Note 38 — Chapter IV · FAMILIES OF LANGUAGE.

Such a book as we have imagined would form a natural sequel to the principles of comparative grammar as laid down by Bopp, etc. It would differ from a mere comparative dictionary in the arrangement, showing the nature and extent of modification which each word had undergone—where, for instance, Grimm’s laws of change hold good, where not; the cases of the survival of archaic forms (agreeable to Grimm’s second law); and, if they could be discovered as the result of such a classification, the determining causes of such survival among any of the different races.