THEORY OF LANGUAGE. 403 



iNG, — go-lNG. " He likes to walk," or, " he likes walk-iNG :" 

 " to walk or walking is conducive to health." This principle of 

 etymology is equally conspicuous in the Latin language. In 

 the imperatives " ama," " doce," " lege," " audi," we have 

 merely the letters essential to each verb, together with 

 the terminating vowel corresponding to their respective 

 conjugations. In some imperatives even this vowel is want- 

 ing, as in " die," " d'uc," " fac," and " fer." Gramma- 

 rians call these imperatives irregular, and seem to sup- 

 pose that, at some period, they have been deprived of the 

 terminating vowel. Unless we had good proof of this, it 

 might perhaps be with equal probability supposed that these 

 words retain a simplicity originally belonging to all impera- 

 tives. At all events, they illustrate the tendency to brevity in 

 this form of the verb. It is not necessary to recur to uncer- 

 tain points in the antiquities of any language, in order to find 

 out the principles of etymology. They are exemplified in eve- 

 ry modern language. They are abundantly displayed in those 

 cases in which a new language has been formed from materials 

 surviving that destruction of pre-existing languages which is 

 naturally occasioned by the competition of several of them for 

 current use, in the mingling of different tribes. The same ra- 

 dical principles are even found to operate in the diversities of 

 provincial dialects, and in the variations produced by the rest- 

 less spirit of novelty. The imperative of the Latin verb eo 

 is as short as can be imagined, as it consists of the sino-le let- 

 ter i. When the definitive idea represented by any verb is 

 considered as an object concerning which an assertion is to be 

 made, intimation of this circumstance is given in the Latin 

 language by the termination " re" added to the imperative. 

 From the preceding imperatives we have " ama-RE," " doce- 

 " RE," " lege-RE," " audi-RE," and " i-RE." This termination 



seems 



