trary, the phenomena bear everywhere an irregular and sporadic character: the change of vowel in the oldest derivatives is only an accompaniment of derivation by means of suffixes; it has no constant significance; it acquires significance only at second hand, in the manner of a result, not a cause; and it remains everywhere as barren of formative force as in the Germanic verbs (where, as was shown in the third lecture, its infecundity led to the construction of a new scheme of conjugation), or as in our irregular plurals like men and feet, from man and foot. Only, therefore, so far as it is regarded as an effect and sign of thorough integration of elements, of complete unity of designation, can we accept internal change as an exponent of the superiority of Indo-European speech.
But the peculiarities belonging to the character of our family of languages will be more clearly apprehensible when we shall have taken a survey of the other principal forms of human speech, to which, accordingly, after these necessary introductory remarks, we now turn. We shall take up the families in an order partly geographical, and partly based upon a consideration of their respective importance.
On both these grounds, there can be no question as to which group of languages, outside of the Indo-European domain, ought first to receive our attention. It is evidently that one which includes as its principal branches the Hebrew, the Syriac, and the Arabic. From the names of its two extreme members, it is sometimes styled the Syro-Arabian family; but its usual and familiar designation is Semitic or Shemitic, derived from the name of the patriarch Shem, son of Noah, who in Genesis is made the ancestor of most of the nations that speak its dialects. It is a very distinctly marked group, and, though occupying but a limited tract in the southwestern corner of Asia, with some of the adjacent parts of Africa, is of the highest consequence, by reason of the conspicuous part which the race to which it belongs has played in the history of the world. This is too well known to require to be referred to here otherwise than in the briefest manner.
The Phenicians, inhabiting Tyre, Sidon, and the adjacent
