Part 21

loving, thou loving, &c. Exactly this the Turks have done. We need not inquire at present how they produced what we call a participle. It was a task, however, by no means so facile as we now conceive it. In Turkish, one participle is formed by _er_. _Sev_+_er_ would, therefore, mean lov+er or lov+ing. Thou, in Turkish, is _sen_, and as all modificatory syllables are placed at the end of the root, we get _sev-er-sen_, thou lovest. You in Turkish is _siz_; hence _sev-er-siz_, you love. In these cases the pronouns and the terminations of the verb coincide exactly. In other persons the coincidences are less complete, because the pronominal terminations have sometimes been modified, or, as in the third person singular, _sever_, dropped altogether as unnecessary. A reference to other cognate languages, however, where either the terminations or the pronouns themselves have maintained a more primitive form, enables us to say that in the original Turkish verb, all persons of the present were formed by means of pronouns appended to this participle _sever_. Instead of “I love, thou lovest, he loves,” the Turkish grammarian says, “lover-I, lover-thou, lover.”

But these personal terminations are not the same in the imperfect as in the present.

PRESENT. IMPERFECT. Sever-im, I love, sever-di-m, I loved. Sever-sen, sever-di-ñ. Sever, sever-di. Sever-iz, sever-di-k (miz). Sever-siz, sever-di-ñiz. Sever-ler, sever-di-ler.

We need not inquire as yet into the origin of the _di_, added to form the imperfect; but it should be stated that in the first person plural of the imperfect a various reading occurs in other Tataric dialects, and that _miz_ is used there instead of _k_. Now, looking at these terminations _m_, _ñ_, _i_, _miz_, _ñiz_, and _ler_, we find that they are exactly the same as the possessive pronouns used after nouns. As the Italian says _fratelmo_, my brother, and as in Hebrew we say, _El-i_, God (of) I, _i.e._ my God, the Tataric languages form the phrases “my house, thy house, his house,” by possessive pronouns appended to substantives. A Turk says,—

Bâbâ, father, bâbâ-m, my father. Aghâ, lord, aghâ-ñ, thy lord. El, hand, el-i, his hand. Oghlu, son, oghlu-muz, our son. Anâ, mother, anâ-ñiz, your mother. Kitâb, book, kitâb-leri, their book.

We may hence infer that in the imperfect these pronominal terminations were originally taken in a possessive sense, and that, therefore, what remains after the personal terminations are removed, _sever-di_, was never an adjective or a participle, but must have been originally a substantive capable of receiving terminal possessive pronouns; that is, the idea originally expressed by the imperfect could not have been “loving-I,” but “love of me.”

How then, could this convey the idea of a past tense as contrasted with the present? Let us look to our own language. If desirous to express the perfect, we say, I have loved, _j’ai aimé_. This “I have,” meant originally, I possess, and in Latin “amicus quem amatum habeo,” signified in fact a friend whom I hold dear,—not as yet, whom I _have_ loved. In the course of time, however, these phrases, “I have said, I have loved,” took the sense of the perfect, and of time past—and not unnaturally, inasmuch as what I _hold_, or _have_ done, _is_ done;—done, as we say, and past. In place of an auxiliary possessive verb, the Turkish language uses an auxiliary possessive pronoun to the same effect. “Paying belonging to me,” equals “I have paid;” in either case a phrase originally possessive, took a temporal signification, and became a past or perfect tense. This, however, is the very anatomy of grammar, and when a Turk says “severdim” he is, of course, as unconscious of its literal force, “loving belonging to me,” as of the circulation of his blood.

The most ingenious part of Turkish is undoubtedly the verb. Like Greek and Sanskrit, it exhibits a variety of moods and tenses, sufficient to express the nicest shades of doubt, of surmise, of hope, and supposition. In all these forms the root remains intact, and sounds like a key-note through all the various modulations produced by the changes of person, number, mood, and time. But there is one feature so peculiar to the Turkish verb, that no analogy can be found in any of the Aryan languages—the power of producing new verbal bases by the mere addition of certain letters, which give to every verb a negative, or causative, or reflexive, or reciprocal meaning.

_Sev-mek_, for instance, as a simple root, means to love. By adding _in_, we obtain a reflexive verb, _sev-in-mek_, which means to love oneself, or rather, to rejoice, to be happy. This may now be conjugated through all moods and tenses, _sevin_ being in every respect equal to a new root. By adding _ish_ we form a reciprocal verb, _sev-ish-mek_, to love one another.

