108 



PRINCIPLES OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE. 



duality and plurality, formed the other numbers of this simple verbal tense. 

 The prefixion of an augment, an adverbial preiix, jjointing to a "then" or 

 " there" as one of the conditions of the action, gave a past tense ; reduplica- 

 tion, symbolizing the completion of the action, produced a perfect. The future 

 and the moods, subjunctive and optative, Avere chiefly formed by composition 

 •with the developed forms of other roots, ^ signifying "to be" and " to desire." 

 Expansions of the verbal scheme, down to such late fonnations as the Germanic 

 preterit (I lovc-d =z I love-did J and the llomanic future [faimcr-ai =: j'ai a 

 aimer, " I have to love,") arc very numerous and various. The same root of 

 action or quality, by the addition of other affixes, in part of pronominal origin, 

 in part derived from other verbal roots, had its iudefiniteness limited to expres- 

 sion of the person or thing possessing the quality or exerting or suffering the 

 action, or of the act or quality itself; and the forms so created became the basis 

 of still further modification and combination. Thus arose nouns, substantive 

 and adjective ; for the two classes are originally and in idea but one. Things 

 were named as the possessors of qualities or acts, not in the way of definition 

 or complete description, but by seizing on some notable characteristic, and 

 making it stand as representative of the rest. Nouns were provided with case- 

 terminations ; these varied the themes to which they were appended, as to num- 

 ber, whether singidar, dual, or plural ; as to gender, whether male, female, or 

 neither of the two, (and this, as already noticed, upon an ideal scheme of classi- 

 fication ;) and as to case, or kind of relation sustained to the action of the sen- 

 tence, whether as subject, direct object, or indirect object, with implication of 

 the relations which we express by the use of the prepositions to, in, with, from, 

 for, and of. Eight such cases were possessed by the primitive language ; the 

 Anglo-Saxon retained five of them ; we have saved but one of the oblique 

 cases, the genitive, (our " possessive.") Prepositions, adverbial prefixes to the 

 verb, of mixal pronominal and verbal origin, were from a very early time im- 

 portant aids in directing and limiting the action expressed by the verb ; these 

 only later, and by degrees, detached themselves from the verb, and came to 

 belong to the noun, assuming the office of its disappearing case-endings. The 

 article is the part of speech of most modern origin, the definite article growing 

 out of the demonstrative pronoun, the indefinite out of the numeral one. 



At what rate these processes of growth went on at the beginning, how rapid 

 was the development out of monosyllabic barrenness into the wealth and fer- 

 tility of inflective speech, we can never hope to know. The conditions of that 

 ancient period, and the degree in which they could quicken the now sluggish 

 processes of word-combination and formation, are beyond our ken. We know 

 only that, before the separation of the Indo-European tribe into the branches 

 Avhich later became the nations of Europe and southwestern Asia, so much of 

 this linguistic development had taken place that its traces remain uneffaced, 

 even to the present day, in the languages of them all ; and, also, that the work 

 was accomplished hundreds of years, if not thousands, before the light of re- 

 corded history breaks upon the very oldest member of the family. 



Much of what has been shown to be true of the history of Indo-European 

 language is true also of that of other divisions of the human race. All the 

 varied forms of speech which fill the earth have grown into their present 

 shape by development out of such simple elements as we have called roots; 

 roots, too, have been everywhere of the same two classes, pronominal and ver- 

 bal, and the earliest forms have beeti produced especially by the combination 

 of the two. Linguistic families are made up of those languages which have 

 recognizably descended, in the ordinary course of linguistic tradition, from a 

 common ancestor. But these great families are found to differ from one 

 another, not only in their material, but also in their management of it ; in their 



