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LECTURE VIII.
We have now taken a survey of the most important phenomena of language and of linguistic growth, as they are illustrated in the forms of speech peculiar to the Indo-European family. We have seen in what scanty beginnings our own tongue and those related to it had their origin, and what, in brief, were the steps by which they advanced from the weakness and barrenness of radical monosyllabism to the rich completeness of inflective speech. These matters were brought to light in the course of the regular prosecution of our fundamental inquiry, "why we speak as we do," it having been made to appear that our English linguistic tradition had been, during a protracted and most important period, one with that of all the other members of the family mentioned. But now, considering the possibility that the Indo-European family may be found, after all, only a constituent group in some yet vaster family—or even, supposing that possibility to be disproved, considering the impropriety of our so circumscribing our interests and our sympathies as to understand by the "we" of our question anything less than the whole human race—it becomes our duty next to pass in review the other great linguistic families which
