Till:, STUDY OF FRENCH I\ FOREIGN UNIVERSITIES. 371 



For this reason a certain temptation exists to look for connec- 

 tions with the Latin damnum, and to locate it in the same family 

 as dommage. which was in Old-French, as it is now in English, 

 damage. However, in the language of the Middle-Ages, dangier 

 has a sense different from what it means nowadays. Then it was 

 equivalent to pouvovr, presomption. Un homme dangereux meant 

 then: un homme imperieux, volontaire, i.e., self-willed, authorita- 

 tive, overbearing. Well, this circumstances combined with the 

 form dougier, which is frequently met with in manuscripts, proves 

 that danger has come from the same etymon that has given dame 

 and domaine, namely, the Latin dominum. It has nofhing 

 to do whatever with damnum. 



The third chapter of historical grammar, and the one that 

 has as yet not received the same degree of attention as the other 

 two, is syntax. The method will be the same here as for the 

 other sub-divisions: the past must explain the present. One 

 example will do to show the kind of work we have to occupy 

 ourselves with. Let us take the past participle of a verb conju- 

 gated with avoir and its agreement with the direct object in case 

 the latter precedes it. This rule is a stumbling-stone to all 

 strangers beginning to learn French. Well, the history of the 

 language gives it full explanation. In olden times the part 

 played by the verb avoir, accompanying, as an auxiliary, the past 

 participle of another verb, was not so vague as it is now. Avoir 

 in those days had still its original value of posseder. Thus is was 

 quite natural to say : j'ai la lettre lite, in about the same spirit 

 as one would say: j'ai un beau livre; or: il a deux ennemis morts 

 for il a nwrt (tue) deux ennemis. Later on, when in construc- 

 tions like these, avoir had become more and more a mere auxi 

 Mary, a symbol to make the periphrastic tenses of a verb with, 

 the mind, whenever the object of the action was mentioned, 

 before the action itself drew the main attention to the direct 

 object and stuck to the habit of giving to this past participle the 

 characteristics of gender and number that distinguish this object. 



These are the extremely sketchy and rapidly traced 

 (•utlines of the study of French at a foreign university, 

 and of the method to whose strict discipline the student 

 has to submit. For phonetics and morphology this method 

 is the deductive method. The starting-point is to be taken 

 not at the sounds of modern French, where resemblances as well 

 as multiple diversity would be apt to lead us on wrong tracks, 

 not at modern grammatical forms either, which have become too 

 uniformly blurred, but at popular Latin, the lingua rustica with 

 its clear and simple vocalism, its rich and logical forms. From 

 there we leisurely descend the current until we reach the lan- 

 guage at its present stage. With regard to syntax, it might be 

 recommended, because it is more practical, to proceed inversely, 

 ascending from the present usage to preceding stages, comparing 

 carefully what actually is with what formerly was. 



T think I may now conveniently pass to literature, 

 »md devote a few thoughts to this second great branch 