To each of these three forms a causative sense may be imparted by the addition of the syllable _dir_. Thus,

I. _sev-mek_, to love, becomes IV. _sev-dir-mek_, to cause to love.

II. _sev-in-mek_, to rejoice, becomes V. _sev-in-dir-mek_, to cause to rejoice.

III. _sev-ish-mek_, to love one another, becomes VI. _sev-ish-dir-mek_, to cause one to love one another.

Each of these six forms may again be turned into a passive by the addition of _il_. Thus,

I. _sev-mek_, to love, becomes VII. _sev-il-mek_, to be loved.

II. _sev-in-mek_, to rejoice, becomes VIII. _sev-in-il-mek_, to be rejoiced at.

III. _sev-ish-mek_, to love one another, becomes IX. _sev-ish-il-mek_, not translatable.

IV. _sev-dir-mek_, to cause one to love, becomes X. _sev-dir-il-mek_, to be brought to love.

V. _sev-in-dir-mek_, to cause to rejoice, becomes XI. _sev-in-dir-il-mek_, to be made to rejoice.

VI. _sev-ish-dir-mek_, to cause them to love one another, becomes XII. _sev-ish-dir-il-mek_, to be brought to love one another.

This, however, is by no means the whole verbal contingent at the command of a Turkish grammarian. Every one of these twelve secondary or tertiary roots may again be turned into a negative by the mere addition of _me_. Thus, _sev-mek_, to love, becomes _sev-me-mek_, not to love. And if it is necessary to express the impossibility of loving, the Turk has a new root at hand to convey even that idea. Thus while _sev-me-mek_ denies only the fact of loving, _sev-eme-mek_, denies its possibility, and means not to be able to love. By the addition of these two modificatory syllables, the numbers of derivative roots is at once raised to thirty-six. Thus,

I. _sev-mek_, to love, becomes XIII. _sev-me-mek_, not to love.

II. _sev-in-mek_, to rejoice, becomes XIV. _sev-in-me-mek_, not to rejoice.

III. _sev-ish-mek_, to love one another, becomes XV. _sev-ish-me-mek_, not to love one another.

IV. _sev-dir-mek_, to cause to love, becomes XVI. _sev-dir-me-mek_, not to cause one to love.

V. _sev-in-dir-mek_, to cause to rejoice, becomes XVII. _sev-in-dir-me-mek_, not to cause one to rejoice.

VI. _sev-ish-dir-mek_, to cause them to love one another, becomes XVIII. _sev-ish-dir-me-mek_, not to cause them to love one another.

VII. _sev-il-mek_, to be loved, becomes XIX. _sev-il-me-mek_, not to be loved.

VIII. _sev-in-il-mek_, to be rejoiced at, becomes XX. _sev-in-il-me-mek_, not to be the object of rejoicing.

IX. _sev-ish-il-mek_, if it was used, would become XXI. _sev-ish-il-me-mek_; neither form being translatable.

X. _sev-dir-il-mek_, to be brought to love, becomes XXII. _sev-dir-il-me-mek_, not to be brought to love.

XI. _sev-in-dir-il-mek_, to be made to rejoice, becomes XXIII. _sev-in-dir-il-me-mek_, not to be made to rejoice.

XII. _sev-ish-dir-il-mek_, to be brought to love one another, becomes XXIV. _sev-ish-dir-il-me-mek_, not to be brought to love one another.

Some of these forms are of course of rare occurrence, and with many verbs these derivative roots, though possible grammatically, would be logically impossible. Even a verb like “to love,” perhaps the most pliant of all, resists some of the modifications to which a Turkish grammarian is fain to subject it. It is clear, however, that wherever a negation can be formed, the idea of impossibility also can be superadded, so that by substituting _eme_ for _me_, we should raise the number of derivative roots to thirty-six. The very last of these, XXXVI. _sev-ish-dir-il-eme-mek_ would be perfectly intelligible, and might be used, for instance, if, in speaking of the Sultan and the Czar, we wished to say, that it was impossible that they should be brought to love one another.

_Finnic Class._

It is generally supposed that the original seat of the Finnic tribes was in the Ural mountains, and their languages have been therefore called _Uralic_. From this centre they spread east and west; and southward in ancient times, even to the Black Sea, where Finnic tribes, together with Mongolic and Turkic, were probably known to the Greeks under the comprehensive and convenient name of Scythians. As we possess no literary documents of any of these nomadic nations, it is impossible to say, even where Greek writers have preserved their barbarous names, to what branch of the vast Turanian family they belonged. Their habits were probably identical before the Christian era, during the Middle Ages, and at the present day. One tribe takes possession of a tract and retains it perhaps for several generations, and gives its name to the meadows where it tends its flocks, and to the rivers where the horses are watered. If the country be fertile, it will attract the eye of other tribes; wars begin, and if resistance be hopeless, hundreds of families fly from their paternal pastures, to migrate perhaps for generations,—for migration they find a more natural life than permanent habitation,—and after a time we may rediscover their names a thousand miles distant. Or two tribes will carry on their warfare for ages, till with reduced numbers both have perhaps to make common cause against some new enemy.

