Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 edition. Excerpt: ... and further back, we shall at last reach a period when kw alone, and not k pure, existed1. 61.--(a) It will have been seen from the preceding sections (55-60, and the notes) that scarcely any philological problem can have given occasion to more diverse and hostile opinions than that involving the genealogy and relationship of the various I-E. A-sounds. If to those opinions I here venture to add one more, it is because I have grounds for thinking that some of the principles enunciated in the former part of this treatise will enable me to attack the problem upon a totally different side from any towards which previous inquirers have advanced. I must remark at the outset that the ethnic question, involving the relationship of the Lithu-Slaves to the Aryans on the one side and to the rest of the Europeans on the other, is distinct from, and as regards our present inquiry subordinate to, the linguistic question, and not this to that. If, indeed, we had trustworthy records of the primitive history of that section of the Europeans, we should no doubt be able to account for all the linguistic phenomena which now appear so perplexing. As things stand, however, the only means we have of obtaining, conversely, a glimpse or two of the history of the people is furnished by language; and hence I shall for a time leave the ethnic question altogether out of sight. (b) Referring now to 18-22, 28 (d), and especially to 38-43, we can hardly fail, I think, to be struck by the great similarity between the phenomena presented by the distribution of the various I-E. A-sounds and those presented by the cases there discussed and formulated; for the most striking feature of this distribution is the diagonal or cross relationship between..."