this method of construction. Even if the conjecture were
admitted, which sets forth a given period as the era of
transition from the monosyllabic to the dissyllabic form,
there would still remain in the elements, from which wé suppose
the dissyllabic language to have been constructed, the
peculiarity that they consist of roots having a vowel between
two consonants, in which the vowel, being indifferent as
to the meaning or essential import'is left to be changed
by, and become subservient to, the purposes of inflection,
and to indicate the relations of meaning as to time., .mood,
and other modifications. On these grounds, which appear
hardly to be contestible, M. de Humboldt defends the
opinion which assigns to the Syro-Arabian language, as the
essential and original character of its formation, a preponderance
of dissyllabic roots. Thé phenomenon, as he
observes, which struck Gesenius, namely the resemblance
in the meaning of the first syllable in many different roots,
indicates only a similarity in the leading idea or impression
which the sounds of words were intended to denote.
A careful comparison of the second syllables may^ténd to
elucidate this subject; but even if it should1 be admitted
that the similar dissyllables are all compounded words,
which is extremely improbable, they are still; compounds
in their nature unlike all others; and if the- Shemite speech
had once adopted to so great an extent the principle of
composition, as thus to have constructed its roots, it
is scarcely credible that it would all at once have abandoned
it and for the future repudiated the use of compound words,
which it has certainly prohibited to such an extent, that
this has become, as evëry one knows, a leading feature in
all the Syro-Arabian dialects.
It appears on the whole to have been the opinion of M.
de Humboldt, founded evidently on the most probable results
of the facts compared, that the Shemite language consisted
in its original material of roots principally dissyllabic.
Into this language it seems that many roots were admitted
of foreign origin, cognate with Sanskrit or Greek or other
primitive words. But in dealing with them, the genius of
the language displays itself. Before they became Semitic
CHARACTERISTICS OP THEIR LANGUAGE. 555
words they were turned into dissyllables, according to the
structure of. the language, and were furnished with mutable
vowels, and rendered susceptible of the inflections peculiar
to Semitic verbs, and this was done by adding a second
syllable to the monosyllabic primitives.
»Connected with the triliteral form of roots and the dissyllabic
structure is the phenomenon before mentioned,
and which also was pointed out by Humboldt. I allude to
the circumstance, that in Semitic roots the three consonants
express the import or leading^idea. connected with the
word, and the interior vowels >its shades of meaning and
the modifications of. time'and mood, agency or passion,
actual o r ; potential existènee.: It is hard to determine
with respeck-to these, two peculiarities.'of Semitic roqts,
namely,. their trilitëral structure and the peculiarity; just
pointed out, which is the determining cause and groundwork
of the other, though it, is manifest that there is a
very close connection between them. The greater compass
which the formation óf roots by three consonants afforded^
may have given rise , to the denoting various relations of
words by changes of vowels; and the principle of so denoting
these relations being once adopted, the requisite fulness
of expression could only be obtained in words of a
certain compass and containing several consonants*. = Other
languages display' occasional traces of this tendency,* but
the adoption of such a principle as a fundamental law of
structure in the formation of words and of language, and in
the system invented for the expression of ideas and their modifications,
is a phenomenon quite peculiar and characteristic
of the Semitic languages. It seems to place these languages
in a different category from all other human idioms.
The origination of the latter may be attributed to accident
or to the unpremeditated and momentary efforts of the
mind, and to the occasional development of a few original
elements. Even the Greek and Sanskrit come under this
observation. But the artifice of construction is so deeply
I * The changes of interior vowels, termed in Sanskrit Gnna and Vnddhis, are
examples in other languages, as are suéh changes as those of s!5w, old«,—
pivot, iisixova,—greta, jreregrót.—Moss Goth.