THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 69 
the distinctive element in the word had the accent. This would be 
only parallel with the undoubted fact that the augment had the ac- 
cent no matter how many syllables followed it, as in acicarat re- 
duplicated aer. of car. But as resting on an hypothesis, we can 
hardly deem it absolutely certain like that explaining the vowel- 
difference between éa¢ and dzton or biten, pépoitha, epepithmen, pts-to-s. 
Here we may observe that the Sanskrit guna vowel is really only the 
strong form under the acute accent or the so-called deflected form 
under the resulting circumflex. 
Our examples have explained two of the six classes of English 
verbs with gradation which Skeat enumerates, the /a// class owning 
its preterit form to contraction of a reduplicated form. These are 
the drink class and the drive class, to which dind and dite respectively 
belong. ‘The choose class is the class with ew perf..ow, weak form x, 
of which edez-somaz etleloutha aor. eluthonis a mutilated example. 
The dear and gzve classes are but one, their differences being 
late developed. They answer to the Greek verb with ¢ in pres., o in 
sing. pf., vowel dropt if possible in weak form, as ¢répo, ¢étropha, 
pass. ¢¢-trammai—ra for sonant 7. And, without delaying you 
with details, we may compare the shake class, pr. scace, pret. scéc, pl. 
scoton, pp. scacen, with-erragen, erroga, if the presence of a indicates 
an aoristic present. But what of the corresponding cognate nouns ? 
We find in Greek such forms as dérma, philigos, pets-tes, with the 
strong root form as the present; others like tomé, loipds, klop-0-s, 
phon-os, with the defiected root form found in the sing. pf., and 
others have the weak root form, as /7s-40s, ¢7-st-s, psud-ro-s, makros 
(as contrasted with mékestos, with root accent and strong root form.) 
We find traces of the same thing, though overcome by analogy, in 
Latin—precor, procus. But in the Teutonic language it is again 
very important. 
Thus with the vocalism of the pret. sing. we have darn, barm, 
qualm, share, trade, bond, song, wander, wrangle, wrong, abode, 
wroth, wrath, etc., answering to Greek words like /égos : éégo, and 
with weak root forms; score, spokesman, bundle, drunkard. 
drift, sod, etc. And examples may be cited from Sanskrit, 
as bheda, bhitti, but they do not show the difference between 
the two diphthong forms. Latin differences in quantity like duco 
(for *deuco, O.L. dovco) and duc-em are often examples of grada. 
