A Comparative Grammar (Bopp 1885)/Of the Roots

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A Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, German, and Slavonic Languages (1885)
by Franz Bopp, translated by Edward B. Eastwick

Formation of Cases

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Franz Bopp4555889A Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic, German, and Slavonic Languages1885Edward B. Eastwick

OF THE ROOTS.

[G. Ed. p. 105.] 105. There are in Sanskrit, and the languages which are akin to it, two classes of roots: from the one, which is by far the more numerous, spring verbs, and nouns (substantives and adjectives) which stand in fraternal connection with the verbs, not in the relation of descent from them, not begotten by them, but sprung from the same shoot with them. We term them, nevertheless, for the sake of distinction, and according to prevailing custom, Verbal Roots; and the verb, too, stands in close formal connection with them, because from many roots each person of the present is formed by simply adding the requisite personal termination. From the second class spring pronouns, all original prepositions, conjunctions, and particles: we name them Pronominal Roots, because they all express a pronominal idea, which, in the prepositions, conjunctions, and particles, lies more or less concealed. No simple pronouns can be carried back, either according to their meaning or their form, to any thing more general, but their declension-theme (or inflective base) is at the same time their root. The Indian Grammarians, however, derive all words, the pronouns included, from verbal roots, although the majority of pronominal bases, even in a formal respect, are opposed to such a derivation, because they, for the most part, end with a: one, indeed, consists simply of a. Among [G. Ed. p. 106.] the verbal roots, however, there is not a single one in ă, although long a, and all other vowels, DEV âu excepted, occur among the final letters of the verbal roots. Accidental external identity takes place between the verbal and pronominal roots; e.g. DEV i signifies, as a verbal root, “to go,” as a pronominal root, “he,” “this.”

106. The verbal roots, like those of the pronouns, are monosyllabic; and the polysyllabic forms represented by the grammarians as roots contain either a reduplicate-syllable, as DEV jâgṛi, “to wake,” or a preposition which has grown up with the root, as DEV ava-dhîr, “to despise”; or they have sprung from a noun, like DEV kumâr, “to play,” which I derive from a kumâra, “a boy.” Except the law of their being monosyllabic, the Sanskrit roots are subjected to no further limitation, and their one-syllableness may present itself under all possible forms, in the shortest and most extended, as well as those of a middle degree. This free state of irrestriction was necessary, as the language was to contain within the limits of one-syllableness the whole body of fundamental ideas. The simple vowels and consonants were not sufficient: it was requisite to frame roots also where several consonants, combined in inseparable unity, became, as it were, simple sounds; e.g. DEV sthâ, “to stand,” a root in which the age of the co-existence of the s and th is supported by the unanimous testimony of all the members of our race of languages. So also, in DEV skand, “to go,” (Lat. scand-o) the age of the combination of consonants, both in the beginning and ending of the root, is certified by the agreement of the Latin with the Sanskṛit. The proposition, that in the earliest period of language a simple vowel is sufficient to express a verbal idea, is supported by the remarkable concurrence of [G. Ed. p. 107.] nearly all the individuals of the Sanskṛit family of languages in expressing the idea “to go” by the root i.

107. The nature and peculiarity of the Sanskrit verbal roots explains itself still more by comparison with those of the Semitic languages. These require, as far as we trace back their antiquity, three consonants, which, as I have already elsewhere shewn,^[1] express the fundamental idea by themselves alone, without the aid of vowels; and although they may be momentarily compressed into one syllable, still, in this, the combination of the middle radical with the first or last cannot be recognised as original and belonging to the root, because it is only transitory, and chiefly depends on the mechanism of the construction of the word. Thus, in Hebrew, kâtûl, “slain,” in the fem., on account of the addition âh contracts itself to ktûl (ktûl-âh); while kôtêl, “slaying,” before the same addition, compresses itself in an opposite manner, and forms kôtlâh. Neither ktûl, therefore, nor kôtl, can be regarded as the root; and just as little can it be looked for in ktôl, as the status constructus of the infinitive; for this is only a shortening of the absolute form kâtôl, produced by a natural tendency to pass hastily to the word governed by the infinitive, which, as it were, has grown to it. In the imperative ktôl the abbreviation is not external, subject to mechanical conditions, but rather dynamic, and occasioned by the hurry with which a command is usually enunciated. In the Semitic languages, in decided opposition to those of the Sanskṛit family, the vowels belong, not to the root, but to the grammatical motion, the secondary ideas, and the mechanism of the construction of [G. Ed. p. 108.] the word. By them, for example, is distinguished, in Arabic, katala, “he slew,” from kutila, “he was slain”; and in Hebrew, kôtêl, “slaying,” from kâtûl, “slain.” A Semitic root is unpronounceable, because, in giving it vowels, an advance is made to a special grammatical form, and it then no longer possesses the simple peculiarity of a root raised above all grammar. But in the Sanskṛit family of languages, if its oldest state is consulted in the languages which have continued most pure, the root appears as a circumscribed nucleus, which is almost unalterable, and which surrounds itself with foreign syllables, whose origin we must investigate, and whose destination is, to express the secondary ideas of grammar which the root itself cannot express. The vowel, with one or more consonants, and sometimes without any consonant whatever, belongs to the fundamental meaning: it can be lengthened to the highest degree, or raised by Guna or Vṛiddhi; and this lengthening or raising, and, more lately, the retention of an original a, opposed to its weakening to i or change to u (§§. 66., 67.), belongs not to the denoting of grammatical relations, which require to be more clearly pointed out, but, as I imagine I can prove, only to the mechanism, the symmetry of construction.

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

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↑ Trans, of the Hist. Phil. Class of the R. A. of Litt, of Berlin for the year 1824, p. 126, &c.
↑ In his work on the language and wisdom of the Indians.

[1] Trans, of the Hist. Phil. Class of the R. A. of Litt, of Berlin for the year 1824, p. 126, &c.

[2] In his work on the language and wisdom of the Indians.

[1]

[2]

A Comparative Grammar (Bopp 1885)/Of the Roots

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