Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/79

II.] thought, we thus recognize the constituent elements; not a few, also, which we should not readily conjecture to be other than simple and indivisible entities, and which could not be proved otherwise by any evidence which our present speech contains, do nevertheless, when we trace their history by the aid of other and older languages than ours, admit of analysis into component parts. We will note, as instances, only a familiar word or two, namely such and which. The forms of these words in Anglo-Saxon are swylc and hwylc: with the latter of them the Scottish whilk for which quite closely agrees, and they also find their near correspondents in the German solch and welch. On following up their genealogy, from language to language of our family, we find at last that they are made up of the ancient words for so and who, with the adjective like added to each: such is so-like, 'of that likeness or sort;' which is who-like, 'of what likeness or sort.'

But we turn from compounds like these, in which two originally independent words are fully fused into one, in meaning and form, to another class, of much higher importance in the history of language.

Let us look, first, at our word fearful. This, upon reflection, is a not less evident compound than fear-inspiring: our common adjective full is perfectly recognizable as its final member. Yet, though such be its palpable origin, it is, after all, a compound of a somewhat different character from the other. The subordinate element full, owing to its use in a similar way in a great number of other compounds, such as careful, truthful, plentiful, dutiful, and the frequent and familiar occurrence of the words it forms, has, to our apprehension, in some measure lost the consciousness of its independent character, and sunk to the condition of a mere suffix, forming adjectives from nouns, like the suffix ous in such words as perilous, riotous, plenteous, duteous. It approaches, too, the character of a suffix, in that its compounds are not, like fear-inspiring and house-top, directly translatable back into the elements which form them: plentiful and dutiful do not mean 'full of plenty' and 'full of duty,' but are the precise equivalents of plenteous and duteous. We could with entire propriety form an adjective from a new noun by