98 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



as an offspring of the Greek, as the result of a union of the Aeolic 

 dialect of Greece with barbai-ian languages in Italy, the presumption 

 was decidedly in favor of such an analogy, and it would even have re- 

 quired strong proof to convince us of any radical difference in the modal 

 systems of the two languages. But the more correct views now enter- 

 tained of the origin of the Latin would rather lead us to believe that 

 each language developed its syntax, and especially its modal system, 

 independently. The mo^al system of the parent language of the Indo- 

 European group is of course hopelessly unknown ; and yet the compar- 

 ison of the Latin and Greek verb with the Sanskrit (as the oldest rep- 

 resentative of the family) sometimes enables us to determine special 

 points in regard to the primitive forms with an approach to certainty. 

 Thus, to take the simplest case, when we find asti in Sanskrit meaning 

 is, we may be sure that some similar form existed with that meaning in 

 the parent language of the Sanskrit, the Greek, the Latin, the German, 

 &c., from which iari, est, ist, &c. were derived. So when we find a 

 Potential mood in Sanskrit, which presents striking analogies both to 

 the Greek Optative and to the Latin Subjunctive, and furthermore find 

 the analogy extending even to the Gothic, we must conclude tliat the 

 primitive language contained the elements which the Greek developed 

 into its Optative, and the Latin into its Subjunctive. (See Bopp's Ver- 

 gleichende Grammatik, II. pp. 257 - 259.) Again, the absence in later 

 Sanskrit of any form corresponding to the Greek Subjunctive might 

 give rise to the conjecture, that the Greek developed that mood by it- 

 self; but in the Vedic dialect a few relics are found of a true Subjunc- 

 tive, with a long connecting-vowel as its characteristic ; for example, 

 patdti, bearing the same relation to the Present Indicative pattdi, as 

 ^ovXrjrai to ^ovXerat. This seems to show that a similar mood existed 

 in the parent language. If this testimony can be relied on, we must 

 conclude, not only that the Latin and Greek derived the rudiments of 

 their modal forms from a common ancestor, but that they inherited 

 them from a period anterior to the separation of the Indian branch 

 from the Indo-European family. We should therefore expect to find 

 that the elements are generally the same in the two languages, but that 

 the development is essentially different ; and that the refinements in sig- 

 nification, for which the Greek modal forms are especially conspicuous, 

 have been for the most part developed by each language within itself. 



Let us now examine the forms themselves, to see how far a parallel 

 can be drawn between the Greek and Latin moods. In clauses ex- 



