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THE

GBEEK VEEB

LONDON : PRINTED BY

8POTTISWOODK AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUAREAND PARLIAMENT STREET

THE G-BEEK YEEB

ITS STRUCTURE AND DEVELOPEMENT

By GEOEG CUETIUSPROFESSOR IX THE UNIVERSITY OP LEIPZIG

TRANSLATED BY

AUGUSTUS S. WILKINS, M.A.PROFESSOR OF LATIN AND COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY IS THE OWENS COLLEGE, MANCHESTER

AND

EDWIN B. ENGLAND, M.A.ASSISTANT LECTURER IN CLASSICS IN THE OWENS COLLEGE MANCHESTER

f LIBRARYUNIVERSITY OF

{ CxYLIFORNIA..

LONDONJOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET

1880

All rights reserved

ysi^

ft I R A R "UNIVERSITY OPCALIFORN]

CS7I3I860

PBEEACE.

The following work is a translation of ' Das Verbum derGrriechischen Sprache seinem Baue nach dargestellt,' published intwo volumes (Vol. I. Leipzig 1873, Vol. II. ib. 1876). For thefirst volume we were able to use the second edition (Leipzig 1877):for the second volume Prof. Curtius was good enough to furnish uswith a large number of corrections and additions, prepared byhim for the second edition, now going through the press. ProfessorCurtius desires to express his indebtedness for some of these to

notices by Prof. A. Nauck in the ' Bulletin de l'Academie imperialedes sciences de St. Petersbourg ' Tome xx. pp. 481-520 and inthe ' Melanges Grreco-Romains ' Tome iv. p. 58 ff. We cannotreproduce this acknowledgment without expressing our greatregret that Prof. Nauck should have thought fit to adopt in thesearticles a tone and language which, it might have been hoped,belonged entirely to a past generation of scholars. We have addedfrom the second edition an important excursus as an appendix.

In the preface to Vol. I., Prof. Curtius writes :

C I was first led to make the Greek verb the subject of adetailed examination in the following way. My work "DieBildung der Tempora und Modi im Grriechischen und Lateinischen,"which appeared in the year 1846, had been for some time out ofprint. The progress made by the science since that time wouldat least have necessitated very considerable changes in a newedition. Besides this I hardly felt called upon to make a freshexamination of the structure of the Latin verb. The object,indeed, with which that work of my younger days was undertakenwas to present classical scholars with a critical compendium of the

[6] PREFACE.

actual results arrived at by the comparative study of the verbalstructure, adding thereto investigations made by myself. It seemedto me that after so long an interval I could not approach the same

subject unless I treated the whole verb at once more succinctlyand more in detail, and to this end I saw I should have to confinemyself to the single language to which my special study hasalways been directed. Of course Latin, like any other cognatelanguage, has been examined wherever it promised to throw lighton Greek.

1 1 have taken special pains here to present as far as I could a

complete list of actually occurring forms, though this was far from

my object in the composition of the " Tempora und Modi." Itseemed to me no disadvantage that certain sections of the presentwork should in consequence be little more than lists of forms.For it is of the greatest importance for the correct understandingof these forms that we should know to what extent they werecurrent and in what periods. In the case of the formation of thepresent tense stem for instance all the information we had as tothe occurrence of its manifold varieties was extremely defective.

None of the various indexes of verbal forms, among which Veitch's" Greek Verbs irregular and defective " (3rd edition, Oxford 1871) l

deserves still as always to be held in the highest consideration,

could fully supply the need, since they were undertaken with com-pletely different objects in view. At the same time, after Lobeck'sEhematikon, where however we have constantly to regret that thedifferent periods are not distinguished, it is to this work and toKiihner's new edition of his " Ausfuhrliche Grammatik " to whichI owe by far the greater number of references on this head. Inthe case of Homeric Greek, which had always to be treatedseparately of course, I have, besides Sebers well-known Index,made use of a complete collection of verbal forms made by a

1* I am indebted to the kindness of the author for the information that the

Edinburgh edition of 1860, by which I was led to call the edition of 1871 (styledon its title-page a " New.Edition ") the fourth, was one in which he had no hand.Mr. Veitch recognises only three editions as authorisedthose of 1848, 1865, and1871.I take this opportunity of mentioning a work composed with the sameobject, i.e.' ^ rrjs

vnb . . 2/>, 4' ',", ' 1877, which was kindly sent to me bythe author while I was engaged on this second edition.'

PREFACE. [7]

former pupil at my suggestion. From Hesychius's Lexicon, whichI have gone through in the course of my investigations, I havebeen able, while rigidly excluding all foreign and doubtful matter,

to extract many remarkable forms. The rich treasury too con-tained in Lentz's Herodian has been laid under contribution. Forall that, such is the astounding wealth of forms which Grreekpossesses, that, with the best of intentions, I have fallen far short

of absolute completeness, even within the limits here proposed.

Still I hope it will now be approximately possible to ascertain the

extent to which the phenomena discussed by me were in livinguse. It is now and then surprising to find, in the course of thisenquiry, how forms, which boys at school learn as the proper andregular ones, either have no authority whatever or only occur in

some out-of-the-way place, and stand quite alone.'There is nothing so prejudicial to an insight into the real

structure of the Greek verb as the notion, still widely prevalent,that every verb must admit of being conjugated throughout. Inreality, not only does each single group of forms make a separatewhole, but very often one such group is formed from one and thesame stem many centuries earlier than the other, andleavingthe latest stratum of derived verbs out of the questionalmost

every verb shows us, so to speak, a separate family, with its ownfamily history and a quite individual stamp of character. It maybe doubted if there is another language which has developed thistendency towards individuality so far as that of the Greeks.

c Next to the formation of a complete collection of the charac-

teristic forms from Greek itself I have made a point of com-paring with them whatever forms can be directly comparedfrom the related languages. It is no slight help towards aninsight into the origin and ramification of forms of language ifwe can see clearly how often in two languages, e.g. Grreek andSanskrit, or even in more than two, precisely the same form has

come from the corresponding stem. In the case of the present-tense formations no comprehensive attempt of this kind had everbeen made. All that had been done was to point out similaritiesof formation without taking the trouble to consider the stems in

which they appeared. It may surprise many scholars to find howextensive the agreement between the languages is, even in the

[8] PEEFACE.

case of forms of such comparatively late stamp as the derivedverbs.

6 The oftener we are led by investigations of this kind intoregions in which the ground is slippery, the greater the importance,.I think, which must be attached to such bare collections of un-doubted facts about which it is hardly possible there should be twoopinions. For the etymologist I have undertaken the collectionof such facts in my " Principles of Greek Etymology." Thepresent work is intended to provide, in a similar collection ofverbal forms, a firm basis for the investigation of their origin

4)n this head I have only ventured with some reluctance upon the(very difficult questions of the genesis of verbal forms. Thesequestions must be dealt with by analysis and combination

a

province quite distinct from that of the comparison of parallelforms. I have expounded elsewhere (" Zur Chronologie der indo-germanischen Sprachforschung," 2nd edition 1873) my views onthe origin and developement of the Indo-Grermanic verbal struc-ture. These views, which I still hold, in spite of some amount ofopposition, are naturally those on which I proceed in the present

work.2 With regard to the main questions they are the sameviews which began with Bopp's foundation of our science in thefirm structure of his " Comparative Grammar," which were eluci-

dated and corrected by Schleicher's systematising, though perhaps

now and then too logical condensation, and may be regarded asthe universal doctrine of Comparative Philology. No reasonableman will imagine that this structure is satisfactory at every point.

It has its weak sides, and it is the strengthening, perfecting andcorrection of these to which the science must devote itself as it

advances. Hard problems meet us, in which we have often tocontent ourselves with the indication of a greater or smaller

degree of probability, and we must not fancy that we can settle

every thing once for all. But I confess that the attacks lately

made from different quarters on the foundations of this structureseem to me not at all likely to shake them.

f The principal works used for the second edition have been,

2 [A statement of these views, revised by Professor Curtius, will be found inthe article on the Greek Language in the ' Encyclopedia Britannica,' vol. jri.(ninth edition).]

PREFACE. [9j

before all, Delbriick's " Altindisches Verbum " (Halle 1874),Johannes Schmidt "Zur Geschichte des Vocalismus " Vol. II.

,

Grust. Meyer u Die mit Nasalen gebildeten Prasensstamme n

(Jena 1873).'In the preface to Vol. II., Professor Curtius writes :-^6 This second half of my description of the structure of the

Greek verb has not led me so often as the first to the ultimateand most difficult questions as to the origin of the earliest Indo-Grermanic verbal forms. I have had to deal rather, though not byany means exclusively, still for the most part with the completionand carrying out of primitive types by the Greeks ; althoughthese can be understood only by bringing out the special charac-teristics of the Greek verb from the common back-ground. Muchhowever that bears upon this has now presented itself to me in adifferent light from what it did formerly ; and the doctrine of theperfect especially, which in consequence of the peculiar stampand varied ramification of this tense takes up a very considerablepart of this second volume, is stated here in a manner which inmany respects is new. For the perfect I have very thankfullyavailed myself of the researches of old pupils, of which some arecollected in the " Philological Discussions published by Or. Curtius'sGrammatical Society " (Leipzig 1874), others are printed in the" Studien," while Windisch's description of the Irish perfect,

which I have found instructive on many points, has been printedin Kuhn's " Zeitschrift " Vol. XXIII. But many other chapterstoo, e.g. that on the Verbal Nouns, and specially the doctrine ofthe Infinitive, and the description of the Sigmatic Aorist, containviews differing from those most generally adopted. I trust theymay recommend themselves to the unprejudiced judgment of otherinvestigators. I cannot, I think, be charged with baviug clungobstinately to doctrines which I previously advanced. On thecontrary, I believe that I have never refused to accept more recent

views and tendencies, so far as they appeared to me at all justified,without however deviating from the fundamental principles whichI followed in my first discussion of the Greek Verb thirtyyears ago.'

