A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India v1.c4.314.2

v1.c4.314.2

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.