PROFESSOR OF MODERN LANGUAGES IN THE QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY IN IRELAND. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. All rights reserved. 1871, July 1. Thanigh Fund. 'Ne quis igitur tamquam parva fastidiat grammatices elementa: non quia magnae sit operae, consonantes a vocalibus discernere, ipsasque eas in semivocalium numerum mutarumque partiri; sed quia interiora velut sacri hujus adeuntibus, apparebit multa rerum subtilitas, quae non modo acuere ingenia puerilia, sed exercere altissimam quoque eruditionem ac scientiam possit.' QUINCT. Inst. Orat. i. 4. LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE PREFACE. THE present little book contains the groundwork of one of my ordinary courses of lectures in Queen's College, Belfast. During its delivery I felt seriously the want of a text-book which might relieve the student, to some extent, from the wearisome task of taking notes, and save the time lost occasionally in dictating paragraphs. The book is therefore merely a text-book, which is to supply matter for comment and elucidation. But any intelligent student who carefully goes through every paragraph, will be able to obtain from it a good philological knowledge of the French language according to the present state of the science of Comparative Grammar. I suppose such a student to possess a fair knowledge of the descriptive grammar of French and Latin, and some acquaintance with Greek and German. For this reason I have avoided, as much as possible, reference to languages unknown to him, and given, for instance, the Modern German or English representatives of Gothic and Old High German words. On the other hand, I have, as often as possible, especially in the chapter on Phonology, introduced illustrations from the Greek. Throughout it has been my endeavour to bring harmony and connexion into the previous knowledge of the student, and to show him that by learning a new language he increases his knowledge of those he may 6 know already. 'Quanti vel hoc nomine æstimandus est sermo noster,' says Henricus Stephanus, quod ejus notitia ad Latinitatis quoque cognitionem aliquid confert.' Some parts of the book, especially the chapter on Phonology, might be used with great advantage in the lower forms, and would be of infinitely more use than the occasional etymologies which it has become the fashion to introduce into descriptive grammars of the French language. The majority of these etymologies are such as every boy makes easily for himself, and the rest are of a very questionable description. What is the use of telling a boy that aimer is derived from amare? He knows that as well as his master. Now, there would be some use in telling him something about the in the first syllable of aimer. But when a boy is told that mon, ton, son, are from meus, tuus, suus, the very thing he ought to be cautioned against, such etymologizing is downright mischief. It would probably not be beyond the boy's capacity to explain to him why he ought to look for the etymon of a French nominative in a Latin accusative. Me, moi, te, toi, se, soi he is told to derive from the Latin me, te, se, and most likely he would do so without being told. But an explanation of how these double forms arose is not vouchsafed to him. Surely no boy could possibly ever forget it, if it had once been explained to him that here he has before him the most beautiful instance of dialectic regeneration in the whole range of Romance grammar. The abbreviations and terminology are those used by all English philologists. The only innovation is perhaps the use of the word 'graphic,' in the sense in which German philologists use it. In some instances I might have replaced it by 'silent etymological,' or by 'orthographic ;' but the word is so useful, that its adoption in English sooner or later seems to me certain. The mark is sometimes used to denote from a form like.' Since writing the note on page 116, I have had an opportunity of spending a few days in the British Museum, and examining a number of old grammars, dictionaries, and editions of classics printed by the best printers. Though the question of the written accents is scarcely worthy of serious attention, I shall probably give elsewhere an account of the result of my inquiries. Here I will only add a few observations. Beza (de Francicæ linguæ recta pronuntiatione: Genevæ, 1584, p. 73) observes: Franci nullos accentus notant;' and then he goes on to advocate the use of the circumflex to denote the length of a syllable. Robertus Stephanus (Gallica Grammatices Libellus, 1558, p. 6) says of the final e: 'Quando vero est in fine, etiam varie pronuntiatur; aliquando sono longiore et producto, velut Aimé, aperto ore ut pronuntietur productiore sono: et tum sæpe notamus accentu Latinorum acuto, præcipue ubi dubitari posset de significatione, veluti Aimé, Poureté, Gravité.' Du Marsais formulated the rules of accent in the manner in which they were accepted by the Académie. At all times the whole matter seems to have been considered seriously only by printers, and it is only of late that ignorant Frenchmen have supposed that the accents were settled by the Académie,' and that to use them differently from the Académie is a heinous crime. Another one of these printer's marks is the cedilla, which was entirely unknown to Robert Etienne, and which I found in six different old editions of Henri Etienne's Traicté de la Conformité.' |