Page:A Comparative Grammar of the Modern Aryan Languages of India Vol 1.djvu/43

Rh as a, while the unaccented vowel is weakened to i. In vavi we have the same form, but with a v prefixed, and the form iva is a mere modern corruption, which is rejected in many cases by good authors.

Although, however, I think sufficient proof is obtainable of the fact of accentual influence, I am far from being in a position to push the theory to its full length. In truth the accent is always a difficult and obscure matter, and it is the more so in the modern languages, because they have passed through a period, a very long period, of their existence without a literature.

§ 7. It is this absence of written memorials by which to trace the current popular speech which constitutes, and probably always will constitute, the main difficulty of the inquiry. The great value to philologists of the Romance group of languages consists in the fact that they originated in historical times, and the various stages of their growth and development lie before our eyes in a long series of documents. "The language of the native population, the changes which took place in their political condition, the races and languages of the invaders and of the other foreign nations with which they came in contact, are all certainly known: and although the early stages of these Latin dialects, when they were merely barbarous and unfixed jargons, formed by the intercourse of natives and strangers, spoken chiefly among illiterate persons, and used neither as the language of the Government, of legal instruments, nor of books, are not only (with the exception of a few words) wholly unknown, but lost beyond hope of recovery; yet the events which accompanied and occasioned their origin are matter of historical record; and, if we cannot always say with certainty to what precise cause the changes which the Latin underwent were owing, our information enables us at least to obtain negative results, and to exclude undoubtingly