The translation of the first volume has been executed by Mr.England, that of the second by Mr. Wilkins, but every page has

[10] PKEFACE.

been carefully revised by us both, and we are jointly responsiblefor the whole. The very full indexes to the original work wereprepared by Dr. Vanicek of Neuhaus : the task of adapting themto the present translation, involving as it did the verification andalteration of more than 5,000 references, has not been a lightone: but it is hoped that they will prove of great value infacilitating the use of the book.

The numbers in the margin refer to the pages of the secondedition of Vol. I. and of the first edition of Vol. II. in theoriginal. It may be convenient to notice that the second editionOf Vol. I. contains eight pages more than the first, while the

second edition of Vol. II., in consequence of the insertion of the

excursus at p. 33, will probably contain about twenty pages more

than the first. Hence e.g. a reference to p. 206 of Vol. I. 1 will-answer to p. 211 Vol. I.2 (p. 143 of the translation): p. 370Vol. I.^p. 376 Vol. I.2 (p. 258 of the translation): p. 100Vol. II.2=p. 84 Vol. II. 1 (p. 329 of the translation).

The kindly welcome given to our translation of the ' Principlesof Greek Etymology ' leads us to hope for an equally favourablereception for a work which has been universally recognised as anot less important contribution to the cause of a sound andscientific knowledge of the Grreek language.

Manchesteb :Christmas, 1879,

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.PAGE

INTRODUCTION. 1

CHAPTER II.THE PERSONAL TERMINATIONS . . . 24

. Active. ... 24

First Person Singular .... 24

Second Person Singular 31Third Person Singular 37First Person Plural 41

Second Person Plural 44Third Person Plural 45Dual 50

II. Middle .... 55First Person Singular 57

Second Person Singular 59Third Person Singular 60First Person Plural 61

Second Person Plural 63Third Person Plural 64Dual Forms 67Excursus on the 68

CHAPTER .THE AUGMENT 72

A) The Syllabic Augment.

76

1) Double Consonants following the Augment 772) Syllabic Augment before a Vowel 78

B) The Temporal Augment 87C) Absence op the Augment 91D) The Position of the Augment 94

[12] TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IV.PAGE

PRESENT STEMS WITHOUT A THEMATIC VOWEL . 96I. Monosyllabic

. . 96II. Stems of Two or Three Syllables

. 105

CHAPTER V.AORIST STEMS WITHOUT A THEMATIC VOWEL . . 125

I. Monosyllabic 126II. Disyllabic 13a

CHAPTER VI.THEMATIC PRESENTS FORMED WITHOUT ANY FURTHER

STRENGTHENING OF THE STEM . . .13$

CHAPTER VH.STEMS WHICH LENGTHEN THE VOWEL IN THE PRESENT . 150

I. Diphthongal Intensification. . . .

. .153H. MONOPHTHONGAL INTENSIFICATION 156

CHAPTER VHI.THE T- CLASS 16a

I. Labial Stems .164II. Guttural Stems . . 168HI. Vowel Stems . . .168

CHAPTER IX.THE NASAL CLASS 169

I. Presents in -,- 178. Presents in --, --- 180IIL Presents in - and -wau> * 18SIV. Presents in -,- 184

V. Presents in **, which point to an older vm . . . .185

CHAPTER X.THE INCHOATIVE CLASS 187

. ADDED DIRECTLY TO VOWEL ROOTS 192.- added Consonantal Hoots which have become Vocalic

by Metathesis 193

TABLE OF CONTENTS. [13]PAGE

.- ADDED TO VOCALIC STEMS OP TWO OR MORE SYLLABLES

.

.194IV. - AFFIXED AFTER THE ADDITION OF A SHORT VOWEL . . . 195V. - ADDED IMMEDIATELY TO CONSONANTAL ROOTS . . . .196

VI. A TRANSFORMED- 197

CHAPTER XI.

THE I- CLASS . . . . . .201

I. Presents in - 207II. Presents showing the Effects left by an earlier -jw . .211

A) Verbs in- from -/ 211) Verbs with Epenthesis of . . . ...". . . . 213C) Presents in () 218D) Presents in 222

APPENDIX TO THE I- CLASS . . . . 229

Denominative Verbal Formation 229I. Vocalic Division 234

1. Verbs in -a, -ata>,- . . 234

2. Verbs in -, -,- 238

3. Verbs in -e, -eta, -* and- 239First Excursus.On the Interchange and Meaning of the Verbs in -,

-, -e 244

Second Excursus.On the Inflexion of the Contracted Verbs . . . 2464. Verbs in - and- 2495. Verbs in - and- 2506. Verbs in -et/ and- 251

II. Consonantal Division 2531. Derived Verbs in -m 253

2. Derived Verbs in- 255

3. Derived Verbs in - 255

4. Derived Verbs in- (-) . ...".. . . 256

CHAPTER .

THE E-CLASS AND THE RELATED FORMATIONS . 258

1. Presents in - with Forms from a shorter Stem in other Tenses . 2622. Presents without an -e by the side of other Forms with c or tj . . 2633. Both Formations side by side in the Present 2684. -Formations in other Tenses than the Present, where the Present-

Stem is expanded in some other way 270

APPENDIX TO THE E- CLASS . . . .273

[14] TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER XIII.PAGR

THEMATIC AORISTS 275

I. AORISTS WITHOUT REDUPLICATION 27SII. Aorists with Reduplication 28&

CHAPTER XIV.THE MOODS OF THE PRESENT AND SIMPLE AORIST STEM. 296

I. Imperative. . .296

A) Second Singular Active 297B) Second Person Middle . > . . 304C) Third Singular, Active and Middle 305D) Third Plural, Active and Middle 306E) Dual Forms 310

. Conjunctive 311HI. Optative 324

CHAPTER XV.VERBAL NOUNS OF THE PRESENT AND SIMPLE AORIST

STEM 338

I. Infinitives 338II. Participles 351

CHAPTER XVI.THE PERFECT STEM AND THE FORMS CONSTRUCTED

FROM IT 354I. Reduplication in the Perfect 356

A) With an Initial Consonant 356B) With an Initial Vowel of the Stem 365C) Loss of Reduplication 370D) Position of the Reduplication 373

. The Active Perfect 381A) Personal Terminations of the Indicative 381B) Formation of the Stem 386

a. Relics of the Primary Formation 386b. Formation of the Stem by an added Vowel . . . . 388c. Changes in the Vowel of the Stem-Syllable . . . 395d. Consonantal Changes in the StemSyllable . . . 403

e. The Perfect with 408III. The Middle Perfect 416IV. Moods of the Perfect 422V. Verbal Nouns of the Perfect 424

TABLE OF CONTENTS. [15]PAQB

VI. Tendencies towards Sigmatic Perfect Forms . . . .427VII. The Pluperfect .... 428

A) Active Pluperfect . . .428-B) Middle Pluperfect 434

VIII. The Future from the Perfect Stem 436-

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SIGMATIC AORIST 437

A) Relics of a Primitive Formation 445B) The Ordinary Formation 449C) Irregularities 460

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE FUTURE 467

I. The Sigmatic Future 468II. The Future without 475

A) From stems in 475) From other Stems 478C) Other Futures without e 483

III. Moods and Verbal Nouns of the Future . . . . . . . 485-

CHAPTER XIX.

THE PASSIVE STEMS 488

I. The Passive Stem in - 491II. The Passive Stem in - 498ELSEWHERE THAN IN THE PASSIVE STEM .' 500

A) Presents in - 501) Formations further derived 503C) Meaning of these stems . . . . . . . . . 504

Similar Formations in other Languages 506Origin of the Syllable - (0c) in the Passive Aorist . . . 507

CHAPTER XX.

THE VERBAL ADJECTIVES. . . . 511

CHAPTER XXI.

IRREGULARITIES OF THE VOWEL STEMS IN THE FORMA-TION OF THE PERFECTS, FUTURES, PASSIVE AORISTSAND VERBAL ADJECTIVES 616-

[16] TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER.PAGE

THE ITERATIVES 527

CHAPTER XXHI.

DESIDERATIVES, INTENSIVES AND FREQUENTATIVES . 633

CHAPTER XXIV.

ANOMALIES 538

EXCURSUS.

On some Eecent Explanations of the Vocalism in the Thematic Aorist . . 545

INDEXES.

A. Gbeek 553B. Italic 578C. Sanskrit 581D. Ibanic 583E. Teutonic . 584F. Letto-Slavonic 584G. Keltic .585

THE GBEEK "VERB.

CHAPTER I.INTRODUCTION.

The term verb is not always used by grammarians in the same sense. IWe hear, on the one hand, of the verb in a sentence, and ' oris said to be a verb ; on the other, the same term is used to denotethe numerous forms which along with this or belongto one stem, and we hear of the verb, or the verb.Dionysius Thrax used the word in the former sense when he thus dennedthe notion of the verb : (Bekker,1 Anecd.' ii. 672). Schoemann, in what he says about the nature of theverb, at p. 16 of his treatise on the Parts of Speech, agrees with thisdefinition. It is in the power of making an assertion, i.e. in the unionof a subject with a predicate within one and the same word, that thepeculiarity of this, as opposed to other parts of speech, consists. For ourpresent purposes we shall have to distinguish more carefully betweenthese two uses. We do not call or verbs, but verbal forms,and only use the term verb collectively, understanding by a verb a moreor less extensively ramifying system of forms, all of which possess thepower of making an assertion, and come from one stem, or are at leastheld together by the bond of a common meaning. Again, all Greek verbsjoin to form that higher unity, which, as the sum and substance of thewhole mass of kindred phenomena, we may call ' The Greek Verb.'

