Note 8 — Chapter II · BEGINNING OF NINETEENTH CENTURY

Humboldt’s relation to Bopp’s general ideas is worth studying; see his letters to Bopp, printed as Nachtrag to S. Lefman’s Franz Bopp, sein leben und seine wissenschaft (Berlin, 1897). He is (p. 5) on the whole of Bopp’s opinion that flexions have arisen through agglutination of syllables, the independent meaning of which was lost; still, he is not certain that all flexion can be explained in that way, and especially doubts it in the case of ‘umlaut,’ under which term he here certainly includes ‘ablaut,’ as seen by his reference (p. 12) to Greek future stalô from stéllō; he adds that “some flexions are at the same time so insignificant and so widely spread in languages that I should be inclined to call them original; for example, our i of the dative and m of the same case, both of which by their sharper sound seem intended to call attention to the peculiar nature of this case, which does not, like the other cases, denote a simple, but a double relation” (repeated p. 10). Humboldt doubts Bopp’s identification of the temporal augment with the a privativum. He says (p. 14) that cases often originate from prepositions, as in American languages and in Basque, and that he has always explained our genitive, as in G. manne-s, as a remnant of aus. This is evidently wrong, as the s of aus is a special High German development from t, while the s of the genitive is also found in languages which do not share in this development of t. But the remark is interesting because, apart from the historical proof to the contrary which we happen to possess in this case, the derivation is no whit worse than many of the explanations resorted to by adherents of the agglutinative theory. But Humboldt goes on to say that in Greek and Latin he is not prepared to maintain that one single case is to be explained in this way. Humboldt probably had some influence on Bopp’s view of the weak preterit, for he is skeptical with regard to the did explanation and inclines to connect the ending with the participle in t.