Page:An introduction to Indonesian linguistics, being four essays.djvu/36

24 not a single case; Karo has some five dozen. In the entire Prāsthanikaparwa of the Old Jav. Mahābhārata there are, not counting words of form, four certain cases: sih, “pity”, duk, “moment of time”, göń, “big”, and liń, “to speak”.

Roots used as words of form occur in every language, some having them in greater numbers than others, e.g., Mai. only a few, Tontb. a fairly large number. A Tontb. sentence with such monosyllabic words of form : Story of Kĕrisĕn, edited by Schwarz, end: taniqtuo si sisil an doroq i Cĕrisĕn “Thus (runs) the story about Kĕrisĕn”.

35. It can be shown that the Original IN possessed a greater number of independently existing roots than any livihg IN language does. This is indicated by the fact that in Modern Jav. several words exist only in disyllabic form which in Old Jav. still lived in monosyllabic shape; accordingly as we go back in time the number of monosyllables increases. One of these cases is the Modern Jav. duduh, Old Jav. duh, “liquid”. But § 91 forbids us to assume that Original IN spoke entirely in monosyllabic words.

36. The existence of mere roots, not made up into word-bases, can serve us as a touchstone to test the correctness of the principles which we have developed above for the analysis of the word-bases. There is a widespread IN word-base kasih, “pity” ; according to our principles we have to analyze it into ka + sih ; and the sih cited in § 33 confirms the correctness of the analysis.

It happens particularly frequently that a monosyllabic root survives in Toba while the closely related Karo only has a disyllabic word-base formed from it. Here, therefore, Toba offers us the desired guarantee. Examples :

Toba gas, “to break”, shows that Karo tegas, “to tear” = te + gas.

Toba gas, “to stand on end”, shows that Karo těgan, “erection” = tĕ + gan