If we proceed to consider a single verb or system of verbal formsfrom a, so to speak, statistical point of view, this system at once falls 2into two main groups, which have at all times been kept distinct, thoughthe origin and nature of this difference may not have been understood :these are the verb finite, and the verb infinite. It is only the forms ofthe verb finite which are capable of expressing a complete assertion, or, inother words, of making little sentences which can be conceived as standingalone. In the forms of the verb infinite there is always an incompletenessin the assertion, which needs to be supplemented by a form of the firstkind. Infinitives, participles, and verbal adjectives bear the form ofnouns, and belong by right of origin and structure in most instances tothe class of noun-forms. But since the language as preserved to usmakes a distinction of use between these forms and those called noun-forms, in the strict sense of the term, and since they have several charac-teristic distinctions of form in common with the verb proper, they make

INTRODUCTION. CH. .

an integral part of the verbal system, and ought not to be consideredapart from ita fact not always recognised in Comparative Grammar.Their double nature was well set forth in the old name (partici-pium) j the only pity is that this name was confined to a part only of thegroup. We shall find it best to speak of the whole class as verbal nouns.

The elements of meaning which find expression in the Greek verbfinite are of six kinds: 1), Person; 2), Number; 3), Relation borneby the action to the subject, the difference, i.e. between Active, Middle,and Passive, so well named by the ancients ; 4), Kind of Time(Zeitart), by which I mean the varieties of the continuous, momentary,and completed action perceivable, i.e. in,, and respec-tively ; 5), Grade of Time (Zeitstufe), or the difference between present,past, and future ; and 6), Modality. The verbal nouns have no meansat all for expressing the first element, but they can all express the thirdand fourth. Of the fifth, the grade of time, they never had any mark,

3 though, in the case of the participle, a peculiar shifting of function hasenabled the distinctive mark of the kind to do duty for that of the gradeof time ; and besides this, the latest born of the tense-systems, that of thefuture, has produced verbal nouns of its own. Participles are of coursethe only verbal nouns which can mark number (2), and, being real adjec-tives, they mark gender and case as well. Even modality (6) is notentirely absent from the meaning of Greek verbal nouns ; the particle avis added to infinitives and participles with a use analogous to that withverb-forms proper, and in this way some modal differences at least findexpression outside the verb finite.

The array of forms, which this calculation shows the complete verbalsystem in Greek to possess, is astonishingly large. As it is seldom ornever seen in all its force, it will be worth while to pass the long listunder review; Considered genetically, the whole of the forms of theGreek verb divide themselves into seven groups, which, as all the formsin a group have a common unchangeable kernel or stem, we refer toseven stems, or, more accurately, tense-stems. In reviewing these inthis statistical manner, we will for the time preserve the order given inmy * School Grammar,' i.e.: 1), Present-stem; 2), Strong Aorist-stem(Aor. II.); 3), Future-stem; 4), Weak Aorist-stem (Aor. I. act. andmiddle); 5), Perfect-stem; 6), Strong Passive-stem (Aor. II. pass.);7), Weak Passive-stem (Aor. I. pass.). Of these seven groups thosecalled strong and weak are seldom both developed in the same verb, sothat, with comparatively few exceptions, each verb can actually showonly five groups, the active and middle aorist being either strong orweak, and the passive stem likewise. These five groups, however, maybe found entire, but for a few gaps, in a great number of verbs, and so farin current use that we may confidently affirm that there is no singleform belonging to one of these groups that a Greek, when Attic was atits prime, could not have used if he liked.

That our present attempt at reviewing the numerical strength of thisstore of verb-forms may give us no deceptive phantom results, but a real

4 idea of the number of actually occurring forms distinct in sound andmeaning, I shall proceed on the following principles. In the first place,all very rare forms, e.g. the first person dual of the middle tenses, thefeminine dual of the participles, the moods of the active perfect, havebeen left out altogether. Next, all forms which though of different

ch . NUMBER OF VERBAL FORMS. 3

meaning are phonetically identical, e.g. the nom. and ace. neuter parti-ciples, and even the phonetically identical ace. sing. masc. and nom. andace. plur. neut. of the active participles (e.g. ), and the identicalace. sing, and nom. and ace. s. neut. of the middle (e.g. v), alwayscount for a single form. But where some classes of verbs or certaindialects have varieties of formation, or where the examination of theirorigin gives us clear evidence that there was a variety on Greek ground,in such cases no later or accidental identification has made us reckon asone what the language occasionally does, or at one time did, regard asdistinct. For instance, is reckoned once as 1st pers. sing, and onceas 3rd pers. plur., for the Dorians distinguished between and,and all Greeks between and or. , it is true, is1st sing, for both ind. and conj., but as there are in Homer forms in- - for the conj., there was once a distinction between the two forms.Avr) is in Attic at once 3rd sing. conj. act. and 2nd sing. conj. middle

;

but Homer distinguishes between Xvrjai and, and even Attic atone time between Xvy and. The aor. I. inf. act. and the 2nd sing,imp. aor. I. mid. are at any rate occasionally distinguishable by theiraccent, e.g. and reason enough for counting eachform separately. On the same principles the 1st sing. fut. act., e.g.for, has been distinguished from the 1st sing. aor. I. conj..On the other hand, it cannot be shown that there ever was a phoneticdistinction in Greek itself between, as 2nd dual ind. andimperat., or between, as 2nd pi. of the two moods, andtherefore such forms are only counted once.

In this way we get the following result.From the present-stem are formed

4 INTRODUCTION. ch. .

Perf. Ind. Imper. Pluperf. Fut.Act. 7 8 3Mid. 7 4 8 Ind. 7, Opt. 8

altogether 49 forms of the verb finite; and. to this have to be added3 infinitives and 3 participlesin all 109.

The passive-stem, strong or weak as the case may be, gives

Acr. Ind. Conj. Opt. Imp.8 7 8 6

Fut, Ind. Opt.7 9

44

which, with the 2 infinitives and the 38 participial forms, give a totalof 84.

The verbal adjectives, which belong to no tense-stem, produce 38 case-forms.

In all, then, we may get from a complete verb

249 forms of the verb finite, and258 forms of the verb infinite

altogether 507.

6 A glance at the Latin verb is enough to show us how much poorer itis than the Greek. The Latin verbal forms may be referred to twotense-stems, of which the second, that of the perfect, does not extendbeyond the active.

The present-stem has

Ind. Conj. Imper. Imperf. Ind. Imperf. Conj. Fut.Act. 6 6 5 6 6 6Mid. 6 6 4 6 6 6

altogether 69 forms of the verb finite, to which must be added 2infinitives and a participle with 8 different case-forms, and thegerundive with 12 case-forms 1that is, 91 forms in all. The perfect-stem has

6 forms for the indicative perf.6 conjunctive perf.6 indie, pluperf.6 conj. pluperf.1 form for the fut. perf.

for it is only the 1st pers. sing, that is different from the perf. conj.inall 25which with the addition of the inf. act. make 26.

Besides these there is the fut. part. act. with its 12 forms, the perf.pass. part, with the same number, and the 2 supinesin all 26.

The verb finite reckons altogether 94 forms, the verb infinite 49

total 143. Everything besides is periphrastic.In Gothic the resources are still more meagre. We can here only

compare the verb finite, as the declension of the participles is so muchmore complicated that their sum cannot be clearly stated. The strongverb in Gothic as in Latin falls into two groups, here called present andpast. The present group comprises in the indicative 7 forms, the

1 I have counted the same form only once when it does duty for more thanone case, as e.g. legendi for gen. s. an'd nom. pi.

ch. . NUMBER OF VERBAL FORMS. 5

3rd sing, and the 2nd plur. being identical, in the conjunctive 8, in theimperative only 1, as 3 forms are identical with the corresponding indie,forms ; then there are 6 middle forms. The past has 8 for the indicativeand 8 for the conjunctive. The entire sum is therefore 38.

The language that comes nearest to Greek in wealth of forms is 7undoubtedly Sanskrit. Here all the three numbers have their threepersons complete, so that each mood and tense shows 9 forms. Ofmoods and tenses there are 9, as the tenth system of forms, that ofthe participial future, being periphrastic, cannot be reckoned here.We thus get 81 forms of the verb finite in active, middle, and passiverespectively in all, therefore, 243, as against the 268 of Greek.Then there are the conjunctive forms and several optatives peculiarto the dialect of the Yedas, in which dialect, however, many of thelater forms are wanting. Still the verbal system in Indian is on thewhole, as Delbruck remarks (' Altindisches Verbum,' p. 15), not verysharply denned,

-so that it hardly admits of this kind of calculation. -Owing to the fact that many verbs have alternative forms of the present-stem freely current side by side, the number often mounts up excessively.There are, for instance, from the rt. kar make, according to Delbruck,336 forms of the present verb finite alone in Yedic Sanskrit. At a laterstage again the language has a much smaller store to show than Greek.No doubt it would be the other way if we reckoned the causative,intensive, and desiderative formations as well. These count in Sanskritgrammar for integral parts of the regular verbal inflexion, whereas inGreek, where they are far less numerous, they are separate verbs. Sinceeach of these derived formations goes through all persons in the threevoices, and has only the perfect formed by periphrasis, for every groupof 81 forms of the primitive verb we get one of 72in all, that is, 216for each derived formation, and 648 for all the three. Add to these theforms of the primitive verb, and there results the gigantic total of 891genuine verbal forms. Still we should no doubt go wrong if we treatedeach and all of the forms in this tabulated grammatical system as actuallyexisting. The whole list may be found conveniently arranged in MaxMuller's ' Sanskrit Grammar ' (London 1870, p. 245 ff.). This much may,I believe, be positively asserted, that in the number of verbal forms inliving use Greek hardly comes behind Sanskrit. This is in part con- nected with the far finer distinctions of meaning which are to be found 8in Greek. Without doubt both tense and mood systems are in the latterlanguage more developed and more compact.

