Page:Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, German and Slavonic languages (Bopp 1885).pdf/20

xiv PREFACE. monitory voices of the Asiatic as well as the European sisterhood. It was necessary, also, to set aside many false appearances of affinity; as, for example, to deprive the i in the Lithuanian geri of its supposed connection with the i of Gothic, Greek, and Latin forms, such as gôdai, ἀγαθοι, boni (see p. 251, Note †, and compare Grimm I. 827. 11); and to disconnect the Latin is of lupis (lupibus) from the Greek ις of λύκοις (λύκοι-σι). As concerns the method followed in treating the subject of Germanic grammar, it is that of deducing all from the Gothic as the guiding star of the German, and explaining the latter simultaneously with the older languages and the Lithuanian. At the close of each lecture on the cases, a tabular view is given of the results obtained, in which every thing naturally depends on the most accurate distinction of the terminations from the base, which ought not, as usually happens, to be put forward capriciously, so that a portion of the base is drawn into the inflection, by which the division becomes not merely useless, but injurious, as productive of positive error. Where there is no real termination none should be appended for appearance sake: thus, for example, we give, §. 148, p. 164, the nominatives χώρα, terra, giba, &c., as without inflection cf. §. 137. The division gib-a would lead us to adopt the erroneous notion that a is the termination, whereas it is only the abbreviation of the ô (from the old â, §. 69.) of the theme. In certain instances it is