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JULY, 1907.)
RECORD OF THE LANGUAGES OF SAVAGES.
181
A PLAN FOR A UNIFORM SCIENTIFIC RECORD OF THE
LANGUAGES OF SAVAGES.
Applied to the Languages of the Andamanese and Nicobarose. BY SIR RICHARD C. TEMPLE.
Prefaee. COME years ago, I published ante, Vol. XXVIII. (1900), pp. 197 fi., 225 ff., a Theory of
Universal Grammar as applied to a Group of Savage Languages, and in Vol. XXXI. (1902), pp. 165 ff., this theory was successfully applied by Mr. Sydney Ray for the elacidation of a short statement in sixteen unrelated and morphologically distinct languages. While compiling Vol. III, of the Report on the Census of Indis, 1901, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, I had an opportunity of applying it in detail to the languages of the inhabitants of those islands. In 1904 I had another opportunity of revising the Theory in a lecture to the British Association at Cambridge. I now publish the Theory as revised on that occasion, and its application to systematic grammars of the languages of the Andamanose and the Nicobarese. In this matter I have had the advantage of the Resistance of Mr. K. H. Man, the greatest expert on the subject.
The following abstract of the ideas elaborated in the succeeding pages may be of use to the reader.
During the last 30 years the careful record of " savage " languages has been frequently undertaken, and a serious difficulty has arisen, owing to the accepted European system of grammar, which is based on a system originally evolved for the explanation of highly inflected languages only, whereas in many, if not in most," savage" languages, inflexion is absent or present only in
radimentary form. The European system has therefore been found to be unsuited for that purpose. During attempts to provide a suitable system a Theory of Universal Grammar tras evolved.
The root idea is that, as speech is a convention devised by the human brain for intercommunication between human beings, there must be fundamental natural laws by which it is governed, however various the phenomena of those laws may be.
The Theory starts with a consideration of the sentence, i. e., the expression of a complete meaning, as the unit of all speech, and then seeks to discover the natural laws of speech by a consideration of the internal and external development of the sentence.
In explaining internal development, the sentence is ultimately divided into words. considered as components of its natural main divisions, in the light of their respective functions. This leads logically to a clear definition of grammatical terms,
From the consideration of the fanctions of words the Theory passes to that of the methods by which they are made to fulfil their functions. It shows how words can be divided into classes • according to function and explains their transfer from class to class. This leads to an explanation
of connected words and shows how the forms of words grow out of their functions. The growth of the forms is next considered, involving an explanation of roots, stems, and radical and functional affixes. This explanation shows that the sffixes determine the forms of words. This is followed by a consideration of the methods by which the affixes affect the forms.
The sentence, is e., the unit of speech, is then considered as being itself a component of something greater, i. e., of a Inngange. This consideration of its external development leads to the
