Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin - Otto Jespersen

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properly, nothing to indicate past time, but the usage of language having supplied the want of an adequate inflexion, fui received the sense of a perfect, and fu-eram, which would be nothing more than an imperfect, that of a pluperfect, and after the same manner fu-ero signifies ‘I shall have been,’ instead of ‘I shall be’ ” (AC 57). All Latin verbal endings containing r are thus explained as being ultimately formed with the substantive verb (ama-rem, etc.); thus among others the infinitives fac-ere, ed-ere, as well as esse, posse: “E is properly, in Latin, the termination of a simple infinitive active; and the root Es produced anciently ese, by adding e; the s having afterwards been doubled, we have esse. This termination e answers to the Greek infinitive in ai, eînai …” (AC 58).

      If Bopp found a master-key to many of the verbal endings in the Sanskrit root es, he found a key to many others in the other root of the verb ‘to be,’ Sanskrit bhu. He finds it in the Latin imperfect da-bam, as well as in the future da-bo, the relation between which is the same as that between er-am and er-o. “Bo, bis, bit has a striking similarity with the Anglo-Saxon beo, bys, byth, the future tense of the verb substantive, a similarity which cannot be considered as merely accidental.” [Here neither the form nor the function of the Anglo-Saxon is stated quite correctly.] But the ending in Latin ama-vi is also referred to the same root; for the change of the b into v we are referred to Italian amava, from Lat. amabam; thus also fui is for fuvi and potui is for pot-vi: “languages manifest a constant effort to combine heterogeneous materials in such a manner as to offer to the ear or eye one perfect whole, like a statue executed by a skilful artist, that wears the appearance of a figure hewn out of one piece of marble” (AC 60).

      The following may be taken as a fair specimen of the method followed in these first attempts to account for the origin of flexional forms: “The Latin passive forms amat-ur, amant-ur, would, in some measure, conform to this mode of joining the verb substantive, if the r was also the result of a permutation of an original s; and this appears not quite incredible, if we compare the second person ama-ris with the third amat-ur. Either in one or the other there must be a transposition of letters, to which the Latin language is particularly addicted. If ama-ris, which might have been produced from ama-sis, has preserved the original order of letters, then ama-tur must be the transposition of ama-rut or ama-sut, and ama-ntur that of ama-runt or ama-sunt. If this be the case, the origin of the Latin passive can be accounted for, and although differing from that of the Sanskrit, Greek, and Gothic languages, it is not produced by the invention of a new grammatical form. It becomes clear, also, why many verbs, with a passive form, have an active signification; because there is no reason why the addition of the verb substantive should necessarily produce a passive sense. There is another way of explaining ama-ris, if it really stands for ama-sis; the s may be the radical consonant of the reflex pronoun se. The introduction of this pronoun would be particularly adapted to form the middle voice, which expresses the reflexion of the action upon the actor; but the Greek language exemplifies the facility with which the peculiar signification of the middle voice passes into that of the passive.” The reasoning in the beginning of this passage (the only one contained in C) carries us back to a pre-scientific atmosphere, of which there are few or no traces in Rask’s writings; the latter explanation (added in AC) was preferred by Bopp himself in later works, and was for many years accepted as the correct one, until scholars found a passive in r in Keltic, where the transition from s to r is not found as it is in Latin; and as the closely corresponding forms in Keltic and Italic must obviously be explained in the same way, the hypothesis of a composition with se was generally abandoned. Bopp’s partiality for the abstract verb is seen clearly when he explains the Icelandic passive in -st from s = es (C 132); here Rask and Grimm saw the correct and obvious explanation.

      

      Among the other explanations given first by Bopp must be mentioned the Latin second person of the passive voice -mini, as in ama-mini, which he takes to be the nominative masculine plural of a participle corresponding to Greek -menos and found in a different form in Lat. alumnus (AC 51). This explanation is still widely accepted, though not by everybody.

      With regard to the preterit of what Grimm was later to term the ‘weak’ verbs, Bopp vacillates between different explanations. In C 118 he thinks the t or d is identical with the ending of the participle, in which the case endings were omitted and supplanted by personal endings; the syllable ed after d [in Gothic sok-id-edum; ‘Greek,’ p. 119, must be a misprint for Gothic] is nothing but an accidental addition. But on p. 151 he sees in sokidedun, sokidedi, a connexion of sok with the preterit of the verb Tun, as if the Germans were to say suchetaten, suchetäte; he compares the English use of did (did seek), and thinks the verb used is G. tun, Goth. tanjan. The theory of composition is here restricted to those forms that contain two d’s, i.e. the plural indicative and the subjunctive. In the English edition this twofold explanation is repeated with some additions: d or t as in Gothic sok-i-da and oh-ta originates from a participle found in Sanskr. tyak-ta, likh-i-ta, Lat. -tus, Gr. -tós; this suffix generally has a passive sense, but in neuter verbs an active sense, and therefore would naturally serve to form a preterit tense with an active signification. He finds a proof of the connexion between this preterit and the participle in the fact that only such verbs as have this ending in the participle form their preterit by means of a dental, while the others (the ‘strong’ verbs, as Grimm afterwards termed them) have a participle in an and reduplication or a change of vowel in the preterit; and Bopp compares the Greek aorist passive etúphth-ēn, edóth-ēn, which he conceives may proceed from the participle tuphth-eís, doth-eís (AC 37 ff.). This suggestion seems to have been commonly overlooked or abandoned, while the other explanation, from dedi as in English did seek, which Bopp gives p. 49 for the subjunctive and the indicative plural, was accepted by Grimm as the explanation of all the forms, even of those containing only one dental; in later works Bopp agreed with Grimm and thus gave up the first part of his original explanation. The did explanation had been given already by D. von Stade (d. 1718, see Collitz, Das schwache präteritum, p. 1); Rask (P 270, not mentioned by Collitz) says: “Whence this d or t has come is not easy to tell, as it is not found in Latin and Greek, but as it is evident from the Icelandic grammar that it is closely connected with the past participle and is also found in the preterit subjunctive, it seems clear that it must have been an old characteristic of the past tense in every mood, but was lost in Greek when the above-mentioned participles in tos disappeared from the verbs” (cf. Ch. XIX § 12).

      With regard to the vowels, Bopp in AC has the interesting theory that it is only through a defect in the alphabet that Sanskrit appears to have a in so many places; he believes that the spoken language had often “the short Italian e and o,” where a was written. “If this was the case, we can give a reason why, in words common to the Sanskrit and Greek, the Indian akāra [that is, short a] so often corresponds to ε and ο, as, for instance, asti, he is, ἐστί; patis, husband, πόσις; ambaras, sky, ὄμβρος, rain, etc.” Later, unfortunately, Bopp came under the influence of Grimm, who, as we saw, on speculative grounds admitted in the primitive language only the three vowels a, i, u, and Bopp and his followers went on believing that the Sanskrit a represented the original state of language, until the discovery of the ‘palatal law’ (about 1880) showed (what Bopp’s occasional remark might otherwise easily have led up to, if he had not himself discarded it) that the Greek tripartition into a, e, o represented really a more original state of things.

      II.—§ 7. Bopp continued.

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