If after this detailed survey*of the extensive stock of Greek forms wenow try to understand how all this wealth originated, the first certaintywe can arrive at is that its formation was a process of time. Of thisfact we get some few but important indications from the period of thelanguage's history, which may in the narrower sense be called historic,that, namely, which has left us written specimens. One of the most in-genious formations of the Greek verb, the weak passive future, is entirelywanting in Homeric Greek, and of the strong passive future there is butone certain instance,, which only occurs at 365, for-

has not the right meaning. These forms, therefore, were clearly notmade till the time subsequent to that in which the Homeric Epic was inits prime. They were evidently made to supplement the long currentpassive aorists and on the analogy of the other futures. There had long

6 INTRODUCTION. ch. .

been by the side of a, by the side of ,by the side of why should not have-

and later on, why should not have espe-cially as these forms gave greater facility for the expression of passivitythan was afforded by the middle forms . The futureoptative likewise is unknown to Homeric Greek. For no doubt LaRoche is right in altering the completely isolated and not even wellattested at 547, and reading ,after the analogy of other passages. This late growth is very significant,and teaches us much of the nature of the verb. While the system ofcases not only receives no addition whatever in the period known tous by written records, but is actually curtailed, and while very con-siderable losses can be discovered within the limits of Homeric Greek, inthe verb the power of putting out new shoots lasted much longer. Inthe use of the cases then it is remarkable to find older and nicer distinc-tions of meaning often replaced by a less delicate accuracy, and one caseassuming the functions of another as well as its own. With the verb,

9 however, the case is the reverse; here we can, so far at least astenses and moods are concerned, discern here and there the stamp of agreater delicacy and a more thoroughgoing completeness. We findanalogy to be the means by which a still living creative force attains itsends, and we may conclude that analogy was also a material element inproducing the results of yet earlier times. The impulse to canythrough to the end what is once begun, to fill up the gaps in what wasat first an isolated group of forms after the pattern of older types, is onewhich is specially characteristic of the Greek language. Hence it wascomparatively late that the marvellous system we see before us reachedits full completeness. By the side of this process of completion of thewhole we can also trace a few less important innovations as they arise,e.g. the formation of the aspirated perfect, quite unknown to HomericGreek, the extensive use of the in making the active perfect, of whichagain we see only the beginnings in Homer. Other Greek dialects areof considerable use in many directions in helping us to ascertain whatwe can of the phonetic relations of an older time before the division intodialects had taken place. But these are all isolated phenomena comparedwith the mass of forms which are unquestionably as old as Greek itself,and which prove, by the wide extent to which they accord with pheno-mena in related languages, that they were the common inheritance of allor at any rate several of the Indo-Germanic tongues.

The task, therefore, which we have to perform, if we are to understandthe structure of the Greek verb, can only be done by going back tothe relations and conditions of the language in a pre-Greek age. Themain parts of the structure were the work, not of Greeks, but of Indo-Germans far away in antiquity. Our investigation therefore, whetherwe are examining a single phenomenon or constructing a whole out ofmany, must always be of two kinds

reconstructive and constructive aswell. The former is the easier task. Reconstruction has to take theforms of the several languages and conclude from them what the primi-tive Indo-Germanic form was, and to obtain by a systematic combina-

1 tion of such primitive forms a complete image of the structure such as wemay conjecture it to have been before the first encroachments of deface-ment and decay. On the side of construction we have to ask with what

ch. . GROWTH OF THE INDO-GERMANIC VERB. 7

notion was this primitive structure inventedhow did it arise ? In sodoing we try to transport ourselves in thought to periods which are stillmore ancient, when the language bears still less direct resemblance tothat of later times. A clear perception of this twofold nature of our taskis indispensable. There are cases where the two sides are, so to speak, atodds, where it is a question whether the surplus shown by one languageor dialect compared with others is of primeval growth,, or an extraneousimitation of some other similar forma question we shall have to raise,e.g. in the case of the full termination- in the 1st sing, optative. In thesame way it is sometimes not easy, in the case of a sound by which a formin one language is distinguished from the form equivalent to it in another,to see at once whether this sound has always had a share in marking thesignificance of the form, and consequently is to be explained construc-tively, or whether it may not have arisen through a later dulling andspecial, purely phonetic development. In the latter case a reconstruc-tion is necessary before we can arrive at the older sound. Hence, thoughin theory it may be possible to keep these two sides distinct in the treat-ment of individual cases, it is practically inexpedient. What is of realimportance is rather that we should never lose sight of either. Still,since the examination of the details of the Greek verbal structure cannotfail to be a distraction to the due consideration of the whole, and as atthe same time it is of great importance that we should view the wholecollectively, it will be expedient to summarise here, by way of introduc-tion, the most essential points of what seems to me ascertainable aboutthe gradual origin of that verbal system which we may regard as alreadycomplete before the separation of the Indo-Germanic languages. To thismay well be added a short examination of such objections as have beenraised against some of the main points in this collective view, and a shortestimate of the interpretationssome of them diametrically opposed toeach otherwhich have been suggested by its opponents in its stead.

To begin then with the positive part of these considerations ; of thismuch we may be sure, in the first place, that the Indo-Germanic verb,.so far 1

1

as we can by reconstruction arrive at its fundamental outlines, no morecame into being all at once than did the Greek. It did not begin by beinga ready-made system of all kinds of form, each with its clearly dennedfunction assigned to it at its birth. Every attempt to conceive of theverb as a definite entity, after the fashion of the philosophising gram-marians of earlier times, or to show how it needs must follow this patternand no other, is a mistake. This huge system of verbal forms, perhaps themost marvellous creation of the language-making mind of man, is astratified formation. The science of language has long devoted its atten-tion to the right discrimination between these various strata of formslying one above the other, of which the younger always presupposes and isqualified by the older. I have discussed these problems before in mytreatise, ' Zur Chronologie der indogermanischen Sprachforschung,' 2ndedit. Leipz. 1873, but I must here repeat my main points.

All formal structure in the languages of our stock consists essentiallyin the union of two elements, one with meaning and the other without

;

that is, to adopt the usual phraseology, in the union of verbal roots withpronominal stems. Of this union two kinds are possible. Either it isattributive, that is, the pronominal stem is added to the more significantroot with the same force with which at a later stage of the language an

8 INTRODUCTION. ch. .

adjective or pronoun is said by grammarians to be joined attributively toa substantive : that is, ag-a (Gk.

-(-)), ag-man (Lat. ag-men) islike b, or 6. The added pronoun has here no otherforce than that of pointing, like a local adverb there, 7 to the notionexpressed in the root, and bringing it into prominence just as an articlemight. This kind of union is the main source from which arise theformative suffixes and some of the case suffixes, especially those of thenominative and accusative. The other kind of union is the predicative,the essence of which is that the added pronominal stem does duty assubject, and consequently turns the significant stem to which it is addedinto the predicate. In the clear separation of the predicative con-nexion from the attributive, while in their origin the two were hardly

12 distinguishable, lies the chef d'oeuvre of the Indo-Germanic formal struc-ture. By the more detailed arguments of the treatise above mentionedI believe I have shown that the predicative connexion was probably theone that was developed first in this stock of languages. Now herein liesthe germ of the verb. When once a root like da was united to a prono-minal stem like ta in such a way that this combination da-ta meant thatman giver, or he giver, and nothing else, a verbal form had been made,and when presently corresponding forms were made for the other personstoo, the primitive forms being da-ma, da-tva, there existed a set of suchforms, a small paradigm, with the consciousness of their inter-connexionas a necessary consequence. And as men's minds were already awake tothe necessity of avoiding confusion, and care was taken to keep theseforms distinct in sound from the attributive compounds, the verbs as aseparate part of speech now existed once for all. The further steps takenbefore the end of this primitive period,the expression of the plural bythe union of several pronominal elements, and the expression of themiddle voice by a different combination of the same, the prefixing of yetanother pronominal stem, the augment as it is called, by which the gradeof past time was marked off clearly from the grade of present,all thesewe shall see more clearly when we come to the examination of the details.What we have to do here is rather to get a bird's-eye view of the processof development as a whole.

This first stratum of verbal forms thus given in outline comprehendsonly such forms as occur, say, in the present indicative and imperfect ofthe Greek verb '. There is only one verb-stem here, and that as yetquite a simple one. Next to the indicative apparently the imperativewas formed, as we shall see further on, and its characteristic mark* lies,as in the indicative, only in the personal terminations. But of any othermark of distinction of mood or of the kind of time there is not a trace.The capital gain of the first verbal period is essentially this, that therewere now two sets of clearly stamped personal terminations for activeand middle, and an augment. These possessions were lasting, and the

i 3 distinctions thus struck out were made use of in all subsequently formedstrata. The augment, where it was wanted, at the beginning, and thepersonal terminations at the end of the word made, as it were, the firmframework for all new productions whatever within the verb finite.

