The student's handbook of comparative grammar applied to the Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Gothic, Anglo-Saxon and English languages

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1862 Excerpt: ...= Bi-a, 'by twos.' IX. PRONOUNS. 199. The original elements of which the Pronouns are formed are very obscure, and the words have undergone such great changes that many of the forms admit only of conjectural explanations. a) PRONOUNS OF THE FIRST AND SECOND PERSON. The Pronouns of the First and Second Persons are similarly inflected, and may conveniently be considered together. They have the following forms: Pronouns of the First and Second Person Singular. ol OS 200. There are two stems in the above forms of the first person, one for the Nominative alone, and the other for the remaining cases. The Nom. has for the first person in Sanskrit ah, and for the second twa. The Latin and Greek seem to have preserved the original consonant in the first person; for the Germanic languages have k and kh (germ, ch), which presuppose g in the earlier languages. The Sanskrit h and Zend z, therefore, are corruptions of the original sound. Modern English, i, has lost the consonant as compared with the old English ik, like the Italian io as compared with the Latin egg. The ending of the Nominative is s.-am, z.-em, gr.-ov in the archaic forms ey-wv, Tovv, 1. o. It is lost in the other languages, and is a form which appears originally to have been confined to a few pronouns, i. e. ah-dm, tw-am, ay-am, sway-am, etc. The stem in the oblique cases of the first person is ma, that of the second person twa (or tu, changed to tw in some cases). The Accusative, Instrumental, Ablative, and Locative coincide with the declension of nouns. The Dative and Genitive differ. The former cases have in several languages lost the case-ending. Even Sanskrit and Zend have Acc. md and Gen. me as well as the fuller forms. The k in Gothic and sometimes in Anglo-S. Acc. appears to be the remains of a ...