PROGRESS DURING LAST CENTURY 21 



1873, 1875), Osthoff (N '-Declination, 1876), Brugmann (Nasalis 

 sonans, 1876; Geschichte der stammabstufenden Declination, 1876), 

 Collitz (Ueber die Annahme mehrerer grundsprachlichen a-laute, 1878), 

 Job. Schmidt (Zwei arische a-laute, 1879), which led up step by step 

 steadily and unerringly to the definite proof that the Indo-European 

 vocalism was to be understood in terms of the Greek rather than the 

 Sanskrit. These articles, written in the period of intensest creative 

 activity the science has known, represent in the cases of four of the 

 scholars mentioned, namely, Curtius, Amelung, Brugmann, Collitz, 

 the masterpieces of the scientific life of each. Though dealing with a 

 single problem, they combined, both through the results they achieved 

 and the method and outlook they embodied, to give character and 

 direction to the science of the next quarter-century. Karl Verner's 

 famous article, EineAusnahme der ersten Lautverschiebung (KZ. xxni, 

 97 ff., July, 1875), which proved of great importance, among other 

 things, in establishing a connection between Indo-European ablaut 

 and accent, belongs to this period; and Brugmann's article, Nasalis 

 Sonans, which served more than any other work to clear the way for 

 the now prevailing view of ablaut, was influenced by Verner's article, 

 which was by a few months its predecessor. Both articles, it is worthy 

 of noting, were distinctly influenced by the new phonetic; Verner's, 

 it would appear chiefly by Briicke, Brugmann's, through a suggestion 

 of Osthoff's, by Sievers, whose Lautphysiologie had just appeared 

 within the same year. The full effect upon Western science of the 

 introduction of the Indian attitude toward language-study appears 

 therefore to have been realized only with the last quarter of the 

 century. 



More prompt than the response of European science to the teach- 

 ings of Hindoo phonetics and phonology had been the acceptance of 

 the Hindoo procedure in word-analysis, especially with relation to 

 suffixes and inflectional endings. The centuries of study of Greek 

 and Latin had yielded no clue to any classification or assorting of this 

 material according to meaning or function. The medieval explana- 

 tion of dominicus as domini custos was as good as any. Besnier in, his 

 essay, La science des Etymologies (1694), counted it the mark of a 

 sound etymologist that he restrict his attention to the roots of words, 

 for to bother with the other parts would be "useless and ludicrous." 

 And when Home Tooke in the Diversions of Purley, n, 429 (1786- 

 1805), just before the sunrise, wrote the startling words, "All those 

 common terminations in any language . . . are themselves separate 

 words with distinct meanings," and (u, 454) "Adjectives with such 

 terminations (that is, -ly, -ous, -ful, -some, -ish, etc.) are, in truth, all 

 compound words"; and when he flung out like a challenge the ana- 

 lysis of Latin ibo, " I shall go," as three letters containing three words, 

 namely, i " go," 6 ( = /3ov'A.o/xai) " will," o ( = ego) " I," no one seems to 



