Page images
PDF
EPUB

ands; Old High-German, anter, enter; Middle HighGerman, ende; Modern High-German, end). This was preserved as late as Gower's and Chaucer's time,1 though in most cases it had then already been supplanted by the termination ing. Now what is that termination ing? It is clearly used in two different senses, even in modern English. If we say "a loving child," loving is a verbal adjective. If we say "loving our neighbor is our highest duty," loving is a verbal substantive. Again, there are many substantives in ing, such as building, wedding, meeting, where the verbal character of the substantive is almost, if not entirely, lost.

Now, if we look to Anglo-Saxon, we find the termination ing used

1. To form patronymics; for instance, Godvulfing, the son of Godvulf. In the A. S. translation of the Bible, the son of Elisha is called Elising. In the plural these patronymics frequently become the names of families, clans, villages, towns, and nations, e. g. Thyringas, the Thuringians. Even if natnes in ing are derived from names of rivers or hills or trees, they may still be called patronymics, because in ancient times the ideas of relationship and descent were not confined to living beings. People living near the Elbe might well be called the sons of the Elbe or Albings, as, for instance, the Nordalbingi in Holstein. Many of the geographical

1 Pointis and sleves be wel sittánde

Full right and straight upon the hande.

Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik, ii. 348-365.

Rom. of the Rose, 2264.

See Fürstemann, Die Deutschen Ortsnamen, p. 244; and Zeitschrift füṛ Vergleichende Sprachforschung, i. 109.

names in England and Germany were originally such patronymics. Thus we have the villages1 of Malling, of Billing, &c., or in compounds, Mallington, Billingborough. In Walsingham, the home of the Walsings, the memory of the famous race of the Walsings may have been preserved, to which Siegfried belonged, the hero of the Nibelunge.2 In German names, such as Göttingen in Hanover, Harlingen in Holland, we have old genitives plural, in the sense of "the home of the Gottings, the home of the Harlings," &c.

2. Ing is used to form more general attributive words, such as, æpeling, a man of rank; lyteling, an infant; niðing, a bad man. This ing being frequently preceded by another suffix, the l, we arrive at the very common derivative ling, in such words as darling, hireling, yearling, foundling, nestling, worldling, changeling. It is doubtful, in fact, whether even in such words as æþeling, lyteling, which end in l, the suffix is not rather ling than ing, and whether the original spelling was not æpelling and ytelling. Thus farthing, too, is a corruption of feorðling, German vierling.

1 Latham, History of the English Language, i. p. 223; Kemble, Saxons in England, i. p. 59, and Appendix, p. 449.

Grimm, Deutsche Heldensage, p. 14.

Harlings, in A. S. Herelingas (Trav. Song, i. 224); Harlunge (W. Grimm, Deut. Heldensage, p. 280, &c.), are found at Harling in Norfolk and Kent, and at Harlington (Herelingatún) in Bedfordshire and Middlesex. The Walsings, in Old Norse Völsungar, the family of Sigurdr or Siegfried, reappear at Walsingham in Norfolk, Wolsingham in Northumberland, and Woolsingham in Durham. The Billings at Billinge, Billingham, Billinghoe, Billinghurst, Billingden, Billington, and many other places. The Dyringas, in Thorington or Thorrington, are likely to be offshoots of the great Hermunduric race, the Thyringi or Thoringi, now Thuringians, always neighbors of the Saxons. - Kemble, Saxons in Englund, i. pp. 59 63.

It has been supposed that the modern English participle was formed by the same derivative, but in A. S. this suffix ing is chiefly attached to nouns and adjectives, not to verbs. There was, however, another derivative in A. S., which was attached to verbs in order to form verbal substantives. This was ung, the German ung. For instance, clansung, cleansing; beácnung, beaconing; &c. In early A. S. these abstract nouns in ung are far more numerous than those in ing. Ing, however, began soon to encroach on ung, and at present no trace is left in English of substantives derived from verbs by means of ung.

Although, as I said, it might seem more plausible to look on the modern participle in English as originally an adjective in ing, such popular phrases as a-going, a-thinking, point rather to the verbal substantives in ing as the source from which the modern English participle was derived. "I am going" is in reality a corruption of "I am a-going," i. e. “I am on going," and the participle present would thus, by a very simple process, be traced back to a locative case of a verbal noun.1

Let us lay it down, therefore, as a fact, that the place of the participle present may, in the progress of dialectic regeneration, be supplied by the locative or some other case of a verbal noun.

Now let us look to French. On June 3, 1679,

1 Cf. Garnett's paper 66 On the Formation of Words from Inflected Cases," Philological Society, vol. iii., No. 54, 1847. Garnett compares the Welsh yn sefyll, in standing, Ir. ag seasamh, on standing, the Gaelic ag sealgadh. The same ingenious and accurate scholar was the first to propose the theory of the participle being formed from the locative of a verbal

noun.

the French Academy decreed that the participles present should no longer be declined.1

What was the meaning of this decree? Simply what may now be found in every French grammar, namely, that commençant, finissant, are indeclinable when they have the meaning of the participle present, active or neuter; but that they take the terminations of the masculine and feminine, in the singular and plural, if they are used as adjectives. But what is the reason of this rule? Simply this, that chantant, if used as a participle, is not the Latin participle present cantans, but the so-called gerund, that is to say, the oblique case of a verbal noun, the Latin cantando corresponding to the English a-singing, while the real Latin participle present, cantans, is used in the Romance languages as an adjective, and takes the feminine termination,- for instance, "une femme souffrante," &c.

Here, then, we see again that in analytical languages the idea conveyed by the participle present can be expressed by the oblique case of a verbal

noun.

Let us now proceed to a more distant, yet to a cognate language, the Bengali. We there find that the so-called infinitive is formed by te, which te is, at the same time, the termination of the locative singular. Hence the present, Karitechi, I am doing.

1 Cf. Egger, Notions élémentaires de Grammaire Comparée, Paris, 1856, "La règle est faite. On ne declinera plus les participes présents.

D. 197.

- B. Jullien, Cours Supérieur, i. p. 186.

2 Diez, Vergleichende Grammatik der Romanischen Sprachen, ii. p. 114. M. M.'s Essay on the Relation of the Bengali to the Aryan and Abo. riginal Languages of India: Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1847, pp. 314, 315. Cf. Garnett, l. c. p. 29.

and the imperfect, Karitechilâm, I was doing, a mere compounds of achi, I am, âchilâm, I was, with what may be called a participle present, but what is in reality a verbal noun in the locative. Karitechi, I do, means "I am on doing," or “I am a-doing."

Now the question arises, Does this perfectly intelligible method of forming the participle from the oblique case of a verbal noun, and of forming the present indicative by compounding this verbal noun with the auxiliary verb "to be," supply us with a test that may be safely applied to the analysis of languages which decidedly belong to a different family of speech? Let us take the Bask, which is certainly neither Aryan nor Semitic, and which has thrown out a greater abundance of verbal forms than almost any known language.1 Here the present is formed by what is called a participle, followed by an auxiliary verb. This participle, however, is formed by the suffix an, and the same suffix is used to form the locative case of nouns. For instance, mendia, the mountain; mendiaz, from the mountain; mendian, in the mountain; mendico, for the sake of the mountain. In like manner, etchean, in the house; ohean, in the bed. If, then, we examine the verb,

[blocks in formation]

we see again in erorten a locative, or, as it is called, a positive case of the verbal substantive erorta, the

1 See Inchauspe's Le Verbe Basque, published by Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte. Bayonne, 1858.

« PreviousContinue »