Tt is at this point that the language appears to have made use, veryearly in its progress, of a means which it employs in the most variedways for the emphasising of a syllable, namely, repetition or reduplication.Instead of the simple stem, e.g. da, there might appear within the same

ch. . GEOWTH OF THE INDO-GEEMANIC VEEB. 9

verbal framework the reduplicated stem, e.g. dada, and so instead of da-tadada-ta ; and, as this happened right through all the forms, there arose atwofold series : da-ma, da-tva, da-ta, &c, and dada-ma, dada-tva, dada-ta. These two series could hardly fail to be distinguished in meaning.In many cases the difference was this, that the first series was employedto denote momentary action, the second with its fuller forms to denotecontinuous. Here then we have the first materials for marking what Ihave called the kind of time.

,

Any further formative power therefore had hardly room to exertitself either at the beginning or end of the word, but had to confine itselfexclusively to the interior. If we would understand other expansions,we must remember always that the verbal stem forms the predicate tothe shifting subjects denoted by the terminations. Now this predicatemay in a certain sense be compared to the later noun-stems, althoughquite at the beginningthat is, before the creation of verbal formsthedistinction between noun and verb did not exist. No doubt everyrendering of primitive Indo-Germanic in language of a later developmentcan be only approximative ; for there is in the essence of this oldestmode of expression an indistinctness which must of necessity giveway to a greater distinctness in the case of a language which hasbeen actually handed down by tradition. But if we are conscious thatwe are only very imperfectly reproducing the real meaning of thoseprimitive formations, we may perhaps render da-ma by give I, da-ta bygive he, and conjecture that the predicative syllable gradually acquired aforce which was not very different from that of the afterwards clearlydistinguished participle or nomen agentis, e.g. giving, giver. The idea 14that a copula is needed here appears completely untenable even whenviewed from the position of a later development of the language ; forsentences like have not been wanting in anyperiod, and no doubt they were for a long time the only kind of predica-tions in use. 2 The next expansion of verbal forms then was broughtabout, we conclude, by way of the more elaborate specialisation of theforms and functions of the predicate. The means used was exactly thesame as in the case of the noun-stems just mentioned, i.e. expansion ofthe stem. As noun-stems, even in periods of the language which areknown to us, appear now without any suffix, now with several, so theverb-stem can be used without addition as well as with the addition of asuffix. The commonest and shortest suffix is the vowel a.s Instead ofattaching the personal terminations directly to the rt. ag the noun-stem aga is formed from it, and this aga is then connected, e.g. with thesign of the third pers. sing, ta, later ti (aga-ti=ayei, agit), in the sameway in which later the sign of the nominative case is added to the samestem attributively (aga-s=ayo-g) l An imaginable 1st pers. plur. ag-maswould bear to the actually deducible aga-mas=oc, agimus, the samerelation as that borne by the Lat. noun-stem ag-men to an agi-men

2 [Cp. Eoby's Latin Grammar, ii. p. xxii.]3 Fick's attempt to dispute the existence of the suffix a (Beitr. z. K. der Indo-

Germ. Sprachen, vol. i. p. 1 ff.) seems to me unsuccessful. Nor can I see whatgain is expected to result from dividing, e.g. *hha-ra instead of Mar-, since itmakes both syllables quite unintelligible. There is nothing to prove the priorityof the verbal form. It would be just as lawful to deny that na and nu arenominal suffixes.

10 INTRODUCTION. ch. .

which the analogy of regi-men will readily suggest. These -stems sooutgrew the older stratum in numbers, as time went on, that they de-cidedly formed the rule and turned the first stratum into a group of moreor less anomalous exceptions.

The original property of forming stems possessed by this a servedto give to the stem still more of the character of a noun, and thusto mark the action denoted by it as a continuous, lasting one. This

15 explains the fact that this a, represented in Greek by or o, andlengthened in the 1st sing, to , belongs especially to the present-stem

that is, to that group of forms intended to express the action in its extentand duration. By the side of this a appear two more expansions of stemwhich a comparison of the related languages shows to be primitive, i.e.the syllables na and nu, about which little else can be said than that theyare used to make other stems beside verb-stems. The syllables in themiddle of --, -- are compared to the stem-formingelements in-- (=Skt. svap-na-s, Lat. som-nu-s for 80])-nu-s), in theSkt., Goth., and Lith. su-nu-s son, in the Skt. dhrshnu-s bold, withwhich we may directly connect dhrshno-mi I am bold (rt. dharsh=GL). It is hard to see any peculiarity in these expansive syllablesdistinguishing them from the vowel a. Nor is it easy to find anyfurther points of analogy between special forms of present-stems andnoun-stems of a similar grade of formation. After these forms hadestablished themselves, nominal and verbal stem-formation went each theirown way. The intrusion of these stem-forming syllables into theframework of the verb can only be explained by supposing that at thetime of its occurrence the forms had not yet completely set, so to speak,and that there still existed a sense that the terminations were the sub-jects and the stem the predicate. Of marks of case or number thesenoun-forms show not the faintest trace, and hence we conclude that theinflexion of the noun arose later. It is only in the period of stem-formation that the verb and the noun have anything in common. Inthis both are alike. But as soon as the noun-forms turned themselvesby fresh suffixes, and especially by case-terminations, to polysyllabicformations, they became wholly unfit to be made straight into verbs.

Reduplication is an internal, and the attachment of suffixes anexternal expansion of the stem. But the two methods may be com-bined. The stem that has been expanded externally may be inwardlystrengthened as well. We find reduplication and lengthening of thestem-vowel side by side with the attachment of a suffix, especially of ana, and the latter, i.e. lengthening or intensification, becomes an important

16 distinction between different tense-stems. When a distinction arisesbetween a stem bhuga and bhauga, lipa and laipa, we have again atwofold series of forms, and to the old binary stem-formation (the simpleand the reduplicated) is added a new means of distinguishing continuousaction(,) from momentary(, ). Meanwhilereduplication, sometimes in conjunction with the suffixed a, sometimeswithout it, furnishes the means of expressing the more intense, the com-pleted action, and thus when specially developed becomes the source ofthe perfect tense. All forms characterised by the expansion of the stemby a suffix we may distinguish from primitive forms under the namethematic. But in Greek grammar it is advisable to restrict the termthematic to those forms which show the vowels (, ) and (, ) inregular interchange, or in other words, which belong to what has always

ch. . GROWTH OF THE INDO-GERMANIC VERB. 11

been called the conjugation in . This same interchange of vowels maybe seen in the conjunctive throughout, and this is enough to show thatthis mood is a product of the period we have just been describing. Butsince a portion of the so-called verbs in Ml follow, as we saw, in theirpresent stems in -va and -vv the same principle of formation, the termthematic is found inadequate. We shall find it more correct to call thisclass, as opposed to the primitive or radical stratum, the secondary, or

in so far as we here use the word stem in the sense of the already mouldedand modified stemthe stem-stratum.

Besides these, however, there is yet a third group of verbal forms, theanalysis of which shows fresh elements in addition to those common to allverbal forms alike. The in- and, and the in donot belong to the root, nor can they be compared with the expansivestem-suffixes used in the verb after the analogy of noun-stems. Nonoun-stems show anything corresponding to these elements. The sourcefrom which noun-suffixes are drawn is pronominal stems, but with thesethe syllables in question have little or nothing in common. Their originmust therefore be sought elsewhere. Bopp in his time recognised inthem auxiliary verbs, and accordingly regarded the verbal forms sooriginated as compounds. This last expression, now in universal vise incomparative grammar, must be taken, it is true, in a limited and special 1

7

sense, since in the fullest sense of the word all verbal forms are com-pounds. But whereas in -,--,- we have a singleverbal stem in connexion with one or more pronominal stems, there arein ---, -\-- at least two verbal stems, and we can thuscall the latter compound verbal forms with the same propriety as-,- can be called compound nominal forms. Still,to denote them more exactly, we shall find it better to use the moresignificant expression auxiliaryforms, or auxiliary stratum.

This third stratum of necessity presupposes the other two; for ifthere were no verbs there could be no auxiliaries to use. Auxiliariesare nothing but verbs which have lost their full meaning. It is therule in language that the full, the significant, and the lifelike precedesthat which is empty, inexpressive, and lifeless ; and every verb that hasdegenerated into a shadowy auxiliary must have first enjoyed full powersand an independent life of its own. Of this the auxiliary verbs in eveiylanguage afford the clearest proof in their etymology. In periods ofwhich the language has come down to us verbs which originally hadmost clearly defined meanings, such as stand {stare, Fr. ete=status),remain, become (Germ, werden, orig. turn), to be bound (Germ, sollen),have, dwell (Goth, wisan [Eng. was\ Skt. rt. vas, dwell), have becomemere auxiliaries, and are sometimes nothing more than a copula. TheIndo-Germanic tongue must have possessed at least one verb that haddegenerated into a copula before the separation of the languages, i.e. as-mi I am. It had, however, other verbs as well, most likely, which alreadyhad such small specific force that they could be used to express an actionby conjunction with another stem, there being no doubt a shorter wayof saying the same thing by the use of one stem only. We can, how-ever, distinguish clearly the first and second strata in the inflexion ofthe auxiliary-forms. The aorist corresponds to, that is, theauxiliary element here is primary or radical in its inflexion. "->-,on the other hand, like the simple for eram, shows an expandedstem having the added to its root. There must have long existed an

12 INTRODUCTION. ch. .

, or rather, as the whole formation belongs to the Indo-Germanic18 period, an asa, before arose. "We see from this that the third

stratum presupposes both the first and the second. The rt. , moreover,must, before entering into this combination, have passed from the fullmeaning breathe, live, which it is highly probable, it first possessed, tothe empty one which makes us give to e?vat the name of verb substan-tive, or even simple copula. There must in fact have already existed averb substantive, inflected according to the rule of the first or secondstratum, before the forms of the third stratum arose.