During these continued struggles their languages lose as many words as men are killed on the field of battle. Some words (we might say) go over, others are made prisoners, and exchanged again during times of peace. Besides, there are parleys and challenges, and at last a dialect is produced which may very properly be called a language of the camp, (Urdu-zebán, camp-language, is the proper name of Hindustání, formed in the armies of the Mogul emperors,) but where it is difficult for the philologist to arrange the living and to number the slain, unless some salient points of grammar have been preserved throughout the medley. We saw how a number of tribes may be at times suddenly gathered by the command of a Chingis-khán or Timur, like billows heaving and swelling at the call of a thunder-storm. One such wave rolling on from Karakorum to Liegnitz may sweep away all the sheepfolds and landmarks of centuries, and when the storm is over, a thin crust will, as after a flood, remain, concealing the underlying stratum of people and languages.

On the evidence of language, the Finnic stock is divided into four branches,

The Chudic, The Bulgaric, The Permic, The Ugric.

The Chudic branch comprises the Finnic of the Baltic coasts. The name is derived from Chud (Tchud) originally applied by the Russians to the Finnic nations in the north-west of Russia. Afterwards it took a more general sense, and was used almost synonymously with Scythian for all the tribes of Central and Northern Asia. The Finns, properly so called, or as they call themselves Suomalainen, _i.e._ inhabitants of fens, are settled in the provinces of Finland (formerly belonging to Sweden, but since 1809 annexed to Russia), and in parts of the governments of Archangel and Olonetz. Their number is stated at 1,521,515. The Finns are the most advanced of their whole family, and are, the Magyars excepted, the only Finnic race that can claim a station among the civilized and civilizing nations of the world. Their literature and, above all, their popular poetry bear witness to a high intellectual development in times which we may call mythical, and in places more favorable to the glow of poetical feelings than their present abode, the last refuge Europe could afford them. The epic songs still live among the poorest, recorded by oral tradition alone, and preserving all the features of a perfect metre and of a more ancient language. A national feeling has lately arisen amongst the Finns, despite of Russian supremacy, and the labors of Sjögern, Lönnrot, Castrén, and Kellgren, receiving hence a powerful impulse, have produced results truly surprising. From the mouths of the aged an epic poem has been collected equalling the Iliad in length and completeness, nay, if we can forget for a moment all that _we_ in our youth learned to call beautiful, not less beautiful. A Finn is not a Greek, and Wainamoinen was not a Homer. But if the poet may take his colors from that nature by which he is surrounded, if he may depict the men with whom he lives, “Kalewala” possesses merits not dissimilar from those of the Iliad, and will claim its place as the fifth national epic of the world, side by side with the Ionian songs, with the Mahábhárata, the Shahnámeh, and the Nibelunge. This early literary cultivation has not been without a powerful influence on the language. It has imparted permanency to its forms and a traditional character to its words, so that at first sight we might almost doubt whether the grammar of this language had not left the agglutinative stage, and entered into the current of inflection with Greek or Sanskrit. The agglutinative type, however, yet remains, and its grammar shows a luxuriance of grammatical combination second only to Turkish and Hungarian. Like Turkish it observes the “harmony of vowels,” a feature peculiar to Turanian languages, as explained before.

Karelian and Tavastian are dialectical varieties of Finnish.

The Esths or Esthonians, neighbors to the Finns, speak a language closely allied to the Finnish. It is divided into the dialects of Dorpat (in Livonia) and Reval. Except some popular songs it is almost without literature. Esthonia, together with Livonia and Kurland, forms the three Baltic provinces of Russia. The population on the islands of the Gulf of Finland is mostly Esthonian. In the higher ranks of society Esthonian is hardly understood, and never spoken.

Besides the Finns and Esthonians, the Livonians and the Lapps must be reckoned also amongst the same family. Their number, however, is small. The population of Livonia consists chiefly of Esths, Letts, Russians, and Germans. The number of Livonians speaking their own dialect is not more than 5000.

