Page:Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, German and Slavonic languages (Bopp 1885).pdf/118

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There are in Sanskrit, and the languages which are akin to it, two classes of roots: from the one, which is by far the more numerous, spring verbs, and nouns (substantives and adjectives) which stand in fraternal connection with the verbs, not in the relation of descent from them, not begotten by them, but sprung from the same shoot with them. We term them, nevertheless, for the sake of distinction, and according to prevailing custom, Verbal Roots; and the verb, too, stands in close formal connection with them, because from many roots each person of the present is formed by simply adding the requisite personal termination. From the second class spring pronouns, all original prepositions, conjunctions, and particles: we name them Pronominal Roots, because they all express a pronominal idea, which, in the prepositions, conjunctions, and particles, lies more or less concealed. No simple pronouns can be carried back, either according to their meaning or their form, to any thing more general, but their declension-theme (or inflective base) is at the same time their root. The Indian Grammarians, however, derive all words, the pronouns included, from verbal roots, although the majority of pronominal bases, even in a formal respect, are opposed to such a derivation, because they, for the most part, end with a: one, indeed, consists simply of a. Among the verbal roots, however, there is not a single one in ă, although long a, and all other vowels, DEV âu excepted, occur among the final letters of the verbal roots. Accidental external identity takes place between the verbal and pronominal roots; e.g. DEV i signifies, as a verbal root, “to go,” as a pronominal root, “he,” “this.”

The verbal roots, like those of the pronouns, are