If these hypotheses are granted, there is nothing extraordinary inour theory. Every form of the verb finite is a little sentence. Up tothis time speakers had been content with sentences without a copula, inwhich the connexion between subject and predicate was expressed bythe mere juxtaposition of the two, and now it was extremely natural tofollow the analogy of sentences where the copula stood separate, andhave a copula expressed inside the verb itself. While tdov, i.e. a-da-nt,

.

translated into the language of later times, would be turn dantes,-,i.e. a-da-sa-nt, would be turn dantes erant. Two points only must bepresupposed : first, a kind of fluidity about the verbal forms, in con-sequence of which the sense of the origin of the predicative syllables andtheir analogy to noun-stems had not yet been lost ; and secondly, anabsence of marks of case and number at the time that the combinationtook place. An uninflected dik, uniting in itself the meanings showingand show, could easily combine with a following asmi I am, to makedik-asmi, shortened dik-smi ; so, too, asa-mi, the later by-form of as-mi,could combine with the same nominal stem to make dih-asami, shorteneddik-sami, from which was formed the past tense a-dih-sam, i.e. Skt.ddiksham=ehi^a. :

Besides the rt. as we find two other verbal roots used in the sameway : the rt. dha do, and the rt. ja go. Later periods give us in-structive instances of the periphrastic use of these two roots. Inasmuchas every verb expresses an action, every verbal form can be replaced bythe periphrasis of an abstract noun and the verb ' do.' The infinitiveoccurs oftenest in this connexion ; cp. e.g. the German er thut kommen,the English how do you do ? The rt. ja, on the other hand, is exactly

19 adapted to express circumstance, inasmuch as go is equivalent to goabout, versari in aliqua re. Standing separately it has this force in theLat. infitias ire, and the German spazieren gehen (to go a walking).Inasmuch, again, as there is in going the idea of motion towards a goal,gocp. the Fr. je vais /airecan acquire the meaning strive, pursue,and thus become the source of marks of mood and of the future tense.Finally, it can be used for the passive, as we have it used in venum ire,as the opposite of venum dare. For go is an intransitive verb, and assuch stands in a kind of opposition to doing, and the notion ' to get into suchand such a plight,' supplies a link between it and the expression ofpassivity.

Since two or more auxiliary elements of this kind can be combined,there arises the possibility of a large number of forms which partly serveto supply the deficiencies of the older strata, especially in cases wherephonetic difficulties have arisen, partly offer an opportunity of conveyingvarious meanings which the means at hand are quite or partially unableto express.

In the course of time this third stratum outgrew the two earlier ones.

ch. . OBJECTIONS TO THE AGGLUTINATIVE THEORY. 13

Of course the origin of the auxiliary elements was soon lost to view, justas in the second stratum the sense of the way in which the stems hadbeen expanded had soon disappeared. But these syllables, beginning asthey did with a consonant, and capable of symmetrical adjustment to allkinds of stems, met 'the wants of what were relatively late periods.There was not so much force wanted for their articulation nor so great anicety of distinction required as there was for the production of the moredelicate and finer formations of a previous age, which, now that they hadthemselves provided a pattern for the younger generation of formations,became more and more antiquated, though fortunately they were, toonumerous ever to become entirely obsolete.

This short sketch of the gradual genesis of the Greek verbal forms ison the whole in accordance with the views which since Bopp's time haveobtained among comparative grammarians, and which have only beenmodified in single points here and there by further investigations, amongwhich those of Schleicher may be named as the most conclusive and com-prehensive. It is scarcely surprising that in so difficult problems there 20have been differences of opinion on certain points. Still, since the ap-pearance of Bopp's ' Conjugations-system ' the main outlines have receivedgeneral recognition. Such independent enquirers as Pott, Benfey, andSchleicher have been here completely at one with Bopp. Jacob Grimm,who is repeatedly spoken of by the below-mentioned opponent of thereceived theory as opposed to Bopp, expresses himself (' D. Gr.' i. 1051 ff.)as essentially of the same opinion. Those who treat the philosophicalside of language take the same view. For this it is enough to refer to"W. v. Humboldt's treatise 'Ueber das Entstehen der grammatischenFormen ' (< Ges. Schr.' iii. pp. 290, 297), and to Steinthal's ' Charakteristikder hauptsachlichsten Typen des Sprachbaues ' (p. 285 ff.). As we shallsee later on, even before Bopp, Buttmann was of the same view withrespect to one of the main points, i.e. the origin of personal terminationsfrom suffixed pronominal stems. This really remarkable unanimity hasbeen met by a very decided opposition from two sources : first fromWestphal in his * Philosophisch-historische Grammatik der deutschenSprache,' and later in his ' Methodische Grammatik der griechischenSprache,' in both of which books the view we have adopted is called ' dieBopp'sche Agglutinationstheorie,' and most emphatically denounced aserroneous. The second attack has been made by H. Merguet, who in hisbook ' Die Entwickelung der lateinischen Formenbildung ' (Berl. 1870)makes radical objections to several of the main points.4 A scientific oppo-sition to widespread views is itself a useful stimulus and may lead to greater 21certainty if it can be shown to be ill-grounded. I think therefore thatit is worth while to make a brief examination of these objections, and for

4 Merguet has since given repeated expression to his views, but, as far as Ican see, without going more deeply into the question, or subjecting the views hecombats to a thorough examination. I may refer specially to his latest work,TJeber dan Einfluss der Analogie und Differenzimng avf die Gestaltung der Sprach-formen, Konigsberg, 1876 -Similar doubts have been expressed, though with morereserve, by Bergaigne in the Memoir'es de la Societe de linguistique, vol. iii., whopartly follows Alfred Ludwig {Der Infinitiv im Veda ; Agglutination oder Adap-tation'). A. H. Sayce, who, in his Principles of Comparative PMMogy (2nd ed.Lond. 1875), opposes Bopp's theory in many important points, still, at p. 294,accepts its explanation of the personal terminations.

14 INTRODUCTION. ch. .

a moment to look the new theories of our opponents straight in the face.In so doing we must treat separately the origin of the personal termina-tion and the construction of compound verbal forms.

As far then as the personal terminations are concerned, Westphalacknowledges the phonetic similarity between them and the stems of thepersonal pronouns, but he adopts the view advanced, though not verypositively, by Karl Ferd. Becker, according to which the personal ter-minations, and, as Westphal holds, the middle ones, came first, and thepersonal pronouns were afterwards formed from them. The positivepart of his view we shall have to examine later on, but first of all wemust enquire into its negative side. What are the grounds then whichdecide Westphal to abandon a theory that is so widespread and, as itseems to me, so well considered? It almost looks as if he thoughtthe name ' Agglutinationstheorie ' enough in itself to arouse a feeling ofabhorrence in every thoughtful mind, as in fact the expression ' Bopp'sAgglutinationstheorie 'for Bopp's name others with equal capriciousnessput Schleicher'shas subsequently been used here and there in a likecontemptuous sense. The reasons casually adduced by Westphal aremightily meagre. In spite of repeated perusal I have only been able todiscover three definite objections. The first rests on the differencebetween the termination of the 1st sing. act. mi or m and the nomina-tive of the first personal pronoun. ' Those,' he says ('Philos. Gr.' 129),' who take the view contrary to mine and explain the termination of thefirst person in the verb by supposing the attachment of a word whichalready had its own meaning of /, are forced into a grave self-contradic-tion, for the stem ma to which they have recourse has no meaning butme, to me, and never that of /.' This objection is not hard, I think, todisable. It seems to me that the difference between the nominative and theoblique cases is one which language took cognisance of, not when stemswere formed, but after inflexion had begun. No one ever said that a nomi-

22 native ma was the source of the termination mi, but a stem ma, which, likeevery other stem, possessed the faculty of producing various cases in aperiod subsequent, as I think I have shown, to that of the origin of verbalforms. That a stem should in itself be adapted only for a certain set ofcases and not for others seems to me as inconceivable logically as that averb-stem should be adapted only for certain persons, moods, or tenses.All these things are merely accidents affecting the substance of the stemafter it has taken shape, not before. There is nothing of the kind to beseen in the pronominal stem tva for the second or ta for the third person.If then in the language of later times the stem ma forms no nominative,it must be held in so far defective : it must have left off forming a nomi-native. We find something similar in the case of the stem ta. Thisstem developes no nom. sing. masc. and fern, ta-s ta as an independentpronoun, but the nom. plur. ta-i, tds is enough to show us that there is noconceivable obstruction producing this defect, and compound forms like-- and is-te prove conclusively that there is no such thing as thecreation of stems for oblique cases alone.

