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etc., the character of the root “is not to be determined by the number of letters, but by that of the syllables, of which they contain only one”; thus a root like i, ‘to go,’ would be unthinkable in Arabic. The consequence of this structure of the roots is that the inner changes which play such a large part in expressing grammatical modifications in Semitic languages must be much more restricted in our family of languages. These changes were what F. Schlegel termed flexions and what Bopp himself, two years before (C 7), had named “the truly organic way” of expressing relation and mentioned as a wonderful flexibility found in an extraordinary degree in Sanskrit, by the side of which composition with the verb ‘to be’ is found only occasionally. Now, however, in 1820, Bopp repudiates Schlegel’s and his own previous assumption that ‘flexion’ was characteristic of Sanskrit in contradistinction to other languages in which grammatical modifications were expressed by the addition of suffixes. On the contrary, while holding that both methods are employed in all languages, Chinese perhaps alone excepted, he now thinks that it is the suffix method which is prevalent in Sanskrit, and that “the only real inflexions … possible in a language, whose elements are monosyllables, are the change of their vowels and the repetition of their radical consonants, otherwise called reduplication.” It will be seen that Bopp here avoids both the onesidedness found in Schlegel’s division of languages and the other onesidedness which we shall encounter in later theories, according to which all grammatical elements are originally independent subordinate roots added to the main root.

      In his Vocalismus (1827, reprinted 1836) Bopp opposes Grimm’s theory that the changes for which Grimm had introduced the term ablaut were due to psychological causes; in other words, possessed an inner meaning from the very outset. Bopp inclined to a mechanical explanation[7] and thought them dependent on the weight of the endings, as shown by the contrast between Sanskr. vēda, Goth. vait, Gr. oîda and the plural, respectively vidima, vitum, ídmen. In this instance Bopp is in closer agreement than Grimm with the majority of younger scholars, who see in apophony (ablaut) an originally non-significant change brought about mechanically by phonetic conditions, though they do not find these in the ‘weight’ of the ending, but in the primeval accent: the accentuation of Sanskrit was not known to Bopp when he wrote his essay.

      The personal endings of the verbs had already been identified with the corresponding pronouns by Scheidius (1790) and Rask (P 258); Bopp adopts the same view, only reproaching Scheidius for thinking exclusively of the nominative forms of the pronouns.

      It thus appears that in his early work Bopp deals with a great many general problems, but his treatment is suggestive rather than exhaustive or decisive, for there are too many errors in details and his whole method is open to serious criticism. A modern reader is astonished to see the facility with which violent changes of sounds, omissions and transpositions of consonants, etc., are gratuitously accepted. Bopp never reflected as deeply as Rask did on what constitutes linguistic kinship, hence in C he accepts the common belief that Persian was related more closely to German than to Sanskrit, and in later life he tried to establish a relationship between the Malayo-Polynesian and the Indo-European languages. But in spite of all this it must be recognized that in his long laborious life he accomplished an enormous amount of highly meritorious work, not only in Sanskrit philology, but also in comparative grammar, in which he gradually freed himself of his worst methodical errors. He was constantly widening his range of vision, taking into consideration more and more cognate languages. The ingenious way in which he explained the curious Keltic shiftings in initial consonants (which had so puzzled Rask as to make him doubt of a connexion of these languages with our family, but which Bopp showed to be dependent on a lost final sound of the preceding word) definitely and irrefutably established the position of those languages. Among other things that might be credited to his genius, I shall select his explanation of the various declensional classes as determined by the final sound of the stem. But it is not part of my plan to go into many details; suffice it to say that Bopp’s great Vergleichende grammatik served for long years as the best, or really the only, exposition of the new science, and vastly contributed not only to elucidate obscure points, but also to make comparative grammar as popular as it is possible for such a necessarily abstruse science to be.

      In Bopp’s Vergleichende grammatik (1. § 108) he gives his classification of languages in general. He rejects Fr. Schlegel’s bipartition, but his growing tendency to explain everything in Aryan grammar, even the inner changes of Sanskrit roots, by mechanical causes makes him modify A. W. Schlegel’s tripartition and place our family of languages with the second instead of the third class. His three classes are therefore as follows: I. Languages without roots proper and without the power of composition, and thus without organism or grammar; to this class belongs Chinese, in which most grammatical relations are only to be recognized by the position of the words. II. Languages with monosyllabic roots, capable of composition and acquiring their organism, their grammar, nearly exclusively in this way; the main principle of word formation is the connexion of verbal and pronominal roots. To this class belong the Indo-European languages, but also all languages not comprised under the first or the third class. III. Languages with disyllabic roots and three necessary consonants as sole bearers of the signification of the word. This class includes only the Semitic languages. Grammatical forms are here created not only by means of composition, as in the second class, but also by inner modification of the roots.

      It will be seen that Bopp here expressly avoids both expressions ‘agglutination’ and ‘flexion,’ the former because it had been used of languages contrasted with Aryan, while Bopp wanted to show the essential identity of the two classes; the latter because it had been invested with much obscurity on account of Fr. Schlegel’s use of it to signify inner modification only. According to Schlegel, only such instances as English drink / drank / drunk are pure flexion, while German trink-e / trank / ge-trunk-en, and still more Greek leip-ō / e-lip-on / le-loip-a, besides an element of ‘flexion’ contain also affixed elements. It is clear that no language can use ‘flexion’ (in Schlegel’s sense) exclusively, and consequently this cannot be made a principle on which to erect a classification of languages generally. Schlegel’s use of the term ‘flexion’ seems to have been dropped by all subsequent writers, who use it so as to include what is actually found in the grammar of such languages as Sanskrit and Greek, comprising under it inner and outer modifications, but of course not requiring both in the same form.

      In view of the later development of our science, it is worthy of notice that neither in the brothers Schlegel nor in Bopp do we yet meet with the idea that the classes set up are not only a distribution of the languages found side by side in the world at this time, but also represent so many stages in historical development; indeed, Bopp’s definitions are framed so as positively to exclude any development from his Class II to Class III, as the character of the underlying roots is quite heterogeneous. On the other hand, Bopp’s tendency to explain Aryan endings from originally independent roots paved the way for the theory of isolation, agglutination and flexion as three successive stages of the same language.

      In his first work (C 56) Bopp had already hinted that in the earliest period known to us languages had already outlived their most perfect state and were in a process of decay; and in his review of Grimm (1827) he repeats this: “We perceive them in a condition in which they may indeed be progressive syntactically, but have, as far as grammar is concerned, lost more or less of what belonged to the perfect structure, in which the separate members stand in exact relation to each other and in which everything derived has still a visible and unimpaired connexion with its source” (Voc. 2). We shall see kindred ideas in Humboldt and Schleicher.

      To sum up: Bopp set about discovering the ultimate origin of flexional elements, but instead of that he discovered Comparative Grammar—“à peu près comme Christophe Colomb a découvert l’Amérique en cherchant la route des Indes,” as A. Meillet puts it (LI 413). A countryman of Rask may be forgiven for pushing the French scholar’s brilliant comparison still further: in the same way as Norsemen from Iceland had discovered America before Columbus, without imagining that they were finding the way to India, just so Rasmus Rask through his Icelandic studies had discovered Comparative Grammar before Bopp, without needing to take the circuitous route through Sanskrit.

      II.—§

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