Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/102

80 origin, accompanying and auxiliary to the external distinction of conjugational endings. But, among the not inconsiderable number of verbs exhibiting this secondary change of vowel, there are a few, ending in d, in which we have elevated it to a primary rank, casting away the endings as inconvenient and unnecessary. Thus, where the Anglo-Saxon says lædan, lædde, læded, and rædan, rædde, ræded, we say I lēad, he lĕd, we have lĕd, and I rēad, he rĕad, we have rĕad—not even taking the trouble, in the latter instance, to vary the spelling to conform to the pronunciation.

Yet another analogous phenomenon has a much higher antiquity, wider prevalence, and greater importance, among the languages of the Germanic family: it is the change of radical vowel in what we usually call the "irregular" conjugation of verbs. The imperfect and participle of sing, for example, are distinguished from one another and from the present solely by a difference of vowel: thus, sing, sang, sung. Other verbs exhibit only a twofold change, their participle agreeing with either the present or the imperfect; thus, come, came, come; bind, bound, bound. That this mode of conjugation is Germanic only, proves that it arose after the separation of the Germanic languages from the greater family of which these form a branch. It is, in fact, like the other changes of vowel in declension and conjugation which we have just been considering, of euphonic origin, and it has acquired its present value and significance in comparatively modern times: indeed, the English alone has suffered it to reach its full development as a means of grammatical expression, by generally rejecting all aid from other sources than the variation of vowels in distinguishing the verbal forms from one another. In the Anglo-Saxon, it still wore in great measure a euphonic aspect: that language had its separate affixes for the infinitive and participle; it said singan, 'to sing,' and sungen, 'sung;' and its present, ic singe, and its preterit, ic sang, were distinguished in every person but one by terminations of different form: the varying scale of vowels, then, was only auxiliary to the sense, not essential—and it had, and still has, to a considerable extent, the