Lastly, the primitive signification of the moods should be seen more clearly in the independent affirmative sentences in which the verb is in the first person singular." These positions the authors think are strengthened by the observation "that the various uses of the conjunctive and the optative cannot be reduced to unity of meaning except by admitting that the primitive signification is willing' for the conjunctive, desire' for the optative, a signification which is found pure only in independent affirmative propositions in which the verb is the first person singular." The 66 "Les hypothèses de M. D.," writes Thurot (article cited), me semble contestables à deux points de vue, d'abord il n'a pas tenu assez de compte des modifications que l'association des mots apporte à leur significations; ensuite il a confondu l'antériorité logique avec l'antériorité chronologique Si tous les mots conservaient leur sens propre et primitif dans toutes les constructions, il n'y aurait aucun moyen de se faire entendre. On en peut dire autant des formes grammaticales. Si l'optatif signifie proprement le vœu (ce que me paraît fort douteux), il perd cette signification et il la perd au point qu'elle ne peut pas même se présenter à l'esprit, quand il est employé au style indirect. Il en est de même du subjonctif; quand il signifie ce que M. D. appelle l'attente (erwartung), il ne signifie plus la volonté, et il est impossible de lui maintenir ce dernier sens." But even supposing to be very ancient these changes of the primitive meaning of the forms and the words which have taken place in the various constructions, we are nevertheless evidently forced to admit that in an epoch still more ancient forms and words were used in speech in their original meaning and to examine in what manner and owing to what causes such meaning underwent a change. "Je ne saurais admettre davantage," continues the French critic, "qu'on aît parlé longtemps par propositions co-ordonnées uniquement, avant d'employer des propositions subordonnées. Quand la subordination existe dans la pensée, et en beaucoup de cas elle ne peut pas ne pas exister, par exemple pour les circonstances de temps et de lieu relativement à l'action qu'elles ac compagnent, les relatifs adverbiau qui expriment le temps et le liet ne peuvent pas ne pas exprimer li subordination de la proposition qu'ils précèdent à la proposition principale." And in Bergaigue's article we read that Delbrück "dénature complétement le sens de certaines propositions subordonnées par le parti-pris de les traduie comme de simples co-ordonées. Dans les propositions dont la subordin tion est réellement nécessaire, la di pendance a dû être sentie nor seulement dès l'époque védique A criticisms of philologists on the value of such assertions may laquelle M. D. emprunte ses exemples, mais dès le premier jour où le langage s'est hasardé à rendre une seule pensée complexe au moyen de deux propositions." And here, perhaps, the two French philologists did not pay enough attention to the condition of the intellectual life in that epoch so remote and so different from our own that we can hardly figure to ourselves the slow development of the thought and the word in their reciprocal relations. Not all that appears to us original is certainly such, not merely with reference to ourselves, but also in reality in many cases it might be nothing else than the result of a long evolution.-Thurot adds to the above quoted observations the following: 1st, that the optative, morphologically considered, is shown to be akin to the historic tenses; 2nd, that the meaning of desire' might perhaps be better derived from that of past' than vice versa ; 3rd, that in fine the original force of the conjunctive and the optative might perhaps be sought with more success in the dependent than in the independent sentences. Bergaigne attempted to prove that the forms of the conjunctive and the optative could not, originally and in themselves, denote either ' willing' or 'desire.' "M.D. dit lui lui-même" (p. 17): "Un des points de vue les plus importants et qu'on ne doit pas perdre de vue, c'est que le mouvement subjectif de la volonté ou du désir demeure toujours chez la même personne, et ne peut pas passer à une seconde ou à une troisième. C'est par là que les désidératifs par exemple se distinguent des modes pour le sens." Mais si pépoui sig. nifiait par lui-même je désire porter,' pépois signifierait aussi par lui-même tu désires porter' et non 'je desire que tu portes.' Même observation pour le subjonctif. Ainsi donc, si la seconde personne de ce mode signifie primitivement ‘je veux que tu portes,' si la seconde personne de l'optatif signifie également primitivement 'je désire que tu portes,' il faut admettre que l'idée de la première personne y a été primitivement latente, et elle n'a pu l'être que dans une proposition latente elle-même je veux, je désire' d'où dépendait le subjonctif ou l'optatif." This may be said, according to Bergaigne, also of the first person. He observes, moreover, that from the ideas of wishing' and 'desire' could hardly be derived that of 'future time,' nor are the primi tive senses of the two moods distinguished in the expression of the future and of prayer.