Note 147 — Chapter XII

There is a difference of opinion among philologists as to the extent in which modifying constants were themselves originally roots. The school of Ludwig regards demonstrative elements as never having enjoyed existence as independent words; but, even so, they must have had an independent existence of some kind, else it is impossible to explain how they ever came to be employed as constantly modifying different roots in the same way. Moreover, as Max Müller well observes, “to suppose that Khana, Khain, Khanana, Khaintra, Khatra, &c., all tumbled out ready-made, without any synthetical purpose, and that their differences were due to nothing but an uncontrolled play of the organs of speech, seems to me an unmeaning assertion.... What must be admitted, however, is that many suffixes and terminations had been wrongly analyzed by Bopp and his school, and that we must be satisfied with looking upon most of them as in the beginning simply demonstrative and modificatory” (loc. cit., pp. 224 and 225). See also Farrar, Origin of Language, pp. 100, et seq.; Donaldson, Greek Grammar, pp. 67-79; and Hovelacque, Science of Language, p. 37. It will be remarked that this question does not affect the exposition in the text.