a Spanish princess, or a Welshman
with full pedigree. Some condensation is needed for popular
use, and there have always been occasional examples of polysyn.
thetic words. The lawyers in many cf their writs and processes
have formed such words from the Latin of the old documents:
fi-ct, from fierifacias; ca-csa, from capias ad satisfaciendum, and
the like. So in the natural sciences. In chloroforim, the chior
stands for tero/dloride, the o for of, they say, and the forma for
foiirmyle. Sir W. R. Hamilton in the technical names of quanti ties in quaternions, makes up words from single letters. In cis &,
c represents cosine, and i plus s, imaginary ante sign of theta.
Mr. A. J. Ellis had this last year a new mathematical method
to announce, and he was compelled to invent a new terminology
for it. He is a great phonologist as well as an ingenious mathe matician, and he naturally wished to make his new terminology
brief, unambiguous, euphonic and suggestive. The common
structure of our speech was too much for him. It was some
time, he says, before he could reconcile his philological preju dices to the necessities of the case; but he finally made up his
mind that the science of the nineteenth century is not to be
45
1874.]
709