-The Iranic researches of Jolly (see ibid.) produced results favourable to the theories of Delbrück and Windisch. powerfully contributed, nor have they failed to win the praise even of linguistic students who profess ideas hardly in accordance with those which have been maintained in the work in question.' Taking his stand upon the results of the above-mentioned researches, Jolly, in a monograph Über die einfachste form 100 der hypotaxis im indogermanischen (published in the 6th volume of the Studien z. gr. u. lat. gramm. edited by G. Curtius, pp. 215-416), describes first of all the various forms of subordination (hypotaxis) in the following order: I. the subordination is not expressed by any word intended. for that purpose (simplest form of hypotaxis); II. the subordination is denoted by means of a conjunctive word in the secondary sentence, and such word is, 1st, a conjunctive pronoun par excellence, springing from an anaphoric or from an interrogative pronoun; 2ndly, a particle, itself also generally of pronominal origin; III. the subordination is indicated as well in the principal sentence as in the secondary, in so far as both contain a conjunctive word (correlation). These three forms of hypotaxis existed even in the oldest periods of the Aryan languages; probably they were developed in the order above noticed. Proceeding afterwards to examine specially the origin of the first and 1 It was not until after the publication of the Italian edition of these "Cenni storico-critici that we became acquainted with the second volume of the above mentioned Syntaktische forschungen, which forms the work of Delbrück, and is entitled Altindische tempus-lehre (Halle, 1876). The collections of examples and the observations of this illustrious investigator will undoubtedly be useful to the historico-comparative grammar of the Aryan languages, but his studies on the use of the tenses in the oldest Indian should be supplemented by corresponding studies on the functions of the tenseforms in the other Indo-European languages, and especially in the Iranic family and in Greek, the aorist and the perfect of which will be in no small measure illustrated in their syntactical value, by these new investigations. As it is, since Delbrück's treatise is still limited to Old Indian alone, we must not, for the reasons which we have already given elsewhere, discuss it in this work. simpler form, Jolly disagrees with Tobler, who (in the Germania, xvii. 257-94) assumed an ellipse of a conjunctive word, and endeavours to prove, by examples derived first from Teutonic, afterwards from the cognate languages, that, in such a case, there was a transition from parataxis to hypotaxis by means of a simple alteration of accent. Thus, without the hypothesis of the omission of any word, is explained the change of a co-ordinate into a subordinate construction.' Since we have not to notice works on syntactical affinities between the Aryan and other stocks, because they either do not exist or have not come to our knowledge, we bring to an end with the preceding remarks on subordinate constructions the first part of this work. 1 Of Bergaigne's article entitled Essai sur la construction grammaticale considérée dans son développement historique en sanskrit en grec en latin dans les langues romanes et dans les langues germaniques (Mémoires de la Société de linguistique de Paris, iii. 1-51, 124-54, 169-86) we cannot speak, because we are still waiting for the concluding part of it. 2 We must make an exception in the case of the above quoted work of Holzweissig, in which there is a chapter (the fourth, pp. 39-62,) containing a discussion of the usage of the Semitic cases, comparing them with that of the Aryan, a chapter which the author concludes with the statement that there exists a remarkable affinity between the two great linguistic stocks in the difference between grammatical cases and local cases (see especially p. 62). PART II. CHAPTER I. The Primitive Aryan Language. 161 28. THE historical and critical study of the researches made within the last decade into the individual elements of the Aryan languages, from the simplest to the most compound, must be considered as not only necessary in itself to the scientific knowledge of such languages, but also as a preparation to that of the investigations which had for their object the Indo-European languages regarded in the complex whole of their structure. Without the analytical considerations of which the first part of this book consists we should have no solid basis for the synthetic considerations which will form the second part of it. The truth of this statement will appear indisputably proved when we have described and examined the principal results of the latest investigations with respect to the Indo-European languages considered first in their original unity, afterwards in their subsequent multiplicity. Starting with the former we shall in this chapter make some remarks on the fundamental Aryan language. The phonological and morphological reconstruction of this language is, as every student of philology knows, the admirable work of Schleicher, who not only endeavoured in his Compendium to go back to the sounds and forms of the primitive and fundamental Aryan, but even had the |