The Lapps, or Laplanders, inhabit the most northern part of Europe. They belong to Sweden and Russia. Their number is estimated at 28,000. Their language has lately attracted much attention, and Castrén’s travels give a description of their manners most interesting from its simplicity and faithfulness.

The Bulgaria branch comprises the Tcheremissians and Mordvinians, scattered in disconnected colonies along the Volga, and surrounded by Russian and Tataric dialects. Both languages are extremely artificial in their grammar, and allow an accumulation of pronominal affixes at the end of verbs, surpassed only by the Bask, the Caucasian, and those American dialects that have been called Polysynthetic.

The general name given to these tribes, Bulgaric, is not borrowed from Bulgaria, on the Danube; Bulgaria, on the contrary, received its name (replacing Moesia) from the Finnic armies by whom it was conquered in the seventh century. Bulgarian tribes advanced from the Volga to the Don, and after remaining for a time under the sovereignty of the Avars on the Don and Dnieper, they advanced to the Danube in 635, and founded the Bulgarian kingdom. This has retained its name to the present day, though the Finnic Bulgarians have long been absorbed by Slavonic inhabitants, and both brought under Turkish sway since 1392.

The third, or Permic branch, comprises the idioms of the Votiakes, the Sirianes, and the Permians, three dialects of one language. _Perm_ was the ancient name for the country between 61°-76° E. lon. and 55°-65° N. lat. The Permic tribes were driven westward by their eastern neighbors, the Voguls, and thus pressed upon their western neighbors, the Bulgars of the Volga. The Votiakes are found between the rivers Vyatka and Kama. Northwards follow the Sirianes, inhabiting the country on the Upper Kâma, while the eastern portion is held by the Permians. These are surrounded on the south by the Tatars of Orenburg and the Bashkirs; on the north by the Samoyedes, and on the east by Voguls, who pressed on them from the Ural.

These Voguls, together with Hungarians and Ostiakes, form the fourth and last branch of the Finnic family, the Ugric. It was in 462, after the dismemberment of Attila’s Hunnic empire that these Ugric tribes approached Europe. They were then called Onagurs, Saragurs, and Urogs; and in later times they occur in Russian chronicles as Ugry. They are the ancestors of the Hungarians, and should not be confounded with the Uigurs, an ancient Turkic tribe mentioned before.

The similarity between the Hungarian language and dialects of Finnic origin, spoken east of the Volga, is not a new discovery. In 1253, Wilhelm Ruysbroeck, a priest who travelled beyond the Volga, remarked that a race called Pascatir, who live on the Yaïk, spoke the same language as the Hungarians. They were then settled east of the old Bulgarian kingdom, the capital of which, the ancient Bolgari, on the left of the Volga, may still be traced in the ruins of Spask. If these Pascatir—the portion of the Ugric tribes that remained east of the Volga—are identical with the Bashkir, as Klaproth supposes, it would follow that, in later times, they gave up their language, for the present Bashkir no longer speak a Hungarian, but a Turkic, dialect. The affinity of the Hungarian and the Ugro-Finnic dialects was first proved philologically by Gyarmathi in 1799.

A few instances may suffice to show this connection:—

Hungarian. Tcheremissian. English. Atya-m atya-m my father. Atya-d atya-t thy father. Atya atya-se his father. Atya-nk atya-ne our father. Atya-tok atya-da your father. Aty-ok atya-st their father.

DECLENSION.

Hungarian. Esthonian. English. Nom. vér werri blood. Gen. véré werre of blood. Dat vérnek werrele to blood. Acc. vért werd blood. Abl. vérestöl werrist from blood.

CONJUGATION.

Hungarian. Esthonian. English. Lelem leian I find. Leled leiad thou findest. Leli leiab he finds. Leljük leiame we find. Lelitek leiate you find. Lelik leiawad they find.

A Comparative Table of the NUMERALS of each of the Four Branches of the FINNIC CLASS, showing the degree of their relationship.

1 2 3 4 Chudic, Finnish yksi kaksi kolme neljä Chudic, Esthonian iits kats kolm nelli Bulgaric, Tcheremissian ik kok kum nil Bulgaric, Mordvinian vaike kavto kolmo nile Permic, Sirianian ötik kyk kujim ujoli Ugric, Ostiakian it kat chudem njeda Ugric, Hungarian egy ket harom negy

5 6 7 Chudic, Finnish viisi kuusi seitsemän Chudic, Esthonian wiis kuas seitse Bulgaric, Tcheremissian vis kut sim Bulgaric, Mordvinian väte kóto sisem Permic, Sirianian vit kvait sizim Ugric, Ostiakian vet chut tabet Ugric, Hungarian öt hat het

