A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v1.c4.314

Language: English

v1.c4.314.1

The Romance languages, Italian, Spanish, French, Provençal, Portuguese, and others, are derived principally from the Latin by the process of gradually wearing away and confusing the terminations of verbs and nouns till they no longer sufficed to distinguish cases and tenses. Then by degrees additional words had to be introduced to mark these distinctions, and thus grew up the modern analytical method of construction. In Latin, *mons*, *montis*, *monti*, *montem*, *monte*, are words in which the original idea *mon* = mountain is modified by the terminations *s* (for *ts*), *tis*, *ti*, *tem*, *te*, in such a way that they suffice of themselves to indicate the relation which the idea involved in the word bears to the rest of the sentence. To make this idea clearer it had become customary in Latin to prefix certain particles, called prepositions, to the noun in those cases where the verb or noun which had relation to the idea of the object did not express the action sufficiently by itself. Thus, in *video montem*, "I see the mountain," the verb *video* suffices to express fully the action which takes place; but in *eo ad montem*, "I go to the mountain," the verb "I go" does not so suffice. A man may go up a mountain, or down it, to it, from it, or round it; hence the preposition is necessary to show what sort of going is intended with reference to the mountain; *ad*, *trans*, *circum*, = *to*, *across*, *round*, all modify the primary idea in different ways.

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In the prime and noonday of Roman speech the synthetical sentiment, or tendency to *put together* leading words and their subsidiary particles, was so strong that it was customary to prefix the preposition to the verb, and incorporate it with it; accordingly they said *adeo*, *transeo*, *circumeo montem*, in preference to *eo*, *ad*, etc. In Sanskrit this tendency is so powerful that the prepositions are almost always used in this way, and so also to a great extent in Greek. In later times, however, all the terminations noted above became abraded, and for all of them, including even the nominative, the one form *monte* was substituted in Italian. Then came in the more extended use of the prepositions, which were now necessary in every case to distinguish the relation, and the noun was modified accordingly, *del monte* (*de illo monte*), *al monte* (*ad illum montem*), *sul monte* (*super illum montem*), *dal monte* (*de ab illo monte*), and so on. This process did not of course take place all at once. The first step was to confuse the Latin terminations. A Roman of the time of Augustus would say *ad montem* with the accusative, but *a monte* with the ablative, case.

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His descendants in the fifth century have left behind charters and other documents in which *ab montem*, *ad die*, and the like occur.¹ In the case of verbs also the distinctive tense endings being confused and worn away, a more constant use of the personal pronoun became necessary, as well as a recourse to the verbs *to have* and *to be*, in order to make the exact meaning clear and unmistakable. Without wasting more time on these well-known matters, it will be seen that synthesis, or putting together, is the key-note of the ancient languages, as analysis, or dissolving, is of the moderns. When, therefore, we get to that point in the development of languages where the analytical system is fairly established and in full working order, and whence all traces of synthesis have either disappeared or become subordinate and casual instead of universal and regular, we may take that point as the commencement of the modern language. Thus, though the language of Ælfred is our true old English speech, yet it is ancient English still very largely synthetical. Modern English strictly speaking begins about 1265, when the Normans had become thoroughly amalgamated with the Saxons and Angles, and ceased to use their own French as a language apart from the Low-Dutch of the masses.

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Modern French begins a little earlier, about the end of the tenth century, when the rise of the dynasty of Hugh Capet, himself ignorant of Latin, and the extinction of the Frankish Karlings with their Teutonic speech, led to the general use of the Romance Langue d’oil, even among the higher classes.¹ If we now turn to the parallel group of languages which in distant India was developing itself at the same time and under the impulse of precisely the same instincts as those which prevailed in Europe, we shall find the coincidence in point of time fairly maintained.