PROBLEMS IN COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY 63 



two ways. In the first place it has directed attention to the study 

 of modern dialects and some of the most important contributions 

 (like that of Schiepek, Der Satzbau der Egerldnder Mundart, 1899) 

 have been along that line. In the second place it has necessarily led 

 to dealing with concrete and individual forms and phrases rather 

 than with general, abstract, and purely conceptual grammatical 

 categories. The advantage of this mode of procedure is that the 

 treatment of a single concrete phrase can take into account all those 

 factors which in the generic treatment by grammatical categories 

 must be disregarded, for all classification implies a more or less 

 judicious slighting. Consequently, "the inevitable result of over- 

 attention to classification is a diversion of attention from details." 1 

 To illustrate by an example from the author just quoted (p. 210): 

 "It is common ... to speak of the deliberative subjunctive. But 

 the function [does not abide in the single verb-form, for example, 

 faciam, but] belongs to the whole word-group. In the typical form 

 Quid ego nunc faciam each word contributes to the total meaning. 

 ... If both [ego and nunc] are omitted the question is not necessarily 

 dubitative. The subjunctive form also contributes to the expression 

 of the function of the group, though it is not essential, since the 

 same function is occasionally expressed by sentences with the indic- 

 ative. But deliberation cannot be expressed by any one of the four 

 words alone, and it is not, therefore, a function of any one of them 

 alone. There is no such thing as the deliberative or dubitative sub- 

 junctive; to use the term is to attribute the function of the whole 

 word-group to a single member of the group." 



The mention of grammatical categories suggests an important 

 problem which awaits investigation, namely, in how far our so-called 

 grammatical categories exist in the mind of the nai've speaker. Does 

 the untutored speaker who is not sicklied o'er with the pale cast of 

 grammar really possess the categories of number, case, substantive, 

 adjective, etc., apart from the individual forms? The strongest 

 argument in favor of the independent existence of such categories 

 would be the process of so-called functional association. By this is 

 meant the association of words which are neither related in root- 

 meaning (as "father" and "mother"), nor resemble each other in 

 sound (as "co(h)ors" and "curia"), but which play the same part 

 in the construction of the sentence (as two nominatives plural or 

 two first persons of the imperfect). I am not aware that this sort of 

 association appears in any of the experimental investigations which 

 the psychologists have furnished. They are in the habit of distin- 

 guishing two main kinds of association only : one by sense, the other 

 by sound. The nature of the material on which they base their classi- 

 fication may account for the absence of this kind of association in 

 1 Morris, On Principles and Methods in Latin Syntax, p. 217. 



