Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/85

II.] verb and its subject pronoun, and means 'be-I;' that is, 'I exist.' The third person of the same verb, is, possesses virtually a similar character, although linguistic usage, in its caprice, has dealt somewhat differently with it. As am stands for as-mi, 'be-I,' so is stands for as-ti, 'be-that:' we have, indeed, worn off the second element altogether, so that our is is the actual representative only of the radical syllable as; but by far the greater number of the Germanic dialects, and of the other descendants from the primitive tongue in which was first formed the compound asti, have retained at least the initial consonant of the pronominal suffix: witness the German ist, the Slavonian yest, the Latin est, the Greek and Lithuanian esti, the Sanscrit asti, and so on. It is the same t which, in the form of th or s, still does service in the regular scheme of conjugation of our verbs, as ending of the third person singular present: thus, he loveth or loves.

The examples already given may sufficiently answer our purpose as illustrations of the way in which suffixes are produced, and grammatical classes or categories of words created. The adjectives in ful, or the adjectives in less, form together a related group, having a common character, as derivatives from nouns, and derivatives possessing a kindred significance, standing in a certain like relation to their primitives, filling a certain common office in speech, an office of which the sign is the syllable ful, or less, their final member or suffix. With ly, this is still more notably the case: the suffix ly is the usual sign of adverbial meaning; it makes much the largest share of all the adverbs we have. A final m, added to a verbal root, in an early stage of the history of our mother-tongue, and yet more anciently an added syllable mi, made in like manner the first persons singular present of verbs; as an added s, standing for an original syllable ti, does even to the present day make our third persons singular. All these grammatical signs were once independent elements, words of distinct meaning, appended to other words and compounded with them—appended, not in one or two isolated cases only, but so often, and in a sense so generally applicable, that they formed whole classes of compounds. There