Of these two the language is exceedingly simple in structure,
being raised but little above the formlessness of the Chinese. The
Tungusian, however, some authorities would couple with Japanese
as a separate branch. The three others are: the Turkish or
Tatar, the dialects of which reach from the mouth of the Lena
(Yakut) to Turkey in Europe, the Samoyed, from the Altai
down to the arctic shore of Asia, and along this to the White
Sea—an unimportant congeries of barbarous tribes; and the
Finno-Hungarian, including the tongues of the two cultivated
peoples from which it takes its name, and also those of a great
part of the population of northern and central Russia, to beyond
the Ural Mountains, and finally the Lappish, of northern Scandinavia.
The nearer relation of the Samoyed is with the
Finno-Hungarian The Turkish is a type of a well-developed
language of purely agglutinative structure: that is, lacking
that higher degree of integration which issues in internal change.
Whether this degree is wholly wanting in Finnish and Hungarian
is made a question, at any rate, the languages named
have no reason to envy the tongues technically called “inflictive”.
Of a value not inferior to that of inflictive characteristics
is one that belongs to all the Ural-Altaic tongues, in varying
measure and form, and helps to bind them together into a single
family-the harmonic sequence of vowels, namely, as between
root and endings, or a modification of the vowels of the endings
to agree with that of the root or its final syllable.
While the physical race-characteristics known as Mongolian are wanting in the speakers of the western dialects of this family, they are conspicuously present in the people of Japan and Korea; and hence the tendency of scholars to endeavour to connect the languages of the two latter countries, since they also are of agglutinative structure (see Japan and Korea) with the family now under treatment, as also with one another.
Other languages of north-eastern Asia, too little known to group, and too unimportant to treat as separate families, may be mentioned here by way of appendix to their neighbours of the most diversified and widespread Asiatic family. They are the Aino, of Yezo and the Kurile Islands with part of the neighbouring coast; the Kamchatkan; and the Yukagir and Tchuktchi of the extreme north-east. These are sometimes combined with the Eskimo under the title of the Arctic or Hyperborean languages.
The opinion has been held by many scholars that the agglutinative dialects—Sumerain, Accadian, &c.—of the presumed founders of Mesopotamian culture and teachers of the Assyrian Semites (see Babylonia) belonged to the Ural-Altaic family, and specifically to its Finno-Ugrian branch, but the data for this view are still very uncertain. The mere possession of an agglutinative structure cannot be taken as proving anything in the way of relationship.
6. Dravidian or South Indian Family.—This is an important body of nearly and clearly related tongues, spoken by about 50,000,000 people, doubtless representing the main population of all India at the time when the intrusive Indo-European tribes broke in from the north-west, and still filling most of the southern peninsula, the Deccan, together with part of Ceylon. They are languages of a high grade of structure, and of great power and eupliony; and the principal ones have enjoyed a long cultivation, founded on that of the Sanskrit. As they obviously have no Indo-European affinities, the attempt has been made to connect them also with the Ural-Altaic or Turanian family, but altogether without success, although there is nothing in their style of structure that should make such connexion impossible.
7. Malay-Polynesian Family.—Not all the tribes that make up the non-Indo-European population of India speak Dravidian dialects. The Santals and certain other wild tribes appear to be of another lineage. These are now generally known as Kolarian, and are connected with the Malay-Polynesian family. The islands, greater and smaller, lying off the south-eastern coast of Asia and those scattered over the Pacific, all the way from Madagascar fa Easter Island, are filled with their own peculiar families of languages, standing in a more or less distant relationship to the languages of the Mon-Khmer group, and the Kolarians on the mainland and the Nicobar islanders. The principal one among them is the great Malay-Polynesian family. It falls into two principal divisions, Malayan and Polynesian. The Malayan includes, besides the Malay proper (see MALAYS), which occupies the Malaccan peninsula (yet doubtless not as original home of the division, but by immigration from the islands), the languages also of Sumatra, Java, Borneo, &c., of the Philippine Islands, of part of Formosa, and of Madagascar, together with the coasts of Celebes and other islands occupied in the interior by Papuans. The Polynesian division includes most of the tongues of the remaining scattered groups of islands, and that of New Zealand. Probably to these are to be added, as a third division, the Melanesian dialects of the Melanesian Archipelago, of which both the physical and the linguistic peculiarities would in that case be ascribed to mixture with the black Papuan races. All these languages are extremely simple in phonetic form, and of a low grade of structure, the Polynesian branch being in both respects the lowest, and some of the Malayan dialects having reached a development considerably more advanced. The radical elements are much oftener of two syllables than of one, and reduplication plays an important part in their extension and variation. Malay literature goes back as far as to the 13th century, and there are Javan records even from the early centuries of our era, the result of religion and culture introduced into that island from Brahmanic India. In recent years more active investigation has been carried on with a view to tracing out the special laws of historical development prevailing in the family.
8. Other Oceanic Families.—At least two other families, unconnected with the preceding and with one another, are found among the Pacific Islands, and only there. The continental island of Australia, with its dependency Tasmania (where, however, the native tongue has now become extinct), has its own body of probably related dialects, as its own physical type. They have been but imperfectly investigated, their importance, except to the professed student of language, being nothing, but they are not destitute of a rude agglutinative structure of their own. Still less known are the Papuan or Negrito languages, belonging to the black race with frizzled hair inhabiting most of New Guinea, and found also in the interior of some of the other islands, having been driven from the coasts by superior intruders of the Malay race.
9. Caucasian Languages.—Of the existing languages of Asia there remain to be mentioned only those of the Caucasian mountains and highlands, between the Black and Caspian Seas, pressed upon the north by Slavonians and Turks, upon the south by Armenians and Kurds and Turks. Its situation makes of the Caucasus a natural eddy in all movements of emigration between Asia and Europe; and its linguistic condition is as if remnants of many families otherwise extinct had been stranded and preserved there. The dialects north of the principal range-Circassian, Mitsjeghian, Lesghian, &c.-have not been proved to be related either to one another or to those of the south. Among the latter, the Georgian is much the most widespread and important (see GEORGIA) and, alone among them all, possesses a literature. The Caucasian dialects present many exceptional and difficult features, and are in great part of so high a grade of structure as to have been allowed the epithet inflictive by those who attach special importance to the distinction thus expressed.
10. Remnants of Families in Europe.—The Basque people of the western Pyrenees, at the angle of the Bay of Biscay, are shown by their speech to be an isolated remnant of some race which was doubtless once much more widely spread, but has now everywhere else lost its separate identity; as such it is of extreme interest to the ethnologist (see Basques). The Basque language appears to be unrelated to any other on earth. It is of a very highly agglutinative structure, being equalled in intricacy of combination only by a part of the American dialects. Limited as it is in territory, it falls into a number of well-marked dialects, so that it also may not be refused the name of a “family.”
The only other case of the kind worth noting is that of the
