Three Lectures on the Science of Language; Delivered at the Oxford University Extension Meeting - Tapa blanda

Sinopsis

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1899. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... THIRD LECTURE. THOUGHT THICKER THAN BLOOD. I HAVE been asked the question, a very natural question, and one that has often been discussed since the discovery of Sanskrit and since the establishment of a close relationship between Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, Russian, German, English, and Welsh--Does the close relationship of these languages prove a real relationship between the people who speak these languages? At first sight, the answer seems very easy. As a negro may learn English and become, as has been the case, an English bishop, it would seem as if language by itself could hardly be said to prove relationship. That being so, I have always, beginning with my very first contribution to the Science of Language -- my letter to Bunsen "On the Turanian Languages," published in 1854--I have always, I say, warned against mixing up these two relationships,--the relationship of language and the relationship of blood. As these warnings, however, have been of very little avail, I venture to repeat them once more, and in the very words which I used in the year 1854 :-- 1' Much of the confusion of terms and indistinctness of principles, both in ethnology and philology, is due to the combined study of these heterogeneous sciences. Ethnological race and linguistic race are not commensurate, except in ante-historical times, or perhaps at the very dawn of history. With the migrations of tribes, their wars, their colonies, their conquests and alliances, which, if we may judge from their effects, must have been much more violent in the ethnic than ever in the political periods of history, it is impossible to imagine that ethnological race and linguistic race should continue to run parallel The physiologist should therefore pursue his own science, unconcerned about languag...

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