Some New Theories of the Greek Ka-Perfect. 
151 
zwanzig jahre her; ich bin wol zu beneiden ,” where wol is quite equivalent 
to the Greek rtov, oijuai, “forsooth, I think, in my opinion.” 
It is doubtful whether we have any example of the imperfect with kev, 
as the reading of 104 is uncertain. Only one manuscript reads: svSa 
kev rjfxariT] jjev vqxxivEdxev jusyav idrov. The others give evSa uai; but 
of the aorist indicative we have at least one instance, viz. S 546. 
7 / yap fu.iv Zgdqv ys KiygdEai, r) kev ’ Opsdrr/s 
hteIvev v7toq)SdfJ£vo$. 
Here again we may translate “ you will find him alive or (it may be as¬ 
sumed) Orestes has killed him,” the kev being equivalent to wol. In Ger¬ 
man we might translate “ oder es hat ihn wol Orestes getodtet.” 
In German wol is used with the perfect indicative with great freedom in 
popular poetry, e. g., 
“ Es ging ein Muller wol uber's Feld.” 
“ Es zogen drei Burschen wol uber den Rhein.” 
“ Ein Knablein ging spazieren wol um die Abendstund.” 
That no example of the perfect indicative with kev in Homer is found, 
Osthoff regards a matter of chance, to be explained by the rarity of the 
perfect indicative in the epic or narrative style. 
So much for the form and signification in which kev , Ka has attached 
itself to the primitive perfect to produce the -Ka- perfect. Let us now note 
the successive stages of the process by which the -Ka- inflection became es¬ 
tablished throughout the whole perfect indicative and subsequently 
throughout the whole perfect system. First let us set clearly before our 
eyes the original inflection of the perfect indicative active of a Greek verb, 
such as those among which we know the -Ka- perfect to have arisen, viz ., 
long vowel stems. Let us take the stem dr a- (Ion., Att. drrj-). The early 
Greek inflection of this perfect (though not the earliest) was probably 
Singular. 
*Edv7f (for *e- drrj-a; cf. XE-Xgnca) 
^edrifC, (for ^E-drg-a^,; cf. A.£A.oi7taS ) 
*Zdrrf (for *£-drrj-£; cf. XeXontE) 
Dual. 
edrarov 
Edrarov 
Plural. 
tdrauEv 
e drare 
edradiv 
The stages of development are as follows: 
1. By the union of the Ka with the original 1st singular *sdrg we get 
Edrr/Ka. Further illustrations of this perfect from long vowel stems are: 
Ss-Sif-Ka (Segd ‘bind ’) Aeschylus, Andocides. 
rs-Sy-Ka, later rs-SsiKa, after the analogy of EiKa. 
de-Sco-Ka. 
*yE-yvoj-Ka t later s-yvco-Ka. 
2. In the second stage we find that the -Ka- perfect has extended its in¬ 
flection from the first singular in -Ka- to the second singular in -Kaf> and 