8 9 10 Chudic, Finnish kahdeksan yhdeksan kymmenen Chudic, Esthonian kattesa üttesa kümme Bulgaric, Tcheremissian kändäxe endexe lu Bulgaric, Mordvinian kavsko väikse kämen Permic, Sirianian kökjâmys ökmys das Ugric, Ostiakian nida arjong jong Ugric, Hungarian njolcz kilencz tiz

We have thus examined the four chief classes of the Turanian family, the Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, and Finnic. The Tungusic branch stands lowest; its grammar is not much richer than Chinese, and in its structure there is an absence of that architectonic order which in Chinese makes the Cyclopean stones of language hold together without cement. This applies, however, principally to the Mandshu; other Tungusic dialects spoken, not in China, but in the original seats of the Mandshus, are even now beginning to develop grammatical forms.

The Mongolic dialects excel the Tungusic, but in their grammar can hardly distinguish between the different parts of speech. The spoken idioms of the Mongolians, as of the Tungusians, are evidently struggling towards a more organic life, and Castrén has brought home evidence of incipient verbal growth in the language of the Buriäts and a Tungusic dialect spoken near Nyertchinsk.

This is, however, only a small beginning, if compared with the profusion of grammatical resources displayed by the Turkic languages. In their system of conjugation, the Turkic dialects can hardly be surpassed. Their verbs are like branches which break down under the heavy burden of fruits and blossoms. The excellence of the Finnic languages consists rather in a diminution than increase of verbal forms; but in declension Finnish is even richer than Turkish.

These four classes, together with the Samoyedic, constitute the northern or Ural-Altaic division of the Turanian family.

The southern division consists of the Tamulic, the Gangetic (Trans-Himalayan and Sub-Himalayan), the Lohitic, the Taïc, and the Malaïc classes.(305) These two divisions comprehend very nearly all the languages of Asia, with the exception of Chinese, which, together with its neighboring dialects, forms the only representative of radical or monosyllabic speech. A few, such as Japanese,(306) the language of Korea, of the Koriakes, the Kamchadales, and the numerous dialects of the Caucasus, &c., remain unclassed; but in them also some traces of a common origin with the Turanian languages have, it is probable, survived, and await the discovery of philological research.

Of the third, or inflectional, stage, I need not say much, as we have examined its structure when analyzing in our former Lectures a number of words in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, or any other of the Aryan languages. The chief distinction between an inflectional and an agglutinative language consists in the fact that agglutinative languages preserve the consciousness of their roots, and therefore do not allow them to be affected by phonetic corruption; and, though they have lost the consciousness of the original meaning of their terminations, they feel distinctly the difference between the significative root, and the modifying elements. Not so in the inflectional languages. There the various elements which enter into the composition of words, may become so welded together, and suffer so much from phonetic corruption, that none but the educated would be aware of an original distinction between root and termination, and none but the comparative grammarian able to discover the seams that separate the component parts.

If you consider the character of our morphological classification, you will see that this classification, differing thereby from the genealogical, must be applicable to all languages. Our classification exhausts all possibilities. If the component elements of language are roots, predicative and demonstrative, we cannot have more than three combinations. Roots may either remain roots without any modification; or secondly, they may be joined so that one determines the other and loses its independent existence; or thirdly, they may be joined and be allowed to coalesce, so that both lose their independent existence. The number of roots which enter into the composition of a word makes no difference, and it is unnecessary, therefore, to admit a fourth class, sometimes called _polysynthetic_, or _incorporating_, including most of the American languages. As long as in these sesquipedalian compounds, the significative root remains distinct, they belong to the agglutinative stage; as soon as it is absorbed by the terminations, they belong to the inflectional stage. Nor is it necessary to distinguish between _synthetic_ and _analytical_ languages, including under the former name the ancient, and under the latter the modern, languages of the inflectional class. The formation of such phrases as the French _j’aimerai_, for _j’ai à aimer_, or the English, _I shall do_, _thou wilt do_, may be called _analytical_ or _metaphrastic_. But in their morphological nature these phrases are still inflectional. If we analyze such a phrase as _je vivrai_, we find it was originally _ego_ (Sanskrit _aham_) _vivere_ (Sanskrit _jîv-as-e_, dat. neut.) _habeo_ (Sanskrit _bhâ-vayâ-mi_); that is to say, we have a number of words in which grammatical articulation has been almost entirely destroyed, but has not been cast off; whereas in Turanian languages grammatical forms are produced by the combination of integral roots, and the old and useless terminations are first discarded before any new combination takes place.(307)