Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/293

VII.] But they were obviously in great part of pronominal origin, and in the acts of linguistic usage which stamped upon them their distinctive value there is much which would seem abrupt, arbitrary, or even perhaps inconceivable, to one who has not been taught by extensive studies among various tongues how violent and seemingly far-fetched are the mutations and transfers to which the material of linguistic structure is often submitted—on how remote an analogy, how obscure a suggestion, a needed name or form is sometimes founded. Verbal roots, as well as pronominal, were certainly also pressed early into the same service: composition of root with root, of derived form with form, the formation of derivative from derivative, went on actively, producing in sufficient variety the means of limitation and individualization of the indeterminate radical idea, of its reduction to appellative condition, so as to be made capable of designating by suitable names the various beings, substances, acts, states, and qualities, observed both in the world of matter and in that of mind.

This class of derivatives from roots was provided with another, a movable, set of suffixes, which we call case-endings, terminations of declension. Where, as in the case of our two examples vox and rex, the theme of declension was coincident with the verbal root, the declensional endings themselves were sufficient to mark the distinction of noun from verb, without the aid of a suffix of derivation. They formed a large and complicated system, and were charged with the designation of various relations. In the first place, they indicated case, or the kind of relation sustained by the noun to`which they were appended to the principal action of the sentence in which it was used, whether as subject, as direct object, or as indirect object with implication of meanings which we express by means of prepositions, such as with, from, in, of. Of cases thus distinguished there were seven. Three of them distinctly indicated local relations: the ablative (of which the earliest traceable form has t or d for its ending: thus, Sanskrit açvāt, Old Latin equod, 'from a horse') denoted the relation expressed by from; the locative (with the ending i), that expressed by in; the instrumental (with