To trace out and describe in full the history of the Indo-European verb, in these and in the opposite branches of the family, showing the contractions and expansions which it has undergone, down even to such latest additions as the future of the Romanic tongues, and our personal preterit in d (the explanation and method of whose creation have been explained above, within the third lecture), can be a most fascinating and instructive job; however it’s one which we could not enterprise here to undertake. The genitive affix could be very prone to have been at the primary, like many genitive affixes of later date within the history of the Indo-European languages, one correctly forming a derivative adjective: and it is not inconceivable that the dative ending was of the identical nature. Three of them distinctly indicated local relations: the ablative (of which the earliest traceable type has t or d for its ending: thus, Sanskrit açvāt, Old Latin equod, ‘from a horse’) denoted the relation expressed by from; the locative (with the ending i), that expressed by in; the instrumental (with the ending ā), that expressed by with, or by-the idea of adjacency or accompaniment passing naturally into that of means, instrument, or cause.

Two instances, the dative and genitive, designated relations of a much less physical character: the former (with the ending ai) we must always render by for before the noun; the latter (its ending is asya or as) expressed basic pertinence or possession. Doubtless the tense was employed on the outset as normal predicative type, being neither previous, current, nor future, but all of them mixed, and doing duty as both, according as circumstances required, and as sense and connection defined; destitute, briefly, of any temporal or modal character; however other verbal varieties by levels grew out of it, or allied themselves with it, assuming the designation of different modifications of predicative meaning, and leaving to it the workplace of an indicative current. We have already (within the third lecture) had occasion to refer to the common classification of objects named, by the earliest language-makers of our family, in line with gender, as masculine, feminine, or neuter-a classification solely partially depending upon the precise possession of sexual qualities, and exhibiting, in the modern dialects which have retained it, an aspect of almost utter and hopeless arbitrariness. Again, the repetition of the foundation, either complete, or by “reduplication,” as we term it, the repetition of its initial part, was made to point symbolically the completion of the action signified by the root, and furnished one other past tense, a perfect: for instance, from the basis dā, ‘give,’ Sanskrit dadāu, Greek dedōka, Latin dedi; from dhā, ‘put, make,’ Greek tetheika, Old High-German tēta, Anglo-Saxon dide, our did.

The Greek verb is, amongst them all, essentially the most copious in its wealth, the most refined and expressive in its distinctions: it has misplaced hardly anything that was original, and has created a number of new varieties, some of which vastly tax the ingenuity of the comparative philologist who would explain their genesis. Some nouns-of which the Latin vox (voc-s), ‘a calling, a voice,’ and rex (reg-s), ‘one ruling, a king,’ are as acquainted examples as any inside our attain-are produced directly from the roots, by the addition of a distinct system of inflectional endings; the thought of substantiation or impersonation of the motion expressed by the root being arbitrarily laid in them by usage, as was the concept of predication in the forms of the verb. Verbal roots, in addition to pronominal, have been certainly also pressed early into the same service: composition of root with root, of derived form with form, the formation of derivative from derivative, went on actively, producing in enough selection the means of limitation and individualization of the indeterminate radical idea, of its reduction to appellative condition, so as to be made able to designating by suitable names the various beings, substances, acts, states, and qualities, observed each on the planet of matter and in that of thoughts.

Moods were added by degrees: a conjunctive, having for its signal a union-vowel, a, interposed between root and endings, and bearing perhaps a symbolical which means; and an optative, of which the sign is i or ia in the identical position, greatest explained as a verbal root, meaning ‘want, need.’ From this optative descends the “subjunctive” of all the Germanic dialects. The earliest future seems to have been made by compounding with the basis the already developed optative of the verb ‘to be,’ as-yâ-mi; for ‘I shall name,’ then, the language literally mentioned ‘I may be calling’ (vak-s-yâ-mi). The Germanic verb was decreased at one period almost to the excessive of poverty, having saved solely the historical current, which was used also within the sense of a future, and a preterit, the fashionable consultant of the original reduplicated perfect; each of the 2 tenses having additionally its subjunctive temper. Even such derivatives, nonetheless, as implying a greater modification of the radical concept than is exhibited by the only verbal forms, seem to have been from the primary mainly made by way of formative parts, suffixes of derivation, comparable with those which belong to the moods and tenses, and the secondary conjugations of the verb.