Westphal, it is true, regards the assumption that the stem ma mayonce have had the power ofdenoting the subject as an hypothesis that wehave no right to make. 5 But how is it possible to discuss the first estab*

9 How little scruple Westphal has to assume even for Greek forms not sup-

ch. . . OBJECTIONS TO THE AGGLUTINATIVE THEOEY. 15

lishment of linguistic forms which undoubtedly took shape in very earlytimes, if we do not use hypotheses 1 Does Westphal then make nohypotheses when he assumes a language without personal pronouns,assumes personal terminations to have arisen from ' essentially meaning-less ' vowels and consonants, taken quite at will and presumed to ' occurnaturally ' to the primitive Indo-Germans 1 I think these such violentand improbable hypotheses that by their side the assumption that mawas defective seems perfectly innocent. Why, where are we to look for 23a language without personal pronouns 1 How are we ever to conceive ofa verbal structure so elaborate, with the most accurate means of denotingthe I, thou, we, &c, if the language was not at the same time able to ex-press the corresponding persons when standing by themselves, able, how-ever imperfectly, to express ' to him ' or * him,' ' to thee ' or ' thee ' some-how or other ? On Westphal's hypothesis this must have been impossibleuntil this process in the verb was completed. And how is it, if the per-sonal terminations really did fall like drops from the body of the middlevoice, or like ripe apples from its branches, that notwithstanding there isso very little likeness between e.g. the plural of the middle terminationsand that of the personal pronouns 1 He is obliged to admit in his ' GreekGrammar,' i. p. 391 ff., that even after applying all the 'euphonic'sounds, 'fulcra,' &c, which he has at his beck, he finds the stem of thesecond person plural ' completely unintelligible.' But if it is necessary,before we can explain the production of the independent pronouns in theplural, to find other tendencies at work than those which are discerniblein the personal terminations of the verb, the whole of Westphal's hypo-thesis falls to the ground.A second objection deals with the relation of the secondary to the

primary terminations. Westphal will not allow us any right to derivethe former from the latter by loss of sound. In the preterite, he says,we never find mi, si, ti, nti, and are not justified in assuming it to havehad these forms once. But here, too, the received theory is supportedby analogies which are beyond doubt, and which even Westphal cannotreject. If the poetical had not been preserved we should not havea single Greek second person singular with the full termination j in allother cases the has disappeared. In Latin there is no mi, si, ti. Thei has been completely lost, with the exception of a single trace in theCarmen Saliare. In the first person plural it is only Vedic Sanskrit inits -masi, which there occurs more often than -mas, and the Zend -mahi,which have kept the i, which we must undoubtedly assume for the originalIndo-Germanic tongue. In the perfect active in Sanskrit the personaltermination of the 1st and 3rd sing, has disappeared, the primary ending 24of the 3rd plur. (us by the side of anti) is considerably abbreviated. Inshort, the rejection of final vowels, especially by polysyllabic forms, isamong the best-established facts of the history of language, and since itis quite impossible to understand the verbal system without some recon-struction, there is no excessive boldness in presupposing similar processesto have happened in the earliest period of the genesis and first estab-

ported by any authority may be seen from what he says at p. 75 of vol. ii. of hisGk. Gr. : ' We must assume that there was at an earlier stage of the Greeklanguage not only a \eyere say ye, &c., but also Keyov I should like to say, and4* we want to say.'

16.

INTRODUCTION..ch. .

lishment of these forms when we have such clear analogies to guide us.The moderate assumption of such losses, even for so early times, isjustified by the fact that all inflexion not only allows but necessitatessome degree of weakening of the constructive elements added to thebody of the word.A third argument, on which our opponent lays stress, deals with the

of the 3rd pers. plur. (nti, nt, ' Gk. Gram.' p. 79). He holds that ' itis impossible to discern a mark of the third person in each of the twoelements and t so as to give probability to what analogy would show tobe the primary meaning,' i.e. he and he. We shall see below, however,that the pronominal stem an provides us with a satisfactory explana-tion, and this was recognised long since by Schleicher, though to thisthe author of the ' Methodical Grammar ' did not choose to pay anyattention.

I have not been able to discover any other objections to the receivedtheory. It would rather seem that this scholar, who many yearssince showed himself, by his valuable investigation of the laws of finalletters in Gothic, to be an acute enquirer, but who has paid little atten-tion to the literature of linguistic science since that time, has been reallydriven, by a line of argument that does not touch the Indo-Germaniclanguages at all, to represent the construction of Indo-Germanic speechas different to what all previous enquirers have thought it. In thepreface to his * Philosophisch-historische Grammatik,* p. xii, he says

:

1 There is no self-evident ground for the assumption that all phenomenaof the oldest and most primitive store of Indo-Germanic and Semiticinflexions must necessarily have arisen by agglutination, and admit of

25 absolutely no other explanation or analysis.' With respect to the possi-bility of inflexions of a different origin, he appeals especially to Arabic,saying that we have here * a class of inflexions of the noblest and oldestkind, and here not even an attempt can be made to refer the inflexionalendings a, i, u, an, in, un (for this triplet of pure vowels is the basis ofthe later terminations which were dulled by e and o) to pronominal orsignificant roots.' But we must not be too sure of this. It is main-tained, e.g. by Dillmann, a scholar of some note (' Aethiopische Gramm.'p. 254), in spite of Westphal's veto, that the a of the ace, by the side ofwhich there occurs in ^Ethiopian ha as well, is a primitive ' impersonaldemonstrative particle, meaning here, there, identical with the Hebrew- of direction.' Besides, these elements belong to the formation ofcases, others adduced by Westphal to that of moods ; and so even if theycould not be shown to have arisen from the adhesion of originallyindependent stems, this would prove nothing about the personal termina-tions. That these arose in Semitic from pronominal stems seemsgenerally admitted (cp. e.g. Gesenius, ' Hebr. Gr.' (21st ed.),p. 80 ; Dill-mann, * Aethiop. Gr.' p. 161), and is with respect to many of the ter-minations so evident as hardly to admit of a doubt, especially as theSemitic terminations share with the independent pronoun the power ofmarking gender, a power which no other verbs possess. This last factproves clearly that here, as shown by Schleicher, ' Ueber Nomen undVerbum ' (Abh. d. k. Sachs. Ges. d. Wissensch. hist.-pliilosoph. Abth.iv. p. 514 ff.), the distinction between noun and verb has not yet beenquite clearly drawn.

This theory of agglutination which Westphal attacks is supported

ch. ..

OBJECTIONS TO THE AGGLUTINATIVE THEORY. 17

by an almost incalculable number of facts, and takes account throughoutof tangible magnitudes. It is a fact that in a large number of languagesthe personal terminations are absolutely identical with the possessivesuffixes. Compare, e.g. the Magyar (Schleicher, ut supra, 527)

vart-am I have waited hal-atn my fishvart-ad thou hast waited for him hal-ctd thy fishvart-a he has waited for him hal-a his fishvart-unk we have waited. hal-unk our fish.

Who can doubt here that in both cases the terminations were in them- 26selves nothing but expressions of the different persons 1 I and my, thouand thy, are here completely identical, so that we are justified in trans-lating the verbal forms as viewed by the Magyar language by myhaving waited, thy having waited, &c. ; and it will hardly be supposedthat this agglutination took place in the verb sooner than in the noun.Exactly the same process can be discerned in many other languages, asmay be conveniently seen in Schleicher (ut supra), e.g. Ostjakish (p. 535).

pane-m I laid ime-m my wifepane- thou laidest ime-n thy wifepane-t he laid. ime-t his wife.

Jakutish :byst-ym I cut bas-ym my headbyst-yu thou cuttest bas-yu thy headbyst-a he cut. bas-a his head.

If, then,"Westphal bases his view on the very imperfectly demonstratedimpossibility of explaining all inflexion to have arisen from the accretionof separate formations, the opposite view is supported by numerousactual instances of the growth of personal terminations out of pronominalstems. Add to this that, in later periods of languages whose stock ofsounds has been much reduced and thus made often undistinguishablefrom each other, personal pronouns are a second time used with verbalforms to denote the grammatical subject, now of course not as stems butas outworn cases : Igive,je donne, &c, and it will appear that the originclaimed for these terminationshowever difficult it may be to explainsome individual instancesis really as probable a one as we can everexpect to find in the case of problems which deal with the earliestperiods of the life of language. It has, moreover, the support of thegrand idea which is so truly in harmony with the researches of naturalscience, that of the continuity of all linguistic formation. The higherstages of language are not separated from the lower by an impassablegulf, but only by a greater nicety of elaboration to which certain raceshave never attained. Monosyllabic speech, imperfect combination (agglu-tination), perfect combination (inflexion), these are the three main 27stages, the third of which, if I am not mistaken, is being every day foundto be more like the second.

