Page:The Making of Latin.djvu/39

Rh and the Non-vowel Sonants (§§ 197 and 207), remained the same on passing into early Latin; their changes in Latin we shall see later on.

§ The I.Eu. neutral vowel ə (§ 29) became i in Sanskrit, but ă in Greek and Latin, e.g. in Lat. status ‘fixed,’ Gr. , compared with Sansk. sthitás ‘placed, standing.’

§ A direct connection between two words is often conveniently expressed by the symbol :, which is used to mean ‘in relation to.’ Thus we may state the facts just mentioned by writing:

I.Eu. ə appears in I.Eu. *stətós : Sans. sthitás : Gr. , : Lat. status.

These three words are identical, that is, they all go back to the same original. But the sign : denotes any direct kind of relation between two forms; for example we may write “gero : gestus,” “cado : concido,” “Eng. man : Eng. men,” reading the sign as a short way of writing ‘considered in relation to’ or ‘when compared with’ or ‘beside.’

§ Before studying the history of these sounds in Latin, it will help us to consider briefly two sets of changes which happened outside the separate history