These self-consistent, clear, and simple opinions, which more or lessexplicitly form the basis of the whole mass of modern linguistic science,will, I venture to think, find no difficulty in holding their own against thediametrically opposite view expounded by Westphal, especially in hist philosophifcch-historische Grammatik/ e.g. p. 94 ff. It does not fall

c

18 " INTKODUCTION. ch. .

within our province to examine his general considerations, which are sosuggestive of the natural philosophy of earlier times. To many theywill be unintelligible, as I confess they are to me. Westphal regards thelinguistic structure of the Indo-Germanic stock as ' an architectural workof art, endowed with endless magnificence and lavish grandeur.' ' Thelogico-constructive categories followed by the Indo-Germans in the for-mation of their language are the same categories which have sway inthe Cosmos, in the macrocosm and in the microcosm alike ; the samethat underlie sidereal life and the various forms of telluric existence,whether inorganic, vegetable, or animal.' I readily admit, and perhapsmore readers than one would do the same, that I find theories of such avast sweep- brought no nearer to my comprehension by the followingsomewhat extraordinary comparison. Westphal goes on to say, * Ourprimitive Indo-Germanic ancestors followed these categories with thesame perfect unconsciousness as when they snatched at the first food tonourish their bodies, or when the first Indo-German man embraced forthe first time the first Indo-German woman, who, though he did notknow it yet, was to produce him a man like himself.' From this ' dialec-tic of celestial intelligence ' we are at length conducted to the world, withwhich we are directly concerned, the world of sounds, forms, and linguisticexpression. But here on the threshold we are met by assertions forwhich no support is even attempted* a is the vowel which came nearestto his (the Indo-German's) organs.' Since "Westphal himself admits thatthe primitive Indo-German had i and u at command as well, it is quite im-

28 possible to see by what rule he measures the nearness to the Indo-Germanof these different vowels. What is meant by i coming nearer "? If itmeans ' being more easy to pronounce,' the history of language and physi-ology both give the assertion a flat contradiction. The vowel a demandsa greater tension of the organs of speech than i or u, and hence, as iswell known, a tends everywhere, as languages go on, to become more likei or u. And yet it is upon this undefined notion of ' coming nearer,'which surprises us as we pass from the macrocosm to the origin of lan-guage, that all Westphal's subsequent system rests. He confidentlyapplies the same notion of approximation to the consonants as well

:

* The nasal is the consonant that comes nearest to the organs of speech,the dental mute and the sibilant are more remote,6 hence in the inflex-ional system the former is the representative of what comes nearer tothe speaker among the dialectical series of definite conceptions, the dentalmute or the dental sibilant, which takes its place, the expression of some-thing more remote.' Here, as we see, this ambiguous conception isturned to practical account, by being made to serve as an explanation ofthe personal terminations m, s, t.

I have thought it not superfluous to add these samples of the positiveside of Westphal's teaching, though I confess that while reading thesetheorems I have at times doubted whether the author was in earnest, oronly wanted to tiy how much nonsense superficial readers could be madeto accept. I will leave each reader to take his choice between the much-abused * agglutination ' and this new philosophy of the nearest.

Another point of importance in the representation cursorily given

Ok. Or. p. 80 : ' Of consonants those that come nearest are the nasal and themute which is interchangeable with the dental sibilant.'

ch. . OBJECTIONS TO THE AGGLUTINATIVE THEORY. 19

above of the way in which verbal inflexion arose is the question of com-pound tenses. It is universally admitted that composition, a source ofword-making from which the Indo-Germans have gained so much andvarious help for the noun, is to be found at work in the verb as well.Who could fail to recognise even in Latin forms like pot-ero, Gothic likesdki-dedum (we did seek), the presence of two verbal stems, the second of 29which takes a position of subserviency to the first 1 But Westphal (' Philos.Gr.' 107) looks on the whole phenomenon as a comparatively late one.His view is that compound verbal forms are uniformly combinations ofinflected noun-forms with inflected verbal forms, as is the case, e.g. in theSkt. periphrastic perfect of the verbs of the 10th class, e.g. tiorajari Jcakdra,properly - I made theft ' for ' I stole,' or Jcorajam dsa, Uorajam babhuva,properly ' I was theft.' As infinitives again are universally held to bepetrified case-forms, Westphal is content if he can find an infinitive inthe first half of such a verbal compound. A compound therefore likethe French fut. aimer-ai, properly - I have to love,' he finds no stumbling-block. On the other hand, he denies that an uninflected or bare verbal-stem can be compounded with an inflected verbal form, which is theassumption made, e.g. by Bopp and others in order to explain the Skt.-dik-sha-m = Greek -. Here Westphal and Merguet are quite

at one, with this exception, that Merguet goes farther than his predecessorin his unqualified objection to the received theory.

The difference between us here is by no means so fundamental as thatdiscussed above. It is an actual fact that many verbal compounds areof the kind allowed by both scholars, and hence the question must beasked in each case, whether or not there can be found in the verbal-stema noun-stem capable of inflexion. This question we shall not fail toinvestigate below when we Come to the forms concerned. We may,however, notice two points by the way. Great mistakes are often madeby those*who look for inflected noun-forms or infinitives in the interiorof verbal compounds. For instance, while Westphal (p. Ill) asserts that' before this old perfect too of the verb to do (soki-da, &c.) there musthave been an infinitive originally,' he makes not the faintest attempt toestablish this by the investigation of the Teutonic languages. What isthe good of this - must ' if he leaves the question in such an imperfectstate 1 Again, in spite of his unwillingness to recognise bare stems inverbal compounds, Westphal admits on the same page that in the Latinforms eram, erim (legeram, legerim) - it certainly looks as if the auxiliary 30form in question had been added to the simple perfect-stem, though thesecombinations are too obscured to admit of a clear insight into theirgenesis.' In such a case we may be sure of so much at least, that on hisown showing there are still some obscurities left in Westphal's theory.

Merguet expresses himself more strongly still. At p. 199 of theabove-mentioned work he passes a final judgment on all such formationsin the following words : - We must not forget that stems with no inflex-ion can only be assumed to have existed as independent words in a periodantecedent to the appearance of inflexion, and must have ceased to existas such as soon as inflexion arose. Now the auxiliary verb assumed to bethe second component appears in an inflected form, and therefore presup-poses the existence of inflexion. So that we should have to suppose twowords to be here combined, of which the former could only have existedbefore inflexion began, while the latter owed its existence to inflexion

c 2

20 INTRODUCTION. ch. .

itself. These two words consequently could not both have been in useat once, and the supposition of their combination involves a contradic-tion.' Linguistic science would indeed be in an evil plight if it hadbeen maintaining for half a century doctrines which a couple of sen-tences could so completely upset. It is a pity that Merguet did not makehimself a little better acquainted with the views he attacks before writingthese words. He talks throughout as if what he calls inflexion hadburst upon the world all at once like some natural phenomenon, revolu-tionising all the previous order of things, and introducing in fact just theinflexions of verbs and nouns which are to be found in the school-books.But all linguistic enquiry, as I have repeatedly pointed out, assumesforms to have arisen gradually and in strata. Where inflexion was of sogradual a growth, there is no absurdity at all in supposing that by theside of and in composition with inflected forms there appeared formationsbelonging to a previous stage of development.

In my treatise * Zur Chronologie,' to which he occasionally refers, Ihave endeavoured to prove that inflexion in the nouns did not take placetill some time after the three main stages had been reached in the inflex-ion of the verb. If this was so, there were, e.g. no case-forms of the noun-

31 stem dik for a long time after the production of a verbal form asmi orasami I am ; that is, there was a bare stem then in use. And why shouldit be thought impossible that these two forms should have come togetherwith a small change into dik-sami, and that this dik-sami should make apreterite a-diksa-rn as dadd-mi made a-dada-m Merguet himself (p. 64)is obliged to admit that the vocative is an uninflected stem-form. Thereis here nothing like the anachrouism or ' self-contradiction whichMerguet imagines he has found. Again, what are we to say to com-pounds like--, ()-(()-,-- 1 In all these cases wemost unmistakeably find uninflected uniting with inflected stems to makeorganic wholes. Or are we to suppose that in all these cases case-termi-nations have been lost 3 Who would venture to try and establish that]In answer to objections Merguet has published a second work, ' DieAbleitung der Verbalendungen aus Hilfsverben ' &c. (Berlin, 1871). Atp. 33 of this work he is already on the road to the discovery that if wewant to understand the nature of compounded stems., we must transportourselves to that period in which words ' had the form of bare stems.'Without doubt even at that early time types had been produced of everykind of composition, and among others of the composition of predicativestems with the auxiliary verbal forms which I suppose to have beenalready developed. We are, in fact, brought back constantly from alldirections to the fundamental truth, that in all linguistic life we findolder strata side by side with younger, cropping up here and there, andreaching over from an earlier into a later period. What Merguet goeson to say in his first work about the improbability that auxiliary verbswere older than others is still less to the point. No one ever said theywere : it is universally held, on the contrary, that auxiliaries areweakened verbs of independent meaning. Forms then with auxiliariesin them do certainly presuppose older strata of verbal forms, but there isnothing that forbids us to suppose that later, after a number of verbs

32 which originally had a full meaning had become auxiliaries in separateuse, the attempt was made to use them in compounds as well, and that

ch. . OBJECTIONS TO THE AGGLUTINATIVE THEOEY. 21

too when they were bare stems, just as they were used in later timesafter their stems had been expanded and even provided with case-inflex-ions. In my treatise ' Zur Chronologic,' e.g. p. 55 f. (2nd edit.), I havecalled attention to all this, and pointed out how vast are the periodswhich the consideration of all these strata one upon another reveals to us.And in fact I cannot see how what I have there saidand Merguet

(nowhere examines more closelyis in the very least refuted by the con-tradiction he says he has discovered.

Still less successful are the attempts made to find another explanationfor the forms in question. Westphal, inasmuch as he is unable toexplain the whole mass of forms by the aid of the elements which heregards as primitive, assumes a twofold series of adjuncts by which whathe takes to have been the primitive formations were expanded. To thefirst series of adjuncts he assigns meanings, e.g. to the i of the term, mi,whichalthough by his theory i is a ' more remote ' vowelcomesnearest, i.e. is the right one to express present time, to the s of theaorist, to which, for some unknown reason, he ascribes an intensive force,and to the a which he says occasionally denotes the plural. To this listmust be added, if I understand Westphal rightly, those expansives towhich he gives the name ' fulcra,' e.g. the syllables as and jus in thepronominal stems as-ma, jus-ma, and perhaps too some of what he calls' strengthenings,' or ' secondary adjuncts,' e.g. the in . All thesesounds and syllables, of which he nowhere gives any explanation, canaccording to his theory be introduced, even after the primary structureof the language has been esta